How often have you walked into a supermarket with a shopping list and seen something on special offer and "impulse" brought it? "Hey - I know I didn't want any Coke, but it's 4 litres for $2 and, hey, I'll drink it anyway"...
Plus the supermarket could use it to track customers movements around the store ("Hmm, 5% of shopping carts first went to bread then to milk, but didn't buy anything from aisle 6: maybe if we change the store layout to force them to pass through aisle 6 before they reach the milk...")
Proper barcodes shouldn't allow you to do that. The barcode "number" should only relate to a database entry which then should give information such as price/discount details. Barcodes do not (or should not) contain any pricing information of any sort (see how barcodes work)
In your scenerio, you should need to alter the barcode to reflect another database entry corresponding to the discount you are after (and I'm sure/hope the store doesn't sequentially allocate discount codes) AND get it past any fail safe systems the EPOS has in place ($0.05-$10.00: reject) AND hit on a discount code which at least slightly reflects the product description (say the discount voucher was for a bottle of shampoo and you just happen to hit on a $30.00 off champagne voucher - then the till-operator should spot the difference). Oh: don't forget the checksum at the end of the barcode as well.
If you can get away with this as easily as you make out - well, that store is just about asking to be ripped off: so name it here so they can be Slashdotted in a physical sense (imagine loads of geeks hitting the same store chain with faked vouchers:) )
Yep, there is another C5. Specifically, Sir Clive Sinclair's (he of the ZX Spectrum 1980's computer fame) failed electric vechicle. The Segway and the Sinclair C5 have been compared to each other quite a bit here in Britain....
I've got a number of 'depreciated' email addresses "out there" (i.e. they used to be on old Internic records, but aren't anymore/were used to make a single USENET posting over 3 years ago etc etc): any email that hits those addresses is automatically tagged as spam and the senders email address is blacklisted.
There are uses for 'not used' email addresses...
Re:Spam comes from unlikely places...
on
As the Spam Turns
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· Score: 1
I'm currently having fun with a Nigerian spammer of my own... I just wonder how long I can keep him at it:)
Don't be so sure about that. I once configured a mail system for a company that had very very basic anti-spam measures: subject line filtering. One of the filters was a line of five or more periods (.....) as it had been shown that the majority of the spam email being received by the company fitted that criteria.
I put the filter in place and an automatic message back to the sender saying "Mail rejected: Subject line contains five or more periods - please change subject line to resend".
I don't think we had a single person figure it out - one numbnut tried resending the message (prefixed by Fw: and Re:) with the same subject header over 20 times...
Tech support then was fun - the customers would reach us (via our "sales team" whose mail we were filtering) and say "Our email is being bounced", we responded "What does the message you got say?"... And then trying to explain a basic sentance to them - and yet we were still the "bad guys" for not making it easier to understand...
I did learn one thing though - never underestimate human stupidity.
Re:Imminent death of...um...comdex predicted?
on
The Last Comdex?
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· Score: 0, Redundant
But...but..but... you can hardly blame the failure of Comdex on the ability to easily copy it can you?
Unles... the RIAA wouldn't lie to us would they?
That might be interesting - especially if he loses. "And now introducing: Bill Wyman. This is not Bill Wyman the journalist, Bill Wyman the plumber or Bill Wyman who runs the Abbey Creak village shop".
I wonder how many Bill Wyman's there are and how happy they would be to here that due to a fellow Bill Wyman losing a court case against an "imposter" they would ALL have to put "Not associated with the Rolling Stars Bill Wyman" at the bottom of checks, letters etc etc...
Isn't this just another strain of the MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus) superbug. If so, the UK has already had 2 deaths in Edinburgh (after it infected 13 patients). There was a death last year from it after a 14yr boy broke his ankle (see BBC News for more articles).
Paper ballots work ok here in the UK. Of course, here we make make a cross in the voting slip (using good old fashioned pencil and paper) and put it in a sealed box. Voting closes, the sealed box is opened and the crosses counted. Two crosses on the paper, smiley faces, crosses that overlap boxes (just the 'tips' are allowed to) - are all invalid/spoiled papers.
All voting slips have a unique id attached to them which is recorded against the voters name in a book. Voting closes, and these books are sealed elsewhere (away from voting). If a person claims that someone else voted for them etc etc, then their number can be looked up and the vote discounted (I can't remember this ever happening, but it's there in case of emergencies).
Unless they work it that you pay £3.99 (or however much) for the media and with it you get a free licence (therefore you haven't paid for the licence but are constrained by it, but can't get a free media replacement). If the CD is broken, they aren't stopping you for making use of the licence: a bit like having a car tax disc doesn't mean the -insert your localities car licencing division name here- doesn't mean that they have to _give_ you a car just because you have "licence" to use it.
So you are saying the moon landing WAS real and mermaids ARE NOT? *sob* I've a feeling that Santa Claus won't be bringing _you_ any presents this Christmas...
Plus this was posted to the/. section "It's funny. Laugh" and it's also "from the funny-funny-haha dept." should help people realise it is a joke and that Hemos knows it is...
Re:Keeping .su as an area?
on
See Ya .su
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The.eu domain name is currently in the process of being created by the European Union: see The Registers story and the EU's own poorly formatted paper about the issue.
Personally, I run a high-bandwidth site and have had a few qualms finding a host. I've now settled on Positive Internet here in the UK because of their 'fair' bandwidth/process usage policy. Basically, they have no 'fixed' limits - therefore if your little site gets slashdotted one day (or, as mine did with my previous host, get featured on national television) and has a 'spurt' for a day or so, then they won't mind. But if (as I eventually ended up doing) you consume a significant part of their bandwidth/processor usage (I was constantly in the top 10% on one of their shared servers - and this is for months on end), then they contact you and offer you a 'more suitable product'. I've now got my own dedicated server hosted by them (and, therefore, can eat up as much processor usage as I like), and they'll inform me if I eat up massive limits of bandwidth.
What I guess I'm practically saying, is try for 'soft-limits'. If you have a 'hard limit' of 5Gb/month and someone uses up 5.01Gb in a single month (previous months were less than 2Gb) - would you want to loose their custom? Ok, if the next month is also 5.01Gb (or higher) - then it's "contact customer" time - but just "arbitarily shutting down sites" is, IMHO, not a good idea (unless, of course, they are causing _significant_ harm to your business: ie saturating more than 60% of your pipe on their own - but you should have really noticed that before hand _or_ check the source of the referers: it may just be a spike for an hour or two due to slashdot or similar).
It gets better - Nissan Motor has registered the domain name nissancomputer.com which they'll "give" to Nissan Computers if Nissan Motor get given the nissan.com domain name. Now, if they've brought nissancomputer.com with the express purpose of squatting on it for exchange of monies, services or goods (for example, a domain name) - surley that's a blatant case of cybersquatting by Nissan Motor?
Ah - so you are playing my character then. Believe me, you don't really want to - some of those damn models can be so annoying: Me: "Change the CD" Them: "No, I want to have sex" Me: "Maybe, once we've ripped every CD in existance to MP3" Them: "How many is that?" Me: "Well, a lot" Them: "Oh, more than 3 then?"
There was a recent episode on Sky TV in the UK where it had the family 'before Maggie' and Bart was envious of Lisa (and had to sit in a corner for trying to get rid of her), but once Lisa said "Bart" he liked her. Anyways, at the end of the episode (back in 'present day') Homer complains about wanting to hear Maggies first words. He puts her in her cot, closes the door and she removes her dummy and says "Dada".
Of course, there was the other episode where she could speak quite well once it was discovered she was an alien...
Slashdot Mirror
How often have you walked into a supermarket with a shopping list and seen something on special offer and "impulse" brought it? "Hey - I know I didn't want any Coke, but it's 4 litres for $2 and, hey, I'll drink it anyway"...
Plus the supermarket could use it to track customers movements around the store ("Hmm, 5% of shopping carts first went to bread then to milk, but didn't buy anything from aisle 6: maybe if we change the store layout to force them to pass through aisle 6 before they reach the milk...")
Proper barcodes shouldn't allow you to do that. The barcode "number" should only relate to a database entry which then should give information such as price/discount details. Barcodes do not (or should not) contain any pricing information of any sort (see how barcodes work)
In your scenerio, you should need to alter the barcode to reflect another database entry corresponding to the discount you are after (and I'm sure/hope the store doesn't sequentially allocate discount codes) AND get it past any fail safe systems the EPOS has in place ($0.05-$10.00: reject) AND hit on a discount code which at least slightly reflects the product description (say the discount voucher was for a bottle of shampoo and you just happen to hit on a $30.00 off champagne voucher - then the till-operator should spot the difference). Oh: don't forget the checksum at the end of the barcode as well.
If you can get away with this as easily as you make out - well, that store is just about asking to be ripped off: so name it here so they can be Slashdotted in a physical sense (imagine loads of geeks hitting the same store chain with faked vouchers :) )
You may find this list of ad servers more useful than just having a single entry for DoubleClick.
Yep, there is another C5. Specifically, Sir Clive Sinclair's (he of the ZX Spectrum 1980's computer fame) failed electric vechicle. The Segway and the Sinclair C5 have been compared to each other quite a bit here in Britain....
I've got a number of 'depreciated' email addresses "out there" (i.e. they used to be on old Internic records, but aren't anymore/were used to make a single USENET posting over 3 years ago etc etc): any email that hits those addresses is automatically tagged as spam and the senders email address is blacklisted.
There are uses for 'not used' email addresses...
I'm currently having fun with a Nigerian spammer of my own... I just wonder how long I can keep him at it :)
Don't be so sure about that. I once configured a mail system for a company that had very very basic anti-spam measures: subject line filtering. One of the filters was a line of five or more periods (.....) as it had been shown that the majority of the spam email being received by the company fitted that criteria.
I put the filter in place and an automatic message back to the sender saying "Mail rejected: Subject line contains five or more periods - please change subject line to resend".
I don't think we had a single person figure it out - one numbnut tried resending the message (prefixed by Fw: and Re:) with the same subject header over 20 times...
Tech support then was fun - the customers would reach us (via our "sales team" whose mail we were filtering) and say "Our email is being bounced", we responded "What does the message you got say?"... And then trying to explain a basic sentance to them - and yet we were still the "bad guys" for not making it easier to understand...
I did learn one thing though - never underestimate human stupidity.
But...but..but... you can hardly blame the failure of Comdex on the ability to easily copy it can you?
Unles... the RIAA wouldn't lie to us would they?
That might be interesting - especially if he loses. "And now introducing: Bill Wyman. This is not Bill Wyman the journalist, Bill Wyman the plumber or Bill Wyman who runs the Abbey Creak village shop". I wonder how many Bill Wyman's there are and how happy they would be to here that due to a fellow Bill Wyman losing a court case against an "imposter" they would ALL have to put "Not associated with the Rolling Stars Bill Wyman" at the bottom of checks, letters etc etc...
Isn't this just another strain of the MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus) superbug. If so, the UK has already had 2 deaths in Edinburgh (after it infected 13 patients). There was a death last year from it after a 14yr boy broke his ankle (see BBC News for more articles).
Paper ballots work ok here in the UK. Of course, here we make make a cross in the voting slip (using good old fashioned pencil and paper) and put it in a sealed box. Voting closes, the sealed box is opened and the crosses counted. Two crosses on the paper, smiley faces, crosses that overlap boxes (just the 'tips' are allowed to) - are all invalid/spoiled papers.
All voting slips have a unique id attached to them which is recorded against the voters name in a book. Voting closes, and these books are sealed elsewhere (away from voting). If a person claims that someone else voted for them etc etc, then their number can be looked up and the vote discounted (I can't remember this ever happening, but it's there in case of emergencies).
Well, think of all that space - it'll allow you to make one hell of a case mod :)
No, Slashdot isn't, but the British Broadcasting Corporation (aka The BBC) who's coverage of this story Slashdot has linked to is.
Unless they work it that you pay £3.99 (or however much) for the media and with it you get a free licence (therefore you haven't paid for the licence but are constrained by it, but can't get a free media replacement). If the CD is broken, they aren't stopping you for making use of the licence: a bit like having a car tax disc doesn't mean the -insert your localities car licencing division name here- doesn't mean that they have to _give_ you a car just because you have "licence" to use it.
So you are saying the moon landing WAS real and mermaids ARE NOT? *sob* I've a feeling that Santa Claus won't be bringing _you_ any presents this Christmas...
Plus this was posted to the /. section "It's funny. Laugh" and it's also "from the funny-funny-haha dept." should help people realise it is a joke and that Hemos knows it is...
Apart from the fact that nslookup returns slashdot.org= 64.28.67.150 and CmdrTaco has said that it is probably going to change again soon.
http://www.fid.su/engl/projects/SU-Registry/pricin g.html lists the current registration price as US$100, but it was US$15000 during October 2001.
The .eu domain name is currently in the process of being created by the European Union: see The Registers story and the EU's own poorly formatted paper about the issue.
Personally, I run a high-bandwidth site and have had a few qualms finding a host. I've now settled on Positive Internet here in the UK because of their 'fair' bandwidth/process usage policy. Basically, they have no 'fixed' limits - therefore if your little site gets slashdotted one day (or, as mine did with my previous host, get featured on national television) and has a 'spurt' for a day or so, then they won't mind. But if (as I eventually ended up doing) you consume a significant part of their bandwidth/processor usage (I was constantly in the top 10% on one of their shared servers - and this is for months on end), then they contact you and offer you a 'more suitable product'. I've now got my own dedicated server hosted by them (and, therefore, can eat up as much processor usage as I like), and they'll inform me if I eat up massive limits of bandwidth.
What I guess I'm practically saying, is try for 'soft-limits'. If you have a 'hard limit' of 5Gb/month and someone uses up 5.01Gb in a single month (previous months were less than 2Gb) - would you want to loose their custom? Ok, if the next month is also 5.01Gb (or higher) - then it's "contact customer" time - but just "arbitarily shutting down sites" is, IMHO, not a good idea (unless, of course, they are causing _significant_ harm to your business: ie saturating more than 60% of your pipe on their own - but you should have really noticed that before hand _or_ check the source of the referers: it may just be a spike for an hour or two due to slashdot or similar).
It gets better - Nissan Motor has registered the domain name nissancomputer.com which they'll "give" to Nissan Computers if Nissan Motor get given the nissan.com domain name. Now, if they've brought nissancomputer.com with the express purpose of squatting on it for exchange of monies, services or goods (for example, a domain name) - surley that's a blatant case of cybersquatting by Nissan Motor?
If you don't like Babelfish, use Google's translation service: ballots are made by Procomp,, made by Embratel, http://home.uol.com.br/...
Ah - so you are playing my character then. Believe me, you don't really want to - some of those damn models can be so annoying: Me: "Change the CD" Them: "No, I want to have sex" Me: "Maybe, once we've ripped every CD in existance to MP3" Them: "How many is that?" Me: "Well, a lot" Them: "Oh, more than 3 then?"
There was a recent episode on Sky TV in the UK where it had the family 'before Maggie' and Bart was envious of Lisa (and had to sit in a corner for trying to get rid of her), but once Lisa said "Bart" he liked her. Anyways, at the end of the episode (back in 'present day') Homer complains about wanting to hear Maggies first words. He puts her in her cot, closes the door and she removes her dummy and says "Dada".
Of course, there was the other episode where she could speak quite well once it was discovered she was an alien...