About 10 years ago I was laid off and while I was out of work I called up the U of Pheonix. What a mistake. Whenever I think of maybe going back to school, I know I don't need a degree for my career so I think of like... why don't I study physics?

Anyway, I checked out their course catalog, not only did they not have any math courses that were not covered in high school, I took more advanced courses in high school. I may need a refresher before I am ready to jump into a calculus course, but, I don't need math for accountants thanks.

I had to tell them several times I had no interest in their program. They seemed to have trouble with the idea of a person with no degree already having a professional career and not really needing what they offer.

Could be, though we don't know for sure if they actually knew this (not unlikely) or if they just got lucky in having chosen a method which was both accessible and didn't expose them to personal danger. Certainly, if they didn't know this, and chose different methods, they may not have gotten past the first one.

I know a number of people, including myself, who started at jobs like that with no degree and did not get stuck as tier one support all their life. Lots of tech jobs claim to require a degree but don't really.

The thing is you have to just realize that "bachelors degree" really is shorthand for "Degree, or reasonable experience". If you don't have experience, they want to see a degree. If you have experience, the degree is often optional.

Just off the top of my head I can think of about 4 people without degrees who started in support and moved up to senior level positions as administrators, system architects, even one IT Director.

I feel like this should be the gold standard. Whatever method you use, it should be either a lot cheaper or a lot more acurate; if neither, you chose very poorly.

Not sure exactly what lines but, if I remember right, distribution lines are in the 13kV range.... you don't just "cut" them with a pair of dykes. The result of the connection being disrupted can generate some amazing sparks. Electricians who work on circuits like that wear protective suits:
https://www.google.com/search?...

> In Conway's game of life there are strict rules for where new cells are set and old are removed. By
> injecting cells you invalidate those rules and they no longer works.

By injecting cells you are no longer playing conways game of life.

> That is, sentient cells would be able to observe that certain cells doesn't work according to the rule-set.

No. You are postulating something that seems to make sense on the surface but, why would the sentient cells have any particular knowledge of what the rules that created them are? Those rules and the machine that interprets them is also not contained within their universe.

Now, I will concede that yes, it should be possible for such a creator to induce phenomena in such a way as to convince them he exists and open up some communication channel; however, simply exercising his power to add the occasional cell outside of the normal rules wouldn't really do that.

It might create a situation where they have phenomena they can't reconcile, but that doesn't prove anything in particular... "retrograde" planet motions used to be unreconcilable phenomena too.

They are absolutely correct, there is no creator, he doesn't exist inside their universe. Within the context of their universe, the existance or nonexsitance of this creator is essentially meaningless to them.

I really think the clock in a black box metaphor for scientific theories is the best. If someone gives you a watch and you have no way to look inside.... you can make observations, you can model its behgaviour, you can make theories which make predictions.... but unless you can open it, any gears you postulate, no matter how accurately they may model the output, can never be proven to be what is inside.

Until you can devise a test based on observations that seperates one theory of whats inside form another, then the claim of which predictive theory with equivalent results is better has no basis.

So until a theory of a creator produces a testable hypothesis, its really nothing special at all.

A more fitting analogy would be that you designed and built yourself a car, and posted the plans up online. Other people took your plans, built their own cars with it, and started selling them bundled with a bunch of accessories; while still others built their own to drive around.

Now it turns out there is a major flaw in your design that makes it unsafe to drive. Clearly you are at fault for the design, but, are you at fault for all the places other people chose to use your design without reviewing it? You didn't sell it to them, you recieved no royalties, you didn't even get to review or approve what they used it for.

Generally speaking, unless you have some relationship to the coder that would otherwise confer a liability (like you hired them to write that code, etc) I think its really the responsibility of the person building the service around it to make sure they are using good components.

There is a world of difference between "Here is the product I make that works and can offer you" and "here are the plans for how I built mine, you can use them if you want"

> The fact that OpenSSL won't even work using regular malloc() suggests that there're more issues
> waiting to pop up here.

Has it been tried? I saw the claim that they didn't make a compile time option to switch and so they have not had any way to test with the system malloc() in a long time, but I didn't see any claims that someone actually swapped it out for malloc() and it didn't work.

Not in private homes, because I do think people deserve some amount of privacy in their home but, definitely for where the real corruption is: commercial buildings.

My wife's previous employer owned the building that their office was in. They tried to get a permit to build a roof deck and were blatantly extorted by the Boston city building inspector. They refused to pay, he denied them the permit.

Corruption is everywhere where people have power.

Except said stalker has a different problem set than the article's author. The author is looking at the data, and picking out an individual. It is a whole different problem to take an individual, that you have some information about, and pick them out.

So maybe the stalker is looking at an employee of some establishment. He watches when that employee comes in for a few days. Lots of people use the same bike terminal, but how many individuals checked in at 8 am today, 8:03 yesterday, 7:58 the day before?

Before he may have had to follow his prey home, case them through social engagements... now, collect data in the same place every day for a few days, and he has a literal map of their life; all with no danger of exposing himself.

This is far too easy to abuse, and a danger to too many people. It could be used to kidnap children of rich people, it could be used to rob drug dealers, it could be used to track women back to their homes to rape, it could be used to ambush ex-lovers or their new spouses.

Frankly, it is actually putting people in danger in a way that is especially enormously terrible since it would be so easy to avoid. Why would you EVER publish unique identifiers that map to people like that? I can understand this was probably an oversight, but it really is indefensible as an intentional disclosure.

As I finished that statement I realized we may not be in so much disagreement so much as a semantics battle.

I conceede. You are absolutely correct, a different standard should NOT be applied. However, the fact that they are police should be considered an aggrivating circumstance: One which increases the enormity of the crime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

So not a different standard at all, but a different punishment, because it is a more enormous crime...by the same standards.

> Yes, the current situation is unjust. So is the suggestion that police officers be held to a higher standard.

While I agree with the general argument, in the specific I am not sure it holds. Unlike any other group that might be under consideration, police have taken an oath to uphold the law, and accept a paycheck to do the same. When they break the law, especially if they do so to willfully sabotage their own job, and do so on the clock or by making use of the privileges/access they are afforded as part of their jobs.... they really are doing something different that deserves different consideration and a different standard than an ordinary citizen who breaks the law.

If I did the same thing they did, yes I would be charged with crimes....but I wouldn't be doing it after accepting a job and taking a paycheck specifically to uphold the very laws I am wilfully breaking. I wouldn't be using any special access (access to cruisers and equipment) or knowledge (which antena is which?) that I had, only as a result of accepting that job and taking that paycheck.

If we were talking about off duty cops breaking a law unrelated to their day to day job, then I would agree, but that isn't what we are talking about at all.

While I would normally agree here, we are talking about the people who sign up and take an oath to uphold the law....laws which they are clearly breaking by damaging public property. Worst, they are doing so with the intention of obstructing their own job of collecting evidence of crimes to present to the court. So in fact, they are obstructing justice, destroying property, and possibly breaking several other statutes at the same time.

This is nothing other people wouldn't be charged with for destroying police equipment willfully. I garauntee you if I took one of these devices and damaged it so it didn't work, I would be charged with all that and more.

So the reality is...in NOT charging them, the law is being applied differently.

I hadn't even considered that issue. My problem with it is reliability, replacement cost, and glare issues from driving in daylight. My backup camera is great, except I can't see it when my car is pointed north in the morning and the sun shines onto the screen through the sunroof.

If it breaks, well a mirror face is a $30 replacement, installed.

The upside, on the other hand, is at night when people's headlghts are blinding, they would only ever be as bright as the LCD can get, and not shining a beam into my eyes. Worst case, is the rear view is unusable.... worst case with mirrors is quite an annoyance.