Ok, from the blog, he called at work because he 'knew it would be good', I'll give you that. Though, I gotta say, I'm not getting the 'confrontational from the onset' part; he seemed polite, if a bit dispassionate, at the beginning of the conversation.
But me? I record ALL my phone calls, for legal reasons.
This sounds like some brat-ass cop got pissy 'cos a librarian wouldn't roll over for him, and forced him to go through the appropriate channels to get what he needed. I don't see how it's actually a news story. Someone tag this 'slownewsday'.
"Now, as a rep., you hear a 'teen' trying to cancel a regular, paid-for account, still in use (as the rep. sees it). This 'teen' claims to have had broadband for years and not even have that AOL software installed, yet, I repeat, the accound was in regular use, and has been regularly paid for."
This is irrelevant. The card was his. The account was in his name. He asked nicely and answered the first couple of questions politely. The use of the account is irrelevant; the rightful owner of the account requested it cancelled and was given the runaround, as per standard AOL policy. I don't see why that's so hard to grasp.
AOL's doing shittily. Companies that own it keep selling it off like a bad tumor. The only thing keeping it around are the fools in this country that keep AOL because they think that's where the internet comes from.
But yeah. They're losing to the Broadband Game. Meanwhile, the 'invisible hand' is actually causing the retention assholes to exist, and will, in the end, cause AOL to self destruct unless they get a Smart Human to fix their business.
Not much call for an overgrown portal anymore, you know?
If you've made a 'good faith' effort to cancel your account, and your credit score is harmed by stopping payment, you can sue AOL (or any other debtor) for credit fraud.
RTFA. The dude's 30 years old and is paying for the account himself.
I understand that the rep may have been thinking 'hijacking', however how, exactly, would cancelling a hijacked account no be in Vincent's best interests?
The rep evaded the cancellation request repeatedly, saying that it was being used, it's online, etc. It's standard AOL tactics; try anything you can to keep the user from cancelling. I know, I've been there (I spent about an hour trying to convince a rep that I never even signed up for AOL, and trying to get them to cancel my account. Fortunately, cancelling the apparently compromised credit card was far easier). My girlfriend has been there (she spent twenty minutes trying to convince her rep to cancel her old account). AOL's retention reps are right BASTARDS to deal with.
Just do yourself a favor; before you go condemning this guy, sign up for an AOL free trial and try to cancel a month later. See how far you get.
Sorry, you're thinking this is a RISC chip of some nature (ie: all data must be aligned to the chip's bitwidth)? The x86 line of processors handles data at the byte resolution the programmer specifies; a char takes 8 bits, a word takes 16, a dword takes 32 and a qword takes 64, (I may be remembering this incorrectly, but) a float takes 80 and a double takes 160.
Sure, sure, some structs may get padded, but the real memory hogs (graphics / 3d programs) use unsigned byte arrays (for 8 / 24 bit color) to hold their data in RAM, unless it's more convenient to use words or dwords, (for 16 or 32 bit color). Point is, between those two things, yeah, you may need maybe 10-15% more RAM (to handle the padding), but twice is rediculous.
Meanwhile, Vista don't look so good to me. For the life of me, I can't figure what the hype is about.
But then, I use slackware, and like my custom kernels.
Wow. A Standard deviation of 192% means the results are meaningless for a range of 0-100% (the range itself is < 3x the std dev, the basic measure of 'significance' in statistics).
I don't know. G4's 'Midnight Spank' commercials were good enough to get me to download them and show them to all my friends. Seriously. Do you want calico colored guinea pig to eat your other leg?
Yeeaahh.. that scenereo describes why there's such a rich open source development community quite clearly. And why so many open source libs are being used by actual corporations.
Oh. Just in case you're too stupid to realize: I'm calling you a judgemental moron.
Dude, I don't actually care. If they're trying to convince the public that filesharing is no longer a threat to them... HOORAY! I can share without guilt or fear of reprisal!
Shee-it. I just finished downloading every title off WXPN's 885 best albums of all time. Nice little eMule control script I wrote to get albums via a csv file.
I can, for example, do some amazing things with little more than Javascript and a little hunklet of CSS - but I wouldn't try to write encryption with it (I tried it a while ago, actually; creating a 128 bit key took a few MINUTES).
And to be honest, Javascript is not good for complex interfaces; Check out http://www.fordi.org/comics and see what I mean. That little expandy bar NEEDS at least 1.5GHz of power to be usable.
"jeez, from my perspective, the parent is right. encryptions are algorithms which transforma set of numbers without loosing data. To do this, they use mathematical arelationships. if your give everybody a binary algorithm and all it does is add one, that is clearly a vulnerability. The back door in the algorigthms the chinese proposed is not going to be simple but it may very well be there."
You make very good and valid points - none of which are applicable to GP's comment. He was talking about language, which has nothing to do with security. In other words, my comment boils down to: 'no the chinese weren't complaining about everything being in english; the language doesn't come into that layer of encryption.'
"With that lack of knowledge and arrogance I doubt you would ever manage get anybody of the opposite sex to reproduce with you."
My 'lack of knowledge' was at least enough to read what you were attempting to defend.
(Now, this is slashdot, so no remorse on the bad grammar; tut, tut)
As for my lack of arrogance, I thank you....
Oh, you meant it the other way. Ok. Ahem. Plenty of stupid humans with balls the size of melons reproduce. It's very likely the way you came about.
Yeah. There's very good justification for my sig. Especially when I'm in a bad mood.
Slashdot Mirror
*blinks*
Ok, from the blog, he called at work because he 'knew it would be good', I'll give you that. Though, I gotta say, I'm not getting the 'confrontational from the onset' part; he seemed polite, if a bit dispassionate, at the beginning of the conversation.
But me? I record ALL my phone calls, for legal reasons.
Oh, I don't know.
This sounds like some brat-ass cop got pissy 'cos a librarian wouldn't roll over for him, and forced him to go through the appropriate channels to get what he needed. I don't see how it's actually a news story. Someone tag this 'slownewsday'.
(shhh, I know. I was poking fun at his misobservation)
Registers don't use memory.
Pointers are often mis- and over-used. Firefox is kinda free and easy with 'em, for example.
I think most of that time would have been the process of getting his money back from their deathgripping hands.
"Now, as a rep., you hear a 'teen' trying to cancel a regular, paid-for account, still in use (as the rep. sees it). This 'teen' claims to have had broadband for years and not even have that AOL software installed, yet, I repeat, the accound was in regular use, and has been regularly paid for."
This is irrelevant. The card was his. The account was in his name. He asked nicely and answered the first couple of questions politely. The use of the account is irrelevant; the rightful owner of the account requested it cancelled and was given the runaround, as per standard AOL policy. I don't see why that's so hard to grasp.
AOL's doing shittily. Companies that own it keep selling it off like a bad tumor. The only thing keeping it around are the fools in this country that keep AOL because they think that's where the internet comes from.
But yeah. They're losing to the Broadband Game. Meanwhile, the 'invisible hand' is actually causing the retention assholes to exist, and will, in the end, cause AOL to self destruct unless they get a Smart Human to fix their business.
Not much call for an overgrown portal anymore, you know?
Hm. Good to know. Going for that free iPod now...
If you've made a 'good faith' effort to cancel your account, and your credit score is harmed by stopping payment, you can sue AOL (or any other debtor) for credit fraud.
RTFA. The dude's 30 years old and is paying for the account himself.
I understand that the rep may have been thinking 'hijacking', however how, exactly, would cancelling a hijacked account no be in Vincent's best interests?
The rep evaded the cancellation request repeatedly, saying that it was being used, it's online, etc. It's standard AOL tactics; try anything you can to keep the user from cancelling. I know, I've been there (I spent about an hour trying to convince a rep that I never even signed up for AOL, and trying to get them to cancel my account. Fortunately, cancelling the apparently compromised credit card was far easier). My girlfriend has been there (she spent twenty minutes trying to convince her rep to cancel her old account). AOL's retention reps are right BASTARDS to deal with.
Just do yourself a favor; before you go condemning this guy, sign up for an AOL free trial and try to cancel a month later. See how far you get.
And how would cancelling a hijacked account not be in his best interests?
??
Sorry, you're thinking this is a RISC chip of some nature (ie: all data must be aligned to the chip's bitwidth)? The x86 line of processors handles data at the byte resolution the programmer specifies; a char takes 8 bits, a word takes 16, a dword takes 32 and a qword takes 64, (I may be remembering this incorrectly, but) a float takes 80 and a double takes 160.
Sure, sure, some structs may get padded, but the real memory hogs (graphics / 3d programs) use unsigned byte arrays (for 8 / 24 bit color) to hold their data in RAM, unless it's more convenient to use words or dwords, (for 16 or 32 bit color). Point is, between those two things, yeah, you may need maybe 10-15% more RAM (to handle the padding), but twice is rediculous.
Meanwhile, Vista don't look so good to me. For the life of me, I can't figure what the hype is about.
But then, I use slackware, and like my custom kernels.
Yes. They're attempting to make it difficult for a virus, run as administrator, to disable the antivirus software.
Wow. A Standard deviation of 192% means the results are meaningless for a range of 0-100% (the range itself is < 3x the std dev, the basic measure of 'significance' in statistics).
Though, sometimes them psychic powers come in handy. It may not always know what I want to find, but it often knows what I should be looking for.
I don't know. G4's 'Midnight Spank' commercials were good enough to get me to download them and show them to all my friends. Seriously. Do you want calico colored guinea pig to eat your other leg?
Yeeaahh.. that scenereo describes why there's such a rich open source development community quite clearly. And why so many open source libs are being used by actual corporations.
Oh. Just in case you're too stupid to realize: I'm calling you a judgemental moron.
Which is why you stick to emule (brain-dead easy to use) or bittorrent (almost as, but harder to find stuff).
Dude, I don't actually care. If they're trying to convince the public that filesharing is no longer a threat to them... HOORAY! I can share without guilt or fear of reprisal!
*snort* 500?
Shee-it. I just finished downloading every title off WXPN's 885 best albums of all time. Nice little eMule control script I wrote to get albums via a csv file.
Very good point. And the real question is: in what way is something like Java superior to C++ when you take away the ease-of-access via the web?
I'm going to have to agree with you there.
I can, for example, do some amazing things with little more than Javascript and a little hunklet of CSS - but I wouldn't try to write encryption with it (I tried it a while ago, actually; creating a 128 bit key took a few MINUTES).
And to be honest, Javascript is not good for complex interfaces; Check out http://www.fordi.org/comics and see what I mean. That little expandy bar NEEDS at least 1.5GHz of power to be usable.
Yeah. I used google spreadsheets. Very complete. And very slow. I'll stick to KSpread, thank you.
Sorry, read the sig. Not giving a damn.
"jeez, from my perspective, the parent is right. encryptions are algorithms which transforma set of numbers without loosing data. To do this, they use mathematical arelationships. if your give everybody a binary algorithm and all it does is add one, that is clearly a vulnerability. The back door in the algorigthms the chinese proposed is not going to be simple but it may very well be there."
...
You make very good and valid points - none of which are applicable to GP's comment. He was talking about language, which has nothing to do with security. In other words, my comment boils down to: 'no the chinese weren't complaining about everything being in english; the language doesn't come into that layer of encryption.'
"With that lack of knowledge and arrogance I doubt you would ever manage get anybody of the opposite sex to reproduce with you."
My 'lack of knowledge' was at least enough to read what you were attempting to defend.
(Now, this is slashdot, so no remorse on the bad grammar; tut, tut)
As for my lack of arrogance, I thank you.
Oh, you meant it the other way. Ok. Ahem. Plenty of stupid humans with balls the size of melons reproduce. It's very likely the way you came about.
Yeah. There's very good justification for my sig. Especially when I'm in a bad mood.