Even worse - I get letters and calls from companies looking for someone with my name. Apparently there is a guy who lives in the same local area that has not only my same first and last name, but also my same date of birth. Only the middle names and SSN's are different. Most of them seem to think I'm him and just moved to my address.

I actually had one collector who even after I had him call out the last 4-digits of the SSN they had on file and VERIFIED that they weren't mine, still suggested that I pay the other guy's bill to "clear up this mess".

More than likely the local assessor's office, rather than the IRS. Generally property taxes are lower for properties which are owner-occupied versus "commercial" properties (which includes residential property being rented out). Around here the tax bill is pretty much cut in half if you live in it.

I actually work for a county government, and we have an external company contracted that specifically looks for this type of fraud (in exchange, for the first year after its identified they collect 30% of the increase in the tax bill).

Yep - and that's the problem.

Most aren't willing to admit it, but its the "treadmill" concept of these games that keeps people coming back.

Make it absolutely trivial to get whatever you want and people won't be interested in playing the game. You've got the Uber Epics Sword of Everlasting Awesomeness? Well sure - everyone has one - and there's nothing left to do to get the EVEN BETTER sword.

The treadmill concept tricks people into thinking they're working towards a goal, and its what keeps them playing. It also is what makes most eventually quit when they realize that the goal keeps moving and they're never going to get there.

WoW got particularly bad with this when the concept of daily quests were introduced. I saw tons of players resort to "just logging in to do my dailies" at that point, which is bad when you really analyze it. You're logging into a game nearly every day to do the EXACT same thing to make one number go up (gold or token count) just so that you can eventually buy a bunch of pixels that make another number (stats) go up - all so that you can be more efficient at killing things to make the gold tokens go up. Its a vicious cycle.

That's pretty much exactly my situtation. I was a WOW player myself for about 3 years there. Not "hardcore" by most definitions, but I played about 15-20 hours per week. Prior to that I wasn't into much multiplayer. I'd play maybe 3 or 4 single player games per year to completion and be done with them.

When I finally got bored of WoW I actively didn't want to start playing any other MMORPG. After seeing the time investment such games took I really wanted to avoid them altogether. Now I'm back to playing the occasional single player game, which lets me enjoy video games but also other things in life that I had been missing.

The honest truth is that while i liked video games and still do, I don't want them to be my primary focus in life - and that's nearly what it takes to stay current with most MMORPG's.

Any robot that could go out that far is going to have to be pretty sophisticated - to the point that its probably cheaper to just build and launch another telescope (and then we get to benefit by replacing it with a better one).

I'm sure New York has deeper pockets and can afford more than the small jurisdiction I work for, but in our case camera footage ends up deleted for very practical reasons: storage space.

Our detention center (jail) has about 4 dozen security cameras, and even with a fairly decent SAN our retention period is less than 30 days just because we don't have space to hold anymore than that.

Figure in an order of magnitude (or more) more cameras than that, and while I'm sure they could do more than 30 days, I doubt they'll be able to realistically keep the footage for more than a few months tops.

No, actually I hadn't. Though I have now looked it up and it does look like it'll simplify the process. Thanks.

I don't know about being more reliable. I use XFS on my RAID array (mdadm) at home. I'm running the latest version of Linux Mint (Nadia), and if I ever lose poser and don't unmount that file system cleanly it looses all recent changes to the drive (and "recent" sometimes stretches to hours ago). The drive mounts fine and nothing appears corrupted (so I guess its not completely data loss), but any files changes (edits, additions, or deletions) to the file system are simply gone.

Its gotten to the point where if I've just put a lot of stuff on the drive I unmount it and then remount it just to make sure everything gets flushed to disk. If I ever get a chance to rebuild that array it most certainly will be using something different.

You can do that with just about any carrier. The only real difference is that T-Mobile cuts you a break on your per month price for not taking a subsidized phone. With Verizon, AT&T, or any other carrier you can sign up without a contract, its just that you'll be paying the same price as the guys who took the free/cheap phones.

Exactly. I'm 31 myself. I still enjoy gaming - quite a bit when I get a chance, but realistically I can only play very occasionally on weekends and I might play through 3-4 games per year. I don't personally buy $1000 graphics cards, but I have several other hobbies (I shoot a lot of competitive pistol matches, and I'm a private pilot) where dropping $1,000 every other year or so would seem pretty cheap in comparison.

I doubt many people living in "mom's basement" have $1000 to put into a video card. Realistically the people that grew up playing games has continued to go up, and in particular a lot of people who want a video card like this are going to be older (30-45) anyways as a lot of the younger crowd is trending more towards tablet and mobile games.

To a lot of people in that 30 to 45 age bracket $1,000 isn't a whole heck of a lot to spend on a hobby.

As it should be.

I think the problem people have in the US isn't that phones are subsidized - its that the carriers have it arranged so that the "unsubsidized" price is artificially inflated to deter you from even thinking about buying one. Also, except for T-Mobile, you're paying a phone subsidy even if you DO buy your device outright. All you're really buying is the option to remain month-to-month rather than renew a contract.

A good, recent release smartphone shouldn't run more than $300. Heck some of the best Android tablets with 10" screens are getting down around that level, and if you look at the Nexus phones thats about what they run. The carriers though tend to set the "no contract" price for most good phones up around $500-600.

Alas - I just personally end up buying used phones. As long as you're willing to live a generation or so behind the "latest and greatest" there's always some kid dumping their phone to get the new hot thing. I'm currently using an LG Lucid 4G which serves me just fine and I paid $99 for.

Ideas? Sure. First idea: you ran with the metaphor WAY too long ;).

Tazers are for things like a fleeing suspect who needs to be stopped, or if they're responding with a level of force that doesn't justify gunfire (physically resisting arrest). If they actually are actively threatening the life of the officer, they're never going to use a tazer.

Or to put it more bluntly, you never take a tazer to a gunfight.

Here's a hint: if you want to defend yourself in court, DON'T SHOOT AT THE FUCKING COPS when they come to arrest you.