All the mail to that account would bounce, and the bank has other (non phishable) ways to contact me if needed.
"Hello, this is Agent Jenkins from the United City Bank fraud department, is this Mr. Jenkins?
"Mr. Jenkins, I'm involved in an investigation into a series of scams that have resulted in the loss of several hundred thousand dollars. We believe your account may have been targeted within the last 24 hours. I need to be sure of who you are before we proceed, could you please verify your account number, PIN, and online banking password? Thank you, I'll hold."
This may not work on you, but I'm sure regular e-mail phishing won't work on you either. Saying that the phone or even postal mail is non-phishable seems naive.
My credit union has a great solution for this problem. When I sign up to receive e-mail from them, they ask me for a phrase. That phrase is then included in every message they send me. If it's not there, I know the message is fake. Simple, secure, and effective.
I'm constantly struck by the incredibly irony that, of all the financial accounts I've had, the one with the tiny, caters-to-poor-college-students credit union has been the best, the cheapest, the most reliable, and the most secure.
My objection to this entire scheme was that it would allow random people to read my passport from a distance without my permission. If it can only be read while open, that basically takes care of this problem. Hooray!
Any ecologist will tell you that the one thing that limits a population is food. (lots of people debate this and say humans are different. That we control our population at will, however since the "invention" of agriculture the world's human population has done nothing but go up. When the world's population starts decreasing because of self-imposed limits, then I'll listening to how we determine our own carrying capacity). World hunger is a constant issue now, but if everyone in the world can eat, I assure you that the world's next generation will be even bigger. And if all of them can eat...well you see where I'm going.
World hunger has always been a constant issue, and it's better now than it ever has been. It's no longer because of a general shortage of food, but because of evil nasty politics where those in power starve people for their own gain.
World population isn't going down yet, but it looks like it will start to do so within the next fifty years. Many countries are below the replacement birth rate today. Interestingly, those countries which have the lowest birth rates are also those with the most food. It's not the rich places where everybody can afford to feed themselves to an early coronary that the population is growing like crazy, it's the poor places where most of the population is malnourished.
I see what you mean, and I get your point now. I adore Expose, but I can see where a novice might be confused. In Expose's defense, it is always deactivated when you click, no matter where, so a bit of flailing around should always get the user back to a usable state.
Your comments about Expose are confusing to me. By default, Expose can only be activated by pushing F10, F11, and F12. You have to go and change the settings manually if you want it to activate with a screen corner. You shouldn't have been experience this unless you explicitly asked for it, and a newbie won't accidentally trigger it unless he's playing around with his F-keys.
The woman got a request for a video game from her son, and she apparently knew nothing about it. Rather than go out and blindly purchase it, she went to a store, found a clueful clerk, and pointedly asked him if it was appropriate for a child of her son's age. When the answer came back, she listened, and did not buy the game. Why are you insulting her? This sounds like perfect behavior to me.
The same thing, huh? Which part of your program handles the "grab a picture from your mobile phone and get the bar code out of it" and "send the results back to your phone" parts?
I am a Conservative Christian Libertarian (I know it sounds messed up).
It doesn't sound messed up to me. Traditional Conservatives are (supposed to be) very much in favor of personal liberty. Traditional Christians have that whole Golden Rule thing going, and are (supposed to be) very tolerant. Put it together, and a Conservative Christian should, in my eyes, be a Libertarian almost by default. Sadly, it rarely works out that way.
The world can be a better place if we leave nationalism behind, and think collectively in terms on the whole mankind.
The world would also be a better place if we were all transformed into magical fairies with wings so that we could fly wherever we wanted to go. What's your point?
My mistake: the cost of Apollo is about the same as the projected lifetime cost of the ISS ($100 billion "modern" dollars each). Mir is quoted at costing a bit more than $4 billion for its entire operating life.
Look at what Apollo and Mir accomplished during the era of competition. Look at what the International Space Station has accomplished (pretty much zilch) for more money than either of those two programs. "Let's do it together" is a nice sentiment, but it doesn't appear to get anything done.
If you want these developing countries to stop having so many babies, the only proven way to do so is to get them developed, and that can only come through technology.
A large percentage of the populace also believes that the world was created in seven days, but that doesn't mean they're right.
Forever-secret conspiracies simply don't happen in real life. As the saying goes, two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.
Technically, Oswald did die in prison, as Jack Ruby shot him while he was in a jail. However, "who later died in prison" in my post is referring to Ruby, not Oswald.
Russian launch practices are fascinating. They basically cart the rocket out on a huge truck, turn it upright, and fire it off. They routinely launch in horrible weather. By comparison, the US space program uses an incredibly slow and expensive system to take the things to the launch pad while they're upright. They launched one time when it was a tad cold and the entire thing blew up. On the other hand, Apollo 12 was struck by lightning twice during the launch, and went on to land on the Moon.
For everyone who is not a member of the tin-foil hat crowd, everything is fine. Oswald was the only shooter. He got whacked by a nut, who later died in prison. Justice was served as well as was possible, and the facts are there for anybody to see.
Good point. Any time we think slashdot has become really horrible, we should all step back and say, "It's not that bad, it could be worse, it could be kuro5hin."
Yes, I think we understand each other. My point was not that I'm incapable of fixing somebody's printer, but that it's much better if they just get their friend, who actually likes fixing minor computer problems, to come over and fix it.
Why should knowing something about how cares are put together translate into ability to repair them?
The relationship is blindingly obvious, so I am not quite sure how this is even a question.
Great. Next time you need surgery, go see a biologist. When your pipes break, ask a metallurgist. When your TV breaks, ask a semiconductor designer.
You're seriously claiming this apparently healthy background of yours was useless? Yes, Windows (and Linux, or any OS, or virtually any piece of complex software) is loaded with details and quirks. Given what you've just said about your background, I'd assume you'd not only be able to figure out how it works, but perhaps fix a bug in it given the source code. Or modify it. Or flat write your own network configuration wizard if MS hired you to do so tomorrow.
I think there's a fundamental disconnect between what I'm saying (or trying to say) and what you're understanding.
I did not say that I'm useless at these tasks. I'm saying that I'm not very good at them. I can manage, and fix things, if I have a lot of time and am willing to put forth a lot of effort. My point was not to say, "I'm a programmer, sorry, I can't do anything", but to simply make people realize that I might be slow and error-prone when I'm trying to fix their printer.
Yes, I could probably do all of these things you say, given the time, but that's irrelevant. Without some preparation, people don't understand why I'll take more than fifteen minutes to solve what looks like a simple problem.
Actually, I'm typing to you from Linux, and I personally prefer it. However to claim I've never spent two hours on configuration issue I figured would be a simple matter, that led me down a twisty road of quirks and strange details, is amusing.
Ok, fine, maybe Linux should be lumped in with Windows on this matter. The only problem I've had in the past few years that took me more than half an hour to resolve ended up being an incredibly subtle hardware issue involving an intermittent connection that would corrupt memory at seemingly-random intervals. That took a great deal of time and effort to diagnose. Otherwise, things pretty much Just Work. I don't personally enjoy fixing things that should have worked the first time. If it's something that is genuinely a difficult task, like installing Linux on my Airport Base Station or trying to rate-limit TCP connections without controlling any of the computers it passes through, I have a great time. But stuff like setting up a wireless network or a shared printer is basically a solved problem, and it annoys me greatly when it takes a lot of work to do something that should be simple. This is why I use Macs; it's not bulletproof, but most of the time, things that should be simple are. I'm not claiming to have the superior choice for everyone, just like I'm not claiming that my set of skills or knowledge is true of everyone.
While I wouldn't expect a design engineer at ford to be as quick on figuring out whats wrong with my Jetta as the mechanics at a Ford Dealership, he sure as hell knows something about how cars are put (and operate) together.
Why should knowing something about how cares are put together translate into ability to repair them? Your designer probably has a lot of theoretical knowledge about the car. He may even have a good idea as to what went wrong. But will he be able to actually dive in with a wrench and fix it? Not necessarily.
Anyway, I would expect most developers have had a decent level on interaction with setting up and configuring their own workstations, peripherals, LANs, and whatnot. While they might not be as proficient at hammering out problems as someone who does it for a living, I'd sure be concerned if they were as helpless as you claim to be.
Windows has a great deal of arcane knowledge associated with it. I will happily take my generalized knowledge of, say, networking, and apply it to a Windows machine in an effort to make it work. The thing is, it simply doesn't work that way. This summer I was trying to get NAT running on a computer with WinXP connected to the net via (doh!) AOL DSL, so that I could get my computer on the net. What should have been a trivial task took me two hours because the obvious steps of "configure the network correctly, turn on NAT" simply didn't work. It didn't work precisely because of this arcane and stupid stuff that Windows does to sabotage any operation more complicated than a double-click. I consider this to be an example of my lack of ability, rather than an eventual triumph, because who has the time to spend two hours on every single problems on somebody's computer? I have experience in setting up networks, writing networking software, writing network analyzers, and I know a lot of theory behind the whole thing, but in the end it didn't save me, because I had no experience with Windows.
You're a Windows user, right? It seems like you don't realize that the bizarre and inexplicable which plague Windows computers simply don't happen on any other system. Maybe you do realize it, and I'm misinterpreting.
I'm not sure what your point is. Your hobby appears to be "playing with as many types of OSes and hardware as possible", which is great. However, my hobby is, basically, "programming". You learn SMB, I learn lisp. While your hobby translates pretty well to fixing other people's broken computers, mine doesn't. I know some things about it, but it's not what I do on a regular basis, either for work or for fun. I don't like playing with weird or complicated setups at home because they get in the way of what I really like to do. The time I spend troubleshooting my network is time that I could spend writing my TCP mangler. Although many people like to act as if all IT were the same, there are huge differences between the various subspecialties.
Slashdot Mirror
All the mail to that account would bounce, and the bank has other (non phishable) ways to contact me if needed.
"Hello, this is Agent Jenkins from the United City Bank fraud department, is this Mr. Jenkins?
"Mr. Jenkins, I'm involved in an investigation into a series of scams that have resulted in the loss of several hundred thousand dollars. We believe your account may have been targeted within the last 24 hours. I need to be sure of who you are before we proceed, could you please verify your account number, PIN, and online banking password? Thank you, I'll hold."
This may not work on you, but I'm sure regular e-mail phishing won't work on you either. Saying that the phone or even postal mail is non-phishable seems naive.
My credit union has a great solution for this problem. When I sign up to receive e-mail from them, they ask me for a phrase. That phrase is then included in every message they send me. If it's not there, I know the message is fake. Simple, secure, and effective.
I'm constantly struck by the incredibly irony that, of all the financial accounts I've had, the one with the tiny, caters-to-poor-college-students credit union has been the best, the cheapest, the most reliable, and the most secure.
My objection to this entire scheme was that it would allow random people to read my passport from a distance without my permission. If it can only be read while open, that basically takes care of this problem. Hooray!
Normally when you cheat at life insurance, you want to cheat at somebody else's life insurance....
Any ecologist will tell you that the one thing that limits a population is food. (lots of people debate this and say humans are different. That we control our population at will, however since the "invention" of agriculture the world's human population has done nothing but go up. When the world's population starts decreasing because of self-imposed limits, then I'll listening to how we determine our own carrying capacity). World hunger is a constant issue now, but if everyone in the world can eat, I assure you that the world's next generation will be even bigger. And if all of them can eat...well you see where I'm going.
World hunger has always been a constant issue, and it's better now than it ever has been. It's no longer because of a general shortage of food, but because of evil nasty politics where those in power starve people for their own gain.
World population isn't going down yet, but it looks like it will start to do so within the next fifty years. Many countries are below the replacement birth rate today. Interestingly, those countries which have the lowest birth rates are also those with the most food. It's not the rich places where everybody can afford to feed themselves to an early coronary that the population is growing like crazy, it's the poor places where most of the population is malnourished.
I see what you mean, and I get your point now. I adore Expose, but I can see where a novice might be confused. In Expose's defense, it is always deactivated when you click, no matter where, so a bit of flailing around should always get the user back to a usable state.
Your comments about Expose are confusing to me. By default, Expose can only be activated by pushing F10, F11, and F12. You have to go and change the settings manually if you want it to activate with a screen corner. You shouldn't have been experience this unless you explicitly asked for it, and a newbie won't accidentally trigger it unless he's playing around with his F-keys.
The woman got a request for a video game from her son, and she apparently knew nothing about it. Rather than go out and blindly purchase it, she went to a store, found a clueful clerk, and pointedly asked him if it was appropriate for a child of her son's age. When the answer came back, she listened, and did not buy the game. Why are you insulting her? This sounds like perfect behavior to me.
Here's another quote for you:
"Combine this perl with the browser of your choice and you have the same thing."
And yet, it's not the same thing. Your quote just supports that.
The same thing, huh? Which part of your program handles the "grab a picture from your mobile phone and get the bar code out of it" and "send the results back to your phone" parts?
So what about the remaining 0.1% that Valve just totally screwed? Do they not matter because there's not enough of them?
This is true, but it doesn't apply to this story. The general theme of this story seems to be, "what a bad idea!"
I am a Conservative Christian Libertarian (I know it sounds messed up).
It doesn't sound messed up to me. Traditional Conservatives are (supposed to be) very much in favor of personal liberty. Traditional Christians have that whole Golden Rule thing going, and are (supposed to be) very tolerant. Put it together, and a Conservative Christian should, in my eyes, be a Libertarian almost by default. Sadly, it rarely works out that way.
The world can be a better place if we leave nationalism behind, and think collectively in terms on the whole mankind.
The world would also be a better place if we were all transformed into magical fairies with wings so that we could fly wherever we wanted to go. What's your point?
My mistake: the cost of Apollo is about the same as the projected lifetime cost of the ISS ($100 billion "modern" dollars each). Mir is quoted at costing a bit more than $4 billion for its entire operating life.
Look at what Apollo and Mir accomplished during the era of competition. Look at what the International Space Station has accomplished (pretty much zilch) for more money than either of those two programs. "Let's do it together" is a nice sentiment, but it doesn't appear to get anything done.
If you want these developing countries to stop having so many babies, the only proven way to do so is to get them developed, and that can only come through technology.
A large percentage of the populace also believes that the world was created in seven days, but that doesn't mean they're right.
Forever-secret conspiracies simply don't happen in real life. As the saying goes, two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.
Technically, Oswald did die in prison, as Jack Ruby shot him while he was in a jail. However, "who later died in prison" in my post is referring to Ruby, not Oswald.
Russian launch practices are fascinating. They basically cart the rocket out on a huge truck, turn it upright, and fire it off. They routinely launch in horrible weather. By comparison, the US space program uses an incredibly slow and expensive system to take the things to the launch pad while they're upright. They launched one time when it was a tad cold and the entire thing blew up. On the other hand, Apollo 12 was struck by lightning twice during the launch, and went on to land on the Moon.
For everyone who is not a member of the tin-foil hat crowd, everything is fine. Oswald was the only shooter. He got whacked by a nut, who later died in prison. Justice was served as well as was possible, and the facts are there for anybody to see.
Good point. Any time we think slashdot has become really horrible, we should all step back and say, "It's not that bad, it could be worse, it could be kuro5hin."
Not to mention that leaving the browser in an inconsistent state because it died in the middle of an update is evil. Fail gracefully!
Yes, I think we understand each other. My point was not that I'm incapable of fixing somebody's printer, but that it's much better if they just get their friend, who actually likes fixing minor computer problems, to come over and fix it.
Great. Next time you need surgery, go see a biologist. When your pipes break, ask a metallurgist. When your TV breaks, ask a semiconductor designer.
You're seriously claiming this apparently healthy background of yours was useless? Yes, Windows (and Linux, or any OS, or virtually any piece of complex software) is loaded with details and quirks. Given what you've just said about your background, I'd assume you'd not only be able to figure out how it works, but perhaps fix a bug in it given the source code. Or modify it. Or flat write your own network configuration wizard if MS hired you to do so tomorrow.
I think there's a fundamental disconnect between what I'm saying (or trying to say) and what you're understanding.
I did not say that I'm useless at these tasks. I'm saying that I'm not very good at them. I can manage, and fix things, if I have a lot of time and am willing to put forth a lot of effort. My point was not to say, "I'm a programmer, sorry, I can't do anything", but to simply make people realize that I might be slow and error-prone when I'm trying to fix their printer.
Yes, I could probably do all of these things you say, given the time, but that's irrelevant. Without some preparation, people don't understand why I'll take more than fifteen minutes to solve what looks like a simple problem.
Actually, I'm typing to you from Linux, and I personally prefer it. However to claim I've never spent two hours on configuration issue I figured would be a simple matter, that led me down a twisty road of quirks and strange details, is amusing.
Ok, fine, maybe Linux should be lumped in with Windows on this matter. The only problem I've had in the past few years that took me more than half an hour to resolve ended up being an incredibly subtle hardware issue involving an intermittent connection that would corrupt memory at seemingly-random intervals. That took a great deal of time and effort to diagnose. Otherwise, things pretty much Just Work. I don't personally enjoy fixing things that should have worked the first time. If it's something that is genuinely a difficult task, like installing Linux on my Airport Base Station or trying to rate-limit TCP connections without controlling any of the computers it passes through, I have a great time. But stuff like setting up a wireless network or a shared printer is basically a solved problem, and it annoys me greatly when it takes a lot of work to do something that should be simple. This is why I use Macs; it's not bulletproof, but most of the time, things that should be simple are. I'm not claiming to have the superior choice for everyone, just like I'm not claiming that my set of skills or knowledge is true of everyone.
While I wouldn't expect a design engineer at ford to be as quick on figuring out whats wrong with my Jetta as the mechanics at a Ford Dealership, he sure as hell knows something about how cars are put (and operate) together.
Why should knowing something about how cares are put together translate into ability to repair them? Your designer probably has a lot of theoretical knowledge about the car. He may even have a good idea as to what went wrong. But will he be able to actually dive in with a wrench and fix it? Not necessarily.
Anyway, I would expect most developers have had a decent level on interaction with setting up and configuring their own workstations, peripherals, LANs, and whatnot. While they might not be as proficient at hammering out problems as someone who does it for a living, I'd sure be concerned if they were as helpless as you claim to be.
Windows has a great deal of arcane knowledge associated with it. I will happily take my generalized knowledge of, say, networking, and apply it to a Windows machine in an effort to make it work. The thing is, it simply doesn't work that way. This summer I was trying to get NAT running on a computer with WinXP connected to the net via (doh!) AOL DSL, so that I could get my computer on the net. What should have been a trivial task took me two hours because the obvious steps of "configure the network correctly, turn on NAT" simply didn't work. It didn't work precisely because of this arcane and stupid stuff that Windows does to sabotage any operation more complicated than a double-click. I consider this to be an example of my lack of ability, rather than an eventual triumph, because who has the time to spend two hours on every single problems on somebody's computer? I have experience in setting up networks, writing networking software, writing network analyzers, and I know a lot of theory behind the whole thing, but in the end it didn't save me, because I had no experience with Windows.
You're a Windows user, right? It seems like you don't realize that the bizarre and inexplicable which plague Windows computers simply don't happen on any other system. Maybe you do realize it, and I'm misinterpreting.
I'm not sure what your point is. Your hobby appears to be "playing with as many types of OSes and hardware as possible", which is great. However, my hobby is, basically, "programming". You learn SMB, I learn lisp. While your hobby translates pretty well to fixing other people's broken computers, mine doesn't. I know some things about it, but it's not what I do on a regular basis, either for work or for fun. I don't like playing with weird or complicated setups at home because they get in the way of what I really like to do. The time I spend troubleshooting my network is time that I could spend writing my TCP mangler. Although many people like to act as if all IT were the same, there are huge differences between the various subspecialties.