Paypal, eBay, Amazon, etc all have pretty good security centres. I am surprised that abuse@paypal.com gave that automated reply, but if you visit their website the security centre is prett yeasy to find. You might not get a personalised response to your report because they get so darn many reports, but they do follow through on all reports.
I bet that if we took a random sample of daily/. readers, we'd find an average IQ of at least 130.
I very much doubt that. Why, even slashdot readers with low (ie, 4-digit) user ids don't even seem to be able to understand subtle humour, even when a smiley is attached. It would be interesting to see s study which analysed the average slashdot user. My guess is that the average user would turn out to be a 16-20 year old, male, wannabe hacker. Judging from the declining quality of comments (and story submissions) over the years, your IQ expectations are rather high.
Don't try to sell your boss on the idea, just install whatever version tracking tool you prefer and start using it. Install it on your dev machine if you have to and just don't tell him about it. As for bug tracking, either do the same, or just use email or a speadsheet to track bugs if you want.
When something goes haywire (and it will, especially if he is making code changes without telling you about them) you will be able to refer to your version control and/or bug tracking system. If the tools help you solve the problem quickly, then consider telling your boss how you saved the time.
If you try to convince him it is a good idea after he has already knocked it on the head, you won't get anywhere.
There are too many licenses for you to be able to choose one that suits your needs, so you want to add even more crud to the pool of licenses available? As other have pointed out (and more will do so) pick one of the "biggies" - either GPL or BSD. Both licenses seem easy enough to understand, so just pick whichever is closest to your needs and be done with it. Let's not muddy the waters even more by adding to the mess.
How'd they become the "leader in open source collaboration" if they've only just appeared on the scene? And is it really collaboration software, or just another email server?
Personally, I'm not overly impressed with their "impressive flash demo". This story seems like another new company's attempt to drum up hype by submitting their press-release to Slashdot as a news item. The flash demo is neat and all, but I'd be more impressed if their "live" demo was actually working... If it can't handle a simple Slashdotting, it ain't ready for prime-time.
What you are saying is complete bullshit and you know it.
The story here is that some fuckwit who was caught driving while drunk used a loophole to get his sorry ass off the charges. What the fuck does having the source code to a breathalyser unit have to do with the accuracy of the unit? Calibration data is all that is required. REequesting source code is a bullshit way to get yourself off a charge.
*IF* my brother had only had half a can of beer and blew 0.18 on a breathalyser, he would not go to jail. The unit could be easily shown to be defective without resorting to bullshit tactics of asking to see the course code. There are more than enough safeguards in the legal system. (For example, a blood test could be requested (and is mandatory here anyway) to validate the breathalyser reading.)
If my brother had drunk two gallons of beer and the breathalyser said his readiong was 0.00, the police officer would surely notice his intoxicated state and doubt the reading and use an alternate test for verification. Similarly, if he was not obviously intoxicated and blew a large reading, the officer would also use an alternate test.
How many innocent people do you know who have ended up in gaol for DUI? Drunk drivers should be taken off the road - end of story.
If the breathalyser can be shown to have been incorrectly calibrated or otherwise malfunctioning, then that can be used to get him off, provided he was not legitimately over the limit. If any person uses a lame-ass technicality to get off, then it is just plain wrong. I have enough faith in the legal system. It only seems to be smart-ass people who know they have broken the law that try to find loop-holes to get out of being punished for the crimes they have committed.
If my brother had to do time because he was driving whilst drunk, then it is his own stupid fault.
I'd like to hear you repeat your comment if your father/brother/sister is pulled over and a defective breathalizer makes he/she spend two years in jail because of that.
Having had a best friend killed by a drunk driver and having had my brother charged with DUI, I would much rather my brother lose his licence (as happened) because he had been drinking (even if he may or may not have been over the legal limit (and in this case he was)) than my best friend get killed. I would never advocate that people who are drunk behind the wheel should be allowed to walk free just because there is a remote possibility that an innocent person may be wrongly charged.
** DANGER ** DANGER ** WILL ROBINSON ** Do NOT re-feed laser-printed pages in a laser printer, especially if you flip them over.
Rubbish!
As others have pointed out already, many of today's laser printers are designed to be used with duplex units. There is no problem with printing on the reverse side of an already laser-printed sheet. It's even quite feasible to over-print laser-printed forms.
What you shouldn't do is over-print onto photocopied forms. That's where you can cause some problems with the toner being "melted" off the paper. Laser printers fuse their toner at a higher temperature than most photocopiers, so the printer will melt the photocopier's toner. Fixing this problem merely entails printing a half dozen or so sheets though, as by then the bulk of the toner will have been refused onto the sheets (which will be "stained" as you point out.) Not an overly expensive fix, but a PITA.
So some handy hints:
1) Printing on both sides of your paper is quite safe and environmentally friendly. 2) Don't over-print onto photocopied sheets or print on the back of photocopied sheets. 3) Use a good quality toner - some cheap recycled cartridges may cause issues with re-feeding sheets, but generally are fine. 4) If you do have a problem with the toner from a previous print job causing streaking on following sheets, just print a few test pages until the streaking goes away - shouldn't take more than a few sheets. You don't need to replace the whole fuser unit.
Uh, then how does that Phone a Friend business work? [...]
The "phone a friend" person doesn't get to hear the outcome of the question, so they don't know if you have actually won that amount or not. Also, you could easily bomb out on a later question and the PAF will not know.
I would also expect that as part of the pre-planning for the show that PAFs would be required to sign a confidentiality agreement.
The "GIS" companies who you presume "got all of their data from the government in the first place" would have paid a considerable sum for the use of that data and the rights to on-sell the data. Chances are though, the government purchased their original GIS data from a third party source. Not many local governments have the resources to create their GIS dataset from scratch...
What business is it of yours what he wants to do?
Well Mr Troll, if my tax dollars have been spent maintaining this data, I do not want some cheap-assed wannabe businessman ripping me off by getting free access to this data just so he can charge me for whatever "patented business model" he has in mind.
Unless you live in a nudest colony then don't ask this question!
Wouldn't you want your local unit of government to help keep taxes down by raising additional revenues by selling this data?
Having worked for local government (in the planning and development areas, so I do know about this issue) I agree wholeheartedly with you. We had numerous people coming in requesting complete databases containing all sorts of information which they intended to use for commercial purposes. We had no problems with individuals seeking a reasonable amount of data for legitimate purposes, but the commercial operators were just trying to save a butt-load of money.
The town/county/state is not the only source of this information - if you really want to get hold of GIS data and imagery, you can quite easily locate providers of this information.
There was a big push several years ago to move to "user pays" systems around here - in this case I would definitely agree with such an initiative. Why shouldn't a person hoping to profit from this data pay the relevant costs associated with the collection and maintenance? Why should my tax dollars prop up someone else's business?
True, to a point. Has he offered to pay a fair price for the data? My guess is no, and the town is using whatever justification it can to deny the request.
From my reading of the article, he wants to use them for commercial reasons. He has asked for an entire copy of the GIS data and aerial photographical maps. That's a lot of data which would be expensive for anyone to generate. Has he offered to purchase the information, or is he expecting to kick start his business with free information paid for by the city?
Surely if he had a legitimate business idea, he would be willing to pay other data providers for the information he wants. There are several mapping, GIS and photographical companies that would no doubt love to supply him with the data he requires at a reasonable cost.
If this was a software company trying to use GPL'd software to build up a closed source business, people here would be up in arms.
IIRC it was merely a new class of patents, Innovation Patents. These were introduced to make it easier for small businesses and inventors to secure a "holding" patent on their invention at a much reduced cost and smaller amount of paperwork. (Plus no patent lawyers.) These Innovation Patents are only valid for eight years and cannot be enforced in court until it has been properly examined and certified (at an extra cost).
(I found a link from the Australian Patent & Trademark authority, IP Australia, which has more details.)
And if a comment is so poorly received that it can be modded down so many times as to do an auto-ban, perhaps that should be a signal to the user that they are in the wrong place.
Maybe, maybe not. All it takes is a small handful of moderators who disagree with what you are trying to say to mod you down, rather than post a comment. It is one of the areas where moderation is broken - many moderators use moderation as a way to say "me too!" or "I don't agree" rather than properly rewarding/oenalising good/bad posts.
What I might want to see is auto-ban meta moderation, so that meta moderators could view a thread and judge whether the poster's ban is proper. Say 10 votes allowed and a 70% in-favor vote required to lift the ban.
That sounds like a good idea, although it is unlikely to be implemented. From what I can see, even if the down-mods that caused you to be banned are meta-moderated as unfair, the ban sticks. 8-/
Slashdot Mirror
Fake Email/Website (Spoof, Phishing)
Paypal, eBay, Amazon, etc all have pretty good security centres. I am surprised that abuse@paypal.com gave that automated reply, but if you visit their website the security centre is prett yeasy to find. You might not get a personalised response to your report because they get so darn many reports, but they do follow through on all reports.
Sorry, haven't gotten First Post in ages
;-)
You'll be pleased to know that you haven't broken your streak yet.
Too bad Mr AC - you fail it! Musicbrainz does not do genres.
I bet that if we took a random sample of daily /. readers, we'd find an average IQ of at least 130.
I very much doubt that. Why, even slashdot readers with low (ie, 4-digit) user ids don't even seem to be able to understand subtle humour, even when a smiley is attached. It would be interesting to see s study which analysed the average slashdot user. My guess is that the average user would turn out to be a 16-20 year old, male, wannabe hacker. Judging from the declining quality of comments (and story submissions) over the years, your IQ expectations are rather high.
Don't try to sell your boss on the idea, just install whatever version tracking tool you prefer and start using it. Install it on your dev machine if you have to and just don't tell him about it. As for bug tracking, either do the same, or just use email or a speadsheet to track bugs if you want.
When something goes haywire (and it will, especially if he is making code changes without telling you about them) you will be able to refer to your version control and/or bug tracking system. If the tools help you solve the problem quickly, then consider telling your boss how you saved the time.
If you try to convince him it is a good idea after he has already knocked it on the head, you won't get anywhere.
Being a slashdot reader probably means that you're smarter than everyone else...
;-)
Oh that's too funny! You must be new around here...
I know most Slashdotters don't read the articles anyway, but how about a link for those of us that do? ;-)
There are too many licenses for you to be able to choose one that suits your needs, so you want to add even more crud to the pool of licenses available? As other have pointed out (and more will do so) pick one of the "biggies" - either GPL or BSD. Both licenses seem easy enough to understand, so just pick whichever is closest to your needs and be done with it. Let's not muddy the waters even more by adding to the mess.
How'd they become the "leader in open source collaboration" if they've only just appeared on the scene? And is it really collaboration software, or just another email server?
Personally, I'm not overly impressed with their "impressive flash demo". This story seems like another new company's attempt to drum up hype by submitting their press-release to Slashdot as a news item. The flash demo is neat and all, but I'd be more impressed if their "live" demo was actually working... If it can't handle a simple Slashdotting, it ain't ready for prime-time.
Metric or imperial?
;-)
Obviously Imperial - metric would be tonne.
What you are saying is complete bullshit and you know it.
The story here is that some fuckwit who was caught driving while drunk used a loophole to get his sorry ass off the charges. What the fuck does having the source code to a breathalyser unit have to do with the accuracy of the unit? Calibration data is all that is required. REequesting source code is a bullshit way to get yourself off a charge.
*IF* my brother had only had half a can of beer and blew 0.18 on a breathalyser, he would not go to jail. The unit could be easily shown to be defective without resorting to bullshit tactics of asking to see the course code. There are more than enough safeguards in the legal system. (For example, a blood test could be requested (and is mandatory here anyway) to validate the breathalyser reading.)
If my brother had drunk two gallons of beer and the breathalyser said his readiong was 0.00, the police officer would surely notice his intoxicated state and doubt the reading and use an alternate test for verification. Similarly, if he was not obviously intoxicated and blew a large reading, the officer would also use an alternate test.
How many innocent people do you know who have ended up in gaol for DUI? Drunk drivers should be taken off the road - end of story.
If the breathalyser can be shown to have been incorrectly calibrated or otherwise malfunctioning, then that can be used to get him off, provided he was not legitimately over the limit. If any person uses a lame-ass technicality to get off, then it is just plain wrong. I have enough faith in the legal system. It only seems to be smart-ass people who know they have broken the law that try to find loop-holes to get out of being punished for the crimes they have committed.
If my brother had to do time because he was driving whilst drunk, then it is his own stupid fault.
I'd like to hear you repeat your comment if your father/brother/sister is pulled over and a defective breathalizer makes he/she spend two years in jail because of that.
Having had a best friend killed by a drunk driver and having had my brother charged with DUI, I would much rather my brother lose his licence (as happened) because he had been drinking (even if he may or may not have been over the legal limit (and in this case he was)) than my best friend get killed. I would never advocate that people who are drunk behind the wheel should be allowed to walk free just because there is a remote possibility that an innocent person may be wrongly charged.
I'd like to hear you repeat that comment if your best friend was killed by a drunk driver who had got off on a technicality only three weeks prior.
Smart-ass drunks who manage to wrangle their way out of a DUI conviction should not be applauded.
Quirks and Quarks has been podcast since late March, and /Nerd since January.
The date in the RSS feed is the date of the most recent program - only the current episode of Quirks and Quarks is available in the feed.
** DANGER ** DANGER ** WILL ROBINSON ** Do NOT re-feed laser-printed pages in a laser printer, especially if you flip them over.
Rubbish!
As others have pointed out already, many of today's laser printers are designed to be used with duplex units. There is no problem with printing on the reverse side of an already laser-printed sheet. It's even quite feasible to over-print laser-printed forms.
What you shouldn't do is over-print onto photocopied forms. That's where you can cause some problems with the toner being "melted" off the paper. Laser printers fuse their toner at a higher temperature than most photocopiers, so the printer will melt the photocopier's toner. Fixing this problem merely entails printing a half dozen or so sheets though, as by then the bulk of the toner will have been refused onto the sheets (which will be "stained" as you point out.) Not an overly expensive fix, but a PITA.
So some handy hints:
1) Printing on both sides of your paper is quite safe and environmentally friendly.
2) Don't over-print onto photocopied sheets or print on the back of photocopied sheets.
3) Use a good quality toner - some cheap recycled cartridges may cause issues with re-feeding sheets, but generally are fine.
4) If you do have a problem with the toner from a previous print job causing streaking on following sheets, just print a few test pages until the streaking goes away - shouldn't take more than a few sheets. You don't need to replace the whole fuser unit.
The British can actually say words which comprise more than one syllable
You mean like advertisement?
You can subscribe to "Yahoo Delivers" and uncheck all the boxes - I did that and have never received any Yahoo spam on any of my Yahoo accounts. ;-)
Uh, then how does that Phone a Friend business work? [...]
The "phone a friend" person doesn't get to hear the outcome of the question, so they don't know if you have actually won that amount or not. Also, you could easily bomb out on a later question and the PAF will not know.
I would also expect that as part of the pre-planning for the show that PAFs would be required to sign a confidentiality agreement.
The "GIS" companies who you presume "got all of their data from the government in the first place" would have paid a considerable sum for the use of that data and the rights to on-sell the data. Chances are though, the government purchased their original GIS data from a third party source. Not many local governments have the resources to create their GIS dataset from scratch...
;-)
What business is it of yours what he wants to do?
Well Mr Troll, if my tax dollars have been spent maintaining this data, I do not want some cheap-assed wannabe businessman ripping me off by getting free access to this data just so he can charge me for whatever "patented business model" he has in mind.
Unless you live in a nudest colony then don't ask this question!
Oh Mr Troll, what a funny man you are!
Wouldn't you want your local unit of government to help keep taxes down by raising additional revenues by selling this data?
Having worked for local government (in the planning and development areas, so I do know about this issue) I agree wholeheartedly with you. We had numerous people coming in requesting complete databases containing all sorts of information which they intended to use for commercial purposes. We had no problems with individuals seeking a reasonable amount of data for legitimate purposes, but the commercial operators were just trying to save a butt-load of money.
The town/county/state is not the only source of this information - if you really want to get hold of GIS data and imagery, you can quite easily locate providers of this information.
There was a big push several years ago to move to "user pays" systems around here - in this case I would definitely agree with such an initiative. Why shouldn't a person hoping to profit from this data pay the relevant costs associated with the collection and maintenance? Why should my tax dollars prop up someone else's business?
True, to a point. Has he offered to pay a fair price for the data? My guess is no, and the town is using whatever justification it can to deny the request.
From my reading of the article, he wants to use them for commercial reasons. He has asked for an entire copy of the GIS data and aerial photographical maps. That's a lot of data which would be expensive for anyone to generate. Has he offered to purchase the information, or is he expecting to kick start his business with free information paid for by the city?
Surely if he had a legitimate business idea, he would be willing to pay other data providers for the information he wants. There are several mapping, GIS and photographical companies that would no doubt love to supply him with the data he requires at a reasonable cost.
If this was a software company trying to use GPL'd software to build up a closed source business, people here would be up in arms.
IIRC it was merely a new class of patents, Innovation Patents. These were introduced to make it easier for small businesses and inventors to secure a "holding" patent on their invention at a much reduced cost and smaller amount of paperwork. (Plus no patent lawyers.) These Innovation Patents are only valid for eight years and cannot be enforced in court until it has been properly examined and certified (at an extra cost).
(I found a link from the Australian Patent & Trademark authority, IP Australia, which has more details.)
And if a comment is so poorly received that it can be modded down so many times as to do an auto-ban, perhaps that should be a signal to the user that they are in the wrong place.
Maybe, maybe not. All it takes is a small handful of moderators who disagree with what you are trying to say to mod you down, rather than post a comment. It is one of the areas where moderation is broken - many moderators use moderation as a way to say "me too!" or "I don't agree" rather than properly rewarding/oenalising good/bad posts.
What I might want to see is auto-ban meta moderation, so that meta moderators could view a thread and judge whether the poster's ban is proper. Say 10 votes allowed and a 70% in-favor vote required to lift the ban.
That sounds like a good idea, although it is unlikely to be implemented. From what I can see, even if the down-mods that caused you to be banned are meta-moderated as unfair, the ban sticks. 8-/