Purely technically, a Turing Machine that hasn't infinite tapes is simply a Finite State Machine. You cannot build a "real" Turing Machine. Doesn't make his creation less interesting though:-)
Only one of them is of the legal age of consent in most western countries.
Unfounded generalization... Have a read. Especially Europe has many countries where 14 is within the bounds of age of consent. Well, unless of course you want to argue that Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain don't count as "Western Countries" any more. (From skipping over the list, the most common age would be 16, but still...)
(Not related: I found this one particularly amusing....)
Humans... We like to have a piece of paper in our hands, we can easily hand it to a coworker, we can scribble on it to take notes. I know it sounds oldskool, but for many tasks, a piece of paper is just superior. Sure, most of it is for temporary use, but paper isn't going anywhere. For many people reading from screen just isn't anywhere as comfortable as reading from paper. (That's why we still buy real books!)
People who bought the "paperless office" fad years ago were living in a dreamland.
Also, one thing to keep in mind. I have worked on large scale "scan documents from archives and the commit to big-ass proprietary content management systems". The conversion was extremely expensive, and the maintenance even more so. After all, you now needed expensive content manager Consultants, and competent DBAs (who have to be on call). For the paper version, you just needed one or two archivars. Just having tons and tons of paper sitting in a warehouse was was much cheaper, I heard later. These were Police documents, and they scanned in B&W... Photos were as such became unusable... I sure hope they'll keep the originals. I wonder who ever in his right mind approved that project.
I saw somewhere else that your wife keeps her head cool in crisis situations. *That* is the singlemost important quality in a wife (or husband, I'm not going to be gender-specific). Mine doesn't actually have sex with other guys (AFAIK, of course...), but mine is suicidal... Last 6 months she was (hey, still is!) in the hospital recovering from an attempt. Heck, from some point of view, I'd even trade with your ex;-)
Obviously you never have to deal with complete computer illiterate people. My wife has a very hard time understanding what I do and that what I do in the day isn't the same as what I do on my computer in the evening. To her it ALL looks the same. Sure, I can tell her what I do, but essentially it becomes a phrase she tells people when they ask her what I do. It has no significance at all to her (and to most people, in fact).
Same with my mom (but it became better over the years). I distinctly remember, back in my teenage years (that's a very long time ago), that I showed her a sorting algorithm I invented (years later, I got to know it as "Bubble Sort" and that in fact it is horrible, but how would a young teen know?). Her reaction was in the lines of "You spent so many hours on the computer for/this/?". Utterly devastating for me, but I don't blame her. This simply isn't part of her world.
Even today, I see so many people of my generation, actively avoiding computers. My younger sisters generation is better and she had the big advantage of having computers around her for all the time she remembers, mainly because of me and my dad (who is a proto-geek). She's just 5 years younger, but it makes a difference.
So, yes, I can totally see people equating "playing computers" with "using computers". If that's the only problem the guy has with his wife, he's lucky. Believe me, I have many more problems with my wife... *sigh*
I'm also a fan of Opera Mini! That said, on my Sony Ericsson c702 (provided by work), Opera Mini 5 beta works fine. I still think I need to file a bug report or two regarding odd behaviour.
I think partially the problem is your phone with the issues you are having... Never lost my shortcuts, standby works fine if I minimize the application (Multitasking on a phone... a novel idea for the iPhone fanbois) and the nagging for network access is simply a matter of setting "Always allow, never ask" or whatever the option was when it asked the first time.
... and my point is thus that there is a problem with the way the UK banks handle direct debits. I understand your point, but this means there is a fundamental flaw in the way direct debits work in that country. It shouldn't work that way and thus the procedure needs to be fixed. Here it is clearly: blame the banks.
Hospitalized: Somebody else should do that for you in such cases. I do my wifes bills and mail right now because she's been in hospital for the last 6 months.
Long vacation: Depends? Three weeks was the longest and that was my honeymoon. It is very rare you get off for more than two weeks if you're in the private sector. Yeah, I can see how this might be a problem for people in education.
Misdirected mail: Never happened, not in that sense at least. Got dropped in the wrong mailbox, but usually the kind neighbour will then bring it over.
Granting fraudulent transactions by default is a stupid idea.
Euh, direct debit is not "grantic fraudulent transactions" by default. It's granting "transactions to an entity you (more or less) trust by default". If it's fraudulent, you have recourse...
If you don't check your statements within 6 weeks, who is at fault? There is a reason you get those statements sent to you. You don't check your credit card statements either, I suppose?
Six weeks is a month and a half, and enough time to react. If you're scared that it might end up in a lawsuit, sent your complaint by registered mail with return receipt. Keep the relevant documents and that way you can prove you've been within the legal time limits.
So they can create a direct debit without the implication of a bank? Without forgery of his signature? Seems that the UK uses the first type of authorization system as referenced in the wikipedia article I linked to before. I think you see where the problem is, no?
Also, since it's not clear who did it, it might simply be an inside job of a guy at the bank to teach him a lesson even if normally this stuff shouldn't happen. (I do not know how the UK handles direct debit)
And yes, I expect Visa to have better protection on their database than other smaller companies whose core business isn't financial.
My statement seems to be ambiguous since I was replying to the blockquoted part where you adressed small companies. So, let me restate that: I do think that Visa should have good security. I do not expect small companies to have good security. We're in agreement, on that. Having credit card information public is evidently not a good idea, because that's how you use them to pay. Credit cards != Bank Accounts. Always keep that in mind. Different things, different kind of privacy/security implications.
Why not? My bank details, involve my name, my bank account number and... That's it (BIC/SWIFT eventually for international trasactions). You do know what you can do with that information? Send ME money. That's it. At least, that's how it works in my part of Europe. If indeed, somewhere else you only need those information to withdraw money, I'd keep it close to my chest too.
Look at one of the guys who sells OpenBSD stuff in Europe: kd85.com. Scroll down to "Trivia". You'll find his address, his bank details (if you know how to read them, of course) and you surely find his full name on the website too. Do you really think he is at risk at any moment doing this? Nope... As said, the information is enough to give him money. There are many (european) sites who give you bank details like this.
Direct debit does involve that kind of data, BUT the main part of it is that you give them an authorization to withdraw money. In my country the company to which you give that authorization needs to send it to the bank to make it valid. Call the bank, annul the direct debit and the company is unable to withdraw. (Authorization method number two in the Wikipedia article. Why anyone would accept authorization number one is beyond me.)
Even Visa's database has been hacked over the years, so do you expect any old company to be able to protect your data?
VISA is not a bank account, and no, I don't expect them to protect that kind of data. However, as I said, only with my name and bank account, they're not going to get far. The authorization resides at the bank which I trust much more than the odd business.
At one point when the fraudsters were having trouble accessing my accounts via telephone banking, they somehow managed to find the name of my account manager and called the bank asking for her by name!
I understand that identity theft is a serious issue and I do understand laws and regulations are different in the US. (Much laxer... and the banking system is archaic.) I know, I'm going to give anecdotal evidence again, but I never met anyone at my side of the pond that was victim of identity theft. I Googled the issue, and found some interesting insights. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but point number three should give you a hint on how the fraudsters got the information.
Lastschrift is the same as direct debit, but most business seem to require it.
Must be a German thing then. It's not here.
Suddenly some hacker empties your bank account...
Depends on how direct debit is handled. If indeed, the company can directly access your account it's not a good thing. However, that's not how it works in my country (as my original post indicated). Read the authorization part in the wikipedia article. The second type is requires the bank as a third party. This is how it works here. The bank, I trust much more not to be hacked.
in any dispute, the business has the upper hand (and that's why they like it).
Yes, but frequent mistakes will thoroughly tarnish their reputation.
a German bank account so they can automatically debit (Lastschrift) and don't worry, they never make mistakes when debiting your account! And organizations doing Lastschrift never get hacked because they employ magic warrior fairies.
I don't live in Germany, just a neighbouring country. I don't know if "direct debit" (that is what it's called in English) is mandatory or not, but in my country it is voluntary. You *choose* to get direct debit, or you'll simply get bills. Did you really have that much problems with it?
Anyway, in the last 15 or so years, I always chose direct debit over bills. Why? Because I budget my expenses anyway, so I know there is enough money on my bank account and I have absolutely nothing to do. Also, cancelling a direct debit is 100% in your hands. Call your bank, and say: "Cancel direct debit $REFERENCE" and that is it. I can even do that online. As you guess, making a budget means I keep track of what does happen on my accounts. Well, in those 15 years, only once there was a mistake. My ISP double-booked, and when I noticed, the money was already back on my account.
Similar thing for me. Started on BASIC (with the numbered lines, indeed) and then when I discovered Turbo Pascal, I was liberated. BASIC just always felt limited. All because of my dad who showed me BASIC first, because I wanted to calculate stuff, and something like "calc.exe" didn't exist. He showed me "PRINT 10+10" and I was sold. Later when he saw I was programming, he bought me a Turbo Pascal book. Ah, those were the times.:-)
No apt-get (or aptitude as you should use) is a package manager. Stuff Adobe gives you, or whatever iTunes installs, or any Windows updater for non-OS software are download managers.
Go download some drivers at Dell. It will ask you to install a download manager for its drivers. What for? That's a download manager to me.
I inherently distrust download managers. You don't need them. Just give me an http, ftp or (in some cases) torrent download and that's all I need. Download managers are not needed, they are additional fluff for nothing. It gets on my nerves they usually get forced down your throat and you need to jump through hoops on fire to get to a normal download.
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And you'd be wrong.... Computers are Finite State Machines with an insane number of states.
Purely technically, a Turing Machine that hasn't infinite tapes is simply a Finite State Machine. You cannot build a "real" Turing Machine. Doesn't make his creation less interesting though :-)
Unfounded generalization... Have a read. Especially Europe has many countries where 14 is within the bounds of age of consent. Well, unless of course you want to argue that Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain don't count as "Western Countries" any more. (From skipping over the list, the most common age would be 16, but still...)
(Not related: I found this one particularly amusing....)
If it truly is almost identical hardware, I'd say that your XP installation has a problem.
Humans... We like to have a piece of paper in our hands, we can easily hand it to a coworker, we can scribble on it to take notes. I know it sounds oldskool, but for many tasks, a piece of paper is just superior. Sure, most of it is for temporary use, but paper isn't going anywhere. For many people reading from screen just isn't anywhere as comfortable as reading from paper. (That's why we still buy real books!)
People who bought the "paperless office" fad years ago were living in a dreamland.
Also, one thing to keep in mind. I have worked on large scale "scan documents from archives and the commit to big-ass proprietary content management systems". The conversion was extremely expensive, and the maintenance even more so. After all, you now needed expensive content manager Consultants, and competent DBAs (who have to be on call). For the paper version, you just needed one or two archivars. Just having tons and tons of paper sitting in a warehouse was was much cheaper, I heard later. These were Police documents, and they scanned in B&W... Photos were as such became unusable... I sure hope they'll keep the originals. I wonder who ever in his right mind approved that project.
I saw somewhere else that your wife keeps her head cool in crisis situations. *That* is the singlemost important quality in a wife (or husband, I'm not going to be gender-specific). Mine doesn't actually have sex with other guys (AFAIK, of course...), but mine is suicidal... Last 6 months she was (hey, still is!) in the hospital recovering from an attempt. Heck, from some point of view, I'd even trade with your ex ;-)
Obviously you never have to deal with complete computer illiterate people. My wife has a very hard time understanding what I do and that what I do in the day isn't the same as what I do on my computer in the evening. To her it ALL looks the same. Sure, I can tell her what I do, but essentially it becomes a phrase she tells people when they ask her what I do. It has no significance at all to her (and to most people, in fact).
Same with my mom (but it became better over the years). I distinctly remember, back in my teenage years (that's a very long time ago), that I showed her a sorting algorithm I invented (years later, I got to know it as "Bubble Sort" and that in fact it is horrible, but how would a young teen know?). Her reaction was in the lines of "You spent so many hours on the computer for /this/?". Utterly devastating for me, but I don't blame her. This simply isn't part of her world.
Even today, I see so many people of my generation, actively avoiding computers. My younger sisters generation is better and she had the big advantage of having computers around her for all the time she remembers, mainly because of me and my dad (who is a proto-geek). She's just 5 years younger, but it makes a difference.
So, yes, I can totally see people equating "playing computers" with "using computers". If that's the only problem the guy has with his wife, he's lucky. Believe me, I have many more problems with my wife... *sigh*
I'm also a fan of Opera Mini! That said, on my Sony Ericsson c702 (provided by work), Opera Mini 5 beta works fine. I still think I need to file a bug report or two regarding odd behaviour.
I think partially the problem is your phone with the issues you are having... Never lost my shortcuts, standby works fine if I minimize the application (Multitasking on a phone... a novel idea for the iPhone fanbois) and the nagging for network access is simply a matter of setting "Always allow, never ask" or whatever the option was when it asked the first time.
... and my point is thus that there is a problem with the way the UK banks handle direct debits. I understand your point, but this means there is a fundamental flaw in the way direct debits work in that country. It shouldn't work that way and thus the procedure needs to be fixed. Here it is clearly: blame the banks.
I can just shake my head in disbelief that it has come that far at the other side of the pond.
Courts are always last recourse to a European. The mindset is very different. (It seems to be first recourse in the US).
Hospitalized: Somebody else should do that for you in such cases. I do my wifes bills and mail right now because she's been in hospital for the last 6 months.
Long vacation: Depends? Three weeks was the longest and that was my honeymoon. It is very rare you get off for more than two weeks if you're in the private sector. Yeah, I can see how this might be a problem for people in education.
Misdirected mail: Never happened, not in that sense at least. Got dropped in the wrong mailbox, but usually the kind neighbour will then bring it over.
Euh, direct debit is not "grantic fraudulent transactions" by default. It's granting "transactions to an entity you (more or less) trust by default". If it's fraudulent, you have recourse...
If you don't check your statements within 6 weeks, who is at fault? There is a reason you get those statements sent to you. You don't check your credit card statements either, I suppose?
Six weeks is a month and a half, and enough time to react. If you're scared that it might end up in a lawsuit, sent your complaint by registered mail with return receipt. Keep the relevant documents and that way you can prove you've been within the legal time limits.
So they can create a direct debit without the implication of a bank? Without forgery of his signature? Seems that the UK uses the first type of authorization system as referenced in the wikipedia article I linked to before. I think you see where the problem is, no?
Also, since it's not clear who did it, it might simply be an inside job of a guy at the bank to teach him a lesson even if normally this stuff shouldn't happen. (I do not know how the UK handles direct debit)
My statement seems to be ambiguous since I was replying to the blockquoted part where you adressed small companies. So, let me restate that: I do think that Visa should have good security. I do not expect small companies to have good security. We're in agreement, on that. Having credit card information public is evidently not a good idea, because that's how you use them to pay. Credit cards != Bank Accounts. Always keep that in mind. Different things, different kind of privacy/security implications.
Just to set that straight.
Why not? My bank details, involve my name, my bank account number and... That's it (BIC/SWIFT eventually for international trasactions). You do know what you can do with that information? Send ME money. That's it. At least, that's how it works in my part of Europe. If indeed, somewhere else you only need those information to withdraw money, I'd keep it close to my chest too.
Look at one of the guys who sells OpenBSD stuff in Europe: kd85.com. Scroll down to "Trivia". You'll find his address, his bank details (if you know how to read them, of course) and you surely find his full name on the website too. Do you really think he is at risk at any moment doing this? Nope... As said, the information is enough to give him money. There are many (european) sites who give you bank details like this.
Direct debit does involve that kind of data, BUT the main part of it is that you give them an authorization to withdraw money. In my country the company to which you give that authorization needs to send it to the bank to make it valid. Call the bank, annul the direct debit and the company is unable to withdraw. (Authorization method number two in the Wikipedia article. Why anyone would accept authorization number one is beyond me.)
VISA is not a bank account, and no, I don't expect them to protect that kind of data. However, as I said, only with my name and bank account, they're not going to get far. The authorization resides at the bank which I trust much more than the odd business.
I understand that identity theft is a serious issue and I do understand laws and regulations are different in the US. (Much laxer... and the banking system is archaic.) I know, I'm going to give anecdotal evidence again, but I never met anyone at my side of the pond that was victim of identity theft. I Googled the issue, and found some interesting insights. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but point number three should give you a hint on how the fraudsters got the information.
Must be a German thing then. It's not here.
Depends on how direct debit is handled. If indeed, the company can directly access your account it's not a good thing. However, that's not how it works in my country (as my original post indicated). Read the authorization part in the wikipedia article. The second type is requires the bank as a third party. This is how it works here. The bank, I trust much more not to be hacked.
Yes, but frequent mistakes will thoroughly tarnish their reputation.
I don't live in Germany, just a neighbouring country. I don't know if "direct debit" (that is what it's called in English) is mandatory or not, but in my country it is voluntary. You *choose* to get direct debit, or you'll simply get bills. Did you really have that much problems with it?
Anyway, in the last 15 or so years, I always chose direct debit over bills. Why? Because I budget my expenses anyway, so I know there is enough money on my bank account and I have absolutely nothing to do. Also, cancelling a direct debit is 100% in your hands. Call your bank, and say: "Cancel direct debit $REFERENCE" and that is it. I can even do that online. As you guess, making a budget means I keep track of what does happen on my accounts. Well, in those 15 years, only once there was a mistake. My ISP double-booked, and when I noticed, the money was already back on my account.
Sure, I know, anecdotal evidence...
Just a little nitpick: Wifi != Cellular network. What most of the world calls Wifi, you in Germany call W-Lan.
Apart from that, correct guide... (Not German, but I live close enough to Germany to know.)
Similar thing for me. Started on BASIC (with the numbered lines, indeed) and then when I discovered Turbo Pascal, I was liberated. BASIC just always felt limited. All because of my dad who showed me BASIC first, because I wanted to calculate stuff, and something like "calc.exe" didn't exist. He showed me "PRINT 10+10" and I was sold. Later when he saw I was programming, he bought me a Turbo Pascal book. Ah, those were the times. :-)
Yes, I use it. Personally, I even like it. I'll be sad to see it go... Now I'll have to change the default, well unless the new one is bearable too.
The part that it was 3 years ago when they started an Vista did not play nice....
Absolutely... That was pretty much what I tried to say :-) Thanks for saying it better than me.
No apt-get (or aptitude as you should use) is a package manager. Stuff Adobe gives you, or whatever iTunes installs, or any Windows updater for non-OS software are download managers.
Go download some drivers at Dell. It will ask you to install a download manager for its drivers. What for? That's a download manager to me.
I inherently distrust download managers. You don't need them. Just give me an http, ftp or (in some cases) torrent download and that's all I need. Download managers are not needed, they are additional fluff for nothing. It gets on my nerves they usually get forced down your throat and you need to jump through hoops on fire to get to a normal download.
Since they started 3 years ago, I don't think your definition works. Windows Vista just came out with the known compatibility problems.