expect them to know all the tax laws for every state, county, and city in the whole country?
Can I read from this that in the USA any county or city can apply separate rates of sales tax? If so then before trying to worry about how to collect tax from online transactions I would suggest that the US address what sounds like a ridiculously fragmented tax system. I can't imagine it is much fun having no idea how much good are going to cost you in any particular city or because you have strayed over county lines.
I realise this is slightly off-topic but in the figures in your post you don't mention any kind of personal pension or one from a previous employer. Is this a common state of affairs in the US? My understanding is that social security in this case is the equivalent of a state pension in the UK which everyone receives if they are past retirement age.
Lay of the TV marketing crack, Google. True HD means 1920 x 1080 pixels.
Surely the resolution depends massively on the screen size. 1920 x 1080 is considered True HD but that is a term used for televisions which are normally at least 19 inches. Saying that you can't call a 4.7" screen True HD when it will have a pixel density far higher than a 'True HD' tv seems a bit ridiculous. This is exactly why pixel density and screen size are much clearer measurements than resolution.
When the Honda was getting old and would stall (often as I was slowing to a stop at intersections) the sudden loss of power assist in the steering was disconcerting at best, and certainly added effort and therefore time to react as I tried to limp to the side of the road.
Why would you need to pull over to the side of the road because you stalled? Surely slow to a halt and then restart the engine. Hardly a manoeuvre that requires a lot of hard steering.
Sports, particularly anything on grassy pitches involving balls, seems to be torture for most compression algorithms. They don't know that the ball is more important to render correctly than some random spectator, and they seem to get rather lost with the subtle detail of the grass.
It is more the speed of movement that causes the problem with sports coverage. In a sport like football there will be multiple players all moving at once across the whole video stream. This makes it very difficult to compress because there are big changes from frame to frame. Compare this to something like a sitcom which normally has people standing and talking meaning very little changes from frame to frame enabling very efficient compression.
Sun Q, Spiegelman D, van Dam RM, Holmes MD, Malik VS, Willett WC, and Hu FB. “White Rice, Brown Rice, and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in US Men and Women. Archives of Internal Medicine. June 2010; 170(11):961-969.
That is a study of the difference between white and brown rice and how they affect rates of type 2 diabetes in grown men. It doesn't mention anything to do with a connection between foods that infants are fed and their preferences later in life.
When you make a statement like "There is good evidence" then you really need to be able to back that up with compelling evidence from a reliable source.
I'm not saying that I wouldn't do the same if I happened to have the medication in an emergency but let us be clear. Giving prescription drugs to someone who hasn't been prescribed them can be extremely dangerous especially if you don't know without any doubt that they aren't allergic to them. There is also the risk of complications when they are able to be treated by paramedics or when they reach hospital. The pills you gave them to dull the pain in the short term may react badly with later drugs or anaesthetic needed for surgery. Raising the possibility that your altruistic actions could cause serious harm to the person either through unanticipated drug reactions or delaying surgery.
Aside from the safety concerns, giving prescription drugs to a person who hasn't been prescribed them is illegal and you open yourself up to prosecution for supplying narcotics. In a real emergency a prosecution probably isn't that likely but recommending that people hoard drugs so they can hand them out to others if necessary is pretty irresponsible.
Are you not aware of the practically unlimited storage Facebook provides every member in the form of photo albums? Facebook is where most people keep their pictures, it is one of the first mainstream places that people can actually put pictures in order to allow all of their friends to effortlessly look at them. For a lot of people it has changed their photographs from something that is looked at on the back of a camera and then filed away, or something that is printed out and then put in a drawer.
Yes I know a lot of other sites offered this before Facebook but the likes of Flickr never reached the same kind of critical mass needed for it to work in this way and have now largely been usurped by Facebook for casual users.
And the part where they just smiled as they looked at me, telling me they would take my food, and eat it inside my apartment...I will never share another apartment with anyone.
I think the problem was that you shared an apartment with inconsiderate douche-bags. There are plenty of people in the world who aren't, it is just a case of making sure that you know one way or the other before you let them move in.
QR codes are a scam by domain registrars to sell domain names with cute-looking QR codes.
They are more a scam perpetuated by the printing and publishing industries in a desperate attempt to stay relevant in an increasingly online world. "Use QR codes to add value to your print adverts!" they whine as print spends and advertising revenue continue to spiral downwards.
QR codes are so incredibly niche they are pretty much pointless from a marketing point of view. Unless you are marketing specifically to tech savvy people who have smartphones they are completely useless.
Points of failure for a QR code
Must know what a QR code is
Must have a smartphone
Must have a QR reader app
Must be close enough to scan code
Must be quick enough to leap of the sofa and scan TV (for QR codes in ads)
The times I've used Joomla or Wordpress took me longer to configure the design to my specifications than it would have to just do it all in HTML to begin with.
I'm not sure what you were doing in Wordpress to "configure the design" but normally to produce a Wordpress theme you start with a flat HTML design and then add in elements to loop through posts or pull in widget areas. If you are referring to hacking about with an existing theme to try and make it look how you want then yes that isn't an efficient way to work.
To be honest these days it is rarely worth the effort to do it myself I use PSD to XHTML services like XHTMLChop who will take a layered PSD and convert it into standards compliant XHTML and CSS for $100 or so. I can then take that and create a theme for whatever CMS I want to use for the site.
That isn't to say I can't produce standard compliant templates myself by hand but why be the brick layer when you can be the architect.
Not for mobile phones (this thing is for Android), since you typically want to hold it in one hand while typing with the index finger of the other.
Generally on smartphones when people want to type quickly they hold the phone in both hands and type using both thumbs. So they do benefit from a layout like where key presses tend to alternate between left and right hands.
My pet hate has always been that you can't make OSX use a british keyboard layout. You can change it to 'UK keyboard' but it isn't actually a UK layout so if you use a non-apple keyboard keys are in the wrong place.
Grounding the lighting rod in a moving vehicle is problematic.
Not really, a lot of vehicles already have a grounding system which is essentially a conductive strip that hangs down at the back of the car. When the car is stationary the strip is close enough to the ground to discharge any static build up on the car body so that you don't get a static shock when you get out of the car. Making a more robust version that is connected to a lightning rod would be fairly trivial.
Of course it would also be pointless, the occupants of the car would be protected by the skin effect even if they were touching a conductive surface inside the car, which they probably wouldn't be.
I've always bought my phones unlocked and at retail prices, always top-of-the-line phones too, and the most expensive phone I ever bought was $550.
Yes and the point the parent poster was making was that if that phone had been built in the USA it would cost $2000 rather than the $550 you paid for it.
Nonetheless, the credit-card companies want them to pay for a quarterly "network penetration test" on their website, and to provide detailed technical information on the website set-up. Since their web-site is hosted by a big ISP, they have no access to the necessary technical info, and the ISP doesn't really want network penetration tests pounding on their infrastructure all the time. This is a mess.
It is called PCI-DSS Compliance and it has been standard practice for years. If you don't store any credit card details then the compliance process is relatively straight forward, it takes a couple of hours and only has to be done once. The security scans are to verify that the web server is secure. If you use a web host that is already PCI compliant then the scan is just a formality.
On the other hand if you choose to store credit card details on your server, which there is no valid reason to do then it does becomes much more complicated. You also open yourself up to huge liability and a PR nightmare if you ever have a security breach and those credit card details are stolen.
Either use a third party processor and pass the credit card details straight on to them, or if you want your customers to be able to re-order without having to put in their credit card details again then use a token system. There is no reason to store the card details yourself even for a short period of time. Why doesn't the retailer you work with just store a transaction id to show the transaction has completed successfully?
The main reason for this is that they pass all the liability onto the retailer.
This may be true where ever you are posting from but in the UK as long as a payment is made using the Chip and Pin system then the credit card company takes liability. If a payment is made online then again as long as the 3D Secure system is used then the credit card company take liability.
The only time a retailer is liable is if they essentially waive that protection by accepting a signature authorised payment in person, or allowing a customer to checkout without using 3D Secure online.
Are contactless cards shipped in Faraday cage envelopes? If not, can the card numbers be lifted before the card reaches the recipient?
I don't know about elsewhere but in the UK credit cards can't be used until they have been activated either online or over the phone. Not sure if you could skim the card and then wait until the card was activated to use the details but I am fairly sure that NFC connections are a one off deal, you can't store the information and use it over and over again.
Chip 'n PIN is easy to defeat anyway, steal the card, put a few volts through the chip to fry it, then it will automatically fall back on the signature, which is handily represented on the card so you can learn to copy it in an hour or so.
I don't know where you are posting from but certainly in the UK most retailers will refuse a card if the chip doesn't work. If they choose to accept a signature then according to the terms of their contract with Visa/Mastercard they take full liability for the transaction. Meaning that if it is deemed to be fraudulent the money comes out of the retailers pocket rather than from the credit card company. The vast majority of retailers don't want to assume that risk, so they don't accept signature authorised payments.
Chip and pin has nothing to do with near field devices or RFID. The chip and pin system uses an exposed chip on the surface of the card. This chip is read by a chip and pin reader when the card is inserted. The user must then input their pin. You can't read them at a distance, the exposed chip needs to be in contact with the reader circuitry. This article isn't about chip and pin it is about near field devices used for contact-less payments.
they can pick up every fucking card in your wallet from 6-10 feet away
The near field communication devices used for contact-less payments have a range of about 4cm. I guess if you slapped someone on their ass you might be able to get a read on a card in their back pocket but reading them from 6 feet away is fantasy.
have your pin with a camera that could be set up with a good zoom up to 100ft away
I don't know how you type your pin in but ATMs are designed so that the body of the user blocks line of sight to the keypad. Most people also cover the pad with their other hand as they type in their pin to stop anyone in the queue from seeing. If you choose to expose your pin by standing right to the side of the ATM and not covering the pad then that is hardly a failure of the technology.
huge design and engineering costs needed for each major refresh.
Is there really that much design and engineering required? They are using standard components so shifting to a more powerful processor or different chipset is hardly a huge leap. From a design point of view the exterior hasn't changed in any meaningful way since the G5 PowerMac was originally released in 2003 and the interior is pretty set now. The reason the original G5 PowerMacs were so over engineered is that the chips ran incredibly hot so cooling them, without making it sound like a jet engine, required elaborate heatsinks and airpaths through the case. Now they don't have that issue and the case design can stay the same until a new motherboard format requires them to change it.
You will NOT find a woman who would be alright with a "wedding Youtube upload". The fact of getting a tangible product is just as important as the content being provided.
I don't see that this is a big issue. An external DVD writer only costs about £20 and if all you are using it for is burning copies of the final product for clients then it makes sense to have it as an external drive rather than adding to the weight and battery drain of the laptop itself.
Actually you could do that, it wouldn't solve all the economic problems, but if you could guarantee funding for space research for say, the next 30 years (insofar as governments ever make guarantees), you would create jobs, spur demand which would create more jobs.
The problem with the plan is that the money has to come from somewhere. If you suddenly pump the space exploration budget by 100 billion dollars a year then either taxes go up, or the national debt goes up. That debt can only go so high before your credit rating is degraded, as we are seeing happen to countries all around the world at the moment. The effect of that is that borrowing your next 100 billion is difficult and more expensive.
Borrowing money to create jobs only works if the result of those jobs is a larger tax base, otherwise there is no way to pay the money back. Which is exactly the problem a lot of countries are currently in.
I understand that if you are someone who knew exactly where every option was then the ribbon would be a step back. But from my point of view it makes it much easier to find features that were previously buried in the menus.
The point of the ribbon is to expose useful features to the user so they actually use them.
Slashdot Mirror
Can I read from this that in the USA any county or city can apply separate rates of sales tax? If so then before trying to worry about how to collect tax from online transactions I would suggest that the US address what sounds like a ridiculously fragmented tax system. I can't imagine it is much fun having no idea how much good are going to cost you in any particular city or because you have strayed over county lines.
I realise this is slightly off-topic but in the figures in your post you don't mention any kind of personal pension or one from a previous employer. Is this a common state of affairs in the US? My understanding is that social security in this case is the equivalent of a state pension in the UK which everyone receives if they are past retirement age.
Surely the resolution depends massively on the screen size. 1920 x 1080 is considered True HD but that is a term used for televisions which are normally at least 19 inches. Saying that you can't call a 4.7" screen True HD when it will have a pixel density far higher than a 'True HD' tv seems a bit ridiculous. This is exactly why pixel density and screen size are much clearer measurements than resolution.
Why would you need to pull over to the side of the road because you stalled? Surely slow to a halt and then restart the engine. Hardly a manoeuvre that requires a lot of hard steering.
It is more the speed of movement that causes the problem with sports coverage. In a sport like football there will be multiple players all moving at once across the whole video stream. This makes it very difficult to compress because there are big changes from frame to frame. Compare this to something like a sitcom which normally has people standing and talking meaning very little changes from frame to frame enabling very efficient compression.
That is a study of the difference between white and brown rice and how they affect rates of type 2 diabetes in grown men. It doesn't mention anything to do with a connection between foods that infants are fed and their preferences later in life.
When you make a statement like "There is good evidence" then you really need to be able to back that up with compelling evidence from a reliable source.
I'm not saying that I wouldn't do the same if I happened to have the medication in an emergency but let us be clear. Giving prescription drugs to someone who hasn't been prescribed them can be extremely dangerous especially if you don't know without any doubt that they aren't allergic to them. There is also the risk of complications when they are able to be treated by paramedics or when they reach hospital. The pills you gave them to dull the pain in the short term may react badly with later drugs or anaesthetic needed for surgery. Raising the possibility that your altruistic actions could cause serious harm to the person either through unanticipated drug reactions or delaying surgery.
Aside from the safety concerns, giving prescription drugs to a person who hasn't been prescribed them is illegal and you open yourself up to prosecution for supplying narcotics. In a real emergency a prosecution probably isn't that likely but recommending that people hoard drugs so they can hand them out to others if necessary is pretty irresponsible.
Are you not aware of the practically unlimited storage Facebook provides every member in the form of photo albums? Facebook is where most people keep their pictures, it is one of the first mainstream places that people can actually put pictures in order to allow all of their friends to effortlessly look at them. For a lot of people it has changed their photographs from something that is looked at on the back of a camera and then filed away, or something that is printed out and then put in a drawer.
Yes I know a lot of other sites offered this before Facebook but the likes of Flickr never reached the same kind of critical mass needed for it to work in this way and have now largely been usurped by Facebook for casual users.
I think the problem was that you shared an apartment with inconsiderate douche-bags. There are plenty of people in the world who aren't, it is just a case of making sure that you know one way or the other before you let them move in.
They are more a scam perpetuated by the printing and publishing industries in a desperate attempt to stay relevant in an increasingly online world. "Use QR codes to add value to your print adverts!" they whine as print spends and advertising revenue continue to spiral downwards.
QR codes are so incredibly niche they are pretty much pointless from a marketing point of view. Unless you are marketing specifically to tech savvy people who have smartphones they are completely useless.
Points of failure for a QR code
Points of failure for a URL
I'm not sure what you were doing in Wordpress to "configure the design" but normally to produce a Wordpress theme you start with a flat HTML design and then add in elements to loop through posts or pull in widget areas. If you are referring to hacking about with an existing theme to try and make it look how you want then yes that isn't an efficient way to work.
To be honest these days it is rarely worth the effort to do it myself I use PSD to XHTML services like XHTMLChop who will take a layered PSD and convert it into standards compliant XHTML and CSS for $100 or so. I can then take that and create a theme for whatever CMS I want to use for the site.
That isn't to say I can't produce standard compliant templates myself by hand but why be the brick layer when you can be the architect.
Generally on smartphones when people want to type quickly they hold the phone in both hands and type using both thumbs. So they do benefit from a layout like where key presses tend to alternate between left and right hands.
My pet hate has always been that you can't make OSX use a british keyboard layout. You can change it to 'UK keyboard' but it isn't actually a UK layout so if you use a non-apple keyboard keys are in the wrong place.
Not really, a lot of vehicles already have a grounding system which is essentially a conductive strip that hangs down at the back of the car. When the car is stationary the strip is close enough to the ground to discharge any static build up on the car body so that you don't get a static shock when you get out of the car. Making a more robust version that is connected to a lightning rod would be fairly trivial.
Of course it would also be pointless, the occupants of the car would be protected by the skin effect even if they were touching a conductive surface inside the car, which they probably wouldn't be.
Yes and the point the parent poster was making was that if that phone had been built in the USA it would cost $2000 rather than the $550 you paid for it.
It is called PCI-DSS Compliance and it has been standard practice for years. If you don't store any credit card details then the compliance process is relatively straight forward, it takes a couple of hours and only has to be done once. The security scans are to verify that the web server is secure. If you use a web host that is already PCI compliant then the scan is just a formality.
On the other hand if you choose to store credit card details on your server, which there is no valid reason to do then it does becomes much more complicated. You also open yourself up to huge liability and a PR nightmare if you ever have a security breach and those credit card details are stolen.
Either use a third party processor and pass the credit card details straight on to them, or if you want your customers to be able to re-order without having to put in their credit card details again then use a token system. There is no reason to store the card details yourself even for a short period of time. Why doesn't the retailer you work with just store a transaction id to show the transaction has completed successfully?
This may be true where ever you are posting from but in the UK as long as a payment is made using the Chip and Pin system then the credit card company takes liability. If a payment is made online then again as long as the 3D Secure system is used then the credit card company take liability.
The only time a retailer is liable is if they essentially waive that protection by accepting a signature authorised payment in person, or allowing a customer to checkout without using 3D Secure online.
I don't know about elsewhere but in the UK credit cards can't be used until they have been activated either online or over the phone. Not sure if you could skim the card and then wait until the card was activated to use the details but I am fairly sure that NFC connections are a one off deal, you can't store the information and use it over and over again.
I don't know where you are posting from but certainly in the UK most retailers will refuse a card if the chip doesn't work. If they choose to accept a signature then according to the terms of their contract with Visa/Mastercard they take full liability for the transaction. Meaning that if it is deemed to be fraudulent the money comes out of the retailers pocket rather than from the credit card company. The vast majority of retailers don't want to assume that risk, so they don't accept signature authorised payments.
Chip and pin has nothing to do with near field devices or RFID. The chip and pin system uses an exposed chip on the surface of the card. This chip is read by a chip and pin reader when the card is inserted. The user must then input their pin. You can't read them at a distance, the exposed chip needs to be in contact with the reader circuitry. This article isn't about chip and pin it is about near field devices used for contact-less payments.
The near field communication devices used for contact-less payments have a range of about 4cm. I guess if you slapped someone on their ass you might be able to get a read on a card in their back pocket but reading them from 6 feet away is fantasy.
I don't know how you type your pin in but ATMs are designed so that the body of the user blocks line of sight to the keypad. Most people also cover the pad with their other hand as they type in their pin to stop anyone in the queue from seeing. If you choose to expose your pin by standing right to the side of the ATM and not covering the pad then that is hardly a failure of the technology.
Is there really that much design and engineering required? They are using standard components so shifting to a more powerful processor or different chipset is hardly a huge leap. From a design point of view the exterior hasn't changed in any meaningful way since the G5 PowerMac was originally released in 2003 and the interior is pretty set now. The reason the original G5 PowerMacs were so over engineered is that the chips ran incredibly hot so cooling them, without making it sound like a jet engine, required elaborate heatsinks and airpaths through the case. Now they don't have that issue and the case design can stay the same until a new motherboard format requires them to change it.
As far as I can tell there is no way to upgrade anything in the new Macbook Pro including the SSD and RAM.
I don't see that this is a big issue. An external DVD writer only costs about £20 and if all you are using it for is burning copies of the final product for clients then it makes sense to have it as an external drive rather than adding to the weight and battery drain of the laptop itself.
The problem with the plan is that the money has to come from somewhere. If you suddenly pump the space exploration budget by 100 billion dollars a year then either taxes go up, or the national debt goes up. That debt can only go so high before your credit rating is degraded, as we are seeing happen to countries all around the world at the moment. The effect of that is that borrowing your next 100 billion is difficult and more expensive.
Borrowing money to create jobs only works if the result of those jobs is a larger tax base, otherwise there is no way to pay the money back. Which is exactly the problem a lot of countries are currently in.
I understand that if you are someone who knew exactly where every option was then the ribbon would be a step back. But from my point of view it makes it much easier to find features that were previously buried in the menus.
The point of the ribbon is to expose useful features to the user so they actually use them.