Posts by a_yank_lurker 4138 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Nov 2013
The hedgies sued claiming the offer was too low. The court then evaluates, based on a decision by the Nine Seniles, what the fair market price should be, likely to be different number than the offered price. If it is higher, HP forks over more money. But if lower, they lose money on the deal.
This highlights a problem for all. If a sociopath thinks they can abuse the system because of their position they will try. Just hope you are in the target area. More damage is done by insiders than by hackers.
Also, how was he caught? It sounds like his money laundering techniques were amateurish enough that a fraud detection system/person got suspicious. I wonder if the transaction patterns looked different from that of a true retailer. Something that he might not have considered as he might not have ever worked in retail.
The real problem was speculating in an unregulated market with almost all your money. If you are going to speculate make sure you can afford to lose all of it even in regulated market. In some ways a casino offers more reliable rewards even if the games are skewed in favor of the house. Cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic, fundamental intrinsic so unlike speculating with gold or real estate there is tangible property.
As an aside, Libertarians are not Anarchists. Libertarians realize there is a need for laws and regulations for a properly functioning society. But we object regulatory creep by agencies and a tendency for top-down regulation. Rather we prefer finding the right balance to maximize freedom while protecting society from miscreants and to as much as possible push the laws and regulations to the local level as it is closer to the people. Not say getting these balances right is easy, its not.
SQL injection is a well know attack method to gain access to a database that can be defeated by competent parameterization of user input. More like the incompetent coding than a sophisticated attack. From my company's security training, often attackers will use social engineering tricks to get or install there malwares.
@Sisk - Guido designed Python to be a very straightforward thus relatively easy language to learn and master. Many none IT professionals need to do a bit of programming and find Python a good choice for many tasks. Plus the language scales nicely for larger projects if one takes the time to plan the project properly (not a language issue in realty). Most data analysts are not likely to IT people as their is considerable domain knowledge needed to be an effective data analyst. Knowledge an IT person is not likely to know.
I have an uncle who back in the day said he would hire accountants and teach them programming for the accounting code he had to keep up than hire an IT grad and teach them accounting. The issue is the domain knowledge needed and who knows what.
Very good observation. I live in a major Southeastern metropolitan area so the cost of living is not dirt cheap. But decent apartments and affordable housing is available throughout the metro area. My salary would not allow me to rent a dumpster in SF or Silly Valley let alone a nice 2 bed, 2 bath apartment or buy a house.
While there are sampling problems that limit validity of the data it does point out basic a photography problem. Darker colors tend to show less contrast when photographed unless the photographer makes an real effort to compensate with the lighting and camera setting. My cats are very dark brown and without compensating for their coats facial definition tends to get washed out when I photograph them. I would say the error rate for white females should be a red alert that these packages will probably have an unacceptable error rate for any real identification no matter the race of the individual.
Partially true, but smart brand managers care deeply about what their brand is associated with and thus its image. Bad branding and ad placement ultimately means less sales as customers associate your brand with something unsavory. Not a winning strategy. Unilever is telling Fraudbook to get its act together or else. Fraudbook needs Unilever more than Unilever needs them. Advertising on Fraudbook or any other site is only part Unilever's overall marketing strategy.
John Wannamaker commented he did knew have is advertising budget was wasted but he did not know which half it was.
Under feral law, weed is still illegal to possess or sell. So in the states that have legalized it anyone involved in the trade is violating a feral law. Also, note, there is a notorious 1930s decision by the Nine Seniles that basically said the ferals can impose their will on intrastate commerce (such as this) as well as interstate commerce. The original case had to do with wheat allotments and a farmer growing wheat for his own use on his farm (never left his property). The Nine Seniles ruled the ferals could count the wheat against any allotment the farmer had.
@AC - The most pernicious problem in the US injustice system is for prosecutors to pile on marginally related charges to the primary charges in the hopes of guilty verdict at trial. Thus, the offers for a plea bargain look very good when facing 20 or 30 mostly semi-bogus charges. Many famous cases were the conviction was not for what you think (Martha Stewart was nailed for making false statements to the ferals not insider trading; a minor add on charge they could make stick.)
As for Love, it sounds like there are possible UK charges if the ferals are willing to share their evidence but it also depends on how solid the evidence is. With the ferals, I suspect they would tried piling on extra charges once he was over here to find one they might trap him on. If he violated UK law, I have no problem with him being tried in the UK even when the target is the ferals. But then, I distrust the ethics of the ferals.
Speed traps and dodgy traffic tickets are a well know problem in the US. In Georgia a few years ago the state put up warning billboards to warn motorists there was a speed trap ahead in south Georgia. In metro Atlanta a few years ago, Pine Mountain was operating a notorious, illegal speed trap. The county (DeKalb) made sure the local media pointed out the defendant could have the case moved from Pine Mountain muni courts to the county traffic court; a point most were not aware of. Needless to say the county court found most not guilty and those few that were found guilty paid the county not the city. That ended the Pine Mountain speed trap as a revenue source.
Depending on the state, using traffic court to basically fund the town is illegal. A possible challenge is to look at how much of the local budget is paid for by traffic fines versus tax income.
@tombo - If the code is never publicly released (by definition private) then there is no need to specify a license. The terms of the original license only apply when you release derivative code to the public. Also, any new code, unrelated to other code, can be released under a different license than the rest of the code.
Software licenses such as BSD, MIT, or GPL are means to allow legal reuse of the code without the threat of lawsuit. By releasing the code under, say MIT, the copyright holder is granting the user legal rights beyond what is granted by statutory copyright law (basically not much). This is reason it is rarely litigated.
Watch the Weather Channel, if there is a very bad storm in the area flights will be delayed or cancelled. The only issue is figuring out how the delays and cancellations will cascade through the system. Do not really need AI for this just a knowledge of flight patterns and weather.
An unsolicited email or texts answer is never. There are two types of emails a US entity would send: generic alert email/text or one in direct response to a persons contacting the agency. The first is often a traffic or weather alert and is always informational and never requires a response. The second will have either generic content ("Thanks for contacting...") or will have specific content related to a specific question you raised. In the second case, the response will refer to specific issue.
A law enforcement issue will either be an official letter or someone with official credential coming 'a knockin'.
@Mark 85 - the smart monopolists know they can not raise prices just because of their market share. When they raise prices they give competitors a chance to take market share from by undercutting the higher prices. Also, retail is fundamentally a high volume, low margin business no matter who you are. Plus, Amazon, though large, is not as big as other retailers such as Walmart or Target who actually have higher margins than Amazon.
Dumbshoring and its relative dumbsizing only work as bandages over gangrenous wounds at best. It never addresses the real problem: being out of sync with the market. Cutting costs for the sake of cutting costs means you have lost sight of your customers' needs. Customers will react with time and the vicious cycle will continue.
@Charlie Clark - The classical media have done a good job of discrediting themselves with anyone's help. Remember 'Fake but accurate' from 2004? It is easier to find the raw information on the web than it was 25 years ago or at least reports much closer to the source. The media got fat, dumb, and lazy; relying on their mid-20th century dominance to continue.
As far as propaganda, it is only effective if it is the only available source of information. As soon as viable alternatives are available its effectiveness in muted. Also, internal problems within a country will have more effect than an external propaganda effort. The Soviet Union collapsed because of internal problems rather because of any Western propaganda.
@John Brown (no body)-Another item that shows an age gap is attitude towards smartphones. Those of us who are 60+ can remember when there were only landlines with caller id. Often a family had maybe to 2 phones on the line in the house. Wanted to make a call, you shared the phone. Couldn't reach someone (a common occurrence), no message so call back. Away from home, no one could easily reach you. Older people often are not as worried about not answering the phone just because someone called if it interrupts something they are doing. The youngsters often feel they must answer every call even when it disruptive.
@ChrisC - One important difference between Android and Bloat10 is many people set up their phones with the bare minimum of personal stuff on it. I am not worried about Chocolate Factory getting my financial details from their vacuuming because I did not have any financial apps on my phone and never will. But I do online banking, shopping, etc. so I am concerned about the OS vacuuming up my data even if accidentally. I want at least one OS that allows full control of its phone home behavior and that is my primary desktop OS (which is Linux).
While there is almost certainly a bit of posturing by the Congress Critters, the fact there are no reliable patches for these problems from anyone is troubling. Compounded with patches do not seem to coming in the immediate future. While the real danger to users is uncertain at this point, there are more immediate damaging exploits in the wild, the collective blundering invites scrutiny..
@Long John Brass - Chinese subsidizing their solar panel industry does a couple of things. It allows the Chinese to sell below actual manufacturing costs thus undermining a local industry. Thus the victim country has a few choices: slap a tariff on Chinese panels, let the domestic industry whither, or subsidize the domestic industry. The least disruptive is probably a tariff if rebuilding the domestic industry is a priority.
Sounds like a title to a farce. The 2016 election gave the US a choice between a loud-mouthed blowhard and an unindicted felon (the email server is a felony violation of US law). Not exactly a thrilling choice as both were detested by large parts of the public. Add to the mix Felonia called over half the country 'deplorables' and did not bother to campaign in many key states. Bubba told the blockheads in Brooklyn Felonia needed to actively campaign in Michigan, Pennsylvania, etc if she really wanted to win. But what did a 2-term President know about winning elections, apparently not much.
The US Constitution makes the Presidential election in effect 50 simultaneous elections which the candidate must win the right combination to become President. It has been this way from the beginning.
Most of the reason Felonia lost was she ran a stupid campaign alienating more voters in key states like Michigan than Blowhard. Managing to alienate more than Blowhard is an accomplishment of sorts but the wrong kind.
Whatever minimal effect the Russians had has been overstated. Plus most of the 'analysis' assumed Blowhard was Putin puppet. Also, no one has truly tried to determine if Putin had a clear favorite. I suspect he would have preferred Felonia in reality on points.
Cryptocurrencies themselves are not Ponzi schemes as their value fluctuates with the market though as an investment I would class them tulip bulbs. The problem is there many schemes that claim to invest in cryptos with guaranteed rate of return (one characteristic of the classic Ponzi scheme) but there is no way they can actually guarantee future returns. These schemes rely on the 'investors' vague knowledge of cyptos and how they work but awareness of them.
What Charles Ponzi's scheme was to make a plausible sounding line about buying a real financial instrument and using arbitrage to make money (he guaranteed a specific rate). But instead of investing in the actual instrument, use new money to payoff previous 'investors'. The classic Ponzi scheme eventually falls apart because there are a finite number of potential investors. One of the 'insights' Ponzi had was to reason a real financial instrument that people would be aware of but vaguely understood how it worked. It worked in the 1920's and similar scheme work today.
Claimed is the key word. In this research, people were blinding evaluating risk based on a few factors on a piece of paper. And they are about as accurate as an 'expert system'. This is without any interview or interaction with the person which might have improved their accuracy.
The only possible advantage of the 'expert system' is it is faster.
Since the flaws are in the chip design, the chip houses are the correct target for sue balls. Fruit, Slurp, etc might be able to mitigate some of the flaws in the OS but that is more by accident than by design. It is very likely there are couple chip faux pas that are not known/announced that can not be fixed in the OS. But shysters get to do what shysters do.
The point of money is to provide an easy medium of exchange for time worked and cost of goods eliminating the need for a barter system. Whether is it gold coins, paper backed by gold, just paper, or a cryptocurrency, it must be an easy to use medium of exchange. It should be relatively stable medium over time to be effective; the price now is going to be about the same next week or next month.
Do crytpocurrencies function as effective exchange media?
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