So, if you're on Comcast, you're probably paying around $200 a month for Internet, cable TV with HBO, and a landline phone that you almost never use. Maybe you like HBO (or Showtime) but you never watch USA, HSN, or the other junk. You can cut $125 or more off your bill by calling them up and telling them you want to switch to Internet Plus.
You'll lose the landline phone and the Spanish channels and other junk, but you'll have broadband Internet, local channels, and HBO.
And for way less than you're paying now.
It's probably a good time to ring up the folks at Comcast; the embarassing customer service exhange that's been all over the 'net and the media during the past couple of days has probably focused their collective mind, so transition should be fairly easy.
The Mexican group managed to transmit audio, video and Internet across the spectrum of light emitted by LED lamps. This new technology, called Li-Fi or light fidelity, is presented as an alternative to Wi-Fi because it will maximize the original provided speed of the internet to offer safer data transfer and a transfer rate of up to 10 gigabytes per second.
Sisoft has come up with the technology, and unlike WiFi, the signals can't be hacked. Moreover, it's ideal for hospital installation or other facilities that contain radio signal-jamming equipment. Internet at the speed of light - if you wish, you can download an entire movie in 45 seconds. Great for video streamers, too.
They haven't found any as yet, but in a panel discussion a couple of days ago, NASA scientists claimed that they're closer than ever, and that search efforts will be vastly improved with the 2018 launch of the James Webb telescope; one of the largest yet. They plan to ferret out signatures of biogenic gases on planets circling far-off star systems - gases that can only be produced by life forms, and presumably carbon-based forms at that.
Of course, they're still rooting around on Mars, and they may even start rooting around on one of the more promising icy moons further out. They do, however, seem a bit pessimistic about the odds of discovering life elsewhere in our solar system.
On the other hand, they haven't searched Uranus....
Other browsers don't do this, but the Google Chrome browser resets your system's clock tick rate to 1 ms. In Windoze, the rate's a bit less than 26 ms.
In an OS like Windows, events are often set to run at intervals. To save power, the processor sleeps when nothing needs attention, and wakes at predefined intervals. This interval is what Chrome adjusts in Windows, so reducing it to 1.000ms means that the system is waking far more often than at 15.625ms. In fact, at 1.000ms the processor is waking 1000 times per second. The default, of 15.625ms means the processor wakes just 64 times per second to check on events that need attention.
Microsoft itself says that tick rates of 1.000ms might increase power consumption by “as much as 25 per cent”.
In other words, don't be running Chrome on your laptop (on a desktop, it slows the system, but far less dramatically). For laptops, you're better off using anything but Chrome or one of its variants (like CoolNovo). Other browsers only boost the clock tick rate when needed - like for video playback - whereas Chrome has 1 ms. as its default rate. You're losing a quarter of your battery power just by using Chrome as your browser.
Reportedly, Google's looking into the issue, but don't expect a quick fix.
It'll be interesting to see what all of the hard-working illegal aliens are going to be doing in the coming years as droids move into the fields. Systems exist now that can determine ripeness of strawberries, peppers, and other fruits and vegetables - and harvest them without damaging them. Whereas at the start of the twentieth century over half of the American population worked in agriculture, that number today is down to 2%, and more automation is on the way. The tired Lefty bromide routinely trotted out over the years in defense of illegal aliens, "Who's going to pick your lettuce?", is on its way to extinction.
Increasingly, the answer is that machines will; safely, reliably, and with no trips to the Porta-Potty.
Certainly, some may continue to find work in the construction trades, but there are only so many such jobs for unskilled workers to fulfill; even fast-food joints are increasingly turning to automation in the face of government-mandated health insurance and minimum-wage requirements. So for the vast majority of illegals flooding across our southern border, the job markets are going to be shrinking.
In Oregon, the main venues currently available to them are nurseries and other agricultural ventures, and those are precisely the areas targeted by robotics. Some manage to find work with unscrupulous contractors, but that's not exactly reliable:
Construction, which had been one of Oregon's fastest-growing sectors, lost the most ground last month. The report said contractors cut a seasonally adjusted 3,600 jobs, significantly peeling away at its growth from the past year.
And with more Americans forced to work 29 hours a week due to Obamacare mandates, guess who's not going to be buying a house any time soon? What that means is that construction jobs are going to continue on a downward trend. And while the local home sales market appears hot, superficially, the fact of the matter is that it's stalled out; I looked at a new home just a couple of blocks away from here, and it's kind of nice - hardwood floors, great kitchen, spacious yet cozy, and only $250k. Low taxes and utilities due to its location just across the Portland boundary. A year and a half or so ago, and it'd have been snapped up. I looked at it three months ago. It's still on the market.
Down the street, another home's been available for quite some time, and I noticed when passing that the realtor has posted a "new price" sticker on the sign. People aren't in a buying mood, even though interest rates are incredibly low, and the reason for that is likely uncertainty: what if they buy and then get their hours cut - or lose their job entirely? Heck, even the financial sector's cut jobs here.
It's one of the reasons why apartment vacancies are down - it's cheaper to rent, and there's no maintenance to do. With sales and construction sputtering, and robotics hitting the fields, where exactly are these hard-working illegal aliens going to find hard work?
Maybe they can start a lawn-mowing business. Oh, wait - robots are moving into that venue as well.
You may be getting a call from 347-960-4787, which is a New York City number. Actually, you may receive as many as three in the space of an hour or so, if you don't answer the first time.
I never answered, and they never left a message. Out of curiosity, I ran the number. It's a scam, unsurprisingly; the boiler-room denizen tells you that there are issues with your computer which they can "fix" for you. They sometimes claim to be from Microsoft, but in any event, they "advise" you to log into their site so that they can "correct" the problem.
They may claim that your system is infected, or that it keeps sending error messages to "Microsoft".
The calls have really picked up since they began again around 23 June, especially for those with landline phones - but they're also calling cell phones.
You're smart enough to realize that they want to take control of your system in order to plant malware and/or harvest data, but you may know somebody who's a little less savvy. Do them a favor and give them a heads-up on this.
Right...your computer knows it's got virus issues, so it notifies a Microsoft rep somewhere in India so they can fix the problem for you. Uh-huh.
Me, I'm giving the in-laws fair warning; I suggest you do the same.
BTW, I highlighted the current phone number they're calling from so that you can see what others have mentioned. "Who called me" is a good place to look for a free overview, although it's not particularly interactive.
So says the assistant city manager of Dayton, Ohio, as she sings the praises of Persistent Surveillance Systems (PSS), a Cessna-mounted camera system capable of staying aloft for hours at a time, scanning large swaths of city from 10,000 feet up.
After learning about the attempted robberies, PSS conducted frame-by-frame video analysis of the bookstore and sandwich shop and was able to show that exactly one car traveled between them. Further analysis showed that the suspect then moved on to a Family Dollar store in the northern part of the city, robbed it, stopped for gas—where his face was captured on video—and eventually returned home.
A man named Joseph Bucholtz was arrested the following month and pled guilty to three counts of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon and one count of robbery. In November 2012, he was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay $665 to the bookstore.
Okay, it has a certain degree of utility, given its DVR capabilities and when coupled with competent forensic analytics. But as is so often the case with bureaucrats, the assistant city manager takes rather a simplistic view:
“I don’t have any qualms about being surveilled because I’m not doing anything wrong. If it means that unlawful citizens get stopped—I don’t have anything to hide from.”
It's an argument that completely dismisses the implications of surveillance systems over the long term, as history has repeatedly demonstrated that whenever governments are given a new tool - or a defined mission - governments expand them. One need look no further than EPA for an example of the effects of mission creep: in addition to its recent efforts to assert jurisdiction over all waters in the USA - including that flowing down the ditch in front of your home following a rainstorm - they've now written another regulation in which they assert authority to seize the assets of anyone whom they believe to be in violation of one of their regulations; no trial necessary. It's highly doubtful that when President Nixon created the agency he envisioned any such overreach, but of course that is exactly what has transpired in the intervening years.
There is no reason to believe that 'round the clock, citywide surveillance would not be similarly "embraced and extended", to borrow a phrase from the Microsoft playbook. Such systems may be introduced as criminal-catching tools, but that's likely to be only the first step; it will surely be but a matter of time before the systems are extended to include those who disagree with prevailing governmental wisdom.
Apparently, that's a bad thing. No wonder they pirate our stuff.
(Reuters) - Chinese state media on Friday branded Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) iPhone a threat to national security because of the smartphone's ability to track and time-stamp user locations.
A report by broadcaster CCTV criticized the iPhone's "Frequent Locations" function for allowing users to be tracked and information about them revealed.
"This is extremely sensitive data," said a researcher interviewed by the broadcaster. If the data were accessed, it could reveal an entire country's economic situation and "even state secrets," the researcher said.
Mmmmkay...that seems like a bit of a stretch, unless everyone in the country's using iPhones. That seems kind of improbable, as well. Maybe when they were building their knockoffs they forgot to disable the feature. Hard to say, especially for someone like me - I use Android.
A 25 year-old woman in southern France met her One True Love online. He lives in Monaco, so she booked a five-star hotel room there and went off on a date with him. Things did not go well.
They were probably getting on okay, as she went to his house. But...
According to reports, Mina El Houari was a diabetic and collapsed at the man's house, and he thought she had died.
So, well, gosh - he did what anyone might do: he hauled her outside and buried her in his garden.
Relatives got suspicious when El Houari never returned home or contacted them. They called the police, who found muddy pants and a shovel at the suspect's home.
In his confession, he claimed to have had no idea that she was still alive. Apparently, it never occurred to him to call paramedics. These things happen, you know.
Find your soulmate at Match.com. We guarantee a memorable first date.
Chances are, your doctor already knows about those late-night pizza deliveries, as HMOs and other medical facilities are increasingly data-mining your credit/debit and other purchases and tying them into your health record number. Not that it matters to me; I do most of the grocery shopping, and after my Bride had gall-bladder removal surgery a couple of months back, she's on a low-fat diet. So my purchses are going to come up squeaky-clean, health-wise.
They don't know that I paid cash at the Dairy Queen on my way back....
All views are welcome here, but there are a few rules that most understand intuitively. If you're stupid, you need them spelled out. So this note's for you:
1) You don't get to call people names (referred to in general parlance as an "ad-hominem attack").
2) You don't get to hijack discussion threads. This means that you confine your comments to the the post, and/or to comments related to the post.
3) You don't get to spit, drool, crap on the carpets, nor employ expletives - even if you believe that doing so showcases your vast intellectual capabilities.
4) If you happen to be stupid enough to be unable to comply with the above rules, you will receive one (1) warning - after which your subsequent comments may be removed, and your comment privileges revoked.
Whereas at the start of the twentieth century over half of the American population worked in agriculture, that number today is down to 2%, and more automation is on the way. The tired Lefty bromide routinely trotted out over the years in defense of illegal aliens, "Who's going to pick your lettuce?", is on its way to extinction.
