already done here.. we block over half their entire continent right at the firewall.. same with china and a few other countries as well. we don't do business there, so they have no real need to access our web sites, content, contact details and forms, online ordering, etc. soon as we did that, over 2/3rds of the hacking attempts (looking for XSS exploits, etc) on our web sites went away, and so did virtually all of the spam sent via our web forms.
we don't sell over the phone either -- we're a cash (mainly) local business with limited online sales (specific items and services only -- and zero online fraud orders since we blocked those entire IP ranges). nigerian and other scammers that do get ahold of us usually go away once they hear something like 'we do not accept credit cards' or 'stop by our office to place and pay for your order'.
facebook is kinda in the driver's seat here due to its size and popularity, both with users and with companies trying to reach those users.....
so if facebook terminated company accounts when they receive some sort of proof that the company is asking for passwords or forcing friend requests of employees or job seekers -- as well as the accounts of known employees of said company -- the resulting shit storm (from employees-turned-collateral-damage, and from marketing / pr departments / execs, when they can't use facebook) should cause most companies to back off.
than the crooks that abused the system to run their scams.
at&t fixed the problem with postcard-based registration verification but when revenues when down (due to only legitimate users, which accounted for only 20% of them, getting access to the service) they went back to a free-for-all internet-based registration and then the problem with overseas abuse returned.
of course they should pay.. and pay a hell of a lot more than 3 x 16 million for fraud...
what i would have a problem with though is if the government expects (or requires) relay operators to monitor or log conversation content and act on that content.
it was a little ridiculous. we turned the air conditioner on the week before st patrick's day.... if we wanted days of 80F+ temps in mid-march, we'd still be living in south texas or florida, not the upper midwest. we moved to get away from the heat and get back to having four seasons.. this year, winter was a joke, spring was like a week long, and the snowiest month of the year has had none.. NONE, not even any snowcover leftover from the months before.
HOW THE FUCK DO YOU BUY ANYTHING ON AMAZON WITH CASH???
buying on amazon isn't anonymous because it's mail order - you still have to provide name, address and phone for your amazon account and shipping... but you CAN buy amazon gift cards with cash and then use them to pay for your amazon purchases.
there are numerous methods of buying the gift cards with cash, available at 10s of thousands of locations across the country.
i couldn't even get through T2 and thought the first was mostly a waste of time (mainly watched it to see what the fuss was about with megan fox.... answer: not a whole lot).
haven't seen the others, nor most of bay's other films.. his first three were good though (bad boys, the rock, armageddon), but when he got in to producing remakes, it all went to shit.
i knew there was a comic series that started it all, but i first remember the first tv series and the early movies. tmnt was very popular among friends.. catchphrases included. i wasn't what you'd call a fan (i'd watch it if it was on but wouldn't go out of my way) but it was infinitely better than power rangers (which was also popular back then)
i don't consider this to be a reboot with a change this significant.. just a total fuck up.
amazon tracking and collecting this sort of data is not any different than tivo and cable companies doing the same with dvr's (and not any less spooky), what programs are recorded and watched, when they're watched, what parts get replayed, skipped-over or paused on. and like tivo, amazon defaults to opt-in instead of opt-out (which is not exactly convenient to do with tivo.. and near or completely impossible with cable company boxes). tivo took a lot of heat after that most unfortunate of superbowl half-time performances -- amazon should here as well.
Try spending an hour surfing the web with a browser with ZERO adblocking
i end up on an adblock-free browser for at least that long every week. it's horrible how much crap there is and just how much it slows down your browsing. so many trackers, so many ads, so many beacons & cookies, so many scripts... from so many third-party domains... so much slower, less responsive, harder to navigate, harder to read, plus much less secure and much more invasive.. the internet just fucking sucks without adblock + noscript. i just can't believe so many idiots sit on sites like facebook all day and put up with that shit (when they don't have to)
every time i get stuck on a pc like that i can't wait to get back to the sanity of my own firefox + adblock (+ noscript and a few other essential addons). if i can't browse a site *my way* (no scripts, no flash, no beacons, no ads) i simply go elsewhere, perhaps to a more welcoming competitor's site (and that offending site is never thought of again..)
sorry. getting money out of random players won't work.. and per-slot for clan servers it's cheaper to get your own.. even if you have to wrestle donations out of some of your mates.
Joe Matz, Corporate Vice President of Licensing and Pricing went on the record with âoeWe are actively engaged with OnLive with the hope of bringing them into a properly licensed scenario, and we are committed to seeing this issue is resolved.â
i read this as being: onlive is not presently legit but microsoft is playing nice (i.e. squeezing them for every last nickel without involving more than a few lawyers) for now -- until they lose patience (or feel threatened by being beating to market by an upstart.. not once but twice) and bring the sledgehammer down on onlive's entire business model -- windows and office desktop and gaming platform (xbox and windows games, at least)
Most (all?) new items these days are community submitted, and the majority of those are cosmetic items. In other words, it's easy money for Valve because they don't even do most of the work.
they're mainly cosmetic because being a shooter-type game there really can't be *that* many different weapons... and you can't 'pay to win' in tf2 unlike some (most? nearly all? other "f2p" games) as most weapon bonuses for non-default items are offset by (at least one) significant penalty... so that leaves cosmetic and other items or variants that do not affect game play.
furthermore, revenue from sale of 'community made' items is split between valve and the item's creator.... it doesn't all go in valve's pocket as you imply.
At the very most, eBooks should cost $(price of print book - cost of printing and shipping said book).
when you factor in that most commercially-sold ebooks are licensed, not sold, have usage restrictions and can't be resold (which almost always would undercut the new book's price)....
ebooks should cost considerably less than that... something more like half or less the wholesale price (of the cheapest edition, e.g. hardcover, trade, pocket, etc) to large distributor or retailer
we've been using 3.6.xx because of stability.. not necessarily the application itself (it isn't any better or worse than newer ones, imho) but in release cycle.
if you don't like gnome 3 or unity, you don't have to jump ship simply to change desktop environments. the ubuntu community produces decent xfce (xubuntu) and lxde (lubuntu) variants we use xubuntu instead of ubuntu now.. and since lubuntu's release, lower-end hardware has been getting that instead of xubuntu. either variant's desktop can be installed on an existing ubuntu install without reinstalling the whole thing.
replacing a dell motherboard with another from the same model line, or at least just from the same "era" in most cases, should NOT affect the oem pre-activated state of the original factory-installed windows xp... in addition, it should also still allow the dell-branded winxp install media (or recovery partition) to install using its built-in pre-activated key (i.e. no key needed, no activation required after install)...
if you reinstalled winxp from non-dell media and used the key on the coa, then yes, reactivation is needed on a hardware change as significant as the motherboard (which normally contains a network adapter, which is a major piece of the activation puzzle).. but i've only ever had to actually talk to a live person ONE TIME in the 100s of re-activations we've done here at the office... the automated phone method has worked every other time the online method failed (and that ain't very often.. even using keys on coa's of pre-activated systems (dell, hp, etc).. which are supposed to be blacklisted from online activation)
telephone reps for activation often make stuff up when the call goes off-script. just try again on another shift... never mention the motherboard.. you are simply "reinstalling after virus infection" offer no other information. so long as the key you're using hasn't been used for many activations and is the one stuck to the system in question), they should never even ask for anything other than a simple confirmation of how many systems the key is used on (always answer 'one', the one you're trying to activate).
and microsoft's policy on motherboard swaps on systems bundled with oem-licensed software.. same or equivalent manufacturer's replacement is fine... something 'close' if not those aren't available.. can't technically "upgrade" to newer technologies.. (sticking with same cpu socket and memory type should be 'close enough')....
remove mlk day as a federal and state holiday until all mlk-related speeches, photographs, video and text held by his descendants and/or estate is donated to the public domain. why should the nation honor someone who we cannot lawfully study for free? 5 legal holidays crammed between late-nov and mid-feb is stupid as hell anyway.
This practice -- known, wonkily, as uniform pricing -- isn't specific to movies. It's true for sports, where I pay the same price for a football ticket whether the Redskins are playing the New England Patriots or the St. Louis Rams.
not true.
it is, perhaps, in the nfl (what tfa references.. washington redskins football) because of the limited number of regular season home games per year (eight)..
but in other pro sports in north america with a lot more home games per season (41 in nba/nhl, 81 in mlb, in a full regular season)... higher prices for ''premium'' or ''marquee'' games is very common:
example:
the nba's lakers base ticket price ranges from $25 (nosebleed seats on an end) to $280 (lower bowl, courtside).
when the lakers host houston, charlotte, portland, minnesota, or new jersey this season, tickets start at only $10 ($10-265).
but when chicago, new york, dallas, okc, or san antonio come to town the prices go up to $80-450.... and when it's miami or boston, better put a second on the house (or stay at home and watch on tv), tickets jump to $150-900.
this isn't exclusive to the nba either.. major league baseball and national hockey league teams do this too.
illegal parking in handicapped spots is a problem just about everywhere.. and there aren't too many reserved spots either. if anything there isn't enough -- partly because of that illegal parking. but without adequate enforcement, adding more spots would just increase the occurrence of illegal parking in them.
the walmart here for instance, has about 15 reserved spots. during the day, most are always full (and during busy times they are full). and more often than not, there is at least one parked in one of those spots that shouldn't be... even though there *are* 'regular' spots closer to a door than the handicapped spots.
as a side note, another local store goes one further and has reserved spots for expectant mothers and elderly customers (not legally enforceable like a handicapped spot but still towable if you abuse the property owner's posted rules)
it should be noted that not everybody that qualifies for parking in a reserved handicapped spot, always parks in one (even if one is available). many also don't even get the necessary permit unless they require the extra room.
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don't buy five hundred friggin dollar phone.
already done here.. we block over half their entire continent right at the firewall.. same with china and a few other countries as well. we don't do business there, so they have no real need to access our web sites, content, contact details and forms, online ordering, etc. soon as we did that, over 2/3rds of the hacking attempts (looking for XSS exploits, etc) on our web sites went away, and so did virtually all of the spam sent via our web forms.
we don't sell over the phone either -- we're a cash (mainly) local business with limited online sales (specific items and services only -- and zero online fraud orders since we blocked those entire IP ranges). nigerian and other scammers that do get ahold of us usually go away once they hear something like 'we do not accept credit cards' or 'stop by our office to place and pay for your order'.
facebook is kinda in the driver's seat here due to its size and popularity, both with users and with companies trying to reach those users.....
so if facebook terminated company accounts when they receive some sort of proof that the company is asking for passwords or forcing friend requests of employees or job seekers -- as well as the accounts of known employees of said company -- the resulting shit storm (from employees-turned-collateral-damage, and from marketing / pr departments / execs, when they can't use facebook) should cause most companies to back off.
than the crooks that abused the system to run their scams.
at&t fixed the problem with postcard-based registration verification but when revenues when down (due to only legitimate users, which accounted for only 20% of them, getting access to the service) they went back to a free-for-all internet-based registration and then the problem with overseas abuse returned.
of course they should pay.. and pay a hell of a lot more than 3 x 16 million for fraud...
what i would have a problem with though is if the government expects (or requires) relay operators to monitor or log conversation content and act on that content.
it was a little ridiculous. we turned the air conditioner on the week before st patrick's day.... if we wanted days of 80F+ temps in mid-march, we'd still be living in south texas or florida, not the upper midwest. we moved to get away from the heat and get back to having four seasons.. this year, winter was a joke, spring was like a week long, and the snowiest month of the year has had none.. NONE, not even any snowcover leftover from the months before.
buying on amazon isn't anonymous because it's mail order - you still have to provide name, address and phone for your amazon account and shipping ... but you CAN buy amazon gift cards with cash and then use them to pay for your amazon purchases.
there are numerous methods of buying the gift cards with cash, available at 10s of thousands of locations across the country.
http://www.amazon.com/2-page-Corp-GC/b?ie=UTF8&node=1292847011
i couldn't even get through T2 and thought the first was mostly a waste of time (mainly watched it to see what the fuss was about with megan fox.... answer: not a whole lot).
haven't seen the others, nor most of bay's other films.. his first three were good though (bad boys, the rock, armageddon), but when he got in to producing remakes, it all went to shit.
i knew there was a comic series that started it all, but i first remember the first tv series and the early movies. tmnt was very popular among friends.. catchphrases included. i wasn't what you'd call a fan (i'd watch it if it was on but wouldn't go out of my way) but it was infinitely better than power rangers (which was also popular back then)
i don't consider this to be a reboot with a change this significant.. just a total fuck up.
anyone? doubtful. most? also doubtful.
amazon tracking and collecting this sort of data is not any different than tivo and cable companies doing the same with dvr's (and not any less spooky), what programs are recorded and watched, when they're watched, what parts get replayed, skipped-over or paused on. and like tivo, amazon defaults to opt-in instead of opt-out (which is not exactly convenient to do with tivo.. and near or completely impossible with cable company boxes). tivo took a lot of heat after that most unfortunate of superbowl half-time performances -- amazon should here as well.
i end up on an adblock-free browser for at least that long every week. it's horrible how much crap there is and just how much it slows down your browsing. so many trackers, so many ads, so many beacons & cookies, so many scripts... from so many third-party domains... so much slower, less responsive, harder to navigate, harder to read, plus much less secure and much more invasive.. the internet just fucking sucks without adblock + noscript. i just can't believe so many idiots sit on sites like facebook all day and put up with that shit (when they don't have to)
every time i get stuck on a pc like that i can't wait to get back to the sanity of my own firefox + adblock (+ noscript and a few other essential addons). if i can't browse a site *my way* (no scripts, no flash, no beacons, no ads) i simply go elsewhere, perhaps to a more welcoming competitor's site (and that offending site is never thought of again..)
sorry. getting money out of random players won't work.. and per-slot for clan servers it's cheaper to get your own.. even if you have to wrestle donations out of some of your mates.
(i know, i know.. i will punish myself later)
i read this as being: onlive is not presently legit but microsoft is playing nice (i.e. squeezing them for every last nickel without involving more than a few lawyers) for now -- until they lose patience (or feel threatened by being beating to market by an upstart.. not once but twice) and bring the sledgehammer down on onlive's entire business model -- windows and office desktop and gaming platform (xbox and windows games, at least)
a lifetime upgrade to the ultra platinum deluxe screening package, of course.
no. still no free happy ending included.
they're mainly cosmetic because being a shooter-type game there really can't be *that* many different weapons ... and you can't 'pay to win' in tf2 unlike some (most? nearly all? other "f2p" games) as most weapon bonuses for non-default items are offset by (at least one) significant penalty... so that leaves cosmetic and other items or variants that do not affect game play.
furthermore, revenue from sale of 'community made' items is split between valve and the item's creator.... it doesn't all go in valve's pocket as you imply.
when you factor in that most commercially-sold ebooks are licensed, not sold, have usage restrictions and can't be resold (which almost always would undercut the new book's price)....
ebooks should cost considerably less than that... something more like half or less the wholesale price (of the cheapest edition, e.g. hardcover, trade, pocket, etc) to large distributor or retailer
itunes itself maybe not.. at least not that we know about.. but itunes *accounts* get hacked and phished all the time....
we've been using 3.6.xx because of stability.. not necessarily the application itself (it isn't any better or worse than newer ones, imho) but in release cycle.
the chrome-like rapid release schedule sucks ass. when 3.6.xx goes EOL, we'll be moving over to firefox ESR so at least we'll be on a stable version for a year at a time...
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html
free porn for all (and not that kinky Norwegian stuff either)
if you don't like gnome 3 or unity, you don't have to jump ship simply to change desktop environments. the ubuntu community produces decent xfce (xubuntu) and lxde (lubuntu) variants we use xubuntu instead of ubuntu now.. and since lubuntu's release, lower-end hardware has been getting that instead of xubuntu. either variant's desktop can be installed on an existing ubuntu install without reinstalling the whole thing.
replacing a dell motherboard with another from the same model line, or at least just from the same "era" in most cases, should NOT affect the oem pre-activated state of the original factory-installed windows xp... in addition, it should also still allow the dell-branded winxp install media (or recovery partition) to install using its built-in pre-activated key (i.e. no key needed, no activation required after install)...
if you reinstalled winxp from non-dell media and used the key on the coa, then yes, reactivation is needed on a hardware change as significant as the motherboard (which normally contains a network adapter, which is a major piece of the activation puzzle).. but i've only ever had to actually talk to a live person ONE TIME in the 100s of re-activations we've done here at the office... the automated phone method has worked every other time the online method failed (and that ain't very often.. even using keys on coa's of pre-activated systems (dell, hp, etc).. which are supposed to be blacklisted from online activation)
telephone reps for activation often make stuff up when the call goes off-script. just try again on another shift... never mention the motherboard.. you are simply "reinstalling after virus infection" offer no other information. so long as the key you're using hasn't been used for many activations and is the one stuck to the system in question), they should never even ask for anything other than a simple confirmation of how many systems the key is used on (always answer 'one', the one you're trying to activate).
and microsoft's policy on motherboard swaps on systems bundled with oem-licensed software.. same or equivalent manufacturer's replacement is fine... something 'close' if not those aren't available.. can't technically "upgrade" to newer technologies.. (sticking with same cpu socket and memory type should be 'close enough')....
remove mlk day as a federal and state holiday until all mlk-related speeches, photographs, video and text held by his descendants and/or estate is donated to the public domain. why should the nation honor someone who we cannot lawfully study for free? 5 legal holidays crammed between late-nov and mid-feb is stupid as hell anyway.
from tfa...
not true.
it is, perhaps, in the nfl (what tfa references.. washington redskins football) because of the limited number of regular season home games per year (eight)..
but in other pro sports in north america with a lot more home games per season (41 in nba/nhl, 81 in mlb, in a full regular season)... higher prices for ''premium'' or ''marquee'' games is very common:
example:
the nba's lakers base ticket price ranges from $25 (nosebleed seats on an end) to $280 (lower bowl, courtside).
when the lakers host houston, charlotte, portland, minnesota, or new jersey this season, tickets start at only $10 ($10-265).
but when chicago, new york, dallas, okc, or san antonio come to town the prices go up to $80-450.... and when it's miami or boston, better put a second on the house (or stay at home and watch on tv), tickets jump to $150-900.
this isn't exclusive to the nba either.. major league baseball and national hockey league teams do this too.
actually, "ibm compatible" died when makers quit including BASIC in ROM. that was long before 2005.
illegal parking in handicapped spots is a problem just about everywhere.. and there aren't too many reserved spots either. if anything there isn't enough -- partly because of that illegal parking. but without adequate enforcement, adding more spots would just increase the occurrence of illegal parking in them.
the walmart here for instance, has about 15 reserved spots. during the day, most are always full (and during busy times they are full). and more often than not, there is at least one parked in one of those spots that shouldn't be... even though there *are* 'regular' spots closer to a door than the handicapped spots.
as a side note, another local store goes one further and has reserved spots for expectant mothers and elderly customers (not legally enforceable like a handicapped spot but still towable if you abuse the property owner's posted rules)
it should be noted that not everybody that qualifies for parking in a reserved handicapped spot, always parks in one (even if one is available). many also don't even get the necessary permit unless they require the extra room.
belongs in 1960s science fiction. (oh, wait.. it is already there)
not. gonna. happen.
better chance of the whole world agreeing on one single common language than implementing this complete nonsense on a global scale.
if you can get by with the minimal resources...
hostigation kvm vps 128mb/5gb $20 a year via this deal:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com//showthread.php?t=1109937