I gladly accept Nigerian checks on CL. This way the scammers are out of FedEx/UPS fee and I add another fake check to my office collection.
Not a good idea. You are dealing with crooks who may or may not have accomplices near you and you are giving them a real address. Check out 419eater.com for safe ways to do that if you want to bait scammers.
This isn't your usual 419 scam. They're not offering millions of dollars to suckers.
What they're doing is buying stuff from Craigslist sellers with bogus checks that look awfully real. There's another step where they send a too-large check and ask for a partial refund. The checks are so good that they clear, and the fraud isn't discovered until weeks later, at which time your bank yanks the money back.
There's still hints of the usual 419 stuff in there, but you don't have to be either gullible or greedy. You simply have to misunderstand the idiotic system under which checks are processed, which is most of us. The idea that a certified check could fail, a month after you deposited it, is baffling to the majority of people who think of a certified check as practically good as cash.
The checking system is so screwed up that most sellers need to treat all checks with suspicion. But credit cards are expensive to process, and Paypal... is Paypal.
True, and that is what scam artists depend on to run their con. Banks in the US have to make the funds available after a set period even though the check has not cleared; i.e. the issuing bank has not yet accepted the check and verified that it was a valid check and the funds are available in the account. Most people think that because the bank has deposited the funds in their account that the check is good; a not unreasonable expectation because most checks do not bounce and thus they never realize the bank may not have actually cleared the check before the funds were made available. The law was designed to prevent banks from putting excessive holds on checks but a side effect was to give scammers a new way to cheat people.
I think I get the distinction he is trying to formulate. Red Hat focuses their products around their GNU/Linux distribution, that is without GNU/Linux they would not have a product. Rackspace on the other hand have a product that would exists even without OpenStack. Their primary gains in reduction of development costs, since other individuals and companies are contributing to the effort.
Basically these are the two vectors commercial companies have with free software. Either they provide ancillary services to existing software, that is they are basically consultants; or they copyleft some piece of software that is not their in business model and as a result reduce costs.
Good point. I can see where they would be considered two distinct models.
Nothing in Stallman's philosophy precludes profit-driven development - on the contrary, he actively encourages it !
He precludes a certain METHOD of profit generation, not the idea of profit.
Your response is like saying "We can't have pollution standards because saying you can't make profit by dumping strychnine in my drinking water is the same saying you can't make profit at all".
There is absolutely no free software problem with profit.
Of course, and nothing I said is anything remote to your drinking water example. I did point out that profit drives much free software development; if only because it is difficult to maintain enthusiasm for development by volunteers over time or to get bugs fixed that are not of interest to the volunteers.
There is a freedom problem with software that are sold in one PARTICULAR bad way because the harms that it causes to the public far outweigh the profit earned by the seller.
The only thing Stallman has ever done is point out the age-old lesson that if you don't force the medicine seller to tell you what's in his medicine most of it ends up being snake-oil.
However, free open source software is not the only way to do that. The assumption that non-free software is bad and harmful and by extension free software is good and beneficial is incorrect on particle as well ideological terms. Stallman has a very narrow view of what software development should look like and even what constitutes "free." I simply disagree with the idea that his viewpoint is the correct one.
There are, as is pointed out in the link you provided, terms and conditions attached to the use of the software; which do not make it any less free. in fact they keep it free.
Again, the AGPL is a license that you must accept to use the software. You focus on the output which is not the issue; the issue is how you may use the software under the license and your obligation as a result of using the software.
Please name the legal requirement that I accept the AGPL in order to use the software. In the US, there is:
* Copyright law
* Patent law
Patents aren't the issue here, and copyright law is not being invoked by merely making the software available on the network (and in fact, this use is explicitly defined as non-infringing).
We agree on the definition of the the ancillary services and I agree RedHat makes their money that way. I'd say the dominate class would be things like Rackspace which develops (with RedHat) OpenStack but is primarily selling CPU, electricity, network and renting hardware. The management system they use is just an expense. Microsoft / Azure, Amazon / AWS, Verizon's cloud... would all be in the same boat. Or another example would be HP's work which makes its money selling hardware or enterprise packages to run on top of open source OSes.
It sounds like we are in agreement here. I'd consider Rackspace, Red Hat, et al similar OSS business models.
which in this case requires making source available; just as the venue has to pay a fee when someone plays a copyrighted song.
This is incorrect. Songs are described differently than literary works in the copyright statute, software programs being literary works.
A performance of a song, as I listed, requires a license (and copyright law specifically singles out songs). However, the output of a software program is not copyrightable, and therefore no license is necessary.
Copyright law makes no distinction between using over the network and on your local monitor, and such usage is explicitly defined in US statute as non-infringing. How would you like it, or the FSF for that matter, if copyright law could be used to dictate that you sitting at your computer could be a copyright infringer by merely opening up the wrong application sitting at your desk? I suspect not very much.
Again, the AGPL is a license that you must accept to use the software. You focus on the output which is not the issue; the issue is how you may use the software under the license and your obligation as a result of using the software.
I don't need to accept the AGPL to legally download an AGPL'd program, put it on my server, and let the general public use it.
Not correct. You use it under the terms of a license and must comply with the license as a term of use; which in this case requires making source available; just as the venue has to pay a fee when someone plays a copyrighted song.
Actually no. Most of the successful open source business models are not ones in which the open source product is, for the entity writing the code, just an expense not a revenue source and broad participation help reduce that expense. The assumption had been that ancillary services would be the primary, and certainly there are plenty of those but that has not been the dominant class.
I guess we should star by getting agreement on terms. I consider red hat, for example, makes money selling ancillary services a as predominant model, where those services are everything from installations and updates to added features beyond the base GPL version. Does that agree with your definition? What do you consider the dominate class?
Except copyright law defines what distribution is, not the license. And the output of a software program is not copyrightable (by itself).
The AGPL may as well offer everyone a pony; if it's not being distributed (as defined by copyright law), the AGPL doesn't apply. Period.
You are confusing copyright with licensing. A copyright allows control over who may use the work and the terms under which they use it. If I own the copyright I can license the works under the condition if you modify it and run it on network you need to make the source available, which the AGPL does. Distribution, as defined by copyright law, has no relevance to this licensing requirement.
The output of the software is irrelevant to this discussion beyond invoking the AGPL if you have users other than you.
If you're not distributing the software then the AGPL isn't going to help you.
Licenses only grant permission to distribute software; they're irrelevant if you're not distributing the software to begin with.
The AGPL is designed for network software so that if you modify the source and run it on a network you are required to make the source available to your users. It gets around the distribution requirements of the GPL by specifically adding the requirement to "offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network" a copy of the modified source code.
Its been 20 years. We've seen lots of successful open source business models by this point. Mostly people don't contribute when they get nothing in return rather:
B takes code written by A whom could care less about advancing B's purpose and as a result of the license ends up contributing to C for a purpose B could care less about.
Most of the successful open source business models have been around creating a business where selling support and ancillary services brings in the revenue and justifies ongoing development effort. OSS happened to provide a good foundation to build on but the underlying motive is profit driven; it just happens that others benefit as well. There's nothing wrong with that, in fact it helps strengthen support for OSS; it however belies the notion that if you make it free the community will create this wonderful product.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought it was possible to deploy "service as a software substitute" in a manner consistent with free software philosophy. Make the server software's source code available to the service's subscribers and let the subscriber download backups of his account. AGPL was designed for applications intended for use in free SaaSS, and though Google isn't free, it does offer Takeout for the second point.
Actually, since you are not distributing the software there would be no need, under the GPL, to share the underlying code; which is why there is AGPL. However, if software was licensed under the GPL at some point there is nothing to prevent someone from using the last GPL only version and ignoring the AGPL.
I started doing presentations back in the days of 35-mm slides. I didn't have to prepare them myself—I sent the text to the corporate slide presentation department, and they sent me back the slides.
I prepared my presentation by first writing out what I wanted to say, word for word. I then distilled that document into a few topic lines, which I had made into slides, generally about three topics to a slide. At this point I discarded the original manuscript. When I gave the presentation I glanced at each slide to remind me of what I wanted to say, then spoke extemporaniously.
Today I prepare the slides myself using LibreOffice Impress, the free equivalent of Microsoft PowerPoint, but I use the same method.
I have a similar background, except we had an editor who approved all slides. She was a ruthless, heartless person who lacked a soul while wielding a red pen like calvaryman's saber as she edited. In other words, the perfect editor. To this date, I cringe at a presentation withe text less than 16 pt and more than 20 words on a slide. When I see a sentence with a period on a slide I remember her admonition "Women have periods, slides don't."
There's a big difference between physical things that have limits (land, food, water, etc) and 'intellectual property' which can be copied any number of times at virtually no cost. Until physical items are limitless or there is overwhelming cost to reproduce ideas, GPL and communism will be incomparable.
Actually, a fundamental core philosophy is very similar; the idea that people will contribute willingly based on their abilities independent of what they get in return.The challenge is to get people to contribute beyond that needed to meet their needs. For exam,e, someone might be quite capable of fixing many bugs but will only fix those that impact their ability to us etch software and leave the rest to others. There is nothing wrong with free software and I actually use it; the challenge is how do you get people to continually invest time, money and other resources for which they will get nothing in return?
Anyhow, if you want a few extra inches of legroom and don't care about reclining seats, check in early and get the emergency exit row seats. Because they're an egress route they need a lot of space between the seats to allow passengers to file out quickly, and the seats can't recline. Airlines generally can't pre-book those because they have to see you in person to verify that you're able to open the emergency exit seat (about 40-50 lbs). A few of them have started policies where frequent fliers (who've been allowed to use those seats before) can pre-book them.
I've found unless I book a couple of weeks in advance the exit rows are gone. If I book one the questions come up and as long as I answer correctly I get one. I've never gotten one at the airport but YMMV. The best exit is the wind ones were there is no seat in front (a 2 -3 configuration) so you have a ton of legroom. Next best is one were there is a bulkhead in front of the exit; but then the window one is usually worse then the aisle.
Since they have apparently reached the limit of human tolerance, one answer is to offer wider seat spacing for a little extra price on some flights. The remaining "dense pack" passengers then have no reason to complain: "If you needed more space, why didn't you choose our XL flight?"
They already do. For example, Delta offers "economy comfort" for an added fee unless you are a high enough status flyer in which case it is free. They've brought back the old 3 tier first, business, economy model under a different name.
When a dude tries slamming their sit into my knees I press back. I'm 240lb 6'3" and a muscular frame. I win more times than not and the jackass in front of me gets a sore back for their troubles.
That's the real problem. It's gone from both sides being reasonable to having to "win." Personally, I'd be happy if airlines made seats non-reclinable since the few degrees you get is pretty much useless; until that happens I think you'll see more incidents of air rage. I'm amazed at the number of assholes I see on flights who start arguments over really petty things. If someone can't check their ego and or anger for a few hours while on a plane they really should seek professional help and stop flying' it would make it a lot more pleasant for those of us who just want to get to our destination with no drama or unexpected contact with the ground.
The next area of dispute may well start to be armrests given the small width of seats and the increasing size of the flying public. Having someone take an inch or two of your seat is as bad as losing the knee room.
Adding a special character sounds like a good idea, a simple permutation or rule you can remember across all accounts.
Exactly. You could always add the same number to the front and special character to the end or x spaces from the front. Easy to remember but hard to guess
But remember for it to work you can't rely on yourself remembering the answer, you need to know it without remembering it's creation.
Very good point. You still pick things related in a pattern you can remember but would be hard for someone to guess. For example, a street 4 blocks over, an old girlfriend's or someone you knew with a strange last name, the first car you wanted but didn't buy or that a neighbor owned that you liked. The goal is to make it hard for someone to guess so they move on without you forgetting it. It's sort of like setting a password with 3 unrelated words with numbers and or special characters included. Use a pattern you can remember but would be hard to guess.
Remember 2008? Some random douche on 4chan just looked up her dog's name?
Security questions do not work for public figures. Almost none of them will hold up to people whose whole lives are pointlessly documented.
More to the point why does anybody use real information for security questions? As long as I can remember the answer the accuracy is irrelevant. Same with birthdays. If I decide some random date is my birthday it makes it a lot harder to guess.
So your solution for forgetting your password is another password?
The solution isn't random info. It's questions you create with personal information that is memorable enough that you're remember in an instance, but only you, or a very small handful of intimate people, would know. Ie, 'Who was that girl you had a really secret crush on in grade 10?"
The current suite of questions, mother's maiden name, cars, etc, is all information that's potentially communicated to casual friends, as such it can easily slip out into public knowledge.
The problem is there's only so many questions that fit that description, so instead of sharing passwords you end up sharing answers.
First of all, it doesn't have to random every time. I simply would be using answer that no one would associate with me but that I can remember. I already do that for car, street I was born on, mom's maiden name. I also add a number and special character to the answer. Is it fool proof? No, but better than using easily discovered real information. It's not that difficult and the point is to make it hard to find the answers via web searches, for example. Sure, making up your own questions would work but many sites do not let you do that.
Remember 2008? Some random douche on 4chan just looked up her dog's name?
Security questions do not work for public figures. Almost none of them will hold up to people whose whole lives are pointlessly documented.
More to the point why does anybody use real information for security questions? As long as I can remember the answer the accuracy is irrelevant. Same with birthdays. If I decide some random date is my birthday it makes it a lot harder to guess.
Do it for any reason other than being "uncompetitive". What the heck is so "uncompetitive"?
It takes money from the taxi monopoly and the state doesn't get their cut of fees, taxes and licensing money. Can't have that so it must be uncompetitive.
You pick some category (music, books, movies, etc) and then ask a question along the lines of "Which is better?". You can even do it with entire categories (e.g. "What are the best songs to have in my music collection?" "What are the best books to read?")
It's hilarious watching the infighting and attempts to justify responses to a subjective question.
The game has gotten a bit out of hand though. I've even seen it being played on popular tech forums like "Slashdot".
Nah, I prefer old school trolling where you say something that makes the "I've got to correct this idiot..." urge overpower the "The can't be serious..." rationality. For example:
As a scientist, I enjoy science fiction but am upset by how often they get simply science laws wrong. For example, I am a big Star Trek fan and overall find their science plausible. However, whiner the shuttle craft passes in front of the Enterprise it cases a shadow. In a vacuum. Don't they realize you won't get a shadow in the vacuum of space?
Slashdot Mirror
I gladly accept Nigerian checks on CL. This way the scammers are out of FedEx/UPS fee and I add another fake check to my office collection.
Not a good idea. You are dealing with crooks who may or may not have accomplices near you and you are giving them a real address. Check out 419eater.com for safe ways to do that if you want to bait scammers.
This isn't your usual 419 scam. They're not offering millions of dollars to suckers.
What they're doing is buying stuff from Craigslist sellers with bogus checks that look awfully real. There's another step where they send a too-large check and ask for a partial refund. The checks are so good that they clear, and the fraud isn't discovered until weeks later, at which time your bank yanks the money back.
There's still hints of the usual 419 stuff in there, but you don't have to be either gullible or greedy. You simply have to misunderstand the idiotic system under which checks are processed, which is most of us. The idea that a certified check could fail, a month after you deposited it, is baffling to the majority of people who think of a certified check as practically good as cash.
The checking system is so screwed up that most sellers need to treat all checks with suspicion. But credit cards are expensive to process, and Paypal... is Paypal.
True, and that is what scam artists depend on to run their con. Banks in the US have to make the funds available after a set period even though the check has not cleared; i.e. the issuing bank has not yet accepted the check and verified that it was a valid check and the funds are available in the account. Most people think that because the bank has deposited the funds in their account that the check is good; a not unreasonable expectation because most checks do not bounce and thus they never realize the bank may not have actually cleared the check before the funds were made available. The law was designed to prevent banks from putting excessive holds on checks but a side effect was to give scammers a new way to cheat people.
I think I get the distinction he is trying to formulate. Red Hat focuses their products around their GNU/Linux distribution, that is without GNU/Linux they would not have a product. Rackspace on the other hand have a product that would exists even without OpenStack. Their primary gains in reduction of development costs, since other individuals and companies are contributing to the effort.
Basically these are the two vectors commercial companies have with free software. Either they provide ancillary services to existing software, that is they are basically consultants; or they copyleft some piece of software that is not their in business model and as a result reduce costs.
Good point. I can see where they would be considered two distinct models.
Nothing in Stallman's philosophy precludes profit-driven development - on the contrary, he actively encourages it ! He precludes a certain METHOD of profit generation, not the idea of profit.
Your response is like saying "We can't have pollution standards because saying you can't make profit by dumping strychnine in my drinking water is the same saying you can't make profit at all".
There is absolutely no free software problem with profit.
Of course, and nothing I said is anything remote to your drinking water example. I did point out that profit drives much free software development; if only because it is difficult to maintain enthusiasm for development by volunteers over time or to get bugs fixed that are not of interest to the volunteers.
There is a freedom problem with software that are sold in one PARTICULAR bad way because the harms that it causes to the public far outweigh the profit earned by the seller.
The only thing Stallman has ever done is point out the age-old lesson that if you don't force the medicine seller to tell you what's in his medicine most of it ends up being snake-oil.
However, free open source software is not the only way to do that. The assumption that non-free software is bad and harmful and by extension free software is good and beneficial is incorrect on particle as well ideological terms. Stallman has a very narrow view of what software development should look like and even what constitutes "free." I simply disagree with the idea that his viewpoint is the correct one.
Contract law
But the source is free to the public, there's no terms and conditions I have to agree to. Indeed, it would no longer be Free Software, or at least it wouldn't be Open Source Software according to the Open Source Definition.
There are, as is pointed out in the link you provided, terms and conditions attached to the use of the software; which do not make it any less free. in fact they keep it free.
Again, the AGPL is a license that you must accept to use the software. You focus on the output which is not the issue; the issue is how you may use the software under the license and your obligation as a result of using the software.
Please name the legal requirement that I accept the AGPL in order to use the software. In the US, there is:
* Copyright law * Patent law
Patents aren't the issue here, and copyright law is not being invoked by merely making the software available on the network (and in fact, this use is explicitly defined as non-infringing).
Contract law
We agree on the definition of the the ancillary services and I agree RedHat makes their money that way. I'd say the dominate class would be things like Rackspace which develops (with RedHat) OpenStack but is primarily selling CPU, electricity, network and renting hardware. The management system they use is just an expense. Microsoft / Azure, Amazon / AWS, Verizon's cloud... would all be in the same boat. Or another example would be HP's work which makes its money selling hardware or enterprise packages to run on top of open source OSes.
It sounds like we are in agreement here. I'd consider Rackspace, Red Hat, et al similar OSS business models.
which in this case requires making source available; just as the venue has to pay a fee when someone plays a copyrighted song.
This is incorrect. Songs are described differently than literary works in the copyright statute, software programs being literary works.
A performance of a song, as I listed, requires a license (and copyright law specifically singles out songs). However, the output of a software program is not copyrightable, and therefore no license is necessary.
Copyright law makes no distinction between using over the network and on your local monitor, and such usage is explicitly defined in US statute as non-infringing. How would you like it, or the FSF for that matter, if copyright law could be used to dictate that you sitting at your computer could be a copyright infringer by merely opening up the wrong application sitting at your desk? I suspect not very much.
Again, the AGPL is a license that you must accept to use the software. You focus on the output which is not the issue; the issue is how you may use the software under the license and your obligation as a result of using the software.
I don't need to accept the AGPL to legally download an AGPL'd program, put it on my server, and let the general public use it.
Not correct. You use it under the terms of a license and must comply with the license as a term of use; which in this case requires making source available; just as the venue has to pay a fee when someone plays a copyrighted song.
Actually no. Most of the successful open source business models are not ones in which the open source product is, for the entity writing the code, just an expense not a revenue source and broad participation help reduce that expense. The assumption had been that ancillary services would be the primary, and certainly there are plenty of those but that has not been the dominant class.
I guess we should star by getting agreement on terms. I consider red hat, for example, makes money selling ancillary services a as predominant model, where those services are everything from installations and updates to added features beyond the base GPL version. Does that agree with your definition? What do you consider the dominate class?
Except copyright law defines what distribution is, not the license. And the output of a software program is not copyrightable (by itself).
The AGPL may as well offer everyone a pony; if it's not being distributed (as defined by copyright law), the AGPL doesn't apply. Period.
You are confusing copyright with licensing. A copyright allows control over who may use the work and the terms under which they use it. If I own the copyright I can license the works under the condition if you modify it and run it on network you need to make the source available, which the AGPL does. Distribution, as defined by copyright law, has no relevance to this licensing requirement.
The output of the software is irrelevant to this discussion beyond invoking the AGPL if you have users other than you.
If you're not distributing the software then the AGPL isn't going to help you.
Licenses only grant permission to distribute software; they're irrelevant if you're not distributing the software to begin with.
The AGPL is designed for network software so that if you modify the source and run it on a network you are required to make the source available to your users. It gets around the distribution requirements of the GPL by specifically adding the requirement to "offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network" a copy of the modified source code.
Its been 20 years. We've seen lots of successful open source business models by this point. Mostly people don't contribute when they get nothing in return rather:
B takes code written by A whom could care less about advancing B's purpose and as a result of the license ends up contributing to C for a purpose B could care less about.
Most of the successful open source business models have been around creating a business where selling support and ancillary services brings in the revenue and justifies ongoing development effort. OSS happened to provide a good foundation to build on but the underlying motive is profit driven; it just happens that others benefit as well. There's nothing wrong with that, in fact it helps strengthen support for OSS; it however belies the notion that if you make it free the community will create this wonderful product.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought it was possible to deploy "service as a software substitute" in a manner consistent with free software philosophy. Make the server software's source code available to the service's subscribers and let the subscriber download backups of his account. AGPL was designed for applications intended for use in free SaaSS, and though Google isn't free, it does offer Takeout for the second point.
Actually, since you are not distributing the software there would be no need, under the GPL, to share the underlying code; which is why there is AGPL. However, if software was licensed under the GPL at some point there is nothing to prevent someone from using the last GPL only version and ignoring the AGPL.
I started doing presentations back in the days of 35-mm slides. I didn't have to prepare them myself—I sent the text to the corporate slide presentation department, and they sent me back the slides.
I prepared my presentation by first writing out what I wanted to say, word for word. I then distilled that document into a few topic lines, which I had made into slides, generally about three topics to a slide. At this point I discarded the original manuscript. When I gave the presentation I glanced at each slide to remind me of what I wanted to say, then spoke extemporaniously.
Today I prepare the slides myself using LibreOffice Impress, the free equivalent of Microsoft PowerPoint, but I use the same method.
I have a similar background, except we had an editor who approved all slides. She was a ruthless, heartless person who lacked a soul while wielding a red pen like calvaryman's saber as she edited. In other words, the perfect editor. To this date, I cringe at a presentation withe text less than 16 pt and more than 20 words on a slide. When I see a sentence with a period on a slide I remember her admonition "Women have periods, slides don't."
There's a big difference between physical things that have limits (land, food, water, etc) and 'intellectual property' which can be copied any number of times at virtually no cost. Until physical items are limitless or there is overwhelming cost to reproduce ideas, GPL and communism will be incomparable.
Actually, a fundamental core philosophy is very similar; the idea that people will contribute willingly based on their abilities independent of what they get in return.The challenge is to get people to contribute beyond that needed to meet their needs. For exam,e, someone might be quite capable of fixing many bugs but will only fix those that impact their ability to us etch software and leave the rest to others. There is nothing wrong with free software and I actually use it; the challenge is how do you get people to continually invest time, money and other resources for which they will get nothing in return?
Anyhow, if you want a few extra inches of legroom and don't care about reclining seats, check in early and get the emergency exit row seats. Because they're an egress route they need a lot of space between the seats to allow passengers to file out quickly, and the seats can't recline. Airlines generally can't pre-book those because they have to see you in person to verify that you're able to open the emergency exit seat (about 40-50 lbs). A few of them have started policies where frequent fliers (who've been allowed to use those seats before) can pre-book them.
I've found unless I book a couple of weeks in advance the exit rows are gone. If I book one the questions come up and as long as I answer correctly I get one. I've never gotten one at the airport but YMMV. The best exit is the wind ones were there is no seat in front (a 2 -3 configuration) so you have a ton of legroom. Next best is one were there is a bulkhead in front of the exit; but then the window one is usually worse then the aisle.
Since they have apparently reached the limit of human tolerance, one answer is to offer wider seat spacing for a little extra price on some flights. The remaining "dense pack" passengers then have no reason to complain: "If you needed more space, why didn't you choose our XL flight?"
They already do. For example, Delta offers "economy comfort" for an added fee unless you are a high enough status flyer in which case it is free. They've brought back the old 3 tier first, business, economy model under a different name.
When a dude tries slamming their sit into my knees I press back. I'm 240lb 6'3" and a muscular frame. I win more times than not and the jackass in front of me gets a sore back for their troubles.
That's the real problem. It's gone from both sides being reasonable to having to "win." Personally, I'd be happy if airlines made seats non-reclinable since the few degrees you get is pretty much useless; until that happens I think you'll see more incidents of air rage. I'm amazed at the number of assholes I see on flights who start arguments over really petty things. If someone can't check their ego and or anger for a few hours while on a plane they really should seek professional help and stop flying' it would make it a lot more pleasant for those of us who just want to get to our destination with no drama or unexpected contact with the ground.
The next area of dispute may well start to be armrests given the small width of seats and the increasing size of the flying public. Having someone take an inch or two of your seat is as bad as losing the knee room.
Had a relative die and called. Canceling went smoothly right up to the "Please put him on the line to verify the cancellation..."
Adding a special character sounds like a good idea, a simple permutation or rule you can remember across all accounts.
Exactly. You could always add the same number to the front and special character to the end or x spaces from the front. Easy to remember but hard to guess
But remember for it to work you can't rely on yourself remembering the answer, you need to know it without remembering it's creation.
Very good point. You still pick things related in a pattern you can remember but would be hard for someone to guess. For example, a street 4 blocks over, an old girlfriend's or someone you knew with a strange last name, the first car you wanted but didn't buy or that a neighbor owned that you liked. The goal is to make it hard for someone to guess so they move on without you forgetting it. It's sort of like setting a password with 3 unrelated words with numbers and or special characters included. Use a pattern you can remember but would be hard to guess.
Remember 2008? Some random douche on 4chan just looked up her dog's name?
Security questions do not work for public figures. Almost none of them will hold up to people whose whole lives are pointlessly documented.
More to the point why does anybody use real information for security questions? As long as I can remember the answer the accuracy is irrelevant. Same with birthdays. If I decide some random date is my birthday it makes it a lot harder to guess.
So your solution for forgetting your password is another password?
The solution isn't random info. It's questions you create with personal information that is memorable enough that you're remember in an instance, but only you, or a very small handful of intimate people, would know. Ie, 'Who was that girl you had a really secret crush on in grade 10?"
The current suite of questions, mother's maiden name, cars, etc, is all information that's potentially communicated to casual friends, as such it can easily slip out into public knowledge.
The problem is there's only so many questions that fit that description, so instead of sharing passwords you end up sharing answers.
First of all, it doesn't have to random every time. I simply would be using answer that no one would associate with me but that I can remember. I already do that for car, street I was born on, mom's maiden name. I also add a number and special character to the answer. Is it fool proof? No, but better than using easily discovered real information. It's not that difficult and the point is to make it hard to find the answers via web searches, for example. Sure, making up your own questions would work but many sites do not let you do that.
Remember 2008? Some random douche on 4chan just looked up her dog's name?
Security questions do not work for public figures. Almost none of them will hold up to people whose whole lives are pointlessly documented.
More to the point why does anybody use real information for security questions? As long as I can remember the answer the accuracy is irrelevant. Same with birthdays. If I decide some random date is my birthday it makes it a lot harder to guess.
Do it for any reason other than being "uncompetitive". What the heck is so "uncompetitive"?
It takes money from the taxi monopoly and the state doesn't get their cut of fees, taxes and licensing money. Can't have that so it must be uncompetitive.
I like to play a game called "Troll the Internet"
You pick some category (music, books, movies, etc) and then ask a question along the lines of "Which is better?". You can even do it with entire categories (e.g. "What are the best songs to have in my music collection?" "What are the best books to read?")
It's hilarious watching the infighting and attempts to justify responses to a subjective question.
The game has gotten a bit out of hand though. I've even seen it being played on popular tech forums like "Slashdot".
Nah, I prefer old school trolling where you say something that makes the "I've got to correct this idiot..." urge overpower the "The can't be serious..." rationality. For example:
As a scientist, I enjoy science fiction but am upset by how often they get simply science laws wrong. For example, I am a big Star Trek fan and overall find their science plausible. However, whiner the shuttle craft passes in front of the Enterprise it cases a shadow. In a vacuum. Don't they realize you won't get a shadow in the vacuum of space?