Posts by Tom 13

Re: The ocean acts as a moderator for variations in atmospheric conditions

Yes, but except for a few seconds here and there every couple of decades, land doesn't go up and down in swells. Even that tends to be geographically concentrated, so not a real risk when trying to land.

Re: Not sure where they could safely launch and come down on land

Launch from Kennedy, land at White Sands. Yes, you still have to tow the equipment afterward, but only during development and test. Once the system is proven you consolidate to the Cape.

Re: (Still?) no votes for them...

Baloney. Last time I checked they have 536 residents voting for them.

Re: Well, even cosmetic house improvements need to be checked

Those are the nominal reasons for the regs. The real reason is that any work you do to your house is likely to change it's assessed value, and that changes your tax base.

Re: never needs a loan has a "bad" (non existent) credit history.

For precisely the reason that they have no history. With no past history, you can't make future predictions. If you can't make future predictions, you put them in the highest rated risk group.

Anyone who lives here knows the goal is to have two or three credit cards on which you make regular purchases and pay off the balance due each month. I'm ALMOST there having spend far too many years with credit balances that were far too high.

Re:The IRS has nothing to do with this.

Yes and no. No, the IRS doesn't directly have anything to do with. Yes, being able to deduct house taxes from your federal taxes encourages non-federal taxing entities to boost their take from property taxes.

Re: there will be a Home Owners Association

Only if you live in one of the People's Republics. My parents house has no Home Owners Association. Problem is, the maggots that live in the People's Republics keep moving out because they don't like them, then vote to impose People's Republic rules in their new location. Kalifornia is one of the prime examples of this behavior.

Re: How can this be competing with Netflix?

People buy Netflix for the movies and stay for the TV and original content.

And you should get your eyes checked if you think only FIOS users is a small market.

Re: Only two problems.

For the moment, I agree. But not forever.

The first brick in the wall has already been removed. One of the major sports (can't remember if it was NFL or baseball) just stopped blackouts for games in the home team area if the stadium isn't sold out.

Re: surely the cableco has the power now to tell any one specific broadcaster to piss off now.

Meh. Depends on the channel. The Food Channel, sure no problem. ESPN, not so much. Even The Weather Channel can be a bit of a challenge, although in my area they have recently done that.

Re: so called "Custom TV" - this sums it up perfectly

Make it $35 for 35 channels I get to pick, with additional packs available at $10 for 5 picks and you might have a deal. Call it $5 a channel for premiums (I don't subscribe to any myself because they cost WAY too much) and you might even save the industry.

Why internet for card processing

Because that's actually the card processors preferred connection for confirming transactions. Remember, each authorization has to be confirmed at the time of sale. That means talking to the issuing company (usually via third party software) to confirm the transaction.

I have an edge case that absolutely depends on using the internet. Convention runs for three days once a year. The convention center doesn't supply phone numbers ahead of time, but you can provision for internet on a T1. System is only up for those three days, then gets put in storage. Given the window, and vendor supplied equipment coming in, it's actually fairly secure, even over the internet. Granted, even at that when I was there we only gave the POS server internet access, not the actual terminals. These days they also run a pre-registration database which does require internet access, so the POS terminals now have direct internet access. Not sure what if any other measures they added to secure the terminals, but I don't run it anymore.

Re: Technology for technology's sake

Ah yes. I recall "hacking" the TRS-80 system they had in my high school my senior year. I took the class thinking I'd learn something. I didn't realize that the previous year working on their test machine with the permission of my probability and statistics instructor I'd learned 95% of what they'd be teaching. So of course I was always done with the assignments (thorough REM statements included) in half the time of anybody else in the class. Some of the teachers had been fascinated by a Centipede clone released for the TRS-80. And they'd let those of us who were finished play with it on the their console. But it was binary code from a floppy and so couldn't be loaded at the work stations, only the teacher's console. Eventually they got tired of me and a few friend tying up the teacher's console. We asked if we could download it to a station. They said it wasn't possible. At which point I picked up the manual, found the appropriate commands, and downloaded it to my student station. Which in turn was worse than me hogging the teacher's station because now everybody could see what I was doing.

@ridley

All very true. And yet, a carrier is nearly immobile compared to that little barge.

@ dan1980 Re: Ever heard of "word of mouth"?

IIRC the claims from Hadeed were that on the dates posted in the reviews, none of the specific services were provided in the localized area identifiable from the review. That ought to be something a court can confirm. But first Hadeed has to be able to confirm the real name and address of the poster. Risk on the other side is the complaint is valid and Hadeed is just trying to strong lawyer someone they've already abused. Maybe the poster changed the dates so they couldn't be identified, maybe they changed something else for the same reason.

Complicated, messy. But you get that with real people.

Where I come down on this is that there ought to be a legal way for some sort of arbiter to confirm or force a retraction for the review. But it can't involve the company with the bad review getting the name of the reviewer until after the arbiter confirms it is a false accusation or at least that there is a reasonable expectation it can be successfully challenged in court. You know, the sort of thing Grand Juries were theoretically supposed to do.

Re: Ever heard of "word of mouth"?

Except that this business obviously doesn't know who the reviewers are, otherwise they would not be asking for the identities from Yelp.

I'm local to the area so I hear Hadeed commercials on the radio all the time. This case is a bit more complicated than you suggest. Not sure if the article I read was here on El Reg or elsewhere, but the details were that according to Hadeed, they checked the on the bad reviews in an effort to identify the customer to make things right. In reviewing their billing records they could not find any instances that matched the details of the reported bad service. Hence the claim of defamation.

I don't know that I believe Hadeed, but I think they've presented sufficient evidence to call into question the validity of the bad service reviews on Yelp.

The problem then becomes how to protect both Hadeed and the reviewers. I think the only way to resolve that is that the identities have to be revealed to a court appointed auditor (or whatever title you want to give them) who talks to the reviewer and the reviewer has to document the validity of his posting. If the reviewer finds sufficient evidence that the event is valid, the court rejects Hadeed's claim. If on the other hand he finds insufficient evidence, or evidence to the contrary then Hadeed should be able to proceed with the defamation case.

Re: Don't like IIS?

The web server is a sunk cost

Oddly enough, that MIGHT be true if it were OSS, but not anything from MS or Oracle. As El Reg has been pointing out quite loudly with some of its headlines this last week, there's a lot of MS software out there that is EOL and MUST be replaced, regardless of whether or not the hardware is overloaded.

Yes added value is important, but you really should be sure of your footing before making that argument. If you don't you wind up not merely looking like a fool, but confirming the fact that you are.

@1980s_coder

Apology accepted.

Next time, just don't even post it. Too many trolls out there post exactly that sort of drivel with no joke intended and put on the joke icon so they can claim otherwise when downvoted. I'd remove my downvote, except the only way to do that is to switch it to an upvote. While I no longer feel you deserve the downvote, I can't go full opposite to an upvote.

@h4rm0ny

Stuart Longland has the better statement in this argument. The kernel was the wrong place to put this part of the system. That SHOULD have been fixed when they did the "ground up" rewrite of code back in Vista. And this sort of parameter checking is coding 101, not some arcane dark art.

Yes, having found the bug they had to fix it. But this bug should never have been there in the first place and absolutely shouldn't be in the kernel.

Re: You keep saying "democrat" when you should be saying "politician".

Nope, the facts say otherwise. Nixon? Resigned when confronted by members of his own party. Trent Lott, gone. Bill "the rapist Clinton"? Yep, that's right, Dems circled the wagons and denied he even committed perjury. Same thing with a whole raft of Hillary issues starting with Whitewater billing records and cattle futures, but never, ever ending.

Re: So much of what they sell is a snack

Pure prejudice from someone who has probably never actually set foot in a Walmart.

The last time I was in a Walmart (admittedly some time ago) they had plenty of fresh vegetables and meats in and open format section of the store instead of the aisle format. The meats and cheeses are typically along the outer wall, so tend not to look as large as two or three rows of boxed goods. My friends and I tend to stop for the prepared fruit, cheese, and vegetable trays before heading off for a weekend get together (usually a proper US football game in Beaver Stadium).

Re: Inheritance

How onerous inheritance taxes are depends quite a bit on the type of business. The prime and possible only example of this currently is farming. While science can do a lot to advance the productivity of a given plot of land, you still need a lot of it for farming. Which means farmers tend to wind up with a lot of wealth, but not necessarily a lot of income. Hitting them with high inheritance tax usually means selling off the land. Maybe it stays as a farm, maybe not.

Re: brings about greater unhappiness in the general population,

Contented people tend to be unproductive. Unhappy people tend to be motivated to change things. The problem is, we've got too many sycophants telling the unhappy people they can't be happy so they should riot instead. This tends not to work out well for either the rioters or their targets who both wind up with less than they had before.

Re: The problem is when wealth distorts democracy

The flippant way you post that shows an abysmal appreciation of history. The assertion that we ought to all rise to our own level of competence, and that rulers or those tightly connected to them shouldn't benefit would be laughed at in almost any other age. In fact, I'd wager it still is laughed at in most places outside of the UK and the US. Even in Greece they've been showing a penchant for that belief here of late.

Re: And I could be the first one to have an up-vote for a non-sensical comment

Have an up vote because I'm in a contrarian mood at the moment and you have two down votes. But give the free beer to some random person. I don't drink the stuff. Much more than half a glass and I'm ready to hurl the technicolor yawn.I much prefer Gin and Tonics. Those I can suck down by the 32 oz Moose cup.

Re: RIGHT!

I won't pretend to understand what some idiot thinks they wrote on Jimmy-Bob's wonder.

From my time at uni, the simplest explanation is:

Having calculated the speed at which various objects appear to be moving, and having determined that we all seem to be moving apart (everything observed so far has a red-shifted spectrum), when you calculate the mass of the universe based on our observations, all of the objects exceed escape velocity for the mass density of the universe.

Re: I don't think I ever read a scientist's words

That is quite the way they've been acting, particularly with respect to dark matter, and estimating the size of the universe. My major started out there before I migrated to the liberal arts. I got the concepts, just couldn't do the math. One thing that was quite clear was that the whole cosmological understanding is quite a house of cards with lots of places for error that are discounted. That isn't to say it isn't our best understanding of the data collected to date, just that everybody acts like certain things are better proven than they are.