Yup, that's exactly the kind of situation I'm talking about. I once had a landlord I gave a rent check to, and they "accidentally" processed it twice. I confirmed it was the landlord's bank that did it. Overdrew my account substantially, and of course I piled other charges on top of it because I had no idea I was in the red. My credit union was really nice about it, though, realized what happened, and reversed the duplicate charge--as well as all the overdrafts. But by rights the landlord's bank should've had to pay for that mistake.
I'm not talking about banks. I noticed the people who pointed out overdraft situations had the bank reimburse them. I'm talking about some third party overdrawing your account and then making up for the overdrafts as a courtesy to you, for their mistake.
It usually seems to be the financial institutions that make it right rather than the offending transactor.
Guy wanted Chinese characters for "strength" and "honor." Got "small penis" instead. Girl wanted "beautiful goddess" around her belly button, got "Insert General Tso's Chicken Here" instead. (She was mostly upset on account of being a vegetarian.)
Seriously, people: if you aren't certain what the foreign characters actually mean, you probably shouldn't be getting it as a tattoo. Find someone who is fluent and whom you can trust to give you the real deal, don't go to a random tattoo artist who might be a sadistic asshole.
That sounds more like a defective phone/application than something Sprint was specifically doing wrong. I've had multiple Sprint phones over the years and never had a music player that used Internet access when accessing local data. I hope you complained to Sprint about it. They've always been pretty good about crediting me when there's a billing screwup.
Or give the slightest bit of thought to what you're doing before you just click something. I have Sprint and while they aren't the greatest mobile phone company, they spell out quite plainly if that button you're about to push is going to cost you a couple bucks. I don't know how up-front Verizon was about these charges but I have a feeling many people just weren't paying attention.
The same thing happens with banks, for that matter, or any instance where you're charged for something. What are the odds you'll be accidentally credited instead of, say, debited twice for the same thing? And if multiple erroneous debits wind up overdrawing your account, how good are the odds that the offending party will reimburse the overdraft charges?
These errors always seem to be at the expense of the consumer and it's a struggle just to get back to zero, much less be compensated for your time and trouble.
It's also hardly limited to Verizon. I've been with Sprint for several years and had a few occasions where they put strange charges on my bill. Of course, I called and complained and they took them off, saying they were "billing errors." I don't know what I'd prefer, that they're so shady they're purposely tacking bullshit charges onto people's bills, or they are so incompetent they don't know how to keep such mistakes from happening.
I can only guess how many people get those charges who never bat an eye and just pay them.
I suggest that, rather than some draconian solution to shut down the phone while driving, we put some of the computing power in the car to use. We have cameras and such mounted on cars now for safety purposes, to keep you from backing into things, running over kids, etc. Why not include a small camera in the dashboard backed by facial recognition software that checks to make sure you're keeping your eyes on the road, or are at least not looking down at your lap? It should be able to calculate your approximate field of vision based on your head's orientation. If your eyes are off the road for more than, say, a second or two, have the car sound an alarm or start to automatically decelerate.
I think attacking the phone only goes after the symptom (texting) rather than the root cause (sources of distraction while driving.) Equip the car to detect how aware and attentive the driver is being and let it respond accordingly.
Indeed. The phrase "killer app" was used before the notion of smartphones was a glimmer in anyone's eye. From where I'm standing, "app" is just an abbreviation of "application," and it need not even be a software program. Social networking is an "app," in terms of being an application of Web-based technologies to provide useful services, despite not being a program in any strict sense.
I really hate what Apple does to language sometimes.
I've seen this sort of transition occur firsthand. It's not pretty. The company was better for it in the end, though--they just had to shed a lot (and I mean a lot) of people. Over a third of the company was gone by the time it was all said and done and virtually the entire leadership structure was changed.
Not really. An 80386 doesn't run that fast--or hot. A 40MHz 386 chip is going to draw maybe 5 watts. Intel Core i7s draw closer to 100 watts (on up.)
Granted, processing power per watt is much higher in new chips, but that's not a worthwhile tradeoff if you don't need 95% of the computing power at your disposal.
It's not necessary to abandon copyright, however the existing laws on the books could stand to be greatly overhauled. As it is now, we call it "intellectual property" and in some ways we treat it as even more sacrosanct than physical property. It's completely contrary to reasoning behind copyright in the first place. Copyright is a privilege we grant to artists so that they may exploit their work for profit for a limited period of time. It is not and was never meant to be a license for corporations to extort their customers to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a song.
The credit card requirement was why my parents never got a BB account. I remember when I was a kid, they walked into a BB with the intention of signing up to rent movies there, and walked out the second they were told a major credit card was required to be on the account.
They stuck with the local Mom & Pop video rental joint. I can't believe so many people happily handed over their CC info to Blockbuster. I'm not sorry to see them go under, though.
That certainly seems to be the perception, that cops are only interested in either the "low-hanging fruit" busts (speeding tickets, drug possession) or the really high-profile cases (murders, kidnappings, etc.) I had some things stolen out of my house once and had a very strong suspicion as to who did it. I filed a report with the police and even told them who I suspected and why. I was very calm and reasonable about the whole thing, but since the value of my stolen good was only a few hundred bucks they basically filed it away and never touched the case again. I later found out that the person I suspected did have my stolen property, which by that point they had sold to someone else. The cops never even bothered to question the fucker.
Beef is cheap in the US thanks to the proliferation of farm subsidies. It is substantially more expensive in other countries. Anyone in the US complaining about the price of beef should get their head examined.
Hidden form values would basically be passed along to each page for the duration of your session at the site. As soon as you close that tab, that state is lost and you'd have to login again.
Cookies get a bad rap but they're pretty useful for most sites. It's just the tracking cookies used to log your browsing history that have given them a bad reputation. But you can thwart those easily by using a custom hosts file, such as the one located on this page.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup, that's exactly the kind of situation I'm talking about. I once had a landlord I gave a rent check to, and they "accidentally" processed it twice. I confirmed it was the landlord's bank that did it. Overdrew my account substantially, and of course I piled other charges on top of it because I had no idea I was in the red. My credit union was really nice about it, though, realized what happened, and reversed the duplicate charge--as well as all the overdrafts. But by rights the landlord's bank should've had to pay for that mistake.
I'm not talking about banks. I noticed the people who pointed out overdraft situations had the bank reimburse them. I'm talking about some third party overdrawing your account and then making up for the overdrafts as a courtesy to you, for their mistake.
It usually seems to be the financial institutions that make it right rather than the offending transactor.
This is my favorite story about smartass tattoo artists: http://soufoaklin.blogspot.com/2002/09/disgruntled-asian-tattoo-artist-inks.html
Highlights:
Guy wanted Chinese characters for "strength" and "honor." Got "small penis" instead.
Girl wanted "beautiful goddess" around her belly button, got "Insert General Tso's Chicken Here" instead. (She was mostly upset on account of being a vegetarian.)
Seriously, people: if you aren't certain what the foreign characters actually mean, you probably shouldn't be getting it as a tattoo. Find someone who is fluent and whom you can trust to give you the real deal, don't go to a random tattoo artist who might be a sadistic asshole.
That sounds more like a defective phone/application than something Sprint was specifically doing wrong. I've had multiple Sprint phones over the years and never had a music player that used Internet access when accessing local data. I hope you complained to Sprint about it. They've always been pretty good about crediting me when there's a billing screwup.
Or give the slightest bit of thought to what you're doing before you just click something. I have Sprint and while they aren't the greatest mobile phone company, they spell out quite plainly if that button you're about to push is going to cost you a couple bucks. I don't know how up-front Verizon was about these charges but I have a feeling many people just weren't paying attention.
The same thing happens with banks, for that matter, or any instance where you're charged for something. What are the odds you'll be accidentally credited instead of, say, debited twice for the same thing? And if multiple erroneous debits wind up overdrawing your account, how good are the odds that the offending party will reimburse the overdraft charges?
These errors always seem to be at the expense of the consumer and it's a struggle just to get back to zero, much less be compensated for your time and trouble.
It's also hardly limited to Verizon. I've been with Sprint for several years and had a few occasions where they put strange charges on my bill. Of course, I called and complained and they took them off, saying they were "billing errors." I don't know what I'd prefer, that they're so shady they're purposely tacking bullshit charges onto people's bills, or they are so incompetent they don't know how to keep such mistakes from happening.
I can only guess how many people get those charges who never bat an eye and just pay them.
Parent post is lifted pretty much verbatim from here: http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/us_corporation.htm
God forbid people post their own thoughts on Slashdot.
And Nazism - Anything disliked by everybody (except white supremacists.)
I suggest that, rather than some draconian solution to shut down the phone while driving, we put some of the computing power in the car to use. We have cameras and such mounted on cars now for safety purposes, to keep you from backing into things, running over kids, etc. Why not include a small camera in the dashboard backed by facial recognition software that checks to make sure you're keeping your eyes on the road, or are at least not looking down at your lap? It should be able to calculate your approximate field of vision based on your head's orientation. If your eyes are off the road for more than, say, a second or two, have the car sound an alarm or start to automatically decelerate.
I think attacking the phone only goes after the symptom (texting) rather than the root cause (sources of distraction while driving.) Equip the car to detect how aware and attentive the driver is being and let it respond accordingly.
It amazes me that the same people will drop $40-60 on a crappy video game fret about whether or not they wasted their 99 cent app purchase.
We're far too busy for a word with so many letters these days.
Indeed. The phrase "killer app" was used before the notion of smartphones was a glimmer in anyone's eye. From where I'm standing, "app" is just an abbreviation of "application," and it need not even be a software program. Social networking is an "app," in terms of being an application of Web-based technologies to provide useful services, despite not being a program in any strict sense.
I really hate what Apple does to language sometimes.
I've seen this sort of transition occur firsthand. It's not pretty. The company was better for it in the end, though--they just had to shed a lot (and I mean a lot) of people. Over a third of the company was gone by the time it was all said and done and virtually the entire leadership structure was changed.
Not really. An 80386 doesn't run that fast--or hot. A 40MHz 386 chip is going to draw maybe 5 watts. Intel Core i7s draw closer to 100 watts (on up.)
Granted, processing power per watt is much higher in new chips, but that's not a worthwhile tradeoff if you don't need 95% of the computing power at your disposal.
Are marketing people usually known for being funny? Inspired and genuinely humorous marketing material seems to be rather rare.
It's not necessary to abandon copyright, however the existing laws on the books could stand to be greatly overhauled. As it is now, we call it "intellectual property" and in some ways we treat it as even more sacrosanct than physical property. It's completely contrary to reasoning behind copyright in the first place. Copyright is a privilege we grant to artists so that they may exploit their work for profit for a limited period of time. It is not and was never meant to be a license for corporations to extort their customers to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a song.
The credit card requirement was why my parents never got a BB account. I remember when I was a kid, they walked into a BB with the intention of signing up to rent movies there, and walked out the second they were told a major credit card was required to be on the account.
They stuck with the local Mom & Pop video rental joint. I can't believe so many people happily handed over their CC info to Blockbuster. I'm not sorry to see them go under, though.
Too much jiggle!
I think you're making a joke that was inadequately set up. :-p
That certainly seems to be the perception, that cops are only interested in either the "low-hanging fruit" busts (speeding tickets, drug possession) or the really high-profile cases (murders, kidnappings, etc.) I had some things stolen out of my house once and had a very strong suspicion as to who did it. I filed a report with the police and even told them who I suspected and why. I was very calm and reasonable about the whole thing, but since the value of my stolen good was only a few hundred bucks they basically filed it away and never touched the case again. I later found out that the person I suspected did have my stolen property, which by that point they had sold to someone else. The cops never even bothered to question the fucker.
Beef is cheap in the US thanks to the proliferation of farm subsidies. It is substantially more expensive in other countries. Anyone in the US complaining about the price of beef should get their head examined.
Hidden form values would basically be passed along to each page for the duration of your session at the site. As soon as you close that tab, that state is lost and you'd have to login again.
Cookies get a bad rap but they're pretty useful for most sites. It's just the tracking cookies used to log your browsing history that have given them a bad reputation. But you can thwart those easily by using a custom hosts file, such as the one located on this page.
The paper and pencils/pens you used to make your copy aren't free and were nowhere near free, historically.
These days, storage is insanely cheap and you can produce a perfect copy of something for what amounts to pennies' worth of storage space.
The key would most properly be considered a trade secret. Whoever disclosed it is in a whole heap of legal hot water if they're ever caught.