OH MY GOD! You mean someone might just see a photo of my dog? STOP THE PRESSES, MY PRIVACY HAS BEEN RAPED.
The Facebook "threat" to privacy is overblown. I've got a Facebook account. I hardly use it, and don't really have much there. The pictures of me that ARE there are just fishing trip pictures posted by other people. Why the hell should I care who can see them?
So you dont care that FB harvests PII (personally identifiable info) from your freinds and can add more info to your account than you wish to surrender to them yourself?
While some of the privacy issues are overblown, there are some disturbing trends. One other fun one is "shadow profiles".
Supposedly FB is compiling the info they harvest from your freinds' contact lists and "creating" profiles for people who arent on FB yet.
For example, your coworker "Bob" isnt on facebook. You are, as well as a dozen or so mutual friends and acquaintances. Several of you have various bits of his contact info in your contact lists that FB has managed to import "for your convenience." You have his work email address and work number. Bill has his work email and home number (they are golf buddies). His wife has an account and has his work email address and home address in her contacts. His neighbor has his name, home and cell phone numbers in his contacts.
Using all of the above info, FB is able to piece together Bob's account before he even signs up. The disturbing part is this account is full of PII even though he never gave it to them. So even if he wanted to stay relatively private and not give them anything but his name and email address, too bad. His clueless freinds have already ratted him out.
I'm not sure what I find more disturbing, FB privacy, or how easy it is for privacy to be compromised through no fault of the individual. Even without signing up for an account, FB can harvest enough info about a person from acquaintances its scary. So the "just dont use FB" isnt really an option anymore. Sure without an account you will just have a detailed profile with no activity, but that profile still contains more PII than the average person puts up on FB intentionally.
I'm just waiting for the day they start allowing you to tag photos from your contacts, even if that contact isnt a FB user. Well, as FB will see it, "They arent a user YET."
I looked into it myself. After factoring the cost of an RV, spread over 10 years, its still cheaper to stay at a hotel.
At $3.50gal, and campsites reaching $50 per night, its far cheaper to stay at a midrange hotel. its not hard to find a decent hotel room for $80 in most locations.
However when most people fail to connect the dots and factor in the seemingly unrelated expenses, they think its cheaper.
At two of our locations we have Mitsubishi R2 heat pump systems that are capable of running both heat/cool modes simultaneously.
The beauty? The waste heat that is removed from my server room in the winter via cooling mode is exchanged within the system and makes the heat side more efficient, transferring that heat energy to the rest of the building.
So instead of paying for the electricity to turn it into bits and bytes, and then paying AGAIN for even MORE electricity to move that waste heat to the roof via the AC unit, and then even MORE electricity to heat my cube farm, I'm now able to move the waste heat to my cube farm directly, skipping the middle step. Not only do I skip the middle step, but I greatly reduce the amount of energy required in step 3.
LOVE IT!
(and our accountants love the lower utility bills of heat pumps vs gas fired heat)
Prior to the disaster I had heard of improved reactor designs that supposedly could not melt down. Anyone know if these designs are limited to the small scale versions (the size of a semi trailer) Toshiba has designed, or can they be scaled up?
But in the grand scheme of things, when Kraft gets taxed, so does Sargento, etc. resulting in an across the board price increase for ALL cheese. So you cant avoid it.
While I dont necessarily agree to tax BREAKS for corporations, simply increasing taxes on businesses is flawed logic.
This is a common misconception. Repeat after me: "Businesses dont pay taxes, consumers do." Taxes are just another cost of doing business that is simply passed along to the consumer in higher costs.
Raising taxes on a business is no different than their raw materials suppliers raising their prices; the increase is simply passed along in the form of higher costs to the end user.
For example a tax increase levied against Kraft foods would cause them to increase the price of cheese just as fast as the price of raw milk increasing. Both are hits to the bottom line that must be covered in order to stay in business and be profitable.
If you still believe that BUSINESSES actually pay taxes, you are a fool.
cryptanalyst has fuck all to do with checking written signatures. Human beings naturally sign it slightly differently each time they sign their name and autopen is just a fancy version of the "signature" stamps that you'll see in many offices.
Ever seen how the POTUS signs a bill? he does it in teeny, tiny peices, switching pens each time to give key supporters a souvenir so they can say " See this pen Timmy? When your grandpa was younger, he worked with the president on a bill. This pen was used to sign that bill into law."
So cryptography, handwriting/signature analysis goes out the window for this specific kind of signature.
I didnt think it mattered, until one day many years ago I uncovered my copy of Mechwarrior.
Not thinking anything of this then 10yo+ game, I dragged it out and threw it onto my thoroughly modern rig. Bear in mid this was last played on a 486, MAYBE an Pentium, and I was now throwing it onto a 2ghz Athlon XP rig (early P4 equivalent). I installed it and it seemed to go ok. I started the game, great!
lets stop and think back, shall we? Now if you recall playing, you would start the game, and there would be no enemies in sight. you would then start trudging across the field at a pace of about two steps per second. in about 90 seconds to 2 minutes, the first opponent would appear. after several minutes of guns and rockets, one of you would die. Not this time.
I started walking the mech, and it was more like a sprint... the mech was virtually RUNNING at about 4-6 steps per second and its barely controllable. next thing I know the other mechs are on top of me, and before I can get more than one shot off, a hail of rockets and guns and I am dead. The game literally lasted 20 seconds.
Apparently that particular title relied on the clock speed of the processor. the faster the processor, the faster the game would play. By attempting to run that game on a modern platform, I realized that there was no substitute for the original platform.
So yes, hang onto the hardware if you really want to game and get the original results.
You actually think they're trying to track you with your zip code? It's for the same damn purpose of the pumps. You're probably confusing the fuck out of your credit card company giving them 99501.
No, if it were actually used for verification then giving 99501 would cause the verification to fail. Because it's not failing, it's a safe bet that it's used for tracking - whether or not it's at the individual customer level is another story.
Correct. the gas pump zip codes are to prove ID and verify you are the authorized cardholder and arent trying to use a card you just found on the ground or stole from some old lady's purse. It is mostly used around here in bad neighborhoods. The POS request is for marketing and mailings.
while at a "pay at the pump" transaction I dont mind giving my zip to verify my ability to use the card, the zip outside of that type of transaction is bogus!. you have no right to it.
Now then my favorite trick is when a cashier asks for my zip during a face to face transaction where the info is strictly customer base tracking, I enjoy using zip code 99501. Yes, thats the zip for Anchorage, AK. I'm in Indiana. try to figure THAT out mister statistics man...
correct. they have no right to limit your free speech. Instead they should be exercising their rights as the right to hire/fire as they see fit.
Go ahead, badmouth your employer. its your right. It is probably also the right of said employer to take offense to that speech and decide to promote you to "customer" status.
\lives in an employment at will state. \\not sure if AL is also.
\for those a bit dense: we place the monolith after the fact to make it appear for a real-life "2001 a space odyssey" mission due to "leaks" in the space time continuum.
Microsoft does this too. After scratching my head over the past several weeks trying to figure out why I cant download M$ files worth crap half the time, this appears to be why.
ESPECIALLY with two man lift rated boxes, UPS is FAR worse than others.
we use UPS daily at my company to receive shipments because they are fastest from "Brown". Unfortunately, boxes of all sizes and shapes arrive in less than perfect condition, and several % of them arrive actually opened (and some missing product).
Fedex, not a single problem. (although we receive less than 5% of our shipments from them so its not a fair shake)
From our regular UPS driver: they use LOTS of temp help, and lots of automation. both are HELL on boxes as they get flipped and tossed around, and most times THROWN from place to place. (he tells me this as he is in his truck, standing/walking ON somebody else's boxes to reach some of our stuff)
Case in point:
We ordered a dozen new servers from dell. they arrived via fedex, (78lbs each) each in a box big enough for a 5' tall person to fit inside in the fetal position. each box had a convenient built in pallet made of cardboard for easy transport with rabbit jacks or fork trucks. Each arrived in pristine condition.
I shipped them out to my branch offices, and drove to meet them. They arrived in OK condition at each site between Nashville and Pensacola. I installed them, and placed the old servers (which were nearly identical in size, shape, etc) in the boxes and instructed our people to ship them back to my office.
as they started arriving, each and every last one was destroyed. luckilly most servers were still intact, and only one actually came OUT of the box when they split open, causing damage. the rest was all cosmetic.
the best we could determine is during the flips our boxes went through as they were "rolled" around by one guy instead of being lifted by two it ended up on its back. then at some point as it was laying upside down, some brain surgeon saw the pallet bottom and thought to himself, "hey, look! Handles!" Unfortunately the box was not designed that way, and as soon as you jerk on the "pallet", the whole box bottom comes off (I demonstrated on a brand new one that I hadnt shipped out yet). If you were lucky enough to be attempting to fling the box to its next spot, the server would come spilling out all over the warehouse floor.
so brown, you are cheap, but im not a fan.
\and dont get me started on the a**raping Brown charges for ebay shipping vs corporate customers. \\UPS/ebay/paypal wanted to charge me $120 to ship an 80lb box. \\\I shipped it using my company's account and reimbursed them for the $25 they were charged as a corp account. BS!!!
Thats not true. They charge about $30-80 per build to do it depending on how many you buy per month. As I recall it takes significant momentum to get them down to the $30 level. (a guaranteed 20 per month or more as I recall)
I know, I use Dell for my corporate PC purchases and we were interested in that. We chose to do the imaging in-house since we can do it in under 30 minutes on average.
And I agree. $1000 is steep. we pay $1300 for a moderately sized Latitude laptop with 3 year pro support and an extra brick. I cant imagine how he is getting to $1000 on a desktop without going crazy on processor/ram.
...I never got a dime from them being settled or tried.
Thats my point. In General terms:
Defendant:Loser because they pay tons of cash out. Plaintiffs:Loser in the sense that they dont usually get just compensation relative to the harm. Lawers: WIN WIN WIN!
Case in point:
I qualify as a participant in the Classmates suit. They conned me into signing up for a gold membership by lying to me about someone trying to contact me via their service. I was outright defrauded of $30 and so I now qualify for $2 off my next renewal. Not $2 cash, a renewal for a service I dont want!
If I had received a full refund plus minor punitive damages, or even a full refund alone I would consider myself a winner. But I dont consider getting an "award" of single digit percentages of my expense a win.
Thats the equivalent of "I sold your ipod and used it to buy crack, sorry. Here's $10 in coupons to a restaurant you dont like for your trouble."
There is an interesting phenomenon that I dont recall the name for. basically the reason you freak in a skyscraper but not in a plane is the fact that there is nothing in your view to "connect" you to the ground.
when you are in a skyscraper, your brain sees the line of the building to the ground, makes the connection and says "F***! I'm high up!".
In an aircraft, there isn nothing for your brain to connect the plane to the ground, so you are less prone to that freak out.
Point of fact: Im DEATHLY afraid of heights. I cant climb a 20' ladder without freaking out. Yet as a skydiving instructor for the past 8 years, I regularly fly (calmly) to altitude sitting on the floor of an airplane by an open cargo door as it climbs to altitude (often with my a** inches from the edge, and my leg dangling outside). from 5' to 14,000 feet I can look out the door calmly and marvel at the view. (but have trouble climbing a 150' firewatch tower in a nearby forest)
interesting question: what about he baggage in the cargo hold? wont that get in the way of the purty view?
my first 486 system I bought back in the early 90s came in two flavors: the SX version and the DX version.(For those that dont remember, the DX had a math coprocessor, the SX didnt.)
It was about a $50 difference in price between the two models, and so I bought the cheaper one.
One day I was skimming the manual looking for a motherboard jumper and found a cryptic note for "J12 1-2 SX/2-3 DX). On a whim I swapped the jumper.
Whadda ya know! suddenly my bios reported DX processor.
Apparently it was cheaper to build one box, then apply a case sticker/jumper setting to differentiate the two.
a TRUE punishment would be "According to our investigation you made exactly 4 million dollars pulling off this scam of billing people fraudulently. As punishment you owe us $4,010,000 in penalties, PLUS JAIL TIME."
"Attention consumers: Anyone who can produce proof they paid these yahoos please come forth with your cancelled checks, etc for a full refund."
now THAT would be a punishment.
Just for the record, that $10k/4M ratio isnt even a slap on the hand IMHO. Ladies and Germs, that penalty is a whopping 0.24% of the gross these idiots are accused of netting.
To put it in perspective, had a bank manager embezzled $50,000 of his customers' money for personal gain, this would be the equivalent of a $117 fine with no jail time.
Slashdot Mirror
OH MY GOD! You mean someone might just see a photo of my dog? STOP THE PRESSES, MY PRIVACY HAS BEEN RAPED.
The Facebook "threat" to privacy is overblown. I've got a Facebook account. I hardly use it, and don't really have much there. The pictures of me that ARE there are just fishing trip pictures posted by other people. Why the hell should I care who can see them?
So you dont care that FB harvests PII (personally identifiable info) from your freinds and can add more info to your account than you wish to surrender to them yourself?
While some of the privacy issues are overblown, there are some disturbing trends. One other fun one is "shadow profiles".
Supposedly FB is compiling the info they harvest from your freinds' contact lists and "creating" profiles for people who arent on FB yet.
For example, your coworker "Bob" isnt on facebook. You are, as well as a dozen or so mutual friends and acquaintances. Several of you have various bits of his contact info in your contact lists that FB has managed to import "for your convenience." You have his work email address and work number. Bill has his work email and home number (they are golf buddies). His wife has an account and has his work email address and home address in her contacts. His neighbor has his name, home and cell phone numbers in his contacts.
Using all of the above info, FB is able to piece together Bob's account before he even signs up. The disturbing part is this account is full of PII even though he never gave it to them. So even if he wanted to stay relatively private and not give them anything but his name and email address, too bad. His clueless freinds have already ratted him out.
I'm not sure what I find more disturbing, FB privacy, or how easy it is for privacy to be compromised through no fault of the individual. Even without signing up for an account, FB can harvest enough info about a person from acquaintances its scary. So the "just dont use FB" isnt really an option anymore. Sure without an account you will just have a detailed profile with no activity, but that profile still contains more PII than the average person puts up on FB intentionally.
I'm just waiting for the day they start allowing you to tag photos from your contacts, even if that contact isnt a FB user. Well, as FB will see it, "They arent a user YET."
I looked into it myself. After factoring the cost of an RV, spread over 10 years, its still cheaper to stay at a hotel.
At $3.50gal, and campsites reaching $50 per night, its far cheaper to stay at a midrange hotel. its not hard to find a decent hotel room for $80 in most locations.
However when most people fail to connect the dots and factor in the seemingly unrelated expenses, they think its cheaper.
Bullshit. No one actually uses a playbook.
actually you are wrong. Last month I had the pleasure of meeting one of the 5 in the world that do.
At two of our locations we have Mitsubishi R2 heat pump systems that are capable of running both heat/cool modes simultaneously.
The beauty? The waste heat that is removed from my server room in the winter via cooling mode is exchanged within the system and makes the heat side more efficient, transferring that heat energy to the rest of the building.
So instead of paying for the electricity to turn it into bits and bytes, and then paying AGAIN for even MORE electricity to move that waste heat to the roof via the AC unit, and then even MORE electricity to heat my cube farm, I'm now able to move the waste heat to my cube farm directly, skipping the middle step. Not only do I skip the middle step, but I greatly reduce the amount of energy required in step 3.
LOVE IT!
(and our accountants love the lower utility bills of heat pumps vs gas fired heat)
Prior to the disaster I had heard of improved reactor designs that supposedly could not melt down.
Anyone know if these designs are limited to the small scale versions (the size of a semi trailer) Toshiba has designed, or can they be scaled up?
But in the grand scheme of things, when Kraft gets taxed, so does Sargento, etc. resulting in an across the board price increase for ALL cheese. So you cant avoid it.
While I dont necessarily agree to tax BREAKS for corporations, simply increasing taxes on businesses is flawed logic.
This is a common misconception. Repeat after me: "Businesses dont pay taxes, consumers do." Taxes are just another cost of doing business that is simply passed along to the consumer in higher costs.
Raising taxes on a business is no different than their raw materials suppliers raising their prices; the increase is simply passed along in the form of higher costs to the end user.
For example a tax increase levied against Kraft foods would cause them to increase the price of cheese just as fast as the price of raw milk increasing. Both are hits to the bottom line that must be covered in order to stay in business and be profitable.
If you still believe that BUSINESSES actually pay taxes, you are a fool.
cryptanalyst has fuck all to do with checking written signatures.
Human beings naturally sign it slightly differently each time they sign their name and autopen is just a fancy version of the "signature" stamps that you'll see in many offices.
Ever seen how the POTUS signs a bill? he does it in teeny, tiny peices, switching pens each time to give key supporters a souvenir so they can say " See this pen Timmy? When your grandpa was younger, he worked with the president on a bill. This pen was used to sign that bill into law."
So cryptography, handwriting/signature analysis goes out the window for this specific kind of signature.
I didnt think it mattered, until one day many years ago I uncovered my copy of Mechwarrior.
Not thinking anything of this then 10yo+ game, I dragged it out and threw it onto my thoroughly modern rig. Bear in mid this was last played on a 486, MAYBE an Pentium, and I was now throwing it onto a 2ghz Athlon XP rig (early P4 equivalent). I installed it and it seemed to go ok. I started the game, great!
lets stop and think back, shall we? Now if you recall playing, you would start the game, and there would be no enemies in sight. you would then start trudging across the field at a pace of about two steps per second. in about 90 seconds to 2 minutes, the first opponent would appear. after several minutes of guns and rockets, one of you would die. Not this time.
I started walking the mech, and it was more like a sprint... the mech was virtually RUNNING at about 4-6 steps per second and its barely controllable. next thing I know the other mechs are on top of me, and before I can get more than one shot off, a hail of rockets and guns and I am dead. The game literally lasted 20 seconds.
Apparently that particular title relied on the clock speed of the processor. the faster the processor, the faster the game would play. By attempting to run that game on a modern platform, I realized that there was no substitute for the original platform.
So yes, hang onto the hardware if you really want to game and get the original results.
Why work to simplify a problem system when there is a better, simpler, more fair way to do so?
Just abolish the IRS, let us all have our full paychecks, and implement the FairTax!
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq
http://www.fairtax.org/
You actually think they're trying to track you with your zip code? It's for the same damn purpose of the pumps. You're probably confusing the fuck out of your credit card company giving them 99501.
No, if it were actually used for verification then giving 99501 would cause the verification to fail. Because it's not failing, it's a safe bet that it's used for tracking - whether or not it's at the individual customer level is another story.
Correct. the gas pump zip codes are to prove ID and verify you are the authorized cardholder and arent trying to use a card you just found on the ground or stole from some old lady's purse. It is mostly used around here in bad neighborhoods. The POS request is for marketing and mailings.
while at a "pay at the pump" transaction I dont mind giving my zip to verify my ability to use the card, the zip outside of that type of transaction is bogus!. you have no right to it.
Now then my favorite trick is when a cashier asks for my zip during a face to face transaction where the info is strictly customer base tracking, I enjoy using zip code 99501. Yes, thats the zip for Anchorage, AK. I'm in Indiana. try to figure THAT out mister statistics man...
correct. they have no right to limit your free speech. Instead they should be exercising their rights as the right to hire/fire as they see fit.
Go ahead, badmouth your employer. its your right. It is probably also the right of said employer to take offense to that speech and decide to promote you to "customer" status.
\lives in an employment at will state.
\\not sure if AL is also.
We just did at my company. Dell now sells an "N" model Latitude that is the same hardware as a standard model, but without the Microsoft SKUs.
Funny thing happened. the difference between the two quotes was less than $25. Miraculously, I was supposedly only paying $25 for the OS.
I call Shenanigans!
so yes, you CAN buy it without an OS, but they stick it to you big time.
Or maybe this is all just a plan along these lines:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/01/04/132622672/could-it-be-spooky-experiments-that-see-the-future
\for those a bit dense: we place the monolith after the fact to make it appear for a real-life "2001 a space odyssey" mission due to "leaks" in the space time continuum.
Microsoft does this too. After scratching my head over the past several weeks trying to figure out why I cant download M$ files worth crap half the time, this appears to be why.
"the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
I think that pretty much sums it up.
ESPECIALLY with two man lift rated boxes, UPS is FAR worse than others.
we use UPS daily at my company to receive shipments because they are fastest from "Brown". Unfortunately, boxes of all sizes and shapes arrive in less than perfect condition, and several % of them arrive actually opened (and some missing product).
Fedex, not a single problem. (although we receive less than 5% of our shipments from them so its not a fair shake)
From our regular UPS driver: they use LOTS of temp help, and lots of automation. both are HELL on boxes as they get flipped and tossed around, and most times THROWN from place to place. (he tells me this as he is in his truck, standing/walking ON somebody else's boxes to reach some of our stuff)
Case in point:
We ordered a dozen new servers from dell. they arrived via fedex, (78lbs each) each in a box big enough for a 5' tall person to fit inside in the fetal position. each box had a convenient built in pallet made of cardboard for easy transport with rabbit jacks or fork trucks. Each arrived in pristine condition.
I shipped them out to my branch offices, and drove to meet them. They arrived in OK condition at each site between Nashville and Pensacola. I installed them, and placed the old servers (which were nearly identical in size, shape, etc) in the boxes and instructed our people to ship them back to my office.
as they started arriving, each and every last one was destroyed. luckilly most servers were still intact, and only one actually came OUT of the box when they split open, causing damage. the rest was all cosmetic.
the best we could determine is during the flips our boxes went through as they were "rolled" around by one guy instead of being lifted by two it ended up on its back. then at some point as it was laying upside down, some brain surgeon saw the pallet bottom and thought to himself, "hey, look! Handles!" Unfortunately the box was not designed that way, and as soon as you jerk on the "pallet", the whole box bottom comes off (I demonstrated on a brand new one that I hadnt shipped out yet). If you were lucky enough to be attempting to fling the box to its next spot, the server would come spilling out all over the warehouse floor.
so brown, you are cheap, but im not a fan.
\and dont get me started on the a**raping Brown charges for ebay shipping vs corporate customers.
\\UPS/ebay/paypal wanted to charge me $120 to ship an 80lb box.
\\\I shipped it using my company's account and reimbursed them for the $25 they were charged as a corp account. BS!!!
ever hear the old saying "all is fair in love and war." ?
...and no extra charge for the service. ...
Thats not true. They charge about $30-80 per build to do it depending on how many you buy per month. As I recall it takes significant momentum to get them down to the $30 level. (a guaranteed 20 per month or more as I recall)
I know, I use Dell for my corporate PC purchases and we were interested in that. We chose to do the imaging in-house since we can do it in under 30 minutes on average.
And I agree. $1000 is steep. we pay $1300 for a moderately sized Latitude laptop with 3 year pro support and an extra brick. I cant imagine how he is getting to $1000 on a desktop without going crazy on processor/ram.
...I never got a dime from them being settled or tried.
Thats my point. In General terms:
Defendant:Loser because they pay tons of cash out.
Plaintiffs:Loser in the sense that they dont usually get just compensation relative to the harm.
Lawers: WIN WIN WIN!
Case in point:
I qualify as a participant in the Classmates suit. They conned me into signing up for a gold membership by lying to me about someone trying to contact me via their service. I was outright defrauded of $30 and so I now qualify for $2 off my next renewal. Not $2 cash, a renewal for a service I dont want!
If I had received a full refund plus minor punitive damages, or even a full refund alone I would consider myself a winner. But I dont consider getting an "award" of single digit percentages of my expense a win.
Thats the equivalent of "I sold your ipod and used it to buy crack, sorry. Here's $10 in coupons to a restaurant you dont like for your trouble."
the only winners in class action lawsuits are the lawyers.
Not necessarily.
your brain works in mysterious ways.
There is an interesting phenomenon that I dont recall the name for. basically the reason you freak in a skyscraper but not in a plane is the fact that there is nothing in your view to "connect" you to the ground.
when you are in a skyscraper, your brain sees the line of the building to the ground, makes the connection and says "F***! I'm high up!".
In an aircraft, there isn nothing for your brain to connect the plane to the ground, so you are less prone to that freak out.
Point of fact: Im DEATHLY afraid of heights. I cant climb a 20' ladder without freaking out. Yet as a skydiving instructor for the past 8 years, I regularly fly (calmly) to altitude sitting on the floor of an airplane by an open cargo door as it climbs to altitude (often with my a** inches from the edge, and my leg dangling outside). from 5' to 14,000 feet I can look out the door calmly and marvel at the view. (but have trouble climbing a 150' firewatch tower in a nearby forest)
interesting question: what about he baggage in the cargo hold? wont that get in the way of the purty view?
Packard Bell used to do something similar.
my first 486 system I bought back in the early 90s came in two flavors: the SX version and the DX version.(For those that dont remember, the DX had a math coprocessor, the SX didnt.)
It was about a $50 difference in price between the two models, and so I bought the cheaper one.
One day I was skimming the manual looking for a motherboard jumper and found a cryptic note for "J12 1-2 SX/2-3 DX). On a whim I swapped the jumper.
Whadda ya know! suddenly my bios reported DX processor.
Apparently it was cheaper to build one box, then apply a case sticker/jumper setting to differentiate the two.
makes perfect sense really.
sounds more like a shakedown than a punishment.
a TRUE punishment would be "According to our investigation you made exactly 4 million dollars pulling off this scam of billing people fraudulently. As punishment you owe us $4,010,000 in penalties, PLUS JAIL TIME."
"Attention consumers: Anyone who can produce proof they paid these yahoos please come forth with your cancelled checks, etc for a full refund."
now THAT would be a punishment.
Just for the record, that $10k/4M ratio isnt even a slap on the hand IMHO. Ladies and Germs, that penalty is a whopping 0.24% of the gross these idiots are accused of netting.
To put it in perspective, had a bank manager embezzled $50,000 of his customers' money for personal gain, this would be the equivalent of a $117 fine with no jail time.
thanks alot FTC. /sarcasm