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User: RedSynapse

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Comments · 85

  1. Re:And I care why? on The Scope of US E-Waste · · Score: 3, Insightful
    This seems like a troll but I'll bite..

    1) Do you really think that the people of this village wake up in the morning and think "By gum, I can't wait for another day of handling toxic materials with no protection whatsoever. My only hope is that those meddling foreigners, and their insipid health and safety standards, don't rob me of this, my most beloved pastime!"

    Someone else posted this video, but I'll link to it again as it shows the village. These people aren't working in some factory, they are in huts with dirt floors.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4586903n

    2) If we really wanted to leave these people alone, perhaps we shouldn't be sending them tonnes upon tonnes of toxic materials?

    To answer "And I care why?" - Well because all of us consumers of electronic devices are partially responsible for the suffering of these people. Because this computer you are sitting at right now may very well end up in a village in China where it will poison people.

  2. Complain to Their Advertisers on Woman Killed In Wii-Related Competition · · Score: 5, Informative
    The KDND website has a list of all the companies that advertise with them.

    I've put together the following email addresses of KDND's sponsors, so if you think that the folks at KDND are a bunch of negligent twits who probably don't deserve their advertising dollars then why not email these companies and let them know?

    Info@urban-body.com, hr@wyotech.com, smichaels@sierracollege.edu, foundation@sierracollege.edu, marc.goff@US.REDBULL.COM, cs_online@albertsons.com, lgradisher@jewels.com, mediarelations@officedepot.com, communityrelations@officedepot.com, corpcsf@wellsfargo.com, home.pa-newsroom.168d00@statefarm.com, admin@PowerTripBev.com, kburns@ckr.com, chopkins@ckr.com, customerservice@partsamerica.com, oshgift@osh.com, customerservice@tillys.com, info@heald.edu, info@louderlaw.com, dale@sleeptrain.com, webmaster@NissanUSA.com, joseph.l.goode@bankofamerica.com You can also contact KDND's general sales manager at fhormell@entercom.com

  3. America's Most Wanted on FCC to Reorganize 800mhz Band? · · Score: 4, Informative
    I was watching America's Most Wanted last night, and they did a segment about the emergency services spectrum and how in some "dead zones" police, fire, and amublance workers are not able to use their radios because of interference from Nextel cell towers.

    One police officer recounted how he came upon a man who had been shot in the back and was laying there bleeding, when the officer tried to radio in for help he found that he had no radio reception, so he had to wander out into the middle of the street holding his radio up to the sky until he found a spot with reception.

    AMW has a site here where you can sign an online petition, and a description of the problem here

    Additionally here's a link to the Consensus Plan which is supported by emergency first responders to eliminate interference. Apparently there have been over a 1000 cases of interference nationwide in these states since the first case was reported 5 years ago.

  4. Re:Flying cars - from Wikipedia Brittanica (2050) on How Will We Get Around Near-Future Earth? · · Score: 1

    The Chunnel is doing just fine at heading towards bankruptcy without any help from the flying car. Nine billion Euros of debt will do that to a company.

  5. NASA directive on "profane speech" on FCC to Regulate 'Profane' Speech · · Score: 1

    It's a little known fact that NASA has been editing transmissions from orbiting astronauts before releasing transcripts to the public. Here's a rare unedited sample that was picked up direct from a NASA feed .

  6. Re:Not so bad? on Examining New York's Bioresearch Laboratory · · Score: 1

    Ebola Zaire is passed only through direct transmission, not via airborne transmission, yet it is still classified as BSL-4. So while BSL-4 *may* be airborne it's not necessarily so.

  7. Unofficial results on Fifteen Teams Selected for DARPA Grand Challenge · · Score: 1

    from http://www.grandchallenge.org/statusboard/

    Looks like all vehiches have been disabled and the furthest any of them got was 7 miles. Red Team tied with SciAutonics at the 7 mile mark before going kaput.

  8. Just be glad you weren't driving a Toureg on Keyless Entries Fail In Las Vegas On Friday · · Score: 3, Funny
    From Car Talk's Good, Bad, and Ugly of 2003

    An engineer at Volkwagen thought that if someone tries to steal a new super-deluxe Toureg sport utility, the theft deterrent system ought to make it damn hard. So, if the car's alarm is not turned off using the key fob, the would-be intruder (even if he uses the key to manually unlock the driver's door) will run into several obstacles.

    He'll find that the car won't start. And he'll then find he can't remove the key from the ignition (it locks it in place), and can't take the car out of Park.

    Unfortunately, if the battery dies (for no apparent reason), the alarm cannot be turned off. So the owner will face the same set of obstacles.

    He will use the key to manually open the door. He will insert the key and try to start the engine. He will fail, and try to remove the key, which will not come out. He will call VW roadside assistance, who will call AAA. The tow truck driver will arrive and won't be able to jump start the car, because the battery is in the rear cargo compartment, and the door locks are either dead or disabled by the alarm system. He will shrug and leave. Another tow truck driver will arrive, shrug, and leave. A third tow truck driver will arrive and decide to tow the car. He will discover that the transmission is locked in Park, so he can't tow it. He will shrug and leave. After another call to VW roadside assistance, a local dealer will get involved, sending a tow truck with a dolly, so the car can be rolled onto a flat bed truck and taken to the dealer.

    The owner will be really happy he just spent $40,000 on a high-end German sport utility vehicle.

  9. Sounds Good On Paper But.. on Canadian Privacy Act · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Here's an interesting example of how this law is already having unforseen effects.

    Guy calls the bank to activate his new credit card. At the beginning of the call he gets the obligatory "This call may be mointored for quality assurance purposes" message. The guy complains that he doesn't want to have his call monitored. The bank says well if you don't like it you can jam your card where the sun don't shine. Guy complains to the privacy commissioner. The privacy comissioner rules in favour of the guy and decrees that banks cannot monitor calls without consent as it violates our fabulous new privacy laws.

    The upshot? It's now much easier for theives and fraudsters to steal credit cards from mailboxes and activate and use them. The bank is no longer allowed to record what phone number is used to register the card, and if the fraudster has obtained other personal information about you (or fraudently applied for the card in your name) you and the bank are screwed. Go privacy!

  10. Re:Toothless? on Canadian Privacy Act · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Nobody is required to buy anything on credit. You are free to save up your money in your piggy bank until you have enough to pay for your house in cash.

    If however you would like to use someone else's money to buy your house then they are obviously going to want to know whether you are a good risk or not and are going to check your credit history to determine this.

  11. Re:ROI? on AMD Receives $683M for Dresden Plant · · Score: 2, Informative
    no, but the other 2billion Euro's that AMD is spending will stay in the German ecconomy

    I really doubt that. Most of that 2 billion will be going to companies like Applied Materials. Sure there will be local contractors involved in constructing the buildings (i.e. the grunt work), but all the really expensive bits that go inside will come from foreign multinationals.

    What Saxony is really paying all that money for is the creation of jobs. When you do the math 600k per job ain't all that bad. Lets say the average salary will be 50k per year, so in that case you could argue that "the local economy" will make that back in 12 years. The EU actually has rules against these kinds of state subsidies, but because the Fab is being built in former East Germany it's being exempted.

  12. More Reviews on Intel Prescott Released · · Score: 5, Informative

    Tech-Report Prescott Review
    accelenation Prescott Review
    Ace's Hardware Prescott Review
    Gamers Depot Prescott Review
    HardTecs4U
    Hexus
    K-Hardware Prescott Review,
    Legit Reviews Prescott Review
    LostCircuits
    MBReview Prescott Review
    VR-Zone
    X-bit labs Prescott Review
    XtremeSystems Prescott Review
    Extreme-tech Prescott Review

  13. Re:Oxymoronic on FTC vs. Open Relays, round 2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ok I'm going to give up my mod points to nit pick.

    Fighting for peace is a PARADOX not an oxymoron.

    PARADOX: a : a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true.

    Sometimes you really do have to fight to achieve peace. Sometimes you have to kill to save lives. For example, it's posssible that by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that more lives were saved overall because the Japanese were forced to caputulate immedately instead of fight a long drawn out amphibious assault.

    Fucking for virginity is an oxymoron because fucking will never achieve virginity

    OXYMORON: something (as a concept) that is made up of contradictory or incongruous elements.

  14. Re:Simple on Canadians Pay Extra For Their Wireless Hardware · · Score: 1

    Ok 80% of us Canadian's live within 200km of the US border.

    Just as there are not a lot of cell towers in the middle of the wheat fields of Nebraska or Death Valley nor are there many found in the Yukon tundra or mountains of British Columbia.

  15. Access Fee Insanity on Canadians Pay Extra For Their Wireless Hardware · · Score: 5, Informative

    I live in Canada and the one thing that made me give up my cell phone plan was the dreaded monthly "Access Fee."

    I had a plan that was $20 for 200 minutes any time, but on top of this EVERYONE is required to pay a $7.95 access fee regardless of what plan they're using. So if you're a businessperson with a $100 a month plan you end up paying what amounts to an 8% tax, but if you are a po' ass student like me you end up paying an insane %40 tax (plus you also have to pay %15 tax on top of the total amount). INSANE.

    All providers in Canada charge this fee. It seems to be governemnt mandated, although I think I read once that the individual providers are allowed to set what the fee is but they all decided to make it 7.95.

    IMHO this is why we don't have wider adoption of mobible phones in Canada.

    Also I'm not sure how it is in other countries but every text message you send with SMS costs 10 cents. So if you want to send a text message to your friend's mobile phone that says "Hi Jane how are you?" that's ten cents.. then if she replies "I'm good, yourself?" another ten cents, and on and on. My carrier (fido) had a "introductory period" where they gave away the text messaging for free and a lot of people were using it. Now that it's 10 cents per message (I think it's max 256 characters) NOBODY USES IT. I mean come on, does it really cost them 10 cents to transmit a 256 character max plain text message? I think if they charged 1 cent per message they would make more money because people would actually use the service.

  16. Complain To Citibank on Hackers Track Down Banking Fraud · · Score: 2, Informative
    To me the scariest part of this article is that citibank's own "e-mail fraud reporting" services replies to people that they should forward any further occurances of email fraud to an @aol.com email address.

    Something is very wrong.

    It seems like the citibank website is designed not to give out any email addresses but here's some addresses I've found.

    I'd recommend sending a polite e-mailthe following details:

    • A link to the sercurityfocus article http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1745
    • State that there was an fraud attack on citibank that may have affected over 100,000 clients.
    • State that it seems likely that citibank should be able to identify which clients were affected by checking their web logs.
    • Most importantly state that there seems to be something very wrong with their e-mail fraud reporting page, which may itself be compromised, and as such could the person you are contacting forward your e-mail to the appropriate Information Security department.
    Please note that these people are not in departments related to IT or web development, so just ask them to forward your email to the appropriate person. Trust me, if enough people complain about this it will get resolved.

    citibank@shareholders-online.com, shareholderrelations@citigroup.com, investorrelations@citi.com, fixedincomeir@citigroup.com, louis.f.fortunato@citigroup.com, evelyn.kenvin@citicorp.com, mary.cosgrove@citicorp.com, joseph.g.eicheldinger@citicorp.com, valerie.kuhl@citicorp.com, mamie.chinn-hechter@citicorp.com, geoffrey.h.siedor@travelers.com, johnsonl@citigroup.com, prettoc@citigroup.com, kevin.j.heine@citigroup.com

  17. Our Solution on Universities Taken Offline to Fight Worms, Viruses · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I posted this before but it's still relevant..

    I work for tech support for a large (30,000+ students) university. This fall we're expecting as many of 30 percent of the machines coming to residence to be infected with a worm.

    To defend against this we're going scan all machines over the network during the registration process and if the machine is vulnerable the browser will get redirected to a webpage with the relevant patches which the client must apply. If they don't apply the patch they won't be able to connect to anything but our internal authentication vlan.

    One of the reasons our networks get hammered during any worm incident is that there are so many machines connected to the network that just aren't patched ever.. Eventually we just have to manually shut down the ports infected machines are connected to and wait till clients call to complain to explain why they've been disconnected.

  18. Re:Can't afford??? on Microsoft Introduces IM Licensing · · Score: 1

    1) Should that 40B in the bank really belong to Microsoft? Lets say I'm a water seller and I beat-up and intimidate every competitor in a 100 kilometre radius till the exit the market, then start selling water for $50 a glass - would you then say "Bitch all you want about having poor market ethics, monopolistic practices.. he earned it?" Earning something through fair competition is different from living on the proceeds of crime.

    2) Lots of monopolistic companies have done useful things. Standard Oil revolutionized the distribution of petroleum products. But it also used it's monopoly power to crush the competition. You have to look at the total costs and benefits.

    3) Oh come on, a monopoly only needs to have an overwhelming influence on a market to be a monopoly. Saying "Look there are still 5% of home desktop users out there that aren't using a Microsoft OS!" is pretty solid evidence that MS IS an monopoly, not otherwise.

    The reason MS can afford to throw away a bunch of money at IM and XBOX and well everything besides its OS, OFFICE, and intellimouse, is that it reaps huge monopoly profits from those products. I read an article recently that said there is a 90% plus profit margin on its OS and OFFICE products. That's not normal, or indicative of a healthy market.

    So yeah, they own the servers, and they can make people pay. Now give me that $50 for that glass of water. Fair's fair.

  19. Our University's Solution on Handling User Grown Machines on a Large Network? · · Score: 2, Informative

    I work for tech support for a large (30,000+ students) university. This fall we're expecting as many of 30 percent of the machines coming to residence to be infected with a worm.

    To defend against this we're going scan all machines over the network during the registration process and if the machine is vulnerable the browser will get redirected to a webpage with the relevant patches which the client must apply or they won't be able to connect to anything but our internal authentication vlan.

    One of the reasons our networks get hammered during any worm incident is that there are so many machines connected to the network that just aren't patched ever.. Eventually we just have to manually shut down the ports infected machines are connected to and wait till clients call to complain to explain why they've been disconnected.

  20. Money for nothing. on SCO Prepares To Sue Linux End Users · · Score: 0, Funny

    Now look at them yo-yo's that's the way you do it
    Extorting everyone for phony licencing fees
    That ain't workin' that's the way you do it
    Money for nothin' and the kernel for fee
    Now that ain't workin' that's the way you do it
    Lemme tell ya them guys ain't dumb
    Their company's in the toilet anyway
    So hey why not sue everyone?

    No one's installing our operating system
    It's less popular than NetBSD
    We can't move any inventory
    So lets move up the litigiosity

    See the greedy faggots who want a $700 markup
    Buncha rejects from Novell and emWare
    That greedy faggot wants his own jet airplane
    That greedy faggot wants to be a billionaire

    No one's installing our operating system
    It's less popular than NetBSD
    We can't move any inventory
    So lets move up the litigiosity

    I shoulda learned to write NDAs
    I shoulda learned to be a total scum
    Look at that Sontag, mailing out FUD warnings
    Man lets pump, dump and run
    And he's up there, what's that? Red Hat countersuit?
    Instead of Business, they should've got a law degree
    That ain't workin' that's the way you do it
    Get your money for nothin' and the kernel for fee

    No one's installing our operating system
    It's less popular than NetBSD
    We can't move any inventory
    So lets move up the litigiosity

    I want my, I want my, I want my licencing fee
    I want my, I want my, I want my licencing fee
    I want my, I want my, I want my licencing fee
    I want my, I want my, I want my licencing fee
    That ain't workin'

  21. I like gay sexxxxxx too on Chimera Twins Story · · Score: 0, Troll

    Especially with one of those Chimera dudes. Oh man, that's gotta be cool, it would be like a threesome, wouldn't it?

  22. Re:SCO can suck my left nut on SCO Targets US Government, TiVo · · Score: 1
    And I'd go back to fucking CPM much more readily than I'd consider paying SCO's extortion money.

    Only problem with that is CPM is now owned by Caldera. Just can't win eh?

  23. Re:Death Rattle on SCO Targets US Government, TiVo · · Score: 1

    haha, whoops! That's what happens when you cut and paste a typo.

  24. Death Rattle on SCO Targets US Government, TiVo · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The reason for the lawsuits:

    SCOX net earings 2003 -4 million
    SCOX net earings 2002 -25 million
    SCOX net earings 2001 -131 million
    SCOX net earings 2000 -27 million
    SCOX net earings 1999 -9 million

    Right there that's 196 million dollars of debt that SCO has accumulted in the past 5 years. So when you realize that your business model just ain't working, hey, why not just sue everyone.

  25. OSDN keystroke logger on Kinko's Spy Case Illustrates Public Terminal Risk · · Score: 1
    The real problem is the unscrupulous purveyors of these devices who make them available to anyone, like for examaple, the OSDN network, parent company of slashdot.

    :)