If your '400 has nothing but twinax things get more difficult(since that only connects to dumb terminals or twinax client cards in PCs), so I assume you've got TCP/IP. I don't remember the commands any more, but GO MAJOR and page down until you find 'Telnet Server Commands'.
Get a linux box, put TN5250 on it from http://tn5250.sourceforge.net/, and just SSH in from remote. (So: remote machine --> SSH over internet --> Linux box on local network --> TN5250 over LAN --> AS/400) TN5250 can just telnet into the '400. You'll have to teach them the weird key sequences for PF1 through PF24 (escape then 1-9 for PF1 through PF9, escape then 0 for PF10, escape then - for PF11, escape then = for PF12, and escape then the same keys again SHIFTED for PF13 through PF24) and for sysrequest, help, etc.
If your '400 has nothing but twinax for terminal connections, get a twinax client card on a PC and some client software (IBM's Client Access for AS/400 works:) ) and use VNC. It's painful but better than nothing. It's also insecure by itself, so be sure to tunnel that VNC connection through SSH or something.
You still didn't reply using examples and scenarios that don't require us to trust your authority.
I don't see your slashdot user ID in that link. Even if that page is you, it doesn't matter to this discussion as much as you think it does: you need to justify why you think something is true. This is a meritocracy. Let your ideas stand on their own merit, by providing justification and letting peer review weed out the bad ideas.
Basically my gripe is: an earlier post claimed that people might use darker graphics to hide what would otherwise look like obvious lack of detail due to lower poly count. You used a logical fallacy to make it seem like this was impossible: your straw man scenario of some idiot jumping from "faster code" to "brighter graphics", as if there was no other thought put into it, detracts from the discussion by tricking people into laughing at and dismissing someone else's good idea without putting more thought into it.
But we can tell.:)
We're not getting any karma for this, and this really should have been a private message...but... Could you reply again and describe why those things aren't possible? "I don't see it" could mean it's impossible, or it could mean you aren't being open-minded enough. I don't think you're just being negative because you like to argue, but it's starting to look that way. Please help us see why you're right: it still seems reasonable to me that people could make low poly count models not look quite so low-quality by making it hard to see fine detail in the models. To me it seems like one way to accomplish this is by darkening the models, so you reduce the contrast without making things look gray. If you have higher poly count models it seems that you can light them up a bit more without them looking so ugly. We already know you think this is wrong, but we don't believe you. Please tell us why you think this is wrong.
Programmer: "Hey, I just managed to save a couple thousand cycles per frame with some clever inlining, loop unrolling and judicious use of PowerPC assembler."
Artist: "Oh, that's nice."
. . . weeks pass . . . several more optimizations, several thousand more cycles saved . ..
Programmer: "By the way, we decided to increase your polygon budget since all those extra cycles lets us display more polys per frame and keep the same frame rate."
Artist: "Great! I'll design some higher-poly models."
. . . weeks pass . ..
Programmer: "Yep, these new detailed models work great on the improved engine. Weren't you just saying you hated having to over-darken your art, but you were forced to do that because of the lower-poly models? You don't have to do that any more."
Artist: "Great! I'll bump up the saturation on the 'graphics' by 7%"
Why is that scenario impossible? Or even unlikely?
I don't trust your authority on the subject enough to take your word for it. Nothing against you, but too many people claim to be too many things on the Internet. Could you describe why these things couldn't happen, using examples and scenarios that don't require us to trust your authority?
To the article poster: I'm a UNO student also. When can I meet you at the student center? I'll try to stop by there (second floor, cafeteria) today between about 10:00 and maybe 10:45. (When I'm there I'm usually on the south-most wall, where most of the Japanese exchange students sit. I'm an American currently taking my fourth semester of the language, so every little bit helps.:) )
I had the same problem as a kid. Maybe it's a maturity thing -- maybe the problem will only fix itself after years of experience and maturity. For me that process started in my junior year of high school. Prior to that...well, I honestly didn't mean to be this way, but apparently I was a real asshole, seeming to try to make everybody know I was smarter than them, or something. Then suddenly it clicked in my junior hear of HS: "normal people" have social lives and a variety of experiences and whatnot, so I need to *look up to them* for what they have.
They say a person who refuses praise, seeks praise twice. But that was me also: if someone said something in admiration of my computer skills, I would say I would gladly give those skills back in exchange for a more normal life and more social interaction, etc. I felt that I was playing at deliberately hiding my talent from people -- when I did something that revealed my skill I didn't brag about it or do it proudly, I pretended to be ashamed of my weird skill, like I was some kind of mutant. I still thought I was pretty hot shit, especially compared to other computer people (hey Eric Duprey, Russ Kroll and the guys from 8, 9 years ago...sorry guys for how I was acting back then. I would have hated me too...and it's a damn shame I drove you guys away, because I had a lot to learn from you all.) -- but I just tried to hide it, or at least make it look like I was trying to hide it.
I imagine that direction won't work for the kid if he doesn't actually value those things other people has that he doesn't. But it might be someplace to start with him, eventually.
--Michael Spencer
This might fly, maybe: expert opinion
on
The Universal Card
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· Score: 1
Disclaimer: I work for a major credit card processor (and in stories like this, this job apparently means free karma...) but the opinions stated in this post are mine and may or may not also be my employer's. The statements of policy or fact in this post are true in a general sense, and cannot be interpreted as general or appropriate in all situations. So nothing I say here is binding, and when my manager sees this post she'll be happy that I'm covering all my bases.:-)
We're almost definitely not seeing the whole story here. I don't see this as a straight-to-consumer product.
Let's look at it from the straight-to-consumer angle first: the company I work for, First National Merchant Solutions, would almost definitely suspend or close any of our merchants if we found out they were swiping one of these devices through their terminals' card stripe readers. (Assuming present-day Visa and Mastercard regulations.) Mastercard just recently (March 2004) announced revised fraud protection standards to address "Merchant Collusion", where a merchant and a customer are acting in collusion to present a transaction for the intent of fraud.
(Offtopic: there are currently no Visa or Mastercard mandates requiring or encouraging smartcard readers on merchant terminals. The current "push" is compliance with customer account number truncation, so only the last four digits of the customer card number (and not the expiration date) is visible on customer sales receipts. When Visa and Mastercard want to motivate people they do it with policy or with money, and we haven't seen either of those incentives from them yet. Smartcard-capable terminals, at least in our product line, cost $40 - $100 more than their non-Smartcard-capable counterparts, and merchants see neither a monetary benefit (in the form of lower per-transaction fees) nor a risk benefit (in the form of more protection from chargebacks or fraud) for accepting smartcards. We aren't even deploying actual smartcard readers in our terminals yet. I think we process about 15% of all of the Visa/Mastercard transactions in the US by volume (dollar amount), so we would know.)
Now let's look at it with the pure-speculation viewpoint of considering a possible future product. This would be recognized and sanctioned by Visa/Mastercard. What would a product like this offer over conventional magnetic-stripe-read cards? Better customer identity verification -- in specific situations and with certain security procedures in place, it's possible for this technology to give Visa and Mastercard better confirmation that the person who owns the account really is the person who is attempting that sale.
Let's think about the business case for that, though. Considering that I've never even actually held a smartcard-equipped credit card in my hands, nor do we have any smartcard-equipped terminals actually deployed, I have NO expertise to offer on smartcards.
New technology is driven by fraud, and fraud prevention. (Sometimes by transaction cost, but the technology cost of transactions is pretty cheap already.) Who bears most of the cost when fraud is committed? Ignoring issuing-bank-side fraud (where someone signs up for a card with a fake identity, or where they run up their credit limit, send in a rubber check, run up their credit limit again, and then file bankruptcy or skip town)... most of the merchant's risk of loss is due either to identify-related fraud (where a customer presents a card they don't own), fulfillment-related fraud (where a customer receives goods or services and then claims they never received them or received something flawed), employee-related fraud (self-explanatory), or a technical problem explained simply by merchant error (sometimes "ooh what does this button do" crap which would deserve to be on SysadminCo if it weren't confidential and finance-related).
New tech does nothing for fulfillment-related fraud or technical stuff. I think it actually increas
IP datagrams just specify machines. They say packets are going from one computer to another, but they don't care what kind of data is in the packet.
Inside that packet is a specific protocol number. TCP packets use protocol number 6, UDP packets use protocol number 17, and ICMP packets use protocol number 1.
Then, based on the protocol number, the computer interprets the contents of the packet.
In this case, PPTP uses TCP traffic (I think) to set up the connection but uses GRE for the actual payload. If you block GRE then PPTP can't operate.
So find some way to make your network or your computer block protocol number 47, and you'll be good to go.
> > I just want to toss out the notion that the general complaint that slashdot readers don't read the article, and the slashdot effect are mutually exclusive. There were only 8 replies to this thread when I clicked the main article link, and although it wasn't completely slashdotted, it was incredibly slow coming up.
I think the general complaint is that people who post to slashdot don't read the article. That is not mutually exclusive with the article being slashdotted. (There is a silent majority of slashdot readers who don't post, but do read the articles.)
That's my thumb in the picture. Fifteen lines of text fit in the width of my thumb.
(For the record...I did eventually get MAME working, but it runs slow on Qtopia. I'll have to try it on that new X11 ROM and see if it runs at more than 40% speed. )
--Michael Spencer
Re:Its small for a laptop, but HUGE for a PDA
on
Zaurus SL-C860 Review
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· Score: 5, Interesting
The C860 is the same size as the C700 I've been carrying around in my pocket for the past year. Usually I'm carrying it with the network card sticking out the top, and I haven't had anything bad happen to the extra bit of plastic that sticks out. There's a noticable Zaurus-shaped rectangular outline where my pocket is, but nothing sticks out the top of my pocket and nothing gets bent or sheared off. Nobody notices my pocket -- I think that qualifies the Zaurus as pocket-sized.:) I think "small" or "HUGE" aren't really precise enough. Let's talk about whether it's too big for something or too small for something. Those statements are *useful* statements. My C700 is small enough to carry around in your pocket, everywhere you go. The AC adapter folds its prongs into the body and it's small enough to carry around in your other pocket.
The 640x480 screen apparently has led people to mistakenly conclude the screen is large. It's not -- it's just got unusually high dots-per-inch.
The screen is still pretty readable though. People always comment on how small the text is, but when they hold the unit closer (which is normal and natural with a small hand-held device) they can read it clearly. I've found people who need reading glasses to read small print on paper are the only people who have trouble with this screen.
I suppose some people are fashion-conscious enough that how small something looks matters. To me, it just needs to be small enough to comfortably hold in one hand, light enough to not tire that hand out, and small enough to carry in my pocket everywhere I go. That's precisely what it's been for me, for the past year.
You, too, need to look at www.foomp.com's chargeback case studies. If it's been 30 days and you haven't received the credit, you can initiate a chargeback. You're not at their mercy. Chargeback reason "Credit not processed" -- talk to your issuing bank.
I work for a major credit card processor, First National Merchant Solutions, but I don't usually handle chargebacks. I'm still at work though, so I asked a coworker who does.
You're probably curious about chargeback rights. This is where you talk to your bank, explain why you believe that charge wasn't fair or valid, and ask them to get your money back. I'm going to describe these chargeback rights.
"Merchant" means a business who is charging your card. "Cardholder" is you. "Issuer" is the bank that issued your card.
The merchant must have given you prior notice that they were going to bill you. I'm not familiar with the terms & conditions you agreed to, but they may have given you this notification when you signed up.
If you called and cancelled the service within a reasonable amount number of days before you were billed, and they still charged you, AND you haven't received any material goods or services from them, you can charge the sale back.
Also if you never received notification that they were going to charge your account again, you can charge the sale back.
You probably can't charge the sale back claiming that they never provided the goods or services you requested. They will probably claim that your account has been capable of logging in and accessing the service, so they will argue that meets their fulfillment obligations.
I'll refer you to my company's "Chargeback Case Studies" section of its web site. http://www.foomp.com -- click on "REFERENCE DESK" at the top center, then click "Fraud & Loss" at the fourth link down in the body of the page. This section of the site describes the common chargeback reasons, and gives a case study for each chargeback type. This list doesn't include all of the rare chargeback types out there, but it's most of the common ones.
Keep in mind you can't argue a chargeback case like a lawyer. You can't say you called him to cancel...and you already returned the merchandise...and you never received the merchandise...and you've never heard of this merchant before now. You must pick one reason and go with it. If you pick a weak chargeback reason and the chargeback is reversed, you may not get another chance to file another chargeback with a different reason. (You will probably be allowed to rebut the merchant's allegations, making this a 'second chargeback'.)
If you feel you're entitled to a chargeback (because you read about a chargeback case study very similar to your situation) but your bank insists you cannot charge the sale back, the bank may be in violation of Visa/Mastercard regulations. If you feel they are, complain to Visa or Mastercard. You could find out the bank was right all along -- or the bank could find out you were right. If the bank was in error, they could be fined by Visa/Mastercard or (in VERY extreme cases) have their rights to issue those cards revoked.
The opinions expressed above are mine, and not necessarily those of my employer. We are an "acquirer" -- we provide services to merchants, so we're used to helping businesses who are on the defending side of chargeback disputes. Acquirers don't usually go around giving customers advice anyway.
Hmm...good point, I didn't really realize it when I posted that, but the partial information I gave puts Qtopia in a worse light than it deserves.
I'm going to bow out of arguing one perspective or the other, and just offer my observations.
For comparison, on the default Sharp-provided Qtopia ROM (C700 with 32 MB RAM, 48 MB swap):
The text editor scrolls a full screen of text in what feels like a fifth of a second. Much faster. The Netfront web browser, showing the default http://www.zaurusworld.ne.jp page, scrolls up and down very quickly (visible tearing, but many more frames per second than I can count). The Slashdot homepage, however, takes one to two seconds to scroll and update the screen, after the page has finished loading. > 2 MB of RAM free, no swapfile activity while it's scrolling.
By contrast, the Cacko X11 ROM hasn't shown me any slow scrolling/updating problems except under high CPU usage. DOOM on the Cacko ROM runs at a pretty high frame rate, more like a fast 486 way back in the day -- and the window drags across the screen pretty well (more than 10 updates/sec). I end up with a lot more free RAM running X11, even giving Qtopia the benefit of unloaded plugins (rename then reboot) and no fastload. The text editor has a lot more features than Qtopia's, but it scrolls smoothly. If I drag quickly from the top to the bottom of a large text file, I can see nearly all of the text scroll by.
Right now it seems the X11 ROM is appropriate if you want to turn your PDA into a cramped toy Linux box, with much tinkering required. PDA-like operations take *much* more user interface effort to accomplish. (For example, while you can middle click or right click, you do it by pressing Fn + a number to switch click modes. Fn + 1 for left click, Fn + 2 for middle click, Fn + 3 for right click. If you need to take a quick note you need to find and open a text editor, write the document, and save it.)
Abiword was very usable on the C700. Hancom Word on Qtopia is nice -- simple, PDA-centric interface with just the bare minimum features. Abiword on X11 ROCKS though. It's like MS Word 97 in my pocket, sans paperclip. (typo underlining and all)
My first PDA was an Agenda VR3, which also runs Linux and X. Qtopia won't even run on this platform. I'd like to see the Cacko X11 ROM adopt some of those PDA programs -- they were simple but usable. They weren't really appropriate for complex tasks, but I think that's what the ROM needs: lots of desktop X programs for when you need to sit down and do some work (using only what tools you carry in your pants pockets -- people tied to desks or home computers all the time probably won't appreciate this ability); a few PDA programs for quick tasks; and a larger virtual resolution, either via VNC or something native to X. (It kinda bothers me when the OK and Cancel buttons for a dialog are drawn off the bottom of the screen.) Maybe some kind of Palm emulator, for some license-violating slow-executing PDA goodness.:)
I wouldn't buy a new Zaurus just to do X11 until this ROM improves, but for those of us who already have the hardware, this is great. Can't argue with more free capabilities.:)
I agree with the parent. I've used an earlier version of this ROM on my SL-C700. I guarantee X is indeed right at home on this device. It's lighter and faster.
On the Embedded Konsole app for Qtopia, when the screen is full of text (79x29) and I press enter, it takes anywhere between a half second and a full second to scroll the text down one line. ls -alR goes in skips and starts, giving you a good chance to read one particular screen and then skipping many pages ahead on the next refresh.
On the Cacko X11 ROM, using whatever console that uses, the screen scrolls almost instantly. ls -alR looks like it does on a desktop computer -- not only is text flying by so fast you can't read it, you can visibly see screen updates happening so fast, text really is "flying by".
(To be fair, my Qtopia install supports Japanese text, needed for my Japanese language class. That makes fonts *much* bigger, memory-footprint-wise.)...and all of this on a device that's always in my pocket. If it was a laptop I'd be leaving it home 80% of the time I'd end up needing it.
I work at a bank, and own a Zaurus SL-C700. I work full-time in a tech support call center (noon to 11 PM), and am a full-time student. This means when it's late at night, I have plenty of time to work on homework.
For the past two semesters, all of my programming assignments have been written, built, and debugged on the SL-C700. I'd say it takes me perhaps twice as long to type in code, and GCC runs rather slowly. But the hours would otherwise be wasted. I'm not allowed to put Linux or GCC on Bank computers.
I hate to be negative, but he didn't say which president. Anybody providing voting services is helping the state deliver its electoral votes to the president. He's pretty confident he's working for an electronic voting services company.
It does seem a bit suspicious if he's making that statement to one side and not the other though, but I don't think it's a smoking gun.
I'm starting to think I shouldn't have even replied to this user's other post.
: : You give vague guidelines for what you're seeking, like for example, you want to input kana and have it output kanji. You must be a beginner, because you don't seem to realize there is no one-to-one correspondence between words written in kana and kanji.
That's completely normal. That's how Japanese people do it. You press keys on your keyboard that indicate kana, hit the space bar, and it suggests a kanji. If it suggests a kanji you didn't intend, hit the space bar again and get the next most likely.
A dictionary helps with that -- it doesn't hurt. For example, I looked up 'tsuku'. (Those letters at the top are simple phonetic characters "tsu ku" -- they don't each have a meaning, they're like letters of the alphabet. Sounds only.) The dictionary shows me a ton of different kanji that have the same pronounciation. If I click a different kanji up top, I get its meaning on the bottom.
Completely normal. The poster suggested that because the person who submitted the article wants to do this, they must be a beginner and so shouldn't get a dictionary.
That statement is a pretty likely sign that we're being trolled. One can't both insult someone else for being inexperienced and not knowing what they want, and also make that kind of mistake. Interested moderators might also want to look at this post if you think this guy is trolling, or at least being excessively negative (and wrong about it) on purpose. (He's probably right about "denshi jiten" though.)
Hmm...it seems you're mostly right. No place better than slashdot to get a correction I suppose:)
In support of what you said: it turns out Jisho is correct, but that denshijiten is also right. No wonder Japanese exchange students were looking at me funny, but not correcting me, when I said "denki jisho". It's a shame nobody said anything to me before you did, but thanks for the correction. *memorizes denshi jiten*:)
Strange, though, but the default menu option for the dictionary calls it Jisho.
You're probably also technically correct about kanji handwriting recognition. I'm just a third semester student, and I can usually sketch out an unfamiliar kanji well enough for the Zaurus to understand it. Sometimes I put two strokes where one goes, sometimes I put one stroke where two strokes go, sometimes I get the order wrong. Almost always, for unfamiliar kanji, the one I wanted isn't the first one that comes up. I just tap the kanji with the pen and it shows me a list of other possibilities.
If the one I need isn't in there, I look at any similirities between the ones that *are* in the list, and make sure my next attempt at writing it looks different from that.
So I think you're right...it probably does really take about four years to be able to do that accurately and reliably. I think I'm right also -- if the student has a little bit of skill, the Zaurus's handwriting recognition is smart enough to look past most mistakes. By contrast, the simple handwriting recognition in the Zaurus app KanjiNirvana doesn't tolerate *any* errors.
I don't know if you've used the Zaurus's kanji handwriting recognition, but apparently Zauruses are famous for theirs. I make a lot of handwriting mistakes, especially with new and unfamiliar kanji, and the Zaurus picks up what I intended most of the time -- when I'm already kinda familiar with the stroke order. The Zaurus picks up what I meant to write about a third of the time, when I'm unfamiliar with the stroke order and just roughly copying down what I see, and don't mind scrolling through a list of alternates.
So I'd say: if this is your first semester learning kanji, I don't think you'll be able to use the handwriting recognition the way I do. If this is your second semester or later of studying kanji, go for it. It's my second semester also, and it works for me.:)
(Or if you're technical, you can hack the dictionary software onto a Zaurus SL-C700, as I have.)
The built-in "denki jisho" (electronic dictionary) has four dictionaries: Japanese-to-Japanese (completely useless to me); Japanese-to-English (which takes input in hiragana, katakana, or kanji -- but not romaji); English-to-Japanese (almost completely useless to me, except I can copy the definition into a HancomWord doc or something and paste each individual kanji back into the dictionary going the other way); and Katakana to whatever (so you can tell that 'depaato' means department store, etc.)
Zauruses have excellent kanji handwriting recognition too, so you can just sketch out the character combination you're asking about and it reads it. Even if you make mistakes -- which is pretty impressive.
I hear the SL-C8-something (860?) is the same hardware as the C760 but with extra full-sentence-translation software. That software will probably soon be working on the C700 also.
A Japanese friend at the university has one of the higher-end standalone dictionaries. I don't know who makes hers, but on any search hers seems to have nearly double the definitions and meanings that mine does, or has many obscure words that mine doesn't have.
Disclaimer: I work for a company which provides the kind of service I'm talking about here. I'm technical staff, not sales.
Below, when I say "merchant" I'm talking about someone who is selling a good or service, and is receiving payment from a customer using a payment processor.
I can see pros and cons to both ways of processing payments: the "proper credit card processing" way and the PayPal way. If you're a merchant, proper credit card processing locks you into a contract, requires you to pay an application fee and whatnot, does extensive credit checks, and retains the right to take your money away from you again if something goes wrong with a payment. PayPal apparently doesn't lock you into a contract, doesn't require an application fee, doesn't do credit checks, but according to the above reports seems to take your money away from you more liberally.
The major difference seems to be the lengthy merchant application process, and the method by which funds for fraudulent transactions are reclaimed from merchants.
In credit card land, funds are held or taken back from merchants by default when there's a dispute. I think the logic there is that generally merchants have "longer purses", and since only one side can get the "benefit of the doubt" by default, it should be the side more likely to survive going without that money. There's one of three reasons (that I know of) why this can happen to a merchant:
The first is a chargeback. Chargebacks are a known quantity -- there are well-defined reasons why a chargeback can occur, and a defined dispute/arbitration process associated with them. When this happens the disputed funds are taken from the credit card processor immediately, and so the credit card processor takes the funds from the merchant right away. The merchant gets a letter in the mail, or an automatic fax, and their bank account is immediately debited. The credit card processor doesn't get any extra money to sit on -- it payed the money back to the customer's bank before it received the money from the merchant.
The second is some kind of pledge, restriction, or other...umm, thingey...which is decided upon in advance. The merchant and their new credit card processor negotiate a contract that states the processor will hold the merchant's funds for a few months. Usually the schedule for release of funds is well-defined. The thinking here is that if the merchant has really lousy credit, if the merchant were to suddenly start defrauding all of its customers, chargebacks would start rolling in. The bank wants to have the merchant's funds already on-hand so it doesn't have to chase them to Mexico and back trying to get their money back from the merchant. Again, this is negotiated in advance and isn't a surprise to either party.
The third is sometimes unexpected. When the merchant fills out their part of the processing contract, they specify an average ticket (the average dollar amount of any single item they process) and an average annual volume (the average total dollar amount per year they're anticipating charging). If a merchant signs on as a beauty salon and does $30-$50 transactions on average, but then the merchant's construction-contractor husband uses her credit card machine to charge a $4000 job to a client, red flags go up. In this case the funds for that single transaction are held here at the bank, and the merchant gets a phone call and they discuss how the merchant can get their money. (perhaps provide extra proof that this was a valid/authorized transaction, perhaps open a new merchant account for the contractor/husband and tell him to stop using his wife's account, etc.)
(OK, I guess there's a fourth: "hey merchant, we tried to send money to your depository account, but your bank tells us the deposit bounced. Account closed. Can you give us new bank
I'd like to throw another possiblity into your list:
- The backscatter was faked by someone on SCO's network.
Remember, we are inferring whether or not SCO is lying by observing packets generated by SCO's servers. It's possible to create packets that *look like* responses to SYN packets from bogus source addresses, when they're actually being thrown together in userland and sent to the network raw.
First, I'd like to express deepest condolences about what's happened. I'm curious about the extent of the government's control of your financial matters though. I know nothing of New Zealand's laws regarding these kinds of things.
I think you mentioned that you weren't allowed to own more than $500 worth of tools of your trade after being declared bankrupt. What happens if you buy or amass more than that? Will it be confiscated? Will they continue to confiscate your tools even after your debt has been paid?
I'd hate for anything like this to ever happen to anyone again. Please feel free to email me (remove the first three letters of my email username, leaving a one-letter username) if you need pro-bono web hosting. (Preferably plain files with no server-side processing, in case of a slashdotting...) I'm sure between me and the other slashdot users, you'll find no shortage of volunteers to keep your message and your story out where others can see it.
I took a "Number Theory and Cryptography" class at the University of Nebraska at Omaha early this year. We used those two terms interchangably. It doesn't make a lot of sense to English majors or less-qualified grammar-nazis, but in "factor primes" the word "primes" isn't really the direct object, the thing being factored -- they are the result.
Remember that language is defined by the people who use it. If mathematicians want to call "factor primes" what you call "factor a large number to primes", please let them do so.
I can understand a good joke and a laugh, but not everybody here has the social maturity to be able to stand up to a friendly joke. You might embarass a budding mathematician into not speaking in public again. What he said didn't really deserve being joked at.
What you said was still funny though.:)
. o O ( "Dude, it was just a joke, let it go... " ) . o O ( "Dude, it wasn't even wrong, let it go... " ) . o O ( "Dude, it was just a joke, let it go... " ) etc:)
Re:One weakness of both articles: free always wins
on
Economics of File-Sharing
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I think we're departing the article's topic a bit here, but you're right: it's interesting to discuss the cost/benefit decision users make when they decide whether to use an online music service, to buy CDs normally, or to break copyright law and download music without paying. I just think this wasn't the main point of the article. If people feel like discussing this, and today's moderators don't think it's too offtopic, we might see some interesting and important observations.
I'm repeating myself a bit here, but I don't really think I'm qualified to talk about consumer behavior. I am not a psychologist. Economics says that there probably exists a curve to describe how much of the population will evaluate that cost/benefit decision one way or the other. Many would argue that this broad economic view of the decision isn't really adding anything to the discussion -- of course some people will switch and some won't. A more interesting discussion would cover why people switch and why they don't: how much people value the money it takes to buy music legally (an easy discussion) and how much people value the moral and legal risk involved in breaking copyright law and downloading copyrighted music (a much harder discussion).
A discussion that tries to answer these questions must deal more with psychological issues than with economic issues, so it might be offtopic for this article. I won't stop others from discussing it here, but I don't have much to contribute. I'll leave this particular sub-topic to people with more interest in psychology and predictive consumer modeling than in economics.
Re:One weakness of both articles: free always wins
on
Economics of File-Sharing
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I think the author left that out because, to an economist, it seems obvious. The cost/benefit decision consumers make isn't predictable, but it's well-understood. There's some value at which certain percentages of the population think it's better to buy music legally than to break copyright law. The simplistic view I had before reading this article was based on that concept -- I felt that record companies needed to bring their prices down until an acceptably large portion of the population returns to buying copies of music.
If your particular "crossover point" is under a penny, that doesn't invalidate the author's interpretation of human behavior in economics terms. The law of supply and demand has already weeded you out.
The author's paper has changed my opinion. It was extremely insightful, and therefore very persuasive. It doesn't require that we trust the author's expert opinion about anything in particular. Instead he draws from real-world examples that demonstrate common-sense economics concepts, applies formal economics terms to them, and then uses those terms to distance the reader from the emotional impact of "stealing music" and "starving artists" and allow the reader to think about the risks and expectations involved in buying music.
Some users have been misinterpreting "moral hazard" to mean something about placing a "morality cost" on the act of copyright infringement. Some then use this as an opportunity to state that their particular "morality cost" is near zero. That's not what the author meant by "moral hazard". The term doesn't specifically refer to morality, but rather refers to the hazard inherent in trusting that a record label will only charge a fair price, especially when we can't see what they're doing or how they're doing it.
Others might interpret the point of this paper to mean other things, but in my interpretation: people who use the term "moral hazard" as an opportunity to talk about how much people value the legal risk of copyright infringement are missing the point and should be considered offtopic; and people who misunderstand "moral hazard" and think it's talking specifically about the value of that legal risk are probably not reading or not understanding the article.
The article makes good sense, and is worth the time it takes to read it carefully: when I buy music I can't help but wonder if the "agent" (the label) is pricing fairly or unfairly, because I can't see how their business process works. Also, now that the author brings it up, it would help if there was some kind of "insurance" such that I don't have to pay so much if the music I buy sucks, but also if I don't have a chance to abuse this "insurance".
Slashdot Mirror
If your '400 has nothing but twinax things get more difficult(since that only connects to dumb terminals or twinax client cards in PCs), so I assume you've got TCP/IP. I don't remember the commands any more, but GO MAJOR and page down until you find 'Telnet Server Commands'.
:) ) and use VNC. It's painful but better than nothing. It's also insecure by itself, so be sure to tunnel that VNC connection through SSH or something.
Get a linux box, put TN5250 on it from http://tn5250.sourceforge.net/, and just SSH in from remote. (So: remote machine --> SSH over internet --> Linux box on local network --> TN5250 over LAN --> AS/400) TN5250 can just telnet into the '400. You'll have to teach them the weird key sequences for PF1 through PF24 (escape then 1-9 for PF1 through PF9, escape then 0 for PF10, escape then - for PF11, escape then = for PF12, and escape then the same keys again SHIFTED for PF13 through PF24) and for sysrequest, help, etc.
If your '400 has nothing but twinax for terminal connections, get a twinax client card on a PC and some client software (IBM's Client Access for AS/400 works
--Michael Spencer
You still didn't reply using examples and scenarios that don't require us to trust your authority.
:)
I don't see your slashdot user ID in that link. Even if that page is you, it doesn't matter to this discussion as much as you think it does: you need to justify why you think something is true. This is a meritocracy. Let your ideas stand on their own merit, by providing justification and letting peer review weed out the bad ideas.
Basically my gripe is: an earlier post claimed that people might use darker graphics to hide what would otherwise look like obvious lack of detail due to lower poly count. You used a logical fallacy to make it seem like this was impossible: your straw man scenario of some idiot jumping from "faster code" to "brighter graphics", as if there was no other thought put into it, detracts from the discussion by tricking people into laughing at and dismissing someone else's good idea without putting more thought into it.
But we can tell.
We're not getting any karma for this, and this really should have been a private message...but... Could you reply again and describe why those things aren't possible? "I don't see it" could mean it's impossible, or it could mean you aren't being open-minded enough. I don't think you're just being negative because you like to argue, but it's starting to look that way. Please help us see why you're right: it still seems reasonable to me that people could make low poly count models not look quite so low-quality by making it hard to see fine detail in the models. To me it seems like one way to accomplish this is by darkening the models, so you reduce the contrast without making things look gray. If you have higher poly count models it seems that you can light them up a bit more without them looking so ugly. We already know you think this is wrong, but we don't believe you. Please tell us why you think this is wrong.
I think you left something out:
.
.
Programmer: "Hey, I just managed to save a couple thousand cycles per frame with some clever inlining, loop unrolling and judicious use of PowerPC assembler."
Artist: "Oh, that's nice."
. . . weeks pass . . . several more optimizations, several thousand more cycles saved . .
Programmer: "By the way, we decided to increase your polygon budget since all those extra cycles lets us display more polys per frame and keep the same frame rate."
Artist: "Great! I'll design some higher-poly models."
. . . weeks pass . .
Programmer: "Yep, these new detailed models work great on the improved engine. Weren't you just saying you hated having to over-darken your art, but you were forced to do that because of the lower-poly models? You don't have to do that any more."
Artist: "Great! I'll bump up the saturation on the 'graphics' by 7%"
Why is that scenario impossible? Or even unlikely?
I don't trust your authority on the subject enough to take your word for it. Nothing against you, but too many people claim to be too many things on the Internet. Could you describe why these things couldn't happen, using examples and scenarios that don't require us to trust your authority?
To the article poster: I'm a UNO student also. When can I meet you at the student center? I'll try to stop by there (second floor, cafeteria) today between about 10:00 and maybe 10:45. (When I'm there I'm usually on the south-most wall, where most of the Japanese exchange students sit. I'm an American currently taking my fourth semester of the language, so every little bit helps. :) )
I had the same problem as a kid. Maybe it's a maturity thing -- maybe the problem will only fix itself after years of experience and maturity. For me that process started in my junior year of high school. Prior to that...well, I honestly didn't mean to be this way, but apparently I was a real asshole, seeming to try to make everybody know I was smarter than them, or something. Then suddenly it clicked in my junior hear of HS: "normal people" have social lives and a variety of experiences and whatnot, so I need to *look up to them* for what they have.
They say a person who refuses praise, seeks praise twice. But that was me also: if someone said something in admiration of my computer skills, I would say I would gladly give those skills back in exchange for a more normal life and more social interaction, etc. I felt that I was playing at deliberately hiding my talent from people -- when I did something that revealed my skill I didn't brag about it or do it proudly, I pretended to be ashamed of my weird skill, like I was some kind of mutant. I still thought I was pretty hot shit, especially compared to other computer people (hey Eric Duprey, Russ Kroll and the guys from 8, 9 years ago...sorry guys for how I was acting back then. I would have hated me too...and it's a damn shame I drove you guys away, because I had a lot to learn from you all.) -- but I just tried to hide it, or at least make it look like I was trying to hide it.
I imagine that direction won't work for the kid if he doesn't actually value those things other people has that he doesn't. But it might be someplace to start with him, eventually.
--Michael Spencer
Disclaimer: I work for a major credit card processor (and in stories like this, this job apparently means free karma...) but the opinions stated in this post are mine and may or may not also be my employer's. The statements of policy or fact in this post are true in a general sense, and cannot be interpreted as general or appropriate in all situations. So nothing I say here is binding, and when my manager sees this post she'll be happy that I'm covering all my bases. :-)
.)
We're almost definitely not seeing the whole story here. I don't see this as a straight-to-consumer product.
Let's look at it from the straight-to-consumer angle first: the company I work for, First National Merchant Solutions, would almost definitely suspend or close any of our merchants if we found out they were swiping one of these devices through their terminals' card stripe readers. (Assuming present-day Visa and Mastercard regulations.) Mastercard just recently (March 2004) announced revised fraud protection standards to address "Merchant Collusion", where a merchant and a customer are acting in collusion to present a transaction for the intent of fraud.
(Offtopic: there are currently no Visa or Mastercard mandates requiring or encouraging smartcard readers on merchant terminals. The current "push" is compliance with customer account number truncation, so only the last four digits of the customer card number (and not the expiration date) is visible on customer sales receipts. When Visa and Mastercard want to motivate people they do it with policy or with money, and we haven't seen either of those incentives from them yet. Smartcard-capable terminals, at least in our product line, cost $40 - $100 more than their non-Smartcard-capable counterparts, and merchants see neither a monetary benefit (in the form of lower per-transaction fees) nor a risk benefit (in the form of more protection from chargebacks or fraud) for accepting smartcards. We aren't even deploying actual smartcard readers in our terminals yet. I think we process about 15% of all of the Visa/Mastercard transactions in the US by volume (dollar amount), so we would know
Now let's look at it with the pure-speculation viewpoint of considering a possible future product. This would be recognized and sanctioned by Visa/Mastercard. What would a product like this offer over conventional magnetic-stripe-read cards? Better customer identity verification -- in specific situations and with certain security procedures in place, it's possible for this technology to give Visa and Mastercard better confirmation that the person who owns the account really is the person who is attempting that sale.
Let's think about the business case for that, though. Considering that I've never even actually held a smartcard-equipped credit card in my hands, nor do we have any smartcard-equipped terminals actually deployed, I have NO expertise to offer on smartcards.
New technology is driven by fraud, and fraud prevention. (Sometimes by transaction cost, but the technology cost of transactions is pretty cheap already.) Who bears most of the cost when fraud is committed? Ignoring issuing-bank-side fraud (where someone signs up for a card with a fake identity, or where they run up their credit limit, send in a rubber check, run up their credit limit again, and then file bankruptcy or skip town)... most of the merchant's risk of loss is due either to identify-related fraud (where a customer presents a card they don't own), fulfillment-related fraud (where a customer receives goods or services and then claims they never received them or received something flawed), employee-related fraud (self-explanatory), or a technical problem explained simply by merchant error (sometimes "ooh what does this button do" crap which would deserve to be on SysadminCo if it weren't confidential and finance-related).
New tech does nothing for fulfillment-related fraud or technical stuff. I think it actually increas
PPTP uses the GRE protocol, protocol number 47.
Let me back up and explain:
IP datagrams just specify machines. They say packets are going from one computer to another, but they don't care what kind of data is in the packet.
Inside that packet is a specific protocol number. TCP packets use protocol number 6, UDP packets use protocol number 17, and ICMP packets use protocol number 1.
Then, based on the protocol number, the computer interprets the contents of the packet.
In this case, PPTP uses TCP traffic (I think) to set up the connection but uses GRE for the actual payload. If you block GRE then PPTP can't operate.
So find some way to make your network or your computer block protocol number 47, and you'll be good to go.
> > I just want to toss out the notion that the general complaint that slashdot readers don't read the article, and the slashdot effect are mutually exclusive. There were only 8 replies to this thread when I clicked the main article link, and although it wasn't completely slashdotted, it was incredibly slow coming up.
I think the general complaint is that people who post to slashdot don't read the article. That is not mutually exclusive with the article being slashdotted. (There is a silent majority of slashdot readers who don't post, but do read the articles.)
Don't know if anyone cares, but here's an example of the screen resolution.
http://mspencer.net/stuff/c700res.jpg
That's my thumb in the picture. Fifteen lines of text fit in the width of my thumb.
(For the record...I did eventually get MAME working, but it runs slow on Qtopia. I'll have to try it on that new X11 ROM and see if it runs at more than 40% speed. )
--Michael Spencer
The C860 is the same size as the C700 I've been carrying around in my pocket for the past year. Usually I'm carrying it with the network card sticking out the top, and I haven't had anything bad happen to the extra bit of plastic that sticks out. There's a noticable Zaurus-shaped rectangular outline where my pocket is, but nothing sticks out the top of my pocket and nothing gets bent or sheared off. Nobody notices my pocket -- I think that qualifies the Zaurus as pocket-sized. :) I think "small" or "HUGE" aren't really precise enough. Let's talk about whether it's too big for something or too small for something. Those statements are *useful* statements. My C700 is small enough to carry around in your pocket, everywhere you go. The AC adapter folds its prongs into the body and it's small enough to carry around in your other pocket.
The 640x480 screen apparently has led people to mistakenly conclude the screen is large. It's not -- it's just got unusually high dots-per-inch.
The screen is still pretty readable though. People always comment on how small the text is, but when they hold the unit closer (which is normal and natural with a small hand-held device) they can read it clearly. I've found people who need reading glasses to read small print on paper are the only people who have trouble with this screen.
I suppose some people are fashion-conscious enough that how small something looks matters. To me, it just needs to be small enough to comfortably hold in one hand, light enough to not tire that hand out, and small enough to carry in my pocket everywhere I go. That's precisely what it's been for me, for the past year.
You, too, need to look at www.foomp.com's chargeback case studies. If it's been 30 days and you haven't received the credit, you can initiate a chargeback. You're not at their mercy. Chargeback reason "Credit not processed" -- talk to your issuing bank.
--Michael Spencer
I work for a major credit card processor, First National Merchant Solutions, but I don't usually handle chargebacks. I'm still at work though, so I asked a coworker who does.
You're probably curious about chargeback rights. This is where you talk to your bank, explain why you believe that charge wasn't fair or valid, and ask them to get your money back. I'm going to describe these chargeback rights.
"Merchant" means a business who is charging your card. "Cardholder" is you. "Issuer" is the bank that issued your card.
The merchant must have given you prior notice that they were going to bill you. I'm not familiar with the terms & conditions you agreed to, but they may have given you this notification when you signed up.
If you called and cancelled the service within a reasonable amount number of days before you were billed, and they still charged you, AND you haven't received any material goods or services from them, you can charge the sale back.
Also if you never received notification that they were going to charge your account again, you can charge the sale back.
You probably can't charge the sale back claiming that they never provided the goods or services you requested. They will probably claim that your account has been capable of logging in and accessing the service, so they will argue that meets their fulfillment obligations.
I'll refer you to my company's "Chargeback Case Studies" section of its web site. http://www.foomp.com -- click on "REFERENCE DESK" at the top center, then click "Fraud & Loss" at the fourth link down in the body of the page. This section of the site describes the common chargeback reasons, and gives a case study for each chargeback type. This list doesn't include all of the rare chargeback types out there, but it's most of the common ones.
Keep in mind you can't argue a chargeback case like a lawyer. You can't say you called him to cancel...and you already returned the merchandise...and you never received the merchandise...and you've never heard of this merchant before now. You must pick one reason and go with it. If you pick a weak chargeback reason and the chargeback is reversed, you may not get another chance to file another chargeback with a different reason. (You will probably be allowed to rebut the merchant's allegations, making this a 'second chargeback'.)
If you feel you're entitled to a chargeback (because you read about a chargeback case study very similar to your situation) but your bank insists you cannot charge the sale back, the bank may be in violation of Visa/Mastercard regulations. If you feel they are, complain to Visa or Mastercard. You could find out the bank was right all along -- or the bank could find out you were right. If the bank was in error, they could be fined by Visa/Mastercard or (in VERY extreme cases) have their rights to issue those cards revoked.
The opinions expressed above are mine, and not necessarily those of my employer. We are an "acquirer" -- we provide services to merchants, so we're used to helping businesses who are on the defending side of chargeback disputes. Acquirers don't usually go around giving customers advice anyway.
--Michael Spencer
Hmm...good point, I didn't really realize it when I posted that, but the partial information I gave puts Qtopia in a worse light than it deserves.
:)
:)
I'm going to bow out of arguing one perspective or the other, and just offer my observations.
For comparison, on the default Sharp-provided Qtopia ROM (C700 with 32 MB RAM, 48 MB swap):
The text editor scrolls a full screen of text in what feels like a fifth of a second. Much faster.
The Netfront web browser, showing the default http://www.zaurusworld.ne.jp page, scrolls up and down very quickly (visible tearing, but many more frames per second than I can count). The Slashdot homepage, however, takes one to two seconds to scroll and update the screen, after the page has finished loading. > 2 MB of RAM free, no swapfile activity while it's scrolling.
By contrast, the Cacko X11 ROM hasn't shown me any slow scrolling/updating problems except under high CPU usage. DOOM on the Cacko ROM runs at a pretty high frame rate, more like a fast 486 way back in the day -- and the window drags across the screen pretty well (more than 10 updates/sec). I end up with a lot more free RAM running X11, even giving Qtopia the benefit of unloaded plugins (rename then reboot) and no fastload. The text editor has a lot more features than Qtopia's, but it scrolls smoothly. If I drag quickly from the top to the bottom of a large text file, I can see nearly all of the text scroll by.
Right now it seems the X11 ROM is appropriate if you want to turn your PDA into a cramped toy Linux box, with much tinkering required. PDA-like operations take *much* more user interface effort to accomplish. (For example, while you can middle click or right click, you do it by pressing Fn + a number to switch click modes. Fn + 1 for left click, Fn + 2 for middle click, Fn + 3 for right click. If you need to take a quick note you need to find and open a text editor, write the document, and save it.)
Abiword was very usable on the C700. Hancom Word on Qtopia is nice -- simple, PDA-centric interface with just the bare minimum features. Abiword on X11 ROCKS though. It's like MS Word 97 in my pocket, sans paperclip. (typo underlining and all)
My first PDA was an Agenda VR3, which also runs Linux and X. Qtopia won't even run on this platform. I'd like to see the Cacko X11 ROM adopt some of those PDA programs -- they were simple but usable. They weren't really appropriate for complex tasks, but I think that's what the ROM needs: lots of desktop X programs for when you need to sit down and do some work (using only what tools you carry in your pants pockets -- people tied to desks or home computers all the time probably won't appreciate this ability); a few PDA programs for quick tasks; and a larger virtual resolution, either via VNC or something native to X. (It kinda bothers me when the OK and Cancel buttons for a dialog are drawn off the bottom of the screen.) Maybe some kind of Palm emulator, for some license-violating slow-executing PDA goodness.
I wouldn't buy a new Zaurus just to do X11 until this ROM improves, but for those of us who already have the hardware, this is great. Can't argue with more free capabilities.
I agree with the parent. I've used an earlier version of this ROM on my SL-C700. I guarantee X is indeed right at home on this device. It's lighter and faster.
...and all of this on a device that's always in my pocket. If it was a laptop I'd be leaving it home 80% of the time I'd end up needing it.
On the Embedded Konsole app for Qtopia, when the screen is full of text (79x29) and I press enter, it takes anywhere between a half second and a full second to scroll the text down one line. ls -alR goes in skips and starts, giving you a good chance to read one particular screen and then skipping many pages ahead on the next refresh.
On the Cacko X11 ROM, using whatever console that uses, the screen scrolls almost instantly. ls -alR looks like it does on a desktop computer -- not only is text flying by so fast you can't read it, you can visibly see screen updates happening so fast, text really is "flying by".
(To be fair, my Qtopia install supports Japanese text, needed for my Japanese language class. That makes fonts *much* bigger, memory-footprint-wise.)
I work at a bank, and own a Zaurus SL-C700. I work full-time in a tech support call center (noon to 11 PM), and am a full-time student. This means when it's late at night, I have plenty of time to work on homework.
For the past two semesters, all of my programming assignments have been written, built, and debugged on the SL-C700. I'd say it takes me perhaps twice as long to type in code, and GCC runs rather slowly. But the hours would otherwise be wasted. I'm not allowed to put Linux or GCC on Bank computers.
Portable GCC is indeed useful.
I hate to be negative, but he didn't say which president. Anybody providing voting services is helping the state deliver its electoral votes to the president. He's pretty confident he's working for an electronic voting services company.
It does seem a bit suspicious if he's making that statement to one side and not the other though, but I don't think it's a smoking gun.
I'm starting to think I shouldn't have even replied to this user's other post.
: : You give vague guidelines for what you're seeking, like for example, you want to input kana and have it output kanji. You must be a beginner, because you don't seem to realize there is no one-to-one correspondence between words written in kana and kanji.
That's completely normal. That's how Japanese people do it. You press keys on your keyboard that indicate kana, hit the space bar, and it suggests a kanji. If it suggests a kanji you didn't intend, hit the space bar again and get the next most likely.
A dictionary helps with that -- it doesn't hurt. For example, I looked up 'tsuku'. (Those letters at the top are simple phonetic characters "tsu ku" -- they don't each have a meaning, they're like letters of the alphabet. Sounds only.) The dictionary shows me a ton of different kanji that have the same pronounciation. If I click a different kanji up top, I get its meaning on the bottom.
Completely normal. The poster suggested that because the person who submitted the article wants to do this, they must be a beginner and so shouldn't get a dictionary.
That statement is a pretty likely sign that we're being trolled. One can't both insult someone else for being inexperienced and not knowing what they want, and also make that kind of mistake. Interested moderators might also want to look at this post if you think this guy is trolling, or at least being excessively negative (and wrong about it) on purpose. (He's probably right about "denshi jiten" though.)
Hmm...it seems you're mostly right. No place better than slashdot to get a correction I suppose :)
:)
:)
In support of what you said: it turns out Jisho is correct, but that denshi jiten is also right. No wonder Japanese exchange students were looking at me funny, but not correcting me, when I said "denki jisho". It's a shame nobody said anything to me before you did, but thanks for the correction. *memorizes denshi jiten*
Strange, though, but the default menu option for the dictionary calls it Jisho.
You're probably also technically correct about kanji handwriting recognition. I'm just a third semester student, and I can usually sketch out an unfamiliar kanji well enough for the Zaurus to understand it. Sometimes I put two strokes where one goes, sometimes I put one stroke where two strokes go, sometimes I get the order wrong. Almost always, for unfamiliar kanji, the one I wanted isn't the first one that comes up. I just tap the kanji with the pen and it shows me a list of other possibilities.
If the one I need isn't in there, I look at any similirities between the ones that *are* in the list, and make sure my next attempt at writing it looks different from that.
So I think you're right...it probably does really take about four years to be able to do that accurately and reliably. I think I'm right also -- if the student has a little bit of skill, the Zaurus's handwriting recognition is smart enough to look past most mistakes. By contrast, the simple handwriting recognition in the Zaurus app KanjiNirvana doesn't tolerate *any* errors.
I don't know if you've used the Zaurus's kanji handwriting recognition, but apparently Zauruses are famous for theirs. I make a lot of handwriting mistakes, especially with new and unfamiliar kanji, and the Zaurus picks up what I intended most of the time -- when I'm already kinda familiar with the stroke order. The Zaurus picks up what I meant to write about a third of the time, when I'm unfamiliar with the stroke order and just roughly copying down what I see, and don't mind scrolling through a list of alternates.
So I'd say: if this is your first semester learning kanji, I don't think you'll be able to use the handwriting recognition the way I do. If this is your second semester or later of studying kanji, go for it. It's my second semester also, and it works for me.
Get a Zaurus SL-C760.
(Or if you're technical, you can hack the dictionary software onto a Zaurus SL-C700, as I have.)
The built-in "denki jisho" (electronic dictionary) has four dictionaries: Japanese-to-Japanese (completely useless to me); Japanese-to-English (which takes input in hiragana, katakana, or kanji -- but not romaji); English-to-Japanese (almost completely useless to me, except I can copy the definition into a HancomWord doc or something and paste each individual kanji back into the dictionary going the other way); and Katakana to whatever (so you can tell that 'depaato' means department store, etc.)
Zauruses have excellent kanji handwriting recognition too, so you can just sketch out the character combination you're asking about and it reads it. Even if you make mistakes -- which is pretty impressive.
I hear the SL-C8-something (860?) is the same hardware as the C760 but with extra full-sentence-translation software. That software will probably soon be working on the C700 also.
A Japanese friend at the university has one of the higher-end standalone dictionaries. I don't know who makes hers, but on any search hers seems to have nearly double the definitions and meanings that mine does, or has many obscure words that mine doesn't have.
Expensive, but recommended.
Disclaimer: I work for a company which provides the kind of service I'm talking about here. I'm technical staff, not sales.
...umm, thingey...which is decided upon in advance. The merchant and their new credit card processor negotiate a contract that states the processor will hold the merchant's funds for a few months. Usually the schedule for release of funds is well-defined. The thinking here is that if the merchant has really lousy credit, if the merchant were to suddenly start defrauding all of its customers, chargebacks would start rolling in. The bank wants to have the merchant's funds already on-hand so it doesn't have to chase them to Mexico and back trying to get their money back from the merchant. Again, this is negotiated in advance and isn't a surprise to either party.
Below, when I say "merchant" I'm talking about someone who is selling a good or service, and is receiving payment from a customer using a payment processor.
I can see pros and cons to both ways of processing payments: the "proper credit card processing" way and the PayPal way. If you're a merchant, proper credit card processing locks you into a contract, requires you to pay an application fee and whatnot, does extensive credit checks, and retains the right to take your money away from you again if something goes wrong with a payment. PayPal apparently doesn't lock you into a contract, doesn't require an application fee, doesn't do credit checks, but according to the above reports seems to take your money away from you more liberally.
The major difference seems to be the lengthy merchant application process, and the method by which funds for fraudulent transactions are reclaimed from merchants.
In credit card land, funds are held or taken back from merchants by default when there's a dispute. I think the logic there is that generally merchants have "longer purses", and since only one side can get the "benefit of the doubt" by default, it should be the side more likely to survive going without that money. There's one of three reasons (that I know of) why this can happen to a merchant:
The first is a chargeback. Chargebacks are a known quantity -- there are well-defined reasons why a chargeback can occur, and a defined dispute/arbitration process associated with them. When this happens the disputed funds are taken from the credit card processor immediately, and so the credit card processor takes the funds from the merchant right away. The merchant gets a letter in the mail, or an automatic fax, and their bank account is immediately debited. The credit card processor doesn't get any extra money to sit on -- it payed the money back to the customer's bank before it received the money from the merchant.
The second is some kind of pledge, restriction, or other
The third is sometimes unexpected. When the merchant fills out their part of the processing contract, they specify an average ticket (the average dollar amount of any single item they process) and an average annual volume (the average total dollar amount per year they're anticipating charging). If a merchant signs on as a beauty salon and does $30-$50 transactions on average, but then the merchant's construction-contractor husband uses her credit card machine to charge a $4000 job to a client, red flags go up. In this case the funds for that single transaction are held here at the bank, and the merchant gets a phone call and they discuss how the merchant can get their money. (perhaps provide extra proof that this was a valid/authorized transaction, perhaps open a new merchant account for the contractor/husband and tell him to stop using his wife's account, etc.)
(OK, I guess there's a fourth: "hey merchant, we tried to send money to your depository account, but your bank tells us the deposit bounced. Account closed. Can you give us new bank
I'd like to throw another possiblity into your list:
- The backscatter was faked by someone on SCO's network.
Remember, we are inferring whether or not SCO is lying by observing packets generated by SCO's servers. It's possible to create packets that *look like* responses to SYN packets from bogus source addresses, when they're actually being thrown together in userland and sent to the network raw.
First, I'd like to express deepest condolences about what's happened. I'm curious about the extent of the government's control of your financial matters though. I know nothing of New Zealand's laws regarding these kinds of things.
I think you mentioned that you weren't allowed to own more than $500 worth of tools of your trade after being declared bankrupt. What happens if you buy or amass more than that? Will it be confiscated? Will they continue to confiscate your tools even after your debt has been paid?
I'd hate for anything like this to ever happen to anyone again. Please feel free to email me (remove the first three letters of my email username, leaving a one-letter username) if you need pro-bono web hosting. (Preferably plain files with no server-side processing, in case of a slashdotting...) I'm sure between me and the other slashdot users, you'll find no shortage of volunteers to keep your message and your story out where others can see it.
IANAL, but then RTC v Netcom wouldn't apply. What Google is doing is automated.
I took a "Number Theory and Cryptography" class at the University of Nebraska at Omaha early this year. We used those two terms interchangably. It doesn't make a lot of sense to English majors or less-qualified grammar-nazis, but in "factor primes" the word "primes" isn't really the direct object, the thing being factored -- they are the result.
:)
:)
Remember that language is defined by the people who use it. If mathematicians want to call "factor primes" what you call "factor a large number to primes", please let them do so.
I can understand a good joke and a laugh, but not everybody here has the social maturity to be able to stand up to a friendly joke. You might embarass a budding mathematician into not speaking in public again. What he said didn't really deserve being joked at.
What you said was still funny though.
. o O ( "Dude, it was just a joke, let it go... " )
. o O ( "Dude, it wasn't even wrong, let it go... " )
. o O ( "Dude, it was just a joke, let it go... " )
etc
I think we're departing the article's topic a bit here, but you're right: it's interesting to discuss the cost/benefit decision users make when they decide whether to use an online music service, to buy CDs normally, or to break copyright law and download music without paying. I just think this wasn't the main point of the article. If people feel like discussing this, and today's moderators don't think it's too offtopic, we might see some interesting and important observations.
I'm repeating myself a bit here, but I don't really think I'm qualified to talk about consumer behavior. I am not a psychologist. Economics says that there probably exists a curve to describe how much of the population will evaluate that cost/benefit decision one way or the other. Many would argue that this broad economic view of the decision isn't really adding anything to the discussion -- of course some people will switch and some won't. A more interesting discussion would cover why people switch and why they don't: how much people value the money it takes to buy music legally (an easy discussion) and how much people value the moral and legal risk involved in breaking copyright law and downloading copyrighted music (a much harder discussion).
A discussion that tries to answer these questions must deal more with psychological issues than with economic issues, so it might be offtopic for this article. I won't stop others from discussing it here, but I don't have much to contribute. I'll leave this particular sub-topic to people with more interest in psychology and predictive consumer modeling than in economics.
I think the author left that out because, to an economist, it seems obvious. The cost/benefit decision consumers make isn't predictable, but it's well-understood. There's some value at which certain percentages of the population think it's better to buy music legally than to break copyright law. The simplistic view I had before reading this article was based on that concept -- I felt that record companies needed to bring their prices down until an acceptably large portion of the population returns to buying copies of music.
If your particular "crossover point" is under a penny, that doesn't invalidate the author's interpretation of human behavior in economics terms. The law of supply and demand has already weeded you out.
The author's paper has changed my opinion. It was extremely insightful, and therefore very persuasive. It doesn't require that we trust the author's expert opinion about anything in particular. Instead he draws from real-world examples that demonstrate common-sense economics concepts, applies formal economics terms to them, and then uses those terms to distance the reader from the emotional impact of "stealing music" and "starving artists" and allow the reader to think about the risks and expectations involved in buying music.
Some users have been misinterpreting "moral hazard" to mean something about placing a "morality cost" on the act of copyright infringement. Some then use this as an opportunity to state that their particular "morality cost" is near zero. That's not what the author meant by "moral hazard". The term doesn't specifically refer to morality, but rather refers to the hazard inherent in trusting that a record label will only charge a fair price, especially when we can't see what they're doing or how they're doing it.
Others might interpret the point of this paper to mean other things, but in my interpretation: people who use the term "moral hazard" as an opportunity to talk about how much people value the legal risk of copyright infringement are missing the point and should be considered offtopic; and people who misunderstand "moral hazard" and think it's talking specifically about the value of that legal risk are probably not reading or not understanding the article.
The article makes good sense, and is worth the time it takes to read it carefully: when I buy music I can't help but wonder if the "agent" (the label) is pricing fairly or unfairly, because I can't see how their business process works. Also, now that the author brings it up, it would help if there was some kind of "insurance" such that I don't have to pay so much if the music I buy sucks, but also if I don't have a chance to abuse this "insurance".