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User: hedwards

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  1. Re:Tortious? on Hackers Steal Kroger's Customer List · · Score: 1

    Milk is a bad example, most of the milk supply in the US is controlled by a very small number of concerns. A couple years back there was a push here to require all dairies to sell their milk to a collective and then require all in state purchases of milk to be done through the distributor. Thankfully it didn't go through, but it was somewhat nerve wracking watching big milk trying to drive out the last competition.

    If you thought the telecommunications industry was bad, big milk is worse.

    The whole notion that the US has a capitalist system is really ignorant. We don't, we have a system of monopolies, duopolies and oligopolies covering most of the economy, and even where we don't, the government regularly intervenes on behalf of large corporations to destroy as much competition as possible.

  2. Re:Who else is using Epsilon? on Hackers Steal Kroger's Customer List · · Score: 1

    That's a serious problem. Some companies are more transparent about it than others are, but a financial services firm can have quite a few contractors doing the actual work. If any of them lose a laptop or get cracked, your information can get leaked all over the place.

    But, whenever privacy regulations come up for debate they typically get shouted down as "nanny state politics," discouraging personal responsibility, being socialist or causing people to lose their jobs.

  3. Re:Names and email addresses? on Hackers Steal Kroger's Customer List · · Score: 1

    True, but the cost of not participating is getting bigger all the time. There's a lot of discounts you just can't get if you don't have a facebook account and good luck with a lot of those contests if you aren't on facebook or twitter.

    Fortunately, it hasn't gotten to the point of companies being allowed to advertise just on social networking sites, hopefully somebody will realize that it's fundamentally a bad idea if allowing it comes up for a vote in congress.

  4. Re:Tortious? on Hackers Steal Kroger's Customer List · · Score: 2

    If only they would give a discount. Around here when the discount cards rolled out there was an immediate price hike on the regular price to a similar amount as the discount. The net effect being that you weren't saving money with the discount cards, just not being gouged as badly.

    Why they were allowed to do that is beyond me, because the customers didn't have much choice given that all the major grocery chains started doing it about the same time and the smaller ones are much more expensive.

  5. Re:Very Reliable on FBI Overwhelmed With 'Solutions' To Encrypted Note · · Score: 1

    Murdoch is pretty much a whore, he'll be in with anybody that can get him more money. You don't honestly believe that he believes any of the crap that his media outlets release, do you?

  6. Re:Welcome Back... on Facebook, Zuckerberg Sued For $1 Billion Over Intifada Page · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If the Israelis would stop committing crimes against humanity it might be a bit easier to take them seriously. But as it's presently war criminals against terrorists and the people they represent, it's really hard to grant either side any sort of moral authority.

  7. Re:Burn the Quran instead on TSA Mandates GA 'Self-Pat-Down' Program · · Score: 1

    So, making bigoted remarks that piss off the ones that haven't yet decided which side their on is productive? Do we drop nukes on Riyadh and hope for the best?

  8. Re:If you're tempted to do a 4/1 joke, remember th on MakerBot Introduces Printable Vinyl Records · · Score: 1

    That was largely my thought, the drop boxes make the summaries hard to read and the gag itself isn't really funny to begin with.

  9. Re:There's never been an escape from Stalag 13! on Toshiba Develops 3-D Monocle · · Score: 1

    Now if only he had been running Stalag 17...

  10. Re:Great innovation on Google Gmail Motion Beta · · Score: 1

    I realize that this is a prank, but I think it shouldn't be. The only aspect of it that's actually ridiculous is expecting people to pay that much money for the interface or creating an interface that few people can use. The idea behind it would be great for people that just need to read their email, but not actually type anything.

  11. Re:Would have been so much better if done correctl on Debian, OpenSUSE, Arch, Gentoo and Grml Merge · · Score: 1

    I think it would've been better if they had Debian merging with FreeBSD, that would at least be plausible, for specific values of plausible.

  12. Re:April Fools on Debian, OpenSUSE, Arch, Gentoo and Grml Merge · · Score: 1

    World backup day being yesterday was a good idea. It gives people one last chance to make sure they're backed up before April Fool's day commences and they might need to recover their datas.

  13. Re:To install on Debian, OpenSUSE, Arch, Gentoo and Grml Merge · · Score: 1

    I think he works for Mozilla now. You have to be really careful when dealing with book mark backups if you're a camp counselor.

  14. Re:This is on 'Zodiac Island' Makers Say ISP Worker Wiped an Entire Season · · Score: 1

    Which is particularly embarrassing. Personally, I don't use the gmail site, I just use Thunderbird which downloads all of the messages that I get. The bigger issue are those assholes that insist on not including the entire message when they email. Those messages may as well get chucked in the trash right now, because they're not going to be readable in the future. Fortunately, it's mostly just marketing materials, but still.

  15. Re:Am I missing something here? on 'Zodiac Island' Makers Say ISP Worker Wiped an Entire Season · · Score: 1

    If you haven't restored, you haven't backed up.

  16. Re:Today is World Backup Day on 'Zodiac Island' Makers Say ISP Worker Wiped an Entire Season · · Score: 1

    I forget who said it, but it's totally true. There Are Two Kinds of People in the World, Those Who Have Lost Data and Those Who Will. Which is unfortunate because unlike when I started using computers in prehistoric times, the opportunities and the equipment for doing backups has really come a long way.

  17. Re:World Backup Day on 'Zodiac Island' Makers Say ISP Worker Wiped an Entire Season · · Score: 1

    That's what I like about crashplan, I can easily backup my data locally and online with the same program. Unless my house burns down, somebody steals my backup disk or the drive fails, I'll be using that for pretty much any restores I need to do, but I've still got the option to download from their site or have them ship me a disk.

  18. Re:Another reason to love on Congressman Wants YouTube Video Covered Up · · Score: 1

    Commercially grown based upon profits from a government granted set of monopolies and duopolies.

  19. Re:Sensationalist headline is sensationalist on Former Truck Driver Reconstructs A-bomb · · Score: 2

    Which is why the vision of a nuclear weapon free future is almost certain to never happen. That particular cat is out of the bag, and not going back in any time soon.

  20. Re:Original Research? on Wikipedia Wants More Contributions From Academics · · Score: 1

    I've been working on a master's level certificate and finding information to cite has been a real challenge. A lot of sites want $30 for an article and I can't justify paying that for an article which may or may not be worth citing. On top of that my instructor would also have to have access to that information.

    It's not that much of a problem if you're going to a big school that has a subscription, but if you're going to a small school, they frequently don't have much in the way of resources for things like that.

    I've been lucky in that the instructions don't require us to use such sources, just so long as we properly cite what we use we're mostly good. But it gets really frustrating trying to write the paper we want since much of the information is locked up.

  21. Re:Isn't it obvious? on Wikipedia Wants More Contributions From Academics · · Score: 1

    I understand the whole 'publish or perish' mentality, as well as the egos, the avoidance of the pedestrian/vulgar/whatever, but seriously? Maybe it's time for the professors as a whole to grow the hell up. The days of the Ivory Tower tenured professional metering information out to a fawning public? Those days have passed long ago - about when Phoenix University and similar schools began to gain some sort of recognition in the community at large.

    The problem is that Phoenix University has a reputation.

      Sure you can learn from other sources, but college remains irreplaceable in terms of learning how to deal with an evaluate knew information. It's been a really long time since you couldn't just go down to the library and gain the same information, the difference is that in a college environment that you've got the opportunity to debate, discuss and balance the information coming in. Such is really difficult to do outside of college, even today.

  22. Re:Strangely, Japan doesn't seem to have such robo on US To Send Radiation-Hardened Robots To Japan · · Score: 1

    That makes sense, I was trying to figure out what aspect of them was in need of hardening.

  23. Re:Mark this one for the history books, folks. on US To Send Radiation-Hardened Robots To Japan · · Score: 1

    Did they have no method of keeping a spare that's completely water tight? Obviously they couldn't run it like that, but it would've taken a lot less time to get one that was in a sealed container unpacked than what it took them to connect a cord to a different facility.

    When a component is that important it's foolhardy to have only one backup. Having three or four is better. I know the building I used to work security at had 3 generators each one was enough to power a small city for a several hours.

  24. Re:It's not mind-boggling at all on MS Global Strategy Chief: Tablets Are a Fad · · Score: 1

    It's more likely that monkeyboy Ballmer hasn't got the geek credentials to sign off on things just because they're cool. Bill Gates for all his problems was at least a geek/nerd, he had technical skills and was into phreaking for a time. The problem is that if you try to run a tech firm like a typical business, then you invariably run out of steam like this. MS has the personnel and expertise to be innovative, they're just choosing to fixate on the bottom line without understanding that the OS market can't be relied upon indefinitely, and definitely not if they're wanting to grow the business.

  25. Re:Wait wait... "go the way of the netbook" on MS Global Strategy Chief: Tablets Are a Fad · · Score: 1

    It's not a winning strategy, but it's a market worth going for as supplementary to your primary market. The problem is that manufacturers by and large stopped selling them a couple years ago. Last time I looked it was really tough to find something that was durable and cheap, netbooks I've seen lately tend to go for similar prices to laptops, which is a huge problem. People who like netbooks typically aren't needing or wanting a lot of shiny features, just something cheap and portable to do basic tasks on.