His birth certificate, bills, etc along with anyone else who could bring it to him/validate his citizenship, were in Michigan (or maybe Minnesota, I forget). He was in prison in Arizona (or New Mexico...somewhere down there). Not sure about social security number or driver's license. Maybe he didn't drive and just didn't know his social number though. Certainly plausible. I don't know mine. Obviously he didn't have much money, since he couldn't get anyone to get the relevant documents to him, if he was living in a city he may not have owned a car -- so no driver's license -- and personally, the only time I've ever needed my social security number is when applying for a job. Sometimes. Not always. Again, I don't know mine, seems plausible he wouldn't know his.
Not sure if you'll see this reply or not, but to back up my claims that in PA you aren't required to show ID...granted, it's a blog, but it's at least a blog of a law office, meant to provide legal information:
And as I mentioned in that post, I was mistaken about federal vs. state government and a couple other details, but the main facts of the story are correct.
No, it's not. It claims to be anti-illegal-immigrant, but it's really just white supremacy. Even native-born citizens have been picked up and imprisoned for months because somebody suspected they were illegal. No proof required. There was a case where a guy was imprisoned in...either Arizona or New Mexico. For months. He was forced to work for $1/day to earn the money to purchase a copy of his birth certificate from the federal government to prove he was a legal citizen. (So much for "Innocent until proven guilty") Another case up here in Pennsylvania, a man (again, a legal citizen, not sure if he was native-born) was arrested and held by ICE for 3 days despite having his valid driver's license and social security card in his wallet at the time of his arrest...strictly because of his last name. It sounded like he might be foreign, so ICE ordered he be detained.
I keep up with this stuff pretty closely, and never heard either one of these. Can't find anything that sounds even remotely similar on google. I suspect you're making things up.
SB1070 still effectively legalizes police harassment of anybody who's skin is darker than a certain shade of brown.
It doesn't do anything of the sort, of course.
That depends who you ask. I'll admit, I haven't read the entire text of the bill. But from what I've read about it, the official government stance is that it doesn't legalize racial profiling, it just allows police to ask if they suspect the person is illegal. But they have never explained how an officer would be able to tell, just by looking at someone, if they are or are not a legal citizen. In my state and many others, if police stop you on the street, for example, you are only required to give them your name. No ID, no license, nothing. Because you aren't required to HAVE any kind of ID. And in fact, if I chose not to drive, I wouldn't have any form of identification on me at any time. I do have my birth certificate and social security card, but everyone I've talked to specifically says that you should NOT carry those with you. Hell, they're both paper, they'd disintegrate pretty rapidly if they were always in your pocket, and at least the social security card specifically says it is invalid if you laminate it or anything. Not sure about birth certificate, as I've never even seen mine...
And they require that you carry identification with you. This is not a legal requirement anywhere else in America.
The requirements for carrying identification/immigration paperwork are exactly the same as the federal laws.
As I said, in Pennsylvania and many other states, if you are stopped by any law enforcement, unless you are driving a car or doing something else that requires some kind of license, you are required to give your full name. That is all. There is no requirement that you carry ANY identification. Do you have a specific federal law that states otherwise?
The first one is from a published report, ("Jailed Without Justice", published by Amnesty International, page 20, very easy to find if you google it) which lists the original source as: "Testimony of Kara Hartzler, Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Immigrantion, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law Hearing on Problems with ICE Interrogation, Detention and Removal Procedures, Second Session of the 110th Congress, 13 February 2008, serial Number 110-80, available at: http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/printers/110th/40742.PDF"
He worked at $1/day, a birth certificate costs $30, so that's at least a month assuming he was working full time every day. Not sure if he would have, I'm not all that familiar with the prison system. Also doesn't count time spent being transferred and such (which ICE does very frequently and without notice). I suppose I did make a slight mistake though in the time, as the original does only say "over a month". And yes, I suppose it would be state, not federal government that he purchased it from, the original doesn't specify.
The second case is from the Summer 2011 issue of "Free For All" published by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. Article was "Pennsylvania's Secret Prisoners". Unfortunately, I'm not finding it available online anywhere, and the name in the article was changed.
So you have no problem with native-born citizens being imprisoned for months, where they are forced to work for $1/day to earn the money to purchase a copy of their birth certificate from the federal government? Because that is happening under federal law.
No, it's not. It claims to be anti-illegal-immigrant, but it's really just white supremacy. Even native-born citizens have been picked up and imprisoned for months because somebody suspected they were illegal. No proof required. There was a case where a guy was imprisoned in...either Arizona or New Mexico. For months. He was forced to work for $1/day to earn the money to purchase a copy of his birth certificate from the federal government to prove he was a legal citizen. (So much for "Innocent until proven guilty") Another case up here in Pennsylvania, a man (again, a legal citizen, not sure if he was native-born) was arrested and held by ICE for 3 days despite having his valid driver's license and social security card in his wallet at the time of his arrest...strictly because of his last name. It sounded like he might be foreign, so ICE ordered he be detained.
If even native-born citizens are being picked up and imprisoned for months under OLD laws, what do you think the effect will be of making those laws harsher?
Besides, even if nobody legal gets arrested, SB1070 still effectively legalizes police harassment of anybody who's skin is darker than a certain shade of brown. And they require that you carry identification with you. This is not a legal requirement anywhere else in America. This is not Nazi Germany, we should not be required to carry our papers. Of course, if you're white, you aren't. It's just brown people who are being required to carry papers...
You've been able to get universal laptop chargers for years now. I've got one that will work with pretty much any major brand laptop and several brands I have never even heard of...everything except Apple. They're the only ones who are big enough jerks to patent their connector. Though to be fair, I suppose their connector is also the only one that isn't just a modified barrel plug.
If they don't adopt it, it'll be for technical reasons. Different laptops already use different voltages sometimes; I'd rather stick with OEM plugs if the alternative is having extra voltage conversion hardware needing to be built in to every single laptop. You can buy a replacement OEM plug for $10 anyway.
Meh, I can't remember when I first saw a computer (I'm 21 right now)....some of my earliest memories are of sitting in front of an old, straight DOS machine. But by third grade I, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I was saying 'computer programmer'. I've changed slightly, as I'm not really that interested in being a code monkey forever, but the point is that even though I don't remember my first experience with a computer, I still wanted to know how it worked.
Of course, at that point I had already done a bit of BASIC programming I think...I mean nothing more than hello world, basic math, 10 print something, 20 goto 10, that kind of stuff...but still, I'd had some exposure. Add in modding games, more BASIC and Logo in elementary school, and programming Lego Mindstorms....at least in my childhood, I had PLENTY of ways to get interested in this stuff.
It really doesn't matter. The only damages the RIAA can reasonably claim for you having pirated music is around $1/song. It's UPLOADING that music that they care about, because then they can pretend that your upload is providing that song illegally to 20,000 people and therefore claim that that single song is worth $20,000 in damages.
They RIAA has NEVER sued ANYONE for merely possessing pirated music. I don't think they've ever sued anyone for downloading music either. It's all about what you upload. If you aren't uploading anything, you should be fine.
Yea, most people have personal and school email accounts....they treat the school one similar to how you treat your work email I guess; they check it maybe once or twice a day. But that's what's easiest to find, and that's frequently what most people give you. Especially with the campus activism stuff, everyone seems to want to keep their campus life with their campus email -- myself included -- but then they rarely check their campus email. Hell, even I don't check it that often -- I have it all going to my gmail, but gmail only loads new messages every hour.
But... do you keep Facebook open 24/7?
Yes. I have a couple tabs that I never close: my Google homepage, two tabs of Facebook (my feed and one of my group's pages), Google Webmaster tools, and Google voice (my main way of texting)
Not everyone has smartphones with data packages. Nearly everyone (especially students) has many email accounts, most people will contact you from both, but only actually check one regularly. So you never know where to send it. Everyone's email inbox is deluged with various messages, it's easy for one to get lost. Facebook limits this by keeping different kind of communication in different areas. You may have signed up for 5000 spam pages that keep throwing junk statuses into your feed, but if I send you an event invite, you'll still see it immediately. I can't tell you how many times it's taken a week or more to get a response to an email. If it's time-sensitive, I avoid email at all costs. But as I said, I can't text everyone, and certainly can't call everyone individually.
So you can't be contacted on Facebook. OK...but for the people who can, it makes things a lot easier. I only know one person who can't be contacted on Facebook. My only way to get in touch with her is email, and it usually doesn't work out that well.
And maybe you swap phone numbers with everyone you meet, but most people I know tend not to. Hell, I didn't even have phone numbers for most of my _roommates_.
But the big thing for me with Facebook is it's utility for activism. I have seen several cases where hundreds of students were brought out to events planned a mere two days in advance. You can't get that kind of reaction time with email. Sure, every group has their massive mailing lists, but you've gotta first email all the group leaders, hope they're actually still the leader, hope they still care, hope they check their email regularly...and then you have to hope the same things from the members. I know for a fact that many members of these groups use an email address that they check at most once a day for those lists. You could never get an event like that organized so rapidly with email. Facebook makes it very easy to contact large groups, because it's designed for large groups. It's more of a distributed model, at least for getting messages around. Email is designed to have one person sending a message.
I can't imagine trying to coordinate a large event in a distributed manner through something like email. What, you send it to all your friends, and ask that they send it to all their friends, like a chain letter? By the time you're done, half the people have marked it as spam, the rest have a few hundred messages sitting in their inbox.....
Personally, I'm not going to text 20 people to ask if they want to have a meeting tomorrow, and have them all text their friends to invite them too. And wait for texts back from everyone to make sure the date/time work. And text them all again when it doesn't. I can't afford that shit, I have 250 texts a month. A single Facebook 'event', done through texts, would instantly result in overage fees. Besides, the majority of the people I invite to things on Facebook I have no other way of contacting. Don't have their phone number, don't have their email. Facebook makes it easy -- all you need is a name. Hell, half the time you don't even need that. And when I have more than 160 characters worth of invite, what am I supposed to do? Send six texts out to everyone? Call them all individually? Email is the only thing that would work, but few people check their email as often as they check Facebook, and as I said, I don't have everyone's email. I'm sure it's different if you're older -- I'm currently in college -- but I don't know a single person who talks to their friends via Email. First you get the Facebook page, then maybe if you're pretty good friends you'll get the phone number, and if you work together frequently you'll start using email.
I agree that Facebook is a fad that will probably fade, but _something_ is going to have to replace it. And I can't think of anything that could do the job other than another social networking site. It's nice to know when people are out of town, for example, but I can't expect they'll call/text/email everyone they know every time they go somewhere. It's nice to be able to plan events on a couple hours notice even and still be able to get everyone you want invited and attending. Something like an extended Google Calendar could possibly replace that, but it's not a great option. It's nice to be able to post news and commentary and such -- I suppose I could make a blog, but I can't expect anywhere near the amount of readers that I currently get on Facebook. Sure, it's not the ideal vehicle for most of these things, but it's a hell of a lot better than the existing alternatives.
TL;DR: The thing about Facebook, I think, is it's not really about communicating with _people_, it's about staying in touch with entire _communities_. There's no single physical place where everyone tends to hang out, and there's no other single way to get in touch with everyone. As soon as we have a better communication medium that revolves around _groups_ rather than _individuals_, it may be able to replace Facebook. Google Wave, I think, was a step in the right direction, but was lacking focus and a good UI.
Huh. Yea, it was fairly big my Freshman year, I think because they had tie-ins with classes and such, but my Sophomore year, no matter what we did we couldn't seem to get more than 4 or 5 people out to the meetings...but I've been talking to some of those guys, and they've been looking to bring it back, so we'll see what happens.
They support it internally of course -- they have a couple Linux labs, a few Unix labs, and WAY too many Macs on campus (all old and EXTREMELY slow, with weird quirks)
As for the wifi -- the old system used a Cisco VPN. They had a Linux version of the software, but it didn't work. But you could just use vpnc. Had to email the helpdesk once though to get the group secret for the special CSE VPN, because all they give you for that is a config file for their software, which has that encrypted or something. The new wifi is seemingly standard WPA2-enterprise, they've got Linux instructions, but I've never been able to connect to it on anything but Android devices. But they still have both systems up side-by-side for now, so I'm not too worried.
The student IT support services I believe claim to support Linux, but good luck getting someone who can actually help. We had a LUG for that (I was VP), but it seems to have dissolved in the last year...
On a related note -- they _laughed_ at the mention of Linux? In my CS classes, any programming that we do is REQUIRED to be done on (or at least work on) Solaris. Except the 100-level intro classes.
The fact that they are committing crimes against someone you hate cannot justify those crimes. Indeed it must not, because turning a blind eye to crime just because you don't like the victim leads to mob rule. It is the antithesis of the rule of law on which our society is founded, which protects our rights as well as Sony's. That's one slope that history has proven time and time again to be very slippery indeed.
Sure, they did they crime, they should do the time...that's part of civil disobedience. But cheering on the hackers against Sony is no different from, say, cheering on MLK during the '60s. Or any major civil rights leaders. Almost all of them have done something illegal as part of their movements. Sit-ins, for example. Illegal and immoral are two entirely different concepts, and while I understand the importance of firm laws, I for one support moral behavior over legal behavior every time.
Except for people like myself, who always disable Windows updates (because they tend to break things as often as they fix them) and already have sufficient protection through other programs. People who know what they're doing aren't going to be downloading this tool. So it's going to be the smart people but not the really smart people I guess. The less smart people will probably have viruses, the more smart people will probably not, so who knows if it's higher or lower in reality.
Yea, I've got a pair of 80s model Ms I found at yard sales for about $5 each. Those things will never die. Need to convert one of them to USB though so I can use it with my laptop...that would be beautiful.
It's great that it improves the quality of service...but here's the problem: My neighbor and I both pay for the same service. So why should he get better service because he's using a more interactive protocol? Why should my file download slow down because my neighbors are all on VoIP calls? Depending on how the traffic shaping is set up, isn't it possible that someone who's paying the exact same amount I am for internet service could be getting several times more real data throughput simply because of what protocols they're using? Granted, it's a bit unlikely, but it certainly seems possible.
You train your soldiers to fight the most likely enemy. Nobody complains that we were training our soldiers to fight Russians during the cold war. So they're using video games now -- so what? Same principle, different tool.
Let's face it, the only real enemy to China is the US. We're the most opposed to them ideologically, we're pretty strongly opposed to them culturally, and we're really the only ones with the military power to dare attack them. Only other possibility is some NATO or UN action...but even that would be largely US troops. Plus that would require that China commit some massive atrocity. The US government has shown it doesn't need a reason to start a war, we'll do it just 'cause we feel like it.
Maybe they just wanted to make it realistic and exciting? I mean let's face it, the US is the most exciting and realistic enemy they could put in there. Because we're the best. We have the strongest military in the world. We're also quite willing to use it. All the time. What, are they going to have themselves attacking the Swiss? For a good military game you need a strong and war-oriented opponent. To keep it realistic, they really have to use the US. Short of some kind of massive atrocity, the only nation that's going to war with China (and isn't getting flattened) is the USA. It was either that or terrorist groups. But it's China. Of course they're going to go with a structured enemy. Terrorists are too decentralized.
Try Linux. Seriously. I've gotten a lot of the older Westwood games (original Command and Conquer and Red Alert, Renegade, etc) to run perfectly under Wine (or occasionally Cedega, though I can't remember if that was actually necessary -- I just happened to be using it at the time) when I couldn't get them to run no matter what I tried under XP.
Every year or so I wipe the drive with a fresh XP-CD install, and need to reinstall my favorite programs, but that would be true of any OS, whether it's Mac, Lubuntu, or Chrome.
Have you ever even used any other OS? Seriously, I've been running Linux for almost a decade now and have never needed to reinstall; though I have occasionally for updates. But I switched to Arch not too long ago, and with that...I never even need to insert a CD. I punch in one command, it updates the OS and about 90% of the software I have installed...then I just reboot and I'm good to go. Don't need to wipe anything. Ever. Linux doesn't really suffer from the buildup of bloat that Windows always does.
Of course, on the other side of that -- my parents have a WinXP box (and a Linux box that they don't know is Linux -- Dell Mini 9) that hasn't had a reinstall in....at least 4 years. Still runs fine. Every so often I have to come by and clean it up (something Linux has never needed -- ever.) but otherwise it's not an issue. But that's the problem I guess. My parents aren't going to reinstall Windows -- they don't know how. And they're _certainly_ not going to go through the cleanup process that I do. Which means every year or so they'd be paying someone to clean up their computer. That's a problem.
Interesting....usually, unless it requires a signature, UPS or FedEx just leave it -- USPS leaves a note telling me to go to the post office the next day to pick it up. If it requires a signature, UPS will leave a note on the door, and I can sign the note and they'll leave the package the next day. I've also gotten deliveries from UPS as late as 7PM. If you aren't home the first time, they'll keep trying -- I've seen them visit my neighbor's house four or five times a day.
Of course, I also live about as close to the nearest UPS facility as I do to my post office, so that helps some. FedEx is just annoying; their nearest facility is about an hour away.
On an unrelated note; doesn't DHL frequently use USPS for last-mile delivery?
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His birth certificate, bills, etc along with anyone else who could bring it to him/validate his citizenship, were in Michigan (or maybe Minnesota, I forget). He was in prison in Arizona (or New Mexico...somewhere down there). Not sure about social security number or driver's license. Maybe he didn't drive and just didn't know his social number though. Certainly plausible. I don't know mine. Obviously he didn't have much money, since he couldn't get anyone to get the relevant documents to him, if he was living in a city he may not have owned a car -- so no driver's license -- and personally, the only time I've ever needed my social security number is when applying for a job. Sometimes. Not always. Again, I don't know mine, seems plausible he wouldn't know his.
Sure, is it likely? no. But it happens.
Yes, yes, I made a slight mistake on the details. Already posted my sources and correction here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2264760&cid=36549794
Not sure if you'll see this reply or not, but to back up my claims that in PA you aren't required to show ID...granted, it's a blog, but it's at least a blog of a law office, meant to provide legal information:
http://blog.princelaw.com/criminal-law-blog
"The Superior Court has held that asking for identification creates an investigative detention that must be supported by reasonable suspicion."
So as I said, in Pennsylvania, in order to ask for ID, they need reasonable suspicion that you have done something illegal.
Already have:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2264760&cid=36549794
And as I mentioned in that post, I was mistaken about federal vs. state government and a couple other details, but the main facts of the story are correct.
I keep up with this stuff pretty closely, and never heard either one of these. Can't find anything that sounds even remotely similar on google. I suspect you're making things up.
Just posted my sources in another comment, here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2264760&cid=36549794
It doesn't do anything of the sort, of course.
That depends who you ask. I'll admit, I haven't read the entire text of the bill. But from what I've read about it, the official government stance is that it doesn't legalize racial profiling, it just allows police to ask if they suspect the person is illegal. But they have never explained how an officer would be able to tell, just by looking at someone, if they are or are not a legal citizen. In my state and many others, if police stop you on the street, for example, you are only required to give them your name. No ID, no license, nothing. Because you aren't required to HAVE any kind of ID. And in fact, if I chose not to drive, I wouldn't have any form of identification on me at any time. I do have my birth certificate and social security card, but everyone I've talked to specifically says that you should NOT carry those with you. Hell, they're both paper, they'd disintegrate pretty rapidly if they were always in your pocket, and at least the social security card specifically says it is invalid if you laminate it or anything. Not sure about birth certificate, as I've never even seen mine...
The requirements for carrying identification/immigration paperwork are exactly the same as the federal laws.
As I said, in Pennsylvania and many other states, if you are stopped by any law enforcement, unless you are driving a car or doing something else that requires some kind of license, you are required to give your full name. That is all. There is no requirement that you carry ANY identification. Do you have a specific federal law that states otherwise?
The first one is from a published report, ("Jailed Without Justice", published by Amnesty International, page 20, very easy to find if you google it) which lists the original source as: "Testimony of Kara Hartzler, Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Immigrantion, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law Hearing on Problems with ICE Interrogation, Detention and Removal Procedures, Second Session of the 110th Congress, 13 February 2008, serial Number 110-80, available at: http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/printers/110th/40742.PDF"
He worked at $1/day, a birth certificate costs $30, so that's at least a month assuming he was working full time every day. Not sure if he would have, I'm not all that familiar with the prison system. Also doesn't count time spent being transferred and such (which ICE does very frequently and without notice). I suppose I did make a slight mistake though in the time, as the original does only say "over a month". And yes, I suppose it would be state, not federal government that he purchased it from, the original doesn't specify.
The second case is from the Summer 2011 issue of "Free For All" published by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. Article was "Pennsylvania's Secret Prisoners". Unfortunately, I'm not finding it available online anywhere, and the name in the article was changed.
So you have no problem with native-born citizens being imprisoned for months, where they are forced to work for $1/day to earn the money to purchase a copy of their birth certificate from the federal government? Because that is happening under federal law.
No, it's not. It claims to be anti-illegal-immigrant, but it's really just white supremacy. Even native-born citizens have been picked up and imprisoned for months because somebody suspected they were illegal. No proof required. There was a case where a guy was imprisoned in...either Arizona or New Mexico. For months. He was forced to work for $1/day to earn the money to purchase a copy of his birth certificate from the federal government to prove he was a legal citizen. (So much for "Innocent until proven guilty") Another case up here in Pennsylvania, a man (again, a legal citizen, not sure if he was native-born) was arrested and held by ICE for 3 days despite having his valid driver's license and social security card in his wallet at the time of his arrest...strictly because of his last name. It sounded like he might be foreign, so ICE ordered he be detained.
If even native-born citizens are being picked up and imprisoned for months under OLD laws, what do you think the effect will be of making those laws harsher?
Besides, even if nobody legal gets arrested, SB1070 still effectively legalizes police harassment of anybody who's skin is darker than a certain shade of brown. And they require that you carry identification with you. This is not a legal requirement anywhere else in America. This is not Nazi Germany, we should not be required to carry our papers. Of course, if you're white, you aren't. It's just brown people who are being required to carry papers...
You've been able to get universal laptop chargers for years now. I've got one that will work with pretty much any major brand laptop and several brands I have never even heard of...everything except Apple. They're the only ones who are big enough jerks to patent their connector. Though to be fair, I suppose their connector is also the only one that isn't just a modified barrel plug.
If they don't adopt it, it'll be for technical reasons. Different laptops already use different voltages sometimes; I'd rather stick with OEM plugs if the alternative is having extra voltage conversion hardware needing to be built in to every single laptop. You can buy a replacement OEM plug for $10 anyway.
Meh, I can't remember when I first saw a computer (I'm 21 right now)....some of my earliest memories are of sitting in front of an old, straight DOS machine. But by third grade I, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I was saying 'computer programmer'. I've changed slightly, as I'm not really that interested in being a code monkey forever, but the point is that even though I don't remember my first experience with a computer, I still wanted to know how it worked.
Of course, at that point I had already done a bit of BASIC programming I think...I mean nothing more than hello world, basic math, 10 print something, 20 goto 10, that kind of stuff...but still, I'd had some exposure. Add in modding games, more BASIC and Logo in elementary school, and programming Lego Mindstorms....at least in my childhood, I had PLENTY of ways to get interested in this stuff.
It really doesn't matter. The only damages the RIAA can reasonably claim for you having pirated music is around $1/song. It's UPLOADING that music that they care about, because then they can pretend that your upload is providing that song illegally to 20,000 people and therefore claim that that single song is worth $20,000 in damages.
They RIAA has NEVER sued ANYONE for merely possessing pirated music. I don't think they've ever sued anyone for downloading music either. It's all about what you upload. If you aren't uploading anything, you should be fine.
Yea, most people have personal and school email accounts....they treat the school one similar to how you treat your work email I guess; they check it maybe once or twice a day. But that's what's easiest to find, and that's frequently what most people give you. Especially with the campus activism stuff, everyone seems to want to keep their campus life with their campus email -- myself included -- but then they rarely check their campus email. Hell, even I don't check it that often -- I have it all going to my gmail, but gmail only loads new messages every hour.
But... do you keep Facebook open 24/7?
Yes. I have a couple tabs that I never close: my Google homepage, two tabs of Facebook (my feed and one of my group's pages), Google Webmaster tools, and Google voice (my main way of texting)
Not everyone has smartphones with data packages. Nearly everyone (especially students) has many email accounts, most people will contact you from both, but only actually check one regularly. So you never know where to send it. Everyone's email inbox is deluged with various messages, it's easy for one to get lost. Facebook limits this by keeping different kind of communication in different areas. You may have signed up for 5000 spam pages that keep throwing junk statuses into your feed, but if I send you an event invite, you'll still see it immediately. I can't tell you how many times it's taken a week or more to get a response to an email. If it's time-sensitive, I avoid email at all costs. But as I said, I can't text everyone, and certainly can't call everyone individually.
So you can't be contacted on Facebook. OK...but for the people who can, it makes things a lot easier. I only know one person who can't be contacted on Facebook. My only way to get in touch with her is email, and it usually doesn't work out that well.
And maybe you swap phone numbers with everyone you meet, but most people I know tend not to. Hell, I didn't even have phone numbers for most of my _roommates_.
But the big thing for me with Facebook is it's utility for activism. I have seen several cases where hundreds of students were brought out to events planned a mere two days in advance. You can't get that kind of reaction time with email. Sure, every group has their massive mailing lists, but you've gotta first email all the group leaders, hope they're actually still the leader, hope they still care, hope they check their email regularly...and then you have to hope the same things from the members. I know for a fact that many members of these groups use an email address that they check at most once a day for those lists. You could never get an event like that organized so rapidly with email. Facebook makes it very easy to contact large groups, because it's designed for large groups. It's more of a distributed model, at least for getting messages around. Email is designed to have one person sending a message.
I can't imagine trying to coordinate a large event in a distributed manner through something like email. What, you send it to all your friends, and ask that they send it to all their friends, like a chain letter? By the time you're done, half the people have marked it as spam, the rest have a few hundred messages sitting in their inbox.....
Personally, I'm not going to text 20 people to ask if they want to have a meeting tomorrow, and have them all text their friends to invite them too. And wait for texts back from everyone to make sure the date/time work. And text them all again when it doesn't. I can't afford that shit, I have 250 texts a month. A single Facebook 'event', done through texts, would instantly result in overage fees. Besides, the majority of the people I invite to things on Facebook I have no other way of contacting. Don't have their phone number, don't have their email. Facebook makes it easy -- all you need is a name. Hell, half the time you don't even need that. And when I have more than 160 characters worth of invite, what am I supposed to do? Send six texts out to everyone? Call them all individually? Email is the only thing that would work, but few people check their email as often as they check Facebook, and as I said, I don't have everyone's email. I'm sure it's different if you're older -- I'm currently in college -- but I don't know a single person who talks to their friends via Email. First you get the Facebook page, then maybe if you're pretty good friends you'll get the phone number, and if you work together frequently you'll start using email.
I agree that Facebook is a fad that will probably fade, but _something_ is going to have to replace it. And I can't think of anything that could do the job other than another social networking site. It's nice to know when people are out of town, for example, but I can't expect they'll call/text/email everyone they know every time they go somewhere. It's nice to be able to plan events on a couple hours notice even and still be able to get everyone you want invited and attending. Something like an extended Google Calendar could possibly replace that, but it's not a great option. It's nice to be able to post news and commentary and such -- I suppose I could make a blog, but I can't expect anywhere near the amount of readers that I currently get on Facebook. Sure, it's not the ideal vehicle for most of these things, but it's a hell of a lot better than the existing alternatives.
TL;DR:
The thing about Facebook, I think, is it's not really about communicating with _people_, it's about staying in touch with entire _communities_. There's no single physical place where everyone tends to hang out, and there's no other single way to get in touch with everyone. As soon as we have a better communication medium that revolves around _groups_ rather than _individuals_, it may be able to replace Facebook. Google Wave, I think, was a step in the right direction, but was lacking focus and a good UI.
Huh. Yea, it was fairly big my Freshman year, I think because they had tie-ins with classes and such, but my Sophomore year, no matter what we did we couldn't seem to get more than 4 or 5 people out to the meetings...but I've been talking to some of those guys, and they've been looking to bring it back, so we'll see what happens.
They support it internally of course -- they have a couple Linux labs, a few Unix labs, and WAY too many Macs on campus (all old and EXTREMELY slow, with weird quirks)
As for the wifi -- the old system used a Cisco VPN. They had a Linux version of the software, but it didn't work. But you could just use vpnc. Had to email the helpdesk once though to get the group secret for the special CSE VPN, because all they give you for that is a config file for their software, which has that encrypted or something. The new wifi is seemingly standard WPA2-enterprise, they've got Linux instructions, but I've never been able to connect to it on anything but Android devices. But they still have both systems up side-by-side for now, so I'm not too worried.
The student IT support services I believe claim to support Linux, but good luck getting someone who can actually help. We had a LUG for that (I was VP), but it seems to have dissolved in the last year...
On a related note -- they _laughed_ at the mention of Linux? In my CS classes, any programming that we do is REQUIRED to be done on (or at least work on) Solaris. Except the 100-level intro classes.
The fact that they are committing crimes against someone you hate cannot justify those crimes. Indeed it must not, because turning a blind eye to crime just because you don't like the victim leads to mob rule. It is the antithesis of the rule of law on which our society is founded, which protects our rights as well as Sony's. That's one slope that history has proven time and time again to be very slippery indeed.
Sure, they did they crime, they should do the time...that's part of civil disobedience. But cheering on the hackers against Sony is no different from, say, cheering on MLK during the '60s. Or any major civil rights leaders. Almost all of them have done something illegal as part of their movements. Sit-ins, for example. Illegal and immoral are two entirely different concepts, and while I understand the importance of firm laws, I for one support moral behavior over legal behavior every time.
Except for people like myself, who always disable Windows updates (because they tend to break things as often as they fix them) and already have sufficient protection through other programs. People who know what they're doing aren't going to be downloading this tool. So it's going to be the smart people but not the really smart people I guess. The less smart people will probably have viruses, the more smart people will probably not, so who knows if it's higher or lower in reality.
Yea, I've got a pair of 80s model Ms I found at yard sales for about $5 each. Those things will never die. Need to convert one of them to USB though so I can use it with my laptop...that would be beautiful.
It's great that it improves the quality of service...but here's the problem: My neighbor and I both pay for the same service. So why should he get better service because he's using a more interactive protocol? Why should my file download slow down because my neighbors are all on VoIP calls? Depending on how the traffic shaping is set up, isn't it possible that someone who's paying the exact same amount I am for internet service could be getting several times more real data throughput simply because of what protocols they're using? Granted, it's a bit unlikely, but it certainly seems possible.
You train your soldiers to fight the most likely enemy. Nobody complains that we were training our soldiers to fight Russians during the cold war. So they're using video games now -- so what? Same principle, different tool.
Let's face it, the only real enemy to China is the US. We're the most opposed to them ideologically, we're pretty strongly opposed to them culturally, and we're really the only ones with the military power to dare attack them. Only other possibility is some NATO or UN action...but even that would be largely US troops. Plus that would require that China commit some massive atrocity. The US government has shown it doesn't need a reason to start a war, we'll do it just 'cause we feel like it.
Maybe they just wanted to make it realistic and exciting? I mean let's face it, the US is the most exciting and realistic enemy they could put in there. Because we're the best. We have the strongest military in the world. We're also quite willing to use it. All the time. What, are they going to have themselves attacking the Swiss? For a good military game you need a strong and war-oriented opponent. To keep it realistic, they really have to use the US. Short of some kind of massive atrocity, the only nation that's going to war with China (and isn't getting flattened) is the USA. It was either that or terrorist groups. But it's China. Of course they're going to go with a structured enemy. Terrorists are too decentralized.
Try Linux. Seriously. I've gotten a lot of the older Westwood games (original Command and Conquer and Red Alert, Renegade, etc) to run perfectly under Wine (or occasionally Cedega, though I can't remember if that was actually necessary -- I just happened to be using it at the time) when I couldn't get them to run no matter what I tried under XP.
Every year or so I wipe the drive with a fresh XP-CD install, and need to reinstall my favorite programs, but that would be true of any OS, whether it's Mac, Lubuntu, or Chrome.
Have you ever even used any other OS? Seriously, I've been running Linux for almost a decade now and have never needed to reinstall; though I have occasionally for updates. But I switched to Arch not too long ago, and with that...I never even need to insert a CD. I punch in one command, it updates the OS and about 90% of the software I have installed...then I just reboot and I'm good to go. Don't need to wipe anything. Ever. Linux doesn't really suffer from the buildup of bloat that Windows always does.
Of course, on the other side of that -- my parents have a WinXP box (and a Linux box that they don't know is Linux -- Dell Mini 9) that hasn't had a reinstall in....at least 4 years. Still runs fine. Every so often I have to come by and clean it up (something Linux has never needed -- ever.) but otherwise it's not an issue. But that's the problem I guess. My parents aren't going to reinstall Windows -- they don't know how. And they're _certainly_ not going to go through the cleanup process that I do. Which means every year or so they'd be paying someone to clean up their computer. That's a problem.
Interesting....usually, unless it requires a signature, UPS or FedEx just leave it -- USPS leaves a note telling me to go to the post office the next day to pick it up. If it requires a signature, UPS will leave a note on the door, and I can sign the note and they'll leave the package the next day. I've also gotten deliveries from UPS as late as 7PM. If you aren't home the first time, they'll keep trying -- I've seen them visit my neighbor's house four or five times a day.
Of course, I also live about as close to the nearest UPS facility as I do to my post office, so that helps some. FedEx is just annoying; their nearest facility is about an hour away.
On an unrelated note; doesn't DHL frequently use USPS for last-mile delivery?