Any of you actually sit down and watch TV lately? It's seriously for morons. Fantastically stupid shit shoved in to your eyeballs. I used to wonder why we've got such a cultural divide in the US. No longer. TV turns you in to a fucking idiot.

This is one of the reasons I cut the cord three years ago. All the channels I used to enjoy went to shit. Discovery, TLC, A&E, History, SciFi (or SyFy) and even the weather channel were all shells of the former selves. Hell, you couldn't even get the damn headlines anymore from CNN Headline News or whatever they were calling it when I left. I found myself watching less and less TV until I realized I wouldn't miss anything and it was costing me $165 for my bundle each month. Now I have Netflix, a roof antenna, MythTV, and internet only. It costs me about $68 per month for all of it. I save nearly $1,200 every year and I don't miss it at all.

Amen. Just yesterday, I had to clean up two Windows 10 machines that "updated" over the prior night and no longer worked correctly. One machine had a network printer that just quit working. The other had a local printer AND a wireless network device which quit working. Every day is a new Windows 10 repair. I get more jobs from making Windows work after updates than I do cleaning up malware anymore.

Windows 10 users are all beta (or alpha) testers.

3) People who did not commit the crime, but were bullied into taking a plea bargain because you can't trust the jury.
4) People who did not commit the crime but were convicted on questionable, made-up, or circumstantial evidence.

Amen! I stopped at a Walmart on the way home from a family reunion a few years ago in an area I assumed should be safe. A friend of mine had warned me about that location since it was near his home, but I thought he was joking. I was afraid I wouldn't make it back to my car. I had my kids lock themselves in the car while I put away the groceries. I never returned there again.

The Bloomberg article is eye-opening. The Walmart closest to me is a shithole. The shelves are frequently empty and the customers do not look like "natives." I live in a fairly affluent area and I always wondered why the Walmart three miles down the road is so run down, especially after the huge expansion a couple years ago. It is in a very congested retail area with a large mall and NONE of the other stores in the area look anything like it. It looks like the Walmart crime/demographics database is the secret reason why there are so few employees running the place. You hardly ever see more than a handful of employees. I usually drive much farther and go to a better stocked, cleaner and safer Walmart in a blue collar area when I need staple groceries.

I remember when Walmart first opened in our region back in 1991 and ran Kmart and a couple grocery chains out. Their stores were clean and you could never find an empty shelf. When they ran out of an item, the tags were removed and something else was put in its place until the stock truck arrived. Now it's a disaster area. If it weren't for canned and dry goods groceries, water softener salt and soaps, I'd abandon them completely.

It could also get legitimate numbers (collection agencies following the law) blacklisted wrongly because people don't like them...

Follow the law? These parasites do NOT follow the law. I had one debt collector robocall my house every day for six months before I even knew who it was calling me. Then I spent another six months trying to convince them that the person they were looking for was not at my number. They had a SIMILAR name as my 13-year-old son. I finally had to threaten them with reporting them to the phone company for harassment and turning them into the state Attorney General's office for illegal debt collection practices to get them to quit. That finally got their attention.

Year's later, I started getting debt collectors looking for my ex-wife that I had divorced seven years prior. I had a hard time getting them to stop too. And when I bought my son his first cell phone, for six months he was badgered by debt collectors looking for the previous owner of his number. That cost me real money as I was paying for his service by the minute at the time.

I would be happy as a clam to see those unscrupulous cock smokers lose their ability to harass innocent people even if it meant they could no longer do their job. Debt collectors are waaaaayyy over the line separating legitimate collection and outright harassment and abuse. If they can't police themselves, I have no problem shutting them down with technology.

/End Rant

Every time I hear someone say where does it say X in the Constitution, I know they never made it to the 9th in their reading.

There was a warrant involved, the owners of the phone were dead, so have no right to privacy, so there was no constitutional or privacy issue.

And Apple was an uninvolved third party conscripted against its will to perform duties against its conscience. Would you be so eager to be conscripted to work on a project for an arbitrary government agency just because you knew how to do the job? Particularly if you thought the project might affect the reputation or long term profitability of your business?

This was Apple making a stand to raise their sales numbers, that is all it was.

And sometimes people do the right things for the wrong reasons.

Also, them taking this stand did not stop the tool from being created and used, and guess what? It didn't get abused and leaked to the internet!

As far as you know.

That is precisely why I give MS the ole middle finger on every machine I set up when it wants me to create a Microsoft account. I NEVER use a Microsoft account as part of the login of the main user. I always also add a second user for emergencies. I have seen too many people get locked out of their AD machines at work to ever use cloud authentication. It's just plain stupid on a home laptop.

Fox News repeatedly, and sadly effectively, misreports basic news to anger and mislead their viewers for ideological reasons.

That sounds like Nancy Grace on CNN. Are you certain you have your facts correct?

I read in the news that WalMart was bringing back the greeter job. The stores around here never really did away with them. They are supposed to be some sort of loss prevention or deterrent line of defense. I cannot remember the last time I saw one actually offer to get a cart. I'd say it's a 50% chance that they even open their mouth to greet anyone. Mostly, they sit on a chair and look bored.

Unless by leaving a precedent set of a customer successfully suing and winning, you invite LOTS of others to follow on. This is especially the case when there is such a large pool of potential candidates and a general dislike for the practices that precipitated the suit. You might want to look at how IBM and Newegg handle similar situations. No quarter is given in order to discourage followers.

Bailing out early on the first suit might cause you to have to spend a lot more on others later. Unless you are certain you are going to lose anyway.

You are the idiot. Of course I have the right not to be murdered. Anyone who violates that right will be punished by the government. And in my state, that means they run the risk of forfeiting their own life.

Similarly, you have the right to free speech. Unfortunately, you choose to exercise it only to prove how ignorant you truly are.

So what? There is no constitutional right to not be killed. That's why the death penalty and abortion are constitutionally legal. There is a constitutional right to own weapons making all laws that ban them unconstitutional.

This is the Fifth Amendment:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Sounds like a right to me.

Dammit. Beaten to the draw by TFA.

Is it a babelfish?