You are right in the realm of this discussion. I was thinking more along the lines of someone stealing a card number and using it while the card sits tucked away in your wallet. Skimming and the like. Cash in that way is more secure since it should be readily apparent that someone else is using it since it's not there in your wallet.
Anonimity is also a good point. I think many of us tend to overlook that.
My point, yet again since you're being dense, is that fraud protection does come at a price and less fraud is better for the system.
See, your problem is that you're an idealist. Yes, it'd be wonderful if everyone was pure of heart and evil never inflicted man (or woman perhaps). It's never going to happen. You know what, if they somehow defied humanity and made cc's fraud proof we'd probably see a rise in muggings and home burglaries. Frankly, I'd rather pay a little more for goods to account for the criminal element than have my house burglarized while I'm at work.
Do you think historical systems that have kept segments of the population in poverty while a company profited were lucrative for all involved?
There aren't many living in poverty in nations where credit cards are as common as wallets. If credit cards weren't a benefit to the people then people wouldn't use them, right? Your premise isn't that they're purposely addictive and designed to defraud the common man, is it?
Hey, I wouldn't mind biometrics on a chip in the card. Not sure how that would work with online stuff but it'd be something more than we have now. I can just picture it.. "new credit cards invade privacy by encoding your biological data on a chip!" and a bunch of/.'ers ranting against it.
You made the statement that writing "SEE ID" was nothing but a waste of time BECAUSE [and this is the only reason you listed] the consumer was protected from fraud and shouldn't, therefore, take any measures whatsoever to protect himself from fraud. I merely pointed out that this is incredibly short-sighted and typical of the average citizen.
If the system set in place was not lucrative to all involved then the system would be changed. Since it has not been, a rational person can conclude that enough is being done. There is nothing short-sighted in that.
The fraud will exist anyway. The whole credit card system is incredibly insecure. If you want to combat credit card fraud do the right thing.. use cash. It is far more secure.
A bunch of places don't care about your "see id". Probably cashiers that think like I do. If you have a problem with the security of the card then you have the choice not to use it. What you should not have a right to do is tell the merchant how to run their shop.
I'd love to hear your theory on how "see id" helps fight fraud when the thief starts ordering stuff on the Internet. Not everything of value has to be delivered and not every site demands to delivery to the card holder address.
They probably do. Credit card companies love screwing vendors, they do whatever the can to ensure they don't lose money.
In ecommerce sales where no signature is collected the vendor always loses out. They won't even discuss the matter. Even if the company can prove that one individual was responsible for tens of thousands of dollars in theft via ecommerce neither the feds nor the cc companies involve themselves. The vendor loses, the cc company doesn't lose anything and life goes on.
I assume they're just as dastardly to meatspace vendors. Perhaps it's only possible on higher priced purchases. I'd be amazed if they didn't try to lay the loss on the merchant.
Why? You're not found liable for fraudulant charges. All your doing is holding up the line. Even if they check, have you ever once seen a cashier question a signature? I haven't.
When I used to cashier part time in college I always wished I could reject those cards. "Sorry, SEE ID isn't the cardholder's name. I can't accept this."
Worse, is the problem of side-effects. Many programmers using languages such as C and C++ use side effects all of the time. How do you adequately express that in a visual language?
Actually, it'd be nice if the "language" eliminated the use of side-effects. Find an explicit way of doing the same thing, people that have to look at your code later will thank you for it.
I've been forced to use them for doing IVR
on
True Visual Programming
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I used to write IVR applications, interactive voice response. They're the automated phone systems that everyone loves to hate.
While I had been doing it for ten years it never failed that when there was a regime change within the company some new high level manager would read an add in some random telephony journal and think he could magically reduce our IVR development time ten times over.
Yep, everytime it was one of those graphical languages. Look! Just connect the voice prompts to touch tone input nodes then uhm, magic.. and we're done!
At least in the products we were forced to try it never worked out that way. Any type of call flow the GUI developers didn't have in mind would be like pulling teeth. You'd have to work around the narrow vision they had. That defeats the purpose of it being simple or rapid.
Worse yet, there was no way to optimize anything. On an 800 line dead-head time costs money. If I'm trying to ask someone for a PIN so I can start billing them for the call I need to shave off every fraction of a second I can. After hundreds of thousands of calls those fractions add up! But since you have no low level control of anything you're completely at the mercy of the developers that wrote the language.
Then there's code re-use. I hadn't seen a package that let you easily create libraries. If a problem was found with a frequently used "drawing of code" you couldn't use any automated tools to find or fix it, you have to open each by hand and look. I hate things you can't grep on.
Anyhoo, UI editors are about as visual as I prefer to get. It's an interesting project and for some applications it might make sense. I haven't found one yet.
Sequels are bad enough (generally), prequels.. that set a new low. But to remake the same movie over and over and over. Yikes.
Yes, there is a zombie like audience that will drool over it no matter how many times the same used story is told. But come on, for the amount of money being thrown at these projects aren't there new stories to tell? Where has the creativity gone?
Lucas could probably make many more times as much money if he came up with something original but as entertaining as Star Wars. Perhaps he's not capable.
There are many different ways they could prevent this. This reminds me of the Streambox VCR app that could download Real Video streams that weren't meant to be recorded by the viewers. I believe Real's server started asking for small blocks of bytes from the client's executable to use as verification of legit software. Something like that anyway. Then the community will defeat that and the whole situation will become akin to the IM client wars..
There was a recently a story on NPR where a federal agency (NRC perhaps?) asked the utilities what it would take to re-energize the nuclear industry in the United States. The conclusion was that the feds would have to award some monetary value to the first company to construct a reactor of a modern design.
Each company following would get a decreasing amount until utilities had to pay back into the award system.
I haven't heard if this proposal has gone anywhere but at least part of the federal government is looking at increasing our nuclear power production.
Also worthy of note is the nuclear fusion test reactor which looks like it's going to be built in France. I believe that story was linked here on/.
I admit I don't work in the area covered by the subway (known locally as the 'T') but it is a decent system. It's how I prefer to get around when I'm in Boston.
There's also a decent commuter rail system that feeds into it. I'm hopeful that in a few years my hometown in NH will once again connect with it.
That's exactly the right thing to do. There is a decent public transportation system in place in Boston proper. The traffic is a nightmare only because of the people that insist on driving. Consider the amount of office space, consider each of the people in them having a car.. now think about how many massive garages the city would need to house them all. It wouldn't be practical.
Instead of the dig it may have been wiser to declare the heart of the city a no driving zone. Invest the money on garages on the periphery and amp up the public transportation.
If you want to make a statement then don't listen to popular music. Find some indie groups that aren't affiliated with the machine.
If your favorite artist is in league with the RIAA and their cohorts then you should do the right thing and not listen to them. Right?
Downloading their music anyway is being an anti-patriot to the cause. Sure, by downloading you haven't funded them.. but you're still an element of the artist's popularity.
"This year's $170 million package includes proposals to levy sales taxes on software that is purchased on the Internet instead of bought on a computer disk"
The companies that make products like TaxCut examine the IRS rules for language that could decrease what their customers owe in taxes. Since they sell their product to consumers they have an interest in finding ways to lower the customer's burden.
If the IRS were to write the software their interest would be to increase the burden in order to benefit their agency and the federal government.
IMO, there's nothing wrong with the present situation.
I think I paid a whopping $20 for TaxCut. It addressed my needs as a home owner, student, out of state worker, investor and so forth. Then that $20 was deducted on the filing. The only organization that robbed me in this was the IRS.
Worse yet, this roller mouse looks like it will only work with old rectangular keyboards. I would think the first thing the ergonomically aware would do is purchase a contoured keyboard.. which won't work with this mouse!
I can't imagine the mouse giving you crappy tunnel before the keyboard.
Of course they're putting one in the eye.. they're not paying for what they're selling! That's truly absurd.
iTunes and the like have to pay for the right to sell the music. allof doesn't. The fact that allof can sell for far less shouldn't come as a shock to anyone.
Heck, burglars can sell stuff cheap too.. same principle.
This is just another case of American entitlement. People should know that the continued use of allof is wrong. They'll continue doing it though because it's alright for them, and they'll never get caught or get in trouble because of it. We're an online society of anarchy.
Sure the RIAA sucks and Apple is maximizing their profit. Buying tunes from an overseas source that isn't authorized to sell them doesn't help solve anything.
What would be the point of bankrupting a small provider? They've agreed to stop doing what they were doing, that should be sufficient.
If customers had that big an issue with it they could've chosen a different provider. I don't see any malice here. Now if you fine the company out of business all you've done is reduce the amount of competition in the area. You would have also annoyed every one of their users in having to switch providers.
Worse, maybe they don't go bankrupt. Maybe they charge every customer more per month. If there's limited competition the other providers in the area might do the same just because they can.
I bought a 4th gen iPod 40GB about a week ago that had a dock, USB cable, firewire cable and AC plug adapter thing that I haven't used.
Is it that Apple sells a bare-bones unit for cheap plus a dock+cables version for a bit more or that there is no longer any choice at all and there's just a bare-bones?
Rephrase your question properly and then ask it again and see how many raise their hands. No one would be against file sharing, I don't remember any outrage over peer services back in the OS/2 days or other peer networking "clients".
Your question properly phrased is "how many of you think distributing the intellectual property of another without permission should be legal?"
It's not impossible. I was over six figures with a mere associate's degree from a local community college. I took a hit last year when the company I was with for nine years went under but I'm not far off from that mark now either.
It's not so much where you went to school or for how long, it's how well the interviewing process goes and how much knowledge and ability you can convey to those interviewing you.
I'm finishing a four year degree now at night but more so out of boredom than necessity.
Those of us that build are systems or just continually upgrade component by component don't have XP unless we purposely purchased it. I have to think there's still a great majority of/.'ers (and likely Wine users as well) who don't buy prefabs.
Heck, I still run Win2000 just for that reason, I don't want to shell out $$$ for XP when XP is probably close to its end of life.
This boggles my mind too. I've renewed the same server certificates for years and some code certs, it's a royal PITA. Every year they manage to throw a wrench in the process somehow, oh.. this obscure peice of data we got from this place doesn't exactly match your company's street address or we called once at 3am and no one answered.
I'm amazed anyone can get through all that with bogus information. You'd think that someone with that kind of determination could be doing something better with their skills.
Slashdot Mirror
You are right in the realm of this discussion. I was thinking more along the lines of someone stealing a card number and using it while the card sits tucked away in your wallet. Skimming and the like. Cash in that way is more secure since it should be readily apparent that someone else is using it since it's not there in your wallet.
Anonimity is also a good point. I think many of us tend to overlook that.
See, your problem is that you're an idealist. Yes, it'd be wonderful if everyone was pure of heart and evil never inflicted man (or woman perhaps). It's never going to happen. You know what, if they somehow defied humanity and made cc's fraud proof we'd probably see a rise in muggings and home burglaries. Frankly, I'd rather pay a little more for goods to account for the criminal element than have my house burglarized while I'm at work.
Do you think historical systems that have kept segments of the population in poverty while a company profited were lucrative for all involved?
There aren't many living in poverty in nations where credit cards are as common as wallets. If credit cards weren't a benefit to the people then people wouldn't use them, right? Your premise isn't that they're purposely addictive and designed to defraud the common man, is it?
Hey, I wouldn't mind biometrics on a chip in the card. Not sure how that would work with online stuff but it'd be something more than we have now. I can just picture it.. "new credit cards invade privacy by encoding your biological data on a chip!" and a bunch of /.'ers ranting against it.
You made the statement that writing "SEE ID" was nothing but a waste of time BECAUSE [and this is the only reason you listed] the consumer was protected from fraud and shouldn't, therefore, take any measures whatsoever to protect himself from fraud. I merely pointed out that this is incredibly short-sighted and typical of the average citizen.
If the system set in place was not lucrative to all involved then the system would be changed. Since it has not been, a rational person can conclude that enough is being done. There is nothing short-sighted in that.
Vigalante fraud prevention is not the answer.
The fraud will exist anyway. The whole credit card system is incredibly insecure. If you want to combat credit card fraud do the right thing.. use cash. It is far more secure.
A bunch of places don't care about your "see id". Probably cashiers that think like I do. If you have a problem with the security of the card then you have the choice not to use it. What you should not have a right to do is tell the merchant how to run their shop.
I'd love to hear your theory on how "see id" helps fight fraud when the thief starts ordering stuff on the Internet. Not everything of value has to be delivered and not every site demands to delivery to the card holder address.
They probably do. Credit card companies love screwing vendors, they do whatever the can to ensure they don't lose money.
In ecommerce sales where no signature is collected the vendor always loses out. They won't even discuss the matter. Even if the company can prove that one individual was responsible for tens of thousands of dollars in theft via ecommerce neither the feds nor the cc companies involve themselves. The vendor loses, the cc company doesn't lose anything and life goes on.
I assume they're just as dastardly to meatspace vendors. Perhaps it's only possible on higher priced purchases. I'd be amazed if they didn't try to lay the loss on the merchant.
Why? You're not found liable for fraudulant charges. All your doing is holding up the line. Even if they check, have you ever once seen a cashier question a signature? I haven't.
When I used to cashier part time in college I always wished I could reject those cards. "Sorry, SEE ID isn't the cardholder's name. I can't accept this."
Actually, it'd be nice if the "language" eliminated the use of side-effects. Find an explicit way of doing the same thing, people that have to look at your code later will thank you for it.
I used to write IVR applications, interactive voice response. They're the automated phone systems that everyone loves to hate.
While I had been doing it for ten years it never failed that when there was a regime change within the company some new high level manager would read an add in some random telephony journal and think he could magically reduce our IVR development time ten times over.
Yep, everytime it was one of those graphical languages. Look! Just connect the voice prompts to touch tone input nodes then uhm, magic.. and we're done!
At least in the products we were forced to try it never worked out that way. Any type of call flow the GUI developers didn't have in mind would be like pulling teeth. You'd have to work around the narrow vision they had. That defeats the purpose of it being simple or rapid.
Worse yet, there was no way to optimize anything. On an 800 line dead-head time costs money. If I'm trying to ask someone for a PIN so I can start billing them for the call I need to shave off every fraction of a second I can. After hundreds of thousands of calls those fractions add up! But since you have no low level control of anything you're completely at the mercy of the developers that wrote the language.
Then there's code re-use. I hadn't seen a package that let you easily create libraries. If a problem was found with a frequently used "drawing of code" you couldn't use any automated tools to find or fix it, you have to open each by hand and look. I hate things you can't grep on.
Anyhoo, UI editors are about as visual as I prefer to get. It's an interesting project and for some applications it might make sense. I haven't found one yet.
It's movies in general, not just one movie.
Sequels are bad enough (generally), prequels.. that set a new low. But to remake the same movie over and over and over. Yikes.
Yes, there is a zombie like audience that will drool over it no matter how many times the same used story is told. But come on, for the amount of money being thrown at these projects aren't there new stories to tell? Where has the creativity gone?
Lucas could probably make many more times as much money if he came up with something original but as entertaining as Star Wars. Perhaps he's not capable.
Exploitation of an unwilling victim to satisfy a devious desire.
There are many different ways they could prevent this. This reminds me of the Streambox VCR app that could download Real Video streams that weren't meant to be recorded by the viewers. I believe Real's server started asking for small blocks of bytes from the client's executable to use as verification of legit software. Something like that anyway. Then the community will defeat that and the whole situation will become akin to the IM client wars..
There was a recently a story on NPR where a federal agency (NRC perhaps?) asked the utilities what it would take to re-energize the nuclear industry in the United States. The conclusion was that the feds would have to award some monetary value to the first company to construct a reactor of a modern design.
/.
Each company following would get a decreasing amount until utilities had to pay back into the award system.
I haven't heard if this proposal has gone anywhere but at least part of the federal government is looking at increasing our nuclear power production.
Also worthy of note is the nuclear fusion test reactor which looks like it's going to be built in France. I believe that story was linked here on
I admit I don't work in the area covered by the subway (known locally as the 'T') but it is a decent system. It's how I prefer to get around when I'm in Boston.
There's also a decent commuter rail system that feeds into it. I'm hopeful that in a few years my hometown in NH will once again connect with it.
That's exactly the right thing to do. There is a decent public transportation system in place in Boston proper. The traffic is a nightmare only because of the people that insist on driving. Consider the amount of office space, consider each of the people in them having a car.. now think about how many massive garages the city would need to house them all. It wouldn't be practical.
Instead of the dig it may have been wiser to declare the heart of the city a no driving zone. Invest the money on garages on the periphery and amp up the public transportation.
If you want to make a statement then don't listen to popular music. Find some indie groups that aren't affiliated with the machine.
If your favorite artist is in league with the RIAA and their cohorts then you should do the right thing and not listen to them. Right?
Downloading their music anyway is being an anti-patriot to the cause. Sure, by downloading you haven't funded them.. but you're still an element of the artist's popularity.
"This year's $170 million package includes proposals to levy sales taxes on software that is purchased on the Internet instead of bought on a computer disk"
a rt icles/2005/03/02/romney_rethinking_new_powers_for_ tax_aide?pg=2
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/
The companies that make products like TaxCut examine the IRS rules for language that could decrease what their customers owe in taxes. Since they sell their product to consumers they have an interest in finding ways to lower the customer's burden.
If the IRS were to write the software their interest would be to increase the burden in order to benefit their agency and the federal government.
IMO, there's nothing wrong with the present situation.
I think I paid a whopping $20 for TaxCut. It addressed my needs as a home owner, student, out of state worker, investor and so forth. Then that $20 was deducted on the filing. The only organization that robbed me in this was the IRS.
Worse yet, this roller mouse looks like it will only work with old rectangular keyboards. I would think the first thing the ergonomically aware would do is purchase a contoured keyboard.. which won't work with this mouse!
I can't imagine the mouse giving you crappy tunnel before the keyboard.
Of course they're putting one in the eye.. they're not paying for what they're selling! That's truly absurd.
iTunes and the like have to pay for the right to sell the music. allof doesn't. The fact that allof can sell for far less shouldn't come as a shock to anyone.
Heck, burglars can sell stuff cheap too.. same principle.
This is just another case of American entitlement. People should know that the continued use of allof is wrong. They'll continue doing it though because it's alright for them, and they'll never get caught or get in trouble because of it. We're an online society of anarchy.
Sure the RIAA sucks and Apple is maximizing their profit. Buying tunes from an overseas source that isn't authorized to sell them doesn't help solve anything.
What would be the point of bankrupting a small provider? They've agreed to stop doing what they were doing, that should be sufficient.
If customers had that big an issue with it they could've chosen a different provider. I don't see any malice here. Now if you fine the company out of business all you've done is reduce the amount of competition in the area. You would have also annoyed every one of their users in having to switch providers.
Worse, maybe they don't go bankrupt. Maybe they charge every customer more per month. If there's limited competition the other providers in the area might do the same just because they can.
I bought a 4th gen iPod 40GB about a week ago that had a dock, USB cable, firewire cable and AC plug adapter thing that I haven't used.
Is it that Apple sells a bare-bones unit for cheap plus a dock+cables version for a bit more or that there is no longer any choice at all and there's just a bare-bones?
Rephrase your question properly and then ask it again and see how many raise their hands. No one would be against file sharing, I don't remember any outrage over peer services back in the OS/2 days or other peer networking "clients".
Your question properly phrased is "how many of you think distributing the intellectual property of another without permission should be legal?"
I certainly don't think it should be.
It's not impossible. I was over six figures with a mere associate's degree from a local community college. I took a hit last year when the company I was with for nine years went under but I'm not far off from that mark now either.
It's not so much where you went to school or for how long, it's how well the interviewing process goes and how much knowledge and ability you can convey to those interviewing you.
I'm finishing a four year degree now at night but more so out of boredom than necessity.
Those of us that build are systems or just continually upgrade component by component don't have XP unless we purposely purchased it. I have to think there's still a great majority of /.'ers (and likely Wine users as well) who don't buy prefabs.
Heck, I still run Win2000 just for that reason, I don't want to shell out $$$ for XP when XP is probably close to its end of life.
This boggles my mind too. I've renewed the same server certificates for years and some code certs, it's a royal PITA. Every year they manage to throw a wrench in the process somehow, oh.. this obscure peice of data we got from this place doesn't exactly match your company's street address or we called once at 3am and no one answered.
I'm amazed anyone can get through all that with bogus information. You'd think that someone with that kind of determination could be doing something better with their skills.