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http://www.theboyz.biz/

http://www.theboyz.biz/product_info.php?cPath=42_2 9&products_id=37883

We http://theboyz.biz/ don't sell much Garmin...

1. Set up e-commerce web site with Thawte 'self-verifying' SSL certificate image
2. Advertise site in your slashdot comment using a hostname Thawte doesn't recognize
3. ???
4. Profit!

Seriously, if you're gonna stick that Thawte logo on the HOME PAGE of your commerce site, either get the cert for your hostname with and without the 'www.' or always advertise your site with the 'www.' Having a big red X with the words "Thawte Invalid Certificate" on your site probably doesn't inspire much confidence in your potential customers.

Speaking as an on-line store player, MAPs are a tremendous pain. We http://theboyz.biz/ don't sell much Garmin, for example, even though we can often beat others prices on it.

The reason? We're not allowed to _advertise_ that our prices are lower. That's means the Froogle feed, as well as any robots, must also see the MAP price. Even if you could get your site to display "$20 or less", all the robots would simply spot $20, and ignore the rest.

And much on-line shopping is search-engine driven.

It would not be *nearly* as frustrating if it wasn't trivial to go Froogle prices that are higher than ours - but lower than what we can advertise.

We also show the real price after you add the product to your shopping cart (blocked via robots.txt for crawlers). But then again, we have a shipping cost preview from the shopping cart, too -- I *hate* having to fill out all kinds of stuff just to find out that shipping is a ripoff.

Less than $100 I don't know about, but here

http://www.theboyz.biz/product_info.php?cPath=159_ 73_244&products_id=38113

Is a flash player w/ 512M for $101.50 -- and it includes an FM tuner.

There are many others there for not much more. They also have a 1G player is $153, but it's out of stock. (It also has an FM tuner.)

If the system is hacked, they pay, not you.

BZZZZZTTTTT! Thanks for playing, would you like to try again?

First of all, Visa doesn't pay for SQUAT. Chargebacks are funded by the merchants, who in most cases are forced to eat the fraud.

And even if that were NOT true, TAANSTAAFL. Regardless of who foots the bill for the losses, ultimately those costs are passed back to the consumer in the form of higher costs.

Trust me, I know. http://theboyz.biz/ ;)

Actually, OGG seems to be catching on a bit more, at least at the hardware level. I've put several audio players up on our site which support OGG files in addition to MP3 and/or WMA and/or DRM files.

FINDING tracks in OGG format is still problematic, but perhaps that will change as more hardware supports them.

http://www.theboyz.biz/index.php?cPath=159_73_244

Authorize.net (a fairly popular credit card gateway) is also an Internap client - I wonder how many sites (like ours) potentially lost revenue as a result of this outage.

http://www.theboyz.biz/

Hear, Hear. I took a H.S. Prob/Stats class (too many years ago to mention) where the teacher handed out TI stats calulcators to the entire class. (Funded on his own, I might add.)

And I believe I learned more / faster as a result. As one trivial example, it takes a LOT less time to understand the concept of "100!" than it does to compute it!

As he told us the first day of class, the calculator will NOT do your work for you; if you don't understand the concepts, you'll still fail, even with all those dedicated buttons.

http://www.theboyz.biz/Hardware, software, electronics and more!

You're right about it being OT. ;) But it sounds to me like you need to run sendmail on your desktop computer, and have the mail server running in store-and-forward mode.

Or cron fetchmail every 30 seconds -- how 'instant' does it really *have* to be?

http://www.theboyz.biz/Your source for hardware, software, video games and more!

So is *this* the reason that Chris left Novell on Friday?

http://www.theboyz.biz/Your source for hardware, software, video games, small appliances, electronics and more!

Once again I draw your attention to the problems with making conclusions about the entire world based on your one example.

This is a *trivial* exercise, and certainly does not require any hard-wiring.

http://www.theboyz.biz/Computers, parts, electronics, small appliances and more!

NOT really a good idea to start a thread about morons, and then act like one.

_YOUR_ wlan card may have the MAC address burned into it. Once ALL NIC did. I think it was more than 10 years ago that I saw my first NIC that DID NOT HAVE a MAC address (it was all zeroes, and expected to be set in software).

_MY_ wlan card will _CERTAINLY_ let me change the MAC address - under Linux _or_ Windows.

http://www.theboyz.biz/Computers, parts, electronics, small appliances and more!

Theoretically, perhaps - but how secure does it need to be? All wireless traffic in my home uses SSH tunnels between the laptop and the firewall.

When it becomes possible to conveniently crack SSH tunnels, I'll start to worry. By then, I'm sure there will be something better available. Meanwhile, you can sniff those ESP packets to your heart's content.

This is trivial under Linux, and not much more difficult under Winblows (clients), and I'm surprised more people don't suggest it as an alternative to WEP/WPA.

(My girlfriend uses Winblows w/ SSH Sentinel, and has only had one problem that rebooting wouldn't fix - in over 3 years. That one? Installing XP / SP2 turns on the [useless] firewall, which blocks the ports needed by the VPN.)

http://www.theboyz.biz/Computers, parts, electronics, small appliances and more!

No, not EVERY on-line store; only those that support international transactions. It's a moot point, as IMHO the patent is just BS - but "every online store" is quite an exaggeration.

http://www.theboyz.biz/Your source for computers, parts, electronics, small appliances and more!

Hear, hear! If I had mod points, I'd mod you up; as it is I can only comment. It is almost impossible to find a phone which does not at least have a camera these days. Like you, I DON'T WANT A CAMERA. Make the freaking phone smaller and lighter; don't just jam more crap into it.

The thought of browsing the internet on any size phone I consider acceptable is ludicrous, regardless of the resolution. And a radio? PUHLEEEZE. I'll just haul the external speakers along too, I guess!

http://www.theboyz.biz/Your source for computers, parts, electronics, small appliances and more!

As someone familiar with the PayPal seller side of life, I can't say why this gentleman only accepts PayPal via Credit Card. (Possibly so he can tell dissatisifed customers to talk to their card provider, who will then talk to PayPal - by which time he's transferred the money elsewhere.)

However, I _can_ tell you that the payment to the merchant is exactly the same -- it goes into their PayPal account.

And for every horror story about buyers being ripped off by PayPal, I can produce one from an equally offended seller/merchant.

If you have a dispute with us, we'll be happy to work to settle it with you; we would never leave you in the hands of PayPal. That said, we're among those merchants who transfer their PayPal payments elsewhere on a regular basis.

PayPal can - and has - frozen seller acounts, even when those accounts were well in excess of any pending disputes. Whether this is for fun or profit is just speculation (it's the ignorant company indeed which doesn't understand float in today's world).

I (personally, not in conjunction with theboyz.biz) always advise people dealing with PayPal to do so at arm's length. Open a free checking account and use it for NOTHING but PayPal verification. Then take all the money and electronically transfer it to your REAL account. REGARDLESS of whether you are a buyer or a seller.... But, like so many people tell me, "heck, honey 'chile, I've done it a thousand time 'afore and 'taint nothing ever happened". Well, ok, there's a bit of paraphrasing there. ;)

http://www.theboyz.biz/Your source for computers, parts, electronics, small appliances and more!

Speaking of not understanding, I _definitely_ don't understand the "not enough to call my CC company over" remark.

I've disputed smaller charges than that. How much does it cost to make that toll-free phone call, or log onto their website and click on 'dispute this transaction'?

If you have a reputable card provider, and you are in the right, you *will*, in all probability, prevail in the dispute, And the most that you'll have to do is fill out a form explaining the situation.

Think of it as $70 pay for 5 minutes work, and how much sense does it make to pass it up, phrased that way?

http://www.theboyz.biz/Your source for computers, parts, electronics, small appliances and more!

You do make some good points. Your first point in particular is valid, and good for those people who want to minimize the number of sites which potentially store their card in a hackable database. (We're very careful to _never_ write card numbers to disk.)

However, I believe your presentation is somewhat biased. Yes, fraud rates _are_ quantifiable. However, not all merchant accounts are created equal -- nor are the settings a merchant chooses to enable on that account.

Likewise, _some_ merchant accounts have higher fees than PayPal. (PayPal used to be much more competititve in this regard.) However, we actually pay more for our PayPal transactions than for our gateway account. AND we have no control over things like AVS / CVV/CV2 verification and the like.

None of the gateway solutions I've implemented have required any expensive custom programming. All of the merchant accounts we have dealt with have offered us their software (for a fee, of course), or have a large number of pre-approved packages they will support. Since our site is based on the OSS osCommerce package (well - very loosely, now ;), it took more work to get PayPal IPNs working than it did to turn on the appropriate gateway module for our merchant account!

For us it comes down to customer choice. Some customers want to use PayPal (for whatever reason). Some prefer to use their credit card directly (ditto). As long as it doesn't _hugely_ increase our risk exposure - or cost us too much money - we're more than happy to offer additional choices.

But I'd suggest that another look at merchant accounts might demonstrate different conclusions than those you presented. <shrug>

http://www.theboyz.biz/Your source for computers, parts, electronics, small appliances and more!

While it's arguable that PayPal may be no better in those regards, I'd rather have my credit card data in less places than more.

Good point. Personally, I lament the day that American Express killed the program to generate single-use 'e-card' numbers. I wish more card issuers would provide this type of service -- and would go so far as to predict that credit card 'numbers' will one-day be exactly such a digitally-signed, one-time-use token, generated by a chip on the card itself.

http://www.theboyz.biz/Your source for computers, parts, electronics, small applicances and more!

From the e-tailer point of view, we added PayPal for the convenience of our customers. And a substantial percentage of our total orders are settled that way - even though we *do* take credit cards.

*WHY* people use PayPal? Well, there are those who don't have credit cards, to start. (I had a bank account _long_ before I got my first credit card, many years ago though that was.) Beyond that, there have always been people who, for whatever reason, prefer to e.g. write checks, or use their debit card. PayPal is/can be the on-line equivalent. Not to mention literally thousands of reasons of which I haven't thought. ;)

http://www.theboyz.biz/Your source for computers, parts, electronics, small applicances and more!

Hey, no problem - 60" big enough for you?

http://www.theboyz.biz/product_info.php?cPath=49_5 6&products_id=17144

- So, people can make modifications, host their
- own versions, and not be in violation of the
- terms of the GPL, although they are usually
- in violation of the spirit of the GPL.

I have to take offense at that, given that I've spent the last four months hacking a GPL'd project - osCommerce - and have not / do not plan to make the source code available.

Why? Because the code is so hacked, and so site-specific, that little benefit would accrue to the OSS community. Even if I DID publish, odds are nobody would be interested in this 'fork', as it's not nearly as clean, nor as upgradable, as the base package.

I do NOT feel that this is against the spirit of the GPL, and, in fact, did recently contribute some of my changes in an area where there were no pre-existing contributions. It only took 3x as long to make the changes, compare them against a clean install and write documentation as it would have to just make the changes - time I could be using to reduce the 'todo' list of pending site changes. (I have also written and contributed to OSS projects in the past.)

Companies that want to 'privatize' their GPL modifications generally have perfectly legal ways to so do. There are many valid reasons for using GPL code and not redistributing [all of] the source. In this case, there is business logic - and hence trade secrets - built into the code.

Your new source for computers, parts, electronics and more!

Stored value cards are _NOT_ the same as debit cards, in many important respects. For one, the customer CANNOT get cash from the card.

Stored value cards are classed exactly the same as paper gift certificates, as that is what they are. (They are also subject to escheet laws in most states.)

I was part of a small team which created the first such card - Blockbusters - and am still amazed at how fast they've proliferated.

http://www.theboyz.biz/ - Your source for computers, parts and more!

I find myself wondering how many 'war-chalkers' actually attempt to *use* the suppoedly open networks they encounter.

Drive by my house, and you'll see what looks like an unsecured access point -- until you run into the firewall rules which bounce anything that isn't coming across a VPN. (Not that it matters, at least 5 of my neighbors have unsecured APs. ;)

http://www.theboyz.biz/ Your source for computer parts and more!

Lots of people talking about 'how-to', but nobody really answering your question. Typical slashdot...

The advantages of thin clients in this type of environment are many. It's almost impossible for a user to screw up what is effectively nothing but a terminal.

Downsides would include the need for a more expensive server on the back-end, as all the horsepower now has to reside in one place. Also, when the server dies, _everybody_ dies.

And if you use commodity hardware for the thin client, it can be harder to lock things down on the client end. General rule of thumb is NO drives of any kind with the client configured to boot across the network.

Many people have suggested the SunRay, and it's hard to argue with that - it's one of the first thin clients that's really usable (IMHO).

http://www.theboyz.biz/ Computer parts & more!

>> I think that having experts able to review each line of code checked in and put into production defeats the whole idea of using Open Source: at that point, you might as well just hire the experts to write the code in the first place and eliminate the vector all together.

Oh, please. Like anyone is going to let just anybody check code into ANY project, let alone one dealing with high-tech weapons.

I could duplicate your scenario much more easily in the closed source world, where an employee of the sub-contractor snuck code in that was never even peer-reviewed, let alone made available for whoever wanted to look at it.

http://www.theboyz.biz/Your source for computer parts and more!