I can't really think of a time where I've been undercharged on a cellular bill. Normally I just check the total to ensure it's consistently in the same ballpark.
However there have been plenty of times when a teller at a store, etc, has screwed up and undercharged me for something (scanned it in wrong, perhaps), given incorrect change (in my favor), or missed an item. When I catch it, I'm honest. Not just because it's the right thing to do, but also because I don't want the poor pleb handling the register to catch shit for coming up short.
With cellular bills, they seem to make them as difficult to catch errors as possible. So the chances of me catching sneaky little overs and unders is pretty low unless it makes a noticeable dent in the end-sum, but none I've seen have ever been in my favor.
C or C++ code *can* be portable, as you said. It depends on what you're doing with it. If it interacts with a windows-only library, it ain't gonna work on 'nix.
The same applies to Java though, after a fashion. I've seen plenty of modules that relied on windows or mac-only situations, such as a OS-specific directory path, etc.
ANY email source is a non-trusted source. I don't know how many times I've heard "well, yes I got the message not to open attachments, especially not cards, but *THIS* card came from my Aunt Betsy, and SHE would NEVER send me a virus"
Well no, Aunt Betsy probably wouldn't send you a virus, but the infection that was on her computer sniffing entries out of her address book certainly would. Oh, and those emails from billgates@microsoft.com probably aren't legit either, being that email sources are ridiculously simple to spoof...
I've definitely run across it once or twice. The first time was with Bell phone cards, which for some reason had issues dialing the "778" prefix (newer prefix in BC, Canada). It really sucked when I'd bought a few cards to keep in touch with my GF while out-of-town, only to find the damn cards didn't recognize her number.
The second time was with 1-8xx routing issues from the local Fido (Rogers) network. NO 800-type number would work, they'd always come up as busy. Other networks worked fine. This one cropped up twice in about 14 months, but I think they may have fixed it now.
Did it use his real name, or just "officer bubbles?" It seems to me that there's a pretty good gulf between declaring "Officer John Smith beats people" and drawing cartoons of "Officer Bubbles", foremost that it's not going to make an easy association between his actual name and the actions in question.
I haven't seen the videos in question (since they've for the most part been taken down), but as everyone still seems to refer to the dude as "officer bubble" I'd hazard a fair guess that quite a lot of the material probably isn't actually aimed at his name, and thus it might be pretty hard to prove libel/slander.
2.2 has been out for awhile. If your phone isn't firmware-locked, then you could probably update to 2.2 yourself, and there's probably an image online to do so. If like me (a sad Milestone owner), your phone is locked (motorola SUCKS), then you'll have to wait for your phones creator - in your case Samsung - to provide the update. Google working on 3.0 has nothing to do with Samsung, Motorola, or others being dicks about not releasing the updated 2.2, and a lot more with them not caring much about existing handsets as the release their new models...
It's often not just "forced arbitration", but "arbitration in state X"... so there's some expensive travel involved too. On top of that, the carrier is going to try and find an arbitrator who commonly favors its side, so you're pretty much screwed.
The good news: The moon has managed to absorb the impact of a large asteroid, thus saving the earth from impact The bad news: The moon is now in a decayed orbit, and will be impacting earth in 10... 9...
Prior to that, they had a similar issues with bad tracks on floppies, and I believe software CD's as well. It's not really a new concept, and besides other than DS carts I don't see much software actually being *distributed* on flash, or do they plan on locking the software itself to defects on a given machine?
I had to double-check that date, but no, I mean Tiberium Wars, which came out in 2007 (three years ago, as opposed to thirteen).
After being screwed by EA, I passed on either C&C4 or Red Alert 3. In fact, I generally avoid any EA games at all now due to the massive suckage in my previous experiences, but let me guess, C&C4 was much the same as C&C3 in terms of being buggy and disappointing?
"if you used the net 25 times in a month then it's probably not accidental, or there is something wrong with your phone."
Yes, there *IS* something wrong with the phone, it's *DESIGNED* to maximize hitting the damn internet button by accident. As per the GP: "cheaper non-smart phones have a prominent button for "marketplace" or some such WAP service?"
I've seen plenty of this here. If there's a D-pad, then the button is often in the middle, or the one closest to the number keys to allow for easy misdialing. Hell, I've had those phones before, and yes even if you can re-map buttons, that internet button is often not re-mappable.
It's *ALWAYS* in a place where it's easy to hit by accident, either when using other common functions, or by pocket-dialing, whatever. It's *NOT* there for the convenience of the customer, but for the profit of the carrier.
As an example, see this picture. On the local carriers, that down-button on the D-pad is going to be the internet button, because it's easiest to mash accidentally. On a phone like this it's even worse, because it'll be a button that easily pocket-dials.
What pisses me off is when my carrier (Fido) decided they'd be "helpful" by completing long distance calls. If I dial a call that's in another area (without using 1), it'll give a quick message saying essentially "this is a long distance call, stand by while we complete it properly for you." The message goes by fairly quickly, so if you're juggling your handset then between dialing and putting it back up to your ear, you may miss it. Similarly, the initialization time for some bluetooth devices may cause you to miss message. Since the new area-code in my province (778) can apply to a cellular here or 500km away, you can't trust those to indicate distance, either.
You know what, I'm not so f*cking stupid I can't redial "1" on my call. I don't need a sneaky "assist" from the phone company in racking up a long-distance bill. These companies need to allow customers to "opt-in" to retarded features like that, or - at the very least - allow them to opt-out of them, and to set a ceiling on their bills for overage.
Yet EA is still - overall - making buckloads of money. Many of the best shops have been bought out by them, trashed (as seems to be this case), put to cranking out rapid-fire shit, and then eventually canned.
Look at what happened to the C&C series. They ripped out some of the most fun parts, and the initial release of - for example - Tiberium Wars was a huge buggy piece of shit. I can't count how many times the thing de-synced and crashed during online play within the first 6 months of patch-cycles, not to mention the bugs that often left single-player missions somehow unfinishable.
It's all push push push to release a product, which means a shitty product, which ends up killing the once-good franchises they've bought out.
EA were also the ones to start pushing the locked-to-an-account model. Sadly, the competition has smell money like sharks smell blood in the water. So now we have other companies like Blizzard adopting the same shit.
Normally I don't mind, but I was a bit irritated I went down to another city (about 8-9h) to visit and pick up my GF. Along the way I stopped several times for gas. On the way back, I stopped again and my card was blocked.
Apparently going outside of my city and buying GAS along the way is enough to trip the pattern recognition, which is somewhat silly as my car's best is about 700-800/tank (45L) and filling up during a 700km (each way) trip is somewhat of a necessity... not to mention the pre-requisite bathroom breaks.
Uhhhhh, and/or they could move the device WITH the UPS. If they're really worried, plug it into a generator or a really big inverter during transport.
I've heard that they have UPS-type devices that have special prongs to connect to the plug too. Pull it partway, connect prongs, and then remove from power... still online.
Eh? We've got several thousand users, a working master/slave replication setup, and very few issues with our LDAP. Usually if something goes awry it's indicative of another problem that also has side-effects on LDAP....
Now all we need is a jabber server that isn't a huge PITA to setup for authentication etc etc.
Seriously, I got jabber to authenticate against an LDAP but it was a huge amount of hackery to do so. The thought of trying to add VOIP and/or H264 video capabilities into the mix is scary, much as I'd love to do so...
As several key prostitution laws were struck down recently. However, I doubt that they'd setup a station in space to become an overprice brothel. It's still readily available on Earth (and legal in various places), and a ticket to another country is likely to be a whole lot cheaper than a trip to space for the visible future.
That being said, I wish that they could get past the "put a station in low orbit" concept and get on to building something on the moon. Having a semi-stable land-mass would eliminate a lot of issues that would crop up, and the moon at least has *some* gravity (if only a fraction of Earth's). Perhaps from there, they could figure out a way to deal with the raw materials issues, start some factories, and thus have a much more convenient launch location than from within Earth's gravity-well.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't really think of a time where I've been undercharged on a cellular bill. Normally I just check the total to ensure it's consistently in the same ballpark.
However there have been plenty of times when a teller at a store, etc, has screwed up and undercharged me for something (scanned it in wrong, perhaps), given incorrect change (in my favor), or missed an item. When I catch it, I'm honest. Not just because it's the right thing to do, but also because I don't want the poor pleb handling the register to catch shit for coming up short.
With cellular bills, they seem to make them as difficult to catch errors as possible. So the chances of me catching sneaky little overs and unders is pretty low unless it makes a noticeable dent in the end-sum, but none I've seen have ever been in my favor.
C or C++ code *can* be portable, as you said. It depends on what you're doing with it. If it interacts with a windows-only library, it ain't gonna work on 'nix.
The same applies to Java though, after a fashion. I've seen plenty of modules that relied on windows or mac-only situations, such as a OS-specific directory path, etc.
This one's been fairly popular in our office, wonder why...
"I started by reasoning that anything I don't understand is easy to do"
Scott Adams says it like it is, without people realizing that there's often more truth than funny to the comics...
ANY email source is a non-trusted source. I don't know how many times I've heard "well, yes I got the message not to open attachments, especially not cards, but *THIS* card came from my Aunt Betsy, and SHE would NEVER send me a virus"
Well no, Aunt Betsy probably wouldn't send you a virus, but the infection that was on her computer sniffing entries out of her address book certainly would. Oh, and those emails from billgates@microsoft.com probably aren't legit either, being that email sources are ridiculously simple to spoof...
Ditto here on the motorola milestone, which moto kindly locked so I can't upgrade the base OS myself as it has a hash check (unlike the Droid).
Are there any 3rd-party updates for your MyTouch (HTC Magic elsewhere)?
I've definitely run across it once or twice. The first time was with Bell phone cards, which for some reason had issues dialing the "778" prefix (newer prefix in BC, Canada). It really sucked when I'd bought a few cards to keep in touch with my GF while out-of-town, only to find the damn cards didn't recognize her number.
The second time was with 1-8xx routing issues from the local Fido (Rogers) network. NO 800-type number would work, they'd always come up as busy. Other networks worked fine. This one cropped up twice in about 14 months, but I think they may have fixed it now.
Did it use his real name, or just "officer bubbles?"
It seems to me that there's a pretty good gulf between declaring "Officer John Smith beats people" and drawing cartoons of "Officer Bubbles", foremost that it's not going to make an easy association between his actual name and the actions in question.
I haven't seen the videos in question (since they've for the most part been taken down), but as everyone still seems to refer to the dude as "officer bubble" I'd hazard a fair guess that quite a lot of the material probably isn't actually aimed at his name, and thus it might be pretty hard to prove libel/slander.
2.2 has been out for awhile. If your phone isn't firmware-locked, then you could probably update to 2.2 yourself, and there's probably an image online to do so.
If like me (a sad Milestone owner), your phone is locked (motorola SUCKS), then you'll have to wait for your phones creator - in your case Samsung - to provide the update. Google working on 3.0 has nothing to do with Samsung, Motorola, or others being dicks about not releasing the updated 2.2, and a lot more with them not caring much about existing handsets as the release their new models...
Turn off the wifi for a month. DON'T tell anyone. If the headaches persist, it wasn't the wifi.
It's often not just "forced arbitration", but "arbitration in state X"... so there's some expensive travel involved too. On top of that, the carrier is going to try and find an arbitrator who commonly favors its side, so you're pretty much screwed.
The good news: The moon has managed to absorb the impact of a large asteroid, thus saving the earth from impact ... 9 ...
The bad news: The moon is now in a decayed orbit, and will be impacting earth in 10
Prior to that, they had a similar issues with bad tracks on floppies, and I believe software CD's as well.
It's not really a new concept, and besides other than DS carts I don't see much software actually being *distributed* on flash, or do they plan on locking the software itself to defects on a given machine?
I had to double-check that date, but no, I mean Tiberium Wars, which came out in 2007 (three years ago, as opposed to thirteen).
After being screwed by EA, I passed on either C&C4 or Red Alert 3. In fact, I generally avoid any EA games at all now due to the massive suckage in my previous experiences, but let me guess, C&C4 was much the same as C&C3 in terms of being buggy and disappointing?
"if you used the net 25 times in a month then it's probably not accidental, or there is something wrong with your phone."
Yes, there *IS* something wrong with the phone, it's *DESIGNED* to maximize hitting the damn internet button by accident. As per the GP:
"cheaper non-smart phones have a prominent button for "marketplace" or some such WAP service?"
I've seen plenty of this here. If there's a D-pad, then the button is often in the middle, or the one closest to the number keys to allow for easy misdialing. Hell, I've had those phones before, and yes even if you can re-map buttons, that internet button is often not re-mappable.
It's *ALWAYS* in a place where it's easy to hit by accident, either when using other common functions, or by pocket-dialing, whatever. It's *NOT* there for the convenience of the customer, but for the profit of the carrier.
As an example, see this picture. On the local carriers, that down-button on the D-pad is going to be the internet button, because it's easiest to mash accidentally. On a phone like this it's even worse, because it'll be a button that easily pocket-dials.
What pisses me off is when my carrier (Fido) decided they'd be "helpful" by completing long distance calls. If I dial a call that's in another area (without using 1), it'll give a quick message saying essentially "this is a long distance call, stand by while we complete it properly for you." The message goes by fairly quickly, so if you're juggling your handset then between dialing and putting it back up to your ear, you may miss it. Similarly, the initialization time for some bluetooth devices may cause you to miss message. Since the new area-code in my province (778) can apply to a cellular here or 500km away, you can't trust those to indicate distance, either.
You know what, I'm not so f*cking stupid I can't redial "1" on my call. I don't need a sneaky "assist" from the phone company in racking up a long-distance bill. These companies need to allow customers to "opt-in" to retarded features like that, or - at the very least - allow them to opt-out of them, and to set a ceiling on their bills for overage.
Yet EA is still - overall - making buckloads of money. Many of the best shops have been bought out by them, trashed (as seems to be this case), put to cranking out rapid-fire shit, and then eventually canned.
Look at what happened to the C&C series. They ripped out some of the most fun parts, and the initial release of - for example - Tiberium Wars was a huge buggy piece of shit. I can't count how many times the thing de-synced and crashed during online play within the first 6 months of patch-cycles, not to mention the bugs that often left single-player missions somehow unfinishable.
It's all push push push to release a product, which means a shitty product, which ends up killing the once-good franchises they've bought out.
EA were also the ones to start pushing the locked-to-an-account model. Sadly, the competition has smell money like sharks smell blood in the water. So now we have other companies like Blizzard adopting the same shit.
Normally I don't mind, but I was a bit irritated I went down to another city (about 8-9h) to visit and pick up my GF. Along the way I stopped several times for gas. On the way back, I stopped again and my card was blocked.
Apparently going outside of my city and buying GAS along the way is enough to trip the pattern recognition, which is somewhat silly as my car's best is about 700-800/tank (45L) and filling up during a 700km (each way) trip is somewhat of a necessity... not to mention the pre-requisite bathroom breaks.
Uhhhhh, and/or they could move the device WITH the UPS. If they're really worried, plug it into a generator or a really big inverter during transport.
I've heard that they have UPS-type devices that have special prongs to connect to the plug too. Pull it partway, connect prongs, and then remove from power... still online.
Eh? We've got several thousand users, a working master/slave replication setup, and very few issues with our LDAP. Usually if something goes awry it's indicative of another problem that also has side-effects on LDAP....
Sounds like your phone/player may have had some feature like "download album art" or something similar turned on?
...which thus explains why I couldn't find it. Thanks for the info.
It's a reference to pranks like this on SL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv6tr3SvmIY
or more particularly, this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RedLyae4b2s
Or a sad attempt to pump up the stock of Linden Labs. I haven't been able to find a listing/history, can anyone else confirm whether it jumped?
Now all we need is a jabber server that isn't a huge PITA to setup for authentication etc etc.
Seriously, I got jabber to authenticate against an LDAP but it was a huge amount of hackery to do so. The thought of trying to add VOIP and/or H264 video capabilities into the mix is scary, much as I'd love to do so...
As several key prostitution laws were struck down recently.
However, I doubt that they'd setup a station in space to become an overprice brothel. It's still readily available on Earth (and legal in various places), and a ticket to another country is likely to be a whole lot cheaper than a trip to space for the visible future.
That being said, I wish that they could get past the "put a station in low orbit" concept and get on to building something on the moon. Having a semi-stable land-mass would eliminate a lot of issues that would crop up, and the moon at least has *some* gravity (if only a fraction of Earth's). Perhaps from there, they could figure out a way to deal with the raw materials issues, start some factories, and thus have a much more convenient launch location than from within Earth's gravity-well.