Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.
on
Katie Jones Interviewed
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You could draw a parallel with the implied right to link to a web site. In effect, Penguin are just publishing a non-clickable link to Katie Jones' site. Of course, when lawyers start calling up and claiming that they now OWN your domain name because they published so many links to it, well, that's a whole other ball of wax...
Right off the bat though, the average user couldn't install WINDOWS.
Very true - and most never have to, because their computer came with XP home pre-installed, hence the excitement over this headline (since proven as misleading). In fact, i'll go one better: the average user doesn't know what OS they're running - go ahead and ask, i bet at least one will say "Office 2000".
I've been playing with the Suse 9.1 Live Eval lately, and i think anybody who is comfortable installing/reinstalling/generally messing about with windows isn't going to have any problems with Linux either. Trouble is that's not that many people.
The forums on sillydog actually record your user-agent string at the bottom of the post, which is, IMO, a pretty cool idea, and maybe one that slashdot ought to consider.
It[Konqueror] also has features I love, like spell checking. So did it come with the "Windoze" spelling installed or did you have to teach it to remember that?
Those of you running firefox can download a search plugin for mailinator.com from mycroft, so you can check [whatever]@mailinator.com from your seach box.
My point is that it's not Ford's problem if someone keeps buying their lower-quality vehicles.
It IS Ford's problems when those lower-quality vehicles fall apart, because then Ford has to issue a recall and that costs them money. God help them if someone gets hurt as a result of one of those lower-quality vehicles falling apart, because then we're talking lawsuits and big damages.
Now, before we all start hollerin' that commercial software companies should be held legally liable for the quality of their products, ask yourself who you would hold liable for free/open software, and why it should be any different?
Sorry, my mistake - it was to check if the car tax had been paid. I couldn't find a link to the episode's information, but i did find this, which might be of interest.
Well, i'm sure diebold et al. have done an analysis which showed that we should give them billions and it would all work out in the end. I think it was titled "e-Reaganomics".
All joking aside - good question, but i'll go you one better: how do you asses the cost? What if electronic voting was slightly less expensive but much more prone to fraud? What if it was the inverse?
I'm not claiming it won't scale - there were roughly the same number of voters in the last US election as there will be in the coming one, and that one worked just fine using pencil and paper. I'm simply saying that a) it makes sense to do it electronically, because it means you need less people doing the tedious work of ballot counting. Freeing people from tedious tasks is pretty much the whole point of IT (well, that an porn) and b) if India can do it (and do it well from what i read) then there's no reason why the world's most technologically advanced nation can't do it too.
I'm Canadian, and we just finished going through a federal election using this method across all ridings.
And there are how many Canadian voters? A dozen? Two dozen, tops? (sorry for the Troll - couldn't help myself - bad me)
India just put six hundred million voters through an all-electronic election. Once you understand that the idea is to make it easier for society and not more rewarding for the companies that make the hardware - just how hard can it be?
There was a pretty interesting bit on the BBC ("car wars" i think) that showed how london police cars are fitted with cameras that automatically scan car registrations and will notify the PC if it spots a vehicle with either outstanding tickets or no insurance. Despite some false positives, it seemed to work pretty well.
CCTV raised a lot of concerns when it was first rolled out, but now that it's here people seem to have accepted it - even more, people seem to appreciate it given the added sense of security and the positive effect on violent crime rates. Still, before we all get all warm and cuddly, we should remember that, at the end of the day, it's a system for surveillance of the general public. Just because the people jogging the joystick today aren't abusing it (it even caught that shocking bit of police brutality in Manchester a while back) doesn't mean the next bunch won't.
It is not your responsibility to provide me with confidential anything, i was merely responding to your claim that the government of Macedonia turns a blind eye to massive credit card fraud - a claim for which you have no evidence. To put this into a language that you can understand: i am NOT trying to defend the "fine people of Macedonia", i am urging people (in this case you) to maybe look beyond a blacklist before deciding that they are all a bunch of crooks. Basically: don't blindly believe everything that authority figures tell you. Ask for proof. But i guess it's obvious that you and i have different opinions on this matter. Let's just leave it at that.
Well, i did that google search and i found that, indeed, Macedonia is blacklisted as a major source of online fraud. That wasn't terribly interesting, since we are discussing the fact that Macedonia is blacklisted as a major source of online fraud. In fact, the first blacklist in that search is the very one that the article mentions. You claim that "For-profit businesses are not going to refuse to do business with an entire country solely based on unsubstantiated rumor." but, unless i'm very mistaken, that's exactly what's happening (remember, rumor is sometimes right) - otherwise where is the substantiation? Anyways, as the article pointed out, there are other countries on that list with whom they will do business - so basically companies will refuse to do business with small countries solely based on rumor.
As for your comment equating people not complaining to the government because they can't order a book from amazon with black people "wasting their time" protesting for their civil rights - well, frankly that's just offensive. I would hope that most people can see the difference between the two.
Finally, as to your question about "How much fraud had to be taking place with an online population of only 90,000 in order for a tiny country like Macedonia to appear on a blacklist?" - well, that's exactly what i'm asking: how much fraud is taking place in Macedonia? "Lots" is not an answer, especially if it's part of the phrase "Lots, or they wouldn't be on the blacklist" or "Lots, because everybody says so".
Do you have link showing the rates of incidence of online credit card fraud in Macedonia? I'm not trolling here, i'm just curious: you seem to be ready and willing to write them off as crooks because they're on a list without taking the time to wonder how they got on that list. This has nothing to do with the "free speech" rights of private organizations - if anything, i'd like them to say more, not less about this: like backing up their blacklists with searchable databases of incident reports, or at least some stats and numbers. You know, evidence.
Asking someone to complain to their government because they can't order something over the internet is a waste of time: even if it did work (and that's a big if) it would take a long time for anything to happen whereas most people order on the internet because they want things now - not in six months or two years or whenever the next election comes around.
I agree with you about capitalism finding a way (all you Gordon Gecko fans together now: "greed is gooooooood"), and, for the record, i had the same thought as you did regarding providing an ordering service, but i abandoned it because everybody knows those countries are just full of scammers and rip-off artists;)
I'll leave you with one thought: for years China totally ignored intellectual property law (pirated windows CDs anybody?), forced western countries into dubious partnerships with local firms aimed at extracting their knowhow and competitve advantages, and let's not forget their shining record when it comes to human rights. Despite all this, western companies lined up around the block for a chance to get in and do business in a market that size. You could put them at the very top of your blacklist and it wouldn't make any difference. Macedonia's problem is that, with 90,000 internet users in a population of 2 million, companies just don't care.
That's not 100% fair - there's only sketchy evidence that the government of Macedonia is turning a blind eye to "massive online credit card fraud". They certainly aren't singled out for special attention in the latest report of the internet fraud complaint center. Rather, the issue stems from the fact that the people compiling these black lists are private organizations - there is no way to appeal against their decision. The author's indignation seems to stem from the fact that his country has been unfairly (in his opinion) blacklisted and that there's not a whole lot they can do about it, because they don't represent a big enough market segment.
Having said all this, the obvious solution to doing business with countries where "collecting payment is a crap-shoot" is to use an escrow service, of which there are several. Yes, this sucks when you want to buy a couple of books from Amazon.com - but you should only have to do it once. Once you have proved your bonafides (and have a customer number) you should be able to carry out furthur purchases with a minimum of fuss beyond sending an email instead of filling out a form...
Hi - i came here via metamod (of the parent poster) and i think everybody here is being a bit harsh: his question wasn't "why does my car need an ID number" but "why does the government feel that it needs to know the ID of my vehicle" - and i think he has a point. Sure, i can accept that the manufacturer needs a way to track its cars, and the insurance company needs to know these things as well. If and when the police need to know - you tell them. After all, if your laptop gets stolen you don't expect them to look up the serial number in the national coputer equipment database, do you?
So... yeah, why does the government need to know the VIN?
Slashdot Mirror
I hate your cat.
but does it? From their FAQ:
and from the cnet article:
but it will be interesting to see how long the sourceforge project stays up. It has that shiny new... and empty look.
Troll? wtf?
You could draw a parallel with the implied right to link to a web site. In effect, Penguin are just publishing a non-clickable link to Katie Jones' site. Of course, when lawyers start calling up and claiming that they now OWN your domain name because they published so many links to it, well, that's a whole other ball of wax...
If you can afford a lawyer, you can afford to at least offer to buy the domain name. What is up with this "i'll see you in court!" knee jerk reflex?
Right off the bat though, the average user couldn't install WINDOWS.
Very true - and most never have to, because their computer came with XP home pre-installed, hence the excitement over this headline (since proven as misleading). In fact, i'll go one better: the average user doesn't know what OS they're running - go ahead and ask, i bet at least one will say "Office 2000".
I've been playing with the Suse 9.1 Live Eval lately, and i think anybody who is comfortable installing/reinstalling/generally messing about with windows isn't going to have any problems with Linux either. Trouble is that's not that many people.
The forums on sillydog actually record your user-agent string at the bottom of the post, which is, IMO, a pretty cool idea, and maybe one that slashdot ought to consider.
It[Konqueror] also has features I love, like spell checking.
So did it come with the "Windoze" spelling installed or did you have to teach it to remember that?
But unlike the Y2K thing, people will wait until *after* the cutover to go on that huge shopping spree.
Those of you running firefox can download a search plugin for mailinator.com from mycroft, so you can check [whatever]@mailinator.com from your seach box.
My point is that it's not Ford's problem if someone keeps buying their lower-quality vehicles.
It IS Ford's problems when those lower-quality vehicles fall apart, because then Ford has to issue a recall and that costs them money. God help them if someone gets hurt as a result of one of those lower-quality vehicles falling apart, because then we're talking lawsuits and big damages.
Now, before we all start hollerin' that commercial software companies should be held legally liable for the quality of their products, ask yourself who you would hold liable for free/open software, and why it should be any different?
ROFLMAO.
thank you very much, that made my day.
" Just out of curiosity, what would you consider to be a genuine USAian last name? Washington, Jefferson, or Franklin?"
Dances With Wolves?
Sorry, my mistake - it was to check if the car tax had been paid. I couldn't find a link to the episode's information, but i did find this, which might be of interest.
Well, i'm sure diebold et al. have done an analysis which showed that we should give them billions and it would all work out in the end. I think it was titled "e-Reaganomics".
All joking aside - good question, but i'll go you one better: how do you asses the cost? What if electronic voting was slightly less expensive but much more prone to fraud? What if it was the inverse?
I'm not claiming it won't scale - there were roughly the same number of voters in the last US election as there will be in the coming one, and that one worked just fine using pencil and paper. I'm simply saying that a) it makes sense to do it electronically, because it means you need less people doing the tedious work of ballot counting. Freeing people from tedious tasks is pretty much the whole point of IT (well, that an porn) and b) if India can do it (and do it well from what i read) then there's no reason why the world's most technologically advanced nation can't do it too.
I'm Canadian, and we just finished going through a federal election using this method across all ridings.
And there are how many Canadian voters? A dozen? Two dozen, tops?
(sorry for the Troll - couldn't help myself - bad me)
India just put six hundred million voters through an all-electronic election. Once you understand that the idea is to make it easier for society and not more rewarding for the companies that make the hardware - just how hard can it be?
There was a pretty interesting bit on the BBC ("car wars" i think) that showed how london police cars are fitted with cameras that automatically scan car registrations and will notify the PC if it spots a vehicle with either outstanding tickets or no insurance. Despite some false positives, it seemed to work pretty well.
CCTV raised a lot of concerns when it was first rolled out, but now that it's here people seem to have accepted it - even more, people seem to appreciate it given the added sense of security and the positive effect on violent crime rates. Still, before we all get all warm and cuddly, we should remember that, at the end of the day, it's a system for surveillance of the general public. Just because the people jogging the joystick today aren't abusing it (it even caught that shocking bit of police brutality in Manchester a while back) doesn't mean the next bunch won't.
Row after row after row of name tags: "Hi, I'm John Smith". Not to mention all the tin foil hats at the coat check.
This place is tooooooo fucking weird.
It is not your responsibility to provide me with confidential anything, i was merely responding to your claim that the government of Macedonia turns a blind eye to massive credit card fraud - a claim for which you have no evidence. To put this into a language that you can understand: i am NOT trying to defend the "fine people of Macedonia", i am urging people (in this case you) to maybe look beyond a blacklist before deciding that they are all a bunch of crooks. Basically: don't blindly believe everything that authority figures tell you. Ask for proof. But i guess it's obvious that you and i have different opinions on this matter. Let's just leave it at that.
Now in spyderman, there were on average 5 people per family viewing the movie.
On average? What are you guys, rabbits?
Well, i did that google search and i found that, indeed, Macedonia is blacklisted as a major source of online fraud. That wasn't terribly interesting, since we are discussing the fact that Macedonia is blacklisted as a major source of online fraud. In fact, the first blacklist in that search is the very one that the article mentions. You claim that "For-profit businesses are not going to refuse to do business with an entire country solely based on unsubstantiated rumor." but, unless i'm very mistaken, that's exactly what's happening (remember, rumor is sometimes right) - otherwise where is the substantiation? Anyways, as the article pointed out, there are other countries on that list with whom they will do business - so basically companies will refuse to do business with small countries solely based on rumor.
As for your comment equating people not complaining to the government because they can't order a book from amazon with black people "wasting their time" protesting for their civil rights - well, frankly that's just offensive. I would hope that most people can see the difference between the two.
Finally, as to your question about "How much fraud had to be taking place with an online population of only 90,000 in order for a tiny country like Macedonia to appear on a blacklist?" - well, that's exactly what i'm asking: how much fraud is taking place in Macedonia? "Lots" is not an answer, especially if it's part of the phrase "Lots, or they wouldn't be on the blacklist" or "Lots, because everybody says so".
Do you have link showing the rates of incidence of online credit card fraud in Macedonia? I'm not trolling here, i'm just curious: you seem to be ready and willing to write them off as crooks because they're on a list without taking the time to wonder how they got on that list. This has nothing to do with the "free speech" rights of private organizations - if anything, i'd like them to say more, not less about this: like backing up their blacklists with searchable databases of incident reports, or at least some stats and numbers. You know, evidence.
;)
Asking someone to complain to their government because they can't order something over the internet is a waste of time: even if it did work (and that's a big if) it would take a long time for anything to happen whereas most people order on the internet because they want things now - not in six months or two years or whenever the next election comes around.
I agree with you about capitalism finding a way (all you Gordon Gecko fans together now: "greed is gooooooood"), and, for the record, i had the same thought as you did regarding providing an ordering service, but i abandoned it because everybody knows those countries are just full of scammers and rip-off artists
I'll leave you with one thought: for years China totally ignored intellectual property law (pirated windows CDs anybody?), forced western countries into dubious partnerships with local firms aimed at extracting their knowhow and competitve advantages, and let's not forget their shining record when it comes to human rights. Despite all this, western companies lined up around the block for a chance to get in and do business in a market that size. You could put them at the very top of your blacklist and it wouldn't make any difference. Macedonia's problem is that, with 90,000 internet users in a population of 2 million, companies just don't care.
That's not 100% fair - there's only sketchy evidence that the government of Macedonia is turning a blind eye to "massive online credit card fraud". They certainly aren't singled out for special attention in the latest report of the internet fraud complaint center. Rather, the issue stems from the fact that the people compiling these black lists are private organizations - there is no way to appeal against their decision. The author's indignation seems to stem from the fact that his country has been unfairly (in his opinion) blacklisted and that there's not a whole lot they can do about it, because they don't represent a big enough market segment.
Having said all this, the obvious solution to doing business with countries where "collecting payment is a crap-shoot" is to use an escrow service, of which there are several. Yes, this sucks when you want to buy a couple of books from Amazon.com - but you should only have to do it once. Once you have proved your bonafides (and have a customer number) you should be able to carry out furthur purchases with a minimum of fuss beyond sending an email instead of filling out a form...
Hi - i came here via metamod (of the parent poster) and i think everybody here is being a bit harsh: his question wasn't "why does my car need an ID number" but "why does the government feel that it needs to know the ID of my vehicle" - and i think he has a point. Sure, i can accept that the manufacturer needs a way to track its cars, and the insurance company needs to know these things as well. If and when the police need to know - you tell them. After all, if your laptop gets stolen you don't expect them to look up the serial number in the national coputer equipment database, do you?
So... yeah, why does the government need to know the VIN?