I think more importantly than that, I don't think checking accounts are protected against fraud most of the time. Giving your checking account to a business like blockbuster is just begging to have your account emptied when you need it most.
Of course there's an easy way to mitigate the risk. Just maintain both a checking and a savings account at the same bank and keep most of your money in the savings account (e.g. if you have direct deposit, have it go to the savings account.) Only keep enough money in your checking account to cover your current obligations. PC Banking makes it easy to monitor your balance and xfer funds as needed.
Most people are capable of catching a ball. I'd hazard to say that the laws, or some mathematical approximation, are hard-wired into the human nervous system.
I'd hazard to say that the laws, or some mathematical approximation, are learned by the incredibly adaptable and flexible human nervous system, over the first few years of life which are usually spent picking up objects, dropping them and also throwing them at your siblings.
So let me get this straight... China has some kind of anarchic version of the internet, where users post whatever they want, and are free to band together to form loose coalitions organized around common interests?
I think this project is enormously more important than anything else NASA could possibly do in the next decade with that same amount of money. More important than scratching around on the moon, more important than figuring out how to get to Mars, *certainly* more important than futzing around on the ISS.
If this project could determine unequivicably once and for all that there is definitely life on other planets, that would be one of the most amazing, most profound, most astonishing discoveries in the history of humanity. It would be earth shattering, if you'll pardon the expression.
Who cares if we can't actually get to the planets themselves? The reward is the knowledge itself.
"Can Microsoft detect it via Xbox LIVE? They probably can... and when they start checking they will probably act like with the Xbox1, ban your Xbox 360 console serial for life from the LIVE servers... or maybe even more, who knows what they are planning. You've been warned!"
While I love the SqueezeBox, I find the slimserver's (web-based) UI to be slow, clumsy, and frustrating. It takes forever to make a decent sized playlist. Maybe I just haven't learned how to use it properly.
slimserver has also, until recently, been plagued by all sorts of weird bugs. They just released 6.2.2 which seems to have most of the problems fixed that I was running into; just in time too, I was getting ready to chuck the whole thing and go back to Winamp.
I'm with you, dude. In fact, I'm still happily listening to my 20 gig archos w/ Rockbox. I was pretty ready to junk it before I found Rockbox, the original archos jukebox firmware was a steaming pile of shit, and their support was non-existant (by which I mean, I sent them several emails over time with quesitons about various problems, and never once got a reply.)
Now with my rockbox jukebox, I *still* have no reason to buy an iPod. Sure, an iPod is smaller but I mostly use the archos in the car, anyway, so I don't care.
My one complaint is the lack of FLAC support, but that's not rockbox's fault (the puny 8-bit cpu in the jukebox just ain't up to the task, apparently.)
Was anyone else as completely underwhelmed by Vinge's article as I was? For a man who has produced so many incredible, original visions in the past, he seems to be stuck in a bit of a rut these days, going on and on about ubiquitous computing. There wasn't a single idea in his article that I haven't heard many times before already, from him and others. It reads like something he cranked out in 10 minutes to meet some last minute deadline...
lol... "Is freely giving away our service a sustainable business model?" Where (or better stated, when) have we heard that before?
More times than we can count, no doubt about that. But as I stated it, that wasn't the question...the question is whether the free giveaways can be sustained by selling add-on services.
There are numerous high profile successful internet companies that freely give away many of their services, such as, say...Yahoo. Or um, Google. While not a guarantee of success, it's certainly no guarantee of failure either.
I certainly agree that Skype could fail for any number of reasons. However, the GP wants to arrograntly predict with absolute certainty that it will fail, based on...what? Nothing convincing. "In five years Skype is going to be as relevant as Napster"...like any of us really has any idea what will happen in five years. It sounds like he mostly just has an axe to grind about open vs. proprietary standards. And this gets a +5 Interesting?
I think other VOIP vendors are actually scared of Skype. The problem is, their business models are built on wooing people away from traditional telco with cheaper prices but still charging them something for VOIP services. Meanwhile, Skype provides 100% free VOIP for people who are willing to change their phone habits slightly, and free is hard to compete with. The real question is whether Skype can build a sustainable business based on subsidizing the free service with optional for-pay add ons.
Comparing Napster to Skype is absurd. Napster failed because its business model, such as it was, depended on its customers violating copyright law, and it got sued into oblivion. Skype is providing a real, legitimate service to real people right now. It could of course still fail for many reasons, but not for the reasons Napster did. Skype is also backed by the very deep pockets of EBay.
Claiming that Skype will fail because it is based on a proprietary standard is also silly. Counter-examples abound, for example, say...Microsoft? That whole multi-billion company is based on a proprietary standard.
I'm always amazed at the willingness of small companies to "out source" such essential communication mechanisms to parties over which they have no control at all. I can imagine it for small companies without a decent IT "guy". But a software company should know better.
I don't understand your comment at all. As if we have control over the regular phone system? What exactly should we know better? That we should be paying huge $ to some long distance phone company when a newer, better technology provides a superior service, and for free?
If Skype should fail (which it does sometimes, the connection quality can be bad due to internet connection issues) we simply switch back to the regular phone at that point.
I work for a small software company that is widely distributed; we have developers in 3 different countries and 5 different time zones. We use Skype almost exclusively for all of our voice communication as well as for casual IM'ing. Every employee is required to install Skype and create and publish a Skype ID. I can't even imagine how much time and money we save this way.
Just as I don't believe we're anywhere near to running out of oil in the next 1000 years
Whoops! Too bad you said that. I was ready to believe your whole post, but this little gem now causes me to instead file your observations under "crackpot."
Slashdot Mirror
Of course there's an easy way to mitigate the risk. Just maintain both a checking and a savings account at the same bank and keep most of your money in the savings account (e.g. if you have direct deposit, have it go to the savings account.) Only keep enough money in your checking account to cover your current obligations. PC Banking makes it easy to monitor your balance and xfer funds as needed.
I'd hazard to say that the laws, or some mathematical approximation, are learned by the incredibly adaptable and flexible human nervous system, over the first few years of life which are usually spent picking up objects, dropping them and also throwing them at your siblings.
I remember the last time I heard that, it was... oh, about five or 10 years ago.
Minuteman Volunteer: No, right now we only keep watch during the day.
Jason Jones: That's a really good idea. I mean, if you did it at night you wouldn't be able to see anything.
Where can we get one of those?
I could not disagree more.
I think this project is enormously more important than anything else NASA could possibly do in the next decade with that same amount of money. More important than scratching around on the moon, more important than figuring out how to get to Mars, *certainly* more important than futzing around on the ISS.
If this project could determine unequivicably once and for all that there is definitely life on other planets, that would be one of the most amazing, most profound, most astonishing discoveries in the history of humanity. It would be earth shattering, if you'll pardon the expression.
Who cares if we can't actually get to the planets themselves? The reward is the knowledge itself.
It's well known that foolproof remote verification of client code from a server is impossible, so confidence in XBox Live's ability to detect this mod seems misplaced at best.
I may have my Slashdot membership permanently revoked for this, but... I thought Galaxy Quest was about a hundred times funnier than Spaceballs.
While I love the SqueezeBox, I find the slimserver's (web-based) UI to be slow, clumsy, and frustrating. It takes forever to make a decent sized playlist. Maybe I just haven't learned how to use it properly.
slimserver has also, until recently, been plagued by all sorts of weird bugs. They just released 6.2.2 which seems to have most of the problems fixed that I was running into; just in time too, I was getting ready to chuck the whole thing and go back to Winamp.
Now with my rockbox jukebox, I *still* have no reason to buy an iPod. Sure, an iPod is smaller but I mostly use the archos in the car, anyway, so I don't care.
My one complaint is the lack of FLAC support, but that's not rockbox's fault (the puny 8-bit cpu in the jukebox just ain't up to the task, apparently.)
I know how to spell panarama, thank you very much!
Two years ago I couldn't even load a single panormara without QT crashing, so I guess they're making progress...
Was anyone else as completely underwhelmed by Vinge's article as I was? For a man who has produced so many incredible, original visions in the past, he seems to be stuck in a bit of a rut these days, going on and on about ubiquitous computing. There wasn't a single idea in his article that I haven't heard many times before already, from him and others. It reads like something he cranked out in 10 minutes to meet some last minute deadline...
Yikes, that's one helluva commute.
Maybe that explains why so many modern day humans don't seem to mind driving 2 hours each way to work every day. It's in our genes!
Only on /. would there be a post saying, "I thought I'd felt a great disturbance in the Force".
More times than we can count, no doubt about that. But as I stated it, that wasn't the question...the question is whether the free giveaways can be sustained by selling add-on services.
There are numerous high profile successful internet companies that freely give away many of their services, such as, say...Yahoo. Or um, Google. While not a guarantee of success, it's certainly no guarantee of failure either.
I certainly agree that Skype could fail for any number of reasons. However, the GP wants to arrograntly predict with absolute certainty that it will fail, based on...what? Nothing convincing. "In five years Skype is going to be as relevant as Napster"...like any of us really has any idea what will happen in five years. It sounds like he mostly just has an axe to grind about open vs. proprietary standards. And this gets a +5 Interesting?
I think other VOIP vendors are actually scared of Skype. The problem is, their business models are built on wooing people away from traditional telco with cheaper prices but still charging them something for VOIP services. Meanwhile, Skype provides 100% free VOIP for people who are willing to change their phone habits slightly, and free is hard to compete with. The real question is whether Skype can build a sustainable business based on subsidizing the free service with optional for-pay add ons.
Comparing Napster to Skype is absurd. Napster failed because its business model, such as it was, depended on its customers violating copyright law, and it got sued into oblivion. Skype is providing a real, legitimate service to real people right now. It could of course still fail for many reasons, but not for the reasons Napster did. Skype is also backed by the very deep pockets of EBay.
Claiming that Skype will fail because it is based on a proprietary standard is also silly. Counter-examples abound, for example, say...Microsoft? That whole multi-billion company is based on a proprietary standard.
I don't understand your comment at all. As if we have control over the regular phone system? What exactly should we know better? That we should be paying huge $ to some long distance phone company when a newer, better technology provides a superior service, and for free?
If Skype should fail (which it does sometimes, the connection quality can be bad due to internet connection issues) we simply switch back to the regular phone at that point.
I work for a small software company that is widely distributed; we have developers in 3 different countries and 5 different time zones. We use Skype almost exclusively for all of our voice communication as well as for casual IM'ing. Every employee is required to install Skype and create and publish a Skype ID. I can't even imagine how much time and money we save this way.
Researchers from McMurdo have been dispatched to investigate.
Whoops! Too bad you said that. I was ready to believe your whole post, but this little gem now causes me to instead file your observations under "crackpot."
Maybe their spam filters blocked it?
It's easier to throw the disks out now rather than much later after they've been taking up shelf space for a year.
Please...you're just beating a dead cat.