Posts by Tom 13

Re: Bama is a dummy

There are many such conversations, but none of them involve the sorts of racists and fascists who reflexively scream "RACIST!" when The Big 0's Communist/Marxist/Racist policies are pointed out.

*Accusing a white police officer who teaches the race awareness course of racism for following proper police procedure when a break-in is reported at a black man's house.

*Overturning long standing creditor and bond holder priority in favor of paying off union goons in bankruptcy court.

*Facilitating gun running to Mexican drug cartels and the murder of a US law officer under three separate ATF operations before trying to cover it up in a sham even Nixon wouldn't have tried.

*Dismissing an already successful prosecution for voter intimidation for a black man in a 90% black majority district because he was attacking white people and they deserve it.

*Re-writing, in contradiction of existing law, the loan terms for a politically connected solar energy company so that American taxpayers would be liable for all of the loan.

*Against the will of the American people implementing a Socialist healthcare system, including offering blatant bribes such as The New Louisiana Purchase and the Corn Husker Kickback.

Oh, and let's not forget my personal favorite:

*Voting with Barney "The Congressional Page Scandal" Frank to block Bush's attempts (which probably would have been too late anyway, but at least were an attempt) to head off the 2007 banking collapse, then blaming it on greedy corporations and Republicans.

As near as I can tell in my 36 years of political observation, the biggest difference between Republicans and Democrats is that no matter how bought they are, Republicans can occasionally be embarrassed about the corruption and forced to do the proper thing. No chance of that with a Dem.

Re: I genuinely don't understand.

The university's position is that you are there to learn not to have sex.

The students typically come to an arrangement for alone time in the room. You'll have other friends on campus and you might crash with them when your roomie has a "friend" over.

What you'll probably find even more amazing is that even outside of uni housing, students still group up with other people they might not know to share rooms and still have the same issues.

And as long as you are both reasonably normal, there is a good chance you'll become decent friends in fairly short order. My first two years were spent with a pre-med student. We didn't have any issues, but then neither of us ever brought "friends" back to the room either. We actually were there to study.

One other thing, I'd wager the sonic boom off a Concord

was probably a good bit less disruptive than the noise I endured living under a common BWI flight path. At the time I lived there it the planes had to effectively execute a hard banking turn as soon as they lifted off the runway because it pointed the wrong way. It seems they didn't want the jets flying over the ocean on take off. So you constantly heard screaming jet engines laboring under that load.

@Norfolk 'n' Goode: You'll find I'm as quick to bash Apple as I am MS,

but only when there is cause. Given that Apple are currently being shaken down by a Chinese company with political connections, I'm rather suspicious this case is also the result of political connections.

Re: @ Hud Dunlap

It's California. They just swing that way. The rest of us on this side of the pond don't understand it either, but there's not much we can do about it.

Addendum: This is part of why we Tea Partiers get labeled neanderthals in your press. We want laws like this changed, while our opponents play it up as increasing sentences for drug use/distribution. Or worse, they play it off as us being unnecessarily inhibited about sex, which is a private matter.

Re: A wll placed SAM?

No, actually you want to use conventional explosives to change the orbit. We know from past experiences that detonating a nuke in orbit is bad for current civilization. What is needed is reconfiguring the ICBMs to carry conventional payloads and launch them in a well calibrated series designed to keep nudging the orbit while keeping it whole. If it break up, you have more pieces to track. Yes they'll all do less damage, but you need to be sure the most damage any of them will do is still on par with taking out a house, not a large city. Tracking one is hard enough, the chaos from a break-up makes the fragments impossible.

Yes, this solution ignores the political problems of nation states peacefully launching a series of ICBMs into space, but it's the only physics solution available.

Re: In what country...

Any country with an automated internet system for reporting lost/stolen property because having police to actually verify things costs too much and is very inefficient. It's the "other personal information" on which they are primarily depending, and which was probably also compromised by the malware on the system.

Possible but doubtful.

You get lots of high-g affects far more frequently for fighter pilots, especially of the naval variety. And they specified that it results from the build-up of fluid around the eye itself.

Of course you'll need a full bore longitudinal study and a cross comparison with the fighter jocks, so...

Medic! We need a loan grant application STAT!

Re: @AC 12:19 GMT

Most folks using DRM encumbered satelilite and cable services don't expect that they OWN a copy of the movie. They only expect it to work for a single instance. Big difference.

@TeeCee

Except of course that isn't what Google is doing and so far shows no indications of doing. In fact, as the article clearly notes, they are continuing to support JS. Maybe on this point they are willing to let the best technology win, because er, well, it is best for Google to support the best technology regardless of from where it originates?

Re: I can't always unedstand "Noo Yawkers"

That only hurts Apple's ads. They advertise it as working for EVERYBODY.

Yeah, I know most voice stuff is a load of crock until trained. One of my early experiences with it was trying to install it for an Israeli who had an accent so thick you needed a chain saw to cut it. Poor sod bought himself a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking (way back around maybe 4.0) for WordPerfect so he wouldn't have to dictate everything to his secretary. I did my best to tweak the software for him. Of course there was no way I could tell him the problem was his accent, that would have gotten me and my company sued.

@Graysonn

No, he used PayPal because proper merchant agreements are scary to read and problematic to implement. Proper merchant accounts make you personally liable for anything that goes wrong with processing the account. If you aren't a corp (a whole other mess to setup) that properly scares the crap out of people. Then the people selling you the merchant account have no idea how to implement it for a website, so you need a third party processor. Paypal has a simple form sign and done. Yeah they take a higher percentage, but it looks less intimidating.

At least that was my experience setting it up for the non-profit I mentioned above. No, I didn't trust PayPal and wasn't ever going to sign with them. But their stuff does look better on the surface.

Re: Preview pics on an LCD screen has a patent?

The need to do so is obvious. The means by which you do it? Perhaps not. There exists the remote possibility they could have found a novel way of doing it that was quicker, easier, cheaper, or more accurate than anything currently being done elsewhere. Unfortunately, given the quality of other patents we know have been issued, I'm doubtful Apple really did anything new.

Re: SCADA system code is entirely proprietary

Good points. Not only unrecognizable, but perhaps also useless as ID tool. If each one is done as a one off, the trackers wind up wasting resources chasing ghosts.

Re: Sabu

According to reports I've read, there wasn't much interrogating. Police knocked on his door, he realized the jig was up and just how badly he was screwed and started chattering away before they even took him down to be booked. After he'd been booked, he was pretty much a sock puppet for the FBI. Which means the other arrests that have just been made are likely to hold up well in court. The question for LULZ and anon is: How much do you trust those people not to turn just as quickly as Sabu did?

Re: Nothing is obvious in Copyrightland

Actually Coca-Cola protects their stuff via Trade Secret, which is different than copyright. If you want to attack the "recipes aren't copyrightable" you want to take on Betty Crocker, Martha Stewart, and that Blam! (Bam! ?) guy from down south.

Never when it is used

to justify prejudice, slander, libel, and the pogroms that result against anyone of a particular belief system.