He's got a gu... umbrella!

Police called after man seen with rifle at mall... turns out it was an umbrella. Idiots.

 

 

Man with umbrella causes rifle scare in Mass. mall

BURLINGTON, Mass. -- A report of a man with a rifle inside a Nordstrom department store triggered a massive police response and the evacuation of a mall near Boston on Tuesday, but the man turned out to be carrying only an umbrella.

The Burlington Mall was evacuated and closed for more than two hours as a police SWAT team wearing body armor and carrying shields searched for an armed man.

Police had received five calls about a short white man with a gray shirt and a backpack who walked in a bathroom carrying what appeared to be a rifle, Burlington Police Chief Michael Kent said at a news conference. Around 40 local, state and federal officers went to the mall after police received the first call just after 10 a.m., he said. See the rest HERE

I'm screwed

Based on 5 minutes of monitoring ONE of the computers in the house, with nothing going but Yahoo IM, AOL instant messnger, Windows Live messenger, and  5 IRC channels on one server, I am going to use 165gb of my 250gb a month cap assuming no chatting, just logged in watching

8.7 minutes of watching google's doodle today, will use a GB

30.02 hours of 720p youtube (which isn't 720p, it's quite less actually) and you are at 250gb. Screwed. Screwed with AT&T

Senator Lugar replies to my letter about AT&T

Dear Mr. Mercer:

 

Thank you for contacting me regarding AT&T's decision to implement usage caps.  I appreciate this opportunity to respond. 

 

I understand your concerns regarding usage caps, and I encourage you to voice your complaints with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which maintains a consumer information bureau to handle disputes within the telecommunications industry.  You can file a complaint online at: http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/complaints.html, or write to them at:

 

Federal Communications Commission

Consumer Information Bureau

Consumer Complaints

445 12th Street, S.W.

Washington, D.C. 20554

 

Much has changed since Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996.  As new technologies have emerged - wireless, broadband, Internet-based voice services - each has put strains on the web of regulations that originated more than a decade ago under this Act.  Senators from both parties agree that congressional action is needed in the near future to resolve these issues. 

 

Competition has not taken root as quickly as I would have liked, but it does exist.  Cable companies are losing some customers to satellite services, which offer cost-competitive packages, and the telephone operating companies are gearing up to offer bundled packages of telephone, broadband Internet, and cable television programming. 

 

I will have your concerns closely in mind should Congress discuss usage caps directly.  Again, thank you for contacting me. 

 

 

                              
                              Sincerely,


                                                            Richard G. Lugar
                                                            United States Senator



CIA's ties to Facebook

Did you know the CIA has a venture fund, and openly invests in facebook…

 

The company is called In-Q-Tel

 

“We [the CIA] decided to use our limited dollars to leverage technology developed elsewhere. In 1999 we chartered ... In-Q-Tel. ... While we pay the bills, In-Q-Tel is independent of CIA. CIA identifies pressing problems, and In-Q-Tel provides the technology to address them. The In-Q-Tel alliance has put the Agency back at the leading edge of technology ... This ... collaboration ... enabled CIA to take advantage of the technology that Las Vegas uses to identify corrupt card players and apply it to link analysis for terrorists [cf. the parallel data-mining effort by the SOCOM-DIA operation Able Danger ], and to adapt the technology that online booksellers use and convert it to scour millions of pages of documents looking for unexpected results”

Dating

Well my friend said on his radio show yesterday 4$ gas within a week, it was 3.60 yesterday, 3.99 today. He also says 5$ by June and 6$ by the end of the summer based on what the 'experts' are saying... if this is the case, I'm afraid I will have to hope I can find someone to date and marry that already lives on my street, that works within a half mile of my work so we can drive to work together. *nods* haha

Math showing AT&T is nuts with their cap!

Assumptions:
24 Mbps / 8 bits  = 3 MB/s (this is the tier I am on, and I can get around 2.8MB/s download, so this is close enough).

 

Caps:
150 GB * 1024 KB = 153,600 MB (DSL)
250 GB * 1024 KB = 256,000 MB (U-verse)


Formula: (using U-verse 24 Mbps)
250 GB * 1024 KB * 8 bits / 24 Mbps / 60 sec / 60 min = 23.7 hours (1 day) to hit cap.


I got the tiers from: http://www.att.net/speedtiers


Results: (time to reach cap at full throttle)
455.1 hours (19 days) for DSL 768 Kbps
227.5 hours (10 days) for DSL 1.5 Mbps
113.7 hours (5 days) for DSL 3 Mbps
56.9 hours (2 days) for DSL 6 Mbps
189.6 hours (8 days) for U-verse 3 Mbps
94.8 hours (4 days) for U-verse 6 Mbps
47.4 hours (2 days) for U-verse 12 Mbps
31.6 hours (1 day) for U-verse 18 Mbps
23.7 hours (< 1 day) for U-verse 24 Mbps


Now, if all of the above were paying the same, I might see this as fair, but considering that the faster speeds pay more, but do not get more cap, this is absolutely NOT fair.  For some more math fun, how much could you download in 30 days on the 24Mbps plan?


Answer: 7,593.75 GB.  Overage fee @ $10 per 50GB would be: $1,470.