No, the point here is obvious: slashdot nerds will bend over backwards to make anything about Apple fit their irrational hatred of Apple and the notion of some sort of offensive "walled garden". You are correct, however, in citing "cognitive dissonance", you've just applied it to the wrong target.
There's actually not much "hatred" here: Apple does make fine products, and most knowledgeable individuals can appreciate the design values that went into them. Actually, most of the "hatred" (rather a strong word, really, and it doesn't help you come across as reasonable) originates from Apple lovers that absolutely cannot stand criticism of their chosen ecosystem, especially when said criticism is valid. Furthermore, Apple does have a number of corporate policies which many of us find objectionable, and I know many Apple aficionados who are the first to agree with that, while simultaneously asking questions like "why does a phone need multitasking or cut & paste anyway?" Apple fans suffer from more than their fair share of cognitive dissonance, believe me. How it is that their brains don't split down the middle is beyond me.
Apple Computer does business in a way that many, many people want nothing to do with. Others find the Apple Way (or rather, the Jobs Way) irresistible. Either way, it's not hatred. Just preference. Me, I prefer Android for now, but if Google screws that up (as they have, let's face it, screwed up a lot of things along the way in spite of their successes) I may switch to another platform. Who knows, that might even be an iPhone.
I thought the point was - the more you abuse your customers the higher value they will ascribe to your services. Texbook cognitive dissonance, next you will have to insert your newscorp cd or something.
Which will, of course, be copy-protected, and probably install rootkit-protected malware to prevent you from accessing said site from anything but their app. Brilliant!
Sure you may be able to say technically the first home computer that could be called personal wasn't an IBM, but does anyone run 6502 MOSFET chips anymore?
What? I mean... what? I agree with itsdapead: if you lived through that period you were either asleep or in an alcoholic haze. The reality is this: IBM was responsible for foisting upon us the following: a fourth-rate "operating system" (and I use the term loosely, "broken Unix clone" might be a better description), a defective-by-design CPU, and last but not least, a drain-bamaged system architecture. I don't give them any points for that, especially because their engineers wanted to do it right (e.g., a 68000-based system, but management nixed the idea because they didn't want to be dependent upon a potential competitor.) IBM's "get it to market now" attitude, and their unfortunate success, left us with a legacy of technological inadequacy which we're still dealing with today.
IBM did do some things right, things that Apple, Commodore and the rest simply failed to do at the time, and which ultimately cost them the market. The Selectric-style keyboard, for example, was a big hit with business users, as was their fairly high resolution Monochrome Display. It made the system look and work much like the mainframe terminals that business users were already familiar with. Additionally, by the time of the official unveiling they had already paid to have all the major Apple ][ business applications of the time ported to their new system (BP Accounting, Peachtree, Wordstar, etc.) so that corporate users could make use of it right away. Some of those ports were pretty lame (blatantly obvious hacks of the original Applesoft BASIC to IBM BASIC) but they were there and they worked. Remember, at that time the Apple ][ was heavily used in business as well as personal applications, so it's incorrect of you to even begin to claim that IBM invented the personal computer. IBM merely capitalized on existing market conditions, and the abject failure the incumbent computer makers to take even a few simple steps to capture the business market. Apple had a commanding lead... and they blew it.
By way of comparison, look at Commodore's much later ads for their 68000-based Amiga computer: "ONLY AMIGA MAKES IT POSSIBLE!" Oh, really? What does it make possible? You couldn't even be bothered to line up some of the major applications already out there and port them to your new platform. The Amiga, at the starting gate, was nothing more than a high-tech demo. IBM, on the other hand, made certain that their new system was useful from the get-go. That was brilliant.
I was a contract programmer then, and had already developed a number of fairly sophisticated, networked industrial process control, monitoring and accounting applications on Apple ][ equipment. Mostly I used the Corvus OmniNet networking and storage products: they worked well for what they were. I even wrote a terminal emulator so that Apple systems could be used on IBM and Burroughs mainfraimes. So IBM was definitely not first, not by a long shot. Remember, at the time, for many people the magic letters I B M were synonymous with computing, and when it came to business sales (which is what IBM was angling for... notice there weren't many games in their original software offering) the choice between Apple and IBM became a no-brainer. Apple eventually tried to recoup some of those losses with the Apple///, but it was a seriously flawed product launch, a seriously flawed product, and it failed miserably. Too little, far too late. But the Apple ][ still beat IBM to the punch by several years.
Which isn't surprising: remember, the entire IBM Personal Computer project was in the nature of an experiment for IBM, who was still primarily a manufacturer of big iron back then. That their newfangled "personal computer" became as wildly successful as
The Justice Department shows no sign of rethinking its campaign to punish unauthorized disclosures to the news media,
I can't read the article as it seems to require some sort of login but this case isn't about punishing unauthorized disclosures TO the news media. It's about punishing unauthorized reporting of information BY the news media. Unless you think that Wikileaks isn't a medium for news, which it clearly is. Possibly the scariest element of this campaign is attempts to establish some news media as in some sense official and free and others as not.
Kinda like Animal Farm: All press are free (but some are more free than others.)
It's not just that, people with rich parents rarely ever have to do a large number of chores around the house and whatnot, so they have a lot more spare time. Most rich kids squander that gift, this kid didn't. Man what I wouldn't give to have all that time I spent mowing the lawn, washing dishes, cleaning, doing laundry etc. back when I was a kid.....
You'd only have spent the time enjoying yourself, which is no great life lesson to teach a child. You were better off learning that adult life is a combination of boredom and pointless hard work at a young age.
I bet you're just loads of fun at parties. Not that I disagree with you, exactly
Why would my electric company overcharge me and say that they won't give my money back?
You're far too trusting, or maybe you've just been lucky. Tell you what, I'll give you a few examples of why I'm a little bit gun shy when dealing with any kind of direct access to my accounts. Remember, possession is nine-tenths of the law, and once your account has been drained, even by mistake, it's not necessarily a simple matter to get it back. It really is not.
I once had a cell phone carrier (who shall rename nameless, but have the words "One" and "Cellular" in their name) that charged me over $3,000 in one day for calls to Moscow and the Siberian Republic. At least, that's what it said on the bill. They even called me the next day to let me know what had happened, agreed that my phone must have been cloned multiple times to have racked up such a bill... and then refused to take the charges off. They had sucked all that money out of my account and told me that "I was responsible for them, since the system wouldn't let anyone else use my account." Well, as a software engineer with some familiarity with that technology, I knew that was a crock and told them so. Didn't matter: I had to get a lawyer involved in order to get even part of it back, and after a year I still "owed" them some five hundred bucks, which I paid so they'd stop reporting me as delinquent. Fucked up my credit, outright stole three grand, and thoroughly pissed me off in the process.
Then I had a credit card provider where I had several grand worth of car rental charges appear on my bill one day, from a company I had never used before, ever. They were all from one particular car rental company, dozens and dozens of charges for the exact same amount, from several different facilities ranging from California to Florida. Naturally I called up my credit card issuer, who at first denied there was a problem until I shouted at the Indian woman on the phone and said, "For God's sake, LOOK!" At that point, she said, "Oh my goodness sir, let me put you on to our fraud department." Thank you. Now, the gentlemen in the fraud department handled the affair very professionally, immediately wrote off all the charges, and apologized for what was really the car rental outfit's error. Although, you know, with all the computer power these companies have at their disposal, they couldn't figure out that something totally unreasonable was going on?
The story doesn't end there. A few months later, I found all the charges back on my bill. All of them. This was the day after I received a letter explaining that, because I'd activated my card at my home address in Iowa (no, I don't live in Iowa), their investigation had concluded that I had, in fact, rented dozens of cars at the same time in different States on the same day. And now my card is over limit and they charged me a few hundred dollars in fees there as well. I mean, what the Hell? So I called back again, had another investigation opened, and they eventually decided to reverse the charges. Again.
And it's not over yet. A few weeks after that, I start seeing charge reversals from the car rental company. Dozens of them. So now I have a few thousand dollars of somebody else's money as a credit on my card.
Here's another one. Where I used to live, I again had thousands of dollars of long distance charges magically appear, this time on my home phone bill. All of them were to Mexico City, and some other town in Mexico that I'd never heard of. This was through SBC at the time (never again. Never, ever again) and I was told that I should be more careful with my long distance usage? Again... WTF?. I had to talk to a supervisor and threaten legal action to get a tech to come out to my house... sure enough, he found that one of my neighbors had tapped into my line and was getting free long distance. I hope they charged his happy l
Sounds great in theory but having been bitten twice now by companies incorrectly double or treble billing me I no longer allow anyone to automatically debit from my account. Much safer to log on to a suppliers payment portal every month and manually make a payment using my debit card.
Still not very safe. If you're going to pay a bill from your personal account, at least here in the U.S., don't do it using an ACH debit. Log on to your bank's site and have the bank send the money. The danger in the U.S. system is that once a direct debit has been accepted from a given payee, it will always be. That's dangerous, and not just from criminal activity. As you say, mistakes get made. It's a lot harder for a mistake like that to happen if you decide how much money to send from your account, rather than someone else deciding how much to take!
I do have a debit card that I use for some things, but it's attached to a separate checking account that is only used for that purpose. I move funds from my primary account to that one as needed, effectively double-buffering my transactions. Even if somebody manages to clean out the debit-card account, they're not going to get much.
I used it today. It wasn't that bad, but I didn't really see the need to change from the previous interface.
Yeah. Haven't decided if I like it better or not (I know enough to play with something for a while until I've figured out what's good and bad about it) but I wasn't unhappy with the old one. The new side-scrolling feature looks nice, but frankly isn't all that usable. I wonder if they actually got much end-user input before they rolled it out.
The bandwidth usage has exploded on our network, and the two biggest culprits are Netflix and MLB.TV. We are considering requiring users who are detected using these services to have to subscribe to the highest service tier, or have those services blocked.
So, when you hear the words "net neutrality" do you immediately cover your ears and go "nyah nyah nah nah nah I can't Hear YOU!" at the top of your lungs, or do you simply catch fire and disintegrate like the vampires in the Blade movies? It's a serious question: inquiring minds want to know.
Remind me never, ever to order services from your company. Under any conditions. Whatsoever. Two things you should understand: a. sometimes you have to spend money to make money and b. the overriding need to "improve shareholder value at all costs" will not make a good defense when we come for you.
Because, of course, the people involved in this debacle didn't think they were doing anything illegal either.
Apparently not. So, that being the case, I have to wonder what else these people (and those like them at other schools) have been doing that isn't quite legal. It would not surprise me, given the level of arrogance exhibited in this case, that we're only seeing the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
It would be enough to make me want to home-school my kids, if I had any. Kids, that is.
It's beautiful. Evil, but beautiful and elegant. But about the most evil thing one can do.
I personally consider it more evil than mass-murder. Because those manipulated people in essence stop being an independent entity, but become part of you. Like a possessed zombie, dead, yet walking the earth and talking your views.
At least the dead have their peace.
So we've already _had_ a zombie invasion? Shit.
And in order to prevent the zombie apocalypse, we should have just killed all the IP lobbyists? Cool.
You don't have to kill them. Just don't let them bite you, and for God's sake don't let them reproduce.
That's why we sent you criminal lot there a few hundred years ago - you weren't expecting an easy ride were you? We had to dump you somewhere with the greatest proportion per capita of deadly creatures!
Back home here in England, about the deadliest animal we have here would be an overwieght blind cow that accidentally trod on you if you feel asleep in its field.
Aren't most Australians descended from the guards, not the prisoners?
You provide inexpensive plentiful electricity free of emissions and you've just put the world's most profitable companies (The Oil Industry) on notice.
Not at all. The reality is that petroleum is far too useful and valuable a substance to be burned for power. That's a waste for which future generations will revile us. Fact is, there will still be plenty of uses for oil even after the last internal combustion engine is melted down for scrap.
Funny how people marvel if it's the US but run in fear if it's China. Both have terrible track records when it comes to human rights.
Funny how people keep comparing the United States and China (or more explicitly, the United States Federal Government with the Peoples Republic of China, which isn't exactly a Republic.) Usually it's people who haven't spent any time in either country, and know nothing about either culture. The reason is pretty obvious: it's an attempt to tear down the U.S. in people's minds by associating it with the world's largest totalitarian state, and by definition indicates that the individual making the claim knows very well that China's track record is far worse. Otherwise, the claim would be on the order of "Funny how people marvel if it's China but run in fear if it's the U.S." Trial lawyers use the same trick: mention the defendant in the same breath as the accused, try to take the defendant down a notch or two. It's more than a little sleazy, but on small-minded people it is often effective. Besides, what do human rights have to do with this? At best, we're talking simple espionage (which I would certainly hope that we are just as guilty of doing to them), and at worst, acts of war.
However, I agree with you about this particular supercomputer. Like most such states, the Chinese government is very concerned about world opinion (because most of the world doesn't take kindly to (ahem!) "authoritarian" governments.) Like the Soviet Union before it, China's leaders want to show off their technological prowess, demonstrate their superiority to the West. They should be careful about doing that, however. Russia touched off the Space Race by launching Sputnik, so sometimes there are unintended consequences to such posturing. Hell, U.S. monitoring of Sputnik's transmissions was a source of inspiration for what ultimately became the Global Positioning System. Fact is, it can be risky to galvanize your enemy into taking action with a PR stunt: that's especially true with a country like the U.S. when the people get fired up about something: government officials often have to respond, if nothing else to keep their jobs. It's not exactly a rational way to handle things, but that is often how it works.
The difference here is that a lot of us could implicitly grasp how important control over near-space was to our security, and supported space development at the time. Today, not so much: I doubt that many of my fellow Americans give a damn about supercomputers, or would even have the slightest idea of their value, and what can be accomplished with them. And I'd say you're also right that this probably not China's most powerful machine: they'd be fools to let us know their true capabilities in this regard.
Nor are are the U.S.-based supercomputing systems that we know about anywhere near the real top-of-the-line: nobody really knows what the NSA has at its disposal, for example. But I can pretty much guarantee that they aren't toys.
Just as much as the public has grown to distrust the police, the police as well have grown to distrust the public. Everyone is a potential enemy
The next generation of police are going have to learn to see cameras as a fact of life, and behave as if a grainy vision of everything they do could see the inside of a courtroom. Usually cameras help the police. Sometimes they raise inconvenient questions.
Have to wonder how cops in England feel about all the cameras over there. And you're right. cops here in the U.S. had better get used to being on camera, and they should forget about the guy with the cell phone. Once surveillance technology becomes truly ubiquitous, the cops won't have any more choice about being recorded than we do. What was the statistic I read recently... the average American is on-camera at least three times a day, maybe more in some metropolitan areas?
I also read recently that one big city (L.A., maybe, I forget) decided to shut down its camera network although not, in my opinion for the right reasons. It wasn't anything to do with civil liberties, ethics, morality, surveillance state issues, right or wrong... it was that the camera system was costing four million a year to operate, and was only raking in three and a half in ticket revenue.
Some have. But it's not a national law: It's state-by-state. Some states have even passed legislation explicitly allowing recording of the police. (I think in other cases the state courts have smacked down the police, and no one's pressed it further.)
Massachusetts hasn't. So it's being an issue there, and because of the way the case was brought up it can be attacked on Constitutional grounds.
I don't know about this particular issue with regards to cops in my State, but as I've mentioned here on Slashdot before, the police here are immune from any consequences to false arrest, among other things. You can't even take them to court if they work you over and it comes out later that they got the wrong person. The reasoning used to pass that law was, I understand, in the category of "well, the police need to be free to do their jobs." Why that means they have to be held unaccountable for actions taken while on that job is beyond me.
Yes, this would mean a lot of boring days in congress
Nah. They'd just pass an "automatic sunrise" bill that would renew all laws about to expire regardless of content, and they wouldn't give that law an expiration date. Remember, these people are weasels, and the reason that you're even talking about these things is because you (quote correctly) don't trust them.
Interesting that you should mention that, given how the Commerce Clause has been contorted, stretched, twisted and carried far beyond the Founder's intent.
Slashdot Mirror
For the forseable future.
I think "forceable future" pretty much describes Apple's approach to the iPhone and its customer base.
No, the point here is obvious: slashdot nerds will bend over backwards to make anything about Apple fit their irrational hatred of Apple and the notion of some sort of offensive "walled garden". You are correct, however, in citing "cognitive dissonance", you've just applied it to the wrong target.
There's actually not much "hatred" here: Apple does make fine products, and most knowledgeable individuals can appreciate the design values that went into them. Actually, most of the "hatred" (rather a strong word, really, and it doesn't help you come across as reasonable) originates from Apple lovers that absolutely cannot stand criticism of their chosen ecosystem, especially when said criticism is valid. Furthermore, Apple does have a number of corporate policies which many of us find objectionable, and I know many Apple aficionados who are the first to agree with that, while simultaneously asking questions like "why does a phone need multitasking or cut & paste anyway?" Apple fans suffer from more than their fair share of cognitive dissonance, believe me. How it is that their brains don't split down the middle is beyond me.
Apple Computer does business in a way that many, many people want nothing to do with. Others find the Apple Way (or rather, the Jobs Way) irresistible. Either way, it's not hatred. Just preference. Me, I prefer Android for now, but if Google screws that up (as they have, let's face it, screwed up a lot of things along the way in spite of their successes) I may switch to another platform. Who knows, that might even be an iPhone.
But I wouldn't count on it.
I thought the point was - the more you abuse your customers the higher value they will ascribe to your services. Texbook cognitive dissonance, next you will have to insert your newscorp cd or something.
Which will, of course, be copy-protected, and probably install rootkit-protected malware to prevent you from accessing said site from anything but their app. Brilliant!
Sure you may be able to say technically the first home computer that could be called personal wasn't an IBM, but does anyone run 6502 MOSFET chips anymore?
What? I mean ... what? I agree with itsdapead: if you lived through that period you were either asleep or in an alcoholic haze. The reality is this: IBM was responsible for foisting upon us the following: a fourth-rate "operating system" (and I use the term loosely, "broken Unix clone" might be a better description), a defective-by-design CPU, and last but not least, a drain-bamaged system architecture. I don't give them any points for that, especially because their engineers wanted to do it right (e.g., a 68000-based system, but management nixed the idea because they didn't want to be dependent upon a potential competitor.) IBM's "get it to market now" attitude, and their unfortunate success, left us with a legacy of technological inadequacy which we're still dealing with today.
... and they blew it.
... notice there weren't many games in their original software offering) the choice between Apple and IBM became a no-brainer. Apple eventually tried to recoup some of those losses with the Apple ///, but it was a seriously flawed product launch, a seriously flawed product, and it failed miserably. Too little, far too late. But the Apple ][ still beat IBM to the punch by several years.
IBM did do some things right, things that Apple, Commodore and the rest simply failed to do at the time, and which ultimately cost them the market. The Selectric-style keyboard, for example, was a big hit with business users, as was their fairly high resolution Monochrome Display. It made the system look and work much like the mainframe terminals that business users were already familiar with. Additionally, by the time of the official unveiling they had already paid to have all the major Apple ][ business applications of the time ported to their new system (BP Accounting, Peachtree, Wordstar, etc.) so that corporate users could make use of it right away. Some of those ports were pretty lame (blatantly obvious hacks of the original Applesoft BASIC to IBM BASIC) but they were there and they worked. Remember, at that time the Apple ][ was heavily used in business as well as personal applications, so it's incorrect of you to even begin to claim that IBM invented the personal computer. IBM merely capitalized on existing market conditions, and the abject failure the incumbent computer makers to take even a few simple steps to capture the business market. Apple had a commanding lead
By way of comparison, look at Commodore's much later ads for their 68000-based Amiga computer: "ONLY AMIGA MAKES IT POSSIBLE!" Oh, really? What does it make possible? You couldn't even be bothered to line up some of the major applications already out there and port them to your new platform. The Amiga, at the starting gate, was nothing more than a high-tech demo. IBM, on the other hand, made certain that their new system was useful from the get-go. That was brilliant.
I was a contract programmer then, and had already developed a number of fairly sophisticated, networked industrial process control, monitoring and accounting applications on Apple ][ equipment. Mostly I used the Corvus OmniNet networking and storage products: they worked well for what they were. I even wrote a terminal emulator so that Apple systems could be used on IBM and Burroughs mainfraimes. So IBM was definitely not first, not by a long shot. Remember, at the time, for many people the magic letters I B M were synonymous with computing, and when it came to business sales (which is what IBM was angling for
Which isn't surprising: remember, the entire IBM Personal Computer project was in the nature of an experiment for IBM, who was still primarily a manufacturer of big iron back then. That their newfangled "personal computer" became as wildly successful as
The Justice Department shows no sign of rethinking its campaign to punish unauthorized disclosures to the news media,
I can't read the article as it seems to require some sort of login but this case isn't about punishing unauthorized disclosures TO the news media. It's about punishing unauthorized reporting of information BY the news media. Unless you think that Wikileaks isn't a medium for news, which it clearly is. Possibly the scariest element of this campaign is attempts to establish some news media as in some sense official and free and others as not.
Kinda like Animal Farm: All press are free (but some are more free than others.)
It's not just that, people with rich parents rarely ever have to do a large number of chores around the house and whatnot, so they have a lot more spare time. Most rich kids squander that gift, this kid didn't. Man what I wouldn't give to have all that time I spent mowing the lawn, washing dishes, cleaning, doing laundry etc. back when I was a kid.....
You'd only have spent the time enjoying yourself, which is no great life lesson to teach a child. You were better off learning that adult life is a combination of boredom and pointless hard work at a young age.
I bet you're just loads of fun at parties. Not that I disagree with you, exactly
Why would my electric company overcharge me and say that they won't give my money back?
You're far too trusting, or maybe you've just been lucky. Tell you what, I'll give you a few examples of why I'm a little bit gun shy when dealing with any kind of direct access to my accounts. Remember, possession is nine-tenths of the law, and once your account has been drained, even by mistake, it's not necessarily a simple matter to get it back. It really is not.
... and then refused to take the charges off. They had sucked all that money out of my account and told me that "I was responsible for them, since the system wouldn't let anyone else use my account." Well, as a software engineer with some familiarity with that technology, I knew that was a crock and told them so. Didn't matter: I had to get a lawyer involved in order to get even part of it back, and after a year I still "owed" them some five hundred bucks, which I paid so they'd stop reporting me as delinquent. Fucked up my credit, outright stole three grand, and thoroughly pissed me off in the process.
... WTF?. I had to talk to a supervisor and threaten legal action to get a tech to come out to my house ... sure enough, he found that one of my neighbors had tapped into my line and was getting free long distance. I hope they charged his happy l
I once had a cell phone carrier (who shall rename nameless, but have the words "One" and "Cellular" in their name) that charged me over $3,000 in one day for calls to Moscow and the Siberian Republic. At least, that's what it said on the bill. They even called me the next day to let me know what had happened, agreed that my phone must have been cloned multiple times to have racked up such a bill
Then I had a credit card provider where I had several grand worth of car rental charges appear on my bill one day, from a company I had never used before, ever. They were all from one particular car rental company, dozens and dozens of charges for the exact same amount, from several different facilities ranging from California to Florida. Naturally I called up my credit card issuer, who at first denied there was a problem until I shouted at the Indian woman on the phone and said, "For God's sake, LOOK!" At that point, she said, "Oh my goodness sir, let me put you on to our fraud department." Thank you. Now, the gentlemen in the fraud department handled the affair very professionally, immediately wrote off all the charges, and apologized for what was really the car rental outfit's error. Although, you know, with all the computer power these companies have at their disposal, they couldn't figure out that something totally unreasonable was going on?
The story doesn't end there. A few months later, I found all the charges back on my bill. All of them. This was the day after I received a letter explaining that, because I'd activated my card at my home address in Iowa (no, I don't live in Iowa), their investigation had concluded that I had, in fact, rented dozens of cars at the same time in different States on the same day. And now my card is over limit and they charged me a few hundred dollars in fees there as well. I mean, what the Hell? So I called back again, had another investigation opened, and they eventually decided to reverse the charges. Again.
And it's not over yet. A few weeks after that, I start seeing charge reversals from the car rental company. Dozens of them. So now I have a few thousand dollars of somebody else's money as a credit on my card.
Here's another one. Where I used to live, I again had thousands of dollars of long distance charges magically appear, this time on my home phone bill. All of them were to Mexico City, and some other town in Mexico that I'd never heard of. This was through SBC at the time (never again. Never, ever again) and I was told that I should be more careful with my long distance usage? Again
I am the one with the money.
No, you really aren't.
He isn't? The why do big corporations spend so much of their money on advertising in an effort to get it away from him?
Sounds great in theory but having been bitten twice now by companies incorrectly double or treble billing me I no longer allow anyone to automatically debit from my account. Much safer to log on to a suppliers payment portal every month and manually make a payment using my debit card.
Still not very safe. If you're going to pay a bill from your personal account, at least here in the U.S., don't do it using an ACH debit. Log on to your bank's site and have the bank send the money. The danger in the U.S. system is that once a direct debit has been accepted from a given payee, it will always be. That's dangerous, and not just from criminal activity. As you say, mistakes get made. It's a lot harder for a mistake like that to happen if you decide how much money to send from your account, rather than someone else deciding how much to take!
I do have a debit card that I use for some things, but it's attached to a separate checking account that is only used for that purpose. I move funds from my primary account to that one as needed, effectively double-buffering my transactions. Even if somebody manages to clean out the debit-card account, they're not going to get much.
I used it today. It wasn't that bad, but I didn't really see the need to change from the previous interface.
Yeah. Haven't decided if I like it better or not (I know enough to play with something for a while until I've figured out what's good and bad about it) but I wasn't unhappy with the old one. The new side-scrolling feature looks nice, but frankly isn't all that usable. I wonder if they actually got much end-user input before they rolled it out.
The bandwidth usage has exploded on our network, and the two biggest culprits are Netflix and MLB.TV. We are considering requiring users who are detected using these services to have to subscribe to the highest service tier, or have those services blocked.
So, when you hear the words "net neutrality" do you immediately cover your ears and go "nyah nyah nah nah nah I can't Hear YOU!" at the top of your lungs, or do you simply catch fire and disintegrate like the vampires in the Blade movies? It's a serious question: inquiring minds want to know.
Remind me never, ever to order services from your company. Under any conditions. Whatsoever. Two things you should understand: a. sometimes you have to spend money to make money and b. the overriding need to "improve shareholder value at all costs" will not make a good defense when we come for you.
Because, of course, the people involved in this debacle didn't think they were doing anything illegal either.
Apparently not. So, that being the case, I have to wonder what else these people (and those like them at other schools) have been doing that isn't quite legal. It would not surprise me, given the level of arrogance exhibited in this case, that we're only seeing the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
It would be enough to make me want to home-school my kids, if I had any. Kids, that is.
It's beautiful. Evil, but beautiful and elegant. But about the most evil thing one can do. I personally consider it more evil than mass-murder. Because those manipulated people in essence stop being an independent entity, but become part of you. Like a possessed zombie, dead, yet walking the earth and talking your views. At least the dead have their peace.
So we've already _had_ a zombie invasion? Shit.
And in order to prevent the zombie apocalypse, we should have just killed all the IP lobbyists? Cool.
You don't have to kill them. Just don't let them bite you, and for God's sake don't let them reproduce.
This isn't incompetence, it's sickening greed.
It is a physical pathology of which greed, amongst other things, including criminal behavior, is a symptom.
Hypothetically speaking, do you think involuntary sterilization is too harsh? With or without anesthesia -- I'm not picky.
They should be told that they're the lucky winner of a Darwin Award.
The self-interested scumbags who perpetrate this shit and the governments that not only allow but support this should both be fucking shamed.
It's hard to make a sociopath ashamed of anything. What you can do is put them in jail when they start to cause too much damage.
I'm sure he's not depositing the check from the banking industry in an American bank account, so it shouldn't be a worry for him.
Well, hopefully that bank's security won't have holes in it like Swiss cheese ...
Not to ask the judge and jury to fill in the blanks behind closed doors.
Correct. Which is why I said, "either nobody asked the experts ..."
That's why we sent you criminal lot there a few hundred years ago - you weren't expecting an easy ride were you? We had to dump you somewhere with the greatest proportion per capita of deadly creatures!
Back home here in England, about the deadliest animal we have here would be an overwieght blind cow that accidentally trod on you if you feel asleep in its field.
Aren't most Australians descended from the guards, not the prisoners?
You provide inexpensive plentiful electricity free of emissions and you've just put the world's most profitable companies (The Oil Industry) on notice.
Not at all. The reality is that petroleum is far too useful and valuable a substance to be burned for power. That's a waste for which future generations will revile us. Fact is, there will still be plenty of uses for oil even after the last internal combustion engine is melted down for scrap.
there is no way they would come close to optimal resource allocation.
It's called "central planning" and it didn't work for the Soviets and it didn't work for the PRC. It won't work for us either.
Funny how people marvel if it's the US but run in fear if it's China. Both have terrible track records when it comes to human rights.
Funny how people keep comparing the United States and China (or more explicitly, the United States Federal Government with the Peoples Republic of China, which isn't exactly a Republic.) Usually it's people who haven't spent any time in either country, and know nothing about either culture. The reason is pretty obvious: it's an attempt to tear down the U.S. in people's minds by associating it with the world's largest totalitarian state, and by definition indicates that the individual making the claim knows very well that China's track record is far worse. Otherwise, the claim would be on the order of "Funny how people marvel if it's China but run in fear if it's the U.S." Trial lawyers use the same trick: mention the defendant in the same breath as the accused, try to take the defendant down a notch or two. It's more than a little sleazy, but on small-minded people it is often effective. Besides, what do human rights have to do with this? At best, we're talking simple espionage (which I would certainly hope that we are just as guilty of doing to them), and at worst, acts of war.
However, I agree with you about this particular supercomputer. Like most such states, the Chinese government is very concerned about world opinion (because most of the world doesn't take kindly to (ahem!) "authoritarian" governments.) Like the Soviet Union before it, China's leaders want to show off their technological prowess, demonstrate their superiority to the West. They should be careful about doing that, however. Russia touched off the Space Race by launching Sputnik, so sometimes there are unintended consequences to such posturing. Hell, U.S. monitoring of Sputnik's transmissions was a source of inspiration for what ultimately became the Global Positioning System. Fact is, it can be risky to galvanize your enemy into taking action with a PR stunt: that's especially true with a country like the U.S. when the people get fired up about something: government officials often have to respond, if nothing else to keep their jobs. It's not exactly a rational way to handle things, but that is often how it works.
The difference here is that a lot of us could implicitly grasp how important control over near-space was to our security, and supported space development at the time. Today, not so much: I doubt that many of my fellow Americans give a damn about supercomputers, or would even have the slightest idea of their value, and what can be accomplished with them. And I'd say you're also right that this probably not China's most powerful machine: they'd be fools to let us know their true capabilities in this regard.
Nor are are the U.S.-based supercomputing systems that we know about anywhere near the real top-of-the-line: nobody really knows what the NSA has at its disposal, for example. But I can pretty much guarantee that they aren't toys.
Just as much as the public has grown to distrust the police, the police as well have grown to distrust the public. Everyone is a potential enemy
The next generation of police are going have to learn to see cameras as a fact of life, and behave as if a grainy vision of everything they do could see the inside of a courtroom. Usually cameras help the police. Sometimes they raise inconvenient questions.
Have to wonder how cops in England feel about all the cameras over there. And you're right. cops here in the U.S. had better get used to being on camera, and they should forget about the guy with the cell phone. Once surveillance technology becomes truly ubiquitous, the cops won't have any more choice about being recorded than we do. What was the statistic I read recently ... the average American is on-camera at least three times a day, maybe more in some metropolitan areas?
... it was that the camera system was costing four million a year to operate, and was only raking in three and a half in ticket revenue.
I also read recently that one big city (L.A., maybe, I forget) decided to shut down its camera network although not, in my opinion for the right reasons. It wasn't anything to do with civil liberties, ethics, morality, surveillance state issues, right or wrong
Some have. But it's not a national law: It's state-by-state. Some states have even passed legislation explicitly allowing recording of the police. (I think in other cases the state courts have smacked down the police, and no one's pressed it further.)
Massachusetts hasn't. So it's being an issue there, and because of the way the case was brought up it can be attacked on Constitutional grounds.
I don't know about this particular issue with regards to cops in my State, but as I've mentioned here on Slashdot before, the police here are immune from any consequences to false arrest, among other things. You can't even take them to court if they work you over and it comes out later that they got the wrong person. The reasoning used to pass that law was, I understand, in the category of "well, the police need to be free to do their jobs." Why that means they have to be held unaccountable for actions taken while on that job is beyond me.
Yes, this would mean a lot of boring days in congress
Nah. They'd just pass an "automatic sunrise" bill that would renew all laws about to expire regardless of content, and they wouldn't give that law an expiration date. Remember, these people are weasels, and the reason that you're even talking about these things is because you (quote correctly) don't trust them.
The law cannot protect one from the lawmakers.
interstate commerce
Interesting that you should mention that, given how the Commerce Clause has been contorted, stretched, twisted and carried far beyond the Founder's intent.