in the event that the customer truly is not there (a very small probability, IMHO)
You might be surprised.
I do a number of "small jobs" for a local cable tv/internet/phone company and one of them is selling their service to new customers. I fill out the forms and then phone or email the booking department and get an install time which I provide to the customer.
I had a customer phone me a couple of weeks ago stating that she had not got the service that she had signed up for; nobody came to install it and she wanted to know why and where is her service that she has signed up for. I checked my records and found that her appointment was for THE PREVIOUS MONTH! It took her a whole month after her previous appointment to get around to asking why the tech hadn't showed up.
I phoned the booking department to ask what had happened because, of course, she said the tech had never showed up. I was advised that nobody had been home when the tech arrived. When I told the customer this, she said, "I was out of town that day."
I had another guy who signed up a little while back. "Is there any particular time you would prefer to have the tech arrive?" "No, I'm home all the time so it doesn't matter." "Ok, here is your appointment." "I'm not home that day." "Ok, what time would you prefer instead?" "I'm home all the time so any time will be fine." "Ok, here is your appointment." "I'm not home that day."
The average parent standing in (the Australian equivalent of) Walmart with little Sally begging for a copy of game X has the ability, resources and knowledge to research its suitability right then and there, standing in the store aisle?
What about a simple rating sticker that could be attached to the box with basic information about the content instead?
RHEL6 should be out soon (the beta was released within the past week or so) and it's based on Fedora 12 so a lot of the SuperWhizzo stuff should work on that.
No, it isn't, and no, they won't. PII is defined in the law. You've read the law, right?
Actually, I read the article that was referenced in the summary, and the article that was referenced in that article. Neither one said anything like what you just posted.
First, plumbers may have husbands who send out invoices for them.
While it's not beyond the realm of possibility that a situation like that may exist, I am not personally aware of one. I know that the guy who does my plumbing has his wife send me the bills, as does the guy I call when I need electrical work, and even the carpenter that I occasionally contract with when I need a renovation or something similar to that.
Second, if those small plumbing businesses are storing customers' social security numbers, drivers license numbers, credit card numbers, or bank account numbers, then they damn well should be encrypting that data.
Indeed, and it's not too likely that they are actually keeping that information. However, the definition that you cite was not provided or mentioned in the Slashdot Summary or either of the two articles that I read. Since I don't live in Massachusetts (or in the US, for that matter) I didn't research it further than reading the articles.
They probably aren't storing your credit card information and social security number.
They are more likely storing your name and phone number so they can call you when your trousers are ready for pickup. Since that's Personally Identifiable Information, they will apparently have to encrypt that.
That could be quite a burden on small businesses like dry cleaners, and plumbers whose wives make up the invoices and send them out at the end of the month.
Since I'm a cheapass, I don't use credit cards because of fees and interest.
Costco and American Express pay me to use their credit card. I use it to pay for everything that I possibly can (including groceries at our local Coop, stamps at the post office and my phone bill) and send AMEX a cheque once per month when I receive the bill. At the end of the year I get a coupon good for several hundred dollars worth of free merchandise at Costco.
I pay $100/year to Costco for my membership but get a multiple of that back in "free" merchandise. I also get a "patronage refund" every year from the Coop in cash (actually a cheque) for goods that I purchase there.
Since I only purchase stuff with my American Express card that I would be buying anyway and I pay it off in full every month, I get effectively free money and merchandise to the tune of, as I said, several hundred dollars every year.
In many cases that won't work. Lots of people (especially people with above-average incomes) live in homes and whatnot that are in the name of one of their corporations or holding companies. Or they live in high-end apartment buildings that are in the name of their landlord.
My point is that in many cases, "sending a few bucks directly to the artist" simply isn't a practical thing to do.
In your position I would pirate everything, and send a couple of bucks straight to the artist I like.
Exactly how could you do something like that? Say, for example, if I wanted to send $5 to Brittany Speers, where would I get her address and payment information? "Send it to the record company that's listed on her latest CD" somehow doesn't seem like the right answer...
But you can't do it with machine-like proficiency on a mass scale.
Sure you can. It's done all the time.
I remember when Staples first opened a new store near me. I got coupons from them almost weekly for a while. That coupon was being delivered only to certain addresses (i.e. businesses) within a certain radius from their new store.
I have spent over 30 years doing custom business programming but it's a sideline to my regular business, so I work on projects off-and-on.
I view programming as a cross between writing a novel and solving a crossword puzzle, and I have never been able to be creative-on-demand, though I'll spend hours on end writing something when I'm "in the zone".
I'm on nobody's clock, though. I don't think I could do an 8-hours-a-day programming job. I would be either bored out of my mind, or blocked and feeling stupid.
I imagine a paywall site would also have to do some kind of IP validation to prevent 1 guy buying access and posting up the info online for everyone else to use.
You can run into problem there due to NAT (hundreds of potential unique subscribers can appear to be at one single IP address) and DHCP (my IP address right now may not be the same as it was 30 minutes ago).
I don't know a single person who still uses 98, ME, or 2000 for that matter.
You don't travel in the right circles, then.
I do some occasional work for a cable TV/Internet/telephone company and just this past Saturday I was looking at a _Chinese-language_ Windows 98 system that suddenly decided to drop offline. (I don't understand a word of Chinese, so that made an interesting service call.)
That's pretty much accurate, with the additional caveat that the theatre has to bring in enough money from ticket sales that the studio will rent them the movie. Some studios have a "low grossing cutoff"; theatres whose gross is below the cutoff can't get the movie until X weeks after its national release date.
Many years ago I worked in an office along with an engineer who was a real macho he-man type. (Nice guy, though.)
Remember the flyers that used to come around for correspondence courses? "Learn a trade at home in your spare time" and that sort of thing.
One day a flyer came for a course in dressmaking so I sent it in with his name and the office address on it.
For at least a couple of years afterward, he received occasional mail from that outfit about how much he can save if he makes his own clothes, and how beautiful the fashions can be, and so on.
It seems to have expired, been deleted or disappeared in some way.Your search - cache:O6bmbLpdB1gJ:www.sdtimes.com/DOES_WINDOWS_COST_MICROSOFT_OPPORTUNITIES_/By_David_Worthington/About_NET_and_WINDOWS/34203 http://www.sdtimes.com/link/34203 - did not match any documents.
Standard (ANSI) C is, as far as I know, the most cross-platform programming language that exists.
It has also been around for 38 years, and programs written in 1972 can still be compiled in 2010.
People keep telling me that I'm crazy for hugging my C compilers and not "moving up to the modern world". While the flavour of the week keeps changing. "Perl is the future!" "Java is the future!" "Ruby on Rails!"
C keeps chugging along and in most cases is actually back-ending the library or whatever that's being used to run the latest hot thing.
C may be the past, but it's also very much the present and will probably be the future as well.
Compiled C goes like a bat of hell compared to a lot of other languages. Many programs written in "those languages" incorporate C routines as well, for speed.
Slashdot Mirror
in the event that the customer truly is not there (a very small probability, IMHO)
You might be surprised.
I do a number of "small jobs" for a local cable tv/internet/phone company and one of them is selling their service to new customers. I fill out the forms and then phone or email the booking department and get an install time which I provide to the customer.
I had a customer phone me a couple of weeks ago stating that she had not got the service that she had signed up for; nobody came to install it and she wanted to know why and where is her service that she has signed up for. I checked my records and found that her appointment was for THE PREVIOUS MONTH! It took her a whole month after her previous appointment to get around to asking why the tech hadn't showed up.
I phoned the booking department to ask what had happened because, of course, she said the tech had never showed up. I was advised that nobody had been home when the tech arrived. When I told the customer this, she said, "I was out of town that day."
I had another guy who signed up a little while back. "Is there any particular time you would prefer to have the tech arrive?" "No, I'm home all the time so it doesn't matter." "Ok, here is your appointment." "I'm not home that day." "Ok, what time would you prefer instead?" "I'm home all the time so any time will be fine." "Ok, here is your appointment." "I'm not home that day."
Six times.
The average parent standing in (the Australian equivalent of) Walmart with little Sally begging for a copy of game X has the ability, resources and knowledge to research its suitability right then and there, standing in the store aisle?
What about a simple rating sticker that could be attached to the box with basic information about the content instead?
It's my understanding that the expiration of the Roundup patent was the impetus behind Monsanto's development of Roundup-Ready seeds.
You must spray your Roundup-Ready seeds with genuine Rountup brand herbicide, no generic glyphosates allowed; that's part of the contract.
Okay... how does a meter maid maximize the amount of illegal parking?
By being unreasonable.
This meter expired 3 seconds before you drove away. Yes, I know you were starting your car at that time. Here's your ticket.
You must be parked within 12 inches of this line. Your car is at 12.3 inches. Here's your ticket.
Openoffice could (will?) pick up the slack when that happens.
RHEL6 should be out soon (the beta was released within the past week or so) and it's based on Fedora 12 so a lot of the SuperWhizzo stuff should work on that.
No, it isn't, and no, they won't. PII is defined in the law. You've read the law, right?
Actually, I read the article that was referenced in the summary, and the article that was referenced in that article. Neither one said anything like what you just posted.
First, plumbers may have husbands who send out invoices for them.
While it's not beyond the realm of possibility that a situation like that may exist, I am not personally aware of one. I know that the guy who does my plumbing has his wife send me the bills, as does the guy I call when I need electrical work, and even the carpenter that I occasionally contract with when I need a renovation or something similar to that.
Second, if those small plumbing businesses are storing customers' social security numbers, drivers license numbers, credit card numbers, or bank account numbers, then they damn well should be encrypting that data.
Indeed, and it's not too likely that they are actually keeping that information. However, the definition that you cite was not provided or mentioned in the Slashdot Summary or either of the two articles that I read. Since I don't live in Massachusetts (or in the US, for that matter) I didn't research it further than reading the articles.
They probably aren't storing your credit card information and social security number.
They are more likely storing your name and phone number so they can call you when your trousers are ready for pickup. Since that's Personally Identifiable Information, they will apparently have to encrypt that.
That could be quite a burden on small businesses like dry cleaners, and plumbers whose wives make up the invoices and send them out at the end of the month.
This is probably for the morons who can't throttle back the A/C before leaving for work and wait 20 minutes for it to cool down after they get home.
(a) I am at home all day; I have an apartment in my business premises, and my business is open at nights.
(b) I have a pet bird who would be very unhappy (and possibly dead) if there was no air conditioning during the day, even if I wasn't here.
Of course, I don't air condition the business part of my building during the day, but the a/c runs 24/7 in my apartment during the hot days of summer.
Since I'm a cheapass, I don't use credit cards because of fees and interest.
Costco and American Express pay me to use their credit card. I use it to pay for everything that I possibly can (including groceries at our local Coop, stamps at the post office and my phone bill) and send AMEX a cheque once per month when I receive the bill. At the end of the year I get a coupon good for several hundred dollars worth of free merchandise at Costco.
I pay $100/year to Costco for my membership but get a multiple of that back in "free" merchandise. I also get a "patronage refund" every year from the Coop in cash (actually a cheque) for goods that I purchase there.
Since I only purchase stuff with my American Express card that I would be buying anyway and I pay it off in full every month, I get effectively free money and merchandise to the tune of, as I said, several hundred dollars every year.
In many cases that won't work. Lots of people (especially people with above-average incomes) live in homes and whatnot that are in the name of one of their corporations or holding companies. Or they live in high-end apartment buildings that are in the name of their landlord.
My point is that in many cases, "sending a few bucks directly to the artist" simply isn't a practical thing to do.
In your position I would pirate everything, and send a couple of bucks straight to the artist I like.
Exactly how could you do something like that? Say, for example, if I wanted to send $5 to Brittany Speers, where would I get her address and payment information? "Send it to the record company that's listed on her latest CD" somehow doesn't seem like the right answer...
But you can't do it with machine-like proficiency on a mass scale.
Sure you can. It's done all the time.
I remember when Staples first opened a new store near me. I got coupons from them almost weekly for a while. That coupon was being delivered only to certain addresses (i.e. businesses) within a certain radius from their new store.
Companies can 'offer you, perhaps, less desirable products than they offer me, or offer you the same product as they offer me but at a higher price,
So? I can do the same thing if you come into my store. "50% off, today only." But only for you, not the guy behind you.
I have spent over 30 years doing custom business programming but it's a sideline to my regular business, so I work on projects off-and-on.
I view programming as a cross between writing a novel and solving a crossword puzzle, and I have never been able to be creative-on-demand, though I'll spend hours on end writing something when I'm "in the zone".
I'm on nobody's clock, though. I don't think I could do an 8-hours-a-day programming job. I would be either bored out of my mind, or blocked and feeling stupid.
I imagine a paywall site would also have to do some kind of IP validation to prevent 1 guy buying access and posting up the info online for everyone else to use.
You can run into problem there due to NAT (hundreds of potential unique subscribers can appear to be at one single IP address) and DHCP (my IP address right now may not be the same as it was 30 minutes ago).
break (or, more specifically) not using break gives you the flexibility to flow through to act with the next condition if you want to.
switch(colour){
case 1:
printf("red");
case 2:
printf("petunias");
break;
case 3:
printf("lilies");}
I can have red petunias, regular petunias, or lilies.
I don't know a single person who still uses 98, ME, or 2000 for that matter.
You don't travel in the right circles, then.
I do some occasional work for a cable TV/Internet/telephone company and just this past Saturday I was looking at a _Chinese-language_ Windows 98 system that suddenly decided to drop offline. (I don't understand a word of Chinese, so that made an interesting service call.)
That's pretty much accurate, with the additional caveat that the theatre has to bring in enough money from ticket sales that the studio will rent them the movie. Some studios have a "low grossing cutoff"; theatres whose gross is below the cutoff can't get the movie until X weeks after its national release date.
Would you go to a restaurant and bring your own sandwich?
Many years ago I worked in an office along with an engineer who was a real macho he-man type. (Nice guy, though.)
Remember the flyers that used to come around for correspondence courses? "Learn a trade at home in your spare time" and that sort of thing.
One day a flyer came for a course in dressmaking so I sent it in with his name and the office address on it.
For at least a couple of years afterward, he received occasional mail from that outfit about how much he can save if he makes his own clothes, and how beautiful the fashions can be, and so on.
Nobody ever figured out why he got that stuff....
Home Hardware, a chain of hardware stores in Canada, has a POS and inventory management system called Prism that runs on SCO UNIX.
It seems to have expired, been deleted or disappeared in some way.Your search - cache:O6bmbLpdB1gJ:www.sdtimes.com/DOES_WINDOWS_COST_MICROSOFT_OPPORTUNITIES_/By_David_Worthington/About_NET_and_WINDOWS/34203 http://www.sdtimes.com/link/34203 - did not match any documents.
Standard (ANSI) C is, as far as I know, the most cross-platform programming language that exists.
It has also been around for 38 years, and programs written in 1972 can still be compiled in 2010.
People keep telling me that I'm crazy for hugging my C compilers and not "moving up to the modern world". While the flavour of the week keeps changing. "Perl is the future!" "Java is the future!" "Ruby on Rails!"
C keeps chugging along and in most cases is actually back-ending the library or whatever that's being used to run the latest hot thing.
C may be the past, but it's also very much the present and will probably be the future as well.
Compiled C goes like a bat of hell compared to a lot of other languages. Many programs written in "those languages" incorporate C routines as well, for speed.
Most debt collectors collect the debt, deducts his commission from the amount that he receives, and then sends the rest to the client.