Age, race country of national origin or social class.
Read the statute. Discrimination based on ANYTHING but the qualifications that pertain specifically to the job or issues regarding the safety of the other workers, or the individual him or herself amounts to illegal discrimination.
Also, take a peek regarding the provacy laws regarding one's financial records. Those are VERY specific as well. The ONLY organizations that have a clearly and legally defined RIGHT to someone's financial history, which includes a credit record are lenders, litigants and institutions where the applicant would be handling large amounts of money and/or where issues of national security come into play. Otherwise, the employer has NO right to this information, though they may ASK for it on a voluntary basis.
Take the example of someone who has been through a really serious divorce and then "downsized" as a typical example: Said person is saddled with half of the marital debt, yet has NO income. Unemployment runs out and payments go into arrears and his or her credit score suffers as a result - possibly a bankruptcy happens as well - or at least a judgement or two fall in, which are later settled - that credit score is still down the tubes for at least SEVEN years. That person will not get a job, based on "bad credit organization" under this model. The model is flawed.
But it is a VERY common situation.
Or worse, a company, with an H.R director who is some sort of "morality nut" looks at your credit record and sees that you have a charge account with Fredericks of Hollywood and with an adult video service... do I need to connect the dots?... You won't get that job, regardless of HOW pristine your credit rating might be, nor HOW qualified you might be for that position!
An employer has NO right to look at a potential hire's credit record. They are NOT a lending institution, they are NOT a taxing authority and they are not allowed to do such a check without the new potential hire signing off on such a check.
If you are a potential new hire, anywhere, REFUSE, and state your reasons FOR refusing - which is that the company has NO LEGAL RIGHT to look at your credit history, whatsoever and, if they refuse to hire you BECAUSE of your refusal to do so, I would suggest that a talk to the EEOC would be the next logical step, because this kind of thing amounts to economic discrimination. And that's illegal.
Too many people are WAY too free to hand out their personal financial information. Keep it between your lendors and the tax people - the ONLY ones who, by law, are SUPPOSED to have access to that information!
Lee Darrow, C.H.
Chicago, IL
That is the question. And, considering the declining number of people voting every election, the rising number of complaints about the elctronic systems being used to tally the votes, the complaints about the butterfly ballots, the delays in counting the votes, the political maniuplations OF the votes when a dispute happens, the public seems to be getting ready to say, "To hell with the whole system!"
And that's bad.
Very few people trust the election system as it now stands on a national basis. There is NO national standard, NO overwatch that is politically independent and NO way to VERIFY the states that are using the electronic-only voting methods.
The gaps are obvious: we need a national standard for the voting process; one that allows verification of EVERY vote on a papertrail basis; we need an independent overwatch OF the voting process; and we need an electronic voting system that is far more secure than the one that is currently being used.
And the probability of that happening amounts to one Big FAT CHANCE.
The excuses? It costs too much, it will take too much time to put into place, it violates State's Rights, there is no way to keep the politics out of the system and no system is completely secure.
How much are we willing to spend to defend our shores from attack? Is.01% of that too much to ask to put into place a secure election system? How about siphoning off some of that pay hike the Congress just voted itself for this instead?
With regards to State's Rights, this is for a national election. Sorry kiddies, doesn't apply as far as standards of the systems themselves go. You still have control of WHO votes and that's where the REAL power resides, so STFU. Keeping the politics out of the system? Well, there's no easy fix for that, but making the election review board similar to the Supremes, but with a requirement of 4 and 4 from each party and only 1 being appointed by the LAST sitting Prez might work... subject to Congressional approval and all that, of course. And secure? Well, nothing is ever totally secure, but we should be able to do better than a four-minute, no-break-the-seal-non-techie-hack!
While I am fully aware of the concept of suspension of disbelief, being married to a professional actress and being a FULL TIME PERFORMER myself, I also understand the THRESHOLD OF DISBELIEF, a concept that you obviously missed.
This film, in every respect, misses the flight path on that one. Fix one to the problem: drop cabin temperature to below 55F. Fix 2, is unable to get to the temperature controls, or they are inoperative, POP A HATCH! Yes, the cabin will depressurize, but the snakes will also have more immediate concerns that dealing with "threats" (humans) that they would NOT attack under any rational circumstances, anyway! They would be having trouble with an immediate temperature drop into deadly ranges AND would be having severe respiratory failure problems, while the PEOPLE would be using the emergency breathing systems.
Even given the premise that the snakes would attack as in the film, which they would NOT, EITHER of these two fixes would solve the problem in very short order.
Frankly, the movie producers would have done better with centipedes. The viausla would have been better, the cg easier and more convincing. Frankly several of the clips didn't scare the 8 year-old from down the block who looked at the trailer and said, "Lousy special effects. Not worth it." And they would scare a wider portion of the average audience.
But western audiences are mostly unaware that there are several species of asian centipede that are deadly to humans.
Sorry to disagree, but the boxoffice numbers speak for themselves - this "blockbuster" petered out after the first week in the theaters, getting beaten by a football movie. That alone speaks volumes.
And it allows the diet police to KEEP you from GETTING that Pepsi that you so desperately want, too!
This thing has the capability of monitoring WHO is using it, WHAT they are buying, and, with very little hassle on the server end, running a database of "healthy/NOT healthy" purchases and locking a user out who has too many "Not Healthy" buys on his or her record. Given the move towards lack of choice in school lunches - how long will it be before companies and even grogery stores start using this technology to remove even MORE freedom of choice from the American consumer?
Every bright side has a dark one and I have the feeling that I just nailed down where the dark side of THIS force happens to be.
Therefore, I christen this vending machine: "DARTH VENDER!"
Yep! Anyone who has ever had a pad of flash paper in their bag will get hauled out and strip searched.
Been there. Had it happen to ME.
After MacWorld a couple of years ago, in New York, the crack TSA troops manning the perimeter didn't understand the cards and nerf balls in my carry on were part of a MAGIC ACT and I wound up splattered up against a wall with a National Guardsman's M-16 shoved up my left nostril, with the Safety OFF!
I am SO not looking forward to this!
Lee Darrow, C.H. Magician and Hypnotist Chicago, IL
Tell that to my late father-in-law, who died from EXACTLY this problem.
I'm sure that several members of his biological family would be happy to provide directions...
All snarkiness aside, this happens far more often than the general public would like to believe. ONCE is too often and, with some tools, like sponges, X-ray scans are unrevealing. In surgery, certain items are thrown away during the procedures and that's where problems can arise, especially during long and involved processes. This is why the "layout and count" solution proposed earlier by someone else won't work - some stuff gets thrown out and simply cannot BE counted!
When a surgeon has been on his or her feet for fifteen or twenty hours straight, doing highly technical work, demanding pinpoint precision, under life-or-death circumstances, it is relatively easy, at the end of the job, for the adrenaline to drop off and fatigue errors to happen, even in the best of circumstances and with the best in the business, which is exactly what happened in my father-in-law's case.
For the home users, this sounds suspiciously like the Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld - "You, no privacy for YOU!"
User: "But I need to protect my personal information from my kids on my home system so they won't use my credit cards to buy every PS3 game in the known universe."
Privacy Nazi: "You didn't say 'Please!' No privacy for YOU! Go to Blue Screen!"
Some of the guys who do stand up routines for IT companies are probably going to have some fun with this one, too.
"So personel can't protect your personal stuff in a personal personel file, right?"
Response: "No privacy for YOU! You are being too personal, personel!"
Who's on 01? What's on 10, and I don't know's on 101...?
Okay, you have the new RFID Passport. You go on vacation, on business, or whatever, to someplace slightly dangerous, like Egypt. During the trip, for some reason, the RFID chip fails. You fly home and, when the Passport agent scans your Passport, it comes up as a fake.
You are now in for several HOURS of being grilled as a possible terrorist trying to enter the United States illegally, may be subject to a full body cavity search and may not even be allowed re-entry BACK into the country! The statute is clear - if you attempt to enter the United States with a forged passport document, you will be turned away and returned to your port of departure or may be subject to arrest and prosecution.
Isn't that a wonderful thought?
My question for the Passport people is: What safeguards have they put in place to protect us from this kind of thing happening?
Make sure you read the User's Agreement carefully! After their attempt in Oklahoma to gain access to all of the files on any Windows user's computer in an effort to "stop piracy," and their support for the RIAA, I would be willing to bet that there will be something like that in the User's Agreement for this puppy as well.
Also, one HAS to ask - WHICH Christmas are they talking about? 2006, 2007, 2019? Given their sterling ability to keep to announced product release dates, I am certainly not going to hold my breath waiting for this "iPod killer."
And has anybody checked to see if Ballmer is walking on a peg leg and hanging with a guy named Ishmail? And are they going to call it the "Peaquod?"
Inquiring minds and all that...
Lee Darrow "Avast, ye scurvy corporate dogs! Prepare to be boarded!" - Oliver Wendell Jones, Bloom County
"Most thefts are done by low-brow thieves." Of a US givernment laptop. From a US government employee. Somehow, the whole idea of "inside job" seems to be echoing through the halls somewhere and no one in slashdotland is seemingly listening.
Ghosted CD bootup, copied in read-only mode on another system - piece of cake to most hackers and almost any high school kid who knows anything about system ops - and that's a LOT of them.
But as far as the original perp goes, to be honest, I would doubt that the perp is a low-brow thief. More likely, the thief, if there WAS a thief, was someone on the inside at the VA, who knew EXACTLY what he, or she, was doing and what he, or she, was taking, and for exactly what purposes.
With that many identities on the drive, the cash value of the data alone is astronomical. And for someone on the GSA payscale, that's a LOT of incentive to pull an inside job. Look for people who quit the VA in the next year or so and seem to hit it big at a casino or playing the ponies. Watch their accounts and their spending habits. Outgo will NOT equal income for someone - or several someones. And THAT will be your pool of "most likely to have copped the laptop" people.
But, by then, the damage will have been done to a large number of the people whose information was stolen anyway.
Once again, the government proves that its security measures are far behind those of the real world's.
Coinsider people who actually work in the field, as opposed to the cublcle-bound workers. With a battery life of only two hours, this thing is essentially useless for these folks. Another issue seems to be the problem of having to power up Windows simply to run the mp3 player, which, in this day and age, is pretty silly, not to mention wasteful.
So, until this critter actually has a useful battery life, people who actually work in the field, away from the office, like sales professionals, engineering types, inspectors, law enforcement professionals, utility workers, field service agents, and the like will have little use for Origami.
Even people who attend trade shows would have a hard time using this thing as they would have to find outlets on a pretty regular basis, instead of being able to wander the show and actually make USE of it for taking notes, like it's supposed to be used.
Origami seems to be a bit flat yet for any practical field use.
Lee Darrow, Chicago, IL
"Hardly seems worthwhile" and "fulfilling the letter of the contract" are mutually exclusive in this instance, it seems. There is a major flaw, if not several. There are users out there who are having problems, otherwise, Microsoft would not have said anything about this issue and just let it lay and let the service date expire, unnoticed.
But they are making an announcement that they are seemingly terminating support early, in violation of their own contract and, frankly, the users should take legal action.
It's what Microsoft would do, were the situations reversed.
Lee Darrow, C.H.
Chicago, IL
No ID in the seat - guy flies in a box as LUGGAGE!
on
Flying Faster Without ID
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Not long ago a guy was arrested in Los Angeles after he SHIPPED himself, air freight, on a passenger airliner, from the east coast to Los Angeles! TSA did NOT screen the packing crate he was IN!!
He was arrested when he jumped out of the box at his mother's house after the delivery guy dropped him off - and the delivery guy SPOTTED him getting OUT of the box!
So 90-plus percent of mp3 player owners use iPods. Of the other brands, several aren't iTunes compatible (thus bucking what has become a de facto industry standard - regardless of how you look at it - the numbers speak for themselves).
Now SanDisk comes along and talks about sheep and the like, but doesn't mention anything about whether or not one can download from the biggest music site online in their ads.
And, so far, on the top levels of this discussion, no one else has, either and I frankly don't have the time to drill down through unteen layers of posts to find out, nor do I particularly want to go to a web site that insults people.
So, SanDisk, the big question is - how DO you want to be perceived in the market - as a company who insults the very market you are trying to woo away from the majority market-share holder, or a company who will actually inform a potential customer about what your vaunted product will - and won't - do?
As a potential customer, I want to know and I don't give a damn about sheep, corporate culture or whether my player is cool or not. I just want to know that I can get and play my tunes from the widest available sources on the market.
If I can't to that, then I have no use for your product.
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." -
Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled --- This says it all, to be blunt. Spammers and phishers are programmers, however, who RELY on the idiots out there clicking on anything that SEEMS interesting enough for them to bite on. Bait the hook and wait for the fish to bite - and let's face it, most users don't WANT to be educated, they want the software to do everything FOR them --- DUH!
Lee Darrow, C.H.
Redmond keeps hitting us for more money. Why? Well, since the OS market is pretty well sewn up (they have about an 80% overall market share, so that qualifies as "sewn up in just about anybody's book), they have to figure out new and innovative ways to keep the cash coming in.
This is obviously it.
And, unfortunately, people will probably actually believe that the program works.
Barnum's Maxim, in its full form reads: "There's a sucker born every minute... and TWO to TAKE him!"
It seems that there's a high concentration of TWO's in Redmond.
No wonder they're called "the terrible Two's...!"
If their paid security program works as well as their initiative with a certain British University to "teach programmers how to write secure code" that was announced a couple of years ago, then anyone subscribing to this turkey will be in for a LOAD of VERY hard times on the security front!
Lee Darrow, C.H.
"Insecurity is better than NO security!" - R. Price, 1967
Slashdot Mirror
Age, race country of national origin or social class. Read the statute. Discrimination based on ANYTHING but the qualifications that pertain specifically to the job or issues regarding the safety of the other workers, or the individual him or herself amounts to illegal discrimination. Also, take a peek regarding the provacy laws regarding one's financial records. Those are VERY specific as well. The ONLY organizations that have a clearly and legally defined RIGHT to someone's financial history, which includes a credit record are lenders, litigants and institutions where the applicant would be handling large amounts of money and/or where issues of national security come into play. Otherwise, the employer has NO right to this information, though they may ASK for it on a voluntary basis.
Take the example of someone who has been through a really serious divorce and then "downsized" as a typical example: Said person is saddled with half of the marital debt, yet has NO income. Unemployment runs out and payments go into arrears and his or her credit score suffers as a result - possibly a bankruptcy happens as well - or at least a judgement or two fall in, which are later settled - that credit score is still down the tubes for at least SEVEN years. That person will not get a job, based on "bad credit organization" under this model. The model is flawed. But it is a VERY common situation. Or worse, a company, with an H.R director who is some sort of "morality nut" looks at your credit record and sees that you have a charge account with Fredericks of Hollywood and with an adult video service... do I need to connect the dots? ... You won't get that job, regardless of HOW pristine your credit rating might be, nor HOW qualified you might be for that position!
An employer has NO right to look at a potential hire's credit record. They are NOT a lending institution, they are NOT a taxing authority and they are not allowed to do such a check without the new potential hire signing off on such a check.
If you are a potential new hire, anywhere, REFUSE, and state your reasons FOR refusing - which is that the company has NO LEGAL RIGHT to look at your credit history, whatsoever and, if they refuse to hire you BECAUSE of your refusal to do so, I would suggest that a talk to the EEOC would be the next logical step, because this kind of thing amounts to economic discrimination. And that's illegal.
Too many people are WAY too free to hand out their personal financial information. Keep it between your lendors and the tax people - the ONLY ones who, by law, are SUPPOSED to have access to that information!
Lee Darrow, C.H.
Chicago, IL
That is the question. And, considering the declining number of people voting every election, the rising number of complaints about the elctronic systems being used to tally the votes, the complaints about the butterfly ballots, the delays in counting the votes, the political maniuplations OF the votes when a dispute happens, the public seems to be getting ready to say, "To hell with the whole system!"
.01% of that too much to ask to put into place a secure election system? How about siphoning off some of that pay hike the Congress just voted itself for this instead?
And that's bad.
Very few people trust the election system as it now stands on a national basis. There is NO national standard, NO overwatch that is politically independent and NO way to VERIFY the states that are using the electronic-only voting methods.
The gaps are obvious: we need a national standard for the voting process; one that allows verification of EVERY vote on a papertrail basis; we need an independent overwatch OF the voting process; and we need an electronic voting system that is far more secure than the one that is currently being used.
And the probability of that happening amounts to one Big FAT CHANCE.
The excuses? It costs too much, it will take too much time to put into place, it violates State's Rights, there is no way to keep the politics out of the system and no system is completely secure.
How much are we willing to spend to defend our shores from attack? Is
With regards to State's Rights, this is for a national election. Sorry kiddies, doesn't apply as far as standards of the systems themselves go. You still have control of WHO votes and that's where the REAL power resides, so STFU. Keeping the politics out of the system? Well, there's no easy fix for that, but making the election review board similar to the Supremes, but with a requirement of 4 and 4 from each party and only 1 being appointed by the LAST sitting Prez might work... subject to Congressional approval and all that, of course. And secure? Well, nothing is ever totally secure, but we should be able to do better than a four-minute, no-break-the-seal-non-techie-hack!
Lee Darrow,
Chicago, IL
And we will all respond by throwing collectable Star Trek pillows at them.
"Fire FUTON TORPEDOS, Mr. Sulu!"
And that's what Google gets for trying to pad their part on the Tholian Web!
Lee Darrow, C.H.
Chicago, IL
While I am fully aware of the concept of suspension of disbelief, being married to a professional actress and being a FULL TIME PERFORMER myself, I also understand the THRESHOLD OF DISBELIEF, a concept that you obviously missed.
This film, in every respect, misses the flight path on that one. Fix one to the problem: drop cabin temperature to below 55F. Fix 2, is unable to get to the temperature controls, or they are inoperative, POP A HATCH! Yes, the cabin will depressurize, but the snakes will also have more immediate concerns that dealing with "threats" (humans) that they would NOT attack under any rational circumstances, anyway! They would be having trouble with an immediate temperature drop into deadly ranges AND would be having severe respiratory failure problems, while the PEOPLE would be using the emergency breathing systems.
Even given the premise that the snakes would attack as in the film, which they would NOT, EITHER of these two fixes would solve the problem in very short order.
Frankly, the movie producers would have done better with centipedes. The viausla would have been better, the cg easier and more convincing. Frankly several of the clips didn't scare the 8 year-old from down the block who looked at the trailer and said, "Lousy special effects. Not worth it." And they would scare a wider portion of the average audience.
But western audiences are mostly unaware that there are several species of asian centipede that are deadly to humans.
Sorry to disagree, but the boxoffice numbers speak for themselves - this "blockbuster" petered out after the first week in the theaters, getting beaten by a football movie. That alone speaks volumes.
Lee Darrow, C.H.
http://www.leedarrow.com/
Cold-blooded critters loose on a plane. At 30,000 feet. Where it's -30F outside or thereabouts.
So you TURN OFF THE HEATERS and the snakes go torpid!
Any schoolkid knows that!
High concept, low IQ flick.
Just another proof of my First Law: "Common Sense Ain't! If It Was, We'd See A LOT MORE OF IT AROUND!!"
Lee Darrow, C.H.
Chicago, IL
"Insecurity is better than NO security!"
And it allows the diet police to KEEP you from GETTING that Pepsi that you so desperately want, too!
This thing has the capability of monitoring WHO is using it, WHAT they are buying, and, with very little hassle on the server end, running a database of "healthy/NOT healthy" purchases and locking a user out who has too many "Not Healthy" buys on his or her record. Given the move towards lack of choice in school lunches - how long will it be before companies and even grogery stores start using this technology to remove even MORE freedom of choice from the American consumer?
Every bright side has a dark one and I have the feeling that I just nailed down where the dark side of THIS force happens to be.
Therefore, I christen this vending machine: "DARTH VENDER!"
Lee Darrow, C.H.
Chicago, IL
Yep! Anyone who has ever had a pad of flash paper in their bag will get hauled out and strip searched.
Been there. Had it happen to ME.
After MacWorld a couple of years ago, in New York, the crack TSA troops manning the perimeter didn't understand the cards and nerf balls in my carry on were part of a MAGIC ACT and I wound up splattered up against a wall with a National Guardsman's M-16 shoved up my left nostril, with the Safety OFF!
I am SO not looking forward to this!
Lee Darrow, C.H.
Magician and Hypnotist
Chicago, IL
Tell that to my late father-in-law, who died from EXACTLY this problem.
I'm sure that several members of his biological family would be happy to provide directions...
All snarkiness aside, this happens far more often than the general public would like to believe. ONCE is too often and, with some tools, like sponges, X-ray scans are unrevealing. In surgery, certain items are thrown away during the procedures and that's where problems can arise, especially during long and involved processes. This is why the "layout and count" solution proposed earlier by someone else won't work - some stuff gets thrown out and simply cannot BE counted!
When a surgeon has been on his or her feet for fifteen or twenty hours straight, doing highly technical work, demanding pinpoint precision, under life-or-death circumstances, it is relatively easy, at the end of the job, for the adrenaline to drop off and fatigue errors to happen, even in the best of circumstances and with the best in the business, which is exactly what happened in my father-in-law's case.
Lee Darrow, Chicago, IL
For the home users, this sounds suspiciously like the Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld - "You, no privacy for YOU!"
User: "But I need to protect my personal information from my kids on my home system so they won't use my credit cards to buy every PS3 game in the known universe."
Privacy Nazi: "You didn't say 'Please!' No privacy for YOU! Go to Blue Screen!"
Some of the guys who do stand up routines for IT companies are probably going to have some fun with this one, too.
"So personel can't protect your personal stuff in a personal personel file, right?"
Response: "No privacy for YOU! You are being too personal, personel!"
Who's on 01? What's on 10, and I don't know's on 101...?
Lee Darrow, C.H.
Chicago, IL
Okay, you have the new RFID Passport. You go on vacation, on business, or whatever, to someplace slightly dangerous, like Egypt. During the trip, for some reason, the RFID chip fails. You fly home and, when the Passport agent scans your Passport, it comes up as a fake.
You are now in for several HOURS of being grilled as a possible terrorist trying to enter the United States illegally, may be subject to a full body cavity search and may not even be allowed re-entry BACK into the country! The statute is clear - if you attempt to enter the United States with a forged passport document, you will be turned away and returned to your port of departure or may be subject to arrest and prosecution.
Isn't that a wonderful thought?
My question for the Passport people is: What safeguards have they put in place to protect us from this kind of thing happening?
Lee Darrow, C,H,
Chicago, IL
Make sure you read the User's Agreement carefully! After their attempt in Oklahoma to gain access to all of the files on any Windows user's computer in an effort to "stop piracy," and their support for the RIAA, I would be willing to bet that there will be something like that in the User's Agreement for this puppy as well.
Also, one HAS to ask - WHICH Christmas are they talking about? 2006, 2007, 2019? Given their sterling ability to keep to announced product release dates, I am certainly not going to hold my breath waiting for this "iPod killer."
And has anybody checked to see if Ballmer is walking on a peg leg and hanging with a guy named Ishmail? And are they going to call it the "Peaquod?"
Inquiring minds and all that...
Lee Darrow
"Avast, ye scurvy corporate dogs! Prepare to be boarded!" - Oliver Wendell Jones, Bloom County
"Most thefts are done by low-brow thieves." Of a US givernment laptop. From a US government employee. Somehow, the whole idea of "inside job" seems to be echoing through the halls somewhere and no one in slashdotland is seemingly listening.
Ghosted CD bootup, copied in read-only mode on another system - piece of cake to most hackers and almost any high school kid who knows anything about system ops - and that's a LOT of them.
But as far as the original perp goes, to be honest, I would doubt that the perp is a low-brow thief. More likely, the thief, if there WAS a thief, was someone on the inside at the VA, who knew EXACTLY what he, or she, was doing and what he, or she, was taking, and for exactly what purposes.
With that many identities on the drive, the cash value of the data alone is astronomical. And for someone on the GSA payscale, that's a LOT of incentive to pull an inside job. Look for people who quit the VA in the next year or so and seem to hit it big at a casino or playing the ponies. Watch their accounts and their spending habits. Outgo will NOT equal income for someone - or several someones. And THAT will be your pool of "most likely to have copped the laptop" people.
But, by then, the damage will have been done to a large number of the people whose information was stolen anyway.
Once again, the government proves that its security measures are far behind those of the real world's.
Lee Darrow, C.H.
But they are making an announcement that they are seemingly terminating support early, in violation of their own contract and, frankly, the users should take legal action.
It's what Microsoft would do, were the situations reversed.
Lee Darrow, C.H.
Chicago, IL
He was arrested when he jumped out of the box at his mother's house after the delivery guy dropped him off - and the delivery guy SPOTTED him getting OUT of the box!
Feel safer now, folks?
Lee Darrow, Chicago
Now SanDisk comes along and talks about sheep and the like, but doesn't mention anything about whether or not one can download from the biggest music site online in their ads.
And, so far, on the top levels of this discussion, no one else has, either and I frankly don't have the time to drill down through unteen layers of posts to find out, nor do I particularly want to go to a web site that insults people.
So, SanDisk, the big question is - how DO you want to be perceived in the market - as a company who insults the very market you are trying to woo away from the majority market-share holder, or a company who will actually inform a potential customer about what your vaunted product will - and won't - do?
As a potential customer, I want to know and I don't give a damn about sheep, corporate culture or whether my player is cool or not. I just want to know that I can get and play my tunes from the widest available sources on the market.
If I can't to that, then I have no use for your product.
Lee Darrow, C.H.
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled --- This says it all, to be blunt. Spammers and phishers are programmers, however, who RELY on the idiots out there clicking on anything that SEEMS interesting enough for them to bite on. Bait the hook and wait for the fish to bite - and let's face it, most users don't WANT to be educated, they want the software to do everything FOR them --- DUH! Lee Darrow, C.H.
Redmond keeps hitting us for more money. Why? Well, since the OS market is pretty well sewn up (they have about an 80% overall market share, so that qualifies as "sewn up in just about anybody's book), they have to figure out new and innovative ways to keep the cash coming in. This is obviously it. And, unfortunately, people will probably actually believe that the program works. Barnum's Maxim, in its full form reads: "There's a sucker born every minute... and TWO to TAKE him!" It seems that there's a high concentration of TWO's in Redmond. No wonder they're called "the terrible Two's...!" If their paid security program works as well as their initiative with a certain British University to "teach programmers how to write secure code" that was announced a couple of years ago, then anyone subscribing to this turkey will be in for a LOAD of VERY hard times on the security front! Lee Darrow, C.H. "Insecurity is better than NO security!" - R. Price, 1967