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User: drew30319

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  1. Re:The didn't crack anything. on Misophonia: Scientists Crack Why Eating Sounds Can Make People Angry (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Yes, aversions can be treated (and I didn't intend to imply otherwise). My point was this study shows a physiological response which makes dealing with it more complicated than "why don't you just ignore it?"

  2. Re:The didn't crack anything. on Misophonia: Scientists Crack Why Eating Sounds Can Make People Angry (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Although it might not have been as much info as we'd like, they did "crack" something: now we know that this is more than mere annoyance; there's an actual response comparable to "flight or fight."

    This means we should treat misophonia more like an allergy (i.e. autonomic response) than a behavioral issue (i.e. intolerance).

  3. from the perspective of a small nonprofit on Ask Slashdot: Making Donations Count · · Score: 1
    First, I think it's great that not only are you interested in supporting worthwhile causes but are also interested in educating yourself about how different orgs use their resources. So . . . kudos!

    Note: I run a nonprofit organization and have a different perspective (+ bias!) about donations.

    [1] Generally, I think it's best to begin as you already have by identifying those causes which are most important to you.

    [2] Next, ask yourself if you're interested in pursuing a global / regional / local approach? The local org might focus on issues which matter to you - and it might be directly related to issues in your neighborhood. On the other hand "big" issues like constitutional rights might only be addressed at the national level.

    Also, are you looking for a large well-established nonprofit or a small up-start where your money will have a more significant impact? For example a donation of $1,000 to the Red Cross will certainly be welcomed but likely not celebrated. If instead you made that $1,000 donation to a nonprofit running on a shoestring budget of $20,000 a year then you've just increased their budget by 5% - which is definitely cause for celebration!

    [3] By now you should have at least a handful of charities which meet your criteria and can begin validating their effectiveness, transparency, and legal status.

    A good place to start is GuideStar ( http://guidestar.org/ ). You will get information on IRS status, financials, mission statements as well as reviews. CharityNavigator ( http://charitynavigator.org/ ) is another great resource and they provide independent ratings of charities. One important distinction though is that CharityNavigator focuses on larger nonprofits (total revenue must be > $1million in the previous fiscal year).

    My nonprofit has a listing with CharityNavigator but no rating because we are (much much much) too small. On the other hand at GuideStar we have a "Gold" rating based on the amount of information which we have shared with them. So either of these are great resources but my bias is showing when I lean toward GuideStar.

    If for some reason you'd rather not use either of these sites I would suggest that at a minimum that you verify that the nonprofit has a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS and that it has not been revoked. You can search for orgs by name or EIN here: http://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/

    For more on charity scams here's some helpful info from the FTC: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/a...

    [4] Once you have narrowed your list down to 1 or 2 then you can decide if there's a specific funding mechanism which appeals most to you (e.g. PayPal, cash, check, bitcoin). Some donation methods can take 5% (or more!) of the donation off the top before the nonprofit gets the donation.

    For example, PayPal charges nonprofits a reduced fee of 2.2% + $0.30 per transaction (details here: https://www.paypal.com/webapps...). Also, BitPay does not charge us anything for bitcoin donations through our site.

    Hopefully by going through this you will wind up with at least one charity which meets all of your criteria and can then just confirm their status in the future without going through all of these steps every time. Thank you on behalf of nonprofit organizations everywhere for supporting their efforts!

    Shameless Plug
    Of course I have to say something about my nonprofit's work: Jennifer Ann's Group is a nonprofit charity preventing teen dating violence. Our most successful program is producing video games to help young people, parents, and educators learn more about this issue and how to seek help if needed. We have produced 20+ video games through an annual video g

  4. Re:No privacy issues here on Charity Promotes Covert Surveillance App For Suicide Prevention · · Score: 1

    Oh wait...I already do that. By not using twitter.

    Exactly. That's why this is not a privacy problem.

  5. No privacy issues here on Charity Promotes Covert Surveillance App For Suicide Prevention · · Score: 1
    Nothing about this app has privacy implications:
    • the data that the app reads is otherwise available to the app user
    • the app applies some level of expert-system analysis to identify potentially life-threatening issues
    • the app then alerts the app user about the potential problem
    • the app user is directed to the potentially troubling tweets for review

    The charity behind the app has now added the ability to opt-out of the above. Of course there's nothing to prevent another app / service to do all of the above because these are tweets that are still available.

  6. re: naivety on Mayday Anti-PAC On Its Second Round of Funding · · Score: 1

    The MAYDAY PAC is like David trying to beat Goliath in a fist fight. Don't fight on his terms, use the sling, idiot!

    I believe the idea is that the money raised by "real people" will be used differently than that raised by corporations. The PAC is the funding mechanism which will be used to consolidate and coordinate "real people" who want to positively affect change. In other words: this is a campaign to raise the money for a sling.

  7. Great Idea! on Ask Slashdot: Taking a New Tack On Net Neutrality? · · Score: 2
    This is fantastic!

    (1) implement the Board of Director's idea as-is;

    (2) encourage the Board (and anybody else who supports the idea) that they need to really market the hell out of it;

    (3) at the same time create a series of spurious emails to the project backers telling them what a terrible idea the project is;

    (4) stay home and watch the news the day that the system goes live;

    (5) watch as the villagers storm the company castle and the board of directors (and associated greedy imbeciles) are summarily tossed out on their pointy heads;

    (6) return to a company which is now free of these fools;

    (7) profit!

  8. Re:Not my horse, not my wagon on Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds · · Score: 1

    "Last I checked, male university students don't get free escorts home at night, yet female university students around here do."

    Not sure what university that would be but you might want to check again, anybody who wants a free escort home at night at the several universities I've been to will get one regardless of their gender.

    And it actually is your problem not as a male / female / whatever but as a PERSON. Get it? If you wait until something affects YOU directly and until then just sit around with your head in the sand then you are a part of the problem.

  9. Affordable option for charities on Ask Slashdot: Easy-To-Use Alternative To MS Access For a Charity's Database? · · Score: 5, Informative

    Rather than discuss alternatives I wanted to let you know that many charities are eligible for deep discounts on MS products. Techsoup.org is a clearinghouse (of sorts) for charities and tech companies, allowing for very deep discounts on hardware and software. For example Office Professional Plus 2013 is $32 and Windows 8.1 is $12. In the past I've paid around $125 for Adobe Creative Suite 6.

    In addition to discounts techsoup also has a wealth of articles on tech-related issues for nonprofit management. http://techsoup.org/

  10. Afraid to ask ... on Cell Phone Powered By Urine · · Score: 1

    I'm afraid to ask what it takes to power a tablet.

  11. my experience running a 501(c)(3) on Ask Slashdot: What Should a Non-Profit Look For In a Web Host? · · Score: 2
    This might not be the type of answer that you're looking for but the issue that has most affected me (running a one-person nonprofit from home) is that I've occasionally had problems because my IP address is shared by "adult" web services because I do not have a dedicated server or address.

    And so . . . with my nonprofit's focus on the prevention of teen dating violence I have people in school districts regularly contacting me via email and/or visiting my website from schools. From time to time my IP address used to wind up on block lists and I would spend a fair amount of time contacting school web admins to allow my emails through and/or access to my site.

    The host I use (HostGator) has worked well for me but unfortunately does not offer a shared-but-not-with-any-adult-sites hosting plan. What I've done to ameliorate the impact is: (1) use Google's fantastic (and FREE) support for nonprofits by using the free Google Apps service to route all of my email accounts through Google and (2) use a free service to monitor my inclusion on any blacklists (MxWatch Monitor via MxToolbox.com). As a result I've been able to avoid almost all email issues and have been able to address any other blacklisting issues as soon as they crop up.

    I don't have the web traffic that you do (approx 5,000 unique visitors daily and less than 50GB monthly bandwidth) but HostGator has been almost completely hassle-free. This is the third hosting company that I've used in the past 7 years and I doubt I'll ever have to switch again. I pay around $20 / month and that includes reseller hosting (I help out a few other sites for small nonprofits that don't have a tech background by hosting their sites for them).

    If you need further info feel free to contact me - and if you decide on HostGator I'd be happy to give you a referral code (my org could use any and all financial support possible!!!).

  12. link to the article (free) on Predicting IQ With a Simple Visual Test · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not sure if anybody has already posted this, but if you'd like to read the article and lack access (and are unwilling to fork over $35) you can read it through the university's website for free: http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/Duje/papers/13_Melnick_IQ_CB.pdf

  13. sosumi on Apple Hides Samsung Apology So It Can't Be Seen Without Scrolling · · Score: 3, Funny
    The copyright DIV appearing directly above the "Samsung apology" is aptly named / placed:

    </div> <!--/sosumi--><p class="statement">On 25 October 2012, Apple Inc. published a statement on its UK website in relation to Samsung's Galaxy tablet computers. [ ... ]

  14. opt-out on The Case For Targeted Ads · · Score: 2

    The author is CEO of 33across.com. And . . . here's their opt-out link: http://optout.33across.com/api/optout/

  15. Re:Blame the right entity on Universal Uses DMCA To Get Bad Lip Reading Parody Taken Down · · Score: 1

    YouTube's counter-claim procedure clearly laid out here: http://www.youtube.com/t/copyright_counter

  16. Re:what recourse? on Universal Uses DMCA To Get Bad Lip Reading Parody Taken Down · · Score: 2

    Although hiring an attorney is not a bad idea, the rest of this is not accurate. DMCA is a large unwieldy tool but YouTube's approach is pretty fair. If you assert your willingness to be identified and sued by the rights holder (through a counter-notification) they will put your content back online. Only if the rights holder then takes legal action do they remove the content.

    Although "the media giants" may abuse DMCA, we have nobody to blame but ourselves for not taking the time to learn what our own rights are and how we can assert them; and asserting them doesn't have to cost us anything other than investing a little time in the process.

  17. YouTube DMCA takedowns on Universal Uses DMCA To Get Bad Lip Reading Parody Taken Down · · Score: 2

    Has YouTube changed their procedures for dealing with DMCA takedowns? I had this same experience with a video for my nonprofit and once I asserted my willingness to be sued YouTube restored the video. Their position at the time (and apparently still their position per their site) was that it was up to the rights holder to sue under DMCA --- not for a contributor to sue to have content restored. The process I followed is here: http://www.youtube.com/t/copyright_counter and although my video was down for a few months it was put back up and is still up years later. This is the way that I believe DMCA was designed to work and YouTube does a pretty good job of balancing this process. YouTube does not make any determination about if the content is "fair use" or not - they instead put the onus on the one asserting infringement to take legal action. Seems reasonable to me - and at least in my case - their process worked.

    IANAL but did graduate from law school a few months ago.

  18. Re:Frist post :( on James Gosling Report of Reno Air Crash · · Score: 2
    It is respect for victims and their loved ones. Anybody seeking this gore out has serious issues - and the most serious issue is that most would disagree with me because this is the point at which we now find ourselves. Entertainment trumps compassion in our culture and frankly I think we'd be better off without those who see this type of tragedy as a way to get their gore-rocks-off; I wish they would just go away.

    We have become numb to genuine tragedy because we celebrate fictionalized tragedy as plot devices and then squeeze every possible $ out of genuine tragedy. Fuck those who say they have a "right to know" or "right to see" - that's crap and intellectually you know better. If it's your sister / mom / daughter who is burning to death in a video nobody has a *right* to watch that on youtube while they chow down on cheezy-poofs.

    My condolences to the many many victims of this whose lives will never be the same. Such a horrible loss and I wish that your lives would never have been so affected.

    P.S. I know somewhat of what I speak. E! Entertainment did a show on my daughter's murder on their program "True Hollywood Stories." My daughter was a high school student murdered by her ex-boyfriend. There was NO "Hollywood" story, true or otherwise. They just wanted to make $$$ off of my poor daughter's death so they could buy more cheezy-poofs. Nothing but parasites.

  19. Re:Blame the Federal Arbitration Act on New Sony PSN ToS: Class Action Waiver Included · · Score: 1
    Personally I don't think there's a problem with preferring arbitration over litigation for business entities; but I agree that arbitration is generally a terrible fit for consumers.

    Also, a recent post on SCOTUSblog has a nice analysis of why the AT&T decision wasn't necessarily as dire for consumers as most commentators have stated: http://www.scotusblog.com/2011/09/att-mobility-faa-preemption-and-class-arbitration/

  20. Re:This is why! on Samsung Cites 2001: A Space Odyssey In Apple Patent Case · · Score: 1

    The color red is not trademarked by Coke (although the bottle shape is).

    However, in 1995 in Qualitex Co. v. Jacobson Products Co., SCOTUS held, "sometimes, a color will meet ordinary legal trademark requirements. And, when it does so, no special legal rule prevents color alone from serving as a trademark [as long as] "in the minds of the public, the primary significance of a product feature [...] is to identify the source of the product rather than the product itself."

    Qualitex Co. v. Jacobson Products Co.: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-1577.ZS.html

  21. Statement from BART on BART Disables Cell Service To Disrupt Protests · · Score: 5, Informative
    From TFA:

    "BART’s primary purpose is to provide, safe, secure, efficient, reliable, and clean transportation services. BART accommodates expressive activities that are constitutionally protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Liberty of Speech Clause of the California Constitution (expressive activity), and has made available certain areas of its property for expressive activity.

    "Paid areas of BART stations are reserved for ticketed passengers who are boarding, exiting or waiting for BART cars and trains, or for authorized BART personnel. No person shall conduct or participate in assemblies or demonstrations or engage in other expressive activities in the paid areas of BART stations, including BART cars and trains and BART station platforms."

  22. Re:Here's an idea on Google Trying to Lure Celebs to Google+ · · Score: 1

    Done!

  23. G+ invites on Google Trying to Lure Celebs to Google+ · · Score: 1
    PopeScott: Interesting - very good to know!

    Everybody else: invites sent - have fun!

  24. Re:Here's an idea on Google Trying to Lure Celebs to Google+ · · Score: 1
    I'll be happy to send you an invite (as I've done for many others who have posted on message boards) but currently you need a Gmail address. If you send me a Gmail address I'll add you right away. (the same applies for anybody else)

    - Drew

  25. liveblogged discussion w/ director of SSRC on Piracy In Developing Countries Driven By High Prices · · Score: 1
    The Berkman Center had a discussion (in Feb. 2010) with Joe Karaganis, Director of SSRC, to discuss the "findings from a forthcoming six-country study of media piracy..."

    .

    Q: What will be the take-away of the report?
    A: It won’t be liked by industry lobbyists because it departs from the theft narrative that has defined the debate. It’s written from the perspective of the developing economies, where the reasons and conditions for piracy are just not part of the piracy of debate. You never hear about problems of pricing, for example. Our goal is to encourage developing cvountries to ssert more control over their IP policies and enforcement in order to enrich their own culture.

    Here is a liveblogged capture of that discussion: http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2010/02/02/berkman-piracy-in-developing-countries