No kidding! He didn't even answer my question (#7)!
All I wanted to know was if and how we can see what types of questions were asked, and then draw our own conclusions of the analysis. I didn't want to know about software vs. hardware server numbers. Just say: "No, you're not allowed to see the questions we ask, no one is." Then I'll be able to say, fine, then I should be expected to trust your judgements of what the data means. But maybe if he had just said: "Yes, you can see how we 'poll' people, but you have to pay for access to it like our clients do.", then I would likewise understand his answer. Is it so hard for someone to take a stand these days and just give a straight answer? My question was simply meant to find out why analyses of polling data was so often quoted as fact these days, when it's possible that the way the poll was conducted was completely bunk. Yes you can independently verify our analysis, or no, no one is allowed to verify our conclusions, was all I was looking for out of him.
Yeah, I saw a boxed Macross DVD set for sale in this Sunday's Best Buy add in the local newspaper. I don't know all the specific episodes as I'm not a total anime freak, but I've thought about picking it up just for the Saturday morning nostalgia effect.:)
I think the price as advertised at Best Buy was only $34.95 for the 3 DVD box set.
I guess your first post read a little brutal to the customer the first time round for me. I'm going to have to agree, to disagree, about supporting the right of a company to auto-bill someone for unproven breech of contract, but I do understand your need to protect yourself from cheats, crack-heads, pot dealers, and the general morons of society. Your 'after the fact' billing seems much more reasonable to me, as that is what I'm used to, and I definitely would want to be warned that something was wrong before I suddenly found my account drained of funds, like the guy in this discussion. Thanks for your measured, and insightful, response to my response.
GPL forces a company to be service oriented, rather than product oriented. A company like Red Hat exists to serve customers who do not have the time, or don't want to take the time, to set up Red Hat software for all it's many different uses in a corporate environment. Sure, a company could set up Red Hat on their own, 'cause the source code is out there, but Red Hat makes money by offering up their technological skills in a service role. What's wrong with that philosophy? Nothing!
Maybe Microsoft is just aware that offering up a 'service' oriented business is not an easy thing to accomplish (especially when you're as large as MS), and is trying to play down the importance of quality service. Both have their place in this economy, so why either of us needs to bash the other one is beyond me. Mud slinging is a bad idea, because it means you're afraid...
I know the RIAA and MPAA haven't decisively had their butts kicked by the consumer yet, but it will happen. Just like all this negativity from Microsoft will end up biting them in the butt too. It's common knowledge that the consumer in any economy will generally (when it's not a luxury item) purchase the highest quality product for the least amount of money. I'm already a Linux devotee, it's just a matter of time before I switch all my app's over to Linux.
The only thing that would curb this trend in free (as in beer) software, would be government enforcement of Microsoft's "standards" (read: monopoly). But that's not too likely in my estimate.
This is not an entirely fair argument. As many people have already stated, and as it even exists for police, radar and GPS tracking can *once in a while* produce innacurate results. When this happens, by your argument, the consumer has absolutley no way to contest this injustice. It is for the governmentally established courts to enforce your contract, as well as their own laws. Not you. If a policeman catches your customer exceeding posted speed limits in their jurisdiction with their own on sight evidence, and a court convicts, then sure, you should be allowed to charge the customer.
Monitoring where your car ends up (Mexico) is allowed, but pre-charging the customer (like Acme did) for an unproven crime should not be allowed. Even your Mexico argument would need at least two eye-witnesses to prove that someone besides your customer didn't steal the car and drive it down there.
I feel sorry that so many people screw you over on a daily basis, but you're in a risky business to begin with (depreciating assets: vehicles; letting others (possibly untrained people) operate your equipment, etc.). I find it amazing that you can have such a flippant attitude with the customer's you're trying to serve. It's that kind of attitude that gives big business in general, a bad name.
What a good point you have. There's been more than a couple times where my little '92 Eagle Talon that can hit over 90 from 65 in 2 seconds got me away from that giant trucker that didn't see me and tried to merge into my lane. Sometimes you can't slow down to avoid an accident and have to gun it to get out of a bad traffic situation.
And you're right, we need more training on how to operate a vehicle to keep people safe than to enact more rules to break. People may consider me a somewhat aggresive driver, but that's only 'cause I pay attention when I drive and know my limits, as well as my car's limits. I don't do 90 around corners, I don't tailgate (too bad anyways;) ), and I don't road rage. I also don't drive slow in the fast lane, don't cut people off, and aggressively speed up to get out of the way of others who don't know how to drive and seem bent on running me over.
And sometimes, those lawsuits seem to be just a way to blame anyone but the person who crashed the car in the first place.
And lastly:
This GPS rental car monitoring is ridiculous! Is this how the New World Order will be? Companies allowed to enforce the laws set forth by government for profit!?! Sure, they should have recompense if the guy damaged the car, but his speeding is between him and the police (read: local government) who set that law, not him and the rental car company.
This was also my favorite, most informative, online-specific news story I've read this year. It's written for the lay-person to understand easily, but at the same time contains plenty of technical information as well. While Steve Gibson does let his personal feelings creep into the story, it actually adds to, rather than detracts from, the importance of the story. Definitely my pick for this year's winner.
My best friend has a CD collection riddled with tiny spots, much of hismusic doesn't play any more. Couldn't have been exposire to sunlight, since he was in the Navy at the time of the degradation.
Probably was due to the oxidation of the salt in sea water. My roommates my freshman year of college discovered about 6 months later that many of their CD's had these gaps in them after taking them with us to Daytona Beach. Oxidation has been a known CD killer since they were developed.
My bad, I guess you guys have heard of Checkfree as stated on your 'OFX support' development page.
I would suggest looking into implementing NPC instead of OFX support though. Just my opinion on this, but OFX sort of sucked for us to support. I won't go into technical (possibly proprietary reasons), but I believe NPC is more flexible. Don't quote me on it, just throwing out my worthless $.02 for general consumption.
On another note, since we do have sort of a merger thing going on with our old rival (now partner) Transpoint, which is a joint venture with Microsoft and First Data, it might be more advantageous to go with the OFX model for overall scalability, but that's more of a question for our sales departments I guess.
But I'm guessing building what amounts to a screenscraper for banks that don't provide account information downloads as.qif or.csv/.txt would be painful at best.
I can assure you that yes, it is a VERY painful thing to do: screen scraping. Let's just stick to downloading files with financial data. But you would have to make sure that the banks are encrypting that data very securely as you don't want your checkbook floating through 15 different internet hops on your way to you unencrypted!
Ah yes, online banking. To the developer's of GNUCash, you may want to look into my company's options CheckFree.com as they handle some of Region Bank's as well as many other bank's online banking needs (although we're not all inclusive of every 'online banking' functionality, just mainly the payment processing stuff). Please email me and I'll see what I can do to get you talking to the right people. (I'm just a lowly software tester;) ).
I'm not trying to plug my company too much here, mainly I too would like something as solid as Quicken2k for Linux as I am finding I enjoy using Linux much more than Windows as of late. I haven't totally ditched Windows for just this reason (lack of a really solid financial tracking tool). I've heard of GNUCash recently, but haven't yet had the chance to try it out. My question is:
Since this is under the GPL license, and a lot of online banking is under proprietary licenses (my company, banks, PayPal, etc.), do you think that any type of medium can be worked out to incorporate the two licenses into a fully functional online banking type product. (I realize you're not a lawyer, but just wanted to know if any of your developers have explored this type of difficult question, and come up with answers and/or solutions).
sure, but this also means that people don't put a price on their time. to configure a system like you describe involves reading HOWTOs, FAQs, and installing stuff that you might not already have. and blowing a week of time testing, etc. needless to say, my mom isn't going to do this.
theoretically, 0knowledge can do all this with one install, magically. that's worth some $.
Hmmm, I always thought paying for products was something people did to avoid thinking/learning/reading?
Damn, and I thought buying books and paying for a college education, buying food to keep my body going, shelter over my head was actually searching for more thinking/learning/reading. Boy, am I a stupid dumb-ass!
I agree, as I tried for several months searching thru realtor.com for a house or condo. Lots of cookie cutter houses on there, and not much use for finding any 'gems.' Even my local newspaper doesn't do a very good job of putting their classified listings online (I live in Columbus, OH - dispatch.com is the local newspaper).
To find the real 'gems' in housing you really need to drive around the neighborhoods and scope them out for yourself, or go through a realtor to scope them for you if you're short on time. The real benefits to real estate that can be found online are the demographics and county listings on government websites. Where I live, our Franklin County Auditor has a website that you can use to look up the last selling price of a house, year sold, etc. that you would normally have to go to a county courthouse to find out. That has been pretty useful to me, but the actual locating, buying, and selling needs to be either done by yourself, or thru a realtor still.
I have often wondered how biased polls are based on the questions asked, the demographics of the people polled, etc. When results about polls are made public, is it also possible to obtain information about how the poll was conducted in a simple, by request method? Now if the answer to that question is, no, how much can we rely on polls, since we have no way of verifying if the questions asked and the people interviewed were heavily biased to favor one outcome over another? (Such as in the recent large discrepancies of the 8% vs. 24% use of Linux as a server results that we've seen on Slashdot recently).
The thing I like about the 'Net is that you can find all the info you want on specialty interests. www.dsm.org is a great resource for me, and all the other Eclipse/Talon/Laser owners of the world that want to learn more about their cars. Obviously, this site does NOT appeal to the masses, and is operated as a 'labor of love.'
I agree with you about Big Media. They will buy up their online competitors, if there competitors are stealing some of their profit. So what? Online, this shouldn't matter, because like you say, someone else can always put up their own info and do it for free. Or if they own a profitable site, don't take it public trying to make bajillions of dollars, and it will remain yours for all time, to do whatever you wish with it.
A beowulf cluster of Natalie Portman lawyers would be far more effective than contracting hits out to a bunch of expensive mercs in today's society. Sure, it may have worked back in the Dark Ages, but today warriors are the louses, and lawyers, the "knights in shining armor". It's pathetic, but true.
Re:Democracy is what *citizens* should demand
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Harm From The Hague
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You have a point here. And to Mr. maynard above, think about the USA as a small expirement in 'globalized' (read centralized, removed) rulership. The United States of America was a binding together of the original 13 colonies, all of which had different subcultures within the then 'New World.' Obviously, it worked pretty well. Only two hundred years later, you have a nation where very, very few have ever met their congressman/woman or their senator, only half even know the names of these representatives, and the other half could care less what happens to them, as long as they're kept ignorant and happy. Sure, things have grown faster, we've made more money, and made more scientific advances this way, but at the expense of morality and an honest life? Is it really worth it?
Re:If democratic and elected, not so sad after all
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Harm From The Hague
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· Score: 2
A 'democracy' is not what leaders pushing for a New World Order or World Government are pursueing though. For one thing, it's organizationally not feasible. For another thing, it does not reign in control, pass laws faster, or decide tough questions quickly. The world has lots of cultures, many of which cannot agree with each other.
Therefore, a one world governments goal would be to control people. No dissension over decisions, no arguments between 'countries,' because everyone is controlled by a central authority. Your utopian dream world could never exist using our current human nature as a basis for civilized rule.
Actually this craziness will feed on itself, and perpetuate illogical decisions. There won't be enough lawyers to littigate it all, so everyone will be doing lots of things that are illegal, but there will be 'bigger fish to fry', so they'll slip through the cracks. A crack addict comes and kills your family in their sleep, yeah that will be common place. But guess what, Company X is sueing government ABC for writing Amendment 34265.234.222 that allows Company Y to steal Company X's work.
The little guys will get screwed more and more, while the rich get richer. Money isn't the root of all evil, the love of it is. And I doubt anyone would argue that big corp's and corrupt politicians LOVE lots of money. That's why it's already more profitable to work on class action lawsuits than to give the poor a chance at a fair trial. Tell me, how many good lawyers work as public appointed defendant lawyers?
So Microsoft products are being pirated in China and Vietnam at a 95% rate. So what?! Prove to me that that has hurt M$'s business. Their founder, Bill Gates is the richest man in the world, even after the dot-com bubble bursting as of late. Enforce sanctions, or withold monetary aid to those countries, but for God's sake, don't make me obey their laws! I live in America because it's not a lawless society, and that's what makes it one of the richest in the world.
This isn't that simple though. I personally don't watch much TV either. The problem is the masses who won't change, will continue to allow this data to be collected, and pretty soon the government and corp's know more about your 'personal profile' than you do. You could be labeled a mass-murderer/pedophile/bigot/white-supremacist/Ch ristian/muslim/etc. before you even reach the age of 15. Then you're imprisoned for your own, and everyone else's future 'protection'. That's not right.
You're equating a criminal offense (smoking pot, doing drugs, etc.) with a possibly fireable (or at least disciplinable) offense (sending personal email on company time). The two do not equate on a right/wrong scale. The criminal offense is illegal, the email disobedience is wrong, but does not get you sent to jail if caught. But it does bring up a good question of how much snooping is too much. It could be argued that neither is right morally, but because a few lives could be saved, it's better that everyone be a little bit more miserable in their personal lives. There's a balance threshold that I think we're getting dangerously close to crossing when we say it's ok to control everything in the name of 'protection'. Hell, I could go run out into a highway and get runover right now. Maybe we should ban highways and track everyone with ID tags so us retarded idiots that like to play in traffic don't hurt ourselves!
My analysis would be that we should just discontinue our usage of that which we do not condone, but many people are pawns, and will gravitate to that which pleases them. I don't watch nearly as much TV as when I was younger because a lot of it now-a-days is crap. If they introduce all kinds of expensive, privacy invading 'Smart Cards', into all new entertainment equipment, I'm sure I could find plenty of other entertainment options if need be. And if enough people do the same, like going back to reading books, those 'industry analysts' would get the hint quick enough and advise industry not to screw with people as much. Of course, this is my utopian dream-world, and like I said, people are pawns, and they'll let themselves get screwed anyways because they're 'being kept happy.'
Slashdot Mirror
All I wanted to know was if and how we can see what types of questions were asked, and then draw our own conclusions of the analysis. I didn't want to know about software vs. hardware server numbers. Just say: "No, you're not allowed to see the questions we ask, no one is." Then I'll be able to say, fine, then I should be expected to trust your judgements of what the data means. But maybe if he had just said: "Yes, you can see how we 'poll' people, but you have to pay for access to it like our clients do.", then I would likewise understand his answer. Is it so hard for someone to take a stand these days and just give a straight answer? My question was simply meant to find out why analyses of polling data was so often quoted as fact these days, when it's possible that the way the poll was conducted was completely bunk. Yes you can independently verify our analysis, or no, no one is allowed to verify our conclusions, was all I was looking for out of him.
I think the price as advertised at Best Buy was only $34.95 for the 3 DVD box set.
I guess your first post read a little brutal to the customer the first time round for me. I'm going to have to agree, to disagree, about supporting the right of a company to auto-bill someone for unproven breech of contract, but I do understand your need to protect yourself from cheats, crack-heads, pot dealers, and the general morons of society. Your 'after the fact' billing seems much more reasonable to me, as that is what I'm used to, and I definitely would want to be warned that something was wrong before I suddenly found my account drained of funds, like the guy in this discussion. Thanks for your measured, and insightful, response to my response.
GPL forces a company to be service oriented, rather than product oriented. A company like Red Hat exists to serve customers who do not have the time, or don't want to take the time, to set up Red Hat software for all it's many different uses in a corporate environment. Sure, a company could set up Red Hat on their own, 'cause the source code is out there, but Red Hat makes money by offering up their technological skills in a service role. What's wrong with that philosophy? Nothing!
Maybe Microsoft is just aware that offering up a 'service' oriented business is not an easy thing to accomplish (especially when you're as large as MS), and is trying to play down the importance of quality service. Both have their place in this economy, so why either of us needs to bash the other one is beyond me. Mud slinging is a bad idea, because it means you're afraid...
The only thing that would curb this trend in free (as in beer) software, would be government enforcement of Microsoft's "standards" (read: monopoly). But that's not too likely in my estimate.
Monitoring where your car ends up (Mexico) is allowed, but pre-charging the customer (like Acme did) for an unproven crime should not be allowed. Even your Mexico argument would need at least two eye-witnesses to prove that someone besides your customer didn't steal the car and drive it down there.
I feel sorry that so many people screw you over on a daily basis, but you're in a risky business to begin with (depreciating assets: vehicles; letting others (possibly untrained people) operate your equipment, etc.). I find it amazing that you can have such a flippant attitude with the customer's you're trying to serve. It's that kind of attitude that gives big business in general, a bad name.
And you're right, we need more training on how to operate a vehicle to keep people safe than to enact more rules to break. People may consider me a somewhat aggresive driver, but that's only 'cause I pay attention when I drive and know my limits, as well as my car's limits. I don't do 90 around corners, I don't tailgate (too bad anyways ;) ), and I don't road rage. I also don't drive slow in the fast lane, don't cut people off, and aggressively speed up to get out of the way of others who don't know how to drive and seem bent on running me over.
And sometimes, those lawsuits seem to be just a way to blame anyone but the person who crashed the car in the first place.
And lastly:
This GPS rental car monitoring is ridiculous! Is this how the New World Order will be? Companies allowed to enforce the laws set forth by government for profit!?! Sure, they should have recompense if the guy damaged the car, but his speeding is between him and the police (read: local government) who set that law, not him and the rental car company.
This was also my favorite, most informative, online-specific news story I've read this year. It's written for the lay-person to understand easily, but at the same time contains plenty of technical information as well. While Steve Gibson does let his personal feelings creep into the story, it actually adds to, rather than detracts from, the importance of the story. Definitely my pick for this year's winner.
Probably was due to the oxidation of the salt in sea water. My roommates my freshman year of college discovered about 6 months later that many of their CD's had these gaps in them after taking them with us to Daytona Beach. Oxidation has been a known CD killer since they were developed.
I would suggest looking into implementing NPC instead of OFX support though. Just my opinion on this, but OFX sort of sucked for us to support. I won't go into technical (possibly proprietary reasons), but I believe NPC is more flexible. Don't quote me on it, just throwing out my worthless $.02 for general consumption.
On another note, since we do have sort of a merger thing going on with our old rival (now partner) Transpoint, which is a joint venture with Microsoft and First Data, it might be more advantageous to go with the OFX model for overall scalability, but that's more of a question for our sales departments I guess.
I can assure you that yes, it is a VERY painful thing to do: screen scraping. Let's just stick to downloading files with financial data. But you would have to make sure that the banks are encrypting that data very securely as you don't want your checkbook floating through 15 different internet hops on your way to you unencrypted!
I'm not trying to plug my company too much here, mainly I too would like something as solid as Quicken2k for Linux as I am finding I enjoy using Linux much more than Windows as of late. I haven't totally ditched Windows for just this reason (lack of a really solid financial tracking tool). I've heard of GNUCash recently, but haven't yet had the chance to try it out. My question is:
Since this is under the GPL license, and a lot of online banking is under proprietary licenses (my company, banks, PayPal, etc.), do you think that any type of medium can be worked out to incorporate the two licenses into a fully functional online banking type product. (I realize you're not a lawyer, but just wanted to know if any of your developers have explored this type of difficult question, and come up with answers and/or solutions).
theoretically, 0knowledge can do all this with one install, magically. that's worth some $.
Hmmm, I always thought paying for products was something people did to avoid thinking/learning/reading?
Damn, and I thought buying books and paying for a college education, buying food to keep my body going, shelter over my head was actually searching for more thinking/learning/reading. Boy, am I a stupid dumb-ass!
To find the real 'gems' in housing you really need to drive around the neighborhoods and scope them out for yourself, or go through a realtor to scope them for you if you're short on time. The real benefits to real estate that can be found online are the demographics and county listings on government websites. Where I live, our Franklin County Auditor has a website that you can use to look up the last selling price of a house, year sold, etc. that you would normally have to go to a county courthouse to find out. That has been pretty useful to me, but the actual locating, buying, and selling needs to be either done by yourself, or thru a realtor still.
I have often wondered how biased polls are based on the questions asked, the demographics of the people polled, etc. When results about polls are made public, is it also possible to obtain information about how the poll was conducted in a simple, by request method? Now if the answer to that question is, no, how much can we rely on polls, since we have no way of verifying if the questions asked and the people interviewed were heavily biased to favor one outcome over another? (Such as in the recent large discrepancies of the 8% vs. 24% use of Linux as a server results that we've seen on Slashdot recently).
I agree with you about Big Media. They will buy up their online competitors, if there competitors are stealing some of their profit. So what? Online, this shouldn't matter, because like you say, someone else can always put up their own info and do it for free. Or if they own a profitable site, don't take it public trying to make bajillions of dollars, and it will remain yours for all time, to do whatever you wish with it.
A beowulf cluster of Natalie Portman lawyers would be far more effective than contracting hits out to a bunch of expensive mercs in today's society. Sure, it may have worked back in the Dark Ages, but today warriors are the louses, and lawyers, the "knights in shining armor". It's pathetic, but true.
You have a point here. And to Mr. maynard above, think about the USA as a small expirement in 'globalized' (read centralized, removed) rulership. The United States of America was a binding together of the original 13 colonies, all of which had different subcultures within the then 'New World.' Obviously, it worked pretty well. Only two hundred years later, you have a nation where very, very few have ever met their congressman/woman or their senator, only half even know the names of these representatives, and the other half could care less what happens to them, as long as they're kept ignorant and happy. Sure, things have grown faster, we've made more money, and made more scientific advances this way, but at the expense of morality and an honest life? Is it really worth it?
Therefore, a one world governments goal would be to control people. No dissension over decisions, no arguments between 'countries,' because everyone is controlled by a central authority. Your utopian dream world could never exist using our current human nature as a basis for civilized rule.
The little guys will get screwed more and more, while the rich get richer. Money isn't the root of all evil, the love of it is. And I doubt anyone would argue that big corp's and corrupt politicians LOVE lots of money. That's why it's already more profitable to work on class action lawsuits than to give the poor a chance at a fair trial. Tell me, how many good lawyers work as public appointed defendant lawyers?
So Microsoft products are being pirated in China and Vietnam at a 95% rate. So what?! Prove to me that that has hurt M$'s business. Their founder, Bill Gates is the richest man in the world, even after the dot-com bubble bursting as of late. Enforce sanctions, or withold monetary aid to those countries, but for God's sake, don't make me obey their laws! I live in America because it's not a lawless society, and that's what makes it one of the richest in the world.
This isn't that simple though. I personally don't watch much TV either. The problem is the masses who won't change, will continue to allow this data to be collected, and pretty soon the government and corp's know more about your 'personal profile' than you do. You could be labeled a mass-murderer/pedophile/bigot/white-supremacist/Ch ristian/muslim/etc. before you even reach the age of 15. Then you're imprisoned for your own, and everyone else's future 'protection'. That's not right.
You're equating a criminal offense (smoking pot, doing drugs, etc.) with a possibly fireable (or at least disciplinable) offense (sending personal email on company time). The two do not equate on a right/wrong scale. The criminal offense is illegal, the email disobedience is wrong, but does not get you sent to jail if caught. But it does bring up a good question of how much snooping is too much. It could be argued that neither is right morally, but because a few lives could be saved, it's better that everyone be a little bit more miserable in their personal lives. There's a balance threshold that I think we're getting dangerously close to crossing when we say it's ok to control everything in the name of 'protection'. Hell, I could go run out into a highway and get runover right now. Maybe we should ban highways and track everyone with ID tags so us retarded idiots that like to play in traffic don't hurt ourselves!
If that were the case, I would no longer need the 61" monitor for, uhhh..., presentations. I could preoccupy my time other ways. ;)
Yes, my sense of sensationalistic humor is too much for some of the slashdot crowd...
My analysis would be that we should just discontinue our usage of that which we do not condone, but many people are pawns, and will gravitate to that which pleases them. I don't watch nearly as much TV as when I was younger because a lot of it now-a-days is crap. If they introduce all kinds of expensive, privacy invading 'Smart Cards', into all new entertainment equipment, I'm sure I could find plenty of other entertainment options if need be. And if enough people do the same, like going back to reading books, those 'industry analysts' would get the hint quick enough and advise industry not to screw with people as much. Of course, this is my utopian dream-world, and like I said, people are pawns, and they'll let themselves get screwed anyways because they're 'being kept happy.'