Tho... and I hate to really sound cold here, because it can come off that way.
However... maybe its not that big a deal. I really think our society puts a bit too high sometimes of a value on life for the sake of life. I mean, everybody dies. Perhaps "best effort" really is enough. Maybe a little effort spent in comming to terms with what the situation and eventualities of the situation are would pay off more in the end than scrambling to take care of every possibility to basically... delay the inevitable.
I am not talking about not caring. I am talking about accepting realities and being mindful of what makes sense and what doesn't. If the situation is that bad, and not going to get better, then maybe, certainly try to make the best care situation possible, but remember... the day is very probably going to come when no amount of vigilance is enough.
realise he is already providing care WITHOUT this at all. So even a simple DIY solution is better than nothing. In fact, if his DIY solution fails, then it is no worst than the current situation as exists.
What he needs to look as is the failure modes. A system that "fails loud" is much better than one which "fails silent". That is... it should be designed so that the most likely parts to fail will cause it to fail such that it does the safest thing possible, that is... alerts people that he is not responding.
Lets take the example below that someone gave of a 2 way pager and an email system. It mails him asking for a response every n minutes. If it doesn't get a reply within some specified duration, it alerts his backup.
This solution is great. Because if he fails to get the page, or the battery in the pager dies, or if he is merely in a noisy place and misses it... which, as a person whoc arries a pager, I can attest, are the most common failure modes. Then the safest thing happens, it assmes he is incapacitated and calls in backup.
Now, if the server running it goes down or loses net connection, then the system is broken and may (depending on how it failed) fail to alert anayone. However, this is only an issue if it happens when he is incapacitated. Otherwise, its a non-issue.
Then even if it does happen when he is incapcitated, it is still just as bad, as if the system never existed in the frst place.
Honestly, I think DRM *IS* an infection from the very start.
Ok, so we have systems that work. They do what the user wants. Its a pretty healthy system overall.
DRM comes in pretending to be something that the user wants. It is a trojan horse, a virus. It is brought in, under the disguise of something that helps the system. Then, when it strikes, like this, it does nothing but hurt the system. It doesn't help the user, it hurts the user.
Like a virus, it turns the users own system against the user. It makes the system do what DRM owners (the viruses source) want. It is an infection that only works because it is becoming ubiquitous.
DRM is the classic slippery slope. If we accept the infection, if we don't fight it tooth and nail, then down the road when it really is in everthing, we will have turned over all control to the big boys who control the DRM.
It is a viral infection of the worst sort. It deserves to be described as such. This IS the battle for hearts and minds, and the enemy is not at all shy about casting precious freedom in their own jaundiced light. I say its time to call a spade a spade. This is infection.
This is the first symptom of the infection. Definitly past time to start treating this disease.
Nope, I actually use a mnemonic system to hel me remeber them
Its funny how often I have to give someone "the stare" when they ask "whats your password"... but truth is, I couldn't even rattle it off if I tried. I learn the mnemonic and the muscle memory of typing it, but I don't know it character by character.
I have to sit down for a sec and go over the mnemonic to remeber the individual chars.
ha! true. Or at least people who know how to use a strong password.
Personally, the passowrd that I us for free websites like slashdot and myspace (actually, I am not on myspace anymore, I closed the account because it was worthless at best and didn't like the idea of having my social netowork available publically) is weak as shit.
Seriously, my unix boxes get strong passwords. My work accounts get strong passwords. Websites? Get a dictionary word that I picked at random 10 years ago. If i particularly think I want a stronger one on a site, then its a permutation of a dictionary word that I picked 8 years ago with a number at the end.
If its a box I care about, it often looks more like line noise (for those who have actually seen line noise)
I see what you are saying and agee. Though a few things come to mind. My mother was always fond of reminding us "Don't cut your nose off to spite your face".
Lets take cell phones. I am pretty much locked into Verizon on a contract. Sucks, I could buy out the contract, which would be good for them in the short term, but would hit them in the long term and they know that (thats why they make it expensive to buy out.. like $150)
Anyway... I got a new phone and verizon sure makes it hard to put on custom ring tones and stuff like that. So far I have been unable. Honestly, the phone has bluetooth... there is NO REASON I shouldn't be able to just transfer files over... but they disable it.
Now... if I leave verizon, it costs me $150, plus I need to then get on a new service... and none of the other services have quite as good of a network. I just am not convinced that it is worth it. It might be, but I don't know yet.
I would love to take a stand and say "No Verizon, this is obnoxious, my dollars are walking". However, is it worth the trade off? I don't know yet. Maybe, I almost have myself convinced to dump them.
I don't know about stupidly passive. I think its easy to say that but... I think Scott Adams of Dilbert Fame had it right in one of his books (I believe it was "The Dilbert Princible")... the world is far too complex to be smart all the time.
I mean ok... the DSL provider just switched around a couple of fees. One no longer being recovered, one new one to line their own pockets.
The difference is minor... probably about what I spend on my morning coffee. However thats one bill, from one service provider. Take my situation... I pay electric, gas, cell phone, cable, a mortgage, collect rent, collect 4/5 of the bill money from my roomates, water bill, house insurance.
Theres alot of room in there for a change to just go unnoticed, because I also work 40 hours, study martial arts, and try to have a social life, including seeing my friends and dating. Never mind spending some time here and there with the family.
Um... believe it or not, I don't have that much time to spend pouring over each and every line item on each and every bill. In fact, if it wasn't for gnucash, I might not have a clue as to what my finances really looked like overall.
So yah, I could easily get extra fees tacked on and not notice. Does that make me stupidly passive? I don't think its that so much as overly active. My time is spread pretty thin sometimes. I think that is true of alot of people.
They arn't helping, but in fact, hurting their customers.
TheWell is relaying email for a person to an address. They detect spam comming through the relay, and then block it. They are blocking spam that their own customer has directed at his own mailbox!
Sure he didn't send it, but he told TheWell to forward his mail to the other address. Now they look at the content, which if they were smart, would even tell them that it didn't originate at TheWell, and are blocking the mail.
Brilliant!
Honestly, I dislike comcast internet alot. Even from a straight up simple customer (I rely on them for nothing more than packet passing, not email, nothing).
I call their support... I tell them "I released the DHCP lease and then renewed the lease and I got no DHCP reply at all"
"Ok try going into properties and hitting repair"
What!?! Did I WHAT! I just told him what I did... I did exactly what hitting "repair" would do... IF I was on a windows box.
Right.... but its easy to prove the drive was wiped. Its hard to prove that you remember your passphrase, or didn't lose the little USB key fob that has the keys on it.
"Sorry man, I lost the key, it sucks, I am going to have to rebuild the box too"
Sure it looks bad, but... nowhere near as bad as being caught wiping the drive.
yah, if someone makes a comment about verizon doing things for the NSA being bad, then the whole slashdot community must feel that way. So if someone else makes a comment about them doing it to get a laptop back and being good guys, thats a contradiction. Yay slashthink:)
Wow Delaware, theres a state I thought only existed to charge tolls to people driving through.
Anyway, yah I bet its an uphill battle. Usually is when it involves asking the town to step in, especially when something isn't flagrant and easy to see, like drunk students being a nuissance (and they often are)
I would get a brocure for the device from the company, and bring that to the police station. show them what the company claims, and then tell them this guy is using one of these in you rneighborhood. Its one thing if they can't hear it, that just means you have to step up the proof.
If the police don't want to help, then take it up the chain. Go down to town hall. Try to talk to an alderman or selectman... or whatever your locality has. You want to know why the police and town cowtow to old people? its because they know how to make a nuissance of themselves at city hall.
Agreed.... while it is better to talk out ones problems... and better not to damage peoples property... this is obnoxious. There are really two ways to go here.
1) go down to the police station and try to talk to someone. When you walk in on your own and calmly try to explain your situation, you can usually find some pretty calm people who will gladly discuss your options, or tell you that you have none.
The key to dealing with police... never get aggrevated or show either fear or agression. They win ALL agressive encounters. The number they lose is so small, that its not worth considering that it happens.
2) disable the device... poke some holes in its speaker element.... clip the leads. Do it when hes sleeping. The problem with old people is you never know when they are up and looking out windows. They often don't get as much sleep as younger people and wake up for bathroom runs in the middle of the night and stay up (at least, the ones I know do)
Whether you intended or not... this has been a hot topic here before. I know... I tend to bring it up:)
I think the system has some huge problems and those problems come down to people. No system, no matter how well devised, will work properly with corrupt people. Its a cultural thing. The ability to have non-profits and other socially beneficial corps already exists.... its the culture of greed that is the problem and the reason that there are so many more explicitly for profit ventures.
I think what Bill Gates (god I hate to say this in some ways) and Warren Buffet have done recently is laudable. Absolutly wonderful of them to give so much of their fortunes away to help the world. They have truely shown themselves to be men of high character in this way.
However, I have to question, could we not find a better way to get that money into such causes without needing it to concentrate in one or two people and hope that some number of these men with so much at their disposal decide to be altruistic?
I don't know that I really have an answer, but I would like to think that maybe if we encourage a culture of helping eachother and working together for the common good like one big oversized human tribe, then maybe the world will be a better place::sniff:: I smell patchouli all of a sudden.
Mostly because I wont go as far as to say I believe in total equality of outcome... but I do believe in a sort of balance of outcome. I don't think anyone is so important to society that what they do in a year deserves that level of compensation to an individual.
Thats not to say nobody should be able to have extra large estates, and jet set around the world... but a society that is doling out those sorts of luxuries to a few while others are strugggling to make ends meet is pretty insane.
But what do you want, I am a self described socialist. Honestly I think our society should do away with the for profit corperation too, I think corperations should only be allowed to be formed to serve social purposes (which providing any sort of service already is) and be focused on that rather than "profits" as the bottom line.
There is something thats often overlooked. Good leadership is important. You will normally hear me ranting about the pay disparities between the top and the bottom, and I am not backtracking here, I don't think anyone should be getting multi million dollar salaries... but all that aside...
Bad leadership is worst than none. Good leadership is important. Good leaders, team leads, managers are people who make you not just work, but actually WANT to work for them. People who you can be like when everything else hits the fan, its not just that you care about your job, but you actually respect them and want to work because you know they will get shit if you fail.
Pay is nice, but its community and social pressures that people really respond to. Its that "we are all in this together" attitude that binds a team together and makes them really get the job done. I think the most important aspect of a leader is the ability to catalyse that in his team.
The best defense against this sort of thing is teams that are close enough that no member would betray the team because, they would be betraying people who they respect.
This is one reason why I like working for nonprofits that are doing things that I like, where I can get behind the corperate mission and be proud to be a part of what we are doing. Hence, I work in healthcare.
Right but there is a big difference between acknowledging the color of a persons skin and racism.
These people are models, being used as part of a piece of art (whether or not that art is being used as part of an ad campaign is besides the point). Yes the colors o ftheir skins are relevant, they are metaphors for the product thats being advertised.
Theres nothing here saying that blacks are inferior to whites, its showing a couple of individuals in a certain circumstance where yes, the white person is in the dominant position of power... to extrapolate this to all white and black relations is silly.
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" (I am told freud said that but I am quoting Data from TNG)
Racism is, afterall, about limiting the roles in society available to people based on their ethnic/racial background. So hows this for racism, due to all the so called "anti-racist sentiment", now a black persons available roles has increased dramatically... but god forbid that they want to appear submissive to a white person... that role is now unavailable to them... because of the color of their skin! Isn't THAT racism?
Once again, the road to hell is paved by good intentions. Lack of perspective has really confused some otherwise well meaning people.
what gets me is this "I have a hammer, so that problem must be a nail" approach that our legislatros seem to love so well.
I recently read about a local law that may or may not have passed (I think it did) which meant to classify violence against homeless people as a hate crime.
It was designed to solve a real problem, it had the best of intentions, but boy is it the wrong solution. There was a case a couple of years back where a couple of guys beat a homeless man within an inch of his life. They were caught, and convicted, and served a couple of months in jail. A couple of months... for brutally beating a man and nearly killing him.
The prosecutors said the main problem is that they tend to rely on basically trumping up charges. If you go into a mans home and beat him, they can add on extra charges, burglary, breaking and entering, and a few more which I forget. With those extra charges, sentances get bumped up to something more prohibitive.
When a homeless person is beat, there is generally little they have to add more charges and bump up the sentance.
Whats the real issue here? Its not hate. Its that really, the standards for these things are too low. I mean, I don't think we should throw every drunk that gets into a drunken brawl in jail for the rest of his life, but there is a real difference between an aggrevated fight between two men and a couple of guys overpowering and beating a person within an inch o fhis life, and THAT is the distinction that the law should be making....
There is a big difference between a fight and a beating. Again... the best of intentions combined with a little lack of forsight are getting us into a real hairball.
You know, I can't really disagree with you. There is an old addage "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". I totally understand these "social programs" and what they are trying to accomplish, its even... to some extent... noble. Asinine in effect, backwards, silly... but noble in spirit.
I think the problem here is not that they got the scholarship and you didn't, but that second part alone. Education is good for the individual and good for the society. There are few better investments for a people than educating our youth. We should be making sure that absolutly everyone with the will to become educated gets educated, because the returns on that investement will be far greater than we can even begin to measure.
However I digress... its very true what you say... and it all started with the best of intentions. I think the real problem is that we are trying to put a racism band aide on much larger social problems. Social mobility is hard... so yes, blacks starting off as second class citizens and slaves, has had a detrimental effect to them overall lasting until today.
The problem is that those who start poor tend to have less opportunity and stay poor. So it makes sense that there are lots of poor miniorities, I don't think the issue really is racism anymore, that may have been an original cause of their social status, but its not really whats keeping them down today.
I would say poor uneducated white people are in just as bad a boat as poor uneducated black people today.
This ties in with a discussion I had with a friend recently (you know a discussion is going to be interesting when it starts with the question "do you have any interest in BDSM?"). Anyway....
I think the racisim here is in the minds of the watchers. Would this be racist if it was a black woman and a white man? Would it then be sexist if it was a white man grabbing a white woman? In a full on dom/sub relationship it makes sense for the sub to do the dishes and house work and other such things, so if the sub is a woman, that fits with the "standard sexist gender roles" right? What about a master slave relationship? Is it somehow bad for a black woman to want to be the slave to a white master?
Whats worst, a black person being a willing slave to a white person, or trying to tell that same black person what they can and can't do in the confines of their life and sexuality?
This is all silly. The knee-jerk racism reaction is ridiculous. Isn't the whole goal of tolerance and antiracism to teach us to see people as people rather than black people and white people? Black people have as much right to be submissive as a white person if thats what they want!
just today I heard a peice on NPR, talk about random. They had asked people to tape record sounds from their environment, and a guy who lives near power lines noticed the sound of them arcing. Then some workers would come by, spray down the insulators, and it would stop for a few months... then the cycle would begin again.
The NPR show which featured this guy contacted the power company, and receievd the explaination that this was common and due to dirt buildup on the insulators.
In the future I would like to do something like that, however, hoenstly....
Its a matter of who you choose to do it with. I had the right friend, not a hugly close or good friend, but the right kind of friend, one with good buisness sense and an honest person. We both lived on the premisis and rented out rooms, split everything down the middle.
I wouldn't do that with just anyone. Some of my best and closest friends arn't the people I would enter into a serious buisness arrangement with. Was there risk? Hell ya, but it worked for us and 3 years later, I own the place on my own. Frankly, in this area, its the only really viable way to swing it. In the end though, its a buisness, and you have to treat it as such, and be partnered with someone who does also.
Realise that as we did it, we could leverage firsttime homebuyer programs and other goodies. I would think that a corperation (admittedly I havn't looked into this) would be more problematic, because the bank will consider it higher risk (like an income property, ie a place you don't intend to live) so a higher downpayment (typically 1/4 of the total value) rather than 20% that a normal private party sale can get away with.
Hear hear! Thank you! Mr Hammer, Meet Mr Nail Head...
As a homeowner who makes more than $50k/year at his "day job", I pay about 15%... in fact, my total income is over 80k when you count everything, but I still have an effective tax rate of 15%!... less than friends of mine who make less than half of what I do.
Why?
Simple... I get around 60k from work, and about 20k from renting rooms in my condo (5 bedroom condo, actually 2 fam house conversion)... this gives me huge tax breaks. I can't claim to understand it all myself (I pay a tax preparer), but basically I make a big profit, but get to take a huge loss on paper because of a partial rental depreciation. (there are downsides to this if I decide to sell... but lets not go there...)
Long story short, I was out of work last year for 7 months, I got paid over $500/week in unemployment, and basically took 12k in income throughj unemployment, that had NO taxes taken out. Thats 12k of untaxed income, on top of 10k in rental income (I had a partner last year who owned half the condo and took half the rent so half the rental income).... what did I pay to the federal government once this 22k of yet untaxed income came into play?
About 1 grand.
Why? because I get huge deductions for owning property that is. Its a huge incentive. If you make that much, you seriously should conside rbuying. And forget this marriage and kids bullshit. I have fammily in the country, there are plenty of breeders out there (yes I call them breeders, no I am not gay... just not intending to have children in the next few years, if ever)....
Live with a few friends, and rent out rooms to pay the mortgage in the city... I went from having a good job where I basically blew my money and broke even every year to having a positive net worth of about double my anual salary (thank you gnucash for the figures), in about 3 years.... go figure.
In any case, the system is setup to encourage you to buy property... so do it! Take a hint!
A couple of years ago my roomates and I were renting from one of the roomates father. He decided to sell and we decided to make a venture into real estate and bought the place together. So for two years he was my partner? Um domestic partner? well um I guess so:)
We did live together, and own property together, by our employers definitions we were like a mutual checkbook away from being able to get on the same medical insurance package with domestic partner benefits.
That swhat I liked a bout samurai (not fixing typoos, im drunk)
The time moved, not really linearly, but as you moved from area to area. So you came into a fairly small area, and sure you COULD indefinitly sit there and just fight people as they came by, but many places didn't have lots of random passerbys most of the time, and they generally weren't worth your time.
So each area has plenty of action usually, but theres no real reason to just hang out in one place.
bu tat its heart, it was a sword fighting game. In fact, it could even be played in a duel mode against another player.
Whats more, there was only one save game, and when you loaded it, it erased the loaded one... so unless you wanted to play tricks like making copies, you could only play through once, then you had to start over. You die, you start over, you win, you start over.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup.
Agreed on all counts actually.
Tho... and I hate to really sound cold here, because it can come off that way.
However... maybe its not that big a deal. I really think our society puts a bit too high sometimes of a value on life for the sake of life. I mean, everybody dies. Perhaps "best effort" really is enough. Maybe a little effort spent in comming to terms with what the situation and eventualities of the situation are would pay off more in the end than scrambling to take care of every possibility to basically... delay the inevitable.
I am not talking about not caring. I am talking about accepting realities and being mindful of what makes sense and what doesn't. If the situation is that bad, and not going to get better, then maybe, certainly try to make the best care situation possible, but remember... the day is very probably going to come when no amount of vigilance is enough.
-Steve
When looked at that way sure... however...
realise he is already providing care WITHOUT this at all. So even a simple DIY solution is better than nothing. In fact, if his DIY solution fails, then it is no worst than the current situation as exists.
What he needs to look as is the failure modes. A system that "fails loud" is much better than one which "fails silent". That is... it should be designed so that the most likely parts to fail will cause it to fail such that it does the safest thing possible, that is... alerts people that he is not responding.
Lets take the example below that someone gave of a 2 way pager and an email system. It mails him asking for a response every n minutes. If it doesn't get a reply within some specified duration, it alerts his backup.
This solution is great. Because if he fails to get the page, or the battery in the pager dies, or if he is merely in a noisy place and misses it... which, as a person whoc arries a pager, I can attest, are the most common failure modes. Then the safest thing happens, it assmes he is incapacitated and calls in backup.
Now, if the server running it goes down or loses net connection, then the system is broken and may (depending on how it failed) fail to alert anayone. However, this is only an issue if it happens when he is incapacitated. Otherwise, its a non-issue.
Then even if it does happen when he is incapcitated, it is still just as bad, as if the system never existed in the frst place.
-Steve
Honestly, I think DRM *IS* an infection from the very start.
Ok, so we have systems that work. They do what the user wants. Its a pretty healthy system overall.
DRM comes in pretending to be something that the user wants. It is a trojan horse, a virus. It is brought in, under the disguise of something that helps the system. Then, when it strikes, like this, it does nothing but hurt the system. It doesn't help the user, it hurts the user.
Like a virus, it turns the users own system against the user. It makes the system do what DRM owners (the viruses source) want. It is an infection that only works because it is becoming ubiquitous.
DRM is the classic slippery slope. If we accept the infection, if we don't fight it tooth and nail, then down the road when it really is in everthing, we will have turned over all control to the big boys who control the DRM.
It is a viral infection of the worst sort. It deserves to be described as such. This IS the battle for hearts and minds, and the enemy is not at all shy about casting precious freedom in their own jaundiced light. I say its time to call a spade a spade. This is infection.
This is the first symptom of the infection. Definitly past time to start treating this disease.
-Steve
Nope, I actually use a mnemonic system to hel me remeber them
Its funny how often I have to give someone "the stare" when they ask "whats your password"... but truth is, I couldn't even rattle it off if I tried. I learn the mnemonic and the muscle memory of typing it, but I don't know it character by character.
I have to sit down for a sec and go over the mnemonic to remeber the individual chars.
-Steve
ha! true. Or at least people who know how to use a strong password.
Personally, the passowrd that I us for free websites like slashdot and myspace (actually, I am not on myspace anymore, I closed the account because it was worthless at best and didn't like the idea of having my social netowork available publically)
is weak as shit.
Seriously, my unix boxes get strong passwords. My work accounts get strong passwords. Websites? Get a dictionary word that I picked at random 10 years ago. If i particularly think I want a stronger one on a site, then its a permutation of a dictionary word that I picked 8 years ago with a number at the end.
If its a box I care about, it often looks more like line noise (for those who have actually seen line noise)
-Steve
I see what you are saying and agee. Though a few things come to mind. My mother was always fond of reminding us "Don't cut your nose off to spite your face".
Lets take cell phones. I am pretty much locked into Verizon on a contract. Sucks, I could buy out the contract, which would be good for them in the short term, but would hit them in the long term and they know that (thats why they make it expensive to buy out.. like $150)
Anyway... I got a new phone and verizon sure makes it hard to put on custom ring tones and stuff like that. So far I have been unable. Honestly, the phone has bluetooth... there is NO REASON I shouldn't be able to just transfer files over... but they disable it.
Now... if I leave verizon, it costs me $150, plus I need to then get on a new service... and none of the other services have quite as good of a network. I just am not convinced that it is worth it. It might be, but I don't know yet.
I would love to take a stand and say "No Verizon, this is obnoxious, my dollars are walking". However, is it worth the trade off? I don't know yet. Maybe, I almost have myself convinced to dump them.
-Steve
I don't know about stupidly passive. I think its easy to say that but... I think Scott Adams of Dilbert Fame had it right in one of his books (I believe it was "The Dilbert Princible")... the world is far too complex to be smart all the time.
I mean ok... the DSL provider just switched around a couple of fees. One no longer being recovered, one new one to line their own pockets.
The difference is minor... probably about what I spend on my morning coffee. However thats one bill, from one service provider. Take my situation... I pay electric, gas, cell phone, cable, a mortgage, collect rent, collect 4/5 of the bill money from my roomates, water bill, house insurance.
Theres alot of room in there for a change to just go unnoticed, because I also work 40 hours, study martial arts, and try to have a social life, including seeing my friends and dating. Never mind spending some time here and there with the family.
Um... believe it or not, I don't have that much time to spend pouring over each and every line item on each and every bill. In fact, if it wasn't for gnucash, I might not have a clue as to what my finances really looked like overall.
So yah, I could easily get extra fees tacked on and not notice. Does that make me stupidly passive? I don't think its that so much as overly active. My time is spread pretty thin sometimes. I think that is true of alot of people.
-Steve
However, this is just stupid.
They arn't helping, but in fact, hurting their customers.
TheWell is relaying email for a person to an address. They detect spam comming through the relay, and then block it. They are blocking spam that their own customer has directed at his own mailbox!
Sure he didn't send it, but he told TheWell to forward his mail to the other address. Now they look at the content, which if they were smart, would even tell them that it didn't originate at TheWell, and are blocking the mail.
Brilliant!
Honestly, I dislike comcast internet alot. Even from a straight up simple customer (I rely on them for nothing more than packet passing, not email, nothing).
I call their support... I tell them "I released the DHCP lease and then renewed the lease and I got no DHCP reply at all"
"Ok try going into properties and hitting repair"
What!?! Did I WHAT! I just told him what I did... I did exactly what hitting "repair" would do... IF I was on a windows box.
-Steve
Right.... but its easy to prove the drive was wiped. Its hard to prove that you remember your passphrase, or didn't lose the little USB key fob that has the keys on it.
"Sorry man, I lost the key, it sucks, I am going to have to rebuild the box too"
Sure it looks bad, but... nowhere near as bad as being caught wiping the drive.
-Steve
yah, if someone makes a comment about verizon doing things for the NSA being bad, then the whole slashdot community must feel that way. So if someone else makes a comment about them doing it to get a laptop back and being good guys, thats a contradiction. Yay slashthink :)
Wow Delaware, theres a state I thought only existed to charge tolls to people driving through.
Anyway, yah I bet its an uphill battle. Usually is when it involves asking the town to step in, especially when something isn't flagrant and easy to see, like drunk students being a nuissance (and they often are)
I would get a brocure for the device from the company, and bring that to the police station. show them what the company claims, and then tell them this guy is using one of these in you rneighborhood. Its one thing if they can't hear it, that just means you have to step up the proof.
If the police don't want to help, then take it up the chain. Go down to town hall. Try to talk to an alderman or selectman... or whatever your locality has. You want to know why the police and town cowtow to old people? its because they know how to make a nuissance of themselves at city hall.
-Steve
Agreed.... while it is better to talk out ones problems... and better not to damage peoples property... this is obnoxious. There are really two ways to go here.
1) go down to the police station and try to talk to someone. When you walk in on your own and calmly try to explain your situation, you can usually find some pretty calm people who will gladly discuss your options, or tell you that you have none.
The key to dealing with police... never get aggrevated or show either fear or agression. They win ALL agressive encounters. The number they lose is so small, that its not worth considering that it happens.
2) disable the device... poke some holes in its speaker element.... clip the leads. Do it when hes sleeping. The problem with old people is you never know when they are up and looking out windows. They often don't get as much sleep as younger people and wake up for bathroom runs in the middle of the night and stay up (at least, the ones I know do)
Since he can't hear it... he will never know.
-Steve
Whether you intended or not... this has been a hot topic here before. I know... I tend to bring it up :)
::sniff:: I smell patchouli all of a sudden.
I think the system has some huge problems and those problems come down to people. No system, no matter how well devised, will work properly with corrupt people. Its a cultural thing. The ability to have non-profits and other socially beneficial corps already exists.... its the culture of greed that is the problem and the reason that there are so many more explicitly for profit ventures.
I think what Bill Gates (god I hate to say this in some ways) and Warren Buffet have done recently is laudable. Absolutly wonderful of them to give so much of their fortunes away to help the world. They have truely shown themselves to be men of high character in this way.
However, I have to question, could we not find a better way to get that money into such causes without needing it to concentrate in one or two people and hope that some number of these men with so much at their disposal decide to be altruistic?
I don't know that I really have an answer, but I would like to think that maybe if we encourage a culture of helping eachother and working together for the common good like one big oversized human tribe, then maybe the world will be a better place
-Steve
You really want to start that flamewar now here?
Mostly because I wont go as far as to say I believe in total equality of outcome... but I do believe in a sort of balance of outcome. I don't think anyone is so important to society that what they do in a year deserves that level of compensation to an individual.
Thats not to say nobody should be able to have extra large estates, and jet set around the world... but a society that is doling out those sorts of luxuries to a few while others are strugggling to make ends meet is pretty insane.
But what do you want, I am a self described socialist. Honestly I think our society should do away with the for profit corperation too, I think corperations should only be allowed to be formed to serve social purposes (which providing any sort of service already is) and be focused on that rather than "profits" as the bottom line.
Well there, I said it. Flame on!
-Steve
There is something thats often overlooked. Good leadership is important. You will normally hear me ranting about the pay disparities between the top and the bottom, and I am not backtracking here, I don't think anyone should be getting multi million dollar salaries... but all that aside...
Bad leadership is worst than none. Good leadership is important. Good leaders, team leads, managers are people who make you not just work, but actually WANT to work for them. People who you can be like when everything else hits the fan, its not just that you care about your job, but you actually respect them and want to work because you know they will get shit if you fail.
Pay is nice, but its community and social pressures that people really respond to. Its that "we are all in this together" attitude that binds a team together and makes them really get the job done. I think the most important aspect of a leader is the ability to catalyse that in his team.
The best defense against this sort of thing is teams that are close enough that no member would betray the team because, they would be betraying people who they respect.
This is one reason why I like working for nonprofits that are doing things that I like, where I can get behind the corperate mission and be proud to be a part of what we are doing. Hence, I work in healthcare.
-Steve
Right but there is a big difference between acknowledging the color of a persons skin and racism.
These people are models, being used as part of a piece of art (whether or not that art is being used as part of an ad campaign is besides the point). Yes the colors o ftheir skins are relevant, they are metaphors for the product thats being advertised.
Theres nothing here saying that blacks are inferior to whites, its showing a couple of individuals in a certain circumstance where yes, the white person is in the dominant position of power... to extrapolate this to all white and black relations is silly.
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" (I am told freud said that but I am quoting Data from TNG)
Racism is, afterall, about limiting the roles in society available to people based on their ethnic/racial background. So hows this for racism, due to all the so called "anti-racist sentiment", now a black persons available roles has increased dramatically... but god forbid that they want to appear submissive to a white person... that role is now unavailable to them... because of the color of their skin! Isn't THAT racism?
Once again, the road to hell is paved by good intentions. Lack of perspective has really confused some otherwise well meaning people.
-Steve
Oh I totally agree.
what gets me is this "I have a hammer, so that problem must be a nail" approach that our legislatros seem to love so well.
I recently read about a local law that may or may not have passed (I think it did) which meant to classify violence against homeless people as a hate crime.
It was designed to solve a real problem, it had the best of intentions, but boy is it the wrong solution. There was a case a couple of years back where a couple of guys beat a homeless man within an inch of his life. They were caught, and convicted, and served a couple of months in jail. A couple of months... for brutally beating a man and nearly killing him.
The prosecutors said the main problem is that they tend to rely on basically trumping up charges. If you go into a mans home and beat him, they can add on extra charges, burglary, breaking and entering, and a few more which I forget. With those extra charges, sentances get bumped up to something more prohibitive.
When a homeless person is beat, there is generally little they have to add more charges and bump up the sentance.
Whats the real issue here? Its not hate. Its that really, the standards for these things are too low. I mean, I don't think we should throw every drunk that gets into a drunken brawl in jail for the rest of his life, but there is a real difference between an aggrevated fight between two men and a couple of guys overpowering and beating a person within an inch o fhis life, and THAT is the distinction that the law should be making....
There is a big difference between a fight and a beating. Again... the best of intentions combined with a little lack of forsight are getting us into a real hairball.
-Steve
You know, I can't really disagree with you. There is an old addage "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". I totally understand these "social programs" and what they are trying to accomplish, its even... to some extent... noble. Asinine in effect, backwards, silly... but noble in spirit.
I think the problem here is not that they got the scholarship and you didn't, but that second part alone. Education is good for the individual and good for the society. There are few better investments for a people than educating our youth. We should be making sure that absolutly everyone with the will to become educated gets educated, because the returns on that investement will be far greater than we can even begin to measure.
However I digress... its very true what you say... and it all started with the best of intentions. I think the real problem is that we are trying to put a racism band aide on much larger social problems. Social mobility is hard... so yes, blacks starting off as second class citizens and slaves, has had a detrimental effect to them overall lasting until today.
The problem is that those who start poor tend to have less opportunity and stay poor. So it makes sense that there are lots of poor miniorities, I don't think the issue really is racism anymore, that may have been an original cause of their social status, but its not really whats keeping them down today.
I would say poor uneducated white people are in just as bad a boat as poor uneducated black people today.
-Steve
This ties in with a discussion I had with a friend recently (you know a discussion is going to be interesting when it starts with the question "do you have any interest in BDSM?"). Anyway....
I think the racisim here is in the minds of the watchers. Would this be racist if it was a black woman and a white man? Would it then be sexist if it was a white man grabbing a white woman? In a full on dom/sub relationship it makes sense for the sub to do the dishes and house work and other such things, so if the sub is a woman, that fits with the "standard sexist gender roles" right? What about a master slave relationship? Is it somehow bad for a black woman to want to be the slave to a white master?
Whats worst, a black person being a willing slave to a white person, or trying to tell that same black person what they can and can't do in the confines of their life and sexuality?
This is all silly. The knee-jerk racism reaction is ridiculous. Isn't the whole goal of tolerance and antiracism to teach us to see people as people rather than black people and white people? Black people have as much right to be submissive as a white person if thats what they want!
-Steve
just today I heard a peice on NPR, talk about random. They had asked people to tape record sounds from their environment, and a guy who lives near power lines noticed the sound of them arcing. Then some workers would come by, spray down the insulators, and it would stop for a few months... then the cycle would begin again.
The NPR show which featured this guy contacted the power company, and receievd the explaination that this was common and due to dirt buildup on the insulators.
In the future I would like to do something like that, however, hoenstly....
Its a matter of who you choose to do it with. I had the right friend, not a hugly close or good friend, but the right kind of friend, one with good buisness sense and an honest person. We both lived on the premisis and rented out rooms, split everything down the middle.
I wouldn't do that with just anyone. Some of my best and closest friends arn't the people I would enter into a serious buisness arrangement with. Was there risk? Hell ya, but it worked for us and 3 years later, I own the place on my own. Frankly, in this area, its the only really viable way to swing it. In the end though, its a buisness, and you have to treat it as such, and be partnered with someone who does also.
Realise that as we did it, we could leverage firsttime homebuyer programs and other goodies. I would think that a corperation (admittedly I havn't looked into this) would be more problematic, because the bank will consider it higher risk (like an income property, ie a place you don't intend to live) so a higher downpayment (typically 1/4 of the total value) rather than 20% that a normal private party sale can get away with.
-Steve
Hear hear! Thank you! Mr Hammer, Meet Mr Nail Head...
As a homeowner who makes more than $50k/year at his "day job", I pay about 15%... in fact, my total income is over 80k when you count everything, but I still have an effective tax rate of 15%!... less than friends of mine who make less than half of what I do.
Why?
Simple... I get around 60k from work, and about 20k from renting rooms in my condo (5 bedroom condo, actually 2 fam house conversion)... this gives me huge tax breaks. I can't claim to understand it all myself (I pay a tax preparer), but basically I make a big profit, but get to take a huge loss on paper because of a partial rental depreciation. (there are downsides to this if I decide to sell... but lets not go there...)
Long story short, I was out of work last year for 7 months, I got paid over $500/week in unemployment, and basically took 12k in income throughj unemployment, that had NO taxes taken out. Thats 12k of untaxed income, on top of 10k in rental income (I had a partner last year who owned half the condo and took half the rent so half the rental income).... what did I pay to the federal government once this 22k of yet untaxed income came into play?
About 1 grand.
Why? because I get huge deductions for owning property that is. Its a huge incentive. If you make that much, you seriously should conside rbuying. And forget this marriage and kids bullshit. I have fammily in the country, there are plenty of breeders out there (yes I call them breeders, no I am not gay... just not intending to have children in the next few years, if ever)....
Live with a few friends, and rent out rooms to pay the mortgage in the city... I went from having a good job where I basically blew my money and broke even every year to having a positive net worth of about double my anual salary (thank you gnucash for the figures), in about 3 years.... go figure.
In any case, the system is setup to encourage you to buy property... so do it! Take a hint!
-Steve
Yah actually I noticed this issue too.
:)
A couple of years ago my roomates and I were renting from one of the roomates father. He decided to sell and we decided to make a venture into real estate and bought the place together. So for two years he was my partner? Um domestic partner? well um I guess so
We did live together, and own property together, by our employers definitions we were like a mutual checkbook away from being able to get on the same medical insurance package with domestic partner benefits.
-Steve
Shit... use the default pdf viewer in ubuntu evince 0.5.2
Just select the text and bang,.... there it is for reading.
-Steve
That swhat I liked a bout samurai (not fixing typoos, im drunk)
The time moved, not really linearly, but as you moved from area to area. So you came into a fairly small area, and sure you COULD indefinitly sit there and just fight people as they came by, but many places didn't have lots of random passerbys most of the time, and they generally weren't worth your time.
So each area has plenty of action usually, but theres no real reason to just hang out in one place.
bu tat its heart, it was a sword fighting game. In fact, it could even be played in a duel mode against another player.
Whats more, there was only one save game, and when you loaded it, it erased the loaded one... so unless you wanted to play tricks like making copies, you could only play through once, then you had to start over. You die, you start over, you win, you start over.
-Steve