If you use your card with a PIN (or PIN and Chip), then there are much fewer protections. If you use your debit card with a VISA or MC logo as a credit-card then you are generally protected (although you will need to fight for the money to come back in your account sooner than later, as opposed to not paying that amount when your statement comes).

It all depends on the bank. Last time my debit card got lifted they reported my card as stolen. They overnighted a new card for me (they called me at 6pm, I had the new card in my hands by 9am, four states away), and they setup a 90 day, interest-free loan to cover all the transactions that happened during the time the card was being used by somebody else. I got back a week later, filled out a form, the charges were reversed and I paid back the loan with the money that came in on the reversed charges.

Sure it was an extra headache, but they really didn't put me out for anything. In fact, they called back a few times to make sure everything was ok.

You don't have to have a fork up your ass all the time -- you choose it by association. If you let assholes handle your money then expected to be treated as such when things go wonky ;)

Every time you join their wireless network, there is a click-through stating you agree that your traffic will be stored, should you do something stupid. Not in those same words, but close enough (at least in a series of two sentences... of which any Harvard student should be able to understand..

Most of their traffic capturing was put in because of a mandate from the MPAA and RIAA back quite a few years ago. They were either going to be sued for aiding and abetting or they had to keep logs of which students were downloading which Metallica songs. They don't keep the traffic just the IP headers (actually trends, not every IP header). This was very well publicized a few years ago and shouldn't be a surprise to anybody.

Additionally, the upstream provider is required to conform to CALEA laws anyway, which would have been able to provide the same types of reports. It would have required Harvard's assistance to translate an IP to a person (I'm more than assuming they would have been willing to do this as well). CALEA does not require ISPs to notify that their traffic is being recorded, but guess what -- anything that leaves your network is out there in the open and may be open for inspection.

Most likely they had to put them in due to agreements with the MPAA and RIAA. Back about 6 or 7 years ago when music piracy was still at the tips of everyone's tongues, these organizations threatened to sue most of the major universities for aiding and abetting piracy if they didn't track what their users were doing. Most schools put in IDP systems on their outer-most gateways to the world to capture the data out of band for a short amount of time.

I don't think it's that simple.

It's easy to buy somebody a military-grade weapon to respond to a shooting. A few buck, one-time charge to a department that wants to spend it. Heck, just think of all the uses that one-time charge would provide!

It's not easy to reform our health system (look at how they tried, then completely failed because of the political battles and lobbyists), where there would be an ongoing charge that people would be reminded of each and every year when they pay their taxes. Regardless if they get better services (like mental health services) for the same if not lower prices -- it became a perceived burden that is subject to the political whims each and every year there is a new congress that wants to push their current agenda.

In my mind, the reason why the USA has all these problems with guns is not because of the guns. It's because of the people (guns don't kill people -- people kill people). All of the comparables that you can look at in Europe, Asia, etc. where firearms are available (or even in many places where it is not), if somebody has a mental illness there are actually resources available to help them. In the USA getting any help for mental illnesses is discouraged either due to lack of insurance, the incorrect insurance (service A is covered, but you need service B, which is not), or even the fear that they find something worse and you end up having to sell your house to get basic coverage. I have a few friends that are taking care of others who have severe mental issues -- and even though they have good jobs they have to live like paupers because of all the stuff that isn't covered by the insurance they can afford (and even them, the people they are helping get treatment are only getting the bare minimal treatment) . A fellow engineer who makes $100k/yr is living with his mother who has dementia barely has enough to pay for gas each week. Her medical bills alone after insurance is still $5k/month. If that doesn't discourage you to get treatment, I don't know what will.

Which is funny, as AT&T is starting petitions (and passing laws) in many states to no longer be considered a common carrier and be regulated as a utility.

Not to argue (I'm one who does everything on the desktop myself), but pretty much all the printers come with built-in WiFi, bluetooth and/or network connectivity. I think maybe the $25 printers on sale at Best Buy might be the only ones that are USB only. The last two ones I bought are WiFi enabled, and they surprisingly work well from my tablets.

A lot of that has to do with the channels being moved around more than digital vs. analog. During the move the FCC sold off a large portion of the VHF spectrum to the cellular companies. This moved a lot of the high-propagation stations to UHF with much smaller viewing areas. At the same time, the FCC sold off the higher end of the UHF spectrum which moved all the channels that had sketchy portions of the frequency down, causing their areas in some cases to double. In our area (Lansing, MI), we lost all of our VHF except one -- the rest moved to UHF (meaning I now have a hard time getting them when I live downtown due to the shadowing effect). I ended up having to put three antennas on my house, isolated from certain directions to avoid the multipath.

Texting 911 is supported in very few places. Any area where AT&T runs the database for emergency services (32 states), has NO capability for this because they never upgraded to the newer e911 infrastructure. In those cases, if your cellular provider routed SMS messages for 911 to a place, it is often their own office which they than have to manually route to a PSAP (often the wrong one), who will then call you back.

To my knowledge, there are less than a dozen municipalities that are able to handle 911 texts in the USA. Thinking this will blindly work is dangerous -- especially since SMS is a store-and-forward type of system where there is no immediacy or urgency built in to the packets that get routed.

This would be true of a network built only on large towers. Too bad > 80% of the frequency now is tied to nano, pico or other small or directed antennas that are powered off the local grid. Look at the roof tops or steeples of the larger buildings in your area -- most likely you will find cell antennas on those -- and there is a great chance those only have a 2 - 4 hour battery at most.

I think it's funny that you make your point that voice-only conveys no emotion, yet you suggest SMS, social media and email via an emotion-less web comment. What emotion am I conveying right now, asshat?

If you want a map of all the COs -- they are here : http://www.dslreports.com/coinfo They are not placed by geographic radius, but by number of subscribers. Back in the day, a central office might serve an exchange or two (an exchange is the three digits after the area code in a phone number, for example 517-355, where 355 was the exchange). Of course some COs were larger and served multiple exchanges, some getting as large as a dozen and some were smaller and only handled a single exchange. Each exchange could have just short of 10,000 subscribers (known as nodes, corresponding to the 4 digits after the exchange in the phone number).

COs, regardless of the brand (two of the most common in modern day were the 5ESS and the DMS100) knew ALL the info for their subscribers and how to route calls to tandem (directly connected) switches and upper class switches. These were known as Class 5 switches (they had directly connected subscribers) Similar to IP routing, if the phone number you were dialing was not a local subscriber then it would switch the call to the next higher class switch (Class 4), who knew how to route calls to every exchange in your LATA (your toll-free calling area). If it didn't know how to route it, it would toss it to the Class 3 switch and so forth. Billing is always done at your local CO using "CDR" records (and sent to your phone company for central billing). There are now exceptions to these roles with LNP (local number portability), but the same series of events generally occur. Remote COs know nothing of subscribers in other COs.

So, short answer, if a CO powered down completely, calls within that exchange would not get delivered. If your CO survived but was disconnected from the CLASS 4 switch, then it would be able to process calls locally and be able to send calls to the tandem switches, but you wouldn't be able to call others in your LATA and they wouldn't be able to call you.

Now cellular is a totally different game altogether. Cellular companies are subscribers of the phone network, not really a part of it. They run their own infrastructure and don't directly participate in SS7 for routing. A CO could disappear and the cellular network wouldn't necessarily be hurt (unless that was their point of termination with the phone network).

These were a lot more words than most people will care to read for a comment... I spent 8 years on the 5ESS DSIG crew installing new COs and working on the SS7 protocol.

And that is why we have laws like FERPA that protect this data and are supposed to prohibit schools from sharing this information with 3rd parties...

That is -- when schools choose not to ignore it.

I don't know a single "good" programmer who would join a company for a 4 month contract, unless they were stuck between a rock and a hard place.... and even then, they'd be looking for the next gig when they were on your contract.

Put faith in your hires first. Offer good rewards (benefits, salary, etc) and good employees will come. Act like you are trying to screw them over from the get-go and you will only get those desperate enough for it and can't get a job somewhere where they don't seem like they are screwing them over.

I run a phone system that covers 5 exchanges... It's fun watching them when their auto-dialer starts hitting our numbers. I just route them all to the same recording -- which they hit just short of 50,000 times.