Name one thing that other governments do that the US government hasn't already done. There is nothing.
Torture? Check
Indefinite detention of innocent people? Check
Spying on own citizens? Check
Lavish support and benefits for corporations at the expense of ordinary people? Check
Americans need to get off their hypocritical high horse of "freedom", "liberty", "justice" and all that crap. They are no better than any of the dictatorships out there.
> The bill prohibits employers from demanding user names and passwords from employees and job applicants.
Now all an employer has to do is "suggest" that you "voluntarily" give up your Facebook password, but that your refusal will not have any impact on their hiring decision. And by a strange coincidence, no one who refuses will get hired.
Business as usual in the Land of Unfettered Capitalism
Air Conditioning the Military Costs More Than NASA's entire Budget:
http://gizmodo.com/5813257/air-conditioning-our-military-costs-more-than-nasas-entire-budget
That says a lot about this country and where it's headed. It has no problem cooling troops in a war that has no purpose and no end, even when "we are broke!". But funding anything that might be remotely useful? Forget it!
I don't know which shop the OP bought his NAS from, but....
Take a look at the reviews posted on compusa.com and circuitcity.com (both seem to be run by the same company now). I don't trust them anymore. It's hard to find a product with less then 4 stars. Often the same products are reviewed less favorably on sites like Newegg.
You could save the online bills to your computer. Many of them are available as PDFs. But, yes, it requires a certain discipline on your part rather than just having them show up in the mail.
I also agree with other posters that companies don't generally do this to go "green", but to make a buck. That is why T-Mobile's plan sounds more offensive.
Yes, I find it interesting that Americans get all fired up about privacy when a camera catches them running a red light - fired up enough to call their lawmakers and cause a 117-3 vote to ban the evil "privacy-invading" cameras.
But when their own government spies on their phone calls and emails with no warrant or cause, the response is a yawn and "Well, I have nothing to hide so why should I worry?".... Which begs the question: what are you hiding in your car then?
Seriously, look at your virulent response to red light cameras and the relatively quiet ease with which you have let your government spies get away with breaking the law.
If you want a thin, snappy solution, try Puppy Linux. It loads itself into memory and runs from there.
However I have been using a full Ubuntu install on a 4GB USB drive with some modifications to optimize writes. I used unionfs to transparently overlay a ramdisk on top of some directories that are likely to be written to (/var,/etc,/home,/usr, etc). Unionfs provides a merged view of the overlaid directory and the ramdisk, while disallowing writes to the overlaid directory. What this means is that when I read a file it comes from the flash, but when I write to the file it goes to the ramdisk and not to the flash. Future reads of that file will come from the ramdisk version. So "apt-get install" writes everything to ramdisk and is super fast. If I decide later that I want to keep the updates, I can run a script that syncs the changes from the ramdisk to the flash. Of course this also means that if I don't like the updates I can just reboot and everything will be as it was before the install.
I did this based on a few web links that talked about similar things, but I haven't documented it publicly. If anyone is interested in knowing more, contact me at cc02568c at y-a-h-o-o dot com.
History has also shown that the economy and national debt have consistently improved under a Democratic President and consistently worsened under a Republican.
http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm
So why don't you vote for Obama for President, and your local Republicans for Congress?
I'm suprised no one has mentioned this yet, but try Consumer Cellular http://www.consumercellular.com/. They give you a free phone (with $30 activation) with no contracts. I have been using their Emergency ("No-minutes") plan for years now. It costs $10 a month and any minutes you do use are 25c per minute anywhere in the US. Perfect for those who want just a phone and don't use it a lot.
According to this program, telephone companies back in the 1990s took government funds and promised that they'd hook us up to the information superhighway, but then reneged on that promise. That is why we are in the state we are now.
I have a working Linux PVR in my living room right now. Here are the specs:
PIII Duron 850MHz 70GB hard drive Hauppauge WInTV Go TV capture card ($30 now) ATI Radeon with TV out ($45) Encoder: mp1e (MPEG-1, good quality at 30fps, 352x240, which is enough for watching on a TV set. 1GB per hour) Playback: mplayer (excellent, except for a bug that I had to work around) Offline (non-realtime)compression using mencoder to MPEG-4 (approx 0.5 GB per hour) "Dialog"-based GUI controlled with X10 remote. TV listings using xlmtv Can watch, pause, rew, ff live TV Can select shows for recording. Working on editing out ads.
Basically implemented by throwing mp1e and mplayer together and glueing it all together with a perl script, some C code and a kernel module.
Using this I have been able to do almost everything that a Tivo does from my living room sofa. I say "almost" because I haven't implemented the "Season Pass" feature of Tivo yet. Also the GUI is not as fancy as Tivo's, but definitely useable.
All in all it was fun to develop and definitely better than buying a Tivo!
I haven't got around to posting the source yet. If anybody is interested, email me: cigy@xmission.com.removethis
You don't have to resign first and then look for another job. If an H-I employee is not happy with his current pay, he can find a new job and get a new H-1 and then leave his present job. No problem with that. The problem comes only if he decides to apply for a green card. During the whole process, he cannot change jobs.
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> The last I checked, no cash was being given away to oil companies.
I am guessing you don't check often or you check in the wrong places (like Faux News).
Energy subsidies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#Allocation_of_subsidies_in_the_United_States
As Oil Industry Fights a Tax, It Reaps Subsidies
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/04bptax.html?pagewanted=all
These subsidies have been the subject of frequent battles in the lame US Congress.
Either way please read up on this crap and go crawl back under your rock.
Name one thing that other governments do that the US government hasn't already done. There is nothing. Torture? Check Indefinite detention of innocent people? Check Spying on own citizens? Check Lavish support and benefits for corporations at the expense of ordinary people? Check Americans need to get off their hypocritical high horse of "freedom", "liberty", "justice" and all that crap. They are no better than any of the dictatorships out there.
> The bill prohibits employers from demanding user names and passwords from employees and job applicants.
Now all an employer has to do is "suggest" that you "voluntarily" give up your Facebook password, but that your refusal will not have any impact on their hiring decision. And by a strange coincidence, no one who refuses will get hired.
Business as usual in the Land of Unfettered Capitalism
Air Conditioning the Military Costs More Than NASA's entire Budget: http://gizmodo.com/5813257/air-conditioning-our-military-costs-more-than-nasas-entire-budget
That says a lot about this country and where it's headed. It has no problem cooling troops in a war that has no purpose and no end, even when "we are broke!". But funding anything that might be remotely useful? Forget it!
> money that cannot be counterfeited
Really? I expected a little better than that from IEEE Spectrum. That statement made me realize the article is not even worth reading.
All you guys upset about this, please relax - for now.
As long as there is a Democrat in the White House, Utah's Republican legislature will not allow this to happen.
Now if a Republican gets in to the White House, you can sit back and watch as they fall over themselves justifying this.
That's right, why can't we trust an organization that polices itself?
Remember Pat Tillman? Or the admission just a couple of days ago that "oh yeah, we did kill those pregnant women in Afghanistan after all".
Trust these guys? Why?
> I saw people in a van aiding and abetting a member of an armed group
So helping someone that is injured and dying is "aiding and abetting" an armed group.
You are one sick person....among many similar Americans.
I don't know which shop the OP bought his NAS from, but....
Take a look at the reviews posted on compusa.com and circuitcity.com (both seem to be run by the same company now). I don't trust them anymore. It's hard to find a product with less then 4 stars. Often the same products are reviewed less favorably on sites like Newegg.
You could save the online bills to your computer. Many of them are available as PDFs. But, yes, it requires a certain discipline on your part rather than just having them show up in the mail.
I also agree with other posters that companies don't generally do this to go "green", but to make a buck. That is why T-Mobile's plan sounds more offensive.
Yes, I find it interesting that Americans get all fired up about privacy when a camera catches them running a red light - fired up enough to call their lawmakers and cause a 117-3 vote to ban the evil "privacy-invading" cameras.
But when their own government spies on their phone calls and emails with no warrant or cause, the response is a yawn and "Well, I have nothing to hide so why should I worry?".... Which begs the question: what are you hiding in your car then?
Seriously, look at your virulent response to red light cameras and the relatively quiet ease with which you have let your government spies get away with breaking the law.
If you want a thin, snappy solution, try Puppy Linux. It loads itself into memory and runs from there.
However I have been using a full Ubuntu install on a 4GB USB drive with some modifications to optimize writes. I used unionfs to transparently overlay a ramdisk on top of some directories that are likely to be written to (/var, /etc, /home, /usr, etc). Unionfs provides a merged view of the overlaid directory and the ramdisk, while disallowing writes to the overlaid directory. What this means is that when I read a file it comes from the flash, but when I write to the file it goes to the ramdisk and not to the flash. Future reads of that file will come from the ramdisk version. So "apt-get install" writes everything to ramdisk and is super fast. If I decide later that I want to keep the updates, I can run a script that syncs the changes from the ramdisk to the flash. Of course this also means that if I don't like the updates I can just reboot and everything will be as it was before the install.
I did this based on a few web links that talked about similar things, but I haven't documented it publicly. If anyone is interested in knowing more, contact me at cc02568c at y-a-h-o-o dot com.
History has also shown that the economy and national debt have consistently improved under a Democratic President and consistently worsened under a Republican. http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm So why don't you vote for Obama for President, and your local Republicans for Congress?
> History has shown that when one party has control of the entire legislative and executive branches of our government, the economy suffers
You mean like it just suffered under 6 years of the Republican party's control?
>> The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid your neighbors' wallets and give you their money.
Hey, are you accusing my daddy of being a thug?
I'm suprised no one has mentioned this yet, but try Consumer Cellular http://www.consumercellular.com/. They give you a free phone (with $30 activation) with no contracts. I have been using their Emergency ("No-minutes") plan for years now. It costs $10 a month and any minutes you do use are 25c per minute anywhere in the US. Perfect for those who want just a phone and don't use it a lot.
According to this program, telephone companies back in the 1990s took government funds and promised that they'd hook us up to the information superhighway, but then reneged on that promise. That is why we are in the state we are now.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/inde x.html
I have a working Linux PVR in my living room right now. Here are the specs:
PIII Duron 850MHz
70GB hard drive
Hauppauge WInTV Go TV capture card ($30 now)
ATI Radeon with TV out ($45)
Encoder: mp1e (MPEG-1, good quality at 30fps, 352x240, which is enough for watching on a TV set. 1GB per hour)
Playback: mplayer (excellent, except for a bug that I had to work around)
Offline (non-realtime)compression using mencoder to MPEG-4 (approx 0.5 GB per hour)
"Dialog"-based GUI controlled with X10 remote.
TV listings using xlmtv
Can watch, pause, rew, ff live TV
Can select shows for recording.
Working on editing out ads.
Basically implemented by throwing mp1e and mplayer together and glueing it all together with a perl script, some C code and a kernel module.
Using this I have been able to do almost everything that a Tivo does from my living room sofa. I say "almost" because I haven't implemented the "Season Pass" feature of Tivo yet. Also the GUI is not as fancy as Tivo's, but definitely useable.
All in all it was fun to develop and definitely better than buying a Tivo!
I haven't got around to posting the source yet. If anybody is interested, email me: cigy@xmission.com.removethis
You don't have to resign first and then look for another job. If an H-I employee is not happy with his current pay, he can find a new job and get a new H-1 and then leave his present job. No problem with that. The problem comes only if he decides to apply for a green card. During the whole process, he cannot change jobs.