That is *way* better than the problem we faced last year, which took many months of sleuthing to fix: our phone number had somehow gotten wires crossed with an honest to god escort service in Canada somewhere (we live in California, not even the right *country*). Don't ask me how, I don't know, and neither did the phone company when we eventually managed to track down the source of the real number. We would have several calls a week (some weeks several times a day) requesting to know whether specific hooker-sounding female names were "available" right now. And of course it took forever to get any information out of these clients as to who they were trying to call and how they got our number (at first we thought it was just wrong numbers, *eventually* we got enough information from the callers to piece together what was really happening).

Loads of fun, but not really the same, since the people calling *were* looking for a (I assume?) legitimate business in the location they were calling, and it wasn't at all their fault, nor the fault of the business in question, that it was being mistakenly redirected to our number. Was pretty hilarious, though. When I finally tracked down someone capable of fixing it at the phone company responsible for the mixup, he laughed for like a minute straight.

Yes it is. Which is why everyone makes fun of it. The out of universe explanation is that the guy who wrote that didn't know what he was talking about, and nobody else did either until it was too late to fix it. The (total retcon) in-universe explanation, which is legit in that it is way super cool, even though it was also very obviously a retroactive ass-pull fix, is: the Kessel Run requires you to weave through a giant pile of black holes and other nasties you wouldn't want to hit. Therefore, in order to optimize time, what you're *really* optimizing is your pathfinding algorithm; thus, smuggers started talking about how fast someone completed said run in units of distance, because that's what they were measuring.

Because if I recall (though I haven't read it in forever), the previously-official-but-not-anymore Han Solo prequel story was actually a pretty fun story. It wasn't the Thrawn trilogy, but it was still pretty decent, and I would totally support there being a movie adaptation of it: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki...

But again, not as much as I wanted to see Thrawn on the big screen. Star Wars the no-longer-extended-universe-that-has-no-Timothy-Zahn-in-it-anywhere is dead to me.

Urban farming, "GrowWise", definitely doesn't sound like "pots of *basil*" is exactly the right market for it. More like something else that also starts the same way, but has two fewer words.

Great timing for it, too, what with the burgeoning legalization movement all across the country (but, often, only for personal use, not for sale, making logistics difficult unless you are actually growing it yourself).

That's silly. I would *love* an electric car. I'd absolutely love to fix our reliance on gas, and to never have to visit a gas station. That would be great. But not until a. the infrastructure is there, b. electric cars don't cost waaaay more up-front, and c. the range issue has been fixed. All of these issues I absolutely believe will be fixed in my lifetime, but they aren't there yet.

It leaves Windows 7. Just because they've made a newer one doesn't mean the existing one will suddenly stop working...? (Well, at least it didn't used to mean that; no guarantees going forward...)

Finally a thread where his gibberish is absolutely 100% relevant, and there *isn't* a post about how app appers app apps yet? Come on! It's practically *begging* you to write about apping apps so you can app apps while you app, or whatever the crap. That'd be like a thread that's actually about using hosts file with no hosts file gibberish guy.

Seriously, though, this is dumb. Why the heck would google want to stop writing apps for their own ecosystem, and why would we want them to? I mean, we want them to stop *sucking*, like maps totally does and always has, and it would also be nice if we could uninstall the ones we don't ever feel we'll use, but that doesn't mean Google shouldn't make them...

The best password: ********

"How frequently have people run into companies sending sensitive information (like passwords) in cleartext via e-mail?"

Not *that* often, but more often than you would think. (See plaintextoffenders.com - they've got hundreds of examples.)

"What would you do if this type of situation happened to you?"
What I do when this happens:
1. Take a screencap of the email, black out the username and password, and send it to plaintextoffenders.com
2. Contact the site admin, let them know that you just did that, and why it's such a bad idea. Link them to http://plaintextoffenders.com/...
3. Immediately change your password on the site to something stupid that would definitely not even *remotely* help an attacker guess what sort of passwords you might use on other sites, since if their password security is that awful, chances are their security is awful in other ways too.

Agree complete: I *would* agree with the phrasing "The earth is getting warmer because of human activity" (i.e. it's a contributing factor). I would even agree with the phrasing "The earth is getting warmer primarily because of human activity" (i.e. it's the *biggest* factor). Saying it's getting warmer "mostly" because of human activity means there's very little *else* contributing to the trend, which I'm not at all sure we have proof of, nor is it even particularly relevant. I caught that right away. I'm surprised that high a percentage of liberals/democrats agreed anyway, given it's not really true as stated.

Presumably because they need the money, and as was pointed out by the OP, it's easier to break back into a field you were already in, than a new one. Breaking into a totally new field not right out of college *is* kind of difficult, after all, especially if you've been totally out of the workforce for 3 years (but even if you haven't).

My wife is also looking towards completely changing career paths entirely out of IT (where she's been for a few years). I totally wish her luck, but it's not the easiest thing to do, and she knows it.

That said, yes, it is kind of silly that it was the husband posting this to /., and not the person who is actually looking for advice.

Then somebody hacks into a thermostat, uses it to burn somebody's house down for luls. The couple whose house was burned down tries to sue, loses due to the contract that says their only recourse is a refund of the 50$ even though WTF, it makes all the news everywhere, and the device is forever known as "that device that burned some guy's house down and they gave him a whopping 50 bucks". They're now out 50 bucks in direct cost, and a jillion dollars in lost sales.

We sometimes forget the economics side of things, but companies *often* forget the social side of things (i.e. if you treat people like crap, they'll tell their friends, who will tell their friends, and eventually you'll be "that company that treats people like crap". Unless, of course, you're a monopoly, or if all your competition is equally terrible, in which case do what you like.)

Except in this particular case, it sounds like the reviews are super fake. Not just super fake, but also insulting (to and at least borderline offensive. *Either* of those would be enough to get the reviews pulled completely (not just hidden). So it's strange they'd go straight to the courthouse, instead of just flagging the reviews for deletion? I flag reviews all the time (usually by people who don't know how to use yelp and have posted reviews to the wrong place, but occasionally also for other reasons), then they get deleted.

I would have a huge problem with requiring reviewers to check in at the business, because a. not everyone always has a smartphone, b. not everyone always has their smartphone *with* them and charged, and c. even when I do, I'd say my rate of actually being allowed to check in is about 50% (the other half the time, it says the GPS couldn't get an exact enough fix on my location).

SpaceX Breaks Down... (crap, what happened now?)

its rocket landing attempts. Ah, alright then, never mind. Got me worried for nothing.

4:3 really wouldn't be that much of an improvement, either. A small one, but I remember the jump from 4:3 to 16:10 *very* fondly. I'm not against change, just against *stupid* change. 16:10 is optimal for just about everything. (Yes, even playing 16:9 media: in that specific use case, it leaves just enough space for controls. ;))