Maybe it doesn't count as backwards compatibility (either because it was an add on or because it added compatibility with someone elses product) but I think that Colecovision beat the 7800 to market.
What are we really arguing about here? Are we contemplating whether or not such a list is unconstitutional? Maybe it's whether or not unsolicited phone calls are invasions of privacy? Is all this a debate over whether or not telemarketing is free speach?
As I see it, the issue is; does a person have a right to empower the government to prevent a party from calling them.
Lets compare a restraining order and a do not call list. Given the example of a party with 30 people standing in a room. A person with a restraining order against them may not be allowed to enter the room because the party that placed the order against them is present. In this case that persons right to free speech was impeded since they can't speak their message to the 29 other people present. Now contrast that with a do not call list, a party is empowering the government on their behalf to tell multiple parties tthat they do not want to receive their solicitations. The arrangement is mutually beneficial (no wasted resource, no undesired interruptions) and it doesn't prevent those multiple parties from contacting other people, only myself.
Now the last I checked restraining orders weren't considered unconstitutional. All you need for a restraining order is some shred of evidence that you're being harassed by a person. Restraining orders do seriously inhibit free speech, but we seem ok with empowering the government in such cases anyway because it's usually for the benefit of a party.
Maybe in a perfect world the existence of the list would be enough, companies wouldn't want to call those people for the sheer reason they've expressed their disdain for telemarketers and the government wouldnt' hhve to enforce the list on our behalf. But people are people and they are going to call anyway, therefor I want to empower the government on my behalf to prevent them from calling me. It's not my business nor my desire to prevent them from calling anyone else, just from calling me. I'm not impinging their right to free speech any more than if I hang up on them when they called me, I'm just saving them the call and me the time.
Hrmmm just checked trillian and notice I wasn't connected to Yahoo. Oddly enough it appears that my Yahoo configuration is suddenly missing, as in my user name and password are gone from the connection manager. I'm going to lose countless minutes of sleep on this one, the last time I sent/received amessage using my yahoo messenger account was months ago.
Re:Mo Money! Mo Money! Mo Money!
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Windows ATMs by 2005
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Don't forget that the powers that be at financial institutions are shitty pants. The amount of legacy systems out there is simply amazing. The problem is that if they reimplement something on their side, there's more than a chance that some hacks added to the old system will not make the transition, thus breaking compatibility with someone elses system (even if their system is doing it wrong).
The best example of this I can give was a EFT processor that spent time and money creating and implementing a new message format for OLTP. During testing with their first large client, they discovered that the client misinterpreted the spec (aka they went the hard route rather than the easy obvious way). Rather than having the client change their code, they actually changed the interpretation of their specification. This would have been fine except that 80% of the next 100 clients to come on line interpreted the updated spec the way it was originally intended and every one of them had to make the change.
Now just think about what this says. If a company is willing to bastardize it's brand new message specification just to make one client happy, how many little hacks do you think you'll find in 15 years worth of coding?
Re:Mo Money! Mo Money! Mo Money!
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Windows ATMs by 2005
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· Score: 5, Informative
Ummm... You're the optimist aren't you.
I worked in the EFT industry for about 5 years as an engineer and I can say that you are so wrong it's not even funny. The people that make decisions are worried most about how much it's going to cost. If it wasn't for cost, every bank would be processing transactions in real time rather than relying on batch processing on IBM's that are as old as I am.
When a "new" technology comes along in the industry, it's usually applied to the old technology model. For example, when the processor I worked for started using TCP/IP as a transport between datacenters, they didn't encrypt the data end to end. Instead they just replaced some older dedicated link and relied on the same weak ass pin block encryption they always did, paying no mind to the fact that someone with a notebook and a network card could easily yeild 40-50 complete cards per second.
And if you think because it's financial that everything has to be balanced to the penny, you're so wrong. To start with the legacy systems that some networks have to deal with ensure that reconcilliation will NEVER be 100%. Then add to it that if the money is right, a processor will further bastardize their code to accomodate someone else's improper implementation. You end up with a legacy system that often produces unexpected results when something out of the ordinary occurs (I remember one morning when people were being credited several billion dollars to their account after returning something to a store).
As far as auditors or regulators plugging the holes, fat chance. Regulators are more concerned about transaction fees being present on the front of ATMs and the taxability of the transactions that occur. The auditors only know what the engineers tell them since they are usually not engineers or marginal ones at best. The auditors are primarily interested in the paperwork trail left behind from production code installs. If the paperwork looks good they're happy. Mind you that as far as the auditors are concerned, good looking paper work means that it exists. They do not look for proof of testing other than a signature, in other words no supporting documentation showing the before and after effects of the change are required to be documented. Furthermore no regression test is required to show that nobody piggybacked malicious code on the issue. In otherwords the auditors just smile nicely if you hand them a big stack of papers.
Ultimately, the EFT idustry is filled with dinosaurs, people that talk about how funny it was when they used punch cards or learned some obscure language in college that hasn't been used in decades. When I left the industry 4-5 years ago, there were people that still used their PCs as dumb terminals because they didn't understand the whole personal computer thing (I'm REALLY not joking).
So as far as Windows being used on ATMs, they are going to do as they've done in the past. They will build the machine but instead of putting OS/2 on it, they'll install windows on it. They will rely on the same security they always have, and why shouldn't they? It's served them well for 30 years.
Well that does raise an interesting question. If Sony is liable because they made the console, wouldn't the parents be liable because they made the kids?
Doesn't really matter, it's not like they could track you down withtout paying a ton in law fees.
As I've recently learned, if a telemarketer calls and fails to identify the company name there is no easy way for someone to track them down.
For example, you are on a published do not call list (in my case the New York State list) and you get an automated call asking if your interested in a 3 day vacation to walt disney world. Rather annoyed for interrupting your bowl of fruit loops, you press 1 for more information. Then the voice system rattles through some sort of disclaimer and tells you that someone will call you back then asks you if you agree, obviously you don't want to establish a business relationship with this company (thus giving them the right to call you legally inspite of the call list) so you select 2 for no and the system hangs up on you.
So immediately you whip out a pen and paper and start to make notes on the call so you can go after them for the $2500 (or is it $5000?) in punitive damages for violating the do not call list. You right down the time and then check the caller ID only to realize, they never gave a company name (illegal) they never gave you the option to opt out (illegal) and you have no clue who it was that called you. So you hang up and call Goveneror Patakis Consumer Protection Board and tell them about the incident. They ask you what the company name that called you was, you repeat "They never identified themselves which is illegal on it's own aside from the do not call violation". They tell you that you need the company information to which you ask "great, how do I go about getting it". They tell you that you have to call the phone company.
So faithfully you hang up and call the phone company and they tell you that they can't give you that information. Then you ask how do you get it and they tell you that you have to get a subpoena for it. In other words you now have to take time off from work in order to play Matlock and create a lawsuit just to find out who it is harassing you. Imagine if you had to do your own detective work before you could submit a claim for a stolen car.
I've also had a similar scenario where a telemarketer called me at a really bad time. I promptly asked for a manager, when the manager picked up I asked for the company name and address. They asked me why I wanted it and I told them that "by law you called me you have to disclose this information" and they hung up on me. I wrote down the offer name and the time just in case they called again, but in reality I knew since I didn't get a company name or a phone number that they annoyed me, wasted my valuable time and were going to get away with it.
Until there is someone that will chase down the violations on behalf of the people on the do not call list, the telemarketers can pretty much operate unimpeded. If anything this should be an opportunity for a sleazy lawyer. If they recoup any punitive damages split it 50/50 with the person that received the call. Shit, they can keep all of it except for $100, just mail me a check for $100 with the memo "punitive damages from telemarketer" so I can frame it and hang it over my phone.
When I worked for Sun I actually calculated his procedes from stock sales and came up with a number around $65mil for 1999 or 2000 (this was a couple years ago).
Ummmm this is one of the better pictures.
Eh, I'm always happy to see another co-worker escape. Although I'm sure his parachute is a lot more golden than mine was:(.
All processors in the debit card industry are required to have their security procedures audited. This includes extensive documentation of any change made to production code, handling of master encryption keys, database maintenance etc. It's not that the companies don't answer to someone, it's that the someone they answer to either doesn't see the weakness or realizes the huge cost involved in rectifying these problems and ignores it.
The parent post is mostly correct except that there are a few satelite based ATM's. IIRC military credit union(s) use them for ATM's deployed on large warships or remote bases. But most ATM's are leased line and/or terminated to a frame relay cloud somewhere. ATM's ustilizing POTS are a more recent development (mid 90's) and are generally reserved for low traffic volume locations such as convenience stores and boobie bars. But the advent of the ATM surcharge has vaulted the number of POTS based ATM's to new heights.
What goes across the line is considerably more than a hash of the pin and some data stored on the card. There is information such as the type of transaction, ther terminal ID of the machine it's coming from, transaction sequence number, etc. A copy of the data stored on the mag stripe is also usually sent in the transaction request. This additional information is necessary for reconciliation of funds as well as tracking customer problems.
Unfortunately a large portion of the security in the debit processing industry is by obscurity, minimizing theft incident values and by keeping the system sealed. In order to exploit these networks a user on the inside is usually necessary and the process of exploitation will leave that persons "fingerprints" all over the theft. Without a person on the inside the actual amounts a person could steal are rather small (thank the theives the next time you need $500 from your ATM card and your bank only allows you to withdraw $400 a day).
The biggest problem is that the debit industry relies on legacy systems. Trying to retrofit the authorization process to use newer technologies is both difficult and extremely expensive and would require industry wide cooperation.
Batman & Robin Chiller has had its shoulder bars removed thus the head banging is gone. Personally it's a favorite rollercoaster of mine provided you can get 2-3 runs in within a reasonable amount of time (the lines can be hell) they've also learned how to launch the trains properly. My last trip to GA (the end of this past july) was the first time I'd ever seen chiller run all day without them having to stop the red train on the fail safe platform (the story I had gotten years before was that the launches suck up so much juice that if they launch the cars side by side or even too close together that the GA power station starts to struggle and eventually they get a bad run where the trains don't have enough velocity and have to be stopped).
Medusa is still a great coaster but you have to get the first row to really appreciate it. Nitro was a pleasant surprise since it's fast, gives tons of negative gs and seems to last forever while being astonishingly quiet. Nitro was totally not what I was expecting and even though it sounds like it would be boring it turned out to be worth the ride. The original GA batman coaster is still a solid coaster and the lines are usually pretty short these days.
If you don't like being beaten up the Great American Scream Machine has to come off your list. Over the years they've added extra brakes along the way and the wear and tear has made this coaster painful compared to when it was new. But the champ of pain at GA is the Viper. The viper's days have to be numbered, either that or it needs to be renamed to "beat you bloody under 25 seconds". Originally the viper was supposed to be either two or three times as long as it exists today but it was shortened last minute. The combination of the abrupt turns and the "padded" shoulder bars make this a must ride for the S&M crowd in a hurry.
But if you want scary at Great Adventure, Rolling Thunder is still the king. As it's gotten older and deteriorated the suspense of wondering if it's going to fall apart has peaked. Every time I get on RT I think of the handfull of people that have been thrown from it back when it was properly maintained. The only coaster that scares me more in this sense is the Cyclone =].
Yeah but can they write file conversion filters? Apparently not.
What kind of applications are they finding that would require users to keep two computers at their desk? I can't imagine that they have many custom applications that run on PCs. I would guess that most of the custom stuff is run off dumb terminals which can be emulated on a regular desktop computer. They stated that they've migrated everyone onto a single financial application. And for the handful of antiquated PC applications that they're using, which ones don't have modern counterparts that can be used by converting file formats? Any ideas?
How long will it be before this database is used by spam mailers to target people with the genetic defect that makes them suceptable to late night infomercial advertising?
By any chance, has anyone checked to see if Microsoft modified the EULA when they released the new version of the Xbox? It would be interesting if they stuck anything in there that would strengthen their ability to prosecute and/or seek damages for circumvention of the protection scheme.
I guess it depends on the business but sometimes blinkenlights do actuall sell services. When I worked for one of the major providers of EFT services, every customer tour of the data center included bringing the customer into the comm room. Fourty Tandem. IBM and EMC cabinets sitting on a raised floor is about as interesting looking as a warehouse full of watercoolers. But when you take a customer into a room where hundreds of comm lines terminate and cause their panels to blink franticly the customer usually gets that "wow" look. The trip past the actual hardware was necessary because of the layout of the building otherwise I'd be willing to bet the salespeople would have skipped that section.
If that doesn't impress the customer, sales people have also been known to show customers how the emergency stop button shuts down the data center (actually happened once).
One, if I lived in a third world country I doubt I could afford the "kaz".
Two, if I was a police or military officer I wouldn't want a vehicle with limited range that takes a hour (very very optimistic here) to fill up.
Three, if I was a person waiting for a bus if one pulled up with a wheel missing I might just wait for the next one any way.
Four, this one I'll give ya. If my wheel just fell off I'd probably want someone to give the drive assembly a look and inspect the other 7 wheels to see if they are in danger too. Then again I thought this is why people open towing companies...
If I had to venture a guess, the 8 wheels are necessary to support the gross weight (yes pun intended) of the vehicle at planned high speeds. Look at the new Mercedes SL55. After "removing" the speed limiter the car is claimed to have a 186mph top speed compared to the factory 155. According to the literature and automotive press the car is actually capable of 200+ mph but tires do not exist to carry it's 4,235lbs curb weight.
All said and done, aside from sounding like something from chi-town (Da bears) da KAZ is pretting interesting. I still think it'll be more interesting once people get to hotrod their own electric cars (2, 3, 4, 8, 16 wheel, battery or fuel cell). I can already picture garage gearheads hand winding motors and polishing drivetrain components.
I don't want to defend Intel, but I hardly think that the efficiency differences between the PowerPC and x86 chips can be attributed to the teams working on them. The simple fact is that the PowerPC family is much newer and free of the legacy baggage that x86 processors must carry with them.
That said, Apple needs to do something if they ever want to see my money. As much as I want a Mac with OSX it's just not going to happen when I can get more usable horsepower (not just GHz) for less money by going the ugly x86 route.
About a month ago I had heard from a couple people inside my local Time Warner office that they were going begin a large scale roll out of video on demand. Where are you located? Do you live in a pilot area or has that roll out atually begun?
I've never been a fan of ink cartridges that contain print heads, nor ink cartridges that contain more than one ink color, nor printers where you cannot easily replace the print head as necessary.
Actually some manufacturers are returning to a two piece setup that allows you to change the ink cartridges and the print head seperately. Personally I'm completely willing to pay extra upfront to save money in the long run.
Lets ignore linux support for just a momment. I think it's commonly agreed that printer manufacturers are out to extract every last cent from consumers any way they can.
What about the magazines that "Review" these printers? I mean it's pretty obvious that magazines like PC World, Home Computer Luser and all the other magazines that target clueless users, are basically just glorified advertising catalogs. But try researching a new printer.
I recently tried to find some reviews on photo printers and found that whatever reviews available are highly biased, largely unscientific, based on old models and generally useless. This article links to some other reivews which are horribly old:
If you can make your way through those articles you'll see that there is no common baseline for comparison. A fault in one printer may be talked about extensively, but in another printer it's mentioned casually. The Canon 820D has been recently replaced with the 830D (about 1-2 weeks ago) and there is no mention of it. Compared to the offerings out there the units reviewed are few.
I wish more "reputable" hardware review sites would take the time to review printers. I still haven't been able to decide between the Canon 830D, the Epson 960 stylus photo and the Epson 2200 stylus photo mainly because I don't have enough information.
As it is now it seems like printer reviews are conspicuously absent or out of date. It's almost as if the printer manufacturers are supressing reviews so that people will "gamble" on printers due to their low price and how good those "specs" on the box are.
Anyone happen to know anything about the Canon 830D, Epson Stylus Photo 960 and the Epson Stylus Photo 2200?
But is this really a "slashdot" article. I mean is it really big news to the general public that you can shave 28 seconds off a burn? Anyone that has a true need (like the garage bands or businesses) or desire for these drives would search for the review and this server wouldn't be suffering.
Now a review of 8x DVD writers, that's something I think many would like to see.
You basically reinforced my comment that social humiliation is a much better course of action. I never stated that because your phone is on vibrate that you can just blatantly answer it and have a loud conversation wherever you are. But people do speak softly in libraries, no reason you couldn't answer a phone there as long as you're considerate about how loud you speak. Nor is there a reason why someone cannot excuse themselves from the table in a restaurant if their phone vibrates. I'm not such a social prude that I would be opposed to someone taking a QUICK call while seated at the table in a restaurant (unless I missed something you're supposed to be talking in a restaurant).
And I never said that there aren't times where we can't afford to be out of touch. All I said is who are we to make that decision for someone else without knowing all the facts. I'd agree that a phone should be turned off during an exam, both for courtosey, concentration and cheating reasons. As far as the dentist he could have just said, "please don't answer that". For the record, I left my cell phone home on the day of my wedding.
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Errrrr I meant to say that Colecovision and the 2600 -Adapter beat the 7800 to market.
Maybe it doesn't count as backwards compatibility (either because it was an add on or because it added compatibility with someone elses product) but I think that Colecovision beat the 7800 to market.
What are we really arguing about here? Are we contemplating whether or not such a list is unconstitutional? Maybe it's whether or not unsolicited phone calls are invasions of privacy? Is all this a debate over whether or not telemarketing is free speach?
As I see it, the issue is; does a person have a right to empower the government to prevent a party from calling them.
Lets compare a restraining order and a do not call list. Given the example of a party with 30 people standing in a room. A person with a restraining order against them may not be allowed to enter the room because the party that placed the order against them is present. In this case that persons right to free speech was impeded since they can't speak their message to the 29 other people present. Now contrast that with a do not call list, a party is empowering the government on their behalf to tell multiple parties tthat they do not want to receive their solicitations. The arrangement is mutually beneficial (no wasted resource, no undesired interruptions) and it doesn't prevent those multiple parties from contacting other people, only myself.
Now the last I checked restraining orders weren't considered unconstitutional. All you need for a restraining order is some shred of evidence that you're being harassed by a person. Restraining orders do seriously inhibit free speech, but we seem ok with empowering the government in such cases anyway because it's usually for the benefit of a party.
Maybe in a perfect world the existence of the list would be enough, companies wouldn't want to call those people for the sheer reason they've expressed their disdain for telemarketers and the government wouldnt' hhve to enforce the list on our behalf. But people are people and they are going to call anyway, therefor I want to empower the government on my behalf to prevent them from calling me. It's not my business nor my desire to prevent them from calling anyone else, just from calling me. I'm not impinging their right to free speech any more than if I hang up on them when they called me, I'm just saving them the call and me the time.
Hrmmm just checked trillian and notice I wasn't connected to Yahoo. Oddly enough it appears that my Yahoo configuration is suddenly missing, as in my user name and password are gone from the connection manager. I'm going to lose countless minutes of sleep on this one, the last time I sent/received amessage using my yahoo messenger account was months ago.
Don't forget that the powers that be at financial institutions are shitty pants. The amount of legacy systems out there is simply amazing. The problem is that if they reimplement something on their side, there's more than a chance that some hacks added to the old system will not make the transition, thus breaking compatibility with someone elses system (even if their system is doing it wrong).
The best example of this I can give was a EFT processor that spent time and money creating and implementing a new message format for OLTP. During testing with their first large client, they discovered that the client misinterpreted the spec (aka they went the hard route rather than the easy obvious way). Rather than having the client change their code, they actually changed the interpretation of their specification. This would have been fine except that 80% of the next 100 clients to come on line interpreted the updated spec the way it was originally intended and every one of them had to make the change.
Now just think about what this says. If a company is willing to bastardize it's brand new message specification just to make one client happy, how many little hacks do you think you'll find in 15 years worth of coding?
Ummm... You're the optimist aren't you.
I worked in the EFT industry for about 5 years as an engineer and I can say that you are so wrong it's not even funny. The people that make decisions are worried most about how much it's going to cost. If it wasn't for cost, every bank would be processing transactions in real time rather than relying on batch processing on IBM's that are as old as I am.
When a "new" technology comes along in the industry, it's usually applied to the old technology model. For example, when the processor I worked for started using TCP/IP as a transport between datacenters, they didn't encrypt the data end to end. Instead they just replaced some older dedicated link and relied on the same weak ass pin block encryption they always did, paying no mind to the fact that someone with a notebook and a network card could easily yeild 40-50 complete cards per second.
And if you think because it's financial that everything has to be balanced to the penny, you're so wrong. To start with the legacy systems that some networks have to deal with ensure that reconcilliation will NEVER be 100%. Then add to it that if the money is right, a processor will further bastardize their code to accomodate someone else's improper implementation. You end up with a legacy system that often produces unexpected results when something out of the ordinary occurs (I remember one morning when people were being credited several billion dollars to their account after returning something to a store).
As far as auditors or regulators plugging the holes, fat chance. Regulators are more concerned about transaction fees being present on the front of ATMs and the taxability of the transactions that occur. The auditors only know what the engineers tell them since they are usually not engineers or marginal ones at best. The auditors are primarily interested in the paperwork trail left behind from production code installs. If the paperwork looks good they're happy. Mind you that as far as the auditors are concerned, good looking paper work means that it exists. They do not look for proof of testing other than a signature, in other words no supporting documentation showing the before and after effects of the change are required to be documented. Furthermore no regression test is required to show that nobody piggybacked malicious code on the issue. In otherwords the auditors just smile nicely if you hand them a big stack of papers.
Ultimately, the EFT idustry is filled with dinosaurs, people that talk about how funny it was when they used punch cards or learned some obscure language in college that hasn't been used in decades. When I left the industry 4-5 years ago, there were people that still used their PCs as dumb terminals because they didn't understand the whole personal computer thing (I'm REALLY not joking).
So as far as Windows being used on ATMs, they are going to do as they've done in the past. They will build the machine but instead of putting OS/2 on it, they'll install windows on it. They will rely on the same security they always have, and why shouldn't they? It's served them well for 30 years.
Well that does raise an interesting question. If Sony is liable because they made the console, wouldn't the parents be liable because they made the kids?
Commercial numbers are uneligable for do not call lists. In other words if they pay an employee $30/hr and they spend 4 hours a week dealing with unsolicited callers, oh well they're out $120. Then again it's not like they could do anything about it if the caller doesn't give you all their information
Doesn't really matter, it's not like they could track you down withtout paying a ton in law fees.
As I've recently learned, if a telemarketer calls and fails to identify the company name there is no easy way for someone to track them down. For example, you are on a published do not call list (in my case the New York State list) and you get an automated call asking if your interested in a 3 day vacation to walt disney world. Rather annoyed for interrupting your bowl of fruit loops, you press 1 for more information. Then the voice system rattles through some sort of disclaimer and tells you that someone will call you back then asks you if you agree, obviously you don't want to establish a business relationship with this company (thus giving them the right to call you legally inspite of the call list) so you select 2 for no and the system hangs up on you.
So immediately you whip out a pen and paper and start to make notes on the call so you can go after them for the $2500 (or is it $5000?) in punitive damages for violating the do not call list. You right down the time and then check the caller ID only to realize, they never gave a company name (illegal) they never gave you the option to opt out (illegal) and you have no clue who it was that called you. So you hang up and call Goveneror Patakis Consumer Protection Board and tell them about the incident. They ask you what the company name that called you was, you repeat "They never identified themselves which is illegal on it's own aside from the do not call violation". They tell you that you need the company information to which you ask "great, how do I go about getting it". They tell you that you have to call the phone company.
So faithfully you hang up and call the phone company and they tell you that they can't give you that information. Then you ask how do you get it and they tell you that you have to get a subpoena for it. In other words you now have to take time off from work in order to play Matlock and create a lawsuit just to find out who it is harassing you. Imagine if you had to do your own detective work before you could submit a claim for a stolen car.
I've also had a similar scenario where a telemarketer called me at a really bad time. I promptly asked for a manager, when the manager picked up I asked for the company name and address. They asked me why I wanted it and I told them that "by law you called me you have to disclose this information" and they hung up on me. I wrote down the offer name and the time just in case they called again, but in reality I knew since I didn't get a company name or a phone number that they annoyed me, wasted my valuable time and were going to get away with it.
Until there is someone that will chase down the violations on behalf of the people on the do not call list, the telemarketers can pretty much operate unimpeded. If anything this should be an opportunity for a sleazy lawyer. If they recoup any punitive damages split it 50/50 with the person that received the call. Shit, they can keep all of it except for $100, just mail me a check for $100 with the memo "punitive damages from telemarketer" so I can frame it and hang it over my phone.
When I worked for Sun I actually calculated his procedes from stock sales and came up with a number around $65mil for 1999 or 2000 (this was a couple years ago).
Ummmm this is one of the better pictures. Eh, I'm always happy to see another co-worker escape. Although I'm sure his parachute is a lot more golden than mine was :(.
All processors in the debit card industry are required to have their security procedures audited. This includes extensive documentation of any change made to production code, handling of master encryption keys, database maintenance etc. It's not that the companies don't answer to someone, it's that the someone they answer to either doesn't see the weakness or realizes the huge cost involved in rectifying these problems and ignores it.
The parent post is mostly correct except that there are a few satelite based ATM's. IIRC military credit union(s) use them for ATM's deployed on large warships or remote bases. But most ATM's are leased line and/or terminated to a frame relay cloud somewhere. ATM's ustilizing POTS are a more recent development (mid 90's) and are generally reserved for low traffic volume locations such as convenience stores and boobie bars. But the advent of the ATM surcharge has vaulted the number of POTS based ATM's to new heights. What goes across the line is considerably more than a hash of the pin and some data stored on the card. There is information such as the type of transaction, ther terminal ID of the machine it's coming from, transaction sequence number, etc. A copy of the data stored on the mag stripe is also usually sent in the transaction request. This additional information is necessary for reconciliation of funds as well as tracking customer problems.
Unfortunately a large portion of the security in the debit processing industry is by obscurity, minimizing theft incident values and by keeping the system sealed. In order to exploit these networks a user on the inside is usually necessary and the process of exploitation will leave that persons "fingerprints" all over the theft. Without a person on the inside the actual amounts a person could steal are rather small (thank the theives the next time you need $500 from your ATM card and your bank only allows you to withdraw $400 a day).
The biggest problem is that the debit industry relies on legacy systems. Trying to retrofit the authorization process to use newer technologies is both difficult and extremely expensive and would require industry wide cooperation.
Batman & Robin Chiller has had its shoulder bars removed thus the head banging is gone. Personally it's a favorite rollercoaster of mine provided you can get 2-3 runs in within a reasonable amount of time (the lines can be hell) they've also learned how to launch the trains properly. My last trip to GA (the end of this past july) was the first time I'd ever seen chiller run all day without them having to stop the red train on the fail safe platform (the story I had gotten years before was that the launches suck up so much juice that if they launch the cars side by side or even too close together that the GA power station starts to struggle and eventually they get a bad run where the trains don't have enough velocity and have to be stopped).
Medusa is still a great coaster but you have to get the first row to really appreciate it. Nitro was a pleasant surprise since it's fast, gives tons of negative gs and seems to last forever while being astonishingly quiet. Nitro was totally not what I was expecting and even though it sounds like it would be boring it turned out to be worth the ride. The original GA batman coaster is still a solid coaster and the lines are usually pretty short these days.
If you don't like being beaten up the Great American Scream Machine has to come off your list. Over the years they've added extra brakes along the way and the wear and tear has made this coaster painful compared to when it was new. But the champ of pain at GA is the Viper. The viper's days have to be numbered, either that or it needs to be renamed to "beat you bloody under 25 seconds". Originally the viper was supposed to be either two or three times as long as it exists today but it was shortened last minute. The combination of the abrupt turns and the "padded" shoulder bars make this a must ride for the S&M crowd in a hurry.
But if you want scary at Great Adventure, Rolling Thunder is still the king. As it's gotten older and deteriorated the suspense of wondering if it's going to fall apart has peaked. Every time I get on RT I think of the handfull of people that have been thrown from it back when it was properly maintained. The only coaster that scares me more in this sense is the Cyclone =].
Yeah but can they write file conversion filters? Apparently not.
What kind of applications are they finding that would require users to keep two computers at their desk? I can't imagine that they have many custom applications that run on PCs. I would guess that most of the custom stuff is run off dumb terminals which can be emulated on a regular desktop computer. They stated that they've migrated everyone onto a single financial application. And for the handful of antiquated PC applications that they're using, which ones don't have modern counterparts that can be used by converting file formats? Any ideas?
How long will it be before this database is used by spam mailers to target people with the genetic defect that makes them suceptable to late night infomercial advertising?
By any chance, has anyone checked to see if Microsoft modified the EULA when they released the new version of the Xbox? It would be interesting if they stuck anything in there that would strengthen their ability to prosecute and/or seek damages for circumvention of the protection scheme.
I guess it depends on the business but sometimes blinkenlights do actuall sell services. When I worked for one of the major providers of EFT services, every customer tour of the data center included bringing the customer into the comm room. Fourty Tandem. IBM and EMC cabinets sitting on a raised floor is about as interesting looking as a warehouse full of watercoolers. But when you take a customer into a room where hundreds of comm lines terminate and cause their panels to blink franticly the customer usually gets that "wow" look. The trip past the actual hardware was necessary because of the layout of the building otherwise I'd be willing to bet the salespeople would have skipped that section.
If that doesn't impress the customer, sales people have also been known to show customers how the emergency stop button shuts down the data center (actually happened once).
One, if I lived in a third world country I doubt I could afford the "kaz".
Two, if I was a police or military officer I wouldn't want a vehicle with limited range that takes a hour (very very optimistic here) to fill up.
Three, if I was a person waiting for a bus if one pulled up with a wheel missing I might just wait for the next one any way.
Four, this one I'll give ya. If my wheel just fell off I'd probably want someone to give the drive assembly a look and inspect the other 7 wheels to see if they are in danger too. Then again I thought this is why people open towing companies...
If I had to venture a guess, the 8 wheels are necessary to support the gross weight (yes pun intended) of the vehicle at planned high speeds. Look at the new Mercedes SL55. After "removing" the speed limiter the car is claimed to have a 186mph top speed compared to the factory 155. According to the literature and automotive press the car is actually capable of 200+ mph but tires do not exist to carry it's 4,235lbs curb weight.
All said and done, aside from sounding like something from chi-town (Da bears) da KAZ is pretting interesting. I still think it'll be more interesting once people get to hotrod their own electric cars (2, 3, 4, 8, 16 wheel, battery or fuel cell). I can already picture garage gearheads hand winding motors and polishing drivetrain components.
I don't want to defend Intel, but I hardly think that the efficiency differences between the PowerPC and x86 chips can be attributed to the teams working on them. The simple fact is that the PowerPC family is much newer and free of the legacy baggage that x86 processors must carry with them.
That said, Apple needs to do something if they ever want to see my money. As much as I want a Mac with OSX it's just not going to happen when I can get more usable horsepower (not just GHz) for less money by going the ugly x86 route.
About a month ago I had heard from a couple people inside my local Time Warner office that they were going begin a large scale roll out of video on demand. Where are you located? Do you live in a pilot area or has that roll out atually begun?
I've never been a fan of ink cartridges that contain print heads, nor ink cartridges that contain more than one ink color, nor printers where you cannot easily replace the print head as necessary.
Actually some manufacturers are returning to a two piece setup that allows you to change the ink cartridges and the print head seperately. Personally I'm completely willing to pay extra upfront to save money in the long run.
Lets ignore linux support for just a momment. I think it's commonly agreed that printer manufacturers are out to extract every last cent from consumers any way they can.
What about the magazines that "Review" these printers? I mean it's pretty obvious that magazines like PC World, Home Computer Luser and all the other magazines that target clueless users, are basically just glorified advertising catalogs. But try researching a new printer.
I recently tried to find some reviews on photo printers and found that whatever reviews available are highly biased, largely unscientific, based on old models and generally useless. This article links to some other reivews which are horribly old:
Canon S820D February 2002
Epson Stylus Photo 785EPX July 2001
Epson Stylus Photo 2000P February 2002
HP PhotoSmart 1315 November 2001
Kodak Personal Picture Maker 200 by Lexmark January 2001
If you can make your way through those articles you'll see that there is no common baseline for comparison. A fault in one printer may be talked about extensively, but in another printer it's mentioned casually. The Canon 820D has been recently replaced with the 830D (about 1-2 weeks ago) and there is no mention of it. Compared to the offerings out there the units reviewed are few.
I wish more "reputable" hardware review sites would take the time to review printers. I still haven't been able to decide between the Canon 830D, the Epson 960 stylus photo and the Epson 2200 stylus photo mainly because I don't have enough information.
As it is now it seems like printer reviews are conspicuously absent or out of date. It's almost as if the printer manufacturers are supressing reviews so that people will "gamble" on printers due to their low price and how good those "specs" on the box are.
Anyone happen to know anything about the Canon 830D, Epson Stylus Photo 960 and the Epson Stylus Photo 2200?
But is this really a "slashdot" article. I mean is it really big news to the general public that you can shave 28 seconds off a burn? Anyone that has a true need (like the garage bands or businesses) or desire for these drives would search for the review and this server wouldn't be suffering.
Now a review of 8x DVD writers, that's something I think many would like to see.
You basically reinforced my comment that social humiliation is a much better course of action. I never stated that because your phone is on vibrate that you can just blatantly answer it and have a loud conversation wherever you are. But people do speak softly in libraries, no reason you couldn't answer a phone there as long as you're considerate about how loud you speak. Nor is there a reason why someone cannot excuse themselves from the table in a restaurant if their phone vibrates. I'm not such a social prude that I would be opposed to someone taking a QUICK call while seated at the table in a restaurant (unless I missed something you're supposed to be talking in a restaurant).
And I never said that there aren't times where we can't afford to be out of touch. All I said is who are we to make that decision for someone else without knowing all the facts. I'd agree that a phone should be turned off during an exam, both for courtosey, concentration and cheating reasons. As far as the dentist he could have just said, "please don't answer that". For the record, I left my cell phone home on the day of my wedding.