Very true. I love how some hysterical people think they're going to get lung cancer just because they go out to a smoky bar a couple of times a week for about 2-3 hours at a time. Has there ever been a documented case of this? Also, what do these people do when they're walking down the street and a city bus or a big truck passes by, emitting the same chemicals as cigarette smoke? Where is their campaign to ban vehicles? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that those types of people simply love to poke their nose in other peoples' business.
One solution that would greatly reduce the amount of fraudulent credit card use, and this may be in the works at the moment, is to assign a PIN to each credit card, just like ATM cards. When you pay by card in the store, you enter your PIN into a keypad, like you currently do to pay with a debit card. Assuming you don't do something stupid like write it down on the back of your card, someone who steals your wallet can't use the card. This is much better protection than the non-protection you get with a signature. Even if the minimum wage register grunt bothers to look at a signature, it's not too hard to forge someone else's signature, especially when you have the copy on the back of the card to practice with. Store employees are never trained in handwriting recognition, so they could not possibly be expected to catch this.
Not only is this a good idea, but I don't think the threat of hackers suing the attack company is a big one. The hacker would have to make their identity known in order to file suit, therefore admitting responsibility for dozens of felonies. As for an ISP that gets attacked for permitting fraud or spam, they could face a countersuit if they tried to sue. They could be sued for facilitating fraud and theft of bandwidth. At the very least, they wouldn't have the resources to fight in court, given what these types of suits cost to litigate and the profit margins of the ISP industry. It will no doubt be controversial, but overall a good idea.
There are much worse enemies out there, like Underhand Networks (oops I mean Undertone Networks). These people have figured out how to get popup ads past the Google toolbar blocker. Hey idiots, if I went to the trouble to install a popup blocker, what makes you think I'm going to click on your popup ad, except to close it? I hope the era of annoyance crap flood marketing comes to an end, but I think I'd be naively optimistic to expect it to happen anytime soon.
Most likely. Go into a redneck bar in the Southern United States and yell out "rasslin's fake!" and see how many guys want to kick your ass. Only try this if you can run fast or if you're a blackbelt in Kung Fu.
How the hell do you count them? You would have to get Ms Cleo to come in and read the mind of the person who cast the ballot without clearly marking a presidential choice. Basic rules of voting are: if you don't cast a vote, your vote is not counted. I don't see any way around that.
Why exactly would this keep you from coming back? The most common reason for tour employees to photograph tourists is for promotional materials. You know, those glossy brochures you saw in the hotel that led you to take the tour? Usually they ask permission to do that sort of thing, or at least have some sign or other written materials explaining they will do this, but I suppose they're not required to. The chances of this tour guide working covertly with the FBI to compose tourist profiles is quite remote, not to mention that it doesn't make a lot of sense. For a covert investigation, they would get far more information by secretly photographing the license plates of cars entering the facility.
You didn't by chance drop your business card in one of those "win a free lunch" fish bowl things did you? That is where most locally oriented spam comes from. If efforts to get your name off their list fail and they send an obnoxious amount of spam, a can of spam through the window just might do the trick. At least that is a lot more than you can do to some spammer working out of their trailer in central Arkansas and relaying their spam through a Korean proxy.
At this point, it's all about the brand name. Its the same reason people pay double for Nike shoes what they would pay for Reebok. People percieve AOL to be worth the extra money. If they did an objective side by side comparison to another service and calculated which one was a better value, AOL would lose all their customers overnight. But AOL execs know people won't do that, so as long as they can live off their legacy, that will keep the money rolling in.
OK, the guy has a few good points, like that people shouldn't be voting if they aren't familiar with who is running other than who has the coolest campaign commercials. Other than that, it's not 1850 anymore. We shouldn't return to the days of only older men who own land being able to vote. Society belongs to everyone. That being said, everyone needs to take responsibility to become informed about their government and not just fall for the story line of whichever politician says what they want to hear.
I will never understand why some team owners think that blacking out home games is a good idea. If you can't watch your hometown team play on TV, are you going to all of a sudden decide to blow several hundred dollars to go to the stadium to see the game? I suppose some people are this braindead, but I would think most would say "screw the !" This strategy makes as much sense as the MPAA attempts to ban the VCR. Overall team profits should increase with more exposure as fans tend to buy team merchandise, go to games, watch games on TV which leads to advertising revenue, etc. Hint to team owners, if nobody goes to your games it's probably because your team sucks and the tickets are overpriced.
This is what I've always thought. I can see why Tivo makes it more convenient to record a show, with the menus you can control with your remote, but you could always set up a computer to record shows to your hard disk. Or use the old fashioned VCR. I view Tivo as a convenience item. Kind of like buying bread at the bakery instead of baking your own.
Wow. If a spoiler adds 40 to 60 percent horsepower, then I'm sure if I put some of those black racing stripes down the center of my 4 cylinder Neon they will add at least 10 to 20 percent, don't you think?
How about the fact that innocent victims are not being harmed? Old ladies are not being scammed out of their retirement funds. Only those that have shown a desire to scam others are being scammed here. While the legality is questionable, I certainly am not bothered by it.
My impression of AT&T Wireless is that they are always advertising plans with low rates, like $19.95 a month and a free phone, but then if you look at what is included, it's not much. If you want to get a phone with decent features (nothing fancy, just the ability to store numbers and keep a log of recent calls) and a plan with a reasonable amount of features and minutes, all of a sudden AT&T is the most expensive option. That is why I have never even considered their service. Although I know AT&T Wireless was spun off from AT&T corporate, they still carry with them many aspects of AT&T culture, like the complete inability to compete in any truly competitive marketplace and the always-poor customer service. It's no surprise they have been losing customers in record numbers in recent years.
The BBB has no legal standing, and companies no longer care about their BBB reputation, since most customers don't bother to check it. In the case of blatant fraud, call your state attorney general. Most AGs now are all too eager to take on some big corporation, especially if other people can be found who are experiencing the same problems.
It still is about that price in some areas, if you don't get any special calling options. That means that unless you use prepaid calling cards you get to pay old fashioned long distance rates, like $.50 a minute. Consider what most people spent on local and long distance service years ago, it's probably about the same as they now pay for a cell phone with free long distance. That is called progress. In inflation adjusted dollars, telecom costs are lower than they've ever been. One difference is that people communicate a lot more than they used to, with friends, family and work obligations spread all across the country which is why some people's costs may have increased.
Sorry to spoil a good anti-corporate rant here, but some things really do work out in favor of the consumer.
Let's say I sell you a kitchen table. You pay me $200 for a piece of shiny wood with 4 legs, which I deliver to your house. I make no mention of restrictions, but AFTER the sale, you notice a piece of paper stapled to the bottom of the table. It says that you didn't really buy the table, you bought a table usage license. I have placed restrictions on how you can use the table, such as in the kitchen only and only for eating. If you wish to keep an electronic device on the table such as a TV, radio, or even your cellphone charger, you have to pay me $10 a month in additional royalties. If you fail to comply with the terms, under the power of the DMCA I can enter your house, sieze the table along with anything that may be sitting on it, and require you to pay me a $500,000 penalty. Does this sound reasonable? Would it hold up in court?
I've always wondered why the hell they would care about servers as long as you're not serving several gigs of data each day. If you have a personal FTP server to connect to from work or school, how does that harm their network? Between this policy and the PPPoE, that almost negates the benefit of a fiber connection. I think I'd just stick with cable modem, which is fast enough for what I need. Why bother have a blazing fast web browsing connection, which sounds like all that Verizon will be letting people do with it.
Rather than a straight loser pays system, I think it would be best to make a slight change to the existing system. If the plantiff's suit is dismissed before trial and the judge rules it has no legal merit, attorney fees are awarded to the defendant by default. The plantiff can file a response to petition the court not to award fees if they can show good cause. At the same time, when the plantiff prevails, attorney fees should be awarded by default unless the defendant can make a good case to the court otherwise. This would strike a balance between discouraging nuisance suits and not making the stakes too high for someone to sue a wealthy defendant.
"The Standard" meaning that the proprietary features were built into FrontPage and therefore much easier to implement than by doing it the proper way, which can require actual programming knowledge. I suppose there are still a few people left who call themselves web developers even though their only skill is knowing how to build a site in FrontPage.
Re:Sounds like a Best Buy/Comp USA employee...
on
How Cheap Can A PC Be?
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Don't forget the Best Buy Profit Protection Plan. Oh, I mean the Product Protection Plan, silly me. It's only 60% of the purchase price and covers almost nothing, but you wouldn't want that thing to break down now would you?
Slashdot Mirror
Shut up, Roland. We know it's you.
Very true. I love how some hysterical people think they're going to get lung cancer just because they go out to a smoky bar a couple of times a week for about 2-3 hours at a time. Has there ever been a documented case of this? Also, what do these people do when they're walking down the street and a city bus or a big truck passes by, emitting the same chemicals as cigarette smoke? Where is their campaign to ban vehicles? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that those types of people simply love to poke their nose in other peoples' business.
One solution that would greatly reduce the amount of fraudulent credit card use, and this may be in the works at the moment, is to assign a PIN to each credit card, just like ATM cards. When you pay by card in the store, you enter your PIN into a keypad, like you currently do to pay with a debit card. Assuming you don't do something stupid like write it down on the back of your card, someone who steals your wallet can't use the card. This is much better protection than the non-protection you get with a signature. Even if the minimum wage register grunt bothers to look at a signature, it's not too hard to forge someone else's signature, especially when you have the copy on the back of the card to practice with. Store employees are never trained in handwriting recognition, so they could not possibly be expected to catch this.
Not only is this a good idea, but I don't think the threat of hackers suing the attack company is a big one. The hacker would have to make their identity known in order to file suit, therefore admitting responsibility for dozens of felonies. As for an ISP that gets attacked for permitting fraud or spam, they could face a countersuit if they tried to sue. They could be sued for facilitating fraud and theft of bandwidth. At the very least, they wouldn't have the resources to fight in court, given what these types of suits cost to litigate and the profit margins of the ISP industry. It will no doubt be controversial, but overall a good idea.
There are much worse enemies out there, like Underhand Networks (oops I mean Undertone Networks). These people have figured out how to get popup ads past the Google toolbar blocker. Hey idiots, if I went to the trouble to install a popup blocker, what makes you think I'm going to click on your popup ad, except to close it? I hope the era of annoyance crap flood marketing comes to an end, but I think I'd be naively optimistic to expect it to happen anytime soon.
Most likely. Go into a redneck bar in the Southern United States and yell out "rasslin's fake!" and see how many guys want to kick your ass. Only try this if you can run fast or if you're a blackbelt in Kung Fu.
How the hell do you count them? You would have to get Ms Cleo to come in and read the mind of the person who cast the ballot without clearly marking a presidential choice. Basic rules of voting are: if you don't cast a vote, your vote is not counted. I don't see any way around that.
Why exactly would this keep you from coming back? The most common reason for tour employees to photograph tourists is for promotional materials. You know, those glossy brochures you saw in the hotel that led you to take the tour? Usually they ask permission to do that sort of thing, or at least have some sign or other written materials explaining they will do this, but I suppose they're not required to. The chances of this tour guide working covertly with the FBI to compose tourist profiles is quite remote, not to mention that it doesn't make a lot of sense. For a covert investigation, they would get far more information by secretly photographing the license plates of cars entering the facility.
You didn't by chance drop your business card in one of those "win a free lunch" fish bowl things did you? That is where most locally oriented spam comes from. If efforts to get your name off their list fail and they send an obnoxious amount of spam, a can of spam through the window just might do the trick. At least that is a lot more than you can do to some spammer working out of their trailer in central Arkansas and relaying their spam through a Korean proxy.
At this point, it's all about the brand name. Its the same reason people pay double for Nike shoes what they would pay for Reebok. People percieve AOL to be worth the extra money. If they did an objective side by side comparison to another service and calculated which one was a better value, AOL would lose all their customers overnight. But AOL execs know people won't do that, so as long as they can live off their legacy, that will keep the money rolling in.
OK, the guy has a few good points, like that people shouldn't be voting if they aren't familiar with who is running other than who has the coolest campaign commercials. Other than that, it's not 1850 anymore. We shouldn't return to the days of only older men who own land being able to vote. Society belongs to everyone. That being said, everyone needs to take responsibility to become informed about their government and not just fall for the story line of whichever politician says what they want to hear.
I will never understand why some team owners think that blacking out home games is a good idea. If you can't watch your hometown team play on TV, are you going to all of a sudden decide to blow several hundred dollars to go to the stadium to see the game? I suppose some people are this braindead, but I would think most would say "screw the !" This strategy makes as much sense as the MPAA attempts to ban the VCR. Overall team profits should increase with more exposure as fans tend to buy team merchandise, go to games, watch games on TV which leads to advertising revenue, etc. Hint to team owners, if nobody goes to your games it's probably because your team sucks and the tickets are overpriced.
This is what I've always thought. I can see why Tivo makes it more convenient to record a show, with the menus you can control with your remote, but you could always set up a computer to record shows to your hard disk. Or use the old fashioned VCR. I view Tivo as a convenience item. Kind of like buying bread at the bakery instead of baking your own.
If you want to get the guy back, just ask him to say any word with more than 3 syllables. I guarantee you'll laugh at least as hard.
Wow. If a spoiler adds 40 to 60 percent horsepower, then I'm sure if I put some of those black racing stripes down the center of my 4 cylinder Neon they will add at least 10 to 20 percent, don't you think?
How about the fact that innocent victims are not being harmed? Old ladies are not being scammed out of their retirement funds. Only those that have shown a desire to scam others are being scammed here. While the legality is questionable, I certainly am not bothered by it.
My impression of AT&T Wireless is that they are always advertising plans with low rates, like $19.95 a month and a free phone, but then if you look at what is included, it's not much. If you want to get a phone with decent features (nothing fancy, just the ability to store numbers and keep a log of recent calls) and a plan with a reasonable amount of features and minutes, all of a sudden AT&T is the most expensive option. That is why I have never even considered their service. Although I know AT&T Wireless was spun off from AT&T corporate, they still carry with them many aspects of AT&T culture, like the complete inability to compete in any truly competitive marketplace and the always-poor customer service. It's no surprise they have been losing customers in record numbers in recent years.
The BBB has no legal standing, and companies no longer care about their BBB reputation, since most customers don't bother to check it. In the case of blatant fraud, call your state attorney general. Most AGs now are all too eager to take on some big corporation, especially if other people can be found who are experiencing the same problems.
It still is about that price in some areas, if you don't get any special calling options. That means that unless you use prepaid calling cards you get to pay old fashioned long distance rates, like $.50 a minute. Consider what most people spent on local and long distance service years ago, it's probably about the same as they now pay for a cell phone with free long distance. That is called progress. In inflation adjusted dollars, telecom costs are lower than they've ever been. One difference is that people communicate a lot more than they used to, with friends, family and work obligations spread all across the country which is why some people's costs may have increased.
Sorry to spoil a good anti-corporate rant here, but some things really do work out in favor of the consumer.
Boost Mobile, otherwise known as Ghettophone. Have you seen their commercials?
Let's say I sell you a kitchen table. You pay me $200 for a piece of shiny wood with 4 legs, which I deliver to your house. I make no mention of restrictions, but AFTER the sale, you notice a piece of paper stapled to the bottom of the table. It says that you didn't really buy the table, you bought a table usage license. I have placed restrictions on how you can use the table, such as in the kitchen only and only for eating. If you wish to keep an electronic device on the table such as a TV, radio, or even your cellphone charger, you have to pay me $10 a month in additional royalties. If you fail to comply with the terms, under the power of the DMCA I can enter your house, sieze the table along with anything that may be sitting on it, and require you to pay me a $500,000 penalty. Does this sound reasonable? Would it hold up in court?
I've always wondered why the hell they would care about servers as long as you're not serving several gigs of data each day. If you have a personal FTP server to connect to from work or school, how does that harm their network? Between this policy and the PPPoE, that almost negates the benefit of a fiber connection. I think I'd just stick with cable modem, which is fast enough for what I need. Why bother have a blazing fast web browsing connection, which sounds like all that Verizon will be letting people do with it.
Rather than a straight loser pays system, I think it would be best to make a slight change to the existing system. If the plantiff's suit is dismissed before trial and the judge rules it has no legal merit, attorney fees are awarded to the defendant by default. The plantiff can file a response to petition the court not to award fees if they can show good cause. At the same time, when the plantiff prevails, attorney fees should be awarded by default unless the defendant can make a good case to the court otherwise. This would strike a balance between discouraging nuisance suits and not making the stakes too high for someone to sue a wealthy defendant.
"The Standard" meaning that the proprietary features were built into FrontPage and therefore much easier to implement than by doing it the proper way, which can require actual programming knowledge. I suppose there are still a few people left who call themselves web developers even though their only skill is knowing how to build a site in FrontPage.
Don't forget the Best Buy Profit Protection Plan. Oh, I mean the Product Protection Plan, silly me. It's only 60% of the purchase price and covers almost nothing, but you wouldn't want that thing to break down now would you?