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Comment Re: This is silly (Score 1) 720

Did people argue against the automobile because buggy whip workers would turn to a life of crime when they lose their jobs?

There are always Luddites so probably.

We call them environmentalists today. Now someone build me a fusion reactor that works so I can afford heat my driveway and never shovel snow again! Waste heat destroying the environment be dammed! /Sarcasm

Comment Re:This is silly (Score 2) 720

You can take this as anecdotal but my wife works closely with people on welfare through a charity and it is quite common for them to get 1 or 2 free phones from the government. These are not iPhones but cheap android or feature phones like you would get with a pre-paid plan. However, the people who get them treat them like burners. It's quite ridiculous yet at the same time my wife says that not giving them phones is basically resigning them to poverty because if you don't have a phone number to put down on your application no one will take you seriously and when you choices are a phone or food the decision on what to buy becomes obvious.

Comment Password reUse (Score 2) 549

While I agree with the researchers point that dictionary attacks are the biggest risk for passwords and that you shouldn't use the same password for every account you have I don't think that a password manager is required for all situations. For example I use the same password for Slashdot, Engadget, Toms Hardware and a few other entertainment accounts. None of these accounts can really cost me money so who cares if someone gets the password? I can just make a new one. So I don't think that sharing passwords in this case is bad. I call this password my "Insecure" password. Now for other services such as my bank, email, windows log in, work password. All of these passwords are unique but I don't have many of them so it isn't hard to remember them.

Comment Republic Wierless (Score 2) 209

So my wife and I both switched from Verizon Unlimited to Republic Wireless this past January and I've already saved enough money to cover the cost of the two Moto X's I had to buy. I can see Republic Wireless not working well for everyone though. I happen to live in the Chicago Area where coverage from every major provider is basically the same. I actually get better service in the loop with my Republic Wireless phone than I did with Verizon because Sprint's towers are less congested.

However, I wouldn't ever tell my Mother-In-Law to switch to Republic since she lives so far north in Michigan that they deliver the mail by snow mobile and talk with Canadian accents. Sprint basically has zero coverage up there and when my wife and I visit we have to put our phones on airplane mode with only WiFi so the battery doesn't die really fast. Verizon has full coverage with 4G LTE there so the choice is obvious.

Comment Re:This is what happens.... (Score 1) 274

I think you are confusing professed members of a faith refusing to follow a moral code laid out over thousands of years with not having a codify morality. Trust me the Catholic church has a written down expressly codify morality. It's called Cannon Law. You can get a brief introduction to it in a book called the Catechism. Look it up some time.

Also, just because some members of a group don't follow the rules of the group doesn't mean the groups rules are all bad. It just means some members should be kicked out of the group.... but they didn't do that and it is a shame.

Comment My Solution (Score 1) 268

So, I did this with all of my movies, VHS, DVD, BluRay ect.. I ended up with a very large library of video on my computer. In my computer I used an Adaptec 5805 RAID controller with backup battery and 4 3TB WD Red HDD's to store all the data in a RAID 5. I am also running a PLEX Server to organize and add meta data to all of the video files as well as serve them to the HTPC and Roku 3 in my house. As for backup I purchased an account with Crash Plan.

With all of this I get a nice organized library for all my video files with meta data. The ability to stream them around my house and to my phone on the road. Data redundancy both local via the RAID 5 and remotely through crash plan.

  • Total cost
  • Raid Card: $250 (Yay Ebay! This card is $480 in newegg plus $120ish for the battery.)
  • Hard drive cage with Hotswap bays: $40
  • Server: Just used my gaming computer so $0 but would be $2.5k to rebuilt the computer but you don't need a computer that fast as a file server though it is a transcoding champ.
  • HDDs: 4x $125 = $500
  • Plex: Lifetime $75
  • Crash Plan: $5/month
  • Total: $945 + Computer + $5 a month
    • The initial backup took a really long time. (Almost 2 weeks.) Even with my 25mbps up stream so you may want to pop for the seeded backup option if your internet isn't very fast but it is limited to 1TB so it wouldn't have saved me too much time. I've been satisfied so far but I've been lucky and haven't needed the backup yet. Though I guess it's like insurance I pay for it but I don't ever want to use it.

Comment Re:The biggest risk to the pyramids is Islam (Score 4, Informative) 246

Let's not forget that Christians and Muslims are both religions with divergent sects. As such it might be helpful to see the following list:

  • Christians (General) 2.5+ Billion
  • Catholic Church: 1.2 Billion
  • Islam (General): 1.2 Billion
  • Sunni Islam: 0.9 Billion
  • Protestantism: 0.8 Billion
  • Shia Islam: 0.3 Billion
  • Eastern Orthodox (Christian): 0.25 Billion
  • Other Christian: 0.2 Billion

By that account the Catholic Church is still the biggest religion.

Comment Re:The real crime here (Score 2) 465

Advancements in medicine (drugs) have reduced crime (they have almost eliminated the need for insane asylums)

Tell that to all the homeless schizophrenics on the street due to deinstitutionalization. We have not eliminated the need for forced institutionalization we have limited it some but mental health is a seriously neglected part of american society. Here's a less sensational article if you don't like the other one.

Comment Re:The real crime here (Score 1) 465

At the bottom of the reference I linked to, they mention that there are conspiracy theorists that say that Lay faked his death and he's still alive.

I got a fake I just made it up conspiracy theory. His heirs killed him by inducing a heart attack because they knew him dying before appeal would complicate the civil suits so they might be able to force settlement and keep more of the inheritance. That seems much more plausible than he faked his own death. But like I said I just made it up so it's probably not true.

Comment Re:Growing pains. (Score 5, Interesting) 233

super corrupt elements of the government(like unelected senators) were run out

See I always saw that as a misunderstanding by the majority of people as to what Senators really are. The US Federal Senator's job before the 17th amendment was to represent the interests of the State they were appointed by not the people of the State. (We have the House of Representatives for that) So if your senators were corrupt then it meant that your State Legislator/Governor was corrupt. (A very distinct possibility i.e. Illinois) All we have done is taken the part of the Federal government that was supposed to be stable and turned it into the US House of Reps part II.

Also I contend that it is easier to buy a Senator now than it was before the 17th amendment. Now instead of buying off the majority of a State Legislator you would only have to buy off one man. Of course given supply and demand (There are more State Legislators than Senators.) the price of buying a Senator may be such that it isn't any different.

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