Give me a break. There are far more interesting subjects to do an Ask Slashdot subject on. Let alone something they covered TWICE already. This is the third time they did this story. I don't mind repackaging content. But when the point is to give an opinion about a product and the whole thing has been covered twice already in the same place it's redundent. In general I don't care if/. reposts things. Just don't do it 3 times. And don't make it repetitve... at least have some new information.
Nope, I got reported to ORBS by spamcop.net because someone spammed a mailing list I run, and one of my subscribers ran the spam (with incomplete headers) through spamcop.
Spamcop has got to be the most worthless thing I've ever seen. Just about any ISP of any size is blocked according to their site. That and they can't tell the difference between spam and just regular email.
However if this "immortality" pill is not invented in our lifetime because "Celera" is keeping the information as proprietary Corporate Trade Secrets, then that, my friend, is nothing less than a CRIME against humanity!
Who's to say that immortality is a good thing. Didn't you ever hear the queen song "Who Wants to Live Forever?":)
Baloney credit card fraud will not bankrupt the banks. Anyone that thinks that has never had a merchant account and seen how the banks deal with fraud. Frankly the banks make money off the fraud.
a) The banks do not cover the charges in most cases and especially not in cases where a magnetic swipe is not take (i.e. ecommerce and phone orders ). In these cases if it's the merchant ends up eating the cost of the charge because the bank takes the money back.
b) The banks/processors get a small fee for every transaction on top of the percentage. They keep the fee and the percentage whiel dinging the merchant for the entire cost of the charge when they only deposit the net amount after fees. This fee is around 12 cents a transactions for Visa + approx 3%. So assuming someone stole a million cards and ran just one transaction on it. Visa just made $120,000.00 off of fraud and that's not even taking into consideration the percentage.
c) On top of the fee to run the transaction there is normally a fee for handling the fraud process (known as a chargeback). A low for this fee in the market is $5.00 and I've seen it as high as $15.00 per charge. Which would mean as much as $15 million in revenue off the fraudulent charge.
d) Before most chargebacks mentioned above are run a retrieval request is also issued. This is normaly also a $5.00 - $15.00 cost.
The only time the credit card companies are risking anything is if the merchant goes out of business. Which is highly unlikely since most people who steal cards spread there fraudulent activity around.
So frankly I don't think the card companies have any incentive to solve the problem. Merchants are always the people left holding the bag.
Not that this discussion really belongs here but slashdot.com is some DSL provider or something that's squating on it. So it's not like they have the choice, unless the want to rename the site which would just be stupid.
Actually the courts have upheld that privacy is an implicit right on a consitutional basis. I seem to recall that they felt that the illegal search and seizure was close enough.
According to the mission website the new computer has advanced radition protection. The radiation in space will eventually destroy the computer. They replaced it with a newer computer that was designed to have a longer life span. Additionally the new computer has six times as much memory and three times as much processor speed. The new processor speed and memory will be used to give them more accuracy in the pointing of the spacecraft.
It trys to look up my contact handle on ARIN, when ARIN contact handles always end in -ARIN (duhh). In fact anything that looks like a contact handle it sends to ARIN.
It adds a list of things of the links that are on the left hand side of their website to command line queries, which takes about 20 lines worth of crap on the top. Network Solutions disclaimer is bad enough.
The only issue I see with geektool is that it doesn't get handles very well. But at least it can handle NSI's handles.
A lot of people (including the article) have implied that if we make it easy to vote that somehow it cheapens the vote and that people will not be as thoughtful about their vote. As an individual that uses absentee ballots I find this idea ludicrous.
People seem to think that if you walk into the voting poll that you took the time to think about your vote. But I find this to be totally the opposite of my experience. When I voted at the polls I often would vote haphazardly. Now that I vote via Absentee Ballot I can take the time to look over the ballot, review the materials and then fill it in.
Granted there is no reason I couldn't have done this if voted at a polling center, but I found I often wouldn't.
In the state of Washington (where I live) the State puts out a voting guide every time before we vote. Now that I use an Absentee Ballot, I sit down with my ballot and the guide and read the guide as I vote. I felt like I couldn't take the time to do that at the polls.
The same benefits of allowing you the time to think about your vote and cast it at your time applies to internet voting. While I'll agree that the security of voting systems must be a priority, I don't think that we should be suggesting that making it harder to vote makes the decision of what to vote for any more thought out.
It doesn't ask for your name. The URL brings up a page that explains what opting out does and then if you decide to go ahead you click a link, it does it. They never ask you to type a single thing.
Why anyone would ever want a game on these cameras is beyond me. I have a DC260 and it's a really great camera but it sucks batteries faster than the original "discman" style CD players do. In fact I keep an extra set of batteries in my car just for this thing.
I don't even use the preview screen anymore unless I absolutely need it. Why? It makes it suck batteries down even faster. I'm willing to bet because these things have such crappy battery life with the screen on that you couldn't even play a whole game.
Credit cards can be used in some jurisdictions to charge money used in gambling. In some you can't. However, how the credit card companies deal with these charges is what is important here. Charges for gambling are counted as cash advances against the account NOT as a regular charge.
This is accounted for via SIC codes (Standardized Industrial Classification). Each merchant account has one associated with it. Unless the merchant lied about what they were selling the SIC code would have clearly indicated it was for gambling.
So since they had the knowledge of that it was gambling, were already doing special processing on the charge, and had the individuals address, Visa should have blocked the charge!
While I don't think this woman should have sued Visa, I can see how she could manage to get them to settle.
P.S. IANAL but work within the ecommerce industry so I'm familiar with how the credit card system is setup
Why is it that nobody can get it right. The Kansas change only removed evolution from required curiculum. As a results students wouldn't be tested over it and teachers can teach what they want. This leaves the decision up to invidiual districts not the state. Read the minutes of the meeting for more information.
There is what is called a comment extension to GIF. A number of software applications that make GIFS put a comment extension in the GIF that tells what software made the GIF. I know Photoshop does this.
WIRE was only intended to be used for 4 months because of the cooling issues that another poster has already explained.
They couldn't have even hoped to have a repair mission up there within the 4 months that they were originally working under.
Again as another poster pointed out the cost of the repair would have been much more than what it cost to build.
Re:Philanthropy != Communism
on
RMS Responds
·
· Score: 1
Just because he doesn't use the specific word evil doesn't mean he doesn't portray that attitude.
Re:Philanthropy != Communism
on
RMS Responds
·
· Score: 1
Not that I think RMS is a communist or any of the other free software or open source movement people.
However, RMS does take a very different approach then the philanthropists that you refer to.
Andrew Carnegie DID NOT run around telling everyone that they shouldn't use membership libraries that they were inherently evil and that everyone should work to build free libraries.
He just built libraries and let everyone else do as they so choose. For that matter I'm sure he didn't tell his peers that they were evil because they weren't building libraries.
However, RMS seems to think that anyone that produces any software for sale is just plane evil. People who sell things can generally be called capitalists.
It's for this very reason that many people say that RMS is a communist. Because he seems to present the view that no one should be able to sell any proprietary software.
While I realize that this is a very tunnel visioned view, e.g. RMS obviously doesn't have a problem with Red Hat making money. I do think that his view may be easy to misinterpret as communism.
A lot of people have been making a big deal out of IPIX's patent. While I'll agree their patent is probably baseless and that there is a large degree of prior art. This is not what the claim against Helmut Dersch is about.
IPIX is claiming that he violated their copyrights with regards to one of the example photos that he had on his website.
Helmet argues that he took the photo and in fact was even in the photo. However, this is not a total response to IPIX's claim as I understand it.
IPIX claims that their file format is a computer program and as such is entitled to special protection under the copyright laws. While, the information is not clear, I would imagine the supposedly offending photo was in an IPIX format, since the page that they forced him to take down was in relation to how to convert from their format.
So why is IPIX doing this? They are going after Helmet not because they have a problem with his software. While they probably don't necessarily like the fact that his software is available, what they find particularly offensive is his description of how to move from their file format.
They're doing this because their licensing structure is setup such that you must pay *PER VIEW* of their file format. So if you can easily convert away from their file format then you can easily avoid their licensing scheme.
So they aren't trying to protect their patent. They're trying to protect their licensing scheme.
Slashdot Mirror
Give me a break. There are far more interesting subjects to do an Ask Slashdot subject on. Let alone something they covered TWICE already. This is the third time they did this story. I don't mind repackaging content. But when the point is to give an opinion about a product and the whole thing has been covered twice already in the same place it's redundent. In general I don't care if /. reposts things. Just don't do it 3 times. And don't make it repetitve... at least have some new information.
They did a story on this back in October... You'd think that people would search for stuff before they'd submit it...
Spamcop has got to be the most worthless thing I've ever seen. Just about any ISP of any size is blocked according to their site. That and they can't tell the difference between spam and just regular email.
Who's to say that immortality is a good thing. Didn't you ever hear the queen song "Who Wants to Live Forever?" :)
a) The banks do not cover the charges in most cases and especially not in cases where a magnetic swipe is not take (i.e. ecommerce and phone orders ). In these cases if it's the merchant ends up eating the cost of the charge because the bank takes the money back.
b) The banks/processors get a small fee for every transaction on top of the percentage. They keep the fee and the percentage whiel dinging the merchant for the entire cost of the charge when they only deposit the net amount after fees. This fee is around 12 cents a transactions for Visa + approx 3%. So assuming someone stole a million cards and ran just one transaction on it. Visa just made $120,000.00 off of fraud and that's not even taking into consideration the percentage.
c) On top of the fee to run the transaction there is normally a fee for handling the fraud process (known as a chargeback). A low for this fee in the market is $5.00 and I've seen it as high as $15.00 per charge. Which would mean as much as $15 million in revenue off the fraudulent charge.
d) Before most chargebacks mentioned above are run a retrieval request is also issued. This is normaly also a $5.00 - $15.00 cost.
The only time the credit card companies are risking anything is if the merchant goes out of business. Which is highly unlikely since most people who steal cards spread there fraudulent activity around.
So frankly I don't think the card companies have any incentive to solve the problem. Merchants are always the people left holding the bag.
Not that this discussion really belongs here but slashdot.com is some DSL provider or something that's squating on it. So it's not like they have the choice, unless the want to rename the site which would just be stupid.
Actually the courts have upheld that privacy is an implicit right on a consitutional basis. I seem to recall that they felt that the illegal search and seizure was close enough.
According to the mission website the new computer has advanced radition protection. The radiation in space will eventually destroy the computer. They replaced it with a newer computer that was designed to have a longer life span. Additionally the new computer has six times as much memory and three times as much processor speed. The new processor speed and memory will be used to give them more accuracy in the pointing of the spacecraft.
This is the way Victoria's Secret has always been. Get used to it.
It trys to look up my contact handle on ARIN, when ARIN contact handles always end in -ARIN (duhh). In fact anything that looks like a contact handle it sends to ARIN.
It adds a list of things of the links that are on the left hand side of their website to command line queries, which takes about 20 lines worth of crap on the top. Network Solutions disclaimer is bad enough.
The only issue I see with geektool is that it doesn't get handles very well. But at least it can handle NSI's handles.
People seem to think that if you walk into the voting poll that you took the time to think about your vote. But I find this to be totally the opposite of my experience. When I voted at the polls I often would vote haphazardly. Now that I vote via Absentee Ballot I can take the time to look over the ballot, review the materials and then fill it in.
Granted there is no reason I couldn't have done this if voted at a polling center, but I found I often wouldn't.
In the state of Washington (where I live) the State puts out a voting guide every time before we vote. Now that I use an Absentee Ballot, I sit down with my ballot and the guide and read the guide as I vote. I felt like I couldn't take the time to do that at the polls.
The same benefits of allowing you the time to think about your vote and cast it at your time applies to internet voting. While I'll agree that the security of voting systems must be a priority, I don't think that we should be suggesting that making it harder to vote makes the decision of what to vote for any more thought out.
An even better question is why is almost everyone posting at Score 2?
*sigh* repost because /. lost my original post.
That's what Roaming Profiles in Netscape are for. :)
It doesn't ask for your name. The URL brings up a page that explains what opting out does and then if you decide to go ahead you click a link, it does it. They never ask you to type a single thing.
I don't even use the preview screen anymore unless I absolutely need it. Why? It makes it suck batteries down even faster. I'm willing to bet because these things have such crappy battery life with the screen on that you couldn't even play a whole game.
I'll just take my Palm Pilot along for games. :)
You can enjoy at http://ben.reser.org/echelon/.
Have fun, but please don't kill my server. If the CGI is too big of a problem I'll have to take it down.
This is accounted for via SIC codes (Standardized Industrial Classification). Each merchant account has one associated with it. Unless the merchant lied about what they were selling the SIC code would have clearly indicated it was for gambling.
So since they had the knowledge of that it was gambling, were already doing special processing on the charge, and had the individuals address, Visa should have blocked the charge!
While I don't think this woman should have sued Visa, I can see how she could manage to get them to settle.
P.S. IANAL but work within the ecommerce industry so I'm familiar with how the credit card system is setup
Why is it that nobody can get it right. The Kansas change only removed evolution from required curiculum. As a results students wouldn't be tested over it and teachers can teach what they want. This leaves the decision up to invidiual districts not the state. Read the minutes of the meeting for more information.
There is what is called a comment extension to GIF. A number of software applications that make GIFS put a comment extension in the GIF that tells what software made the GIF. I know Photoshop does this.
WIRE was only intended to be used for 4 months because of the cooling issues that another poster has already explained.
They couldn't have even hoped to have a repair mission up there within the 4 months that they were originally working under.
Again as another poster pointed out the cost of the repair would have been much more than what it cost to build.
Just because he doesn't use the specific word evil doesn't mean he doesn't portray that attitude.
Not that I think RMS is a communist or any of the other free software or open source movement people.
However, RMS does take a very different approach then the philanthropists that you refer to.
Andrew Carnegie DID NOT run around telling everyone that they shouldn't use membership libraries that they were inherently evil and that everyone should work to build free libraries.
He just built libraries and let everyone else do as they so choose. For that matter I'm sure he didn't tell his peers that they were evil because they weren't building libraries.
However, RMS seems to think that anyone that produces any software for sale is just plane evil. People who sell things can generally be called capitalists.
It's for this very reason that many people say that RMS is a communist. Because he seems to present the view that no one should be able to sell any proprietary software.
While I realize that this is a very tunnel visioned view, e.g. RMS obviously doesn't have a problem with Red Hat making money. I do think that his view may be easy to misinterpret as communism.
A lot of people have been making a big deal out of IPIX's patent. While I'll agree their patent is probably baseless and that there is a large degree of prior art. This is not what the claim against Helmut Dersch is about.
IPIX is claiming that he violated their copyrights with regards to one of the example photos that he had on his website.
Helmet argues that he took the photo and in fact was even in the photo. However, this is not a total response to IPIX's claim as I understand it.
IPIX claims that their file format is a computer program and as such is entitled to special protection under the copyright laws. While, the information is not clear, I would imagine the supposedly offending photo was in an IPIX format, since the page that they forced him to take down was in relation to how to convert from their format.
So why is IPIX doing this? They are going after Helmet not because they have a problem with his software. While they probably don't necessarily like the fact that his software is available, what they find particularly offensive is his description of how to move from their file format.
They're doing this because their licensing structure is setup such that you must pay *PER VIEW* of their file format. So if you can easily convert away from their file format then you can easily avoid their licensing scheme.
So they aren't trying to protect their patent. They're trying to protect their licensing scheme.