I guess that I was being kind of unfair to George W. Bush - national guard duty may be mostly part time, but it is still military service. He and Clinton both had family connections that would have made sure that they never served in Vietnam. On second thought, Bush's method of dropping out of the draft pool (enlisting in the national guard) was much more gallant than Clinton's (hiding at Oxford University in England).
I'll re-phrase my statement to say that only one top military commander in the US in the last 22 years and counting has had any military experience.
Just a thought that I had. I totally agree with your sentiment about the competence of the people involved. I have just noticed over the years that experience doesn't seem to mean as much as it used to (in industry, as well). It's the old, "it's not what you know, it's who you know" thing being practiced literally.
Look, you wouldn't a guy without experience running warships in charge of the Navy would you? Would you put someone with no experience flying airplanes in charge of the air force?
The current commander-in-chief of the US military was a community organizer.
The previous one joined the Texas air national guard to avoid being drafted.
The one before that went to college in England to be deferred from the draft.
The one before that actually enlisted in the navy following the attack on Pearl Harbor to fight for his country. He served as an aviator for the duration of the war.
The one before that served in the army, as an officer, before and through WWII.
From this point, all of them back to Truman had a military background. FDR served as secretary of the navy in WWI.
For 22 years and counting, the top military commander in the US has had no real military experience (not even peacetime duty)...
And if you add 'https://' to the front of the url, the certificate is invalid. It looks like it's the default certificate for their hosting service, but who knows? It would be the one to fake - how many government sites are hosted on the same service?
www.nhtsa.gov uses an invalid security certificate.
The certificate is only valid for the following names: *.akamaihd.net , *.akamaihd-staging.net , a248.e.akamai.net , *.akamaized.net , *.akamaized-staging.net
48. I guess I used an out-dated term! Of course, I have direct deposit, and we can access our pay stubs through our portal to ADP. They are PDF files that look exactly like they did when we received paper ones each week, years ago. They keep 3 years' worth of them (and W-2's) online for the employees to access directly. Older ones have to be requested via a rep. We get W-2's mailed to us, but that's it. Everything else is available online. We also schedule PTO and vacation days online through the portal.
The point of my original post was that we have the convenience of not needing to enter our W-2 information (or even have the document in hand), at the expense of a security hole that can be exploited if someone has the right information, which is just run-of-the-mill personal identification information that we all give to many institutions, some of which have been or will be breached.
I've been using H&R Block's TaxCut software for years, and in the last couple of years or so, I noticed a new option to retrieve your W-2 information for you. Since most companies use a payroll service, the software can actually find and retrieve your W-2 information and fill it in for you. I didn't even have to know who my employer's payroll service is, which is stupid for them not to require - it's on every check stub. I don't remember if it did any authentication offhand (it was a year ago!). If, through ID theft, someone has your name, SSN, etc., they could easily fill this information in on a bogus return they are filing. Then, as mentioned in another post, no attempt is made to verify that the bank account the refund is being deposited in actually belongs to the taxpayer. On second thought, I guess the ID thief could just open an account in your name to receive the refund in.
Given law enforcement's inability and unwillingness to investigate any online crime, combined with the complete lack of government regulation or even recognition as a legal tender, what is stopping the exchange operators from simply stealing the bitcoins and then saying they were hacked?
"Sorry, we got hacked and all your coins are gone. It was probably criminals in Russia / North Korea / Elbonia. Look! They covered their tracks so well, they made it look like the attack came from the Starbucks across town. We lost all our money, too, so we're shutting down and filing bankruptcy. Better luck next time."
Is there any way to track the stolen coins and void them? I wouldn't think people would steal them if they couldn't spend / cash them...
My thought, exactly. However, it will be difficult to do when we have a voter turnout of 36.3%.
When the polling places are empty, and the line is several blocks long at the 'Pawn Stars' store, we are seriously fucked. This picture was taken on election day, 2012, a presidential election. It was posted by Ross Miller, the Nevada candidate for attorney general.
Not all of us are 'proud to be American' this last decade or so.
For the record, I've never personally profited from any of our government's shenanigans, nor have I ever worked a defense-related or government-generated job. Like most people that I know, I have gained nothing from the government's imperialistic activities except more disdain for them.
I have actually communicated directly with my congressman and both of my senators in person and via email numerous times about the subject of making so many surplus weapons and selling them to those countries (or anyone, for that matter). I included the remote self-destruct idea in the event of them being used on a tyrant's own people, or against us or any of our allies. It was like talking to a rock (three of them, actually). Apparently, a big sack of money always wins...
My lifestyle is actually based on designing and manufacturing medical research and surgical/pharmaceutical products which actually benefit people worldwide. The products I design and make are used in genetic research, blood collection and component separation, heart pumps, stent systems, many laproscopic surgery products, and hundreds of various drugs. While the corporations that I work with are in some ways corporate douchebags, much like the 'defense' contractors, they at least contribute to the well-being of the people of the world in the end. How many lives did your work save today?:-)
The last time I was in Salt Lake City, there were microbreweries in the airport. One had a beer called 'Polygamy Pilsner', made by Mormons for, well, everyone else. I had three of them.
I'm exhuming a Slashdot meme from long ago, but if you have a spare VM, fire it up and string them along to the Team Viewer/WebEx part of the call, and give 'em a full screen goatse!;-)
For those who are fairly new around here, it was an old meme - a picture of... well, never mind. You don't want to know. I'll just say you cant unsee it.
The self-destruct feature should have been included in every plane, tank, APC, rocket launcher, mortar, rifle, and any other weapons we have been selling to unstable, neurotic dictators in the middle east for decades. Set up to be remotely activated by the U.S., of course. Instead, we have our troops facing down our own weapons.
The beauty of using the integrated metadata is that you can organize the photos by creating search folders, or just doing searches. A search folder searching for 'Vacation' will always have all of your vacation files in it, and will automatically include new photos with 'vacation' in the tags. You can then narrow down by year, location, or whatever else you've included in your files.
If you are tagging jpeg files, just use Windows explorer.
Right-click on the file, and select 'Details'. The EXIF tags are shown and can be edited here. Title, subject, rating, tags, comments, etc.
You can ctrl-select multiple files and edit the data that will be the same on all of them at once. For example, select all 50 photos from your vacation, and give them the subject 'Vacation 2014'. These tags are part of each file, and are indexed and searchable on Windows and OSX. I haven't tried it on Linux or FreeBSD yet, but I would imagine one of the various desktops' search functions will search (and index?) the tags.
That's one reason I don't understand why this was even voted on. Illinois was the state involved in the case that prompted the US supreme court ruling.
Maybe they're laying the groundwork for something they can use to fight against the push for police body-cams.
This is the state that should have a 'governor's wing' on its prisons.
Here in the police state of Illinois, our legislature has passed a bill, which was larded onto another, completely unrelated bill, which makes recording cops and government officials a class 3 felony, with up to 2-4 years in prison. The bill was added as an amendment to the unrelated bill, which passed with over 90% support in both chambers, essentially making it veto-proof.
It uses the word 'eavesdropping' a lot, so it may be argued that it applies only to audio; however, a chance at having a sentence like this would certainly scare off most people who would try to film the cops.
It will be interesting to see how this develops - a similar bill was struck down by the state supreme court in March, and the US supreme court has ruled that police have no expectation of privacy when they're in public, and on duty.
The TV-style bullshit that just leaps for your eyes and blares at you is insufferable; but at least it only watches you at the level of granularity provided by the Neilson lab rats.
Not so much, anymore. With the addressable digital boxes that the TV providers use, there is just as much profiling done when you watch TV, too. Your TV provider knows what you watch, how you watch it, and when you watch it. I think it can, however, be gamed to work to our advantage:
If enough people time-shift live TV by 15-20 minutes per hour (the typical amount of advertising) and skip past all the ads, at least on networks where it isn't disabled, that sends a message that we don't want ads. Or, they'll disable skipping ads on all channels. If enough of us rent on-demand movies like Gia and skip to all of the lesbian scenes, that sends a message that we want more lesbian scenes.:-)
It's difficult to do with telemarketers, but try being nice to the person who calls you the third or fourth time. Tell them that you have repeatedly said you are not interested, and ask to be added to their internal Do Not Call list. AT&T has one as well. A couple of days later, you will get a robocall to confirm your addition to the DNC list. That is the last call you will get, at least for a while. I haven't gotten a call from either of them in months, but I'm guessing that it times out after a year or so.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a space station...
I guess that I was being kind of unfair to George W. Bush - national guard duty may be mostly part time, but it is still military service. He and Clinton both had family connections that would have made sure that they never served in Vietnam. On second thought, Bush's method of dropping out of the draft pool (enlisting in the national guard) was much more gallant than Clinton's (hiding at Oxford University in England).
I'll re-phrase my statement to say that only one top military commander in the US in the last 22 years and counting has had any military experience.
No straw man intended...
Just a thought that I had. I totally agree with your sentiment about the competence of the people involved. I have just noticed over the years that experience doesn't seem to mean as much as it used to (in industry, as well). It's the old, "it's not what you know, it's who you know" thing being practiced literally.
Look, you wouldn't a guy without experience running warships in charge of the Navy would you? Would you put someone with no experience flying airplanes in charge of the air force?
The current commander-in-chief of the US military was a community organizer.
The previous one joined the Texas air national guard to avoid being drafted.
The one before that went to college in England to be deferred from the draft.
The one before that actually enlisted in the navy following the attack on Pearl Harbor to fight for his country. He served as an aviator for the duration of the war.
The one before that served in the army, as an officer, before and through WWII.
From this point, all of them back to Truman had a military background. FDR served as secretary of the navy in WWI.
For 22 years and counting, the top military commander in the US has had no real military experience (not even peacetime duty)...
And here I am without any mod points!
Funniest thing I've seen today! Thanks for the laugh.
www.nhtsa.gov uses an invalid security certificate.
The certificate is only valid for the following names: *.akamaihd.net , *.akamaihd-staging.net , a248.e.akamai.net , *.akamaized.net , *.akamaized-staging.net
(Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain)
Actually, it will fail the second after 03:14:07 on January 19, 2038 UTC. It's a Tuesday.
...You have 20 seconds to comply.
48. I guess I used an out-dated term! Of course, I have direct deposit, and we can access our pay stubs through our portal to ADP. They are PDF files that look exactly like they did when we received paper ones each week, years ago. They keep 3 years' worth of them (and W-2's) online for the employees to access directly. Older ones have to be requested via a rep. We get W-2's mailed to us, but that's it. Everything else is available online. We also schedule PTO and vacation days online through the portal.
The point of my original post was that we have the convenience of not needing to enter our W-2 information (or even have the document in hand), at the expense of a security hole that can be exploited if someone has the right information, which is just run-of-the-mill personal identification information that we all give to many institutions, some of which have been or will be breached.
I've been using H&R Block's TaxCut software for years, and in the last couple of years or so, I noticed a new option to retrieve your W-2 information for you. Since most companies use a payroll service, the software can actually find and retrieve your W-2 information and fill it in for you. I didn't even have to know who my employer's payroll service is, which is stupid for them not to require - it's on every check stub. I don't remember if it did any authentication offhand (it was a year ago!). If, through ID theft, someone has your name, SSN, etc., they could easily fill this information in on a bogus return they are filing. Then, as mentioned in another post, no attempt is made to verify that the bank account the refund is being deposited in actually belongs to the taxpayer. On second thought, I guess the ID thief could just open an account in your name to receive the refund in.
Just another Sunday with an evening football game. I'll catch it here and there. Can't sit in front of the tv for 3-4 hours; I'll lose interest.
Given law enforcement's inability and unwillingness to investigate any online crime, combined with the complete lack of government regulation or even recognition as a legal tender, what is stopping the exchange operators from simply stealing the bitcoins and then saying they were hacked?
"Sorry, we got hacked and all your coins are gone. It was probably criminals in Russia / North Korea / Elbonia. Look! They covered their tracks so well, they made it look like the attack came from the Starbucks across town. We lost all our money, too, so we're shutting down and filing bankruptcy. Better luck next time."
Is there any way to track the stolen coins and void them? I wouldn't think people would steal them if they couldn't spend / cash them...
My thought, exactly. However, it will be difficult to do when we have a voter turnout of 36.3%.
When the polling places are empty, and the line is several blocks long at the 'Pawn Stars' store, we are seriously fucked. This picture was taken on election day, 2012, a presidential election. It was posted by Ross Miller, the Nevada candidate for attorney general.
I guess this identification chart is now obsolete:
http://xmb.stuffucanuse.com/xm...
Not all of us are 'proud to be American' this last decade or so.
:-)
For the record, I've never personally profited from any of our government's shenanigans, nor have I ever worked a defense-related or government-generated job. Like most people that I know, I have gained nothing from the government's imperialistic activities except more disdain for them.
I have actually communicated directly with my congressman and both of my senators in person and via email numerous times about the subject of making so many surplus weapons and selling them to those countries (or anyone, for that matter). I included the remote self-destruct idea in the event of them being used on a tyrant's own people, or against us or any of our allies. It was like talking to a rock (three of them, actually). Apparently, a big sack of money always wins...
My lifestyle is actually based on designing and manufacturing medical research and surgical/pharmaceutical products which actually benefit people worldwide. The products I design and make are used in genetic research, blood collection and component separation, heart pumps, stent systems, many laproscopic surgery products, and hundreds of various drugs. While the corporations that I work with are in some ways corporate douchebags, much like the 'defense' contractors, they at least contribute to the well-being of the people of the world in the end. How many lives did your work save today?
The last time I was in Salt Lake City, there were microbreweries in the airport. One had a beer called 'Polygamy Pilsner', made by Mormons for, well, everyone else. I had three of them.
I'm exhuming a Slashdot meme from long ago, but if you have a spare VM, fire it up and string them along to the Team Viewer/WebEx part of the call, and give 'em a full screen goatse! ;-)
... well, never mind. You don't want to know. I'll just say you cant unsee it.
For those who are fairly new around here, it was an old meme - a picture of
The self-destruct feature should have been included in every plane, tank, APC, rocket launcher, mortar, rifle, and any other weapons we have been selling to unstable, neurotic dictators in the middle east for decades. Set up to be remotely activated by the U.S., of course. Instead, we have our troops facing down our own weapons.
The beauty of using the integrated metadata is that you can organize the photos by creating search folders, or just doing searches. A search folder searching for 'Vacation' will always have all of your vacation files in it, and will automatically include new photos with 'vacation' in the tags. You can then narrow down by year, location, or whatever else you've included in your files.
Sorry - right-click -> Properties -> 'Details' tab :-)
If you are tagging jpeg files, just use Windows explorer.
Right-click on the file, and select 'Details'. The EXIF tags are shown and can be edited here. Title, subject, rating, tags, comments, etc.
You can ctrl-select multiple files and edit the data that will be the same on all of them at once. For example, select all 50 photos from your vacation, and give them the subject 'Vacation 2014'. These tags are part of each file, and are indexed and searchable on Windows and OSX. I haven't tried it on Linux or FreeBSD yet, but I would imagine one of the various desktops' search functions will search (and index?) the tags.
That's one reason I don't understand why this was even voted on. Illinois was the state involved in the case that prompted the US supreme court ruling.
Maybe they're laying the groundwork for something they can use to fight against the push for police body-cams.
This is the state that should have a 'governor's wing' on its prisons.
Here in the police state of Illinois, our legislature has passed a bill, which was larded onto another, completely unrelated bill, which makes recording cops and government officials a class 3 felony, with up to 2-4 years in prison. The bill was added as an amendment to the unrelated bill, which passed with over 90% support in both chambers, essentially making it veto-proof.
It uses the word 'eavesdropping' a lot, so it may be argued that it applies only to audio; however, a chance at having a sentence like this would certainly scare off most people who would try to film the cops.
It will be interesting to see how this develops - a similar bill was struck down by the state supreme court in March, and the US supreme court has ruled that police have no expectation of privacy when they're in public, and on duty.
The TV-style bullshit that just leaps for your eyes and blares at you is insufferable; but at least it only watches you at the level of granularity provided by the Neilson lab rats.
Not so much, anymore. With the addressable digital boxes that the TV providers use, there is just as much profiling done when you watch TV, too. Your TV provider knows what you watch, how you watch it, and when you watch it. I think it can, however, be gamed to work to our advantage:
:-)
If enough people time-shift live TV by 15-20 minutes per hour (the typical amount of advertising) and skip past all the ads, at least on networks where it isn't disabled, that sends a message that we don't want ads. Or, they'll disable skipping ads on all channels. If enough of us rent on-demand movies like Gia and skip to all of the lesbian scenes, that sends a message that we want more lesbian scenes.
It's difficult to do with telemarketers, but try being nice to the person who calls you the third or fourth time. Tell them that you have repeatedly said you are not interested, and ask to be added to their internal Do Not Call list. AT&T has one as well. A couple of days later, you will get a robocall to confirm your addition to the DNC list. That is the last call you will get, at least for a while. I haven't gotten a call from either of them in months, but I'm guessing that it times out after a year or so.