Same with pre-employment drug screening. I simply won't do that. (And the practice has fallen out of favor, anyway.)
Maybe in certain tech circles, but the rest of the country is gung-ho on it. Even the peons at target and best buy have to take drug tests, in the states without good employee protection laws they can also be required to take them randomly during employment too. Can't have those guys doing mind-numbingly boring jobs blowing off a little stress when they get home you know...
As for sanctimony, the guy who asks for information, and then ignores the half of that information that disproves his argument really shouldn't be on a high horse about sanctimoniousness.
Dude, I've been fucking with you since you first posted. When the very first sentence of your entrance to the discussion is to insult the people you disagree with, nobody is going to give a damn about what you have to say. You came in riding that horse.
The biggest fish they've bragged about is some cabbie in LA and his friends who sent a whopping $8500 to some terrorist group in Africa
Not to mention that the reason he sent the money seems to have been a tribal issue, as in a bribe/tribute so his family back home would get better treatment from the guys running the town who also happened to be members of the terrorist group.
Meanwhile, under oath Alexander was forced to walk back their big claim of foiling 54 plots.
What is so amazing to me are people like you who are always happy to criticize someone who took action for doing it "the wrong way." The problem with that attitude is that everyone has their own version of "the right way." Snowden got results, it ain't perfect but its 1000x more effective than what anyone else has done. He deserves enormous slack for that.
Crazy theory here. Could they be trying to focus Skype for use with their Windows Phone to try to give people a compelling reason to switch over to their mobile OS?
Sure looks like it. And it will probably work just as well as google killing off all of their services that remotely compete with g+.
I realize that given your politics you just about have to say that
Just like I realize that given your latent smugness you had to say that and that it is no surprise you posted a link from the writer with the absolute most to lose if the "surge" isn't all its cracked up to be.
Brooks Law states "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later".
+6 man, +6. That is exactly what first came to mind when they went for that "surge" mentaphor.
Second thing that comes to mind is that the surge didn't work, it just happened to coincide with a change of local Iraqi politics (locals got sick of extremists killing locals instead of just americans so they started outing the extremists so the americans finally knew who to kill).
Disruptions: Visually Impaired Turn to Smartphones to See Their World September 29, 2013, 11:00 am
In recent years, many smartphone apps that are aimed at blind people have appeared.
Luis Perez loves taking photographs. He shoots mostly on an iPhone, snapping gorgeous pictures of sunsets, vintage cars, old buildings and cute puppies. But when he arrives at a photo shoot, people are often startled when he pulls out a long white cane.
In addition to being a professional photographer, Mr. Perez is almost blind.
"With the iPhone I am able to use the same technology as everyone else, and having a product that doesn't have a stigma that other technologies do has been really important to me," said Mr. Perez, who is also an advocate for blind people and speaks regularly at conferences about the benefits of technology for people who cannot see. "Now, even if you're blind, you can still take a photo."
Smartphones and tablets, with their flat glass touch screens and nary a texture anywhere, may not seem like the best technological innovation for people who cannot see. But advocates for the blind say the devices could be the biggest assistive aid to come along since Braille was invented in the 1820s.
Counterintuitive? You bet. People with vision problems can use a smartphone's voice commands to read or write. They can determine denominations of money using a camera app, figure out where they are using GPS and compass applications, and, like Mr. Perez, take photos.
Google's latest releases of its Android operating systems have increased its assistive technologies, specifically with updates to TalkBack, a Google-made application that adds spoken, audible and vibration feedback to a smartphone. Windows phones also offer some voice commands, but they are fewer than either Google's or Apple's.
Among Apple's features are ones that help people with vision problems take pictures. In assistive mode, for example, the phone can say how many heads are in a picture and where they are in the frame, so someone who is blind knows if the family photo she is about to take includes everyone.
All this has come as a delightful shock to most people with vision problems.
"We were sort of conditioned to believe that you can't use a touch screen because you can't see it," said Dorrie Rush, the marketing director of accessible technology at Lighthouse International, a nonprofit vision education and rehabilitation center. "The belief was the tools for the visually impaired must have a tactile screen, which, it turns out, is completely untrue."
Ms. Rush, who has a retinal disorder, said that before the smartphone, people who were visually impaired could use a flip-phone to make calls, but they could not read on the tiny two-inch screens. While the first version of the iPhone allowed people who were losing their vision to enlarge text, it wasn't until 2009, when the company introduced accessibility features, that the device became a benefit to blind people.
While some companies might have altruistic goals in building products and services for people who have lost their sight, the number of people who need these products is growing.
About 10 million people in the United States are blind or partly blind, according to statistics from the American Foundation for the Blind. And some estimates predict that over the next 30 years, as the vast baby boomer generation ages, the number of adults with vision impairments could double.
Apple's assistive technologies also include VoiceOver, which t
October 19, 2013 " The country's largest retailer, which for years didn't blink at would-be competitors, is now under such a threat from Amazon that it is frantically playing catch-up by learning the technology business, including starting @WalmartLabs at Walmart Global E-Commerce, its dot-com division.
The two retail behemoths, one the king of the physical store and the other the conqueror of the online world, are battling over e-commerce -- competing for the most talented engineers, trying to gain the upper hand in the new frontier of same-day delivery and warring over online pricing. "
Probably paywalled, but the NY Times paywall is like swiss cheese.
If you use Tor and then buy something with a personal credit card or debit card, you're doing it wrong.
Bullshit.
Nowadays every little fucking detail that a merchant can glean from you goes into multiple databases that you have zero control over. It is preposterous that I should have to risk giving up my name and address to every website I've browsed from the same IP address that I placed an order from.
Until merchants are legally prevented from sharing your personal information with whoever the fuck they want, it is morally reprehensible for them to expect customers to not take measures to protect their privacy.
That's one of the main reasons I use a VPN. Since I have to give the merchant my shipping address and name I don't want them selling that info to the profilers like BlueKai or DoubleClick in conjunction with my real IP address because any traffic that leaks out via my real IP address would then be easy to cross-reference.
If a merchant is going to require that I give up the privacy of my internet usage just to do business with them, I will just spend my money elsewhere.
Sure, for current generation jammers. But the next rev won't just jam, it will spoof. At which point you are going have a lot harder time distinguishing legit from fake.
Just like your driver's license isn't a right to drive: It can be revoked.
Uh, no. If that argument worked then we would have no rights - no right to life because of capital punishment, no right to vote because most states don't let prisoners vote and some don't let ex-cons vote, etc, etc.
It acts like a material discriminator, in that certain interesting materials, such as wires or micro-circuitry, invert only one of the reflections, so instead of cancelling each other out, they amplify.
The discussion of "twin inverted pulse sonar" clearly states that one signal is inverted from the other. So if only one signal gets inverted during reflection they aren't amplifying, they are canceling.
Seems more likely that "hard" objects cleanly invert both signals while "noisy" ones like bubbles or brush fuzz up both signals, essentially adding noise that the receiver can then subtract by subtracting the two signals. In which case this is classic differential signaling.
"As its name suggests, TWIPS uses trains of twinned pairs of sound pulses. The first pulse of each pair has a waveform that is an inverted replica of that of its twin. The first pulse is emitted a fraction of a second before its inverted twin." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101117104502.htm
Slashdot Mirror
Same with pre-employment drug screening. I simply won't do that. (And the practice has fallen out of favor, anyway.)
Maybe in certain tech circles, but the rest of the country is gung-ho on it. Even the peons at target and best buy have to take drug tests, in the states without good employee protection laws they can also be required to take them randomly during employment too. Can't have those guys doing mind-numbingly boring jobs blowing off a little stress when they get home you know...
So you get proven wrong on a fairly trivial point, and your response is to claim you meant to be proven wrong the entire damn time?
Proven right or wrong, didn't matter, I didn't even bother to read what you wrote past what I quoted in order to give you some bait to respond to.
As for sanctimony, the guy who asks for information, and then ignores the half of that information that disproves his argument really shouldn't be on a high horse about sanctimoniousness.
Dude, I've been fucking with you since you first posted. When the very first sentence of your entrance to the discussion is to insult the people you disagree with, nobody is going to give a damn about what you have to say. You came in riding that horse.
In the Constitution itself, Article 1, Section 5, specifically allows Congress to decide actual Congressional debates "require secrecy."
Ah, so this really just a congressional rule. Basically you are the point of circular reasoning, enjoy your sanctimony.
The biggest fish they've bragged about is some cabbie in LA and his friends who sent a whopping $8500 to some terrorist group in Africa
Not to mention that the reason he sent the money seems to have been a tribal issue, as in a bribe/tribute so his family back home would get better treatment from the guys running the town who also happened to be members of the terrorist group.
Meanwhile, under oath Alexander was forced to walk back their big claim of foiling 54 plots.
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/02/nsa_director_admits_to_misleading_public_on_terror_plots/
Under the Constitution the government is allowed to classify data.
Yeah, and which clause is that?
Wyden already had classified information about this stuff. He wouldn't do anything about it except give vague warnings.
What is so amazing to me are people like you who are always happy to criticize someone who took action for doing it "the wrong way." The problem with that attitude is that everyone has their own version of "the right way." Snowden got results, it ain't perfect but its 1000x more effective than what anyone else has done. He deserves enormous slack for that.
There are procedures to report those crimes. I don't know of Snowden following them.
He did. The result was partly what convinced him to go another way.
The other part that convinced him? What happened to the others that tried before him.
Crazy theory here. Could they be trying to focus Skype for use with their Windows Phone to try to give people a compelling reason to switch over to their mobile OS?
Sure looks like it. And it will probably work just as well as google killing off all of their services that remotely compete with g+.
I realize that given your politics you just about have to say that
Just like I realize that given your latent smugness you had to say that and that it is no surprise you posted a link from the writer with the absolute most to lose if the "surge" isn't all its cracked up to be.
Brooks Law states "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later".
+6 man, +6. That is exactly what first came to mind when they went for that "surge" mentaphor.
Second thing that comes to mind is that the surge didn't work, it just happened to coincide with a change of local Iraqi politics (locals got sick of extremists killing locals instead of just americans so they started outing the extremists so the americans finally knew who to kill).
24*30 720 Kw.
so about 10 bucks
Where do you live that 1kw costs less than 2 cents?
In California, 1kw can easily cost 20-30 cents.
Even "cheap" parts of the country run 8-10 cents.
So a more realistic cost is $55 to $215 depending on the local market.
I'd love to see a blind person try to use touch screen phone.
Touch screen phones may well be the best tech to come along for helping blind people ever.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/disruptions-guided-by-touch-screens-blind-turn-to-smartphones-for-sight
Since that might be pay-walled, here's a copy:
Disruptions: Visually Impaired Turn to Smartphones to See Their World
September 29, 2013, 11:00 am
In recent years, many smartphone apps that are aimed at blind people have appeared.
Luis Perez loves taking photographs. He shoots mostly on an iPhone, snapping gorgeous pictures of sunsets, vintage cars, old buildings and cute puppies. But when he arrives at a photo shoot, people are often startled when he pulls out a long white cane.
In addition to being a professional photographer, Mr. Perez is almost blind.
"With the iPhone I am able to use the same technology as everyone else, and having a product that doesn't have a stigma that other technologies do has been really important to me," said Mr. Perez, who is also an advocate for blind people and speaks regularly at conferences about the benefits of technology for people who cannot see. "Now, even if you're blind, you can still take a photo."
Smartphones and tablets, with their flat glass touch screens and nary a texture anywhere, may not seem like the best technological innovation for people who cannot see. But advocates for the blind say the devices could be the biggest assistive aid to come along since Braille was invented in the 1820s.
Counterintuitive? You bet. People with vision problems can use a smartphone's voice commands to read or write. They can determine denominations of money using a camera app, figure out where they are using GPS and compass applications, and, like Mr. Perez, take photos.
Google's latest releases of its Android operating systems have increased its assistive technologies, specifically with updates to TalkBack, a Google-made application that adds spoken, audible and vibration feedback to a smartphone. Windows phones also offer some voice commands, but they are fewer than either Google's or Apple's.
Among Apple's features are ones that help people with vision problems take pictures. In assistive mode, for example, the phone can say how many heads are in a picture and where they are in the frame, so someone who is blind knows if the family photo she is about to take includes everyone.
All this has come as a delightful shock to most people with vision problems.
"We were sort of conditioned to believe that you can't use a touch screen because you can't see it," said Dorrie Rush, the marketing director of accessible technology at Lighthouse International, a nonprofit vision education and rehabilitation center. "The belief was the tools for the visually impaired must have a tactile screen, which, it turns out, is completely untrue."
Ms. Rush, who has a retinal disorder, said that before the smartphone, people who were visually impaired could use a flip-phone to make calls, but they could not read on the tiny two-inch screens. While the first version of the iPhone allowed people who were losing their vision to enlarge text, it wasn't until 2009, when the company introduced accessibility features, that the device became a benefit to blind people.
While some companies might have altruistic goals in building products and services for people who have lost their sight, the number of people who need these products is growing.
About 10 million people in the United States are blind or partly blind, according to statistics from the American Foundation for the Blind. And some estimates predict that over the next 30 years, as the vast baby boomer generation ages, the number of adults with vision impairments could double.
Apple's assistive technologies also include VoiceOver, which t
it would be beneficial to the american public if the riaa and mpaa would go fuck themselves.
Corporations can only reproduce asexually so, that probably wouldn't be all that good for us.
Somehow the article neglected to mention the biggest risk of them all ... the local wildlife!
He lied to Congress
It was Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper who lied to congress, not Alexander. At least not provably.
It is important that we keep the facts straight, every stray bullet is an excuse for the pro-NSA types to discredit our position.
> does not mean it's wrong, or even racist if a country wants to keep it's heritage intact. Japan is in it's rights
Standard racist logic: if it is legal it can't be racism.
It is almost impossible unless you have Japanese roots.
That's how it should be.
Surprise, racist is racist!
Funny you should mention that:
To Catch Up, Walmart Moves to Amazon Turf
October 19, 2013
" The country's largest retailer, which for years didn't blink at would-be competitors, is now under such a threat from Amazon that it is frantically playing catch-up by learning the technology business, including starting @WalmartLabs at Walmart Global E-Commerce, its dot-com division.
The two retail behemoths, one the king of the physical store and the other the conqueror of the online world, are battling over e-commerce -- competing for the most talented engineers, trying to gain the upper hand in the new frontier of same-day delivery and warring over online pricing. "
Probably paywalled, but the NY Times paywall is like swiss cheese.
If you use Tor and then buy something with a personal credit card or debit card, you're doing it wrong.
Bullshit.
Nowadays every little fucking detail that a merchant can glean from you goes into multiple databases that you have zero control over. It is preposterous that I should have to risk giving up my name and address to every website I've browsed from the same IP address that I placed an order from.
Until merchants are legally prevented from sharing your personal information with whoever the fuck they want, it is morally reprehensible for them to expect customers to not take measures to protect their privacy.
vpn use triggers the 'cancel the order' logic
That's one of the main reasons I use a VPN. Since I have to give the merchant my shipping address and name I don't want them selling that info to the profilers like BlueKai or DoubleClick in conjunction with my real IP address because any traffic that leaks out via my real IP address would then be easy to cross-reference.
If a merchant is going to require that I give up the privacy of my internet usage just to do business with them, I will just spend my money elsewhere.
Sure, for current generation jammers. But the next rev won't just jam, it will spoof. At which point you are going have a lot harder time distinguishing legit from fake.
Just like your driver's license isn't a right to drive: It can be revoked.
Uh, no. If that argument worked then we would have no rights - no right to life because of capital punishment, no right to vote because most states don't let prisoners vote and some don't let ex-cons vote, etc, etc.
No, it is a sonar-only one to the 2013 radar version.
It acts like a material discriminator, in that certain interesting materials, such as wires or micro-circuitry, invert only one of the reflections, so instead of cancelling each other out, they amplify.
The discussion of "twin inverted pulse sonar" clearly states that one signal is inverted from the other. So if only one signal gets inverted during reflection they aren't amplifying, they are canceling.
Seems more likely that "hard" objects cleanly invert both signals while "noisy" ones like bubbles or brush fuzz up both signals, essentially adding noise that the receiver can then subtract by subtracting the two signals. In which case this is classic differential signaling.
"As its name suggests, TWIPS uses trains of twinned pairs of sound pulses. The first pulse of each pair has a waveform that is an inverted replica of that of its twin. The first pulse is emitted a fraction of a second before its inverted twin."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101117104502.htm