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Comment Re:It's much more complicated than this... (Score 3, Insightful) 825

Of course if you are going to become a multinational company, this raised the incentive to incorporate somewhere tax friendly.

This helps American jobs how?

The Obamacare tax is already limiting premium health care offerings due to the high cost. Lost my health care plan as it was unaffordable and has a higher payment plan than my home loan.

Who can afford two home loans, or a home loan and obama care? Forget shifting the premium onto my tax bill and say you can get it with a subsidy. My tax to pay our subsidy has removed my option for full coverage. I could keep my doctor and keep my plan if I took on a 2nd full time job to support it.

Not an option.

I have considered retiring to somewhere with affordable health care. Would that make me an economic refugee?

Comment Re:So what will this accomplish? (Score 1) 154

I'm old enough to remember capping gas prices in the 1970's where retail prices were held below wholesale. Anybody remember the days where stations had flags out? Red, out of gas. yellow, emergency services only, green gas available. Traveling to Idaho had a string of red. Parked in a small town and spent the night to await the truck in the morning. Most places tried to ration gas to a couple of dollars (couple of gallons) so you constantly drove from station to station instead of filling up. Lines for stations with gas circled the block.

For drives not wanting to risk car damage from driving in hazardous conditions, I can see where a lot of drivers will stay home that do not have chains or a high ground clearance vehicle.

Comment A call for Write Protect (Score 5, Interesting) 95

It is time ro return to the Write Protect Switch. Passwords are no longer effective in preventing firmware alterations by hostile organizations.

For those old enough to remember them, changing a BIOS required an EPROM burner and UV eraser. Changing CMOS settings required setting the write protect jumper.

Early infections were restricted to Write Enabled floppies, hard drives for machines with them, and everything else was write protected.

It is time to return to write protected firmware requiring physical access to alter.

Our complacency with remote management is showing the error of our ways as we are compromised.

Comment Re:Time to abandon normal phones? (Score 1) 217

Closing spoofing closes normal business trunking.
Case in point.

I have a DID line. No outgoing phone plan at all. Normal business applications is an 800 toll free number. Call it and an entire bank of phones ring for the first available operator.

I also have several trunk lines. Mush like the local hotel. You know the drill. Dial 9 for an outside line. What was proposed is to give each of the trunks a FIXED phone number. You can call a trunk line, but they don't take inbound calls. Instead the PBX uses the info of the extension to identify the call to the CID system. I call, you call back on my 800 number. It's the way the PBX system works.

Unfortunately with the break up of ma bell, there exists COME equipment outside the control of ma bell. Now ma bell can't own all the PBX'es and be responsible for every extension.

There existed a day when anything attached to a phone line was owned by ma bell.

Now Customer Owned and Maintained Equipment (COME) has let the jeanie out of the bottle and there is no way to put the jeanie back in the bottle. I you have a business trunk line and a DID even over VOIP, setting your own line display name is a normal administrative task.

Unfortunately this is subject to abuse.

For more info on the subject read the manual for any good software PBX such as Asterisk, 3CX, etc. I can directly set the "Display Name" on my SNOM desk phone. I can call from various extensions as needed to display either my local market number or the 800 number.

Comment Re:Yeah (Score 4, Interesting) 562

The government should defend the Constitution instead of tear it apart.

The people should be secure. The people should have the right to assemble, and exclude a government representative from the meeting.

A meeting my phone should have the same protection.

It is illegal for citizens to wiretap a cell phone signal. This should apply to everyone.

It became clear this was not true. Other tools were made to enforce what should have been standard.

Now the government is a little upset that encryption exists.

Comment Re:I do not understand the self-flagellation (Score 1) 479

Nursing is a poor example now. With the obesity epidemic, there is a huge number of men in nursing now. A better example would be social services such as child protective services. Think of the children. All men might molest the kids. The argument makes as much sense as your critical project programmer might get pregnant and leave. Both are a possibility, but not a reason to exclude a gender.

Comment Re:Honest question. (Score 1) 479

Wrong question to ask. Correct question is; Are there other fields under represented by men? If they diversify those jobs, then the pool of creative and talented women could fill the vacancies created by men taking traditionally ladies jobs,

Use your imagination. Jobs that come to mind are day care workers, social workers, elementary schoolteachers, hospice and adult foster care, etc. Don't flame the thread by suggesting exotic anything. keep on topic.

Some traditional roles are already diversifying such as nursing and other non doctor medical professions such as radiology, etc.

Comment Re:Malware preventative measure (Score 2) 181

In reading TFA, a prevention may be to add the Tor list into your hosts file so it cant download a Tor client to continue. Add the list into your router blacklist can be out of reach of the malware to bypass the block.

In the arms race this is effective on the current version. An update may have a new list of Tor download locations.

Not sure if blocking TOR at the router is possible or effective.

Comment Re:Dupe (Score 4, Interesting) 840

I made a hobby and career in electronics.

Early VCR's were expensive and repairable. You could buy parts such as pinch rollers, tape guides, video drums, etc. A $30 video head and a couple hours labor for replacement and full alignment would run close to $100 ( back when shop rates were ~35/hr.

VCR's became sub $100 devices and service people gave a few estimates and went out of business.

A common failure with microwave ovens is moisture gets into the keypad or LCD resulting in the conductive paint or ribbon failure. A timer can be had for over the price of a new oven. Even with free labor, it's cheaper to replace. Labor isn't free.

Me, I'm still in electronics, but no longer in consumer throw away junk. I service semiconductor equipment. $1-5 million equipment is still worth repairing. They don't let noobs practice on it though. Need other verifiable training and experience to even get considered.

There are tons of entry level positions that pay fast food rates. Look at ads for those wanting someone to fix smart phones. Assembly people working under microscopes get very little pay as it competes with overseas sweatshops.
Getting past that into a living wage is a little tougher.

Those with a student loan simply can't afford to even consider the field. About the only way in if you are interested is a few years in the military for both training and hands on in something besides entry level.

Straight electronics is easy to understand. not being a coder and having to rig up a JTAG connection to troubleshoot something that is undocumented is the pits. For an example of this pick up any used VOIP adaptor from the used market and try to unlock it. Unless you are really interested in learning to set up a server, wireshark, and possibly JTAG to get past a custom provisioned adapter is a total waste of time. There is no money to be made to offset the time investment in learning it. A New unlocked ATA can be had for under $50.

Paying u fix it fileds are NOT in consumer electronics. They are in HVAC, Plant maintenance, PLC programming, CNG, and other related fields. People will not pay much to repair the broken screen on a used phone. People will be desperate to get the spring replaced on the garrage door or heat pump fixed. Learn the going rates in the fileds. You are not going to pay for Obamacare and build a retirement nest egg fixing cell phones and flatscreen tv's.

Comment Re:CryptoWall (Score 1) 463

Sounds like just what I need in reserve for a plausible reason my drive died when getting an RIAA demand. It it's more than 2 weeks to a trial, Right?

As a bonus I would hope they infect themselves too.

No need to mention the offline backup..

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