>... online in the form of Pumped Storage. The EU had 32 gigawatts. > >There's plenty of room to do more of that out in the desert;
So let me get this straight. You want to use wind and solar to pump massive amounts of water into THE DESERT! And then you expect it to just sit there and wait for us to use it? Unless you dig a really deep hole to minimize the amount of water exposed to the surface, I'm guessing your scheme will do better at making clouds than solving our energy problems. But that could be useful too...
> What happens when ISPs start to throttle (or block all together) encrypted or binary data ?
Hence the SLA. If I pay for a guaranteed 512Kbps, they can throttle it down to that level, but no further. We would, of course, need some sort of consumer advocate group to help demonstrate that low bandwidth was an SLA violation by the ISP instead of slowness on the other end.
> amen. The error message seems to be designed for people who know about these things, not mom and pop users.
people who know about these things, like, say, website administrators who should be updating the SSL keys to ensure a secure web infrastructure exists and can't be circumvented because users are trained to just click "OK".
Amen. First post AND intelligent. Now I remember why I read slashdot.
Any why all this talk of 'language'. Who cares about the language. I feel like C3PO. I'm fluent in over 16 million 'programming languages' in the sense that the syntax of the language is trivial. And while Ruby is the best in that sense, Javascript is very good, allowing me to write very copy-n-paste free code with good support for arrays and hashes. It's the API that's the problem, not the language itself. And that's a matter of getting M$ and Mozilla to agree on improvements to the DOM standard.
The potential devastation of a nuclear accident (or a problem intentionally caused by terrorists) is huge. Just because they're rare doesn't mean can ignore them.
Between the potentials for horrible death, long term illness, and decline in home values, nuclear is very risky business. And I didn't say coal wasn't bad as well. I wouldn't live next to a coal plant either.
And as for the Sun, you just made my case. I already live too close to that reactor. I often get sunburns, have to water my lawn more, pay for air conditioning... That thing is truly a disaster. Maybe I'll join the guy who's trying to sue God because his insurance failed to cover an "act of God". Anyone up for a good class action!
Don't be a tool. The Internet has always operated on the principle that traffic on the public network isn't private. Let them use Deep Packet Inspection. If you didn't encrypt your data, that's your fault.
And as for consumer bargaining power, we never had any. Residential broadband has always been without an SLA. Even if you network goes down or is slow for weeks, your only recourse is to cancel your service.
What we need are SLA's for consumer broadband that guarantee a minimum (not maximum) bandwidth. Then, let them inspect all they want, I'll encrypt what I need to be private. And let them block all they want within the SLA, I'll pay for the level of service I need.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for Net Neutrality. The ISP I'm handing my money to should be routing anything I choose to send, illegal or no (since IPSs should just be carriers and not liable or responsible for how I choose to use their network), but just don't everyone go panicking that "they're looking at my data".
I think he meant in the sense that, just as Nuclear power screwed over people who live too close to a reactor site at the expense of rich men with lucrative energy deals friends in congress, so too will the music industry screw over consumers who have to either pay their fees or get hit with ridiculous lawsuits at the expense of rich men with lucrative record labels and friends both in congress and the judiciary.
Isn't it sad that, for the first time in it's history, the USPTO has finally done something right an its only affect is to save Dell some embarrassment down the line when the business community recognizes "Cloud Computing" as the useless marketing buzzword, as the tech community already has.
Oh, I'm sorry that the exact wording of a slashdot post isn't specific and clear enough to go directly into law. Perhaps I meat Congress should do it's job and pass a law that DOES protect consumers by giving them legal remedies, the details of which should be worked out by our duly-elected officials.
Of course, I fear you're right. Any attempt to pass such a bill would probably end up, like CAN-SPAM, as something that does the exact opposite of what the average citizen would expect it to do.
Anyway, I just think I should have the right to ask why I was denied insurance/credit/etc., and if it was a result of someone sharing information about me that I didn't give them permission to share, they should compensate me. Oh well, I guess it could be worse. God bless those in Georgia (the country) Afghanistan, and Iraq who have real problems.
The Law I want passed is one to give consumers grounds to sue if personal data some company collects causes you harm. It has nothing to do with advertising. I know it's standard practice not to RTFA, but you apparently didn't even finish reading the sentence in my post. It's right there, dude. You didn't even have to click a link. Lazy bastard.
Ah, you must work for a Government contractor. An idiot who's boss is cozy with some other idiot who hands out my tax dollars and only has his job because he used to be in the armed forces. I know government waste is a minuscule portion of the federal budget compared to social security, medicare, Iraq, and interest on the debt, but it just really pisses me off.
I'm not language agnostic. I don't do python or other languages where whitespace is significant. I don't do lisp or prolog (who does?). I don't do.NET. I do do Windows though.
And I don't plan on applying. Judging from your use of the letter 'u', I assume sending e-mail to that address will get me offers of a lot of money if only I can send you my bank account number so you can deposit it.
This isn't news to me. I proudly wear a tinfoil hat and therefore have always assumed Google and every other search engine does everything technically possible to track my internet usage. And I behave accordingly. Firefox deletes ALL private data each time I close it. I don't do ANYTHING on the Internet that would be upsetting if it were public knowledge.
So, you see, those of us wearing tinfoil hats aren't recluses that hide in the forest and survive on nuts and berries to avoid the grid. Instead, we are people who simply avoid the grid if and when we do want privacy and don't get upset when we get some confirmation of what we've known all along: the grid ain't private.
And as for targeted advertising, everyone's got it all wrong. Targeted advertising is the ONE thing that I DO want them to track me for. After all, seeing ads for things I might actually want to buy rather than crap I don't want is a Good Thing. Targeted Advertising IS consumer friendly. It's feeding the data into health insurance eligibility and credit scores and potentially inaccurate data into legal proceedings that's scary.
So everyone needs to stop worrying about advertising and start demanding that congress pass a law stating that if a company collects information about you and shares it with a third party without your explicit consent, that information is considered "public" in that it can count towards liable claims. Don't worry about what they share. Worry about your right to sue them if sharing the info causes you harm.
WTF? It must be a slow news day. But I guess if slashdot is becoming a classifieds site, why not just go with the flow:
I'm an IT professional with U.S. Citizenship and 10+ years in the field. I have experience with both Linux and Windows administration, programming in C/C++/Fortran/Java/Ruby/PHP. I'm looking for a 6-figure salary anywhere in the US or $80K+ in Colorado. References available upon request.
Someone please let me know when slashdot opens up to personals too, as I've got a much more interesting ad for that one.
I agree that $24,000 seems like a lot, but one accident and you could easily pay double that. I had a friend who canceled his insurance. While in the car with his grandfather driving, his grandfather fell asleep and they hit a tree. Luckily, the only injury was my friend's fractured foot. The initial setting and cast was covered by the medical provision on his grandfather's auto insurance, but there's a $5k limit on that. In most other states, the liability portion of his grandfather's auto insurance would have covered all of his medical costs, but due to an antiquated law in California that assumes you won't sue a relative, his auto insurance does not.
My friend was worried sick for a few weeks because if he had to have surgery, it would be about $40K, which neither he nor his grandfather had. Fortunately, the doctor didn't recommend surgery after x-rays 2 weeks later.
Granted, citizens in California probably pay less for their auto insurance because of the law, but I bet if he had to have surgery, his grandfather would have wished he lived in a state where he paid more for insurance but could get his grandson's hospital bills covered.
$40K, and that was a small injury. Imagine injury to internal organs, multiple fractures all over his body, etc. The $24k you saved seems pretty small. If you were in a big accident, you'd incur a huge amount of charges just from the emergency care you received. And you'd end up paying far more than the $24K you saved. Unless, of course, you simply don't have the money and declare bankruptcy instead. Then I'd have to pay for your worthless ass via the higher medical costs hospitals have to charge me and my insurance company to cover bad debts like you.
And what if you get cancer. You'll never get coverage. Think having a job will help? Nope! If you've had a gap in coverage, your employers insurance company can refuse to cover preexisting conditions.
And as for pregnancy, unless you're ugly, gay or a monk, I may get stuck paying for some poor uninsured girl you impregnate. What's that? You'd pay your fair share of her pregnancy costs? Uh, there goes your $24k, buddy.
Health insurance does cost a lot, but if you're one of the ones who never gets any of that money back, count your blessings.
What we really need is regulation to ensure everyone can get coverage and help for those who can't afford it (remember, most of us are just layoff away from not being able to afford it). I propose the following:
1) The government start a non-profit that offers high deductible plans and will cover everyone, with penalties for gaps in coverage. By competing with for-profit insurance companies and exercising market power over hospitals, they will keep prices down. 2) Provide everyone with a McCain-style refundable tax credit to pay for the government sponsored high-deductible plan OR a qualifying private plan. Qualifying private plans would have to accept everyone and cover the same things as the government plan. 3) Provide government-backed low-interest loans to anyone who pays more than $1000/year (or maybe some income-based amount) towards their deductible. This will allow even the poor to buy a high-deductible plan.
I've already written all my state and federal representatives with these ideas, but if you like them, please do likewise. You may not realize it, but medical expenses are probably the greatest risk most of us have to our financial future. Medical expenses not only cost a lot, but often take away your biggest asset -- your ability to work!
While I agree that Verified by Visa is a marketing joke, encountering it doesn't prevent me from completing the transaction or make me switch banks/cards. After all, banks and credit card processors are the ones with far more liability, so why not let them take whatever steps they feel are necessary to protect the transaction.
Under the Fair Credit Billing Act (FCBA), credit card holders have a limit of $50 of liability for just about any charge you disagree with. This means "I didn't make it.", "I bought it, but never received it", "I don't remember it and you can't provide documentation that I made it". It's very consumer-friendly legislation.
What's more, even though the law doesn't cover charges less than $50 or more than 100 miles from you home address (an antiquated provision that didn't anticipate charges made by phone or internet), both VISA and MasterCard have zero liability policies that apply to all U.S.-issued cards anywhere they're accepted. This is way better protection than cash. If you pay in cash and the item is defective, but the store refuses to accept a return, then you're SOL. If you pay by credit card, you just dispute the charge. This is especially useful for car repairs that end up not really fixing the problem. For those saying they only use their card when they have to, that's stupid. If you have a card at all, you could end up with fraudulent transactions on your account, so having a card and not using it doesn't really protect you.
One important note about VISA's and MasterCard's fine print: VISA's policy only excludes PIN-based transactions not processed by VISA. MasterCard's excludes all PIN-based transactions. The FCBA only applies to credit transactions and therefore excludes ALL debit transactions (PIN-based are usually debit). Did you know that the credit card companies charge merchants about half as much for PIN-based transactions? Why do you think the machines at your supermarket ask you for a PIN by default? This is partly because using a PIN makes fraudulent transactions more difficult, but probably more due to the difference in legal liability the processor holds.
Seriously though, I've disputed numerous transactions under the FCBA. My bank (WellsFargo) handles disputes quickly and easily, and I've always either received all my money back or had the merchant fix the problem. I even had my card stolen in Mexico (copied, actually, since I still had the card but card was supposedly present at the transaction), and all charges were easily resolved.
Note that accounts under FCBA dispute are marked on your credit report, but I've never received a notice that I'm entitled to a free report because of it, so it must not affect your credit score.
So remember, kids:
Under the Uniform Commercial Code, there's an implied warranty of merchantability on everything purchased in the U.S. unless otherwise stated.
Always buy with a credit card.
VISA is better than MasterCard (a.k.a. the Evil-O's. No, I don't work for VISA, but I used to work for a VISA subcontractor.).
Avoid cash for anything you might ever consider returning
Avoid debit and pin-based transactions like the plague. They're a conspiracy to shift legal liability onto consumers. If banks and credit card processors really cared about security, they'd PKI chips, PINs, and cardholder photographs on the actual card. But implementing these things is simply more expensive than simply shifting the liability to the card holder.
But it sounds like they're getting info from pharmacy databases. I know I have HIPAA privacy statements from my doctor's office, but I don't ever remember getting one from a pharmacist. And the grantparent-references wikipedia seems to state the HIPAA just makes them give you their privacy statement, but doesn't seem to force them to have a privacy policy that excludes sharing info.
This just goes to show that if you or anyone in your family gets sick, you're totally screwed. McCain wants the market to help insurance costs, but it never will, because it's much cheaper for insurance companies to simply avoid insuring sick people than try to drive down costs. Obama has all but dropped healthcare as an issue, and wanted to let people opt out anyway.
This really is the last straw. If we don't have meaningful healthcare legislation in both houses within the month of the election and/or it's not signed a year into the next presidency, I'm ready to join a lawful militia and refuse to pay taxes. Who's with me?
It's a funny story, but I think it's unfair to blame COBOL. After all, the state payroll system was probably written by state employees, and if you were writing a program that controlled your own salary, what sort of "features" and coding practices might you use?
Re:Anyone with more knowledge explain this to me
on
AMD Fusion Details Leaked
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
there is no code today that will use it explicitly, the whole paradigm of a GPU is that you do not read data back to the CPU.
Perhaps you should look into GPGPU and CUDA. Most of what most people do with computers involves one-way traffic to the GPU, but a small and sometimes well-funded subset of us have bigger plans than video games for the massive parallelization the GPU provides.
It will be interesting to see if the Nvidia/Intel and AMD/ATI alliances will kill progress in this direction and make us all wait for Intel and AMD to figure out a way to market 256 threads of execution to consumers who won't ever need it, but perhaps it will bring about innovations that remove todays bottlenecks, such as host/device bandwidth instead.
Self-signed certs ok? net neutrality? Mr. Tuck is an embarrassment to The University of Massachusetts Lowell. Obviously they should let him post anything within the bounds of the 1st amendment and academic freedom, but I hope some professor at least makes sure he takes the appropriate classes to straighten him out about how authentication and encryption work and what net neutrality is before they hand him a diploma.
On the other hand, perhaps he's just some freshman posting junk on his university-supplied web page who had no idea it would get such scrutiny on a forum as public as slashdot. In that case, shame on Chandon Seldon for posting it to slashdot and especially shame on the editors for accepting the "story".
I know, I know, "complaining about the editors? I must be new here."
I don't mind the "awesome bar" so much, but has anyone else noticed that javascript animations are uselessly slow on FF3 for Linux (FF3/Win works fine)? I'll I've got are some scriptaculous Effect.Appear()'s and FF3 takes up 100% CPU until I close it.
Slashdot Mirror
>... online in the form of Pumped Storage. The EU had 32 gigawatts.
>
>There's plenty of room to do more of that out in the desert;
So let me get this straight. You want to use wind and solar to pump massive amounts of water into THE DESERT! And then you expect it to just sit there and wait for us to use it? Unless you dig a really deep hole to minimize the amount of water exposed to the surface, I'm guessing your scheme will do better at making clouds than solving our energy problems. But that could be useful too...
> What happens when ISPs start to throttle (or block all together) encrypted or binary data ? Hence the SLA. If I pay for a guaranteed 512Kbps, they can throttle it down to that level, but no further. We would, of course, need some sort of consumer advocate group to help demonstrate that low bandwidth was an SLA violation by the ISP instead of slowness on the other end.
> amen. The error message seems to be designed for people who know about these things, not mom and pop users.
people who know about these things, like, say, website administrators who should be updating the SSL keys to ensure a secure web infrastructure exists and can't be circumvented because users are trained to just click "OK".
Amen. First post AND intelligent. Now I remember why I read slashdot.
Any why all this talk of 'language'. Who cares about the language. I feel like C3PO. I'm fluent in over 16 million 'programming languages' in the sense that the syntax of the language is trivial. And while Ruby is the best in that sense, Javascript is very good, allowing me to write very copy-n-paste free code with good support for arrays and hashes. It's the API that's the problem, not the language itself. And that's a matter of getting M$ and Mozilla to agree on improvements to the DOM standard.
Nuclear is the safest form of power. Until it's not:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident (Yes, I know if officially caused no death or illness, but that doesn't mean disasters can't happen.)
The potential devastation of a nuclear accident (or a problem intentionally caused by terrorists) is huge. Just because they're rare doesn't mean can ignore them.
Between the potentials for horrible death, long term illness, and decline in home values, nuclear is very risky business. And I didn't say coal wasn't bad as well. I wouldn't live next to a coal plant either.
And as for the Sun, you just made my case. I already live too close to that reactor. I often get sunburns, have to water my lawn more, pay for air conditioning... That thing is truly a disaster. Maybe I'll join the guy who's trying to sue God because his insurance failed to cover an "act of God". Anyone up for a good class action!
Don't be a tool. The Internet has always operated on the principle that traffic on the public network isn't private. Let them use Deep Packet Inspection. If you didn't encrypt your data, that's your fault.
And as for consumer bargaining power, we never had any. Residential broadband has always been without an SLA. Even if you network goes down or is slow for weeks, your only recourse is to cancel your service.
What we need are SLA's for consumer broadband that guarantee a minimum (not maximum) bandwidth. Then, let them inspect all they want, I'll encrypt what I need to be private. And let them block all they want within the SLA, I'll pay for the level of service I need.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for Net Neutrality. The ISP I'm handing my money to should be routing anything I choose to send, illegal or no (since IPSs should just be carriers and not liable or responsible for how I choose to use their network), but just don't everyone go panicking that "they're looking at my data".
Hey, I have big lips, you insensitive clod.
I think he meant in the sense that, just as Nuclear power screwed over people who live too close to a reactor site at the expense of rich men with lucrative energy deals friends in congress, so too will the music industry screw over consumers who have to either pay their fees or get hit with ridiculous lawsuits at the expense of rich men with lucrative record labels and friends both in congress and the judiciary.
Isn't it sad that, for the first time in it's history, the USPTO has finally done something right an its only affect is to save Dell some embarrassment down the line when the business community recognizes "Cloud Computing" as the useless marketing buzzword, as the tech community already has.
Oh, I'm sorry that the exact wording of a slashdot post isn't specific and clear enough to go directly into law. Perhaps I meat Congress should do it's job and pass a law that DOES protect consumers by giving them legal remedies, the details of which should be worked out by our duly-elected officials.
Of course, I fear you're right. Any attempt to pass such a bill would probably end up, like CAN-SPAM, as something that does the exact opposite of what the average citizen would expect it to do.
Anyway, I just think I should have the right to ask why I was denied insurance/credit/etc., and if it was a result of someone sharing information about me that I didn't give them permission to share, they should compensate me. Oh well, I guess it could be worse. God bless those in Georgia (the country) Afghanistan, and Iraq who have real problems.
The Law I want passed is one to give consumers grounds to sue if personal data some company collects causes you harm. It has nothing to do with advertising. I know it's standard practice not to RTFA, but you apparently didn't even finish reading the sentence in my post. It's right there, dude. You didn't even have to click a link. Lazy bastard.
Ah, you must work for a Government contractor. An idiot who's boss is cozy with some other idiot who hands out my tax dollars and only has his job because he used to be in the armed forces. I know government waste is a minuscule portion of the federal budget compared to social security, medicare, Iraq, and interest on the debt, but it just really pisses me off.
Or maybe you work for a drug cartel...
</flamewar>
I'm not language agnostic. I don't do python or other languages where whitespace is significant. I don't do lisp or prolog (who does?). I don't do .NET. I do do Windows though.
And I don't plan on applying. Judging from your use of the letter 'u', I assume sending e-mail to that address will get me offers of a lot of money if only I can send you my bank account number so you can deposit it.
I've got $10 for his legal defense. I didn't RTFA in detail, but does anyone know if one has been started and, if so, where to send my $10.
And I'm serious here, so no jokes about "Just send your bank account number to this e-mail address is Zimbabwe and we'll take care of the rest".
This isn't news to me. I proudly wear a tinfoil hat and therefore have always assumed Google and every other search engine does everything technically possible to track my internet usage. And I behave accordingly. Firefox deletes ALL private data each time I close it. I don't do ANYTHING on the Internet that would be upsetting if it were public knowledge.
So, you see, those of us wearing tinfoil hats aren't recluses that hide in the forest and survive on nuts and berries to avoid the grid. Instead, we are people who simply avoid the grid if and when we do want privacy and don't get upset when we get some confirmation of what we've known all along: the grid ain't private.
And as for targeted advertising, everyone's got it all wrong. Targeted advertising is the ONE thing that I DO want them to track me for. After all, seeing ads for things I might actually want to buy rather than crap I don't want is a Good Thing. Targeted Advertising IS consumer friendly. It's feeding the data into health insurance eligibility and credit scores and potentially inaccurate data into legal proceedings that's scary.
So everyone needs to stop worrying about advertising and start demanding that congress pass a law stating that if a company collects information about you and shares it with a third party without your explicit consent, that information is considered "public" in that it can count towards liable claims. Don't worry about what they share. Worry about your right to sue them if sharing the info causes you harm.
WTF? It must be a slow news day. But I guess if slashdot is becoming a classifieds site, why not just go with the flow:
I'm an IT professional with U.S. Citizenship and 10+ years in the field. I have experience with both Linux and Windows administration, programming in C/C++/Fortran/Java/Ruby/PHP. I'm looking for a 6-figure salary anywhere in the US or $80K+ in Colorado. References available upon request.
Someone please let me know when slashdot opens up to personals too, as I've got a much more interesting ad for that one.
I agree that $24,000 seems like a lot, but one accident and you could easily pay double that. I had a friend who canceled his insurance. While in the car with his grandfather driving, his grandfather fell asleep and they hit a tree. Luckily, the only injury was my friend's fractured foot. The initial setting and cast was covered by the medical provision on his grandfather's auto insurance, but there's a $5k limit on that. In most other states, the liability portion of his grandfather's auto insurance would have covered all of his medical costs, but due to an antiquated law in California that assumes you won't sue a relative, his auto insurance does not.
My friend was worried sick for a few weeks because if he had to have surgery, it would be about $40K, which neither he nor his grandfather had. Fortunately, the doctor didn't recommend surgery after x-rays 2 weeks later.
Granted, citizens in California probably pay less for their auto insurance because of the law, but I bet if he had to have surgery, his grandfather would have wished he lived in a state where he paid more for insurance but could get his grandson's hospital bills covered.
$40K, and that was a small injury. Imagine injury to internal organs, multiple fractures all over his body, etc. The $24k you saved seems pretty small. If you were in a big accident, you'd incur a huge amount of charges just from the emergency care you received. And you'd end up paying far more than the $24K you saved. Unless, of course, you simply don't have the money and declare bankruptcy instead. Then I'd have to pay for your worthless ass via the higher medical costs hospitals have to charge me and my insurance company to cover bad debts like you.
And what if you get cancer. You'll never get coverage. Think having a job will help? Nope! If you've had a gap in coverage, your employers insurance company can refuse to cover preexisting conditions.
And as for pregnancy, unless you're ugly, gay or a monk, I may get stuck paying for some poor uninsured girl you impregnate. What's that? You'd pay your fair share of her pregnancy costs? Uh, there goes your $24k, buddy.
Health insurance does cost a lot, but if you're one of the ones who never gets any of that money back, count your blessings.
What we really need is regulation to ensure everyone can get coverage and help for those who can't afford it (remember, most of us are just layoff away from not being able to afford it). I propose the following:
1) The government start a non-profit that offers high deductible plans and will cover everyone, with penalties for gaps in coverage. By competing with for-profit insurance companies and exercising market power over hospitals, they will keep prices down.
2) Provide everyone with a McCain-style refundable tax credit to pay for the government sponsored high-deductible plan OR a qualifying private plan. Qualifying private plans would have to accept everyone and cover the same things as the government plan.
3) Provide government-backed low-interest loans to anyone who pays more than $1000/year (or maybe some income-based amount) towards their deductible. This will allow even the poor to buy a high-deductible plan.
I've already written all my state and federal representatives with these ideas, but if you like them, please do likewise. You may not realize it, but medical expenses are probably the greatest risk most of us have to our financial future. Medical expenses not only cost a lot, but often take away your biggest asset -- your ability to work!
While I agree that Verified by Visa is a marketing joke, encountering it doesn't prevent me from completing the transaction or make me switch banks/cards. After all, banks and credit card processors are the ones with far more liability, so why not let them take whatever steps they feel are necessary to protect the transaction.
Under the Fair Credit Billing Act (FCBA), credit card holders have a limit of $50 of liability for just about any charge you disagree with. This means "I didn't make it.", "I bought it, but never received it", "I don't remember it and you can't provide documentation that I made it". It's very consumer-friendly legislation.
What's more, even though the law doesn't cover charges less than $50 or more than 100 miles from you home address (an antiquated provision that didn't anticipate charges made by phone or internet), both VISA and MasterCard have zero liability policies that apply to all U.S.-issued cards anywhere they're accepted. This is way better protection than cash. If you pay in cash and the item is defective, but the store refuses to accept a return, then you're SOL. If you pay by credit card, you just dispute the charge. This is especially useful for car repairs that end up not really fixing the problem. For those saying they only use their card when they have to, that's stupid. If you have a card at all, you could end up with fraudulent transactions on your account, so having a card and not using it doesn't really protect you.
One important note about VISA's and MasterCard's fine print: VISA's policy only excludes PIN-based transactions not processed by VISA. MasterCard's excludes all PIN-based transactions. The FCBA only applies to credit transactions and therefore excludes ALL debit transactions (PIN-based are usually debit). Did you know that the credit card companies charge merchants about half as much for PIN-based transactions? Why do you think the machines at your supermarket ask you for a PIN by default? This is partly because using a PIN makes fraudulent transactions more difficult, but probably more due to the difference in legal liability the processor holds.
Seriously though, I've disputed numerous transactions under the FCBA. My bank (WellsFargo) handles disputes quickly and easily, and I've always either received all my money back or had the merchant fix the problem. I even had my card stolen in Mexico (copied, actually, since I still had the card but card was supposedly present at the transaction), and all charges were easily resolved.
Note that accounts under FCBA dispute are marked on your credit report, but I've never received a notice that I'm entitled to a free report because of it, so it must not affect your credit score.
So remember, kids:
My browser window's title bar was completely covered in ':' characters. I though I'd been hacked!
But it sounds like they're getting info from pharmacy databases. I know I have HIPAA privacy statements from my doctor's office, but I don't ever remember getting one from a pharmacist. And the grantparent-references wikipedia seems to state the HIPAA just makes them give you their privacy statement, but doesn't seem to force them to have a privacy policy that excludes sharing info.
This just goes to show that if you or anyone in your family gets sick, you're totally screwed. McCain wants the market to help insurance costs, but it never will, because it's much cheaper for insurance companies to simply avoid insuring sick people than try to drive down costs. Obama has all but dropped healthcare as an issue, and wanted to let people opt out anyway.
This really is the last straw. If we don't have meaningful healthcare legislation in both houses within the month of the election and/or it's not signed a year into the next presidency, I'm ready to join a lawful militia and refuse to pay taxes. Who's with me?
It's a funny story, but I think it's unfair to blame COBOL. After all, the state payroll system was probably written by state employees, and if you were writing a program that controlled your own salary, what sort of "features" and coding practices might you use?
there is no code today that will use it explicitly, the whole paradigm of a GPU is that you do not read data back to the CPU.
Perhaps you should look into GPGPU and CUDA. Most of what most people do with computers involves one-way traffic to the GPU, but a small and sometimes well-funded subset of us have bigger plans than video games for the massive parallelization the GPU provides.
It will be interesting to see if the Nvidia/Intel and AMD/ATI alliances will kill progress in this direction and make us all wait for Intel and AMD to figure out a way to market 256 threads of execution to consumers who won't ever need it, but perhaps it will bring about innovations that remove todays bottlenecks, such as host/device bandwidth instead.
Self-signed certs ok? net neutrality? Mr. Tuck is an embarrassment to The University of Massachusetts Lowell. Obviously they should let him post anything within the bounds of the 1st amendment and academic freedom, but I hope some professor at least makes sure he takes the appropriate classes to straighten him out about how authentication and encryption work and what net neutrality is before they hand him a diploma.
On the other hand, perhaps he's just some freshman posting junk on his university-supplied web page who had no idea it would get such scrutiny on a forum as public as slashdot. In that case, shame on Chandon Seldon for posting it to slashdot and especially shame on the editors for accepting the "story".
I know, I know, "complaining about the editors? I must be new here."
Oops. My mistake. I /ment/ to say "its a safe bet your on slashdot." rather /then/ "it's a safe bet your on slashdot.".
Thank goodness for the Grammar Nazi's. If they hadn't shown up, I might have suspected I was wrong.
I don't mind the "awesome bar" so much, but has anyone else noticed that javascript animations are uselessly slow on FF3 for Linux (FF3/Win works fine)? I'll I've got are some scriptaculous Effect.Appear()'s and FF3 takes up 100% CPU until I close it.