I was referring strictly to cold-target marketing (that is, contacting people who don't have a prior business relationship with the company). Hence my use of the word "prospect" in "prospect list" - as in, a list of prospective clients.
It gets worse than simply ignoring the Do Not Call list. You see, in order to be compliant with government regulations, legitimate marketing firms need to purchase an annual subscription to the DNC list. They then need to purge from their prospect list any number appearing in the DNC list.
Unfortunately, the government sells this list to anyone who asks; thus, Russian telemarketing companies sometimes buy the DNC list as a source of pre-verified, valid phone numbers.
I wasn't saying everyone should roll over for cops. I was saying that politeness and tact can go a long way in defusing a situation like that, whereas rudeness can make it a lot worse by eliciting a similar response from the cops.
Put another way, if a cop is asserting undue authority, being rude to him is only going to encourage that behavior, whereas being polite will do the opposite (or at least won't make it worse).
You're reading too much into what I said. I'm not agreeing with the behavior of the ATM guys. In fact I support the actions of the person who was arrested (if not the attitude with which he did them), and regardless of his attitude I disapprove of the manner in which he was treated.
All I was saying is that there is, in fact, evidence that the, um, victim was not the perfect picture of politeness (which is what my parent post seemed to imply).
You have to identify yourself; this does not necessitate providing a drivers' license. That interpretation would make it illegal to not have a drivers' license; it's perfectly legal to never obtain any form of federal- or state-issued picture identification. (It might make some things harder - opening a bank account, for example - but it's legal.)
What you are required to do is provide your name and your address, so that the police can verify that through some other means. That fulfills the needs of "required to identify yourself".
If I had taken a picture of the inside of an ATM for whatever reason, and the police later suspected me of robbing that (or any other) ATM, I'd probably just cooperate with their investigation - the faster they rule me out as a suspect, the fewer of my tax dollars they waste investigating the wrong person.
My wife thinks I'm crazy, but I've always been of the opinion that if a police officer tries to assert false authority over me for whatever reason, I would stand up for my rights; but for my wife's sake, I don't think I'd make a scene if she were with me...
(Un?)Fortunately, I haven't yet had an appropriate opportunity to do so.
This quote from TFA strikes me as both taunting and smartass-y:
I told them plainly that I'm not in the habit of giving my ID to people just because they want it, especially fake cops who put money in box and get to play at being real cops.
I would say there are some significant differences between your standard Windows event-driven program and your standard Android program. You see, the Windows program has exactly one entry point (WinMain or main); the event handlers are called by library functions or signals or whatever, but the program is already running at that point.
With Android, your program may actually be loaded at any of the entry points (at least, that's my understanding of it). They may both be event-driven, but there are some fundamental differences that make programming for the Android platform a significantly different task than programming a single-entry-point event-driven program.
That is correct, all application development is done in Java. Yes, that is a show-stopper for some people, but that doesn't make Android a "bad" thing.
I find it difficult to program for the Android platform, but only because it's a *very* different programming paradigm. Rather than a single entry point, as with a standard computer program, there are half a dozen entry points. This isn't really a bad thing - having a single entry point would just mean you'd have to figure out which task needs to be done at the beginning of the program.
In other words, the OS does the hard part for you.
You might hate that style of programming, but it doesn't make it bad - and it certainly doesn't mean there are a million things to hate about the Android platform.
(There may, in fact, actually be a million things to hate about Android. I don't have an Android-based device, so I wouldn't know; I've only fiddled with the emulator in the SDK. My point is simply that the programming paradigm needed to write software for the Android platform isn't one of the things you should be hating.)
When I ask for resources for building your own laptop, I'm not talking about "a complete 'barebones' laptop that's maybe missing a hard drive and RAM", which is pretty much what you get at Newegg. If I want that, I'll go buy a cheaper Dell and swap out the hard drive and possibly the CPU.
What I want is a place to buy the parts necessary to build those so-called 'barebones' systems - they're hardly barebones, they already come with most of the parts! I realize there is little or no standardization in the laptop market, but that only adds to the reasoning behind my question.
Answering my question is not so easy as "go to Newegg" or even "Google it". The reason I asked was that there is a fair chance that if it's financially viable and logistically doable, someone on Slashdot has done it before, and will be able to point me in the right direction - for building laptops "from scratch", Newegg is not the answer.
The rules are largely irrelevant to people with integrity. That is, most laws have little effect on the majority of the population; murder being illegal has no direct effect on me, personally, because I've never murdered nor do I plan to murder. Would you argue that since murder being illegal has no effect on most of the population we should make it legal?
The whole point of laws is to keep the minority of people - the GP's "army of assholes" - from screwing things up for the rest of us. The only way to do that is to make laws more and more specific as those people try to find smaller and smaller loopholes to get out of taking responsibility for their own actions.
Second: You definitely can add additional, alternate shipping addresses to your card
Not always. I tried to add an alternate address to my Visa (which I got through my credit union) and they don't have the ability to do that. Granted, this is largely because it's through my credit union rather than through a "real" credit card company, but a lot of people do it this way - so it's not quite always possible.
Why does it matter whether he paid the $6000 or someone else did? The fact of the matter is, someone paid the initial purchase amount, and someone is buying an additional part later - Alienware has no reason to care that those two people are different.
Furthermore, a customer account at Alienware is hardly proof of ownership, even if that account lists prior purchases - those purchases might be gifts, the computer might be a hand-me-down, etc etc; there are a dozen reasons a person might legitimately have an Alienware computer without having the customer account somehow "transferred" to his name.
In simpler terms, if I regularly buy Alienware computers, and I decide to buy one for my cousin, why should I have to put my entire customer account in his name just so he can buy a spare part? It's a completely stupid business model.
I should also point out that it wastes more of Alienware's money in terms of time to take a call and argue with a customer about whether he can buy a part than it would to just sell him the part in the first place.
Oh, and your comment here:
but i understand they made their money on my 6000, not the 150 i decided on later.
You seem to be implying that the initial purchase amount somehow subsidizes later parts purchases. Besides the aforementioned "Who cares? Someone paid the $6000" argument I provided earlier, there's the obvious "Do you really think they're losing money on the $5 piece of metal they're selling for $150?" If you think they are, you're a little confused about how the world works.
If a parts store asked for my VIN, I'd say no. I'd gladly tell them the year, make, and model, but they have no reason to need the VIN.
Last time I bought a part from a dealer was last year, when I bought a negative battery cable from a local Honda dealership. They didn't ask for the VIN, they just asked for the year, make, and model. They don't need any more information.
Yes, I realize "VIN number" is redundant... I was in a hurry, so I didn't proofread very well. A free dinner was waiting for me;)
Slashdot Mirror
I was referring strictly to cold-target marketing (that is, contacting people who don't have a prior business relationship with the company). Hence my use of the word "prospect" in "prospect list" - as in, a list of prospective clients.
It gets worse than simply ignoring the Do Not Call list. You see, in order to be compliant with government regulations, legitimate marketing firms need to purchase an annual subscription to the DNC list. They then need to purge from their prospect list any number appearing in the DNC list.
Unfortunately, the government sells this list to anyone who asks; thus, Russian telemarketing companies sometimes buy the DNC list as a source of pre-verified, valid phone numbers.
What's interesting to me is that two of the three firms they contacted refused to even look at it.
Thanks for the link; it's bookmarked :)
I wasn't saying everyone should roll over for cops. I was saying that politeness and tact can go a long way in defusing a situation like that, whereas rudeness can make it a lot worse by eliciting a similar response from the cops.
Put another way, if a cop is asserting undue authority, being rude to him is only going to encourage that behavior, whereas being polite will do the opposite (or at least won't make it worse).
You're reading too much into what I said. I'm not agreeing with the behavior of the ATM guys. In fact I support the actions of the person who was arrested (if not the attitude with which he did them), and regardless of his attitude I disapprove of the manner in which he was treated.
All I was saying is that there is, in fact, evidence that the, um, victim was not the perfect picture of politeness (which is what my parent post seemed to imply).
You have to identify yourself; this does not necessitate providing a drivers' license. That interpretation would make it illegal to not have a drivers' license; it's perfectly legal to never obtain any form of federal- or state-issued picture identification. (It might make some things harder - opening a bank account, for example - but it's legal.)
What you are required to do is provide your name and your address, so that the police can verify that through some other means. That fulfills the needs of "required to identify yourself".
Tact and politeness are generally considered useful skills, especially when dealing with the cops (even rent-a-cops).
In other words, there are plenty of nicer ways to say "I won't give you my ID" than "I don't give my ID to fake cops".
If I had taken a picture of the inside of an ATM for whatever reason, and the police later suspected me of robbing that (or any other) ATM, I'd probably just cooperate with their investigation - the faster they rule me out as a suspect, the fewer of my tax dollars they waste investigating the wrong person.
I haven't actually laughed out loud (when reading Slashdot, anyway) for quite a while, thanks :)
In all seriousness, though, not everyone can think on their toes like that...
My wife thinks I'm crazy, but I've always been of the opinion that if a police officer tries to assert false authority over me for whatever reason, I would stand up for my rights; but for my wife's sake, I don't think I'd make a scene if she were with me...
(Un?)Fortunately, I haven't yet had an appropriate opportunity to do so.
This quote from TFA strikes me as both taunting and smartass-y:
I told them plainly that I'm not in the habit of giving my ID to people just because they want it, especially fake cops who put money in box and get to play at being real cops.
I stand corrected. ...
*goes to Amazon with a credit card handy*
But they're not selling ChronoTrigger commercially anymore, so how would they lose money that way?
Counter-Strike was a fan-made mod. It sells quite well, now.
No evidence? Half-Life is good evidence, by itself. There are others.
I agree (about it looking old, anyway). I think its layout should remain approximately the same, but it needs a facelift.
I would say there are some significant differences between your standard Windows event-driven program and your standard Android program. You see, the Windows program has exactly one entry point (WinMain or main); the event handlers are called by library functions or signals or whatever, but the program is already running at that point.
With Android, your program may actually be loaded at any of the entry points (at least, that's my understanding of it). They may both be event-driven, but there are some fundamental differences that make programming for the Android platform a significantly different task than programming a single-entry-point event-driven program.
That is correct, all application development is done in Java. Yes, that is a show-stopper for some people, but that doesn't make Android a "bad" thing.
I find it difficult to program for the Android platform, but only because it's a *very* different programming paradigm. Rather than a single entry point, as with a standard computer program, there are half a dozen entry points. This isn't really a bad thing - having a single entry point would just mean you'd have to figure out which task needs to be done at the beginning of the program.
In other words, the OS does the hard part for you.
You might hate that style of programming, but it doesn't make it bad - and it certainly doesn't mean there are a million things to hate about the Android platform.
(There may, in fact, actually be a million things to hate about Android. I don't have an Android-based device, so I wouldn't know; I've only fiddled with the emulator in the SDK. My point is simply that the programming paradigm needed to write software for the Android platform isn't one of the things you should be hating.)
Right, that's why it's so hard to buy spare parts from Dell's website. </sarcasm>
When I ask for resources for building your own laptop, I'm not talking about "a complete 'barebones' laptop that's maybe missing a hard drive and RAM", which is pretty much what you get at Newegg. If I want that, I'll go buy a cheaper Dell and swap out the hard drive and possibly the CPU.
What I want is a place to buy the parts necessary to build those so-called 'barebones' systems - they're hardly barebones, they already come with most of the parts! I realize there is little or no standardization in the laptop market, but that only adds to the reasoning behind my question.
Answering my question is not so easy as "go to Newegg" or even "Google it". The reason I asked was that there is a fair chance that if it's financially viable and logistically doable, someone on Slashdot has done it before, and will be able to point me in the right direction - for building laptops "from scratch", Newegg is not the answer.
The rules are largely irrelevant to people with integrity. That is, most laws have little effect on the majority of the population; murder being illegal has no direct effect on me, personally, because I've never murdered nor do I plan to murder. Would you argue that since murder being illegal has no effect on most of the population we should make it legal?
The whole point of laws is to keep the minority of people - the GP's "army of assholes" - from screwing things up for the rest of us. The only way to do that is to make laws more and more specific as those people try to find smaller and smaller loopholes to get out of taking responsibility for their own actions.
Second: You definitely can add additional, alternate shipping addresses to your card
Not always. I tried to add an alternate address to my Visa (which I got through my credit union) and they don't have the ability to do that. Granted, this is largely because it's through my credit union rather than through a "real" credit card company, but a lot of people do it this way - so it's not quite always possible.
Why does it matter whether he paid the $6000 or someone else did? The fact of the matter is, someone paid the initial purchase amount, and someone is buying an additional part later - Alienware has no reason to care that those two people are different.
Furthermore, a customer account at Alienware is hardly proof of ownership, even if that account lists prior purchases - those purchases might be gifts, the computer might be a hand-me-down, etc etc; there are a dozen reasons a person might legitimately have an Alienware computer without having the customer account somehow "transferred" to his name.
In simpler terms, if I regularly buy Alienware computers, and I decide to buy one for my cousin, why should I have to put my entire customer account in his name just so he can buy a spare part? It's a completely stupid business model.
I should also point out that it wastes more of Alienware's money in terms of time to take a call and argue with a customer about whether he can buy a part than it would to just sell him the part in the first place.
Oh, and your comment here:
but i understand they made their money on my 6000, not the 150 i decided on later.
You seem to be implying that the initial purchase amount somehow subsidizes later parts purchases. Besides the aforementioned "Who cares? Someone paid the $6000" argument I provided earlier, there's the obvious "Do you really think they're losing money on the $5 piece of metal they're selling for $150?" If you think they are, you're a little confused about how the world works.
If a parts store asked for my VIN, I'd say no. I'd gladly tell them the year, make, and model, but they have no reason to need the VIN.
Last time I bought a part from a dealer was last year, when I bought a negative battery cable from a local Honda dealership. They didn't ask for the VIN, they just asked for the year, make, and model. They don't need any more information.
Yes, I realize "VIN number" is redundant... I was in a hurry, so I didn't proofread very well. A free dinner was waiting for me ;)