FWIW, the law very rarely supports "finders keepers losers weepers". The short story on that is that "physical posession does not prove or establish transfer of ownership". The only time that has a chance of winning is when the loser fails to establish they ever had ownership. But in this case, she gave it to them, and that 100% transfers ownership. Legally, they owe her nothing, and would be unlikely to lose in a court case.

Someone above cited big business as above this law, such as a "bank error in your favor" getting yoinked back. No, in that case when you sign the paperwork to set up the account, there will be specific wording in there saying you agree that bank errors are NOT in your favor and you will be legally obligated to return any cash withdrawn under those circumstances. The only difference here as far as the bank is concerned is they didn't stop you before you got money from them (unlke say, a bounced check) and so now there's a bit of additional burden to having go to after you to get the money back. (it usually doesn't work that way, so that just tends to get them wound up)

what's with this "RTM" term?

I'm going to have sooo much difficulty not auto-translating that to "RTFM" when I hear or read it...

there are a lot of them for sale, they're very cheap. http://www.ebay.com/itm/221602... is the first one I spotted. They usually run on four AA. That one even has a light in it, that's a feature mine doesn't. (but hey, mine was free)

I have a rechargeable battery bank, a bank that uses 4xAA drycells, and a few 12v-powered usb sources. The drycell one stays in my globebox with some AAs, as it can be "recharged" on short notice with a trip to any store. The rechargeable one is in my center console, to be grabbed if I need to recharge my phone. That one also has a simple little bright white LED light on it and makes a nice impromptu flashlight. (IMHO every battery bank should have this feature, look for it if you are shopping around, it also has a charge level indicator and can be switched off without unplugging the device, but alas only one USB port)

On the floor is one 7 port power station, that can supply two 2amp and 5 1amp ports off the truck's 12v power, good for rapid-charging high-demand things like tablets or other banks. Its daily duty is to power my GPS, a pair of USB speakers on my dash, and keep my iphone charged. Most of the "high power usb chargers" are garbage and a waste of money. This one's actually designed for it and speced to do the job. (http://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/USB-3.0/Hubs/7-Port-Dedicated-USB-Charging-Station~ST7CU35122)

I know several people that have those cheap usb-personal-fans and use a bank to run them, they keep them in their purse and pull them out when they're somewhere hot and want to cool off.

I'm also ordering two DC-DC converters shortly, one that steps down and one that steps up. It occurs to me that I can use the step-up to generate 12v etc from a 5v USB source, which may come in handy.

"Everyone trying to manipulate search results"

Though just because "everyone else is doing it" doesn't make it right. This particular one is just something more people would like to see action taken on.

(I won't shed a single tear for scientologists gettting a slashdot effect)

wait, didn't ISIS just claim responsibility for this?

There's nothing "free" about getting ads and spam thrown at you. If advertisement was free, they wouldn't charge you to do it.

was just gonna say that... 40kb is quite a lot of assembly, or even C as long as it's not using bloated libraries.

Does anyone here happen to know if they code the rovers in assembly? or code the patches in assembly?

agreed. I'd say gas pumps rank second only to ATMs for their target value by the hackers. I think trying to get them on any physical network may be a bad idea. And I'd be willing to bet the manufacturers made it the way it is very much on purpose. Security is generally a 1:500 option. You add 1% of inconvenience to use and maintain, and it adds 500% of inconvenience to compromise. You see "pain in the butt". Hackers see "practically impossible".

While it would be nice to see someone grow a pair and say "Nope, I'm not here for hush money, I'm here for my pound of flesh. So buckle up and prepare for some publicity and federal exposure." it's also hard for me to honestly say I wouldn't turn down a free 20g.

It does seem a bit low though? If it were significantly larger, well, everyone has their price, but 20g is really flying low.

You'd think that [i]somewhere[/i] in the article they'd least ONCE explain that short acronym. But no. Short acronyms are difficult to google.

I think they're talking about this?

privacy issues aside, it's refreshing to occasionally see any government group not rubberstamp any expense that they don't have to worry about paying for. "We can't use this, we're not going to buy it." "but, but... it's so SHINY!"

So now I think we're up to something like... Common Sense: 5 - SNAFU: 885,236

Grant or no grant, that money doesn't just get tossed in a fire if it's not spent. It'll get repurposed somehow, somewhere, maybe by someone else but for public benefit, and hopefully into something more useful and less harmful to the public.

(hopefully we don't hear a shout from the grant people, "so... does somebody else want a free Stingray?")

The airlines will simply insert a clause in the purchase agreement that says they can dock you the difference if you don't show up on the second leg.

That is very unlikely to survive a legal challenge, because although statistically people doing what you are doing may be costing them money, (difficult to prove, but plausible) they would have a very hard time proving that not providing YOU the service caused them additional expenses that requires recovery.

Just because it's included in the contract doesn't guarantee it's enforceable.

I've had my 5S for close to a year now and it has never actually crashed. It's rebooted for OS updates and for a few dozen dead batteries but that's about it. I *have* had to reboot it maybe a dozen times in all due to lagging performance though when it hadn't been rebooted in weeks. My desktop computer's the same way though. Every 2-3 weeks it just needs a reboot to clean house.

It'll sure make a huge cut in the bot accounts that are being used for scamming and spamming. Some of these scammers are probably looking at thousands of accounts used on a given day. Busting their "business model" is the best way to get rid of them.