The fact that someone has figured out how to trick the bank in to thinking they're talking to you does not imply that you authorized the transactions
Trick????
I'm a call center engineer for a large financial institution. Guess what they do to verify you are who you say you are? They ask questions. They ask for the same information people enter into the phishing sites.
They require 3 pieces of information. (Mother's maiden, DOB, SSN, etc). Once the caller answers those questions, they HAVE TO treat the caller as the account owner and do whatever they ask. It's not a trick.
The phishers are the ones playing the trick and deserve to be punished.
It can't be much or it would break backward-compatibility with about a zillion iPods that are out there.
I doubt Apple is going to force iPod owners to upgrade their firmware just for DRM.
MS, yes, they would do that kind of thing. But not Apple.
Wow! Sony only has 1 camera on the list. This is both surprising considering how many different models they market and their ubiquity around the world, and at the same time not surprising since their reputation is in the tank.
A friend of mine had a Sony camera a couple years ago. The LCD stopped working and it was still under warranty.
They told him that only the parts were under warranty and it would cost $180(US) in labor to fix it.
He tossed the camera and vowed never to buy anything from Sony ever again.
...and a 100M+ dollar block buster??? This is what they're going to dump money into?
The first one was OK but according to IMDB only cost 48M.
They shouldn't spend any more than that on the sequel since I doubt
people are going to flock to see it.
Your 1080i master for broadcast is your 1080i master for the HD-DVD.
Not quite. All releases on HD-DVD so far have been in 1080p.
I'm no expert in HD technology, but I'd say it should be pretty easy
to take 60fps 1080p (HD-DVD) and turn it into 30fps 1080i (HD broadcast).
All forms of energy distort the space around them, which in turn affects how that energy moves through space. We call it all "gravity".
I thought only particles with mass had a "gravitational effect"... ie. massive particles emit gravitons where non-massive particles don't.
So do photons emit just as much gravitational influence as, for example, an electron? Or is it far less because (guessing) the electron has more energy?
Do other particles (neutrinos, etc) also exhibit gravity?
Thanks for the reply.
...or that something has to be massive to feel gravity, both of which are false.
I agree with you in that photons have no mass and you don't have to have mass to "feel" gravity.
However, I've always heard/read that the reason gravity "attracts" non-massive objects (eg photons), is because
gravity is bending space itself.
i.e. You can say that a photon is traveling in a "curved path" because it is "attracted" or "pulled" to a near-by massive object.
But isn't it more correct (in terms of general relativity) to say that the photon is traveling in a straight line
and it's space that's "curved"?
IANA Physicist but the way I understand it, gravity ONLY influences space. Other objects, (eg photons, electrons, people) are then influenced by that change in the shape of space (eg, falling down, orbiting around the earth, tides, etc).
I love the BBB; filing a complaint with them usually resolves the issue.
Unfortunatly, the BBB doesn't really rate "customer service".
eg. Metrocall really screwed up my account about 10 years ago and it wasn't until
I filed a BBB complaint that it got straightened out.
Obviously this has nothing to do with customer service and the BBB doesn't
want to get complaints that "some customer service rep was rude to me."
The BBB deals with situations in which a specific outcome is desired by
the plaintif (eg. Correct the balance on my account; refund my money; etc..)
I'm a techie at a LARGE call center in a finance company. We use Gallup surveys
to rate our customer service and then we publish those scores. Customer service
is important in commercial and retail finance; that's why we publish those scores.
Finance will sell you a product (mortgage, checking, brokerage) but
the company doesn't make money unless you keep your account open.
Unlike finance, most companies don't see customer service as a money-making opportunity.
(Many times, it isn't.) For instance, if you buy a video card from company X, then they
already have your money. Once company X has your money, their incentive to make you happy is gone.
They will provide you with the cheapest customer service they can and they sure as hell aren't going
to spend a fortune on things like quality coaches and Gallup surveys.
Here's the moral of the story:
Good customer service is VERY EXPENSIVE for any company and,
because there's very little brand-loyalty left in the consumer market, it rarely leads to repeat customers.
Good customer service is only viewed as a necessity for companies that need to keep you as an ongoing customer.
The finance industry, and other "service" industries, has figured out that retaining customers is far cheaper then aquireing new ones.
Of course, the mainframes do all the account processing.
Account numbers and customer info very rarely get copied anywhere else,
and if it does, the internal data security teams constantly do audits.
Agreed. I was just trying to make another point about server under-utilization.
Virtualiztion will allow a MIN and MAX amount of CPU power to go to each machine.
Cisco doesn't allow for that as an exception to the SLA, but they should.
Is that because you need more Server 2k3 boxes to get the job done?
Outside of the obvious joke, this is actually true, but probably not for the reasons you think.
Real reason: politics.
One of the problems with server apps is that they tend to be "critical" to normal operations of the business.
This means if you tell someone, "Hey, your server is under-utilized so were going to put this other groups app on there...",
the shit is definitely going to start flying. (ex. "that server came out of my budget..." etc.)
Ask anyone where I work (or probably where anyone works) and they would say that it would be the end of the world
to have to share a server. In truth, it's all too easy for someone to mess up and bring a server to it's knees.
The group I work in, we have probably 80 servers (yes, they all run MS), and none of them can be shared because
it violates the SLA we have with Cisco. They won't support the app if anything else is running on the server.
(Cant say I entirely blame them.)
They solution to this problem is virtualization; I've been telling my co-workers that the future of servers is virtualization.
Until we can really make it work politically, we'll be running racks and racks of servers that mostly run 90+ percent idle.
I'm sorry, but how does your anecdotal evidence of a single company change the fact that the majority of servers are not Windows? Microsoft was recently celebrating the fact that they hit the 25% mark for server sales (for a single quarter), and last I checked, 25% wasn't even a plurality in the server market.
I wasn't saying they have a majority overall, just in my company.
I was giving an example to counter the GPs claim that MS doesn't have respectability in the server market.
Not only do they have respectability, I see more and more vendors requiring them and most custom apps we write is on MS (desktop and server), although a lot of our web stuff is IBM (websphere, etc).
I work in telecommunications; Aspect, Avaya, Cisco (not cisco routers/switches) have ALL migrated from other OSs to MS in the past 5 years for their server and desktop apps.
Yes, Novel, Sun, HP, and IBM are huge in the server business. Except for IBM, they will steadily lose share to MS over time.
One of the main reasons this hasn't happened faster (like in the desktop arena) is because there are a LOT of home-grown apps that companies have built over the past 15 years that still require a particular OS to use.
At the bank I work for, we have a home-grown desktop app that is "critical". It was originally written for OS2. Around 1997 the team was forced to port it to MS windows NT. The conversion was brutal and it took them forever to get all the bugs worked out.
Cut to 9 years later. WERE STILL USING THAT APP! (and no one is happy about it.)
They've tried 4 times in the past 5 years to either have it rewritten or replaced with a vendor product, but every project has failed.
It's so bloated and patched it's a nightmare to maintain, but even tougher to replace.
Now apply that story to the thousands of custom server apps in thousands of companies around the world that only run on SunOS, HPUX, Novel, etc.
The number of custom web apps alone that have been written on Sun servers could keep that company going another 20 years.
We run a lot of MS server OS at work because we've been busy migrating stuff over the past 5 years. (a LOT of stuff.)
So, my point is, MS Server OSs are not only respectable, but many large companies are actively moving towards them because they see it as streamlining. (Large companies like to be consistent and stick to "industry standards", even if it doesn't make good business sense.) MS knows it's going to take time; it's not like replacing a desktop OS.
but when it comes to servers, they're fighting tooth and nail to get a position of respectability, let alone dominance.
Are you kidding?
I work for a very LARGE bank. I guarentee you we have more boxes running MS Server 2003 than all others combined.
We have some HPUX, IBM, and SUN sprinkled in there but several of the vendor apps I've worked with lately has dropped all support
for SunOS and is now requiring Windows Server for their apps.
We use to run Novel for our file servers but that was dropped for MS Active Directory.
The next leading server OS we use is probably zOS.
No Linux yet but I know the powers-that-be are looking at it.
(BTW, I'm no MS fanboy, I'm just making a point.)
I'm sure there are many industries in which MS does not have the majority of the server market but
large financial groups are not among them.
I do a lot of Visual Studio programming (both desktop/server and Web) and I was concerned that IE-Beta might break some of the integrated debugging features with Studio. So far it hasn't been a problem.
Only once did I have a problem: I ran the debugger and then immediately clicked on an existing IE window. It usually opens a whole new IE window (vs a new tab in an existing IE window), but that one time it didn't do anything. I stopped and restarted the debugger and it worked fine.
I'm going to get the HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox360 sometime soon after it's released.
Amazingly, the 360 does not have DVI or HDMI outputs.
So, from your post above, are you saying I CAN get 1080i from my component outputs?
I've been trying to find something definitive online around this but cant find anything.
Also, do you know of a web site that shows what resolution different HD-DVD movies
are mastered in?
e.g. I want to find out if Serinity on HD-DVD is 720p or 1080i.
i worked there in 2002 as an intern and they did a 4000-person layoff. I remember people were getting 4 months severance pay or something like that. Sounded like a good deal to me.
I would have thought it was a great deal too when I was in College: "Hey, you no longer have to work and here's twenty thousand dollars." Woohoo!!! Lets party!
Unfortunatly, once you graduate college it becomes a much more difficult situation. A middle aged engineer (and his/her family) can become quickly accustomed to that kind of money. House mortgage, spouse, 2.5 kids, etc., can quickly burn up 4 months pay.
And if you have a kid in college you might as well declare bankruptcy and tell the kid to start applying for financial aid, grants, and scholarships.
I think it's great that a company would give a severance at all, but from the employees' point of view, it's much more favorable to keep your job.
Maybe the problem is that those quoted lifespans are "in captivity," where the bulb is just kept quietly shining...
Nope...that's not it. I have one fixture in my kitchen that I burn 24/7 so I've used CFLs in it for years.
I still have to replace the damn thing every 6-9 months.
So yes, as far as I'm concerned, that 5 year life span is just BS from the marketing department.
Why just one wiki for Africa?
Many people in the US think Africa is a country...it's a continent!
MANY languages.
MANY cultures.
MANY countries.
Imagine if Wikipedia said "OK, Asia only gets one Wikipedia; Europe only gets one Wikipedia."
Yeah, right...like that would fly.
This is where Africa usually gets the shaft: it's treated as a whole; any effort usually benefits the populous/popular countries.
(eg. world response to massive genocide.)
We weren't using the expensive Sales-Reps-travelling-the-country method to get adoptions, we were using other much cheaper (and obviously not-to-be-disclosed-here) methods to promote the book.
You mean like mailing a copy and then calling them?
You can buy Medeco locks for homes. You just cant walk into a Lowes/HomeDepot and buy one.
Most people aren't willing to pay ~$300 for a deadbolt so they don't bother with that market.
Open your phone book to Locks and Locksmiths; you'll probably see a Medeco dealer in there.
Medeco is a far better lock than Abloy but it's not as readily available to the consumer market.
(They mainly sell to the commercial market via distributors.)
Guess what locks are on the White House: Medeco.
Guess what locks are used on Nuclear Warheads: Medeco.
Guess what locks are on every door of every US embassy around the world: Medeco.
Added to that, you have to send your key TO MEDECO in order to get a copy made.
Medeco blanks are impossible to get ahold of.
Added to that, they have some insane reward if you come to their headquarters and pick a Medeco lock in front of them.
No one has done it in 30 years.
This is true for most lusers out there, but for geeks like us it's very handy.
I find it very interesting when I install some software and
my ZoneAlarm pops a window showing me it's trying to phone home.
(Adobe is the worst when it comes to this.)
Windows should be have a built-in white-list for outgoing network connections,
including a help link to a web page (or a wiki) showing what propram is sending what to where and why!
Slashdot Mirror
Link to New Mexico subdivision with no houses.
I'm a call center engineer for a large financial institution. Guess what they do to verify you are who you say you are? They ask questions. They ask for the same information people enter into the phishing sites.
They require 3 pieces of information. (Mother's maiden, DOB, SSN, etc). Once the caller answers those questions, they HAVE TO treat the caller as the account owner and do whatever they ask. It's not a trick.
The phishers are the ones playing the trick and deserve to be punished.
It can't be much or it would break backward-compatibility with about a zillion iPods that are out there.
I doubt Apple is going to force iPod owners to upgrade their firmware just for DRM.
MS, yes, they would do that kind of thing. But not Apple.
Wow! Sony only has 1 camera on the list. This is both surprising considering how many different models they market and their ubiquity around the world, and at the same time not surprising since their reputation is in the tank.
A friend of mine had a Sony camera a couple years ago. The LCD stopped working and it was still under warranty. They told him that only the parts were under warranty and it would cost $180(US) in labor to fix it.
He tossed the camera and vowed never to buy anything from Sony ever again.
The first one was OK but according to IMDB only cost 48M.
They shouldn't spend any more than that on the sequel since I doubt people are going to flock to see it.
I'm no expert in HD technology, but I'd say it should be pretty easy to take 60fps 1080p (HD-DVD) and turn it into 30fps 1080i (HD broadcast).
So do photons emit just as much gravitational influence as, for example, an electron? Or is it far less because (guessing) the electron has more energy?
Do other particles (neutrinos, etc) also exhibit gravity?
Thanks for the reply.
However, I've always heard/read that the reason gravity "attracts" non-massive objects (eg photons), is because gravity is bending space itself.
i.e. You can say that a photon is traveling in a "curved path" because it is "attracted" or "pulled" to a near-by massive object.
But isn't it more correct (in terms of general relativity) to say that the photon is traveling in a straight line and it's space that's "curved"?
IANA Physicist but the way I understand it, gravity ONLY influences space. Other objects, (eg photons, electrons, people) are then influenced by that change in the shape of space (eg, falling down, orbiting around the earth, tides, etc).
I love the BBB; filing a complaint with them usually resolves the issue.
Unfortunatly, the BBB doesn't really rate "customer service".
eg. Metrocall really screwed up my account about 10 years ago and it wasn't until I filed a BBB complaint that it got straightened out.
Obviously this has nothing to do with customer service and the BBB doesn't want to get complaints that "some customer service rep was rude to me."
The BBB deals with situations in which a specific outcome is desired by the plaintif (eg. Correct the balance on my account; refund my money; etc..)
I'm a techie at a LARGE call center in a finance company. We use Gallup surveys to rate our customer service and then we publish those scores. Customer service is important in commercial and retail finance; that's why we publish those scores. Finance will sell you a product (mortgage, checking, brokerage) but the company doesn't make money unless you keep your account open.
Unlike finance, most companies don't see customer service as a money-making opportunity. (Many times, it isn't.) For instance, if you buy a video card from company X, then they already have your money. Once company X has your money, their incentive to make you happy is gone. They will provide you with the cheapest customer service they can and they sure as hell aren't going to spend a fortune on things like quality coaches and Gallup surveys.
Here's the moral of the story:
Good customer service is VERY EXPENSIVE for any company and, because there's very little brand-loyalty left in the consumer market, it rarely leads to repeat customers.
Good customer service is only viewed as a necessity for companies that need to keep you as an ongoing customer.
The finance industry, and other "service" industries, has figured out that retaining customers is far cheaper then aquireing new ones.
Of course, the mainframes do all the account processing.
Account numbers and customer info very rarely get copied anywhere else,
and if it does, the internal data security teams constantly do audits.
Agreed. I was just trying to make another point about server under-utilization.
Virtualiztion will allow a MIN and MAX amount of CPU power to go to each machine.
Cisco doesn't allow for that as an exception to the SLA, but they should.
Real reason: politics. One of the problems with server apps is that they tend to be "critical" to normal operations of the business.
This means if you tell someone, "Hey, your server is under-utilized so were going to put this other groups app on there...",
the shit is definitely going to start flying. (ex. "that server came out of my budget..." etc.)
Ask anyone where I work (or probably where anyone works) and they would say that it would be the end of the world to have to share a server.
In truth, it's all too easy for someone to mess up and bring a server to it's knees.
The group I work in, we have probably 80 servers (yes, they all run MS), and none of them can be shared because it violates the SLA we have with Cisco. They won't support the app if anything else is running on the server.
(Cant say I entirely blame them.)
They solution to this problem is virtualization; I've been telling my co-workers that the future of servers is virtualization.
Until we can really make it work politically, we'll be running racks and racks of servers that mostly run 90+ percent idle.
I was giving an example to counter the GPs claim that MS doesn't have respectability in the server market.
Not only do they have respectability, I see more and more vendors requiring them and most custom apps we write is on MS (desktop and server), although a lot of our web stuff is IBM (websphere, etc).
I work in telecommunications; Aspect, Avaya, Cisco (not cisco routers/switches) have ALL migrated from other OSs to MS in the past 5 years for their server and desktop apps.
Yes, Novel, Sun, HP, and IBM are huge in the server business. Except for IBM, they will steadily lose share to MS over time.
One of the main reasons this hasn't happened faster (like in the desktop arena) is because there are a LOT of home-grown apps that companies have built over the past 15 years that still require a particular OS to use.
At the bank I work for, we have a home-grown desktop app that is "critical". It was originally written for OS2. Around 1997 the team was forced to port it to MS windows NT.
The conversion was brutal and it took them forever to get all the bugs worked out.
Cut to 9 years later. WERE STILL USING THAT APP! (and no one is happy about it.)
They've tried 4 times in the past 5 years to either have it rewritten or replaced with a vendor product, but every project has failed.
It's so bloated and patched it's a nightmare to maintain, but even tougher to replace.
Now apply that story to the thousands of custom server apps in thousands of companies around the world that only run on SunOS, HPUX, Novel, etc.
The number of custom web apps alone that have been written on Sun servers could keep that company going another 20 years.
We run a lot of MS server OS at work because we've been busy migrating stuff over the past 5 years. (a LOT of stuff.)
So, my point is, MS Server OSs are not only respectable, but many large companies are actively moving towards them because they see it as streamlining. (Large companies like to be consistent and stick to "industry standards", even if it doesn't make good business sense.)
MS knows it's going to take time; it's not like replacing a desktop OS.
I work for a very LARGE bank. I guarentee you we have more boxes running MS Server 2003 than all others combined.
We have some HPUX, IBM, and SUN sprinkled in there but several of the vendor apps I've worked with lately has dropped all support
for SunOS and is now requiring Windows Server for their apps.
We use to run Novel for our file servers but that was dropped for MS Active Directory.
The next leading server OS we use is probably zOS. No Linux yet but I know the powers-that-be are looking at it.
(BTW, I'm no MS fanboy, I'm just making a point.)
I'm sure there are many industries in which MS does not have the majority of the server market but
large financial groups are not among them.
I do a lot of Visual Studio programming (both desktop/server and Web) and I was concerned that IE-Beta might break some of the integrated debugging features with Studio. So far it hasn't been a problem.
Only once did I have a problem: I ran the debugger and then immediately clicked on an existing IE window. It usually opens a whole new IE window (vs a new tab in an existing IE window), but that one time it didn't do anything. I stopped and restarted the debugger and it worked fine.
Thanks for the info. It's very much appreciated.
I don't think you're looking at the correct web site.
I'm going to get the HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox360 sometime soon after it's released.
Amazingly, the 360 does not have DVI or HDMI outputs.
So, from your post above, are you saying I CAN get 1080i from my component outputs?
I've been trying to find something definitive online around this but cant find anything.
Also, do you know of a web site that shows what resolution different HD-DVD movies are mastered in?
e.g. I want to find out if Serinity on HD-DVD is 720p or 1080i.
Thanks.
I would have thought it was a great deal too when I was in College: "Hey, you no longer have to work and here's twenty thousand dollars." Woohoo!!! Lets party!
Unfortunatly, once you graduate college it becomes a much more difficult situation. A middle aged engineer (and his/her family) can become quickly accustomed to that kind of money. House mortgage, spouse, 2.5 kids, etc., can quickly burn up 4 months pay.
And if you have a kid in college you might as well declare bankruptcy and tell the kid to start applying for financial aid, grants, and scholarships.
I think it's great that a company would give a severance at all, but from the employees' point of view, it's much more favorable to keep your job.
I still have to replace the damn thing every 6-9 months.
So yes, as far as I'm concerned, that 5 year life span is just BS from the marketing department.
Why just one wiki for Africa?
Many people in the US think Africa is a country...it's a continent!
MANY languages.
MANY cultures.
MANY countries.
Imagine if Wikipedia said "OK, Asia only gets one Wikipedia; Europe only gets one Wikipedia."
Yeah, right...like that would fly.
This is where Africa usually gets the shaft: it's treated as a whole; any effort usually benefits the populous/popular countries.
(eg. world response to massive genocide.)
You mean like mailing a copy and then calling them?
You can buy Medeco locks for homes. You just cant walk into a Lowes/HomeDepot and buy one.
Most people aren't willing to pay ~$300 for a deadbolt so they don't bother with that market.
Open your phone book to Locks and Locksmiths; you'll probably see a Medeco dealer in there.
Medeco is a far better lock than Abloy but it's not as readily available to the consumer market.
(They mainly sell to the commercial market via distributors.)
Guess what locks are on the White House: Medeco.
Guess what locks are used on Nuclear Warheads: Medeco.
Guess what locks are on every door of every US embassy around the world: Medeco.
Added to that, you have to send your key TO MEDECO in order to get a copy made.
Medeco blanks are impossible to get ahold of.
Added to that, they have some insane reward if you come to their headquarters and pick a Medeco lock in front of them.
No one has done it in 30 years.
This is true for most lusers out there, but for geeks like us it's very handy.
I find it very interesting when I install some software and
my ZoneAlarm pops a window showing me it's trying to phone home.
(Adobe is the worst when it comes to this.)
Windows should be have a built-in white-list for outgoing network connections,
including a help link to a web page (or a wiki) showing what propram is sending what to where and why!