I really don't understand why the legal system needs to be bothered to deal with this. My tax dollars have better things to do than get wasted deciding "It's acceptable to display multiple products in one place."
If the argument is from $company that "They searched for my expensive product, but bought a cheaper alternative instead! We demand that they not see other items!", then it seems obvious that these people have never shopped anywhere, ever. Generic acetaminophen is sitting right next to Tylenol, but how often does Tylenol lobby to make that illegal?
If anything, the more expensive product company marketing goons need to realize that places like Amazon are doing them a favor because the opposite happens too. A cheap coffee-maker has two stars, but something 50% more expensive has 4.5, so people look to see why it's reviewed so much higher. I know I do.
Peer-reviews have helped many people avoid buying garbage unwittingly, and steered many people to something better suited to their needs.
If there is only.01% of the US population at any given time with defects that could have been fixed through some wacky procedure that is reasonably sound, isn't it worth putting some effort into preventing 30k people from suffering? What's is being ignored is that this procedure wouldn't even be mandatory, so what is there to lose? To put an economic spin on it: As a fully-functioning US citizen, I am willing to spend some of my tax dollars in an effort to potentially save $5 million each year in direct subsidies alone.
A simple cost/benefit analysis will tell you that removing a bunch of broken people from society is a great burden being released. 30 years at $500/month? That's $180k! I'm pretty darn sure there are many cases that involve significantly more or less, but I saw a generalized study a couple of years ago that tossed out those estimates.
This is why we keep seeing positions that are re-listed. HR people can't or won't do their jobs, and they get crap. Recruiters do even worse by telling the applicants what to say on resumes and in interviews, and they bring in crap.
I believe the argument comes down to "prior art", and that Ron Paul established his trademark and brand long before the owners of ronpaul.org and ronpaul.com.
Seriously, HR doesn't care that you dropped out of college to get better with your web developing, all they see is "incomplete". The purpose of a degree (for capable people) isn't to teach you anything, it's to get past the incapable HR drones.
Get the degree AND teach yourself; it's the only way to both be on top of the game, and get a job.
Most awful password experience? "Password must be at least 12 characters, with one number, one upper case letter, and one special character." Thisis1passwordsystemthatsucks! I had to call support when logging in for the first time, and then I learned that there is an unpublished maximum length. Wow.
I keep sending emails to company security admin people about their poor security practices, and I don't think they care.
Security questions? Pictures? Forcing some format?
Jeez... at least get with the freaking late twentieth century and let me use up to 256 characters...
Best passwords ever, and easiest to remember: Pick a song that's important to you, and use your favorite line. Ain't nobody going to guess which Celine Dion song I picked...
The FDA _should_ keep dragging its collective feet, because there are MANY more dangerous things that should be targeted first, alcohol being number one on that list. My guess is that the main reason there are so many people going to hospitals with caffeine-related symptoms is because this country is overloaded with obese people who have heart conditions. This is just another instance of natural selection.
Caffeine's deadly effects are already well-known, it's called "LD50", like many other substances that can be detrimental in huge quantities. Any guesses about if consuming that much caffeine with that much fluid actually can cause one to die? That's another argument.
Ephedra disappeared from the market because of negative press coverage of several stupid athletes who abused it. I doubt caffeine is in any real danger, it's even more prevalent than alcohol, because it doesn't stop a person from functioning as a person.
This is exactly the problem that should be addressed (compulsory contractual services without acceptance).
I'm a Verizon customer (old-school family plan) with a non-smartphone, and I can't change my telephone myself if I try switching to anything that is labeled "smartphone". Frankly, I'm glad, because I wouldn't want to start incurring an additional $15 or $30, and I think a lot of parents would rather not have kids that can change their telephone without their knowledge, only to incur more fees every month.
Like I said before, there is a very stark difference between being harassed by a co-worker, radio personality, school bully, neighbor, etc., and being harassed by the government. The government effectively has infinite resources, and all of the other threats don't. You can escape the other problems, but the government may choose to keep you prisoner in one way or another.
There is a difference between blaming people who are representative of themselves, and people who are representative of something much bigger than they are.
A few years ago, I started trying to learn Ruby, but I quickly changed my mind because the project at large kept changing, and I didn't have time to follow it. Perl's stagnation has made it much easier to use as a resource in places where stability is key.
Why is Perl great? Very small foot-print, minimal resources for outstanding performance, and flexibility.
After abandoning Ruby (until they calm down), I started exploring Perl and C/C++ with much better results. In my experience, Perl can be very user-friendly, or it can be cryptic... just like most other languages.
Unlike a billboard google just displays the most common search terms, it's a statistical fact, not an endorsement.
Two things are brought to mind by this post: There are three types of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. The masses are asses.
Using the truth to spread misinformation is the nastiest way to sway opinions. Google's products unintentionally reflecting the thoughts of people that are poorly informed is only going to make the situation worse.
The difference exists in the outcome of these actions, and the responses possible.
A bully makes your life difficult with threats and intimidation? Go to a different school, neighborhood, forum, restaurant, etc; that bully has severely limited resources.
The government makes your life difficult with threats and intimidation? You don't have options.
One of the best parts about Magic is playing with multiple players, and trying to figure out the best way to deal with so many different players/approaches. You _can't_ win by beating your opponents, you need the right strategy.
On that note, Race for the Galaxy is definitely an excellent game to explore. If you're familiar with game theory, try expanding it to three, four, or five people.
At the risk of seeming like a shill, I have to say that most of the top 10 games on Board Game Geek are worth playing, and definitely hard to master.
Generally speaking, Agricola, and Puerto Rico are considered to be the best board games currently available. If you haven't played them, you should really try to find them, because they're very dynamic, and require a lot of strategizing, while demanding that you be able to react to both your opponents and the game.
I work primarily in product testing, and nothing wastes more time than people or documentation that haven't been brought up to the latest information and standards.
Anecdotal evidence: Last week, a crucial item wasn't shipped on Friday because I had outdated documentation about the last few tests required before shipment. The prototype failed key tests, and nothing could be shipped until Monday. It didn't matter that this item met the expected standards, everyone in testing had outdated standards, and the shipment was halted.
Sadly, the failure went unnoticed by anyone who cared until long after the deadline, because they were all, you guessed it, in meetings.
While the wealthiest people generally are the business owners and investors, they pay employees less every year compared to inflation. Wages have stagnated, yet inflation still increases.
If you take nothing else away from this entire discussion, this should be it. Over the last ~100 years, the average personal income (which is grossly inflated) has risen about 400%, but the cost of basic goods has risen over 2000%. Don't take our word for it, do a little comparing for yourself.
In addition one of the better investments is education. In general the more education you have the more you will make in the long term. However, when it is hard even for the middle class to send their kids to college, a good education is not always possible.
I don't want to rain on your parade, but I was making more before I went to college (to add a BA to my AAS) than I did for _five years_ after graduating again in 2007. After getting a BA, I couldn't even get interviews because I was considered "over-qualified" by human resources persons, or I had a BA instead of a BS (field independent).
Actually, I work for a WISP. I've done my share of climbing 60-100ft antennae to install or repair the equipment we've got up there, and I've experienced the tower sway at that low height. There are a few other locations where there are things mounted around 250 or so, but I haven't tended anything that high up on a flimsy structure. Lots of things are hanging out on top of buildings that are 120-300ft, but most of those installations have enough structure to remain pretty rigid.
I agree that proper planning can eliminate a lot of the issues associated in most situations, but not everyone else is familiar with it. 5Ghz is pretty forgiving, but 28Ghz isn't.
The problem that was already addressed is the curving of earth, because it can be overcome with height. Let's sustain that increasing the altitude of your dishes will allow greater distance without the sphere's shape interfering, you still have all of the factors associated with those heights: weather, cost of getting there, service, general maintenance.
Maintenance: How easy is it to remove ice? Snow? What about the cost of maintaining the tower?
Service: What do you do when you can't communicate with the unit, and you've ruled out everything except the cable between the unit and it's nearest point of contact?
Cost: This is a broader issue than maintenance, because it allows for not owning the tower/building. Tower space is premium, building roof-tops are premium, labor to install, service, or repair is EXTRA premium. Not only do you need guys willing to climb 200+ feet, but they need to be technically capable. http://www.midweststeeplejacks.com/ charges no less than $250/hr.
Weather: Why don't you see point-to-point connections on towers that are 200ft up on towers? Because the bandwidth requires very high frequencies, and those frequencies are very susceptible to any movement caused by wind. I've seen a gentle breeze (on the ground) turn a wireless link from -45 dbi to -60. Let's not forget rain and snow.
The only good ways to mount an antenna or dish at a height, and ensure reliability, are with a very large antenna (think something with 3 or 4 legs and covering at least 400 feet^2), or a building.
The cost of basic necessities has risen by over 2000%, but average income has risen by only about 400%. Mind you, that's just the average income, and I only personally know about a dozen people who earn more than $40k.
It doesn't matter how cheaply things can be made if the consumer cost keeps rising while incomes don't. There are many things at work, so I won't single anything out as the root cause, but the intermingling of government and private businesses is an important factor.
Certainly, this conversation can get very complicated, but I don't think it would behoove us to delve further into it at this time, so take this post with a grain of salt.
The issue is that no one on the list of recipients got the chance to refuse the message.
How can you be certain he is not part of an internet forum dedicated to anonymity? What if he were sending an email with updates on domains that are security risks to a long list of subscribers to his IPsec newsletter?
There is a very long list of possibilities for what he could have been doing that was perfectly legitimate. Basically, USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, $common-carrier should not read your text-only message to determine if there is any information they don't like, and refuse to deliver it based on that alone.
In a nutshell, the ISP where I work doesn't do any active logging beyond the basic router logs. Right now, 90-95% of our customers are NATed, so we don't even lease that many public IPs from the tier 2 provider we use. To my knowledge, the most we do is provide information when it is requested (within reason), or by court order.
There was a customer with some suspicious activity from their modem that connected to (I'm not joking) known international IPs of organizations that are bad news. When we were contacted by the FBI to find out who this person might be, we learned that this activity (millisecond-length bursts of data) is part of a known botnet. Had the company been subpoenaed, we would have had little information to provide, other than the router logs that only track MAC/IP history (I don't think we even use an extensive DNS history).
Is this because the company is fairly small, and the percentage of offending traffic is negligible or not even present? Maybe. I do know that one of the employees has been pretty aggressive with the amount of MAFIAA material he torrents on the network, but I don't know that it's even been something that has caused us to get unsavory attention.
By "rural", do you mean people that live 1+km mile from their nearest neighbor? The closest community is a cluster of 10 houses with a bar/pub? The nearest place to buy groceries is 30 miles away? The nearest place to buy fuel is 10+ miles away?
I don't think we're thinking the same things, because some of the people I know would have to pay for over a mile of cable to be buried from the ISP's incoming line. A few were told they'd have to pay for a node, or some sort of junction.
I don't mean for it to appear "whoosh-like", but I found a BA in Philosophy to be something that was fairly useful.
Much like high school calculus and chemistry don't teach anything about calculus or chemistry, but give you tools to solve problems; philosophy equips you with the ability to quickly wrap your head around things that you don't already know much about, and appreciate your own shortcomings enough to realize that you can learn something from almost everything.
I work for a rural ISP, and it is pretty common for ALL maps to get you lost around county lines. "County road 2? Which one?" "Why does 157ave become 159ave when it reaches this state highway?"
Not only that, but most people, even people who do live in semi-rural areas, don't understand how directions are given by locals. "Turn left by the broken tractor." -- I have seen the same tractor in the same place for close to 10 years. "At the second mud road, turn right." If you're fortunate enough to be driving near a river, directions get a little easier, because it's hard to mistake a river for anything else.
With the ever-increasing possibility of being arrested for something you didn't do, or something you didn't even know was illegal, or even something fabricated, this seems highly dubious. The more that stuff like the NDAA starts appearing, and with the slew of selectively enforceable laws increasing further, you can bet that people are going to be very paranoid, guilty or not.
The thinner the constitution gets, the less safe I feel using it as a shield against the government.
Slashdot Mirror
I really don't understand why the legal system needs to be bothered to deal with this. My tax dollars have better things to do than get wasted deciding "It's acceptable to display multiple products in one place."
If the argument is from $company that "They searched for my expensive product, but bought a cheaper alternative instead! We demand that they not see other items!", then it seems obvious that these people have never shopped anywhere, ever. Generic acetaminophen is sitting right next to Tylenol, but how often does Tylenol lobby to make that illegal?
If anything, the more expensive product company marketing goons need to realize that places like Amazon are doing them a favor because the opposite happens too. A cheap coffee-maker has two stars, but something 50% more expensive has 4.5, so people look to see why it's reviewed so much higher. I know I do.
Peer-reviews have helped many people avoid buying garbage unwittingly, and steered many people to something better suited to their needs.
If there is only .01% of the US population at any given time with defects that could have been fixed through some wacky procedure that is reasonably sound, isn't it worth putting some effort into preventing 30k people from suffering? What's is being ignored is that this procedure wouldn't even be mandatory, so what is there to lose? To put an economic spin on it: As a fully-functioning US citizen, I am willing to spend some of my tax dollars in an effort to potentially save $5 million each year in direct subsidies alone.
A simple cost/benefit analysis will tell you that removing a bunch of broken people from society is a great burden being released.
30 years at $500/month? That's $180k! I'm pretty darn sure there are many cases that involve significantly more or less, but I saw a generalized study a couple of years ago that tossed out those estimates.
This is why we keep seeing positions that are re-listed. HR people can't or won't do their jobs, and they get crap. Recruiters do even worse by telling the applicants what to say on resumes and in interviews, and they bring in crap.
I believe the argument comes down to "prior art", and that Ron Paul established his trademark and brand long before the owners of ronpaul.org and ronpaul.com.
Seriously, HR doesn't care that you dropped out of college to get better with your web developing, all they see is "incomplete". The purpose of a degree (for capable people) isn't to teach you anything, it's to get past the incapable HR drones.
Get the degree AND teach yourself; it's the only way to both be on top of the game, and get a job.
Most awful password experience?
"Password must be at least 12 characters, with one number, one upper case letter, and one special character."
Thisis1passwordsystemthatsucks!
I had to call support when logging in for the first time, and then I learned that there is an unpublished maximum length. Wow.
I keep sending emails to company security admin people about their poor security practices, and I don't think they care.
Security questions?
Pictures?
Forcing some format?
Jeez... at least get with the freaking late twentieth century and let me use up to 256 characters...
Best passwords ever, and easiest to remember: Pick a song that's important to you, and use your favorite line. Ain't nobody going to guess which Celine Dion song I picked...
The FDA _should_ keep dragging its collective feet, because there are MANY more dangerous things that should be targeted first, alcohol being number one on that list. My guess is that the main reason there are so many people going to hospitals with caffeine-related symptoms is because this country is overloaded with obese people who have heart conditions. This is just another instance of natural selection.
Caffeine's deadly effects are already well-known, it's called "LD50", like many other substances that can be detrimental in huge quantities. Any guesses about if consuming that much caffeine with that much fluid actually can cause one to die? That's another argument.
Ephedra disappeared from the market because of negative press coverage of several stupid athletes who abused it. I doubt caffeine is in any real danger, it's even more prevalent than alcohol, because it doesn't stop a person from functioning as a person.
This is exactly the problem that should be addressed (compulsory contractual services without acceptance).
I'm a Verizon customer (old-school family plan) with a non-smartphone, and I can't change my telephone myself if I try switching to anything that is labeled "smartphone". Frankly, I'm glad, because I wouldn't want to start incurring an additional $15 or $30, and I think a lot of parents would rather not have kids that can change their telephone without their knowledge, only to incur more fees every month.
Like I said before, there is a very stark difference between being harassed by a co-worker, radio personality, school bully, neighbor, etc., and being harassed by the government. The government effectively has infinite resources, and all of the other threats don't. You can escape the other problems, but the government may choose to keep you prisoner in one way or another.
There is a difference between blaming people who are representative of themselves, and people who are representative of something much bigger than they are.
A few years ago, I started trying to learn Ruby, but I quickly changed my mind because the project at large kept changing, and I didn't have time to follow it. Perl's stagnation has made it much easier to use as a resource in places where stability is key.
Why is Perl great? Very small foot-print, minimal resources for outstanding performance, and flexibility.
After abandoning Ruby (until they calm down), I started exploring Perl and C/C++ with much better results. In my experience, Perl can be very user-friendly, or it can be cryptic... just like most other languages.
Unlike a billboard google just displays the most common search terms, it's a statistical fact, not an endorsement.
Two things are brought to mind by this post:
There are three types of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.
The masses are asses.
Using the truth to spread misinformation is the nastiest way to sway opinions. Google's products unintentionally reflecting the thoughts of people that are poorly informed is only going to make the situation worse.
The difference exists in the outcome of these actions, and the responses possible.
A bully makes your life difficult with threats and intimidation? Go to a different school, neighborhood, forum, restaurant, etc; that bully has severely limited resources.
The government makes your life difficult with threats and intimidation? You don't have options.
One of the best parts about Magic is playing with multiple players, and trying to figure out the best way to deal with so many different players/approaches. You _can't_ win by beating your opponents, you need the right strategy.
On that note, Race for the Galaxy is definitely an excellent game to explore. If you're familiar with game theory, try expanding it to three, four, or five people.
At the risk of seeming like a shill, I have to say that most of the top 10 games on Board Game Geek are worth playing, and definitely hard to master.
Generally speaking, Agricola, and Puerto Rico are considered to be the best board games currently available. If you haven't played them, you should really try to find them, because they're very dynamic, and require a lot of strategizing, while demanding that you be able to react to both your opponents and the game.
...and meetings.
I work primarily in product testing, and nothing wastes more time than people or documentation that haven't been brought up to the latest information and standards.
Anecdotal evidence: Last week, a crucial item wasn't shipped on Friday because I had outdated documentation about the last few tests required before shipment. The prototype failed key tests, and nothing could be shipped until Monday. It didn't matter that this item met the expected standards, everyone in testing had outdated standards, and the shipment was halted.
Sadly, the failure went unnoticed by anyone who cared until long after the deadline, because they were all, you guessed it, in meetings.
While the wealthiest people generally are the business owners and investors, they pay employees less every year compared to inflation. Wages have stagnated, yet inflation still increases.
If you take nothing else away from this entire discussion, this should be it. Over the last ~100 years, the average personal income (which is grossly inflated) has risen about 400%, but the cost of basic goods has risen over 2000%. Don't take our word for it, do a little comparing for yourself.
In addition one of the better investments is education. In general the more education you have the more you will make in the long term. However, when it is hard even for the middle class to send their kids to college, a good education is not always possible.
I don't want to rain on your parade, but I was making more before I went to college (to add a BA to my AAS) than I did for _five years_ after graduating again in 2007. After getting a BA, I couldn't even get interviews because I was considered "over-qualified" by human resources persons, or I had a BA instead of a BS (field independent).
Actually, I work for a WISP. I've done my share of climbing 60-100ft antennae to install or repair the equipment we've got up there, and I've experienced the tower sway at that low height. There are a few other locations where there are things mounted around 250 or so, but I haven't tended anything that high up on a flimsy structure. Lots of things are hanging out on top of buildings that are 120-300ft, but most of those installations have enough structure to remain pretty rigid.
I agree that proper planning can eliminate a lot of the issues associated in most situations, but not everyone else is familiar with it. 5Ghz is pretty forgiving, but 28Ghz isn't.
The problem that was already addressed is the curving of earth, because it can be overcome with height. Let's sustain that increasing the altitude of your dishes will allow greater distance without the sphere's shape interfering, you still have all of the factors associated with those heights: weather, cost of getting there, service, general maintenance.
Maintenance: How easy is it to remove ice? Snow? What about the cost of maintaining the tower?
Service: What do you do when you can't communicate with the unit, and you've ruled out everything except the cable between the unit and it's nearest point of contact?
Cost: This is a broader issue than maintenance, because it allows for not owning the tower/building. Tower space is premium, building roof-tops are premium, labor to install, service, or repair is EXTRA premium. Not only do you need guys willing to climb 200+ feet, but they need to be technically capable. http://www.midweststeeplejacks.com/ charges no less than $250/hr.
Weather: Why don't you see point-to-point connections on towers that are 200ft up on towers? Because the bandwidth requires very high frequencies, and those frequencies are very susceptible to any movement caused by wind. I've seen a gentle breeze (on the ground) turn a wireless link from -45 dbi to -60. Let's not forget rain and snow.
The only good ways to mount an antenna or dish at a height, and ensure reliability, are with a very large antenna (think something with 3 or 4 legs and covering at least 400 feet^2), or a building.
If you track inflation, and compare it to incomes, you will see that technology, and the obsolescence of human labor has actually been a loss for the individual. The generally accepted inflation gauge is the CPI:
http://inflationdata.com/inflation/Consumer_Price_Index/HistoricalCPI.aspx?reloaded=true
I think it's pretty safe to say the income chart is close enough to illustrate my point:
http://visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2006/08/15/average-income-in-the-united-states
The cost of basic necessities has risen by over 2000%, but average income has risen by only about 400%. Mind you, that's just the average income, and I only personally know about a dozen people who earn more than $40k.
It doesn't matter how cheaply things can be made if the consumer cost keeps rising while incomes don't. There are many things at work, so I won't single anything out as the root cause, but the intermingling of government and private businesses is an important factor.
Certainly, this conversation can get very complicated, but I don't think it would behoove us to delve further into it at this time, so take this post with a grain of salt.
The issue is that no one on the list of recipients got the chance to refuse the message.
How can you be certain he is not part of an internet forum dedicated to anonymity? What if he were sending an email with updates on domains that are security risks to a long list of subscribers to his IPsec newsletter?
There is a very long list of possibilities for what he could have been doing that was perfectly legitimate. Basically, USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, $common-carrier should not read your text-only message to determine if there is any information they don't like, and refuse to deliver it based on that alone.
In a nutshell, the ISP where I work doesn't do any active logging beyond the basic router logs. Right now, 90-95% of our customers are NATed, so we don't even lease that many public IPs from the tier 2 provider we use. To my knowledge, the most we do is provide information when it is requested (within reason), or by court order.
There was a customer with some suspicious activity from their modem that connected to (I'm not joking) known international IPs of organizations that are bad news. When we were contacted by the FBI to find out who this person might be, we learned that this activity (millisecond-length bursts of data) is part of a known botnet. Had the company been subpoenaed, we would have had little information to provide, other than the router logs that only track MAC/IP history (I don't think we even use an extensive DNS history).
Is this because the company is fairly small, and the percentage of offending traffic is negligible or not even present? Maybe. I do know that one of the employees has been pretty aggressive with the amount of MAFIAA material he torrents on the network, but I don't know that it's even been something that has caused us to get unsavory attention.
By "rural", do you mean people that live 1+km mile from their nearest neighbor?
The closest community is a cluster of 10 houses with a bar/pub?
The nearest place to buy groceries is 30 miles away?
The nearest place to buy fuel is 10+ miles away?
I don't think we're thinking the same things, because some of the people I know would have to pay for over a mile of cable to be buried from the ISP's incoming line. A few were told they'd have to pay for a node, or some sort of junction.
I don't mean for it to appear "whoosh-like", but I found a BA in Philosophy to be something that was fairly useful.
Much like high school calculus and chemistry don't teach anything about calculus or chemistry, but give you tools to solve problems; philosophy equips you with the ability to quickly wrap your head around things that you don't already know much about, and appreciate your own shortcomings enough to realize that you can learn something from almost everything.
I work for a rural ISP, and it is pretty common for ALL maps to get you lost around county lines.
"County road 2? Which one?"
"Why does 157ave become 159ave when it reaches this state highway?"
Not only that, but most people, even people who do live in semi-rural areas, don't understand how directions are given by locals.
"Turn left by the broken tractor." -- I have seen the same tractor in the same place for close to 10 years.
"At the second mud road, turn right."
If you're fortunate enough to be driving near a river, directions get a little easier, because it's hard to mistake a river for anything else.
With the ever-increasing possibility of being arrested for something you didn't do, or something you didn't even know was illegal, or even something fabricated, this seems highly dubious. The more that stuff like the NDAA starts appearing, and with the slew of selectively enforceable laws increasing further, you can bet that people are going to be very paranoid, guilty or not.
The thinner the constitution gets, the less safe I feel using it as a shield against the government.