They're merely hacks to get around some serious deficiencies with JavaScript...
Much like libc is just a hack to get around some serious deficiencies of C.
Query, for instance, wouldn't even be useful if the DOM weren't so horribly fucked up
And what does that have to do with JavaScript? You are saying the language is bad because one of the libraries is bad. Might as well go around complaining about every language at that point, because they all have some screwed up libraries.
Then the fact that every implementation of the language is some variant or another and you need browser specific code in real world Javascript.
This is in no way a fault of JavaScript or even the browsers implementation of JavaScript. This tends to be because of the libraries you might be using through JavaScript, such as the DOM library or other built in browser functions. Those have nothing to do with the language that is JavaScript, though people confuse them a lot. This would happen with any language, as it's up to the browser implementor to implement the libraries. Try using JavaScript in a pure JS interpreter without calling out to other libraries and you will see it works the same on all compliant interpreters.
Javascript doesn't have types to speak of, doesn't handle numbers very well, I mean seriously "+" appends two numbers? No scope to speak of. It looks object oriented, but has no real notion of classes. No inheritance.
You clearly know nothing about javascript. JavaScript has types. These types are not dynamic but can be auto-cast using clearly defined rules. JavaScript is fully object oriented. All types are objects, even functions. JavaScript has very clearly defined scope (you use curly brackets to define all scope in JavaScript). With out scope there would be no possibility of closures. And of course JavaScript handles numbers just fine (excusing the standard IEEE oddities that all IEEE compliant languages have). It also handles strings appropriately. If you can't tell the difference between a number and a string then I'm not sure what to tell you.
The only thing you got right is JavaScript's shining strength, and that is that it does not have classes. JavaScript is not a Classical language, it is a Prototypical language. If you don't know the difference then you probably should not be commenting on Prototypical languages.
In fact, Sony wouldn't know that unless VISA International tells them.
Most of the major credit card suppliers have already stated that there has been no fraud associated with this attack. I admit I have not yet read a statement from VISA, but I'm fairly certain VISA would have notified people if there was a pattern and this would have hit the news already.
It takes a billing cycle or two before phony charges become clear, as customers complain.
This is complete bullshit. Credit Card companies can detect fraud within moments of the transaction taking place unless the charges somehow look similar to the customers usual spending habit, which is very rarely the case. The majority of credit card fraud cases are caught by he banks and card companies, not by the consumers.
There will be fraud on some of these cards following the intrusion, but unless that number is higher than the expected case for 12 million cards, then Sony will not be held responsible. So far I have read three claims of fraud, which seems pretty low for the typical fraud rate on 12 million cards.
But as I have said many times, I'm not saying it won't appear, just saying that so far it has not, and the longer it goes the less likely it will appear.
We do realize that for most world citizens that have the money to have bought a PS3 system, that information is already... I don't know, like everywhere? Actively being collected by hundreds if not thousands of corporations and being (legally) sold between entities throughout the world.
I pointed this out yesterday, though I doubt most people really understood it, but all this information, except the potential CC#s and security questions, are a matter of public record for the vast majority of US citizens (can't say about the rest of the world). The lack of SSNs makes the information useful for social engineering and very little else. The security questions potentially give a little more information but I believe Sony's would pretty harmless things like "your favorite animal" and things like that. Passwords are easy to change and so are CC numbers.
Basically just agreeing with you, with the added information that this is public information that can easily be looked up in freely official records.
This would be true if time were not of the utmost importance when it comes to credit card fraud against people who are aware that there cards are compromised. Every other details that was in the data that may have been compromised is a mater of public knowledge for most people. Names, address and date's of birth are part of many vital, and public, records. I guess some of their security questions may have revealed other details, but in most cases who your childhood hero was, is not useful for identity theft (and also why I never answer those questions with anything that even looks like a valid answer personal). The only thing this compromised data has done is collect the data in one place. Data that is soon going to be protected by an id theft prevention service (if it's not already), or otherwise invalid do to canceled cards and such.
Every day this information goes unused, and unsold, the value drops. Again this is not to say that we should count on this to keep us protected, just saying that there is no reason to believe at this point that any real damage to individual consumers will come of any of this.
Never mind the fact that simple data mining of Facebook would get more useful identity information.
It's actually 12 million credit cards, and many of those have probably been canceled before any fraud was able to appear. Never mind the fact that not a single cause of fraud has been associated with the intrusion, and with 12 million cards you would think a pattern of fraud would start to appear pretty quickly. That's not to say it won't happen, or that people should not take the necessary precautions, just that so far there have been no incidents, so shorting a valuable stock is probably not the wisest idea.
Things like "Next Thursday we're sending troops into Boogerstantown at 4 AM." Release it next Friday after Boogerstantown gets clobbered.
Or maybe, just maybe, release it before boogerstantown gets clobber so that the people of the United States can tell the government and military to stop fucking around with boogerstantown and worry about fixing the ever dwindling economic power of a once great country. Or how about releasing it so that the people of boogerstantown can get out before they become labelled "collateral" damage.
The US military should not be left to act on there own except when in imminent danger and in defense of themselves or the citizens of the united states. The people of turkfuckistan or what every you were calling it are by an large most likely not a threat to the US, and even the few that are a threat are not near the level of threat that warrants significant governmental attention when the US economy is being shipped off to The Peoples Republic of Whogivesafuck.
Because I'll tell you, if they are willing to hide when they are attacking other people, they are also willing to hide when other people are going to attack us. They have and they will continue if the people of the United States (I can't speak for people of other countries but their situation is probably just as fucked right about now) start standing up and making this country what it is supposed to be, Of,By and For the people.
i actually welcome wikileaks in the realm of corporate intel and nonmilitary government secrets.
Why do you hold Corporations and non-military personnel to a higher standard than the military? You are basically saying that the military can be as corrupt as they want to be, but no one else can. You are advocating a police state whether you understand that or not. Your ignorance is just not even worth trying to point out since you profess it so openly in words.
You are a fool, and one of the few people in this country that actually deserves it when their military turns on them, or creates enemies that turn on them, or makes some drastic mistake that otherwise cause the destruction of the nation. Please don't think your siding with the military will stop them from assassinating you, in secrecy, when they decided they don't like something you have do or say.
and probably one of the few times an extended warranty makes sense.
Extended warranties always make sense... For the company selling them. Just like insurance, extended warranties are statistically a losing proposition. You actually have considerably better return on investment, over the long run, playing most casino games. To put it bluntly, extended warranties are a con.
Do you *seriously* expect any random reporter to understand the difference between encryption and hashing?:)
No I would not expect a random reported to understand that, hence why the reported said "I believe (translation not being perfect) that Hirai said they were not." He clearly didn't understand what Hirai said, which could have very well been, "the passwords were stored with a one way Hash" and the reported never heard the japanese word for "encrypted."
Have you seen any reputable resource verifying that the passwords were not hashed?
Beyond that, hashing the passwords means very little. When you have 70 million passwords and the right software and password tables, you will be able to determine a very large portion of those passwords in a very short period of time. Hashing merely keeps the honest person honest, it does not secure the password.
From the article you linked: "That same reporter asked if passwords were encrypted. I believe (translation not being perfect) that Hirai said they were not."
This is clearly fear mongering. The writer admits that they are not sure what Hirai said. Plus saying that they were not encrypted would actually be accurate if the passwords were stored correctly. Encryption implies the ability to decrypt. Password should be stored as a one way Hash, not encrypted. There is quit likely just some misunderstanding of the reporters part.
The credit card data WAS accessed.
From the article you linked: "Nikkei just asked if all 10 million credit cards got out. Hirai said "we can't rule out the possibility" that credit card info was compromised"
Again, there was no statement that the Credit Card data was accessed. It has been stated that there was no proof that it was accessed. Now that might just mean that they have poor logging on the access of that data, but that in itself is in no way a statement saying that credit card data was accessed.
When government shutdown threatened this spring, the non-negotiable point for Democrats was funding for abortion provider Planned Parenthood (whose founder Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist and racist). In 2000, blacks made up 17% of live births, yet they made up 36% of abortions.
So because blacks, as you put it, have more abortions than other races we should avoid government funding of all facilities that provide the option of abortion? That's some interesting logic there. It's as if you believe the abortion rate will go down if we don't proved government subsidies for such facilities. The abortion rate will not change, just the option for people of lower income to be able to seek professional and safer abortions will be taken away.
Black Americans disproportionately live in school districts with failing public schools, yet Democrats overwhelmingly oppose programs that might assist blacks in those school districts to send their children to good private schools.
So the government should not support a non-profit organization that provides healthy options to lower income families, but they should redistribute wealth to for profit corporations that have not shown that they are any better suited to educate the disadvantaged than the public school system.
Democrats strongly support the Davis-Bacon Act, which was passed for the express purpose of keeping black construction workers from competing with white union members for government construction jobs.
Yes I can see how a law that explicitly targeted what was essentially slave traders from being paid by the government while their indentured servants barely survive, if even that. Prevailing wage laws do not keep any race from receiving work, but they do mean you have to be paid equally for equal work.
And trust me, I'm not arguing that Democrats are any less racist than Republicans, I'm just thinking you need to rethink your arguments better.
And if you answer no then don't be surprised if you get nothing.
Insurance companies don't ask such questions, and they would need to have it in your agreement that it was a requirement if they wanted to deny your claim. They give you discounts for having alarm systems, they do not require that you secure the premises, at least not in any contract I have read.
Perhaps the real solution is don't expose your very expensive stereo system where thieves can see it in your car.
Thieves don't have to be able to see it. The purpose of high end stereo equipment is to be heard, and actually in many cases to be seen at shows and such. Yes it would be put in place so as to be obscure, but that really does defeat some of the point.
I was pretty happy with just taking the insurance approach. Theft claims do not typically raise your insurance rates, and when ever the equipment gets stolen I was able to use the insurance money to upgrade to the latest equipment. Never mind the fact that I believe that those who steal from me probably need it more than I do.
Nominated for this week's dumbest comment. A closed window is a deterrent. An open window is an invitation.
This is incorrect. This is the same argument used to lull people into a false sense of security that is used to sell "The Club" for auto security. Back in the 90's I had a number of car stereos stolen, very high end equipment, highly prized by crooks. Both were stolen from fully secured vehicles. After the second one, I talked to the installer of the third, who also sold car alarms and other security devices. His advice was to leave the doors unlocked and have insurance. Breaking into a car, or a home, is very easy for even your average burglar . If you want to minimize your loss in the event of a burglary, then do yourself a favor and leave your doors and windows unlocked. People rarely walk from door to door looking for the easy target. What they do is scope out places that have easily fenceable goods and determine when the place will be empty. Then then enter the premises anyway they can, and smashing a windows is very, very simple.
...most of the people who don't pursue undergraduate degrees are generally either too lazy or incompetent.
This is the biggest load of rubbish I have heard in a very long time. There are plenty of people that have chosen specifically not to pursue any degree program for many reasons. Some people chose to be tradesmen, entering into a career in one of the many trades like electrician or plumber. These people are highly motivated, and often very competent in their field. Some people have chosen to enter into a field that is new and therefor does not yet have an established degree program, like many of the earlier pioneers in computers and software. These people are also very highly motivated. There are also those who learn at a rate that is considerably higher than that taught in universities and have chosen to be self educated. And we can't possibly count out the effects of the economic situation. Simply put, to call people who chose not to pursue an undergraduate degree as either lazy or incompetent is an elitist view point that only exist to make those that have pursued such degrees to feel better about their own inadequacies.
With all of the copious grants and scholarships available from public and private sources both, there are few who validly are prevented from that education for want of money.
Clearly spoken as someone that is not a white-male from a middle class family in the united states. And probably also not from a truly impoverished neighbor hood, where the government grants wont cover many of the necessities of life, such as transportation, or better yet to put food on the table of an entire family. There is more to the economic situation that being able to pay tuition, but we try not to think about that, since again this helps to maintain the elitist attitudes and our own self gratification.
It is almost always talent or will, and forcing those with neither talent nor will through a process judged by similar "retention" standards as secondary education will completely tarnish if not effectively erase the value of the certification of undergraduate degrees.
And of course lets not possibly forget that this kind of attitude, that one needs talent, or some exceptional will (everyone that gets up out of bed in the morning and goes to work has the necessary will to get through an undergraduate degree) to achieve success in an undergraduate degree, has a very negative impact on those that for some reason or another do not have the same kind of elitist belief.
And it's sad, because in there some where you have a good point, that university degree programs are not for everyone and should not be required for everyone. Many careers would fair better with hands on training and apprenticeships, rather than book learning and rote memorization. It's to bad that this good point has to be hidden behind elitist ramblings.
I have no idea what you are saying. I am unaware of anyone who says that capitalists should be the locus of power.
That's the problem, most of the people that think this way would never say it, and only think this way because they haven't really thought things through. Unrestricted capitalism leads to the situation where capital is the only measure of power, and therefore capitalists become the locus of power. Once you can buy and sell anything, then you have handed over power to those that control the means of production. And if you start with an environment where 1% control the means of production, you have basically chosen to give up your freedom in exchange for serfdom.
I'm sure the book 'Outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell will be mentioned somewhere above...An above-average intelligence (~120 IQ) coupled with high practical intelligence is the common denominator of successful people.
Gladwell actually makes the argument that environment is the major factor in success, with practice, 10k hours to be exact, being the next most significant factor. Talent (or I.Q. in this case) need only be at a reasonable level and that being at the extreme high side does not afford any appreciable benefit, in regards to success.
Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" points out that "genius" looks more like 10,000 hours of practice than any kind of "magic super neurons." Have their been studies that show IQ really does predict long term success?
Actually in "Outliers", Gladwell refers to a study that showed specifically that IQ does not predict long term success. If I recall, the study showed that on average those with above average IQ faired better than average, but those with higher IQs within that group did not do any better. So for this IQ showed some correlation with success, but only to a small degree, and very high IQs did not provide any additional advantage . I wish I had a copy of the book in front of me to point out the specific research.
The U.S. still has some people who believe that the government should serve the populace and that individuals should be the locus of all power.
To bad that those of us that believe this are in a very small minority.
Lets not mistake believing that the individuals should be the locus of power with the more common thought that the capitalists (those that control capital) should be the locus of power. An elected government, when elected by knowledgeable people, has a far better chance of representing the individuals than a de-facto government set up by the capitalists by virtue of their capital alone.
The origins of the term Libertarian are traceable back to the Anarchist movements. The original Anarchist movements were collectivist movements, with Anarcho-Communist and Anarcho-Syndiclist being two of the major schools of thought. During the spanish revolutions the anarchists in Spain formed anarchist communes built of this collectivist ideal, which to this day are the best implemented examples of large scale anarchism. These Anarcho-Collectivists are the original Libertarians, as were the Libertarian-Socialists and even the Anarcho-Capitalists.
Point being that the current usage of Libertarian, to hide the goals of Corporatism, is certainly not in line with the original meaning of the word, and hence why some people believe that the Neo-Libertarians "hijacked the name".
Because most techie types simply will refuse to buy it.
The real "techie types" will not refuse to buy the PS4 because of this issue. Real "techie types" realize that even though Sony removed this feature, if you voluntarily installed a firmware update, they were also the only console maker to even offer such a feature to begin with. Twice now Sony has officially an operating system that allowed developers access to unique processing hardware. Neither Nintendo or MS has had unique cutting edge hardware, nor offered user the ability to access that hardware fro development purposes. The real "techie types" are still using the Other OS feature on their cluster of PS3s, they were never using the PS3 to play games.
This is going to end up right up there with Sony's other historic mistakes. In other words, it's not going to change much because Sony still offers more for the money than any other console maker.
Slashdot Mirror
They're merely hacks to get around some serious deficiencies with JavaScript...
Much like libc is just a hack to get around some serious deficiencies of C.
Query, for instance, wouldn't even be useful if the DOM weren't so horribly fucked up
And what does that have to do with JavaScript? You are saying the language is bad because one of the libraries is bad. Might as well go around complaining about every language at that point, because they all have some screwed up libraries.
Then the fact that every implementation of the language is some variant or another and you need browser specific code in real world Javascript.
This is in no way a fault of JavaScript or even the browsers implementation of JavaScript. This tends to be because of the libraries you might be using through JavaScript, such as the DOM library or other built in browser functions. Those have nothing to do with the language that is JavaScript, though people confuse them a lot. This would happen with any language, as it's up to the browser implementor to implement the libraries. Try using JavaScript in a pure JS interpreter without calling out to other libraries and you will see it works the same on all compliant interpreters.
Javascript doesn't have types to speak of, doesn't handle numbers very well, I mean seriously "+" appends two numbers? No scope to speak of. It looks object oriented, but has no real notion of classes. No inheritance.
You clearly know nothing about javascript. JavaScript has types. These types are not dynamic but can be auto-cast using clearly defined rules. JavaScript is fully object oriented. All types are objects, even functions. JavaScript has very clearly defined scope (you use curly brackets to define all scope in JavaScript). With out scope there would be no possibility of closures. And of course JavaScript handles numbers just fine (excusing the standard IEEE oddities that all IEEE compliant languages have). It also handles strings appropriately. If you can't tell the difference between a number and a string then I'm not sure what to tell you.
The only thing you got right is JavaScript's shining strength, and that is that it does not have classes. JavaScript is not a Classical language, it is a Prototypical language. If you don't know the difference then you probably should not be commenting on Prototypical languages.
In fact, Sony wouldn't know that unless VISA International tells them.
Most of the major credit card suppliers have already stated that there has been no fraud associated with this attack. I admit I have not yet read a statement from VISA, but I'm fairly certain VISA would have notified people if there was a pattern and this would have hit the news already.
It takes a billing cycle or two before phony charges become clear, as customers complain.
This is complete bullshit. Credit Card companies can detect fraud within moments of the transaction taking place unless the charges somehow look similar to the customers usual spending habit, which is very rarely the case. The majority of credit card fraud cases are caught by he banks and card companies, not by the consumers.
There will be fraud on some of these cards following the intrusion, but unless that number is higher than the expected case for 12 million cards, then Sony will not be held responsible. So far I have read three claims of fraud, which seems pretty low for the typical fraud rate on 12 million cards.
But as I have said many times, I'm not saying it won't appear, just saying that so far it has not, and the longer it goes the less likely it will appear.
We do realize that for most world citizens that have the money to have bought a PS3 system, that information is already... I don't know, like everywhere? Actively being collected by hundreds if not thousands of corporations and being (legally) sold between entities throughout the world.
I pointed this out yesterday, though I doubt most people really understood it, but all this information, except the potential CC#s and security questions, are a matter of public record for the vast majority of US citizens (can't say about the rest of the world). The lack of SSNs makes the information useful for social engineering and very little else. The security questions potentially give a little more information but I believe Sony's would pretty harmless things like "your favorite animal" and things like that. Passwords are easy to change and so are CC numbers.
Basically just agreeing with you, with the added information that this is public information that can easily be looked up in freely official records.
This would be true if time were not of the utmost importance when it comes to credit card fraud against people who are aware that there cards are compromised. Every other details that was in the data that may have been compromised is a mater of public knowledge for most people. Names, address and date's of birth are part of many vital, and public, records. I guess some of their security questions may have revealed other details, but in most cases who your childhood hero was, is not useful for identity theft (and also why I never answer those questions with anything that even looks like a valid answer personal). The only thing this compromised data has done is collect the data in one place. Data that is soon going to be protected by an id theft prevention service (if it's not already), or otherwise invalid do to canceled cards and such.
Every day this information goes unused, and unsold, the value drops. Again this is not to say that we should count on this to keep us protected, just saying that there is no reason to believe at this point that any real damage to individual consumers will come of any of this.
Never mind the fact that simple data mining of Facebook would get more useful identity information.
Hey, you are only required to have health insurance if you have health, and nobody is being forced to have health.
It's actually 12 million credit cards, and many of those have probably been canceled before any fraud was able to appear. Never mind the fact that not a single cause of fraud has been associated with the intrusion, and with 12 million cards you would think a pattern of fraud would start to appear pretty quickly. That's not to say it won't happen, or that people should not take the necessary precautions, just that so far there have been no incidents, so shorting a valuable stock is probably not the wisest idea.
Things like "Next Thursday we're sending troops into Boogerstantown at 4 AM." Release it next Friday after Boogerstantown gets clobbered.
Or maybe, just maybe, release it before boogerstantown gets clobber so that the people of the United States can tell the government and military to stop fucking around with boogerstantown and worry about fixing the ever dwindling economic power of a once great country. Or how about releasing it so that the people of boogerstantown can get out before they become labelled "collateral" damage.
,By and For the people.
The US military should not be left to act on there own except when in imminent danger and in defense of themselves or the citizens of the united states. The people of turkfuckistan or what every you were calling it are by an large most likely not a threat to the US, and even the few that are a threat are not near the level of threat that warrants significant governmental attention when the US economy is being shipped off to The Peoples Republic of Whogivesafuck.
Because I'll tell you, if they are willing to hide when they are attacking other people, they are also willing to hide when other people are going to attack us. They have and they will continue if the people of the United States (I can't speak for people of other countries but their situation is probably just as fucked right about now) start standing up and making this country what it is supposed to be, Of
i actually welcome wikileaks in the realm of corporate intel and nonmilitary government secrets.
Why do you hold Corporations and non-military personnel to a higher standard than the military? You are basically saying that the military can be as corrupt as they want to be, but no one else can. You are advocating a police state whether you understand that or not. Your ignorance is just not even worth trying to point out since you profess it so openly in words.
You are a fool, and one of the few people in this country that actually deserves it when their military turns on them, or creates enemies that turn on them, or makes some drastic mistake that otherwise cause the destruction of the nation. Please don't think your siding with the military will stop them from assassinating you, in secrecy, when they decided they don't like something you have do or say.
and probably one of the few times an extended warranty makes sense.
Extended warranties always make sense... For the company selling them. Just like insurance, extended warranties are statistically a losing proposition. You actually have considerably better return on investment, over the long run, playing most casino games. To put it bluntly, extended warranties are a con.
Do you *seriously* expect any random reporter to understand the difference between encryption and hashing? :)
No I would not expect a random reported to understand that, hence why the reported said "I believe (translation not being perfect) that Hirai said they were not." He clearly didn't understand what Hirai said, which could have very well been, "the passwords were stored with a one way Hash" and the reported never heard the japanese word for "encrypted."
Please hash the passwords next time.
Have you seen any reputable resource verifying that the passwords were not hashed?
Beyond that, hashing the passwords means very little. When you have 70 million passwords and the right software and password tables, you will be able to determine a very large portion of those passwords in a very short period of time. Hashing merely keeps the honest person honest, it does not secure the password.
Passwords were NOT encrypted.
From the article you linked: "That same reporter asked if passwords were encrypted. I believe (translation not being perfect) that Hirai said they were not."
This is clearly fear mongering. The writer admits that they are not sure what Hirai said. Plus saying that they were not encrypted would actually be accurate if the passwords were stored correctly. Encryption implies the ability to decrypt. Password should be stored as a one way Hash, not encrypted. There is quit likely just some misunderstanding of the reporters part.
The credit card data WAS accessed.
From the article you linked: "Nikkei just asked if all 10 million credit cards got out. Hirai said "we can't rule out the possibility" that credit card info was compromised" Again, there was no statement that the Credit Card data was accessed. It has been stated that there was no proof that it was accessed. Now that might just mean that they have poor logging on the access of that data, but that in itself is in no way a statement saying that credit card data was accessed.
When government shutdown threatened this spring, the non-negotiable point for Democrats was funding for abortion provider Planned Parenthood (whose founder Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist and racist). In 2000, blacks made up 17% of live births, yet they made up 36% of abortions.
So because blacks, as you put it, have more abortions than other races we should avoid government funding of all facilities that provide the option of abortion? That's some interesting logic there. It's as if you believe the abortion rate will go down if we don't proved government subsidies for such facilities. The abortion rate will not change, just the option for people of lower income to be able to seek professional and safer abortions will be taken away.
Black Americans disproportionately live in school districts with failing public schools, yet Democrats overwhelmingly oppose programs that might assist blacks in those school districts to send their children to good private schools.
So the government should not support a non-profit organization that provides healthy options to lower income families, but they should redistribute wealth to for profit corporations that have not shown that they are any better suited to educate the disadvantaged than the public school system.
Democrats strongly support the Davis-Bacon Act, which was passed for the express purpose of keeping black construction workers from competing with white union members for government construction jobs.
Yes I can see how a law that explicitly targeted what was essentially slave traders from being paid by the government while their indentured servants barely survive, if even that. Prevailing wage laws do not keep any race from receiving work, but they do mean you have to be paid equally for equal work.
And trust me, I'm not arguing that Democrats are any less racist than Republicans, I'm just thinking you need to rethink your arguments better.
And if you answer no then don't be surprised if you get nothing.
Insurance companies don't ask such questions, and they would need to have it in your agreement that it was a requirement if they wanted to deny your claim. They give you discounts for having alarm systems, they do not require that you secure the premises, at least not in any contract I have read.
Perhaps the real solution is don't expose your very expensive stereo system where thieves can see it in your car.
Thieves don't have to be able to see it. The purpose of high end stereo equipment is to be heard, and actually in many cases to be seen at shows and such. Yes it would be put in place so as to be obscure, but that really does defeat some of the point.
I was pretty happy with just taking the insurance approach. Theft claims do not typically raise your insurance rates, and when ever the equipment gets stolen I was able to use the insurance money to upgrade to the latest equipment. Never mind the fact that I believe that those who steal from me probably need it more than I do.
Nominated for this week's dumbest comment. A closed window is a deterrent. An open window is an invitation.
This is incorrect. This is the same argument used to lull people into a false sense of security that is used to sell "The Club" for auto security. Back in the 90's I had a number of car stereos stolen, very high end equipment, highly prized by crooks. Both were stolen from fully secured vehicles. After the second one, I talked to the installer of the third, who also sold car alarms and other security devices. His advice was to leave the doors unlocked and have insurance. Breaking into a car, or a home, is very easy for even your average burglar . If you want to minimize your loss in the event of a burglary, then do yourself a favor and leave your doors and windows unlocked. People rarely walk from door to door looking for the easy target. What they do is scope out places that have easily fenceable goods and determine when the place will be empty. Then then enter the premises anyway they can, and smashing a windows is very, very simple.
as far as i can remember, correct me if i'm wrong - just grab any cheap mouse/keyboard for your console.
Consider yourself corrected. The PS3 supports standard USB keyboards and mice.
...most of the people who don't pursue undergraduate degrees are generally either too lazy or incompetent.
This is the biggest load of rubbish I have heard in a very long time. There are plenty of people that have chosen specifically not to pursue any degree program for many reasons. Some people chose to be tradesmen, entering into a career in one of the many trades like electrician or plumber. These people are highly motivated, and often very competent in their field. Some people have chosen to enter into a field that is new and therefor does not yet have an established degree program, like many of the earlier pioneers in computers and software. These people are also very highly motivated. There are also those who learn at a rate that is considerably higher than that taught in universities and have chosen to be self educated. And we can't possibly count out the effects of the economic situation. Simply put, to call people who chose not to pursue an undergraduate degree as either lazy or incompetent is an elitist view point that only exist to make those that have pursued such degrees to feel better about their own inadequacies.
With all of the copious grants and scholarships available from public and private sources both, there are few who validly are prevented from that education for want of money.
Clearly spoken as someone that is not a white-male from a middle class family in the united states. And probably also not from a truly impoverished neighbor hood, where the government grants wont cover many of the necessities of life, such as transportation, or better yet to put food on the table of an entire family. There is more to the economic situation that being able to pay tuition, but we try not to think about that, since again this helps to maintain the elitist attitudes and our own self gratification.
It is almost always talent or will, and forcing those with neither talent nor will through a process judged by similar "retention" standards as secondary education will completely tarnish if not effectively erase the value of the certification of undergraduate degrees.
And of course lets not possibly forget that this kind of attitude, that one needs talent, or some exceptional will (everyone that gets up out of bed in the morning and goes to work has the necessary will to get through an undergraduate degree) to achieve success in an undergraduate degree, has a very negative impact on those that for some reason or another do not have the same kind of elitist belief.
And it's sad, because in there some where you have a good point, that university degree programs are not for everyone and should not be required for everyone. Many careers would fair better with hands on training and apprenticeships, rather than book learning and rote memorization. It's to bad that this good point has to be hidden behind elitist ramblings.
I have no idea what you are saying. I am unaware of anyone who says that capitalists should be the locus of power.
That's the problem, most of the people that think this way would never say it, and only think this way because they haven't really thought things through. Unrestricted capitalism leads to the situation where capital is the only measure of power, and therefore capitalists become the locus of power. Once you can buy and sell anything, then you have handed over power to those that control the means of production. And if you start with an environment where 1% control the means of production, you have basically chosen to give up your freedom in exchange for serfdom.
I'm sure the book 'Outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell will be mentioned somewhere above...An above-average intelligence (~120 IQ) coupled with high practical intelligence is the common denominator of successful people.
Gladwell actually makes the argument that environment is the major factor in success, with practice, 10k hours to be exact, being the next most significant factor. Talent (or I.Q. in this case) need only be at a reasonable level and that being at the extreme high side does not afford any appreciable benefit, in regards to success.
Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" points out that "genius" looks more like 10,000 hours of practice than any kind of "magic super neurons." Have their been studies that show IQ really does predict long term success?
Actually in "Outliers", Gladwell refers to a study that showed specifically that IQ does not predict long term success. If I recall, the study showed that on average those with above average IQ faired better than average, but those with higher IQs within that group did not do any better. So for this IQ showed some correlation with success, but only to a small degree, and very high IQs did not provide any additional advantage . I wish I had a copy of the book in front of me to point out the specific research.
The U.S. still has some people who believe that the government should serve the populace and that individuals should be the locus of all power.
To bad that those of us that believe this are in a very small minority.
Lets not mistake believing that the individuals should be the locus of power with the more common thought that the capitalists (those that control capital) should be the locus of power. An elected government, when elected by knowledgeable people, has a far better chance of representing the individuals than a de-facto government set up by the capitalists by virtue of their capital alone.
The origins of the term Libertarian are traceable back to the Anarchist movements. The original Anarchist movements were collectivist movements, with Anarcho-Communist and Anarcho-Syndiclist being two of the major schools of thought. During the spanish revolutions the anarchists in Spain formed anarchist communes built of this collectivist ideal, which to this day are the best implemented examples of large scale anarchism. These Anarcho-Collectivists are the original Libertarians, as were the Libertarian-Socialists and even the Anarcho-Capitalists.
Point being that the current usage of Libertarian, to hide the goals of Corporatism, is certainly not in line with the original meaning of the word, and hence why some people believe that the Neo-Libertarians "hijacked the name".
Because most techie types simply will refuse to buy it.
The real "techie types" will not refuse to buy the PS4 because of this issue. Real "techie types" realize that even though Sony removed this feature, if you voluntarily installed a firmware update, they were also the only console maker to even offer such a feature to begin with. Twice now Sony has officially an operating system that allowed developers access to unique processing hardware. Neither Nintendo or MS has had unique cutting edge hardware, nor offered user the ability to access that hardware fro development purposes. The real "techie types" are still using the Other OS feature on their cluster of PS3s, they were never using the PS3 to play games.
This is going to end up right up there with Sony's other historic mistakes. In other words, it's not going to change much because Sony still offers more for the money than any other console maker.