>Better to constantly rotate existing IDs than to randomly generate new ones.
Long ago, in the days when Junkbuster was enough, it had a "cookie jar" feature.
I don't know if it was ever completed, but the point was to trade tracking cookies on servers . . . at the time, I simply had a folder with the cookie file name (".cookies"? It's been a while), so they failed anyway.
It's entirely possible that technological differences mean that it makes sense for Intel to use one die for multiple products this way, while AMD finds it more efficient to make multiple dies.
I hadn't heard ab out there dongle, though--I would have thought it more efficient to do this on the package with fuses.
And I forgot to mention the articles in the 70s in Popular Electronics and the like that showed you how to mount four or five buttons on the case of your calculator to get the extra functions . . .
But in the *real world*, that's not what Amazon is accused of.
There are companies playing games with tax havens and whathaveyou.
What Amazon is regularly accused of is not *hiding* the profits, but *spending* them on expansion and R&D, which happens to be deductible.
Yes, they play the game on getting reductions in local taxes for placing headquarters--in that case, there were going to get something like 10% off of $30 *billion* in taxes they would pay locally . . .
But to complain that a company is plowing profits into growth and expansion in the way *explicitly encouraged* by the design of the tax code, and demand that they be taxed extra somehow on that, for *doing what the code has decided is desirable for society*, is simply insane.
The two classic examples are IBM mainframe clock frequency (in which you paid extra to get the gizmo halving the frequency *removed*,), and early electronic calculators.
The reality is that for some products, each engineering variant adds significant costs. So it costs you less to build, for example, a single calculator chip with all of the abilities, but not put square root keys and memory keys on your low end models.
If you wanted to sell all $40 full featured calculators, you couldn't sell as many as $20 limited feature calculators. So you sell both. If you used two chips, you'd drive the prices to $45 and $25, and not sell as many of either.
Both seller *and* consumer are better off with the single product.
Another piece of the explanation is that a huge portion of the costs is in the design of the chip and in making the dies; the cost of each produced chip, while real, is small compared to the cost of bringing it into existence.
BTW, this is exactly the same economics for pharmaceutical companies selling cheap to foreign countries when forced, even though they don't cover the average cost on those sales. When you have $1b to design and test, and $1 per pill to make them, with a market of half a billion pills, it makes sense to take $1.50 from the foreign market even though it doesn't cover the "fair share" of development costs.
The most important reform for pharmaceuticals would be to require that pills be made available to US pharmacies or wholesalers on the same terms as offered to any foreign entity. That is, if the average cost of proaction is $3, even though the pill is $1 to make, it makes sense *now* to sell to foreign country for $2 if the choice is not selling any to them. But if selling to them at $2 means that you have to sell in the US for $2, the answer is "hell, no" when the foreign buyer tries to strongarm. *Both* the US consumer and the manufacturer benefit from this rule.
:> So I filed on paper. Simple return, only three pages but it will still cost >the government a disappointing amount of money to process it even if all they >do is enter the routing numbers and refund amount and trust the rest blindly.
The catch, of course, occurs when they make a data entry error, changing which credits/deductions/etc you are eligible for, which then takes half an hour on the phone with them to figure out, and then it's 12 weeks for processing the kind of amended return . . .
hawk, still waiting for his substantial 2017 refund
And at least given that I have it all on spreadsheets that I've been updating since, I think, 1989, (that took surprisingly little revision for this year's changes), and am ready when the forms come out, it took significantly *less* time to use freefillableforms than to wade through the constant streams of sales pitches and micromanagement of the commercial vendors.
And given the missing forms and options (free versions won't let you enter data on depreciation, and inability to use straight-line depreciation are two I'e hit), it's just easier to not deal with them.
The European system was apparently *deigned* to allow and *encourage* this.
It's the same notion as "emission credits" that tend to create more economic output for the same amount of pollution by allowing the "right" to emit to be sold to someone who can make better use out of those emissions.
Here, it changes the industry incentives: when an electric can "sell" in this way, it creates a subsidy from the polluting producer to the clean company. This is *no* different than a reduction in the cost of steel or other components.
Net result is that the price of a fiat goes up to cover this, while the price of a Tesla goes down, meaning more Tesla and less Fiat, and thus less pollution.
Overall, this kind of system yields better results than specific mandated solutions.
All that I mentioned have no fee. There are fee based rewards cards with higher kickbacks, but for the ones I've looked at, the math doesn't work.
And on that laptop, that $60 is only $20 more than my fidelity card, and I don't buy one most years.
When cash back comes isn't really that important to me.Fidelity will just drop it in my checking account by clicking, and capital one only needs a click to send a check (I think it can also post to the account). I mostly just let them accumulate, and every year or so send them to the student loans whose rates are so low I won't use normal money to pre-pay.
2% cards aren't hard to find, though. I have one from fidelity, and my brother has one from discover (which surprised me; the last time I bothered with them, there were so many caps and fractions on its 1%that it wasn't worth keeping.
And it drops to 1% when you use the card out in the real world. I've tried Apple Pay a couple of times, but haven't succeeded yet.
And it's not clear whether online purchases are 1% or 2%.
I don't care about interest rates; I pay my card off a couple of times a week. The only reason I even have it is the kickbacks.
The no currency fees is nice, but my 1.5% capital one already does that.
And the extra 1% on apple stuff doesn't really add up to enough to worry about -- certainly not enough to deal with an extra card.
I changed my phone number a month or so, because after three years it was still on the list for every payday loan and bad credit scheme from the prior owner (texts *always* addressed to the same name).
I still got the robocalls on a never before issued number, but they seem to have stopped.
They had gone through the roof a couple (few?) months ago. Before that, Tmobile usually caught them as "spam likely", and now I'm not seeing them at all again.
I suspect that someone found away around the screening, and then Tmobile figured it out.
It was designed for an SS-50 bus, and actually had the connectors for the edge connector on the motherboard.
However, by the time it was near market, the newer FCC regs meant that it just wouldn't be possible for it to pass.
The result is that the board was wrapped in a think (1/4"? It's been a while . . ) RF case, with limited connections.
And *that* in turn mandated those idiotic serial diskette drives.
At least they eventually figured out (Rev B ROM on them, iirc) that they could skip alternate sectors, so as to be ready to read again---rather than waiting an entire revolution . . .:groan:
I had Serial # 49 as my demo unit, and it also had a different graphics chip--the one they originally designed, instead of the less capable one that shipped.
I *think* that that's the one we sawed through the casing on with plans to connect to the bus, but I'm no longer sure.
hmm, now that you put it *that* way . . . so it's a simple matter of generating enough power to almost propel you at relativistic speeds, firing this co cent rated energy at something ng that warps space and time, and counting on properly handling the x-ray tase of even more power that you just aimed at your ship.
Slashdot Mirror
>Better to constantly rotate existing IDs than to randomly generate new ones.
Long ago, in the days when Junkbuster was enough, it had a "cookie jar" feature.
I don't know if it was ever completed, but the point was to trade tracking cookies on servers . . . at the time, I simply had a folder with the cookie file name (".cookies"? It's been a while), so they failed anyway.
hawk
It's entirely possible that technological differences mean that it makes sense for Intel to use one die for multiple products this way, while AMD finds it more efficient to make multiple dies.
I hadn't heard ab out there dongle, though--I would have thought it more efficient to do this on the package with fuses.
And I forgot to mention the articles in the 70s in Popular Electronics and the like that showed you how to mount four or five buttons on the case of your calculator to get the extra functions . . .
hawk
But in the *real world*, that's not what Amazon is accused of.
There are companies playing games with tax havens and whathaveyou.
What Amazon is regularly accused of is not *hiding* the profits, but *spending* them on expansion and R&D, which happens to be deductible.
Yes, they play the game on getting reductions in local taxes for placing headquarters--in that case, there were going to get something like 10% off of $30 *billion* in taxes they would pay locally . . .
But to complain that a company is plowing profits into growth and expansion in the way *explicitly encouraged* by the design of the tax code, and demand that they be taxed extra somehow on that, for *doing what the code has decided is desirable for society*, is simply insane.
hawk
The two classic examples are IBM mainframe clock frequency (in which you paid extra to get the gizmo halving the frequency *removed*,), and early electronic calculators.
The reality is that for some products, each engineering variant adds significant costs. So it costs you less to build, for example, a single calculator chip with all of the abilities, but not put square root keys and memory keys on your low end models.
If you wanted to sell all $40 full featured calculators, you couldn't sell as many as $20 limited feature calculators. So you sell both. If you used two chips, you'd drive the prices to $45 and $25, and not sell as many of either.
Both seller *and* consumer are better off with the single product.
Another piece of the explanation is that a huge portion of the costs is in the design of the chip and in making the dies; the cost of each produced chip, while real, is small compared to the cost of bringing it into existence.
BTW, this is exactly the same economics for pharmaceutical companies selling cheap to foreign countries when forced, even though they don't cover the average cost on those sales. When you have $1b to design and test, and $1 per pill to make them, with a market of half a billion pills, it makes sense to take $1.50 from the foreign market even though it doesn't cover the "fair share" of development costs.
The most important reform for pharmaceuticals would be to require that pills be made available to US pharmacies or wholesalers on the same terms as offered to any foreign entity. That is, if the average cost of proaction is $3, even though the pill is $1 to make, it makes sense *now* to sell to foreign country for $2 if the choice is not selling any to them. But if selling to them at $2 means that you have to sell in the US for $2, the answer is "hell, no" when the foreign buyer tries to strongarm. *Both* the US consumer and the manufacturer benefit from this rule.
hawk, economics professor
said William Barr to the plant by his desk . . . :)
hawk
You mean the 24/7 infomercial for the Disney empire, which get's interrupted by 15-20 minute chunks of programming?
hawk
The ascii version, of course!
For those who haven't seen it,
telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
The very *definition* of "too much time on his hands" . . . :)
hawk
:> So I filed on paper. Simple return, only three pages but it will still cost
>the government a disappointing amount of money to process it even if all they
>do is enter the routing numbers and refund amount and trust the rest blindly.
The catch, of course, occurs when they make a data entry error, changing which credits/deductions/etc you are eligible for, which then takes half an hour on the phone with them to figure out, and then it's 12 weeks for processing the kind of amended return . . .
hawk, still waiting for his substantial 2017 refund
And at least given that I have it all on spreadsheets that I've been updating since, I think, 1989, (that took surprisingly little revision for this year's changes), and am ready when the forms come out, it took significantly *less* time to use freefillableforms than to wade through the constant streams of sales pitches and micromanagement of the commercial vendors.
And given the missing forms and options (free versions won't let you enter data on depreciation, and inability to use straight-line depreciation are two I'e hit), it's just easier to not deal with them.
hawk
That sounds fine and dandy, until you look at how much it costs to spec out a Mac with that much storage!
hawk
>, and you go into the worst battles with the best people, and mostly you come back out alive
All in all, I think I'll choose a programming language that lacks an intrinsic ability to *kill me*!!!!
*shudder*
hawk, who has never even *worried* about dying while programming before . .
The European system was apparently *deigned* to allow and *encourage* this.
It's the same notion as "emission credits" that tend to create more economic output for the same amount of pollution by allowing the "right" to emit to be sold to someone who can make better use out of those emissions.
Here, it changes the industry incentives: when an electric can "sell" in this way, it creates a subsidy from the polluting producer to the clean company. This is *no* different than a reduction in the cost of steel or other components.
Net result is that the price of a fiat goes up to cover this, while the price of a Tesla goes down, meaning more Tesla and less Fiat, and thus less pollution.
Overall, this kind of system yields better results than specific mandated solutions.
hawk, displaced economics professor
Spherical cows are for amateurs.
Professionals use cubical cows of unit edge length.
They stack *so* much better . . . :_)
hawk
>You already use persistent session cookies, for a raft of purposes.
In all seriousness . . . the reason my slashdot id is so *high* is that when the login system was put in, it required cookies.
At the time, it was common to replace the .cookies file with a folder to defeat them.
It was quite a while before there was a post I wanted bad enough to have to deal with this--as well as to accept a cookie.
Back then, we recognized that writing something that didn't work without cookies *did* make you a bad person :)
hawk
>You are quite off, I suspect you did a conversion error: 6'2" is 1.87 cm,
Oh, dear--I'm going to stay *far* away from metric people.
I'm 6'2", but if I'm turned metric, I'll be turned to the size of a moderate snack for my cats!
hawk, trembling
I couldn't find that extra 1% from a search, not even on chase' own pages.
I think that It was about 20 years ago that the scoring flip-flopped in the US. It went from worrying about "lots of credit" to "per cent utilized".
Now, if you have a handful of cards with $25k limits, and run one or two halfway up, the others may reduce your limits, possibly drastically.
I've even seen pre-emptive cancellation of cards due to rising debt (I practice bankruptcy law these days).
hawk
All that I mentioned have no fee. There are fee based rewards cards with higher kickbacks, but for the ones I've looked at, the math doesn't work.
And on that laptop, that $60 is only $20 more than my fidelity card, and I don't buy one most years.
When cash back comes isn't really that important to me.Fidelity will just drop it in my checking account by clicking, and capital one only needs a click to send a check (I think it can also post to the account). I mostly just let them accumulate, and every year or so send them to the student loans whose rates are so low I won't use normal money to pre-pay.
2% cards aren't hard to find, though. I have one from fidelity, and my brother has one from discover (which surprised me; the last time I bothered with them, there were so many caps and fractions on its 1%that it wasn't worth keeping.
And it drops to 1% when you use the card out in the real world. I've tried Apple Pay a couple of times, but haven't succeeded yet.
And it's not clear whether online purchases are 1% or 2%.
I don't care about interest rates; I pay my card off a couple of times a week. The only reason I even have it is the kickbacks.
The no currency fees is nice, but my 1.5% capital one already does that.
And the extra 1% on apple stuff doesn't really add up to enough to worry about -- certainly not enough to deal with an extra card.
hawk
My understanding is that Tmobile simply shows "scam likely" as caller id and puts through the call, unless you choose to reject them.
>A bus emits approximately 1/6 the CO2 per passenger kilometer as does a single-occupant ICE car.
That depends *entirely* on how full the bus is . . .
The last report I saw locally came out to them emitting more per actual passenger.
hawk
I've seen it, too.
I changed my phone number a month or so, because after three years it was still on the list for every payday loan and bad credit scheme from the prior owner (texts *always* addressed to the same name).
I still got the robocalls on a never before issued number, but they seem to have stopped.
They had gone through the roof a couple (few?) months ago. Before that, Tmobile usually caught them as "spam likely", and now I'm not seeing them at all again.
I suspect that someone found away around the screening, and then Tmobile figured it out.
hawk
The Atari 800/400 had similar problems.
It was designed for an SS-50 bus, and actually had the connectors for the edge connector on the motherboard.
However, by the time it was near market, the newer FCC regs meant that it just wouldn't be possible for it to pass.
The result is that the board was wrapped in a think (1/4"? It's been a while . . ) RF case, with limited connections.
And *that* in turn mandated those idiotic serial diskette drives.
At least they eventually figured out (Rev B ROM on them, iirc) that they could skip alternate sectors, so as to be ready to read again---rather than waiting an entire revolution . . . :groan:
I had Serial # 49 as my demo unit, and it also had a different graphics chip--the one they originally designed, instead of the less capable one that shipped.
I *think* that that's the one we sawed through the casing on with plans to connect to the bus, but I'm no longer sure.
hawk
your words are in the wrong order.
*if* socialism worked, people in the US would demand it.
Venezuela is not an example of it *working*, but rather another case study in its failure . . .
hawk
hmm, now that you put it *that* way . . . so it's a simple matter of generating enough power to almost propel you at relativistic speeds, firing this co cent rated energy at something ng that warps space and time, and counting on properly handling the x-ray tase of even more power that you just aimed at your ship.
What could go wrong? :)
hawk