Or M as it's known these days. It's a horrific mess of a language, but there's still a LOT of legacy code out there and it's nearly impossible to refactor M databases into anything more modern. No matter how much I try to move away from it, I keep getting pulled back in. But hey, it pays the mortgage!

Do you know any cops? Any feds? (I'm speaking of USA-ians; other places might be different, but Comcast doesn't live there.) Subtlety is not their strong point. Arrest everybody and let the courts straighten it out is what they do.

Sure, they're going to get the person who used the credentials to log in. And the address where they logged in from. And then the scenario I just described happens.

Not mention the potential liability issues.

I can easily see the cops kicking in my door because somebody used the hotspot in my house to download kiddie porn or copyrighted files.

Does anyone really think the cops are going to differentiate between the public side and private side of the router? No, they're going to call (or subpoena) Comcast for the address where that router lives. My house.

Yeah, it'll probably get straightened out, eventually, after I get dragged away in handcuffs to the amusement of my neighbors, spend a weekend in jail, get branded in the media as a baby-raper, and get fired by my media-phobic employer. And in the meantime, I'm going to have to pay a lawyer, bail myself out, and put back together my ruined life. And Comcast will point to a sentence in their 20,000 line EULA or ToS that says it's not their problem.

And then if I have any money left, some scumbag lawyer will sue me civilly for conspiring with Comcast because I paid for the power for the router that the real kiddy porn collector used.

Not a chance.

Don't piss on Javascript. Sure, the standard library is terrible and poor cross compatibility makes it impossible to do anything interesting in a browser without shims, but

Maybe it's just me, but I find this hilarious. "but"...

I dread being handed someone else's Javascript code. It's nearly always faster for me to refactor it than to try and resolve a subtle bug.

From what I read here on Slashdot, I thank the gods that I don't do Perl. And many of the complaints I read about PHP are surely valid, but I like it and use it anyway, and so far I have not shot myself in the foot.

Once again, this isn't it.

He's had several opportunities to do something about this. He keeps making weaselly attempts to talk about it like he's doing something without actually making any changes. It seems obvious to me that he wants this to continue, much like his equally weasel-ish approach to medical cannabis. And this way, he can blame it on a do-nothing Congress, thus giving his potential successor a talking point.

I interpret this to mean that they already have good enough assets within Samsung to be confident that they're getting what they want without anything extra.

So, alleged terrorist calls Pizza Hut. I call Pizza Hut. That makes me a legitimate target. Alleged terrorist calls AT&T. You call AT&T. Now you're a legitimate target. Real terrorist calls another real terrorist on a burner cell. Not a legitimate target. This isn't any kind of solution.

with a shitty attitude like that, you're damn right there's nothing you can do about it.

I'm curious... it's easy to malign my attitude, but what, specifically, do you recommend *I* do to solve this problem? What do you think *you* can you do to solve it? I am genuinely interested. Give me something to work with and I'll get behind it 110%. But I'm a pretty smart guy and I don't see a damn thing I can do.

I'm not willing to commit any crimes (other than perhaps some mild civil disobedience) to change things. (And that civil disobedience thing didn't work out well for me with the Occupy movement, but that's another story.) One very minor thing I can do is pollute their data, and I do that at every opportunity.

I hear a good many idiots talk about armed revolution. That's not an answer. I'm old now, but I've seen revolution up close with a rifle in my hand. It isn't pretty and it takes generations to come back from it and what you get back isn't any better, just different.

I am politically active, and I vote my conscience. But all too often I have to vote against someone truly awful rather than for someone who supports some of my views. And I know many people feel that way. I have been trying for two decades to get rid of my senior senator, who's bought and paid for, and I can't even seem to manage that.

In reading over some of your past Slashdot comments on this and other related issues, I don't see anything positive. So here's your chance. Give me something I can get behind and I'm game.

Not at all. I think we've just all come to the realization that there's not a damn thing we can do about it. The people who are supposed to be looking out for us are acting like petulant teenagers. The "hope and change" guy hasn't done anything but make the problem worse. The guys in charge of the whole thing just lie about it and nothing is done. What's the answer, other than ignore the new revelations?

All of these "conditions" are arbitrary and open to whatever interpretation the feds feel like today. In the meantime, it's still being kept as a Schedule 1 drug. This administration has repeatedly and consistently said one thing and done another. You'll forgive me if I don't believe a word of this, which has no more weight than a touchy-feely press release.

The last time I left a job, I was going to a competitor and just assumed my current employer wanted me gone. (It was, and still is, their policy in that circumstance to walk the employee out and pay them for the last two weeks.) My boss made a big stink about me planning to leave immediately, brought HR in, and they told me I'd have to sit out the two weeks or I wouldn't get my accrued vacation time. (Which is illegal in my state, but never mind.) So I unpacked my box, and started a new project that afternoon. You know the punch line. My badge didn't work the next morning, security escorted me to my desk and watched gimlet-eyed as I loaded up my box again and they walked me out the door.

... today wasn't your first day at Bluehost.

This is a common problem for hearing aid users as well. The holy grail of hearing aids is an aid that helps the user hear voices in a noisy environment. Sophisticated digital signal processing has helped a lot, but it remains a partially-solved problem.

I wear an Oticon Chili SP9, which is a high power digital aid, programmable by the audiologist. There's a DAI (direct audio input) boot available, which I use with my low-end MP3 player. There's also a much more sophisticated set of devices called "Connectline" http://oticonusa.com/Oticon/Professionals/professional_products/ConnectLine.html based on a gadget that hangs around your neck or in your pocket. It adds Bluetooth connectivity (and limited control of the aid) from the gadget. It only works with certain Oticon aids using a protocol I haven't been able to decode.

The Connectline gadget seemed like a good idea at the time, and I willingly spent the (lot) of extra money, but I find I mostly use the wired DAI boot. The Bluetooth gadget is more of a pain than a help. The battery doesn't last very long (less than a workday) and has to be shut off to recharge, which it does via a mini-USB connector. And it only links to one or two Bluetooth devices at a time. Also, it interferes with the Bluetooth system in my car.