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Comment Re:What a coincidence... (Score 1) 108

This county allows for people to meet trespassers with deadly force.

What county is that? I know of no jurisdiction anywhere that allows deadly force against non-forcible trespassing. Some jurisdictions allow you to shoot someone that breaks into an occupied residence, but not for just driving past a sign.

Comment Re:Less powerconsumption = less cooling (Score 1) 52

Absolutely. When I ran a small datacenter, I instituted the change from 68F to 75F as a standard. In spite of predictions of disaster, the only thing that changed is the power bill went down.

If you have good airflow, you can go much higher than that. The critical factor is the temp of the components, not the room temp. Dell will warranty their equipment up to 115F (45C). Google runs some of their datacenters at 80F, and others at up to 95F.

There are some drawbacks to "hot" datacenters. They are less pleasant for humans, and there is less thermal cushion in the event of a cooling system failure. But many datacenters avoid that problem by replacing chillers with 100% outside ambient temp air cooling. That wouldn't work in Las Vegas (high of 115F today), but most places it is viable.

Comment Re:Less powerconsumption = less cooling (Score 1) 52

I can personally verify that *temperature change* in the form of increases in temperature, even within the stated hardware specifications has a *HUGE* impact on longevity

So I can believe Google's peer reviewed and published study of hundreds of thousands of devices, or I can accept your "personal verification". Wow, this is a tough decision.

Comment Re:Less powerconsumption = less cooling (Score 2) 52

It works the other way too. If you don't cool the servers at all, eventually they stop consuming power ;-)

Eventually. But not as soon as you might think. Modern servers can tolerate heat fairly well, and many data centers waste money on excessive cooling. As long as you are within the temp spec, there is little evidence that you gain reliability by additional cooling. Google has published data on the reliability of hundreds of thousands of disk drives. They found that the reliability was actually better at the high end of the temperature range. This is one reason that Google runs "hot" datacenters today.

Comment Re:Yup (Score 1) 168

the parents can research what the service does in detail if they wish.

If you are claiming that COPPA allows "implied consent", you are flat out wrong. Parental consent must be explicit.

Every school consent form I've seen in the past few years includes 'may lead to the disclosure of personal information' someplace in the body text.

If their disclosure says that, they should be fine.

What level of consent is needed in your view?

My view is utterly irrelevant. All that matters is the view of the judge your lawyer is trying to convince that your organization was COPPA compliant after a parent sues you.

Look, this is not complicated. Google for "COPPA checklist", click on the first link, then read it. If you are compliant, fine. If not, fix the issues to get in compliance. That is all.

Comment Re:Yup (Score 1) 168

No. In the summary, OP said that this was being done 'without informing the students' parents of what is at stake'.

The summary also says there is a "lack of disclosure in the parental consent process." Just getting parental consent to "use the internet" or "use Google Apps" is not enough. Unless the parents are explicitly giving their consent to the disclosure of identifying information, then this school is breaking the law.

Maybe the OP is being alarmist, and he certainly doesn't appear to be very competent, but the obvious solution is to read the applicable law (which is COPPA), go down the legal checklist, and make sure his school complies.

Comment Re:Yup (Score 2) 168

>The response has often been that I'm over-reacting

Because you are.

Allowing children under 13 to disclose identifying information online, without parental consent, is not only a bad idea, it is illegal. Read up on the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. If these kids are using their real names, their photographs, or their email addresses online without written parental consent, then the school may find themselves in legal trouble. COPPA lays out some pretty specific rules, so if you are using the internet with kids under 13, you need to be familiar with that law.

Comment Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts (Score 1) 395

Have you been to silicon valley? There's plenty of bustle, just with worse traffic and no good restaurants.

Sure, but the traffic has always been bad, and there has never been good restaurants. If this is what it takes to "kill" Silicon Valley, then Silicon Valley would have never existed in the first place. People have been regularly predicting the death of SV since the 1970s.

I live in SV (San Jose, to be exact). The weather is great. My kids go to public schools that are in America's top 1%. The restaurants aren't as good as in SF, but they aren't that bad. Workwise, there is plenty of talent, and it is easy to find people with almost any skill I need. If I get sick of my job, I can walk across the street and find another. Very few other locations has all these benefits.

Comment Re:Cheap (Score 4, Insightful) 458

Can anyone who understands the US TLA agencies explain why the FBI was doing this, rather than the CIA?

My guess is that the FBI was trying to catch American citizens in the act of whistleblowing, so that they can make an arrest. America is not kind to people that expose corruption. Although we have "whistleblower protection programs", they have so many exceptions that they are a sham. Whether they go to the press, the police, or directly to the FBI, many whistleblowers end up in serious legal trouble and often spend time in jail. Citation: List of whistleblowers.

Comment Re:Cheap (Score 5, Informative) 458

Isn't wikileaks supposed to be about opening all secrets?

No, they are not. They believe in transparent government. But they also believe in personal privacy.

What secrets is wikileaks hiding that he traitorously revealed?

The identity of people exposing corruption. Some of these people have risked their lives to do so.

Comment Re:I don't mind (Score 5, Informative) 132

there are many, many desperate children that feel so hopeless and lonely right now in some orphanage

Adoption in many countries is very difficult, and plenty of potential parents do not qualify. My wife and I are financially secure, and are very successfully raising two of our own kids. But we had room in our home and our hearts for at least one more, and looked into adoption. We were turned down. The reasons given were that we were too old (I am in my 50s and my wife is in her 40s), and we already have kids of our own, and childless couples would be given priority.

If there really are orphanages full of desperate children, then governments are doing an incredibly poor job of matching them up with willing and capable parents.

Comment Re:Take HR out of the loop as well some of staffin (Score 4, Insightful) 274

HR is for the cattle.

Indeed. Most of our people were hired either through referrals, or through our internship program. Less than 10% were hired by submitting a resume to HR. Instead of shotgunning resumes, you should be using your network. If you don't have a network, you need to start building one: go to meetups, volunteer for a FOSS project, etc.

Comment Re:Middlemen: the official plague of the modern ag (Score 5, Insightful) 309

Manufacturers, factories, etc don't want the headaches of dealing with uniformed idiots.

If manufacturers don't want to deal directly, they why do we need laws prohibiting them from doing so?

Middlemen provide slack, and options for the supply chain.

If middlemen really added value, then customers would be willing to pay for that value, without government coercion.

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