I wish I could give my mod points away. I'm tired of being saddled with approving this garbage for the general public's consumption. Maybe I should start modding GNAA posts Insightful...
You are correct on all points. I must add, however, for the people who haven't realized it:
The BBB is NOT a government agency, nor is it government-sponsored or in any way associated with the government. It's just a for-profit company, like Consumer Reports or T-Mobile. They do, however, have one power -- the general public is under the impression that they're a government agency.
It's my understanding that when somebody queries about the status of a dues-paying business, they will get a description of roses, as much as possible while staying within the bounds of truth. When somebody queries about a non-member business, if there are no complaints, then they might as well be told "Well, we have nothing on them, but..."; and if there has been a complaint, they at least get "Stay away from that company, they're trouble", or worse.
My company is a member; in our industry, potential customers often check with the BBB. Either way, there's never in over 30 years been a complaint, but this way we get to say we're members, and we're also assured of good reviews.
That's something that I'd like to do -- but it's fraught with difficulty.
--I don't want to be anonymous to the artists, but I don't want to be identifiable to the RIAA, having just confessed about piracy (Legally, it still is piracy, since the RIAA owns those recordings)...
--Some artists would probably share a percentage with the RIAA...
--Having thought of that, it occurs to me that the RIAA still deserves a cut for the marketing that they did which resulted in me discovering the music in question. I am very much beginning to dislike this road!;)
I'm morally against the way they use DRM. If I'm trying to vote against it with my dollars, then I fail above.
I'm practically against their enforcement against piracy -- because, practically speaking, I bought a whole lot more music when I was pirating a lot than I did when I only pirated a little, just because of my excitement about the music. The end result was that more piracy caused them to get more of my money.
These days, I've gone cold turkey; I've got too much to lose (house, etc) and they're enforcing too strongly. I also have gone cold turkey on buying RIAA-related music. The only revenue they get from me now is their cut of my satellite radio subscription (from which I have NO interest in going to the efford of recording, for the record).
Perhaps I should find a way to let them know all of this, else they may think they lost the sales because of increased piracy.
He was pretty much using the service that was trespassing on public property.
Unfortunately, the same "trespassing" can be said of his signal reaching the AP -- and it's much easier to say somebody was "trespassing" on private property than on public. Otherwise, you make very good points.
One should also consider that many coffee shops, in general, are known for providing free WiFi, and if they did not want to do so, then they should have secured their connection. If they want to limit it to customers only, then technology exists to do so. Else, they could at least put up a forced ToS screen, like one I saw at (IIRC) Panera Bread, where you must agree before you get access to the internet.
Also, it's not cool that the manager called 911 for this. Just because you require the services of the police does not mean 911 should be your call. AFAIK, 911 is for time sensitive emergencies only. I'd hate to see somebody who needs urgent service wait because of an unauthorized network use complaint.
Perhaps this would be a good example of when technology SHOULD be used to solve social problems -- a minor investigation by a friendly geek customer and a simple filter rule would have prevented this guy from continuing to use the connection. I mean, come on -- a coffee shop should know about filters...;)
In other news: Miracle first post derails whole discussion, causing whole Slashdot community to bitch about language in a discussion that's supposed to be about some insane (or inane) energy-efficiency creation. Making things worse, this first post pulls off it's miracle using it's subject line, not it's text -- and I didn't even know that anybody reads the subject line (I often don't).
Believe it or not, some people actually haven't seen Fight Club. I know I'm stretching credibility here, but even some Slashdot users haven't seen it.
It sure gets an awful lot of discussion on Slashdot, though, which makes me wonder if, in fact, I'm the only user who hasn't seen it. What makes it such a geek magnet of a movie? It's marketing made it seem like the antithesis of a geek movie, appearing to be drivel scarcely better than "reality" television.
Neato. Apparently the whole point of the car was to make an ultra cheap, ultra efficient, ultra light car in an ultra hurry. My cousin had a Pinto at one point, and I rode in it in the late 80s or early 90s, but managed to survive. He survived too, only to die young of a heart attack or meningitis or some such...too bad, he was cool, and I would have liked to hang out with him as I got older.
This is ONE of the things those massive judgements are about, and what "tort reform" is intended to eliminate.
If that's true, then somebody needs to spread the word.
See, when I think of tort reform, I think of frivolous lawsuits with huge payouts for dumb reasons.
I think of Good Samaritan laws that have to be made to protect people who try to help others.
I think of daily fears that some business idea could possibly get screwed up by an idiot who will then sue.
I think of an auto accident where one person is injured or killed, and another whose unintentional actions get his house taken, and his family unsupported as he pays money that will never replace the other party's life or limb -- two lives ruined, one by accident, and one by lawsuit.
If actual proposed tort reform intends to eliminate such things as your examples, instead of just the sorts of examples I describe above, then the public should know. Until I find out you're right, "tort reform" is not a dirty phrase to me.
Is it somehow better to be exposed to a virus when you are 5 then when you are 25? If so, I think we should be trying to figure out why.
It is better. At 5, the immune system is developing and learning a heck of a lot, just like many other body systems, and much like the mind. At that point, slight exposure (such as vaccination) has a greatly magnified effect. At 25, the immune system is doing it's daily grind, in a dead-end job -- there's no opportunity for the immune system to get promoted.
I grew up exposed to all kinds of crap, from a non-sterile house (mom never did much housework, even though she grew up in a spotless middle-class Jewish home) to demolition dust of hazardous materials on job sites with my dad who didn't know about such things. These days, I manage to breathe any airborn garbage and continue on with whatever I'm doing while others have to go somewhere clear. For my own health, of course, I try to avoid such situations, since resistance doesn't mean I'll take no cumulative damage. Oh, and I don't get a whole lot of allergies -- I had some eye irritation for a couple weeks which has recently gone.
Maybe [Steve] Jobs decided that India wasn't as nice as he remembered it, so he doesn't want to live there after all. (It's a joke, folks. If you don't get it, forget it.)
Or maybe he got it confused with Indiana (as Homer Simpson did).
My wife sometimes orders from Peapod. It costs significantly more than going into the Stop & Shop store. They do deliver to my rural area (well, as rural as you can get in Rhode Island), surprisingly.
I've often lamented the lack of a way to get cheap nonperishables online. For example, I want to buy a case of Stagg Chili, but it's so damned expensive. If Amazon can do better than Stagg's own online store, then I'll buy. Other stuff I'd generally buy generic...so if they can send me generic stuff, I'll buy in case volume.
I just checked -- their generic Rice Krispies alternative is a little cheaper per ounce than Peapod's genuine Kellog's Rice Krispies. In-store, S&S probably sells Kellog's about the same as Amazon's generic, and in-store S&S generic stuff is much cheaper. No sale.
They don't have plain old Kraft Mac & Cheese. They do have numerous sub-varieties of it -- spirals, cartoon-branded, supermac (I'm not familiar with that one), easy mac, etc. No sale.
$16 for 72oz of barbecue sauce. They have only one brand in two flavors. I use barbecue sauce two ways -- any cheap stuff in really big quantities for making a brisket in a crock pot, and specific brands in small quantities used condimentally. No sale.
Bowl Apetit 3 cheese rotini non-perishable just-add-water microwave meal: 12 for $16. Now we're getting somewhere.
Well, this is getting too time-consuming...I'd deal with it later, except it looks like I'm better off just making the 40 minute trip to the Wal Mart Supercenter.
Too bad soft drinks wouldn't work. I would buy a pallet of Diet Pepsi cans if I could get it cheap enough.
I believe the logic behind the assumption that the three women will be less qualified is not gender-specific. At least, MY logic behind arriving at the same assumption isn't. See, the problem is as follows:
Step 1: Gather a large quantity of candidates. Step 2: Select the best however many out of them, which wind up being the top 10% (or 5%, or 1%, or whatever). Step 3: Bring in three that were NOT the best Whatever% of their group, because they are the ONLY in their group Step 4: Profit!
Selecting the best out of a large group means you've got a strong chance of actually having very good ones. Bringing in three who were not obtained via a screening-out process, who were not better than 90% (or 95%, or 99%, or 100-whatever%), results in unknown quality (given the data presented here), and most likely average quality.
The same principle applies whether you're displacing 3 merit-selected male coders with 3 gender-selected female coders, 3 white merit-selected college applicants with 3 black race-selected college applicants (ooh, I'll get modded troll for that), 3 survey-selected coffee blends with 3 charity-supporting coffee blends, or 3 successful national chain restaurants for 3 local eateries. You can safely assume that the replacements in all of those cases are not as good as the "best" ones they replace, until you see actual individual qualifications.
Holy Carp! How long have I been using Opera and never noticed that...
I just tried it, and it works. That's great! I hope I remember it. I ought to put a button on my toolbar for it....Done. Found it in the usual place, at http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons .
One last note, this MSDN blogging site does not care for Firefox. The right hand side of the text hangs over about an inch into the right bar side and it's annoying because the text spills onto the calendar. I certainly hope this doesn't happen on purpose.
Why, are you afraid we'll damage the non-existant ecosystems on other planets? Afraid we'll taint the small stock of usable planets, leaving no place for some more enlightened race whose sun goes nova?
Gimme a break. Space is so huge, and has so much stuff, and apparently so little life, that there's no reason for us to not use everything we can get our hands on, at least on the scale that we can in the imaginable future.
That calls for forcing our own evolution. If we send enough people up there, and have them fuck like bunnies so they'll spawn like guppies, it shouldn't take many generations for cosmic ray resistant folks to be selected and particularly susceptible ones to be culled. I'd guess that babies born in space who are not very resistant would die before coming of age, or would at least be sterile.
It sounds cruel, but if it's voluntary (obviously not for the babies, but for the first generation), and if people are screened/tested to try to select strong stock, then it could work.
In an attempt to prove to my wife what a "cesspit" NYC is, I googled the crime statistics. To my surprise, it wasn't too bad at all. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_york_city#Crime for the statistics -- 2,800 crimes per 100,000 people. That's half as much crime as quiet suburban Cumberland, RI.
I think they're rolling it out first in rural areas where DSL is costing them a lot to run. They've got some sort of repeaters that allow them to run DSL way longer distances than normal. I'd guess that the reduced cost spread between DSL and fiber makes them want to offer fiber to customers who would otherwise buy cheap DSL plans.
My parents just bought a house in Exeter, RI, which is a tiny rural town. It's so small that it only has one police officer; when his shift is over, the state cops have jurisdiction. Approximately 6,000 residents. It's also one of a few towns where Verizon is offering fiber first in the state. I've seen them installing the cables on the poles in nearby areas, too.
My parents have fiber. Fiber is stapled to the side of the house. There's a box into which fiber goes, and the other side of the box is an ethernet jack. Yes, they even supplied a wireless router.
I was there when it was installed. It's really cool...they splice a pre-terminated end onto the fiber using a cool little machine that has an LCD showing the automated welding process in real time. The fiber has multiple layers of insulation, and the actual fiber is even thinner than I thought; it's barely visible.
Meanwhile, in my rural area of Glocester, about 25 miles north of their place, and a few miles closer to Providence, I can't get DSL or Fiber. It's cable or nothing here. Meh.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I could give my mod points away. I'm tired of being saddled with approving this garbage for the general public's consumption. Maybe I should start modding GNAA posts Insightful...
You are correct on all points. I must add, however, for the people who haven't realized it:
The BBB is NOT a government agency, nor is it government-sponsored or in any way associated with the government. It's just a for-profit company, like Consumer Reports or T-Mobile. They do, however, have one power -- the general public is under the impression that they're a government agency.
This comment describes the BBB.
It's my understanding that when somebody queries about the status of a dues-paying business, they will get a description of roses, as much as possible while staying within the bounds of truth. When somebody queries about a non-member business, if there are no complaints, then they might as well be told "Well, we have nothing on them, but..."; and if there has been a complaint, they at least get "Stay away from that company, they're trouble", or worse.
My company is a member; in our industry, potential customers often check with the BBB. Either way, there's never in over 30 years been a complaint, but this way we get to say we're members, and we're also assured of good reviews.
That's something that I'd like to do -- but it's fraught with difficulty.
;)
--I don't want to be anonymous to the artists, but I don't want to be identifiable to the RIAA, having just confessed about piracy (Legally, it still is piracy, since the RIAA owns those recordings)...
--Some artists would probably share a percentage with the RIAA...
--Having thought of that, it occurs to me that the RIAA still deserves a cut for the marketing that they did which resulted in me discovering the music in question. I am very much beginning to dislike this road!
I'm morally against the way they use DRM. If I'm trying to vote against it with my dollars, then I fail above.
I'm practically against their enforcement against piracy -- because, practically speaking, I bought a whole lot more music when I was pirating a lot than I did when I only pirated a little, just because of my excitement about the music. The end result was that more piracy caused them to get more of my money.
These days, I've gone cold turkey; I've got too much to lose (house, etc) and they're enforcing too strongly. I also have gone cold turkey on buying RIAA-related music. The only revenue they get from me now is their cut of my satellite radio subscription (from which I have NO interest in going to the efford of recording, for the record).
Perhaps I should find a way to let them know all of this, else they may think they lost the sales because of increased piracy.
One should also consider that many coffee shops, in general, are known for providing free WiFi, and if they did not want to do so, then they should have secured their connection. If they want to limit it to customers only, then technology exists to do so. Else, they could at least put up a forced ToS screen, like one I saw at (IIRC) Panera Bread, where you must agree before you get access to the internet.
Also, it's not cool that the manager called 911 for this. Just because you require the services of the police does not mean 911 should be your call. AFAIK, 911 is for time sensitive emergencies only. I'd hate to see somebody who needs urgent service wait because of an unauthorized network use complaint.
Perhaps this would be a good example of when technology SHOULD be used to solve social problems -- a minor investigation by a friendly geek customer and a simple filter rule would have prevented this guy from continuing to use the connection. I mean, come on -- a coffee shop should know about filters...
E
Fucking
Gad
!!
In other news: Miracle first post derails whole discussion, causing whole Slashdot community to bitch about language in a discussion that's supposed to be about some insane (or inane) energy-efficiency creation. Making things worse, this first post pulls off it's miracle using it's subject line, not it's text -- and I didn't even know that anybody reads the subject line (I often don't).
Believe it or not, some people actually haven't seen Fight Club. I know I'm stretching credibility here, but even some Slashdot users haven't seen it.
It sure gets an awful lot of discussion on Slashdot, though, which makes me wonder if, in fact, I'm the only user who hasn't seen it. What makes it such a geek magnet of a movie? It's marketing made it seem like the antithesis of a geek movie, appearing to be drivel scarcely better than "reality" television.
Perhaps folks would know what you're talking about if you spelled the guy's name right: Lee Iacocca.
A little googling returned this: http://online.ceb.com/calcases/CA3/119CA3d757.htm
Neato. Apparently the whole point of the car was to make an ultra cheap, ultra efficient, ultra light car in an ultra hurry. My cousin had a Pinto at one point, and I rode in it in the late 80s or early 90s, but managed to survive. He survived too, only to die young of a heart attack or meningitis or some such...too bad, he was cool, and I would have liked to hang out with him as I got older.
See, when I think of tort reform, I think of frivolous lawsuits with huge payouts for dumb reasons.
I think of Good Samaritan laws that have to be made to protect people who try to help others.
I think of daily fears that some business idea could possibly get screwed up by an idiot who will then sue.
I think of an auto accident where one person is injured or killed, and another whose unintentional actions get his house taken, and his family unsupported as he pays money that will never replace the other party's life or limb -- two lives ruined, one by accident, and one by lawsuit.
If actual proposed tort reform intends to eliminate such things as your examples, instead of just the sorts of examples I describe above, then the public should know. Until I find out you're right, "tort reform" is not a dirty phrase to me.
How about LG room air conditioners? My parents just bought a 15,000btu unit...
I grew up exposed to all kinds of crap, from a non-sterile house (mom never did much housework, even though she grew up in a spotless middle-class Jewish home) to demolition dust of hazardous materials on job sites with my dad who didn't know about such things. These days, I manage to breathe any airborn garbage and continue on with whatever I'm doing while others have to go somewhere clear. For my own health, of course, I try to avoid such situations, since resistance doesn't mean I'll take no cumulative damage. Oh, and I don't get a whole lot of allergies -- I had some eye irritation for a couple weeks which has recently gone.
Or maybe he got it confused with Indiana (as Homer Simpson did).
My wife sometimes orders from Peapod. It costs significantly more than going into the Stop & Shop store. They do deliver to my rural area (well, as rural as you can get in Rhode Island), surprisingly.
I've often lamented the lack of a way to get cheap nonperishables online. For example, I want to buy a case of Stagg Chili, but it's so damned expensive. If Amazon can do better than Stagg's own online store, then I'll buy. Other stuff I'd generally buy generic...so if they can send me generic stuff, I'll buy in case volume.
I just checked -- their generic Rice Krispies alternative is a little cheaper per ounce than Peapod's genuine Kellog's Rice Krispies. In-store, S&S probably sells Kellog's about the same as Amazon's generic, and in-store S&S generic stuff is much cheaper. No sale.
They don't have plain old Kraft Mac & Cheese. They do have numerous sub-varieties of it -- spirals, cartoon-branded, supermac (I'm not familiar with that one), easy mac, etc. No sale.
$16 for 72oz of barbecue sauce. They have only one brand in two flavors. I use barbecue sauce two ways -- any cheap stuff in really big quantities for making a brisket in a crock pot, and specific brands in small quantities used condimentally. No sale.
Bowl Apetit 3 cheese rotini non-perishable just-add-water microwave meal: 12 for $16. Now we're getting somewhere.
Well, this is getting too time-consuming...I'd deal with it later, except it looks like I'm better off just making the 40 minute trip to the Wal Mart Supercenter.
Too bad soft drinks wouldn't work. I would buy a pallet of Diet Pepsi cans if I could get it cheap enough.
Weren't there aerial drones in the short lived show "Dark Angel"?
I believe the logic behind the assumption that the three women will be less qualified is not gender-specific. At least, MY logic behind arriving at the same assumption isn't. See, the problem is as follows:
Step 1: Gather a large quantity of candidates.
Step 2: Select the best however many out of them, which wind up being the top 10% (or 5%, or 1%, or whatever).
Step 3: Bring in three that were NOT the best Whatever% of their group, because they are the ONLY in their group
Step 4: Profit!
Selecting the best out of a large group means you've got a strong chance of actually having very good ones. Bringing in three who were not obtained via a screening-out process, who were not better than 90% (or 95%, or 99%, or 100-whatever%), results in unknown quality (given the data presented here), and most likely average quality.
The same principle applies whether you're displacing 3 merit-selected male coders with 3 gender-selected female coders, 3 white merit-selected college applicants with 3 black race-selected college applicants (ooh, I'll get modded troll for that), 3 survey-selected coffee blends with 3 charity-supporting coffee blends, or 3 successful national chain restaurants for 3 local eateries. You can safely assume that the replacements in all of those cases are not as good as the "best" ones they replace, until you see actual individual qualifications.
Holy Carp! How long have I been using Opera and never noticed that...
...Done. Found it in the usual place, at http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons .
I just tried it, and it works. That's great! I hope I remember it. I ought to put a button on my toolbar for it.
Heh...for once, Theo's attitude is actually put to good use.
Why, are you afraid we'll damage the non-existant ecosystems on other planets? Afraid we'll taint the small stock of usable planets, leaving no place for some more enlightened race whose sun goes nova?
Gimme a break. Space is so huge, and has so much stuff, and apparently so little life, that there's no reason for us to not use everything we can get our hands on, at least on the scale that we can in the imaginable future.
That calls for forcing our own evolution. If we send enough people up there, and have them fuck like bunnies so they'll spawn like guppies, it shouldn't take many generations for cosmic ray resistant folks to be selected and particularly susceptible ones to be culled. I'd guess that babies born in space who are not very resistant would die before coming of age, or would at least be sterile.
It sounds cruel, but if it's voluntary (obviously not for the babies, but for the first generation), and if people are screened/tested to try to select strong stock, then it could work.
I forgot -- it's not quite plain old ethernet coming out of the box into the wireless router. It's PPPoE.
I ran some speed tests and got results all within a few percent of 5000Kbps / 1500 Kbps. I hope that's what they subscribed for.
I think they're rolling it out first in rural areas where DSL is costing them a lot to run. They've got some sort of repeaters that allow them to run DSL way longer distances than normal. I'd guess that the reduced cost spread between DSL and fiber makes them want to offer fiber to customers who would otherwise buy cheap DSL plans.
My parents just bought a house in Exeter, RI, which is a tiny rural town. It's so small that it only has one police officer; when his shift is over, the state cops have jurisdiction. Approximately 6,000 residents. It's also one of a few towns where Verizon is offering fiber first in the state. I've seen them installing the cables on the poles in nearby areas, too.
My parents have fiber. Fiber is stapled to the side of the house. There's a box into which fiber goes, and the other side of the box is an ethernet jack. Yes, they even supplied a wireless router.
I was there when it was installed. It's really cool...they splice a pre-terminated end onto the fiber using a cool little machine that has an LCD showing the automated welding process in real time. The fiber has multiple layers of insulation, and the actual fiber is even thinner than I thought; it's barely visible.
Meanwhile, in my rural area of Glocester, about 25 miles north of their place, and a few miles closer to Providence, I can't get DSL or Fiber. It's cable or nothing here. Meh.