Impact Smart Hard Drives

OK… it’s a Friday night and I (like my fellow geeks) are at home watching The Big Bang Theory.

A commercial comes on… a computer maker is going insure the security of the world by making sure their laptops have (get this) “Impact Smart Hard Drives”.

I started wondering if they meant that the hard drive was smart enough to know when it had encountered an impact or if it just knew the definition of the word “impact”.

I would hope that technology companies would refrain from misleading the public about (of all things) the capabilities of the technologies they sell.

Why don’t they say “shock resistant” or something like that.

Save the world… don’t drop your laptop

Veterans | LinkedIn

This is perhaps the best job searching avenue I’ve ever seen for veterans.

When I got out we had the opportunity to go through some transition classes and stuff, interview with potential employers. But the opportunities were fairly limited to blue-collar jobs like truck driver or janitorial services. Not that there is anything wrong with those jobs, but after 20 years or so in the Signal Corps working with digital communications equipment my skill set didn’t exactly match the ready made employment opportunities.

This opportunity on LinkedIn is perfect.

I encourage all individuals who served our country to take advantage of the great search tool LinkedIn has provided for us.

It has monster or any other job search engine beat.

Veterans | LinkedIn

Wisconsin Senate Passes Bill to Regulate Attorney Fees » Controlling Legal Costs

This is an interesting article.

The fees have to be limited based on the ‘factors’ listed below. I don’t see how this is really limited legal fees unless it was to spend some money on legislation that really doesn’t do anything.

• Time and labor required by the attorney
• Novelty and difficulty of the questions involved in the action
• Skill requisite to perform the legal service properly
• Likelihood that the acceptance of the particular case precluded other employment by the attorney
• Fee customarily charged in the locality for similar legal services
• Amount of damages involved in the action
• Results obtained in the action
• Time limitations imposed by the client or by the circumstances of the action
• Nature and length of the attorney’s professional relationship with his or her client
• Experience, reputation and ability of the attorney
• Whether the fee is fixed or contingent
• Complexity of the case
• Awards of costs and fees in similar cases
• Legitimacy or strength of any defenses or affirmative defenses asserted in the action
• Other factors

Wisconsin Senate Passes Bill to Regulate Attorney Fees » Controlling Legal Costs

Another Example of Bad Journalism

This is yet another example of publications, in this cast MarketWatch, takes press releases directly from the internet and redistributes them as ‘news’.

The results of this New York Law Journal’s Reader Rankings Survey is misleading (to say the least).

First off, they had less than fifty respondents.

Second, the survey was sponsored by the company in question, so of course the questions were skewed to provide results they were looking for so the could put this press release out.

For a news source to consider itself main-stream it must first stop reprinting press releases, they are nothing more than marketing tools and have no real news.

If it does want to use press releases for story ideas that’s fine, but it must take a few minutes to check the facts and then rewrite the release interjecting its own findings.

Be careful of what is being published as ‘news’… question everything, especially self-serving news stories which are really just marketing tools.

Mitratech TeamConnect Receives Top Honors for Both Matter Management and Entity Management in New York Law Journal's Reader Rankings Survey - MarketWatch

Google Millionaire: Obama: 'Raise My Taxes, Please!'

I find it very odd that a millionaire who received is education because it was paid for with Pell Grants and (his words) “job training programs that made it possible for me to get to where I am” would want to rely on the federal government to take his money and do the right thing like replenish what his education and job training cost.

Why doesn’t Doug Edwards use what monies he believes should be given in taxes directly back to grant systems and or job training systems that helped him out, that way they would not be so reliant on the federal government to sustain them?

Better yet Mr. Obama, introduce a new tax rule that states if you file a return showing over “X” dollars in income and you are the beneficiary of education grants and job training programs that you have to pay the money back just as if it were a student loan?

I think the best retort President Obama could have given to the group was encouragement to support programs that they feel are worthy directly. Kind of a pep-talk to get them to do good deeds directly rather than indirectly. After all, the odds of raising taxes on millionaires (and Doug knows this) is at best 50/50 right now.

We need to stop relying on lawmakers to be all knowledgeable with regards to taxation and paying for a civilization. They aren’t good at it.

I wonder if Doug Edwards would feel that way if he was living pay-check to pay-check like most Americans do.

Google Millionaire Tells Obama: 'Raise My Taxes, Please!' - DailyFinance

Another Example of the Media Misleading the Public About Internet Security

This is a perfect example of how the media uses the trust the public puts in them as a way to keep them scared and mistrust the Internet.

In this article by The Register (United Kingdom) it explains that the encryption method used by sites like PayPal and others has been compromised in a way that hackers can ‘catch’ your purchase and payment information as it is being transmitted.

While it may be true that SSL 1.0 has been cracked – it was cracked some fifteen years ago in the 1980s.

Modern browsers don’t even allow it as an option in their security settings. Bottom line – NOBODY uses it any more.

TLS encryption isn’t even even turned on by default – so (you guessed it) nobody uses it unless it is with their corporation intranet or other specialty internet service.

The article is hype for some security group in Buenos Aires and some paper they are going to present to the Ekoparty Security Conference.

Don’t be mislead by the media – they only publish stuff they get on emails and never take the time to verify the information themselves.

Hackers break SSL encryption used by millions of sites • The Register

Scientists: New Alloy Could Produce Hydrogen Fuel From Sunlight - International Business Times

If this is accurate it is the “the answer” to the next century energy use in this country and around the world.

Don’t let this story die… share it, friend it, like it, whatever it. Don’t let some large power or oil company squash it.

Scientists: New Alloy Could Produce Hydrogen Fuel From Sunlight - International Business Times