Read the book "Kill Decision". This is basically the plot.

^^ This

Millenials and their "new" inventions. Back in my day we wore our merit badges on a SASH!

So of these 4 "facepalm bugs", none are actually bugs - but less then stellar user experience issues? The headline itself is a facepalm.

HOA's were supposed to be the Republican dream coming to life. Instead of pesky local governments, private corporations would fund infrastructure like roads and sidewalks, take care of plowing them, be responsible for their upkeep. Private corporations that are "more efficient" would be responsible for the development and the neighborhood's upkeep, all while allowing citizens to still participate via board elections. The efficiency of business combined with the representation of Democracy. Let freedom ring! Cities love HOA developments. It's just like a toll road company coming to town. They promise lots of property taxes with no obligation on the cities part.

Except it almost never works out.

I've been getting rock solid 60down/20up VDSL from Qwest (err CenturyLink) for several years for $47/month. Haven't had an outage or issue yet - knock on wood. Pretty Happy.

I did a stint at Ameriprise in the early 2k's. They let most of us go and farmed out the jobs to IBM when American Express divested us. We used to be a division called "American Express Financial Advisors" (or AEFA internally - which was formed from the remnants of IDS Advisors for you Minnesotans familiar with the IDS tower) but when they spun us off into Ameriprise all of IT was axed. Who IBM got to do all the tech work, I don't know. Maybe it was Infosys or maybe they came later. It was all foreign contractors though.

Oh man, that's peanuts compared to my job. Our Cicso IP Phone VOICEMAIL has to be a 7 digit or longer password. And they block repeating numbers, obvious guesses like 867-5309 (or your own phone number). They block patterns like pressing the keypad diagonally or all the corners twice or whatever. AND you have to change it every 30 days. You better believe everyone keeps a post-it with their voicemail password right on their phone. It's a self-defeating system it's so complex.

Good for him, he hit all the buzzword checkboxes. K street will have a lobbying job lined up for him when he's ready to golden parachute out of there.

Hmmm, if DivX is to Xvid, then CurrentC is CtnerruC? Doesn't have the same ring.

According to court rulings, you actually own the first 83 feet. The most famous case of this kind comes from 1945 when a chicken farmer named Thomas Lee Causby sued the US government for flying approximately 83 feet above his property, the noise of which caused a bunch of Causby’s chicken’s to accidentally kill themselves by running into walls. Causby won his case and the courts agreed that although a property owner wasn’t entitled to own all of the air above their land, they were entitled to enough so that planes flying overhead wouldn’t kill their chickens.

As the FAA considers 500 feet and below non-navigational space, it has been assumed that you own that too, but that part has never been tried in court, and you can't count on it.

Mod up! If only I still had some points left!

Mmmmm. Nootropic smoothie. I've got to re-read some Mondo 2000 sometime.

My $3 generic eBay FTDI clone USB->Serial cable (that I bought to program my Baofeng radio via Chirp) came with no drivers and Windows pulled down the real FTDI driver. Over the summer, it only worked sporadically. Usually didn't work. Swapping out the cable for a $12 legit cable from Trendnet solved all issues. It isn't just that these chinese places are making a clone, it's that they are making a crappy sort-of compatible clone and passing it off as the real thing, and directing you to use the FTDI drivers. It totally makes FTDI look bad. I didn't find out until after researching with some guys from chirp that my cable was a knock off. I thought I was buying a supported chipset. Might not be legal or ethical, but I'm all for anything that stops these crappy chinese cloners in their tracks. I spent way too much time and hassle on a problem they caused.

Putin and the quest for the holy grail? I'd watch that SyFy special.