Posts by Tom 13

Re: WTF is anyone still using PayPal for?

I avoided Paypal for a long, long time. I've only within the last year gotten one for the sole reason that they were the only accepted way to make payments to a website. And no, I haven't been on eBay in a long long time either.

You want me to stop using Paypal? Great. Give me an alternative. Because credit and debit cards just don't always work. And I say that as a crazy 'Merkin.

Re: passing the funding through the States

except that passing funding through the States is irrelevant. Banks are required to REPORT on suspicious transactions, not stop them. Because quite frankly too many honest transactions raise flags on the suspicious list (e.g. deposit of over $10,000).

So this is all down to somebody at PayPal being a butthead.

Re: this is a requirement for bank operation

No, there is no such regulation. In fact, given privacy requirements on banks, it is arguable the reverse is true: that they must use encryption on email handling financial information.

Re: Streisand Effect? Nah.

But I thought we liked flash.

...

Except when it comes from Adobe.

Re: A completely different Ass

It might be a different Ass., but it IS the same mindset.

Re: IF Aereo were rebroadcasting "closed" content such as ESPN

Copyright is copyright, and public broadcast is a LIMITED license. The limit is that you the consumer receive it directly from the copyright owner or their authorized reseller. Aereo is neither the consumer nor an authorized agent. And apparently the rewritten cable laws eliminated what was once a safe-haven.

Re: Minority Report

Having read your unpopular post above, I think you are wrong on this reply. I don't like what you have written, but considering it carefully, I think you are correct. Therefore, because of the way the relevant act was rewritten, so long as the data is transmitted on private lines other than the presentation device itself, it counts as broadcast.

Now where I do see a small opening is in challenging the Constitutionality of the re-written law, which it doesn't appear to me happened in this case. But let's face it: a single person is far less likely to be able to afford the lawyers for that case than a corporation is.

Re: But what if I choose to..

Liability and damages in these cases don't depend on whether or not you are reselling a service, only that you are infringing on the value of the the copyright protected materials. The ability of a plaintiff to collect damages does, but not the ruling itself.

A volunteer organization I participated in tried to make that argument for services we wished to provide at a convention. We were shut down cold by the lawyers.

Re: bad news

Yes, but notice how they left out one of the most helpful bits:

BREYER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and KENNEDY, GINSBURG, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN,JJ., joined. SCALIA, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which THOMAS and ALITO, JJ., joined.

Breyer [Clinton, Democrat]

Roberts [Bush Jr, Republican]

Kennedy [Reagan (88), Republican]

Ginsburg [Clinton, Democrat]

Sotomayor [The Big 0, Democrat]

Kagan [The Big 0, Democrat]

Scalia [Reagan (86), Republican]

Thomas [Bush Sr., Republican]

Alito [Bush Jr., Republican]

In 86 when Reagan appointed Scalia, Conservatives still held sway in the Reagan White House. By 88 the RINOs had mostly taken over and sought a stealth candidate with little paper trail for Democrats to attack. Roberts? Well, after the 0bamacare ruling, we've all pretty much decided the NSA turned over incriminating photos to The Big 0. But there's no getting around the fact that every Democrat appointed justice voted to put the screws to the little guys.

Re: impressed - not so much

I was thinking "Yes, but I suspect not in the way he wants me to be."

Re: good source of data

If the city were a business they would. They aren't so they don't give a damn. They've set the rates, designated the buildings, and set the available number of spaces. The people can go frell themselves if they don't like it. They know where the congestion is and they know why. They regard it as a good thing because it discourages people from driving.

Re: causes the door to close itself?

Having an audible alert is still helpful for those rare instances where the self-closing door gets stuck on something that wasn't put away quite right. But again, this isn't an IP stack function but a local sensor loop and you are correct that the first step is the self-closing door.

Now this on the other hand:

The internet of things is shaping up as a riot of technically possible solutions, desperately searching for some problems. On the occasions where a problem can be solved, it often seems an expensive solution for a mildly inconvenient or infrequent occurrence, often with significant additional risks.

deserves about a googleplex of upvotes.

Re: And that's exactly what newer fridges do.

The only other useful thing I can think of would be something that warned you if the power had been out for an extended period of time. Or maybe make it even simpler and just warn if the temperature had exceeded certain parameters and indicate the time period for which they were exceeded. But again, a simple sensor arrangement on the fridge with an indicator on the door would seem to be far more useful.

I can think of one person I know of who might have benefited from a message sent to his email or smart phone on this front recently. Had to throw out a freezer because it came unplugged and he didn't realize it until weeks later. But even at that it wouldn't have helped him. He's still fighting with Verizon to get FIOS connected to his newly built home.

Re: Connected fridge - a small subset of first world problem

I had this debate about 25 years ago when I was working for a home automation firm. They were always talking about connecting the fridge, oven, and VCR to the telephone gateway which would let you control them. I would look at them and ask "Why? What benefit does this give me?" They kind of looked back at me dumbfounded. Once one of them said "Well, if you forgot to set your VCR, you could do it with your phone." My response, "But if I forgot to set the VCR, what are the odds it is loaded with a blank tape anyway?"

Mind you, I thought it was a cool system and had some useful features. I was trying to direct them away from trivial stuff to things that would make it worthwhile. In the end, I sort of won the argument, but it was the king of Pyrrhic victories: the company filed for bankruptcy a year after I left.

Re: @Dan Paul

I think the 33% is before it goes to trial. After it goes to trial I think the figure goes up to 50%. I don't recall all the exact details, just that it was one of the reasons my Dad settled at a lower rate for a truly open and shut* injury case that was covered by insurance. Going to court risked the whole settlement, delayed payment, and wouldn't have netted him a lot more money because of the increased fees.

*Injury was a vehicle accident (18 wheeler ran a red light and nailed him in his bread truck) which almost cost him his leg. He was lucky. About three cars behind him was a surgeon who had just finished training in a new technique for reconstructing the leg. He took charge at the crash site and ordered the ambulance to his hospital. If the paramedics had taken him to their normal drop off, they would have amputated the leg.

Re: Is this . . .

Aye-aye-aye!

Re: once I manage to not have month left at the end of my money

While I appreciate the humor, that's the real root of the problem. Too many of us have too much month/half-month/2-week/week left over at the end of our money. So we're all living off rolling short term credit. If you want to rebuild our economy, for a while most of us have to cut back on expenses so we have money left over at the end of the period. And while that is happening the economy WILL contract because we're paying off all those debts we owe. Only once we get back in a position where credit is extended mainly for capital type investments will the economy recover.

Re: you could use minutes of travel

Even that isn't simple. For instance back when I was driving my commute time could vary between 40 minutes and 100 minutes excluding days on which there was an actual collision in my travel path. There was a two month period when I was leaving the house at 4:30 am and had the 40 minute commute. Most of the time I left at 6:00 and it took 60 minutes. For 7:30 it was the 100. If it got past 7:30 I waited until 9:00 before leaving.

Re: Why did the women move out?

Probably for the same reason men are attracted to it:

There's no mushy gushy emotional interface. The computer does what you tell it to. Exactly what you tell it to and if it doesn't work it is your fault. You don't develop a relationship with it no matter how much the sci-fi shows try to sexualize it with their holograms and voices. For whatever reason, women are drawn to the emotional bonding. You can get that in PM and marketing, but not so much on the programming side.

Re: I always write "prefer not to say"

Which the EEO types translate to WASP - male when they get the form and enter the information into their database.

Re: but what does 'Common Carrier' status imply?

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/201

Near as I can tell, it says the FCC will set ISP rates instead of the ISPs.

So the question is, who do you want setting your ISP rates? A politician who doesn't know jack about what he's regulating, or the tech company selling the service?