Ok, first they made the vibrating razor. Apparently everything that vibrates is better (and I have to say, my toothbrush actually is), so I thought... I'll try that.
It didn't make a noticable difference.
SO... I see the extra blade thing, and think, "Now there's somthing that actually makes sense", so I get one (you can't use the old handles with the new blades, which is actually a new trick from them - usually you can just buy the new cartiridges).
Well, it sucks. Completely useless.
I can only imagine that the were afraid to sell an actual sharp blade that you might be capable of cutting yourself with given today's litigeous environment. It doesn't protrude far enough out of the cartirdge to be usefull.
"That doesn't apply to brick-and-mortar merchants. A brick-and-mortar merchant is 100% protected against fraudulent chargebacks as long as they can show a valid swipe of the magnetic strip or carbon imprint of the credit card and a signature."
You are absolutely correct (the web business is a subsidiary of a brick-and-mortor). The thing is, that isn't the big problem. In the 11 years we've been in business we've never had a physical stolen card used in the physical shop (knock on wood).
A lot of credit card security is in the card itself (holograms, printing, signatures). Since online merchants have chosen to bypass that additional security the banks require that they accept the additional risk.
And we pay more in processing fees for non-slides as well, so we pay more and accept more risk.
The banks launched Verified by Visa and MasterCard Secure Code last year to provide online merchants with the same fraud protection that retail merchants enjoy. With Verified By Visa a customer is passed to the banks website to enter a pin number before completing the transaction. If an online merchant passes the transaction through Verified by Visa or MasterCard Secure Code they have 100% protection against a fraudulent chargeback.
The problem being that not all processors support it yet (ours doesn't).
our Everyone keeps saying, "Who cares, I'm not liable if someone takes my card and uses it", and that "The banks eat it".
No, they don't. The merchants do. And the customers end up covering it in the end.
I own an online retail business. If someone disputes a purchase and we lose the dispute, the credit card processor simply takes the money back from *us*. We're out the money. Nobody else.
We go to great lengths to try and prevent this (AVS, CVV, etc), but you will get one every once in a while no matter what you do.
So fraud rates are built into retail *pricing*. When we get a new product, we have a formula to decide our selling price. It's based on our business costs. Fraud is one of those costs - we know how much we incur per year, so we build it into the profit margin. Every business does this in one way or another.
If fraud goes up, so do our prices. Therefore, it goes full-circle back to the consumer.
You must be really amazing to be able to determine that a given application can't possibly be usable when written in language X and would be much better in language Y without any data or firsthand experience using the application.
Sometimes, things work just fine even though they'd be 20ms faster if written in C/C++.
"Security" software companies only exist becuase... windows didn't have or provide adequate security. Or due to bugs in the OS which were exploited. They're basically parasitic entities.
Now MS is trying to fix this with Vista.
So basically, the logic being put forth is: Our business model is based on your inability to put out a secure product. Your attempt at putting out a secure product is going to break our business model, and thus our business.
Exactly. Different dogs have different "jobs". Most sporting dogs, for example, do not make good guard dogs.
We have a 105 lbs Doberman Pincher (Yes, really. He's 30 inches at the shoulder... he's basically a pony).
Dobermans have a rather strong opinion on property. As in, it's his, and you probably shouldn't think about taking it. I pity any robber who has the delusion that upon entering our home, the large, barking and snarling Doberman will suddenly become friendly.
(And he's a GREAT dog to boot... biggest friendliest lug if he knows who you are, and not aggressive at all when not "defending" his home.)
Sorry, I was responding in the context of the article. Silly me, I know.
It's late at night, and you see two guys slip a door when someone else exits.
They're...
A) Co-Workers you don't know who both happened to forget their badges and need to be in the building after-hours. B) 2 Upper Managers your don't know who both happened to forget their badges and need to be in the building after-hours. C) Two guys who shouldn't be there.
Oh, I agree... during the day when there's lots of people around and such, I'd have no problem approaching someone with a simple "Hey, are you looking for something/someone" type thing.
2 guys at 10pm when the building was pretty much cleared out? Oh, and I just happen to notice they slipped the door when someone was leaving (as in TFA)? Nope. Sorry, not my job. I'm going to smile and nod as I walk by then go pick up a phone:D
FTA: We advised them to look for a badge and question individuals who appear to be out of place.
Umm... how about, "Call security and tell them" instead?
If you've got someone who's in the middle of a criminal act... is it wise to test just how much of a criminal they are?
While it may be that most data poachers serious enough to break into a building aren't violent criminals... I'm not going to test that theory. Especially if it's late at night, I'm unarmed, and I'm outnumbered 2:1.
Spending the rest of the night duct-taped in a supply closet just doesn't seem like all that much fun to me:)
Nice of you to paraphrase his post in order to "espouse your viewpoint".
If the PRC had an operative in the ROC, it's wouldn't be the ROC doing the dirty work, now would it? The whole point of the article centers around some fear that a foreign entity is going to put something inside technology we're buying to spy on the US. Espionage. Seems to me it would be a whole lot easier for China to have agents in Taiwan than say... Texas, yes?
Go back under your rock and have some more coffee.
I actually understand the political and historical difference, BUT...
What you're saying is that it would be impossible for the PRC to get someone inside the ROC to implement something. We are talking about espionage here.
In addition, my point was more of a rounabout way of saying "Well, gee, since our government was instrumental in shipping all our manufacturing offshore, it's going to be rather hard not to buy something made in China, or somewhere very, very close.".
By buying Dells... assembled from components made in Taiwan.::rollseyes::
I wonder if it's actually possible to construct a PC at this point without using at least one component that originated in China, given that everyone is now shifting manufacturing there.
I thought the whole point of getting a patent was so that you were the only one that could legally create instances of your invention. Now it seems you can get a patent, and your competition can go ahead and use it anyway?
If you read the article, you'll find this has nothing to do with the validity of patents or eventual compensation.
What it does mean is that you can't extort an inflated price for your "technology" by getting the infringer shut down while the legal proceedings take place if you are not somehow actually suffering damages by its use.
The legal process still occurs, and if you have a valid patent that is being infringed upon, you will win. The difference is that if your never-implemented-obvious-idea gets tossed out, the "infringer" didn't have to cave in to your demands or suffer huge business losses while the proceedings occured.
If the Blackberry service wasn't worth $612.5 million to RIM, they wouldn't have paid, but rather shut it down. So that actually is an example where the value of the technology was more than the settlement - it would have made no sense for RIM to agree to pay more than the technology was worth.
I think you're a bit confused on the concept of "value".
The technology wasn't necessarily worth $612.5 Million. The ramifications of being shut down by an injunction were. This is called extortion in many cultures.
If I tell you you're going to pay $5000 for car with an actual value of $1000 or else I'm going to break your legs so you can't walk to where you need to go... it's still a $1k car. You're just going to be paying 5 times that. The value has been artificially increased, and only in relation to you.
But saying that terrorist threat is minimal is going too far in the other direction.
I respectfully disagree. It is very minimal.
You have a FAR better chance of being struck by lightning than being killed by a "terrorist". In fact, there are hundreds of forseeable and preventable (at some level) ways you can die in this country that do not involve a terrorist act.
However, our government is spending billions of dollars, stripping away freedoms, spying on its people, etc, etc... for... "Terrorism"?
How about we nick that whole drunk driving thing in the bud instead and save 1000's of lives annually? Or any of the other things than 90 billion dollars would pretty much eradicate without a doubt?
For the same reason I have an extra drive in my Sun Ultra20 workstation with windows installed.
Games (that I want to play) don't run under Solaris, and there are 2 applications I need for work that are windozs only. Being able to dual-boot between Solaris and Windows is handy for this. This machine replaced my Sunblade 1000 and freed up my laptop from always having to be sitting on my desk running windows.
Actually, I think it's quite the opposite, which is probably why I don't really have a complaint about the game.
For the price of Chinese takeout, I have a nice diversion to turn to every once in a while in my otherwise hectic life. I don't really see 50 cents a day as some terrible hardship or an entitlement to perfect gaming nirvana and it simply doesn't upset me if they have a problem every once in a while::shrug::
The point you're missing is that not all servers have queues. The game works fine, unless you want to play on a particular server at a particular time. They in no way represent or guarantee that when you buy the game (and in fact, the EULA explicitly states that you may not be able to).
And a physically defective game is not exactly the same thing as one that functions fine but just didn't meet the purchaser's expectations, is it?
If you go to an amusement park and have to wait in line for some (if not all) of the rides and one of the roller coasters isn't working, you don't get your money back. There is no difference between that and WoW other than expectations. Both are a result of capacity limits.
Now, I don't play the game 40 hours a week, and don't see it as earth shattering if I can't play one night on my favorite server... so, I have no problem continuing to pay and play. If the service didn't work, and I couldn't play, I surely wouldn't be paying for it. Some people seem to have mental breakdowns if they can't log in. To each their own. I'm thinking that the bulk of the 6 million subscibers fall more into the "casual gamer" dept.
- Roach
Re:And the alternative is ... ?
on
World of Queuecraft
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
In any case, if it is impossible to deliver the service to the current userbase, then perhaps they shouldn't have sold it to so many people. It smells like fraud when you take the money and then say "sorry, I can't deliver the stuff right now, there's too many people who've bought it
First, your complaint (like most of them) seems to be based on an assumption that they are not working as hard as they can to improve things, and that they simply sit around all day sipping tea. I, personally, do not see this as being the case.
What I see is a company that had growth far exceeding their business plan and are now playing catchup. IT things don't happen overnight, and like most companies and people, they are not perfect.
As for "fraud"... they only keep taking money from people who choose to continue giving it to them - continuing to play is not compulsory. Your initial purchase price is no different than if you had bought any other video game that didn't live up to your expectations - you can't return those for a refund either.
I know you were just joking, but the point is that I don't "wait", mainly because there's always something else to do.
I would not sit in a chair and stare at a screen for 30 minutes watching a queue.
And if I got caught doing THAT (and at the same time, say, the trash hadn't been taken out), THEN I'd be in trouble:)
- Roach
And the alternative is ... ?
on
World of Queuecraft
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
No matter what they (or any MMORPG) does, there is a group of people that will whine.
The alternative to no queues is...?
A) Let everyone in. I've seen that in other games. It's not pretty. Things don't scale infinitely, and the game server would be unusable. People would then bitch that the game server is unusable.
B) Static cap the server population. They tried that recently. Immediatly there were tons of threads on their forums saying "I can't create a character on world X where my friend is playing! I paid $50 for this game, blah, blah blah".
Personally, I rarely see a queue, and I've been playing WoW for a year on the same server which has been "full" for some time. About the worst I see is about 30 minutes, and I simply alt-tab and read the news for a few or maybe do a quick chore around the house my wife had been nagging me to do:)
Slashdot Mirror
So tell us: what other vibrating devices do you own?
:)
I was referring to the aforementioned toothbrush, but I somehow knew this question was coming sooner rather than later
- Roach
Ok, first they made the vibrating razor. Apparently everything that vibrates is better (and I have to say, my toothbrush actually is), so I thought ... I'll try that.
... I see the extra blade thing, and think, "Now there's somthing that actually makes sense", so I get one (you can't use the old handles with the new blades, which is actually a new trick from them - usually you can just buy the new cartiridges).
It didn't make a noticable difference.
SO
Well, it sucks. Completely useless.
I can only imagine that the were afraid to sell an actual sharp blade that you might be capable of cutting yourself with given today's litigeous environment. It doesn't protrude far enough out of the cartirdge to be usefull.
- Roach
"That doesn't apply to brick-and-mortar merchants. A brick-and-mortar merchant is 100% protected against fraudulent chargebacks as long as they can show a valid swipe of the magnetic strip or carbon imprint of the credit card and a signature."
You are absolutely correct (the web business is a subsidiary of a brick-and-mortor). The thing is, that isn't the big problem. In the 11 years we've been in business we've never had a physical stolen card used in the physical shop (knock on wood).
A lot of credit card security is in the card itself (holograms, printing, signatures). Since online merchants have chosen to bypass that additional security the banks require that they accept the additional risk.
And we pay more in processing fees for non-slides as well, so we pay more and accept more risk.
The banks launched Verified by Visa and MasterCard Secure Code last year to provide online merchants with the same fraud protection that retail merchants enjoy. With Verified By Visa a customer is passed to the banks website to enter a pin number before completing the transaction. If an online merchant passes the transaction through Verified by Visa or MasterCard Secure Code they have 100% protection against a fraudulent chargeback.
The problem being that not all processors support it yet (ours doesn't).
- Roach
our
Everyone keeps saying, "Who cares, I'm not liable if someone takes my card and uses it", and that "The banks eat it".
No, they don't. The merchants do. And the customers end up covering it in the end.
I own an online retail business. If someone disputes a purchase and we lose the dispute, the credit card processor simply takes the money back from *us*. We're out the money. Nobody else.
We go to great lengths to try and prevent this (AVS, CVV, etc), but you will get one every once in a while no matter what you do.
So fraud rates are built into retail *pricing*. When we get a new product, we have a formula to decide our selling price. It's based on our business costs. Fraud is one of those costs - we know how much we incur per year, so we build it into the profit margin. Every business does this in one way or another.
If fraud goes up, so do our prices. Therefore, it goes full-circle back to the consumer.
Brian Roach
You must be really amazing to be able to determine that a given application can't possibly be usable when written in language X and would be much better in language Y without any data or firsthand experience using the application.
Sometimes, things work just fine even though they'd be 20ms faster if written in C/C++.
- Roach
"Security" software companies only exist becuase ... windows didn't have or provide adequate security. Or due to bugs in the OS which were exploited. They're basically parasitic entities.
Now MS is trying to fix this with Vista.
So basically, the logic being put forth is: Our business model is based on your inability to put out a secure product. Your attempt at putting out a secure product is going to break our business model, and thus our business.
- Roach
Er, this is news?
- Roach
Exactly. Different dogs have different "jobs". Most sporting dogs, for example, do not make good guard dogs.
... he's basically a pony).
... biggest friendliest lug if he knows who you are, and not aggressive at all when not "defending" his home.)
We have a 105 lbs Doberman Pincher (Yes, really. He's 30 inches at the shoulder
Dobermans have a rather strong opinion on property. As in, it's his, and you probably shouldn't think about taking it. I pity any robber who has the delusion that upon entering our home, the large, barking and snarling Doberman will suddenly become friendly.
(And he's a GREAT dog to boot
- Roach
My Sun Type 6 USB keyboards are still that way
(Really screws you up if you're using a "PC" keyboard on a different machine
- Roach
Sorry, I was responding in the context of the article. Silly me, I know.
...
;)
It's late at night, and you see two guys slip a door when someone else exits.
They're
A) Co-Workers you don't know who both happened to forget their badges and need to be in the building after-hours.
B) 2 Upper Managers your don't know who both happened to forget their badges and need to be in the building after-hours.
C) Two guys who shouldn't be there.
Final Answer?
- Roach
Oh, I agree ... during the day when there's lots of people around and such, I'd have no problem approaching someone with a simple "Hey, are you looking for something/someone" type thing.
:D
2 guys at 10pm when the building was pretty much cleared out? Oh, and I just happen to notice they slipped the door when someone was leaving (as in TFA)? Nope. Sorry, not my job. I'm going to smile and nod as I walk by then go pick up a phone
- Roach
FTA: We advised them to look for a badge and question individuals who appear to be out of place.
... how about, "Call security and tell them" instead?
... is it wise to test just how much of a criminal they are?
... I'm not going to test that theory. Especially if it's late at night, I'm unarmed, and I'm outnumbered 2:1.
:)
Umm
If you've got someone who's in the middle of a criminal act
While it may be that most data poachers serious enough to break into a building aren't violent criminals
Spending the rest of the night duct-taped in a supply closet just doesn't seem like all that much fun to me
- Roach
Dear Troll,
Nice of you to paraphrase his post in order to "espouse your viewpoint".
If the PRC had an operative in the ROC, it's wouldn't be the ROC doing the dirty work, now would it? The whole point of the article centers around some fear that a foreign entity is going to put something inside technology we're buying to spy on the US. Espionage. Seems to me it would be a whole lot easier for China to have agents in Taiwan than say
Go back under your rock and have some more coffee.
- Roach
I actually understand the political and historical difference, BUT ...
What you're saying is that it would be impossible for the PRC to get someone inside the ROC to implement something. We are talking about espionage here.
In addition, my point was more of a rounabout way of saying "Well, gee, since our government was instrumental in shipping all our manufacturing offshore, it's going to be rather hard not to buy something made in China, or somewhere very, very close.".
= Roach
By buying Dells ... assembled from components made in Taiwan. ::rollseyes::
I wonder if it's actually possible to construct a PC at this point without using at least one component that originated in China, given that everyone is now shifting manufacturing there.
- Roach
I thought the whole point of getting a patent was so that you were the only one that could legally create instances of your invention. Now it seems you can get a patent, and your competition can go ahead and use it anyway?
If you read the article, you'll find this has nothing to do with the validity of patents or eventual compensation.
What it does mean is that you can't extort an inflated price for your "technology" by getting the infringer shut down while the legal proceedings take place if you are not somehow actually suffering damages by its use.
The legal process still occurs, and if you have a valid patent that is being infringed upon, you will win. The difference is that if your never-implemented-obvious-idea gets tossed out, the "infringer" didn't have to cave in to your demands or suffer huge business losses while the proceedings occured.
Makes perfect sense to me.
- Roach
If the Blackberry service wasn't worth $612.5 million to RIM, they wouldn't have paid, but rather shut it down. So that actually is an example where the value of the technology was more than the settlement - it would have made no sense for RIM to agree to pay more than the technology was worth.
... it's still a $1k car. You're just going to be paying 5 times that. The value has been artificially increased, and only in relation to you.
I think you're a bit confused on the concept of "value".
The technology wasn't necessarily worth $612.5 Million. The ramifications of being shut down by an injunction were. This is called extortion in many cultures.
If I tell you you're going to pay $5000 for car with an actual value of $1000 or else I'm going to break your legs so you can't walk to where you need to go
- Roach
But saying that terrorist threat is minimal is going too far in the other direction.
... for ... "Terrorism"?
I respectfully disagree. It is very minimal.
You have a FAR better chance of being struck by lightning than being killed by a "terrorist". In fact, there are hundreds of forseeable and preventable (at some level) ways you can die in this country that do not involve a terrorist act.
However, our government is spending billions of dollars, stripping away freedoms, spying on its people, etc, etc
How about we nick that whole drunk driving thing in the bud instead and save 1000's of lives annually? Or any of the other things than 90 billion dollars would pretty much eradicate without a doubt?
- Roach
For the same reason I have an extra drive in my Sun Ultra20 workstation with windows installed.
Games (that I want to play) don't run under Solaris, and there are 2 applications I need for work that are windozs only. Being able to dual-boot between Solaris and Windows is handy for this. This machine replaced my Sunblade 1000 and freed up my laptop from always having to be sitting on my desk running windows.
- Roach
LMAO.
If I had a wife that did that that often, I certainly wouldn't be wasting my time playing a video game.
- Roach
Two words: WoW Head.
::shrug::
Actually, I think it's quite the opposite, which is probably why I don't really have a complaint about the game.
For the price of Chinese takeout, I have a nice diversion to turn to every once in a while in my otherwise hectic life. I don't really see 50 cents a day as some terrible hardship or an entitlement to perfect gaming nirvana and it simply doesn't upset me if they have a problem every once in a while
- Roach
The point you're missing is that not all servers have queues. The game works fine, unless you want to play on a particular server at a particular time. They in no way represent or guarantee that when you buy the game (and in fact, the EULA explicitly states that you may not be able to).
... so, I have no problem continuing to pay and play. If the service didn't work, and I couldn't play, I surely wouldn't be paying for it. Some people seem to have mental breakdowns if they can't log in. To each their own. I'm thinking that the bulk of the 6 million subscibers fall more into the "casual gamer" dept.
And a physically defective game is not exactly the same thing as one that functions fine but just didn't meet the purchaser's expectations, is it?
If you go to an amusement park and have to wait in line for some (if not all) of the rides and one of the roller coasters isn't working, you don't get your money back. There is no difference between that and WoW other than expectations. Both are a result of capacity limits.
Now, I don't play the game 40 hours a week, and don't see it as earth shattering if I can't play one night on my favorite server
- Roach
In any case, if it is impossible to deliver the service to the current userbase, then perhaps they shouldn't have sold it to so many people. It smells like fraud when you take the money and then say "sorry, I can't deliver the stuff right now, there's too many people who've bought it
... they only keep taking money from people who choose to continue giving it to them - continuing to play is not compulsory. Your initial purchase price is no different than if you had bought any other video game that didn't live up to your expectations - you can't return those for a refund either.
First, your complaint (like most of them) seems to be based on an assumption that they are not working as hard as they can to improve things, and that they simply sit around all day sipping tea. I, personally, do not see this as being the case.
What I see is a company that had growth far exceeding their business plan and are now playing catchup. IT things don't happen overnight, and like most companies and people, they are not perfect.
As for "fraud"
- Roach
I know you were just joking, but the point is that I don't "wait", mainly because there's always something else to do.
I would not sit in a chair and stare at a screen for 30 minutes watching a queue.
And if I got caught doing THAT (and at the same time, say, the trash hadn't been taken out), THEN I'd be in trouble
- Roach
No matter what they (or any MMORPG) does, there is a group of people that will whine.
...?
:)
The alternative to no queues is
A) Let everyone in. I've seen that in other games. It's not pretty. Things don't scale infinitely, and the game server would be unusable. People would then bitch that the game server is unusable.
B) Static cap the server population. They tried that recently. Immediatly there were tons of threads on their forums saying "I can't create a character on world X where my friend is playing! I paid $50 for this game, blah, blah blah".
Personally, I rarely see a queue, and I've been playing WoW for a year on the same server which has been "full" for some time. About the worst I see is about 30 minutes, and I simply alt-tab and read the news for a few or maybe do a quick chore around the house my wife had been nagging me to do
- Roach