What about telling the satellites directly to not send positional data anymore?
Or even better, send plausible but incorrect data. Then the terrorist drone will impact 100 meters off target. If the data is shut off completely, the terrorists will just delay their launch.
Let's even make it a private corporation for the sake of the argument.
Yes, let's do that. If it is a private corporation, then I can remove my mailbox, and they will have to walk to my front porch, increasing the cost and reducing the volume. I can also sue them through a class action lawsuit if they leave litter on my property. I have no such recourse against the government.
I just don't buy the argument that it is okay for the government to engage in scummy practices just because some corporation is just as scummy. The government should be held to a higher standard, and should be expected to represent to the collective interests of the people. I doubt if many people consider junk advertising to be in our interests.
And UPS/Fedex wouldn't deliver those if USPS wasn't around?
If one Nigerian spammer was removed another would take his place. That doesn't make spamming a legitimate function of government. The government of the United States should not engage in sleazy practices just because "someone else would do it if they weren't".
I don't want to have to find my bills in that pile of shite.
Solution: Use a spam filter with a whitelist. I get 90% of my bills by email, and have never missed one.
The USPS provides the service of delivering that crap to the companies that produced it... In this instance case you're not the customer.
But why should the government be providing a service that is the physical equivalent of spam? Is that really an appropriate role of government? I understand why the USPS was established back in 1775, but those reasons are no longer valid today. Personal correspondence is a negligible amount of the mail.
I would never get a package at my apartment because the package will walk away the moment the delivery person drops it off. I have a post office box for package deliveries, which is closer and more convenient than the nearest UPS Store or FedEx facility.
I have a lock box next to my front door. UPS and FedEx packages are placed in the box, and then the courier closes the lid, which locks the box. USPS deliveries are placed in my unsecured mailbox. If the USPS was downsized and privatized, you would still have your PO box, only it would be better because you could receive UPS and FedEx packages there also (privately deliveries to PO boxes is banned under current law).
What if Congress pass a law that requires Fortune 500 companies to pre-fund employee matches for the next 75 years now?
Those corporations create valuable products and services, that I can chose to buy to not buy. The USPS delivers a pile of crap to my house everyday that is 99% garbage. The sooner Congress gets rid of them the better. Bills should be sent by email. Packages should be delivered by UPS, Fedex, etc. The only thing left is all the second class advertising garbage, and that should disappear, leaving forests standing, and freeing up space in my trash can.
Will every password from our past life suddenly be verboten, everywhere? That seems... pretty unworkable.
Why will it be unworkable? For 32 character passwords, and 100 possible characters (upper, lower, numbers, punctuation) the number of possible passwords is a billion times the number of atoms in the sun. Even if you stick to passwords that are mnemonic, the number of possibilities is still astronomical.
If they walk on to my property with the intent to look in my window, they better already have that warrant in hand otherwise none of what they see will be admissible in court.
Unless you don't know they were on your property, and they use parallel construction to fabricate a different chain of evidence.
DEA official: "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day. It's decades old, a bedrock concept."
Who's going to rein them in? Donald? Hillary? I don't think so. The only candidates that want to fix this are Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. Combined, they are polling at about 1%. Americans don't care about privacy, at least not when it matters.
It is not an appropriate architecture for bitcoin mining. Much of the design is focused on moving massive amounts of data in, out, and between the cores. You don't need any of that for bitcoin, since each hash is independent and uses very little data. Bitcoin mining can be done way more cost effectively on ASICs.
The drivers are going through the neighborhood to route around construction. The root problem is that the construction is taking months to complete. Americans may be surprised, but in many other countries major road repairs are completed in days. I have lived in both China and Japan, where they set up giant illumination lights, and work around the clock in a bustle of activity until the project is done. In America, you just see idle equipment, and occasionally a couple guys in hard hats chatting while drinking coffee. America has the world's most expensive and dysfunctional processes for repairing infrastructure.
What does this 'running for president' thing got to do with the issue at hand?
What??? The fact that Trump is running for president is the ONLY thing that is relevant. If he wasn't running, we wouldn't even be having this conversation, and nobody would give a rats ass what Trump thinks about Mexicans or Muslims. That fact that some random black people openly express racist attitudes does not make it okay for a presidential candidate to also openly expresses racist opinions. People running for president should be held to a higher standard.
Oh no, here come all the "cannabis cures cancer" nutcases
Cannabis doesn't directly cure cancer, but it can suppress the severe nausea caused by many chemotherapy drugs, which means more patients complete the course, which means more of them recover and survive.
So far, the only downsides to cannabis legalization have been prison guard layoffs, and the extra burden on politicians that have to figure out how to spend all the money from dope sales taxes.
The system you describe is how it works in many countries, making it nearly impossible for normal citizens to challenge corporations, and making contracts and business agreements nearly impossible to enforce. This stifles investments, and dries up credit since lenders have little recourse against delinquent borrowers.
But please remember. "illegal Mexican immigrant" is not a race or ethnic group.
Except the judge was a native born American citizen, and was not illegal, or Mexican, or an immigrant. When Trump attacked him, and called him a "Mexican", he was clearly referring to his ethnicity.
You mean the judge that's a member of La Raza, the racist organization of Mexicans who hate white people?
No. He is a member of The Hispanic National Bar Association, which used to be known as La Raza National Lawyers Association, and is a completely separate organization from the National Council of La Raza, a political advocacy group. The organization he belongs to changed their name more than 30 years ago, specifically to avoid confusing people like you, but apparently to no avail.
In what kind of screwed up world does not responding to a request for an admission of guilt make you liable for a million dollars in damages?
In the imaginary made-up world of USAToday journalism. This was a civil lawsuit, which doesn't even have a concept of "guilt" and "innocence". I have don't know what actually happened, but it certainly wasn't what TFA described. My best guess is that he failed to respond to interrogatories.
That doesn't explain why the courts of this particular area kept allowing an obvious legal troll to keep filing follow-ons to a case that he lost at the outset.
Actually, it does. The judge does NOT represent the defendant. The defendant represents the defendant. In nearly all cases, a small claims ruling cannot be appealed by the plaintiff, so he could have pretty easily stopped any appeal, but instead HE FAILED TO RESPOND, and let the case proceed by default. By the time he realized he was in serious jeopardy, the deadlines were past, and it was too late. Woody Allen once said that "90% of success is just showing up". That is especially true in court.
Normally, a share buy-back causes prices to inch up... I wonder why investors are behaving strangely.
Because normally a company retains shares that it buys back, exchanging cash for stock, with no net loss of value. But in this case they are burning cash to buy the shares, and then giving away the shares. That is a loss of value, so it makes sense for the stock price to go down, unless investors thinks the PR value of this stunt exceeds the cost, which they apparently don't.
Disclaimer: I am a T-Mobile customer, but I don't think my loyalty will be affected by this. I only use them because they offer a good family plan, with unlimited texting (I have a teenage daughter).
In many other countries, individuals and small businesses have little or no access to the legal system. America's legal system can be abused, but it is still superior to most others. It is not difficult to defend yourself without going bankrupt. You need to educate yourself, and do as much of the work yourself. If you trust your lawyer, you will definitely get screwed. In most legal situations, your primary adversary is your own lawyer, not the opposing party. Online resources have made it far easier to go pro per.
The USAToday article is very biased. The defendant mostly screwed himself by losing documents (and then claiming he never received them) and not responding before deadlines. The courts don't put up with that crap. The facts don't matter if you don't deliver them to the court. He was an idiot, and he left the court to decide based on a preponderance of the evidence that all came from the plaintiff.
Slashdot Mirror
Well they shouldn't be testing GPS in California.
They are doing to interfere with voters driving to the polls today. It is part of the anti-Bernie conspiracy.
What about telling the satellites directly to not send positional data anymore?
Or even better, send plausible but incorrect data. Then the terrorist drone will impact 100 meters off target. If the data is shut off completely, the terrorists will just delay their launch.
GPS, on the other hand, needs a $500/yr jeppersen subscription, courtesy of a Garmin's vendor lock-in.
Why can't you just use your cellphone? Isn't there an app for that?
If you don't like this then you can put a permanent "return to sender" sign on your mailbox.
No, you can't. There is no way to block 3rd class junk mail.
Let's even make it a private corporation for the sake of the argument.
Yes, let's do that. If it is a private corporation, then I can remove my mailbox, and they will have to walk to my front porch, increasing the cost and reducing the volume. I can also sue them through a class action lawsuit if they leave litter on my property. I have no such recourse against the government.
I just don't buy the argument that it is okay for the government to engage in scummy practices just because some corporation is just as scummy. The government should be held to a higher standard, and should be expected to represent to the collective interests of the people. I doubt if many people consider junk advertising to be in our interests.
And UPS/Fedex wouldn't deliver those if USPS wasn't around?
If one Nigerian spammer was removed another would take his place. That doesn't make spamming a legitimate function of government. The government of the United States should not engage in sleazy practices just because "someone else would do it if they weren't".
I don't want to have to find my bills in that pile of shite.
Solution: Use a spam filter with a whitelist. I get 90% of my bills by email, and have never missed one.
The USPS provides the service of delivering that crap to the companies that produced it... In this instance case you're not the customer.
But why should the government be providing a service that is the physical equivalent of spam? Is that really an appropriate role of government? I understand why the USPS was established back in 1775, but those reasons are no longer valid today. Personal correspondence is a negligible amount of the mail.
When was the last time you walked into a post office — the 20th-century?
It was the last time I needed to mail something, so yes, probably last century.
I would never get a package at my apartment because the package will walk away the moment the delivery person drops it off. I have a post office box for package deliveries, which is closer and more convenient than the nearest UPS Store or FedEx facility.
I have a lock box next to my front door. UPS and FedEx packages are placed in the box, and then the courier closes the lid, which locks the box. USPS deliveries are placed in my unsecured mailbox. If the USPS was downsized and privatized, you would still have your PO box, only it would be better because you could receive UPS and FedEx packages there also (privately deliveries to PO boxes is banned under current law).
What if Congress pass a law that requires Fortune 500 companies to pre-fund employee matches for the next 75 years now?
Those corporations create valuable products and services, that I can chose to buy to not buy. The USPS delivers a pile of crap to my house everyday that is 99% garbage. The sooner Congress gets rid of them the better. Bills should be sent by email. Packages should be delivered by UPS, Fedex, etc. The only thing left is all the second class advertising garbage, and that should disappear, leaving forests standing, and freeing up space in my trash can.
Will every password from our past life suddenly be verboten, everywhere? That seems... pretty unworkable.
Why will it be unworkable? For 32 character passwords, and 100 possible characters (upper, lower, numbers, punctuation) the number of possible passwords is a billion times the number of atoms in the sun. Even if you stick to passwords that are mnemonic, the number of possibilities is still astronomical.
If they walk on to my property with the intent to look in my window, they better already have that warrant in hand otherwise none of what they see will be admissible in court.
Unless you don't know they were on your property, and they use parallel construction to fabricate a different chain of evidence.
DEA official: "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day. It's decades old, a bedrock concept."
FBI are getting too big for their britches
Who's going to rein them in? Donald? Hillary? I don't think so. The only candidates that want to fix this are Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. Combined, they are polling at about 1%. Americans don't care about privacy, at least not when it matters.
But how fast can it mine Bitcoin?
It is not an appropriate architecture for bitcoin mining. Much of the design is focused on moving massive amounts of data in, out, and between the cores. You don't need any of that for bitcoin, since each hash is independent and uses very little data. Bitcoin mining can be done way more cost effectively on ASICs.
The drivers are going through the neighborhood to route around construction. The root problem is that the construction is taking months to complete. Americans may be surprised, but in many other countries major road repairs are completed in days. I have lived in both China and Japan, where they set up giant illumination lights, and work around the clock in a bustle of activity until the project is done. In America, you just see idle equipment, and occasionally a couple guys in hard hats chatting while drinking coffee. America has the world's most expensive and dysfunctional processes for repairing infrastructure.
What does this 'running for president' thing got to do with the issue at hand?
What??? The fact that Trump is running for president is the ONLY thing that is relevant. If he wasn't running, we wouldn't even be having this conversation, and nobody would give a rats ass what Trump thinks about Mexicans or Muslims. That fact that some random black people openly express racist attitudes does not make it okay for a presidential candidate to also openly expresses racist opinions. People running for president should be held to a higher standard.
Oh no, here come all the "cannabis cures cancer" nutcases
Cannabis doesn't directly cure cancer, but it can suppress the severe nausea caused by many chemotherapy drugs, which means more patients complete the course, which means more of them recover and survive.
So far, the only downsides to cannabis legalization have been prison guard layoffs, and the extra burden on politicians that have to figure out how to spend all the money from dope sales taxes.
The system you describe is how it works in many countries, making it nearly impossible for normal citizens to challenge corporations, and making contracts and business agreements nearly impossible to enforce. This stifles investments, and dries up credit since lenders have little recourse against delinquent borrowers.
But please remember. "illegal Mexican immigrant" is not a race or ethnic group.
Except the judge was a native born American citizen, and was not illegal, or Mexican, or an immigrant. When Trump attacked him, and called him a "Mexican", he was clearly referring to his ethnicity.
You mean the judge that's a member of La Raza, the racist organization of Mexicans who hate white people?
No. He is a member of The Hispanic National Bar Association, which used to be known as La Raza National Lawyers Association, and is a completely separate organization from the National Council of La Raza, a political advocacy group. The organization he belongs to changed their name more than 30 years ago, specifically to avoid confusing people like you, but apparently to no avail.
Black people say white juries, cops, and judges, can't be impartial all the time. I don't see any inconsistency here.
How many of those black people are running for President of the United States?
In what kind of screwed up world does not responding to a request for an admission of guilt make you liable for a million dollars in damages?
In the imaginary made-up world of USAToday journalism. This was a civil lawsuit, which doesn't even have a concept of "guilt" and "innocence". I have don't know what actually happened, but it certainly wasn't what TFA described. My best guess is that he failed to respond to interrogatories.
That doesn't explain why the courts of this particular area kept allowing an obvious legal troll to keep filing follow-ons to a case that he lost at the outset.
Actually, it does. The judge does NOT represent the defendant. The defendant represents the defendant. In nearly all cases, a small claims ruling cannot be appealed by the plaintiff, so he could have pretty easily stopped any appeal, but instead HE FAILED TO RESPOND, and let the case proceed by default. By the time he realized he was in serious jeopardy, the deadlines were past, and it was too late. Woody Allen once said that "90% of success is just showing up". That is especially true in court.
Normally, a share buy-back causes prices to inch up... I wonder why investors are behaving strangely.
Because normally a company retains shares that it buys back, exchanging cash for stock, with no net loss of value. But in this case they are burning cash to buy the shares, and then giving away the shares. That is a loss of value, so it makes sense for the stock price to go down, unless investors thinks the PR value of this stunt exceeds the cost, which they apparently don't.
Disclaimer: I am a T-Mobile customer, but I don't think my loyalty will be affected by this. I only use them because they offer a good family plan, with unlimited texting (I have a teenage daughter).
Does it work differently in any other country?
In many other countries, individuals and small businesses have little or no access to the legal system. America's legal system can be abused, but it is still superior to most others. It is not difficult to defend yourself without going bankrupt. You need to educate yourself, and do as much of the work yourself. If you trust your lawyer, you will definitely get screwed. In most legal situations, your primary adversary is your own lawyer, not the opposing party. Online resources have made it far easier to go pro per.
The USAToday article is very biased. The defendant mostly screwed himself by losing documents (and then claiming he never received them) and not responding before deadlines. The courts don't put up with that crap. The facts don't matter if you don't deliver them to the court. He was an idiot, and he left the court to decide based on a preponderance of the evidence that all came from the plaintiff.