It's a wonderful device which has a *major* benefit - and the reason I bought it. A call comes in, the device looks at the number. If it's one you've previously let through ( Gran'ma, wife, sprogs, etc) then it simply passes the call through to your phone. If not - it plays an announcement, asks the caller to press a number, identify themselves ( by voice ) and THEN rings your phone with the provided info. On picking up your own phone, you get to either a) let the call through b) send it to voicemail c) send a 'fuck off' message and drop the call
Since robo-calls can't press #6 when asked to identify themselves, it effectively drops ALL robo-calls and the big thing is : IT NEVER RINGS YOUR PHONE.
Marketing peeps who are people, recruiters who *really* want to offer you a job etc etc - can identify themselves and get through.
The only time I've found where it doesn't work well is where you have one of those web-ex meetings and choose the 'call me on my number' option for sound - you get an automated telephone call to your line but which cannot identify itself. The device has the ability to turn off call screening for a period of time (say an hour) to cope with that too.
It's leaps and bounds ahead of all the other 'call blocker' things I could find. All of which seem to work on a 'get a call you don't want? Press this button - gets added to a blacklist. Blacklist is 1000 numbers long!!!!" - but we all know, that's worthless since spam calls are just spoof'd local numbers which continually change.
Sadly... the product itself - while absolutely awesome - is now incredibly hard to source. Amazon had it listed as 'out of stock' for months and months when I first found it. Their web page also had it out-of-stock for the longest time, and I only managed to get one because I was showing a friend and the 'buy' button was lit. I snapped it up straight away.
I suspect shenanigans - shortly after and even now - they are all listed as 'retired'. I suspect someone whapped them with a frivolous lawsuit or they simply got bought out by someone who's interests are... shady.
Nuking an existing site simply results in a second popping up - all cockroach like. Whereas - making the *business* of placing spam calls untenable - due to everyone you call wasting your 'employee's time' talking to robots.. effectively ends the *business* of robocalling.
I watched that video when it first appeared [somewhere]
I continue to happily rant about systemd despite the assertations that 'it's all me' from some bsd dude...
It's not me. It's utter shit. Great for a laptop or some desktop machine I'm sure, but it has no place in a data center server where uptimes are measured in months and no-one sticks a fucking USB stick into your box.
D'you remember what Arthur Anderson changed their name to after their accounting scandal debacle re: Enron?
I 'vaguely' remember. Some bulltshit floaty-woaty fairy name or something or other beginning with A. I have to look it up.. I might remember if I saw it, but I can't immediately bring it to mind when asked.
To be fair.. I'd go as far as to say 98% of spoofed phonecalls are to (Primary) English speaking countries.
There's little point some 'sales rep' sittin' in a call center in India callin' up some german speaking citizen with a barely-understandable-anyway English script...
But yes - Also those with lax laws about wether you can (or should) be doing it or not.
Excellently designed. Doesn't need you to maintain a whitelist.. or a blacklist ( which most of the landline call blockers do - utterly pointless when numbers are spoof'd)
Sadly - My unit was *incredibly* hard to purchase. it had been listed on amazon as 'out of stock' for months and months. And while they *do* have a web site from which you can purchase a unit directly - THAT was also 'out of stock' for a long period of time. It was only when I was showing the page to a friend that I noticed there was a 'buy now...' button and I quickly snapped one up.
I suspect they got some kind of 'finger-of-god' interaction pointed at them. Or perhaps some infringing patent or.. I dunno. A piece of equipment THIS good, far in advance of any other I see on amazon has to have something nefarious dumped on it.
I defend every traffic violation I've ever been handed. Some of them valid, some of them not.
In cases where the officer didn't turn up, I'd say that 70% of the cases were tossed out, and in two cases the judge rescheduled. I objected, naturally, and in one instance it was later dropped, and in the other rescduled and later heard - after which it got thrown out anyway.
I have a 100% success rate in either reducing my (valid) tickets to a slap on the wrist (read: $90 court fine) or tosses out entirely.:P
Goto court.. defend yourself, even if you're guilty, you'll often get a non-points-incurring-verdict.
Warren Buffet has done a *heapload* of a-hole things. Some guy released a book about it a number of years ago.. I was surprised..
Things like - he made a monopoly of industrial railroads. He bought up the indvidual railroad operators and then intentionally shut them down or reduced service so the companies who ship.. coal, grain, steel etc would have to pay more to use HIS (now only) railroad.
This raised the price of grain / coal / steel.. etc - so he bought those - used his rail monopoly to see increased profits.. etc etc..
Like I said - I was quite surprised. I had thought him a 'standup guy' - but apparent he's an a-hole.
Feel free to point out if I'm wrong.. But, isn't this just like a huge mini split? Using CO2 instead of um.. Freon, or whatever they put in them these days?
Stick a huge finned thing out in the ocean, cycle some refrigerant around it, transfer heat from one side to the other? Requires electricity and it's not like.. you're *consuming* CO2 and removing it magically?
The article seemed to describe exactly what the mini-split in my living room does, only on a much higher scale, and with C02 as the transport medium instead of some other rare gas?
As an ex-pat Brit, I caught a few episodes on Dave a year or so back and I find it *Actually* Quite Interesting!
There's factoids and funny bits all through it - you can't find anything like it on 'merikan television (or at least I can't with my cable line-up).
Full Disclosure: I liked Blackadder, that Laywer program he came out with, Jeeves and Wooster (when it came out, less so now), Peters Friends and that Anonymous film he did..:)
I recently revisited the 'Jeeves and Wooster' series with my wife (who is not English) after exhorting its brilliant'ness.
Turns out that my memory is rosy, and it's actually kinda dull and crap. I was disappointed in myself. Blackadder on the other hand, stands the test of time (and memory!)
Publicly, Intel acknowledged the floating-point flaw, but claimed that it was not serious and would not affect most users. Intel offered to replace processors to users who could prove that they were affected. However, although most independent estimates found the bug to be of little importance and would have negligible effect on most users, it caused a great public outcry.
So.. long memory. Many $'s lost. Don't piss off customers (or lie about it and when you have to fess up say : Whatever..)
I'm British and was a perfectly proficient parallel parker before I moved to 'merika. 20 years over here, and the ez-mode perpendicular parking has atrophied my skills such that.. when I was in NYC the other day and tasked with performing a parallel park.. I ended up with one wheel on the pavement... >_
So.. great. Now this guy can go into the same bin as that dude who pushed systemd. The 'Clusterfuck of Things I didn't want..."
2003 outlook was the last I actually liked. I hung onto it for as long as I possibly could before being forced to upgrade to.. I dunno.. whatever it is out there now. It had a reasonably nice UI, it was quick and did a bunch of stuff I liked. The UI wasn't splattered all over the place and it had nice bevelled buttons and stuff, instead of the flat bollocks that is the current trend. I mean, I have what.. three choices of 'theme' now? White, 'light grey' and 'dark grey' - none of which are much use in allowing me to distinguish between parts of the interface..
I take my car to a dealership too. I don't have a great deal of choice, but that's another story.
My list, the first year, included : New air-cabin-filter, oil filter, oil.. some other sundries. They even helpfully brought the air-cabin-filter with them to the waiting area to show me exactly how dirty it was! Full of gunk and y'know... crumbly leafy bits. $60 to replace that.
Since I have no knowledge of cars, I went home and decided to 'get me some lerning..'
Air filter = $3 online. Changing air cabin filter is literally.. (and I *actually mean literally*) case of opening the glove compartment, depressing two clips and pulling it out.
Next time I went, they brought me my air filter to inspect once again - asked me if I'd like it changed - since it was 'so awful'. Me: No, thanks - but since you have it out already, and you have to put something back, would you mind putting *THIS* one back in, rather than the one in your hand? Engineer: Sorry, we can't do that.. Me: No worries, I'll just save the $57 and pop it out once you're done.
etc etc. There's like a dozen little things like this which are *completely stupid* that they try to bag you for.
I hate my dealership. They spam me every six months telling me my car needs a service because.. y'know.. ITS BEEN SIX MONTHS! Despite me swearing at the fuckers that : I don't even drive the thing anymore, take me off your goddamn list, I'll come in when I'm ready.
(toyota)
Their showroom could go up in smoke and I'd actually be happy.
It's been quite a while that 'lawyers' have been outsourced. Simple things like house contracts, wills, and other things you'd normally need a lawyer for are being shuffled down the pipeline to India. Obviously not for the type of lawyers who stand up infront of judges/ juries and actually say stuff, but they're a small part of the plethora of lawyers in the world today.
And also - anecdotal experience tells me this happens. I had a friend who is a lawyer and complains about his corner of the profession being outsourced and also: I received a 'lawyers document' which had come from Bangalore... or somesuch bollocks.
Yeah.. Like a whole bunch of others say in this thread - this is bollocks.
I got into the solar game early. I had mine installed about six years back. I got 48 of the 180W panels (there are much better now) and they cover pretty much all of my electrical use (aswell as my south facing garage). Given that used to be around $250-300 ish a month, that's a fair ongoing savings.
Now, couple that with the Green tags / SREC's which I can sell for (depending on wether gub'ner Christie is being a nobhead this year or not) anywhere between $60 and $600. Five few years back I sold a bunch for $400ish, last year I sold some for $60.
Either way, my 'payoff' is about six years, give or take a couple.
Now - back ontopic. I have a battery backup system aswell! It cost me about $3500 ontop of my installation and consists of a unit which senses the grid and shunts power to the batteries, and 4 marine batteries of some particular type that I don't actually care about. They cover the electrical usage of my house overnight if the grid is down. Not if I'm watching some huge plasma telly all night, but lights.. radios, computers, intarwebs (which.. work for all of 4/8 hours into a regional power outage, it seems that Comcast have an 8 hour emergency generator). During the (summer) day, my panels will provide power to the house and also charge the batteries enough that they'll carry me through the night again. I don't have to turn off refridgerators, clocks, I can even microwave some noodles.
I haven't done numbers. I don't care. This is real world "I have done this.. experience."
The nice thing about battery backups though is that it's instant. I don't even get a flicker if the grid goes out, or there's a brownout. If I turn off my mains my batteries kick in quick enough that computers don't reboot... If I didn't have a little alert set up to tell me when it happens I'd never even notice.
I also get alot of power outages in my area. Stupid reasons like stapling power cables to telephone poles.. which then get hit by trees, etc etc etc. Oh.. and a few hurricanes over the past few years aswell..:)
Since you only have 68 days to live after you get there ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci... ) it's sure going to suck, dying just as you're getting used to the new daylight...
There are many things Anonymous does which are morally dubious. But, I have to say, I can't really take issue with this vigilantism.
After all "think of the children!". But uh.. actually, don't. It's kinda disturbing. Or do.. since, it's disturbing, and one shouldn't bury one's head in the sand because.. it's hard to think about.
The programmers just set the thing up to 'buy whatever'. At the time, 'whatever' may have simply been a bunch of knockoff handbags. It's not illegal to buy those... the seller may get slapped for violating a trademark, or something - but no-one's going to come rip your handbag out of your hands or put you in jail.
And, quite honestly - the feckin' article tells the submitter 'who is responsible'. If the law says : 'knowingly violated' - they are not responsible. If the law says 'recklessly violated' then there is a case to be made.
But let me spin you this :
>The creator of a device that breaks the law because the creator either negligently or intentionally set up the device to break the law is responsible
If I father a child (creator) and raise it to be... less than respectful of the law... my child then robs a bank. Do they put *me* in jail? By your definition they should...
>which makes me think that there never will be a commercial solution
Quite the opposite. I've been 'thinking about' doing this for a couple of years now, and my research has led me to the conclusion that 'everyone' uses Light-o-rama commercial setup to do this.
It's not wireless, but I don't believe (other than the DMX solution DJ's use for their stage lighting) there's a wireless solution to be had. Even that 'solution' isn't actually wireless, since it uses wires for.. the power! Wireless dongles can be plugged into recievers at the light end - but to be honest, you're better off just going the light-o-rama route.
That solution works by giving you a 'squid' of power connectors, into which you plug your extension cords and it just.. turns them on and off. They give you some kind of application that you can use to sync the lights to your music - if you've ever made an animated thing in like Blender or Poser or Daz Studio you'd get right along with it - timeline.. flip this on at second 3, flip this off at second 5, turn the other on at second 10.. etc..
However, it's not cheap - by any standards. In controller hardware OR lights.
I live close-ish to some power lines. Some 4 or 5 years ago - I guess following that NorthEast USA blackout period which was unrelatedly due to some electricity surge from Canada.. or something - the power company came along and cut down a bunch of trees off 'my land' within 100 feet of the lines. I was pretty peeved. I like trees. I have a whole bunch of them on my land. Next year they returned and cut down more... This has happened for every year since..
Sandy comes along - all the trees which sheltered my 'other trees' have been cut down. Result - I lost 9 trees which were previously sheltered from the wind (and I guess hadn't grown the root structure to survive). 2 hit my house.
Elsewhere - where the utility company had not cut down trees to 'save the power lines' - all the trees survived.
While I appreciate that the utility company needs to protect their lines - there are *much worse* situaitons than where my trees border their lines - even just 1 mile down the road. And I'm convinced they opened up the nightmare that was Sandy.
So where do I go to file a lawsuit against all them old mansions for 'displaying child porn' with the cherub stonework in full display. Children abound.. some of them with their dangly bits out... 0_o
Google was also a winner for me because of its clean single line text input for search. No images, no clutter, no links on the page - in the age of a 9600 baud modem the less clutter on the page the better. That was why *I* swapped from alta-vista to google. Alta-vista had started presenting a 'portal page' which was all the rage back then, and I preferred the quick, efficient search from google.
Slashdot Mirror
I have not an app, but a device ( on my home landline :P)
http://www.tel-lynx.com/index....
It's a wonderful device which has a *major* benefit - and the reason I bought it.
A call comes in, the device looks at the number. If it's one you've previously let through ( Gran'ma, wife, sprogs, etc) then it simply passes the call through to your phone.
If not - it plays an announcement, asks the caller to press a number, identify themselves ( by voice ) and THEN rings your phone with the provided info.
On picking up your own phone, you get to either a) let the call through b) send it to voicemail c) send a 'fuck off' message and drop the call
Since robo-calls can't press #6 when asked to identify themselves, it effectively drops ALL robo-calls and the big thing is : IT NEVER RINGS YOUR PHONE.
Marketing peeps who are people, recruiters who *really* want to offer you a job etc etc - can identify themselves and get through.
The only time I've found where it doesn't work well is where you have one of those web-ex meetings and choose the 'call me on my number' option for sound - you get an automated telephone call to your line but which cannot identify itself. The device has the ability to turn off call screening for a period of time (say an hour) to cope with that too.
It's leaps and bounds ahead of all the other 'call blocker' things I could find. All of which seem to work on a 'get a call you don't want? Press this button - gets added to a blacklist. Blacklist is 1000 numbers long!!!!" - but we all know, that's worthless since spam calls are just spoof'd local numbers which continually change.
Sadly... the product itself - while absolutely awesome - is now incredibly hard to source. Amazon had it listed as 'out of stock' for months and months when I first found it. Their web page also had it out-of-stock for the longest time, and I only managed to get one because I was showing a friend and the 'buy' button was lit. I snapped it up straight away.
I suspect shenanigans - shortly after and even now - they are all listed as 'retired'. I suspect someone whapped them with a frivolous lawsuit or they simply got bought out by someone who's interests are... shady.
I'd posit that it's a *better* solution.
Nuking an existing site simply results in a second popping up - all cockroach like.
Whereas - making the *business* of placing spam calls untenable - due to everyone you call wasting your 'employee's time' talking to robots.. effectively ends the *business* of robocalling.
I watched that video when it first appeared [somewhere]
I continue to happily rant about systemd despite the assertations that 'it's all me' from some bsd dude...
It's not me. It's utter shit. Great for a laptop or some desktop machine I'm sure, but it has no place in a data center server where uptimes are measured in months and no-one sticks a fucking USB stick into your box.
Are you sure about that?
D'you remember what Arthur Anderson changed their name to after their accounting scandal debacle re: Enron?
I 'vaguely' remember. Some bulltshit floaty-woaty fairy name or something or other beginning with A.
I have to look it up.. I might remember if I saw it, but I can't immediately bring it to mind when asked.
PS: I looked it up. It's Accenture.
To be fair.. I'd go as far as to say 98% of spoofed phonecalls are to (Primary) English speaking countries.
There's little point some 'sales rep' sittin' in a call center in India callin' up some german speaking citizen with a barely-understandable-anyway English script...
But yes - Also those with lax laws about wether you can (or should) be doing it or not.
Indeed it does - and I have one myself.
Excellently designed. Doesn't need you to maintain a whitelist.. or a blacklist ( which most of the landline call blockers do - utterly pointless when numbers are spoof'd)
Sadly - My unit was *incredibly* hard to purchase. it had been listed on amazon as 'out of stock' for months and months. And while they *do* have a web site from which you can purchase a unit directly - THAT was also 'out of stock' for a long period of time. It was only when I was showing the page to a friend that I noticed there was a 'buy now...' button and I quickly snapped one up.
Since then? Their web site says for all their products : Retired
http://www.tel-lynx.com/
I suspect they got some kind of 'finger-of-god' interaction pointed at them. Or perhaps some infringing patent or.. I dunno. A piece of equipment THIS good, far in advance of any other I see on amazon has to have something nefarious dumped on it.
Depends on the judge.
I defend every traffic violation I've ever been handed. Some of them valid, some of them not.
In cases where the officer didn't turn up, I'd say that 70% of the cases were tossed out, and in two cases the judge rescheduled. I objected, naturally, and in one instance it was later dropped, and in the other rescduled and later heard - after which it got thrown out anyway.
I have a 100% success rate in either reducing my (valid) tickets to a slap on the wrist (read: $90 court fine) or tosses out entirely. :P
Goto court.. defend yourself, even if you're guilty, you'll often get a non-points-incurring-verdict.
Warren Buffet has done a *heapload* of a-hole things. Some guy released a book about it a number of years ago.. I was surprised..
Things like - he made a monopoly of industrial railroads. He bought up the indvidual railroad operators and then intentionally shut them down or reduced service so the companies who ship.. coal, grain, steel etc would have to pay more to use HIS (now only) railroad.
This raised the price of grain / coal / steel.. etc - so he bought those - used his rail monopoly to see increased profits.. etc etc..
Like I said - I was quite surprised. I had thought him a 'standup guy' - but apparent he's an a-hole.
Feel free to point out if I'm wrong.. But, isn't this just like a huge mini split? Using CO2 instead of um.. Freon, or whatever they put in them these days?
Stick a huge finned thing out in the ocean, cycle some refrigerant around it, transfer heat from one side to the other? Requires electricity and it's not like.. you're *consuming* CO2 and removing it magically?
The article seemed to describe exactly what the mini-split in my living room does, only on a much higher scale, and with C02 as the transport medium instead of some other rare gas?
I also care!
As an ex-pat Brit, I caught a few episodes on Dave a year or so back and I find it *Actually* Quite Interesting!
There's factoids and funny bits all through it - you can't find anything like it on 'merikan television (or at least I can't with my cable line-up).
Full Disclosure: I liked Blackadder, that Laywer program he came out with, Jeeves and Wooster (when it came out, less so now), Peters Friends and that Anonymous film he did.. :)
I recently revisited the 'Jeeves and Wooster' series with my wife (who is not English) after exhorting its brilliant'ness.
Turns out that my memory is rosy, and it's actually kinda dull and crap. I was disappointed in myself. Blackadder on the other hand, stands the test of time (and memory!)
Actually no. I buy AMD processors for *intregity*
I haven't bought an Intel processor since they said : If you can show us you *need* it you can have a fixed Pentium (without the FDIV bug).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Publicly, Intel acknowledged the floating-point flaw, but claimed that it was not serious and would not affect most users. Intel offered to replace processors to users who could prove that they were affected. However, although most independent estimates found the bug to be of little importance and would have negligible effect on most users, it caused a great public outcry.
So.. long memory. Many $'s lost. Don't piss off customers (or lie about it and when you have to fess up say : Whatever..)
I can attest to this.
I'm British and was a perfectly proficient parallel parker before I moved to 'merika. 20 years over here, and the ez-mode perpendicular parking has atrophied my skills such that.. when I was in NYC the other day and tasked with performing a parallel park.. I ended up with one wheel on the pavement... >_
So.. great. Now this guy can go into the same bin as that dude who pushed systemd. The 'Clusterfuck of Things I didn't want..."
2003 outlook was the last I actually liked. I hung onto it for as long as I possibly could before being forced to upgrade to.. I dunno.. whatever it is out there now. It had a reasonably nice UI, it was quick and did a bunch of stuff I liked. The UI wasn't splattered all over the place and it had nice bevelled buttons and stuff, instead of the flat bollocks that is the current trend. I mean, I have what.. three choices of 'theme' now? White, 'light grey' and 'dark grey' - none of which are much use in allowing me to distinguish between parts of the interface..
So.. now I know who to blame. .
I'm sorry you got Troll for this. I'm a big Linux user / fan and I found this immensely funny.. :)
I take my car to a dealership too. I don't have a great deal of choice, but that's another story.
My list, the first year, included : New air-cabin-filter, oil filter, oil.. some other sundries. They even helpfully brought the air-cabin-filter with them to the waiting area to show me exactly how dirty it was! Full of gunk and y'know... crumbly leafy bits. $60 to replace that.
Since I have no knowledge of cars, I went home and decided to 'get me some lerning..'
Air filter = $3 online.
Changing air cabin filter is literally.. (and I *actually mean literally*) case of opening the glove compartment, depressing two clips and pulling it out.
Next time I went, they brought me my air filter to inspect once again - asked me if I'd like it changed - since it was 'so awful'.
Me: No, thanks - but since you have it out already, and you have to put something back, would you mind putting *THIS* one back in, rather than the one in your hand?
Engineer: Sorry, we can't do that..
Me: No worries, I'll just save the $57 and pop it out once you're done.
etc etc. There's like a dozen little things like this which are *completely stupid* that they try to bag you for.
I hate my dealership. They spam me every six months telling me my car needs a service because.. y'know.. ITS BEEN SIX MONTHS!
Despite me swearing at the fuckers that : I don't even drive the thing anymore, take me off your goddamn list, I'll come in when I'm ready.
(toyota)
Their showroom could go up in smoke and I'd actually be happy.
Beg to differ,
It's been quite a while that 'lawyers' have been outsourced. Simple things like house contracts, wills, and other things you'd normally need a lawyer for are being shuffled down the pipeline to India. Obviously not for the type of lawyers who stand up infront of judges/ juries and actually say stuff, but they're a small part of the plethora of lawyers in the world today.
Practically the first hit on google for 'lawyers being outsourced' nets this, from 2013 : http://www.smallfirminnovation...
And also - anecdotal experience tells me this happens.
I had a friend who is a lawyer and complains about his corner of the profession being outsourced and also: I received a 'lawyers document' which had come from Bangalore... or somesuch bollocks.
Yeah.. Like a whole bunch of others say in this thread - this is bollocks.
I got into the solar game early. I had mine installed about six years back. I got 48 of the 180W panels (there are much better now) and they cover pretty much all of my electrical use (aswell as my south facing garage). Given that used to be around $250-300 ish a month, that's a fair ongoing savings.
Now, couple that with the Green tags / SREC's which I can sell for (depending on wether gub'ner Christie is being a nobhead this year or not) anywhere between $60 and $600. Five few years back I sold a bunch for $400ish, last year I sold some for $60.
Either way, my 'payoff' is about six years, give or take a couple.
Now - back ontopic. I have a battery backup system aswell! It cost me about $3500 ontop of my installation and consists of a unit which senses the grid and shunts power to the batteries, and 4 marine batteries of some particular type that I don't actually care about. They cover the electrical usage of my house overnight if the grid is down. Not if I'm watching some huge plasma telly all night, but lights.. radios, computers, intarwebs (which.. work for all of 4/8 hours into a regional power outage, it seems that Comcast have an 8 hour emergency generator). During the (summer) day, my panels will provide power to the house and also charge the batteries enough that they'll carry me through the night again. I don't have to turn off refridgerators, clocks, I can even microwave some noodles.
I haven't done numbers. I don't care. This is real world "I have done this.. experience."
The nice thing about battery backups though is that it's instant. I don't even get a flicker if the grid goes out, or there's a brownout. If I turn off my mains my batteries kick in quick enough that computers don't reboot... If I didn't have a little alert set up to tell me when it happens I'd never even notice.
I also get alot of power outages in my area. Stupid reasons like stapling power cables to telephone poles.. which then get hit by trees, etc etc etc. :)
Oh.. and a few hurricanes over the past few years aswell..
Well bugger....
Since you only have 68 days to live after you get there ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci... ) it's sure going to suck, dying just as you're getting used to the new daylight...
There are many things Anonymous does which are morally dubious. But, I have to say, I can't really take issue with this vigilantism.
After all "think of the children!". But uh.. actually, don't. It's kinda disturbing. Or do.. since, it's disturbing, and one shouldn't bury one's head in the sand because.. it's hard to think about.
I cannot agree with this.
The programmers just set the thing up to 'buy whatever'. At the time, 'whatever' may have simply been a bunch of knockoff handbags. It's not illegal to buy those... the seller may get slapped for violating a trademark, or something - but no-one's going to come rip your handbag out of your hands or put you in jail.
And, quite honestly - the feckin' article tells the submitter 'who is responsible'. If the law says : 'knowingly violated' - they are not responsible. If the law says 'recklessly violated' then there is a case to be made.
But let me spin you this :
>The creator of a device that breaks the law because the creator either negligently or intentionally set up the device to break the law is responsible
If I father a child (creator) and raise it to be... less than respectful of the law... my child then robs a bank. Do they put *me* in jail? By your definition they should...
>which makes me think that there never will be a commercial solution
Quite the opposite. I've been 'thinking about' doing this for a couple of years now, and my research has led me to the conclusion that 'everyone' uses Light-o-rama commercial setup to do this.
It's not wireless, but I don't believe (other than the DMX solution DJ's use for their stage lighting) there's a wireless solution to be had. Even that 'solution' isn't actually wireless, since it uses wires for.. the power! Wireless dongles can be plugged into recievers at the light end - but to be honest, you're better off just going the light-o-rama route.
That solution works by giving you a 'squid' of power connectors, into which you plug your extension cords and it just.. turns them on and off. They give you some kind of application that you can use to sync the lights to your music - if you've ever made an animated thing in like Blender or Poser or Daz Studio you'd get right along with it - timeline.. flip this on at second 3, flip this off at second 5, turn the other on at second 10.. etc..
However, it's not cheap - by any standards. In controller hardware OR lights.
Yeah - so about that..
I live close-ish to some power lines. Some 4 or 5 years ago - I guess following that NorthEast USA blackout period which was unrelatedly due to some electricity surge from Canada.. or something - the power company came along and cut down a bunch of trees off 'my land' within 100 feet of the lines. I was pretty peeved. I like trees. I have a whole bunch of them on my land. Next year they returned and cut down more... This has happened for every year since..
Sandy comes along - all the trees which sheltered my 'other trees' have been cut down. Result - I lost 9 trees which were previously sheltered from the wind (and I guess hadn't grown the root structure to survive). 2 hit my house.
Elsewhere - where the utility company had not cut down trees to 'save the power lines' - all the trees survived.
While I appreciate that the utility company needs to protect their lines - there are *much worse* situaitons than where my trees border their lines - even just 1 mile down the road. And I'm convinced they opened up the nightmare that was Sandy.
Also BURY YOUR FUCKING POWER LINES.
Indeed.
So where do I go to file a lawsuit against all them old mansions for 'displaying child porn' with the cherub stonework in full display.
Children abound.. some of them with their dangly bits out... 0_o
http://carvingswithstories.blo...
Looks like a sex act t'me guv.
Google was also a winner for me because of its clean single line text input for search. No images, no clutter, no links on the page - in the age of a 9600 baud modem the less clutter on the page the better. That was why *I* swapped from alta-vista to google. Alta-vista had started presenting a 'portal page' which was all the rage back then, and I preferred the quick, efficient search from google.