I can't believe, what, three-quarters? of the posts on here are people going "OH WELL SHE SHOULD HAVE PAID THEN DUH".
The accounting system screwed up, ok? She was already paid up and they wanted more money.
Now, the ISP terms said they wouldn't guarantee error-or-interruption-free service. BUT...this isn't covered under that. It was an accounting error, and they suspended her account. This is not the same as if, say, their DNS servers borked.
I'd say she deserves compensation. Definitely. I have had my share of burns from ISP's with OUTRIGHT SHODDY accounting and business practices. Fortunately, nothing so serious...yet. About the only problem was paying THREE TIMES at their suggestion because they said the transaction didn't go through....and then receiving a bill for all three charges. That was an immediate cancel, and lucky for them they credited back the amount.
I hope she wins the case, I'd like to see some of these ISP's get a little more professional. It is a business after all, not a geek club.
Well...you know, people make these kinds of decisions every day. And it's one of the choices that at least don't lock you out of trying something different after a short time.
I'm hoping that, in a few years, engineers and scientists will be in high demand again. There are already reports out there that students (at least the ones only in it for the money) are switching out to other majors like journalism.
Sounds like you have a little difficulty determining what you really want.
Did it ever occur to you, while working toward you other two degrees, that it wasn't what you wanted to do? You could have switched majors and been much further ahead then where you are now, which is probably in debt and with two essentially worthless (for what you want to do) degrees.
I suggest you pay more attention to what you're doing this time. Maybe find a way to work with actual physicists and determine if you like it.
Whatever, it's just another "O Great Oracle of Ask Slashdot, guide me in my everyday life choices!" question.
No, I live in a completely different, mid-northern-wisconsin city.
BUT I have reports from various places around the country confirming this.
Coincedence?
Stores have been known to do this. When shopping carts were introduced (to increase the amount of goods a person could buy at one time) they weren't catching on, until the stores hired models to use the carts. Story here.
Seems like they can't win. First they have aggressive tactics from Wal-Mart, basically putting them out of business in many cities.
Now Target's making a bid for power, and Wal-Mart is scurrying. KMart is left in the dust. (By the way, at Target, I notice an unusually large proportion of highly attractive women. Could Target be hiring cute 'mystery shoppers' kind of like the 'leaners' hawking cellphones at bars?)
So now Microsoft gets in on the beating. It's just dismal.
"You can not only feel the resulting force, but you can also get a sense of the quality of the object you're feeling -- whether it's soft or hard, wood-like or fleshy."
One would hope this could be discussed without immediately putting your mind in the gutter, but with quotes like this, it's impossible. It's obvious what these scientists are really trying to develop.
When I was young(er), we had a game that included much of these patents. It was titled "Inventors" or "The Incredible Machine" or something. Each invention was on a card, and had a certain base value. You could buy patents from each other, roll the dice right and get into the "royalty track", have silent partners investing in your holdings, and best of all it came with a little machin that rolled the dice for you and rang a little bell.
It was all in a turn-of-the-century theme, and was a lot of fun. Perhaps a modern version of the game could include Rambus-style tactics...nah. If we'd had that, my sisters would have started pulling each others hair, and someone would be running crying to Mom.
One of my favorite inventions was the automatic hat-tipper.
I now have a new respect for my profession (well, once I actually find a job). Everyone said "electrical engineers can do anything" and today you proved it.
Your control system model of the economy is dead on. After all, what isn't a control system? Economic systems have gains, oscillations, inertia, delays....
Interesting that you phrase it "cap" gains tax. Because essentially you would be implementing a lowpass RC filter with a capacitance dumping high frequencies to ground (the bottomless pit of taxes).:-)
Sounds like a really interesting way to look at economics. Maybe someone should write a book about it.
there is a glass window pane, it has slowly melted into a warbled surface, so the light passing through it and coming into my room is no longer uniform.
Nope. Myth. Glass doesn't sag. It was like that to begin with[0]; glass processes have gotten better which is why window panes today are perfectly flat. This analogy actually DISPROVES what you are trying to say.
[0] They used to blow a big bubble of molten glass on the end of a metal rod. While spinning the bubble, someone would break the bubble at the end, causing the edges of the bubble to fly out and form a spinning disk. The edge portions of the discs were cut into panes; while pretty flat, they would have concentric irregularities. The center of the disk was called a bulls-eye, they would use them in windows and lamps to spread light in different directions.
No, I don't think the plastic over the touchscreen would work. Most touchscreens I'm aware of use pressure-sensitive arrays. Stiff plastic over the screen would spread out the pressure of contact and may not work at all.
Not to mention that touchscreens are very expensive, and external USB-PS/2 touchpads are not.
Touchpads use capacitive sensing, so they can work through a layer of something. I still don't know if a thin plastic card would do the trick, my experience is based on using a touchpad through a piece of paper.
Also, using a touchscreen can be tiring if it's not the primary input method. You have to raise your hand up off the keyboard and tap the screen whenever you want to move the cursor.
The primary use of this computer will probably not be organizing recipies. It's one of those markets that look like they should be there...but aren't. Products have been offered time and again with little success.
Once you get past this, you'll have a lot more fun. The real value will be the non-kitchen related activities, as you mention, watching movies for example. You can do a lot make having a computer in the kitchen useful and expandable.
1) Include a cheap webcam and microphone. By building this in now, you won't have difficulty adding it when you want to do videoconferencing over the home network ("Honey, come out of the Server Dungeon, dinner's ready!)
2) Do everything you can to make it accessible to someone with a quarter-inch-thick layer of raw hamburger, bread crumbs, and egg clinging to their fingers. This is the biggest challenge. Either you invent a contactless way of typing and mousing, or find typing and pointing devices that can be easily cleaned. Touch-screen is out. I've seen too many monitors smeared with pizza and fried chicken grease, and that was just in an office. Touchpad devices do work if a thin layer of material is between the surface and the user's finger; you could use a piece of thin, tough white plastic (less than 1/16th inch) and seal it into one side of the keyboard tray. If it's waterproof, it can be wiped with a soapy rag like the rest of the kitchen.
3) Include a TV-and-radio-tuner capable video card. You've just knocked out two devices that you might one day want to have in the kitchen.
A few good ideas for using (and perhaps selling) the computer: Webcam in baby's room allows Mom to cook dinner and keep an eye on the kid. Grandma's also watching, and Mom is getting some input over AOL-IM on that favorite dish you keep asking for. The radio's on, or maybe MP3s are streaming from your server. And, just maybe, the computer holds a database of recipies.
I'm starting to envy you. Must...buy...house...make kitchen computer...
No, I can't think of a good reason to offer your machine up to any interested script kiddie. The box itself may be unimportant, but it only takes a bunch of "unimportant, don't care if you root me" boxes to make serious DDoS network.
I can see how it might be cool, might be fun to figure out (so why is he asking instead of hacking it up overnight), but if people don't lock down their machines, they are contributing to one of the major problems the Internet faces.
"Hi. I'd like to provide shell access to my machine. No, I don't want to use secure, proven protocols; rather, I'd like to use the AIM protocol.
"My object in this is to provide any interested party with valid usernames and passwords, and rip a huge gaping hole in my machine's security.
"Yes, I will probably log in to my root account over this connection, to maximize the possible damage. I think it would be funny for my machine to be part of any number of DDoS attacks, and obscene emails sent to all of my closest relatives.
"Thanks for your help Slashdot, I expect to find the source posted tomorrow when I check this topic again."
So if cost is Southwest's major concern, then what costs more: alt= information or phone service?
How much does it cost to go through a site and make it blind-accessible, versus hiring extra phone reps?
Neither you nor I know the answer. So until you talk to someone working at Southwest and actually get facts, why don't you leave it up to the company? Your opinion is not a substitute for truth.
Being blind costs. Any idea how much the blind schools cost? How much a seeing-eye dog costs? Text-to-speech? Braille books? Do you know how much other equipment costs for disabled people?
If it costs a little extra for a business to provide a service, then they should be able to make up that cost. Why is the phone ticket price purely against disabled people? Some people either don't have or don't want a computer, or can't get to one at the time. It's not necessarily aimed at disabled people.
So maybe a ticket costs a few extra dollars when you buy it over the phone. It's a service. Disabled people often have to pay for special services. I see no reason a business should be forced to give something away for free, or made to do something that is costly but provides virtually no additional revenue. Yeah, they do have the right to pass on the additional cost. They are a business, they are there to make money.
I know you may have personal connection with the story, as you have a disability as well. Insurance companies can help with prescription drugs, but I know they must cost you at least something. You have a problem, you have to deal with it, you have to pay for it. That's how it works. If companies gave away everything people needed, then you'd be asking for free food, free power, etc., etc., etc.,. The money drives research and pays smart people to keep eating and working on solutions to your problems.
Yes, I have come across the controllers as well; my application was for a lead-acid battery though. Didn't investigate the Li-ion controllers any further.
The problem still won't be solved that way. Grab your laptop battery, look at the terminals: how many are there? Two? Five? What's inside the battery pack? Are you going to get that information without opening it?
Also, I had to ask. Why did you fry those poor batteries?;-) Hey, maybe we could use that principle. Call a cell phone, it explodes...ok, I'll quit now.
Sorry to spoil all your fun, but BS like that deserves to be smacked down. I'll continue to watch your posts from this point on.
Re:I'd hold off
on
LCD Round-up
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Moderators: Check this guy's history for yourself, a known troll. He throws as many buzzwords together as possible. Look into it yourself, there is no USBII.v bus in development. And "full-duplex" communication has nothing to do with LCD screens.
This is not informative, this is pure BS.
Re:I'd hold off
on
LCD Round-up
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
One question:
Do you actually know what you're talking about?
Full duplex? Half duplex? Why does my LCD need to transmit to my video card, instead of the other way around?
I'm an electrical engineer and have no idea what you mean by "full duplex" as related to displays. I can see a few sync signals being helpful, maybe, but still: what does the LCD have to say to my computer?
It's one idea, but anyone who tries it deserves an all-expenses-paid trip to the Darwin Awards winner's circle.
If you try this, you almost certainly WILL lose property, and in the extreme case, life. Batteries aren't so innocent anymore, now that the days of ni-cad batteries are over. The power densities and chemistry are more powerful and more volatile. A Li-ion battery WILL EXPLODE IF MISTREATED. Chargers for these batteries include microcontrollers to precisely monitor and control the battery; in fact this is required by law.
Never, ever mess with the battery. You'll be better off finding a solution that provides the correct DC input to the laptop's power jack...like the power adapter that came with the laptop.
But, imagine a huge network of computers all compiling your kernel...in a few seconds. You could even have redundancy and checksums to guard against the security concerns some are having about this idea.
Again, 6000% more work, but interesting nonetheless.
Ultimately you have to trust the people who develop any source you compile. Unless, of course, you want to pore through the files and hunt for every possible vulnerability.
If a trusted entity set up a service like this, I see no reason it would be more vulnerable to abuse than a source distribution. Unless you always check all the kernel source before you compile it, there is a possiblity of compromise either way.
Since the kernel's track record on this is pretty good, I'd say would be possible to do this without too much risk. I mean, how many of you have used one of those one-floppy-wonder images? Is there any way to be sure a trojan isn't installed in that kernel?
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I can't believe, what, three-quarters? of the posts on here are people going "OH WELL SHE SHOULD HAVE PAID THEN DUH".
The accounting system screwed up, ok? She was already paid up and they wanted more money.
Now, the ISP terms said they wouldn't guarantee error-or-interruption-free service. BUT...this isn't covered under that. It was an accounting error, and they suspended her account. This is not the same as if, say, their DNS servers borked.
I'd say she deserves compensation. Definitely. I have had my share of burns from ISP's with OUTRIGHT SHODDY accounting and business practices. Fortunately, nothing so serious...yet. About the only problem was paying THREE TIMES at their suggestion because they said the transaction didn't go through....and then receiving a bill for all three charges. That was an immediate cancel, and lucky for them they credited back the amount.
I hope she wins the case, I'd like to see some of these ISP's get a little more professional. It is a business after all, not a geek club.
It may have a RISC processor, but does it have a 28 dot 8 modem in it?
Well...you know, people make these kinds of decisions every day. And it's one of the choices that at least don't lock you out of trying something different after a short time.
I'm hoping that, in a few years, engineers and scientists will be in high demand again. There are already reports out there that students (at least the ones only in it for the money) are switching out to other majors like journalism.
Sounds like you have a little difficulty determining what you really want.
Did it ever occur to you, while working toward you other two degrees, that it wasn't what you wanted to do? You could have switched majors and been much further ahead then where you are now, which is probably in debt and with two essentially worthless (for what you want to do) degrees.
I suggest you pay more attention to what you're doing this time. Maybe find a way to work with actual physicists and determine if you like it.
Whatever, it's just another "O Great Oracle of Ask Slashdot, guide me in my everyday life choices!" question.
No, I live in a completely different, mid-northern-wisconsin city.
BUT I have reports from various places around the country confirming this.
Coincedence?
Stores have been known to do this. When shopping carts were introduced (to increase the amount of goods a person could buy at one time) they weren't catching on, until the stores hired models to use the carts. Story here.
Seems like they can't win. First they have aggressive tactics from Wal-Mart, basically putting them out of business in many cities.
Now Target's making a bid for power, and Wal-Mart is scurrying. KMart is left in the dust. (By the way, at Target, I notice an unusually large proportion of highly attractive women. Could Target be hiring cute 'mystery shoppers' kind of like the 'leaners' hawking cellphones at bars?)
So now Microsoft gets in on the beating. It's just dismal.
"You can not only feel the resulting force, but you can also get a sense of the quality of the object you're feeling -- whether it's soft or hard, wood-like or fleshy."
One would hope this could be discussed without immediately putting your mind in the gutter, but with quotes like this, it's impossible. It's obvious what these scientists are really trying to develop.
It's the dream of every geek and habitual speeder out there: car paint jobs that change at the tap of a button.
;-)
If the paint is active as well, I'd like to see how well it does combating rust 24/7.
Imagine...driving along and you decide you want a red car...or maybe a black car...or how about zebra stripes.
Or maybe a lot of huge rust spots, for when you're asking for money
Whoa....you posted this while I was writing the comment you'll see a few posts down....
When I was young(er), we had a game that included much of these patents. It was titled "Inventors" or "The Incredible Machine" or something. Each invention was on a card, and had a certain base value. You could buy patents from each other, roll the dice right and get into the "royalty track", have silent partners investing in your holdings, and best of all it came with a little machin that rolled the dice for you and rang a little bell.
It was all in a turn-of-the-century theme, and was a lot of fun. Perhaps a modern version of the game could include Rambus-style tactics...nah. If we'd had that, my sisters would have started pulling each others hair, and someone would be running crying to Mom.
One of my favorite inventions was the automatic hat-tipper.
I now have a new respect for my profession (well, once I actually find a job). Everyone said "electrical engineers can do anything" and today you proved it.
:-)
Your control system model of the economy is dead on. After all, what isn't a control system? Economic systems have gains, oscillations, inertia, delays....
Interesting that you phrase it "cap" gains tax. Because essentially you would be implementing a lowpass RC filter with a capacitance dumping high frequencies to ground (the bottomless pit of taxes).
Sounds like a really interesting way to look at economics. Maybe someone should write a book about it.
there is a glass window pane, it has slowly melted
into a warbled surface, so the light passing through
it and coming into my room is no longer uniform.
Nope. Myth. Glass doesn't sag. It was like that to begin with[0]; glass processes have gotten better which is why window panes today are perfectly flat. This analogy actually DISPROVES what you are trying to say.
[0] They used to blow a big bubble of molten glass on the end of a metal rod. While spinning the bubble, someone would break the bubble at the end, causing the edges of the bubble to fly out and form a spinning disk. The edge portions of the discs were cut into panes; while pretty flat, they would have concentric irregularities. The center of the disk was called a bulls-eye, they would use them in windows and lamps to spread light in different directions.
No, I don't think the plastic over the touchscreen would work. Most touchscreens I'm aware of use pressure-sensitive arrays. Stiff plastic over the screen would spread out the pressure of contact and may not work at all.
Not to mention that touchscreens are very expensive, and external USB-PS/2 touchpads are not.
Touchpads use capacitive sensing, so they can work through a layer of something. I still don't know if a thin plastic card would do the trick, my experience is based on using a touchpad through a piece of paper.
Also, using a touchscreen can be tiring if it's not the primary input method. You have to raise your hand up off the keyboard and tap the screen whenever you want to move the cursor.
The primary use of this computer will probably not be organizing recipies. It's one of those markets that look like they should be there...but aren't. Products have been offered time and again with little success.
Once you get past this, you'll have a lot more fun. The real value will be the non-kitchen related activities, as you mention, watching movies for example. You can do a lot make having a computer in the kitchen useful and expandable.
1) Include a cheap webcam and microphone. By building this in now, you won't have difficulty adding it when you want to do videoconferencing over the home network ("Honey, come out of the Server Dungeon, dinner's ready!)
2) Do everything you can to make it accessible to someone with a quarter-inch-thick layer of raw hamburger, bread crumbs, and egg clinging to their fingers. This is the biggest challenge. Either you invent a contactless way of typing and mousing, or find typing and pointing devices that can be easily cleaned. Touch-screen is out. I've seen too many monitors smeared with pizza and fried chicken grease, and that was just in an office. Touchpad devices do work if a thin layer of material is between the surface and the user's finger; you could use a piece of thin, tough white plastic (less than 1/16th inch) and seal it into one side of the keyboard tray. If it's waterproof, it can be wiped with a soapy rag like the rest of the kitchen.
3) Include a TV-and-radio-tuner capable video card. You've just knocked out two devices that you might one day want to have in the kitchen.
A few good ideas for using (and perhaps selling) the computer: Webcam in baby's room allows Mom to cook dinner and keep an eye on the kid. Grandma's also watching, and Mom is getting some input over AOL-IM on that favorite dish you keep asking for. The radio's on, or maybe MP3s are streaming from your server. And, just maybe, the computer holds a database of recipies.
I'm starting to envy you. Must...buy...house...make kitchen computer...
No, I can't think of a good reason to offer your machine up to any interested script kiddie. The box itself may be unimportant, but it only takes a bunch of "unimportant, don't care if you root me" boxes to make serious DDoS network.
I can see how it might be cool, might be fun to figure out (so why is he asking instead of hacking it up overnight), but if people don't lock down their machines, they are contributing to one of the major problems the Internet faces.
"Hi. I'd like to provide shell access to my machine. No, I don't want to use secure, proven protocols; rather, I'd like to use the AIM protocol.
"My object in this is to provide any interested party with valid usernames and passwords, and rip a huge gaping hole in my machine's security.
"Yes, I will probably log in to my root account over this connection, to maximize the possible damage. I think it would be funny for my machine to be part of any number of DDoS attacks, and obscene emails sent to all of my closest relatives.
"Thanks for your help Slashdot, I expect to find the source posted tomorrow when I check this topic again."
So if cost is Southwest's major concern, then what costs more: alt= information or phone service?
How much does it cost to go through a site and make it blind-accessible, versus hiring extra phone reps?
Neither you nor I know the answer. So until you talk to someone working at Southwest and actually get facts, why don't you leave it up to the company? Your opinion is not a substitute for truth.
Hey.
Being blind costs. Any idea how much the blind schools cost? How much a seeing-eye dog costs? Text-to-speech? Braille books? Do you know how much other equipment costs for disabled people?
If it costs a little extra for a business to provide a service, then they should be able to make up that cost. Why is the phone ticket price purely against disabled people? Some people either don't have or don't want a computer, or can't get to one at the time. It's not necessarily aimed at disabled people.
So maybe a ticket costs a few extra dollars when you buy it over the phone. It's a service. Disabled people often have to pay for special services. I see no reason a business should be forced to give something away for free, or made to do something that is costly but provides virtually no additional revenue. Yeah, they do have the right to pass on the additional cost. They are a business, they are there to make money.
I know you may have personal connection with the story, as you have a disability as well. Insurance companies can help with prescription drugs, but I know they must cost you at least something. You have a problem, you have to deal with it, you have to pay for it. That's how it works. If companies gave away everything people needed, then you'd be asking for free food, free power, etc., etc., etc.,. The money drives research and pays smart people to keep eating and working on solutions to your problems.
Yes, I have come across the controllers as well; my application was for a lead-acid battery though. Didn't investigate the Li-ion controllers any further.
;-) Hey, maybe we could use that principle. Call a cell phone, it explodes...ok, I'll quit now.
The problem still won't be solved that way. Grab your laptop battery, look at the terminals: how many are there? Two? Five? What's inside the battery pack? Are you going to get that information without opening it?
Also, I had to ask. Why did you fry those poor batteries?
Sorry to spoil all your fun, but BS like that deserves to be smacked down. I'll continue to watch your posts from this point on.
Moderators: Check this guy's history for yourself, a known troll. He throws as many buzzwords together as possible. Look into it yourself, there is no USBII.v bus in development. And "full-duplex" communication has nothing to do with LCD screens.
This is not informative, this is pure BS.
One question:
Do you actually know what you're talking about?
Full duplex? Half duplex? Why does my LCD need to transmit to my video card, instead of the other way around?
I'm an electrical engineer and have no idea what you mean by "full duplex" as related to displays. I can see a few sync signals being helpful, maybe, but still: what does the LCD have to say to my computer?
It's one idea, but anyone who tries it deserves an all-expenses-paid trip to the Darwin Awards winner's circle.
If you try this, you almost certainly WILL lose property, and in the extreme case, life. Batteries aren't so innocent anymore, now that the days of ni-cad batteries are over. The power densities and chemistry are more powerful and more volatile. A Li-ion battery WILL EXPLODE IF MISTREATED. Chargers for these batteries include microcontrollers to precisely monitor and control the battery; in fact this is required by law.
Never, ever mess with the battery. You'll be better off finding a solution that provides the correct DC input to the laptop's power jack...like the power adapter that came with the laptop.
What this project needs is a distributed gcc.
Wow, that pie sure is way up there.
But, imagine a huge network of computers all compiling your kernel...in a few seconds. You could even have redundancy and checksums to guard against the security concerns some are having about this idea.
Again, 6000% more work, but interesting nonetheless.
Ultimately you have to trust the people who develop any source you compile. Unless, of course, you want to pore through the files and hunt for every possible vulnerability.
If a trusted entity set up a service like this, I see no reason it would be more vulnerable to abuse than a source distribution. Unless you always check all the kernel source before you compile it, there is a possiblity of compromise either way.
Since the kernel's track record on this is pretty good, I'd say would be possible to do this without too much risk. I mean, how many of you have used one of those one-floppy-wonder images? Is there any way to be sure a trojan isn't installed in that kernel?