"Receipt paper is really nasty, I can vouch for that."
Depends on what kind of receipt paper. The thermal kind is the worst but the kind you get at the grocery store isn't too bad (I am talking about the actual reciept, not the stream of paper they give you with loads of coupons).
Never try eating the kind that comes out of the self serv gas pump.
"Personally I think that whole thing about car alarms disabling themselves is a myth anyway"
It's gotta be true because Swartzeneger did it in the movie Twins by lifting up the back of a car.
Of course I didn't question how the character would have known anything about car alarms since he spent his whole life on a tropical island without cars.
Many new cars come with regular keys(not the keyless option) that have an RFID dodad embeded in the key so that the car will not start unless the RFID is there when you try to crank the car. I guess this would stop somone from simply using a lockpick on the car unless they could cercumvent the RFID stuff.
One drawback is that if you want an extra key you have to get it from the dealer or get them to "program" your key if you optain one from a third party.
This has insturctions on how to setup some of the keys that don't require any special equipment. Some require at least one existing programed key while some do not.
Just to toss in an example of how government in the USA has meddled with free market. Some insurance companies will charge higher copays for visits to chiropractors. A new law just went into effect in NC that requires the same copay for chiropractors as primary care doctors.
This link gives some information about it but the gist of that story is about the corruption surronding the NC Speaker of the House who got the law passed. http://www.fayettevillenc.com/article?id=231508
I don't know if it's the same now or not but I was put off concerts a long time ago when the "ticketmaster" system would put a concert on sale nationwide for a concert in my hometown. You go lineup at the ticketmaster outlet and find they are sold out in 5 minutes because the scalpers went to a ticketmaster outlets a thousand miles away and bought up all the tickets.
Should online journalists receive the same rights as traditional reporters?
What special rights do traditional reporters get? I think the aftermath of Plamegate has proven that reporters can be compelled to reveal a source in some cases.
I wonder what would happen if somone were to infringe on the patent secret 100MPG big oil pattent if it existed. Could you imagine the noise when big oil filed a lawsuit for patent infringement?
If the ads on websites wern't so anoying people would be less likely to block them.
They spawn new windows or popups or they have anoying animations. I really hate the ones with sound. Another trick is to have a popup that looks like content or even that looks like a real window from your system.
I could probibly think of some more but you get the idea.
If all I had to deal with was ads like you see in a newspaper, I wouldn't bother with trying to block em.
"900 million does sound like a lot for taxes on IP... There must be more to the story..."
My guess is it's something like this: Symantec's tax people get audited by the IRS. Auditors flood Symantec with records requests from the last several years then go do nothing. for a while 'till the statue of limitations dedline looms. Auditors tell Symantec that they will slam them hard unless they sign a statute of limitations extention and claim that Syamantec isn't giving them records fast enough.
Symantec gives in a few times on signing the statute extentions a few times while Auditors keep requesting irrelevent records that they had already been sent but lost. Symantec finally gets tired of screwing with the peon auditors and refuses to sign another statute extention which suprises auditor so they hastily put together a shody justification for a huge $900M assesment.
Next step probibly has the assesment getting reduced to something reasonable which won't make any headlines and won't be a slashdot article.
What if they used a pole that was one thickness at the top and a different thickness at the bottom? The message could also be constructed so that the only characters that counted were the ones on the south side of the pole and the north side could contain a decoy message (and the east and west sides too for that matter)?
"Of course, the thing that's really galling is to hear about these laws, and then see a cop doing 80 in a 65 zone (without lights/siren on) while talking on a cellphone and typing on the laptop in the passenger seat."
Asside from the laptop part, they do that all the time weather they are on duty or not. Off duty cops that get pulled over will ALWAYS make sure that they let the officer know they are an off duty cop and will get off. I have a reletive that gets pulled over for speeding once or twice a year and has never gotten a speeding ticket.
"Except that an experienced driver skilled at threshold braking could still threshold break. He just has to get almost to the point of ABS kick in instead of almost to the point of tire lock-up - which are pretty much the same thing."
A driver that is that good should be aware of what type of equipment he is driving and mash the brake petal to the floor.
I find this whole discussion depressing. I didn't feel too old this morning but trying to recall if I was ever distracted by a laptop in class reminds me that I never saw one in class when I was in college.
And when I graduated, Bush was in the whitehouse. OK, it was the George I but still...
"Suppose Google owned a parking garage with valet service. It lets people park there for free, with the understanding that you'd receive advertisements on your windshield. The Justice Department steps up and says it that Google should hand over the keys to every car so that the government can check them out, just in case."
I think this is a really bad analogy. Googles records of our use of thier service is their records to do with as they please, not the property of the serchers or the searched. You don't own your search and if you don't want a record of your search to exist then don't make the search.
My argument would be that the government doesn't have the right to take GOOGLES records which don't have anything to do with children downloading porn. Perhaps they help children find the porn but would it be illegal to tell a child where to find porn (ex: "Hey 17 year old kid, you can find porn in that bookstore.")? I don't think so since the porn dealer is the one with the porn.
"Interesting, but didn't George Bush recently say that America had to end its "addiction to oil" because most of it came from an "unstable part of the world"?"
Presidents say inane junk in the State of the Union Address every year. It's such a waste of time to watch especially with all the clapping. The gas price shocks after katrina put "gas prices" up as an issue in the months before the SOTUA so he decided to pander. If gas prices had been stable in the wake of Katrina he wouldn't have mentioned it.
My solution would be to allow unlimited anonymous donations, in fact, all donations to political parties/candidates would be required to be anonymous. Regulations would be imposed to keep people from working around it (so somone can't say "I will put $10345.19 into your campaign at 3:01pm Friday").
That way I can go tell my congressmen that I donated a big load of money to him and he will have to be nice to me cause he won't know if I am telling the truth.
Slashdot Mirror
"Receipt paper is really nasty, I can vouch for that."
Depends on what kind of receipt paper. The thermal kind is the worst but the kind you get at the grocery store isn't too bad (I am talking about the actual reciept, not the stream of paper they give you with loads of coupons).
Never try eating the kind that comes out of the self serv gas pump.
"I'm surprised no one has come to market with a Bluetooth tooth. I know I'd get one, just for the grin factor."
Bling?
"Personally I think that whole thing about car alarms disabling themselves is a myth anyway"
It's gotta be true because Swartzeneger did it in the movie Twins by lifting up the back of a car.
Of course I didn't question how the character would have known anything about car alarms since he spent his whole life on a tropical island without cars.
Many new cars come with regular keys(not the keyless option) that have an RFID dodad embeded in the key so that the car will not start unless the RFID is there when you try to crank the car. I guess this would stop somone from simply using a lockpick on the car unless they could cercumvent the RFID stuff.
o _Truck_Key_Blank_Reference_%5B2852-E-1105%5D.pdf
One drawback is that if you want an extra key you have to get it from the dealer or get them to "program" your key if you optain one from a third party.
This has insturctions on how to setup some of the keys that don't require any special equipment. Some require at least one existing programed key while some do not.
PDF warning
http://www.kaba-ilco.com/key_systems/pdf/2006_Aut
Just to toss in an example of how government in the USA has meddled with free market. Some insurance companies will charge higher copays for visits to chiropractors. A new law just went into effect in NC that requires the same copay for chiropractors as primary care doctors.
This link gives some information about it but the gist of that story is about the corruption surronding the NC Speaker of the House who got the law passed.
http://www.fayettevillenc.com/article?id=231508
Here in Hazard County, we normally keep ramps setup all over the place in case you need to jump your car over somethin.
Rather had all the proof he needed which was written in MS Word back in the 70's.
And how could one of those alians possibly beat the krap out of Mr. Data?
Why the heck would these alians that build a bunch of huge deathstars have to use our satellites in the first place?
"Your at-will employment system is a total joke - ever noticed that no other western country has anything like it?"
Yet the US Unemployment rate is below 5% even with a jillion illegal alians.
I don't know if it's the same now or not but I was put off concerts a long time ago when the "ticketmaster" system would put a concert on sale nationwide for a concert in my hometown. You go lineup at the ticketmaster outlet and find they are sold out in 5 minutes because the scalpers went to a ticketmaster outlets a thousand miles away and bought up all the tickets.
Should online journalists receive the same rights as traditional reporters?
What special rights do traditional reporters get? I think the aftermath of Plamegate has proven that reporters can be compelled to reveal a source in some cases.
I wonder what would happen if somone were to infringe on the patent secret 100MPG big oil pattent if it existed. Could you imagine the noise when big oil filed a lawsuit for patent infringement?
If the ads on websites wern't so anoying people would be less likely to block them.
They spawn new windows or popups or they have anoying animations. I really hate the ones with sound. Another trick is to have a popup that looks like content or even that looks like a real window from your system.
I could probibly think of some more but you get the idea.
If all I had to deal with was ads like you see in a newspaper, I wouldn't bother with trying to block em.
"900 million does sound like a lot for taxes on IP... There must be more to the story..."
My guess is it's something like this:
Symantec's tax people get audited by the IRS. Auditors flood Symantec with records requests from the last several years then go do nothing. for a while 'till the statue of limitations dedline looms. Auditors tell Symantec that they will slam them hard unless they sign a statute of limitations extention and claim that Syamantec isn't giving them records fast enough.
Symantec gives in a few times on signing the statute extentions a few times while Auditors keep requesting irrelevent records that they had already been sent but lost. Symantec finally gets tired of screwing with the peon auditors and refuses to sign another statute extention which suprises auditor so they hastily put together a shody justification for a huge $900M assesment.
Next step probibly has the assesment getting reduced to something reasonable which won't make any headlines and won't be a slashdot article.
What if they used a pole that was one thickness at the top and a different thickness at the bottom? The message could also be constructed so that the only characters that counted were the ones on the south side of the pole and the north side could contain a decoy message (and the east and west sides too for that matter)?
"Of course, the thing that's really galling is to hear about these laws, and then see a cop doing 80 in a 65 zone (without lights/siren on) while talking on a cellphone and typing on the laptop in the passenger seat."
Asside from the laptop part, they do that all the time weather they are on duty or not. Off duty cops that get pulled over will ALWAYS make sure that they let the officer know they are an off duty cop and will get off. I have a reletive that gets pulled over for speeding once or twice a year and has never gotten a speeding ticket.
"Depends what state you live in. In Illinois, in order to get your license, you have to sign away the right to refuse a BAC test."
This brings up a few questions:
What will Ill. law enforcement do with drivers that are licensed in another state without such a requirement?
What about somone that was driving without a license?
Would the law in another state be able to give a BAC test to a Ill. driver without their consent?
I wonder if the same thing is happening in other hurricane basins?
"Except that an experienced driver skilled at threshold braking could still threshold break. He just has to get almost to the point of ABS kick in instead of almost to the point of tire lock-up - which are pretty much the same thing."
A driver that is that good should be aware of what type of equipment he is driving and mash the brake petal to the floor.
Or a half eaten can of pringles, an empty Diet Rite can and an unused lubricated condom.
I find this whole discussion depressing. I didn't feel too old this morning but trying to recall if I was ever distracted by a laptop in class reminds me that I never saw one in class when I was in college.
And when I graduated, Bush was in the whitehouse. OK, it was the George I but still...
"Suppose Google owned a parking garage with valet service. It lets people park there for free, with the understanding that you'd receive advertisements on your windshield. The Justice Department steps up and says it that Google should hand over the keys to every car so that the government can check them out, just in case."
I think this is a really bad analogy. Googles records of our use of thier service is their records to do with as they please, not the property of the serchers or the searched. You don't own your search and if you don't want a record of your search to exist then don't make the search.
My argument would be that the government doesn't have the right to take GOOGLES records which don't have anything to do with children downloading porn. Perhaps they help children find the porn but would it be illegal to tell a child where to find porn (ex: "Hey 17 year old kid, you can find porn in that bookstore.")? I don't think so since the porn dealer is the one with the porn.
"Interesting, but didn't George Bush recently say that America had to end its "addiction to oil" because most of it came from an "unstable part of the world"?"
Presidents say inane junk in the State of the Union Address every year. It's such a waste of time to watch especially with all the clapping. The gas price shocks after katrina put "gas prices" up as an issue in the months before the SOTUA so he decided to pander. If gas prices had been stable in the wake of Katrina he wouldn't have mentioned it.
My solution would be to allow unlimited anonymous donations, in fact, all donations to political parties/candidates would be required to be anonymous. Regulations would be imposed to keep people from working around it (so somone can't say "I will put $10345.19 into your campaign at 3:01pm Friday").
That way I can go tell my congressmen that I donated a big load of money to him and he will have to be nice to me cause he won't know if I am telling the truth.