It was the same merchant, but the limit was set to the cost of the first purchase and the number was set to expire three days later, at the end of the month. The second purchase was well over the limit on its own, and as well as a couple weeks past the expiration date.
I used to use disposable credit card numbers all the time. Occasionally I would give a friend without a credit card a one time use number so he could buy something online. By accident, he used the same number twice, after it was supposed to be invalid. The charge went through without a problem. These disposable numbers aren't nearly as safe as the banks make them out to be.
It's nice to see someone actually pointing out the very obvious fact that not everybody with a truck drives a significantly larger vehicle than needed. I know from experience just how expensive it is to rent cars, and it makes sense for people like you to own larger vehicles. People also seem to forget just how much more expensive it is to buy/lease a hybrid over the non-hybrid model, and not everyone can afford one. Then there are families with multiple children; trying to smush them all in a smaller, more fuel-efficient hybrid or sedan would result epic disasters. Yes, there are many people driving gigantic suvs without any idea of how drive them or any use for all the space, but there are legitimate needs for larger trucks and suvs.
I'm reasonably sure that the department heads at Adelphia had competitions to determine who could best annoy customers. My biggest peeve was the regular internet outages. At least two or three times a month service would go out, sometimes for multiple days at a time. The worst part was that you had to call each time to REQUEST a refund for the lost days of service. Requests could only be made after service was turned back on. Only about half of my requests were ever approved by the powers that be. Most of the time they knew about the outages when I called, so they should have known for at least those time to credit people's accounts. But hey, they were money sucking leeches.
If you think his articles getting on the front page of/. is bad, you should have seen one of my cs professors handing out a Dvorak article as a prime example. It was the one about Apple vs Apple, so at least it was inane commentary about the lawsuit instead of a crazy idea. But still, this is a top university cs graduate program.
Of course not. I'm willing to bet that the lease/sale contract will specifically cover Toyota if there is an accident during park assist. Since the driver still needs to be controlling the speed, via the brake, the driver must be paying attention and is in a position to prevent an accident. Therefore, without a serious system failure (along the lines of any other manufacturing defect), it will still be the driver's fault.
A few weeks ago I was rear ended. The damage to my car was pretty extensive, so one of my passengers called 911 while I talked to the other driver. He was on hold for well over five minutes. When someone finally answered, he handed the phone to me. I talked for about 4 seconds before being cut off by the operator. The nice version is that if no one was bleeding or dead, she was hanging up to deal with more important calls.
The call centers are vastly understaffed, which isn't Vonage's fault, so people get put on hold. End of story.
Actually, I did consider biking since I did that a lot in high school. It would be fine on campus, but it's just too dangerous on the streets around here. I take all major roads since there aren't any back roads that avoid the major ones. I have a choice between Sunset, which is two lanes averaging 40mph and ungodly windy, and Wilshire, which is 7 lanes of congestion/40mph and freeway entrances and exits. It's LA - anybody not in a car is basically a target.
If anything, I think biking would be more stressful due to unsafe road conditions. And that's without the people I've seen tailgating bikers by about 5 feet.
During a summer internship I had a one hour train ride every morning and evening. Although I would much rather have had the extra hour of sleep or more time with friends, it was rather relaxing to just sit and read or stare out the window.
Now I have a 2.6 mile drive from my apartment to a parking lot where I go to grad school. Normally it takes about 30 minutes, but today it took an hour, not including time lost when an asshole at the gas station decided to get 2 gallons of gas so she could park her car at the gas station and walk to the dry cleaners. So yeah, commuting can be a relaxing downtime, but it can also be extremely stressful.
This may be slashdot, but there are legitimate reasons to not like the Microsoft laptop mice. Personally, I don't want to have to deal with a usb dongle hanging out of the side of my laptop. I move around a lot, and this poses all sorts of hazards. There is also the convenience of having a bluetooth mouse (assuming you have built in bluetooth) that doesn't require any external dongle to connect. For many people, just this bluetooth connectivity makes it worthwhile. Never having to worry about carrying a charger or a mouse that takes up more space in a laptop bag is an added bonus. You may like your solution, but it is not a good solution for everyone.
Anybody who has gotten a parking ticket in a major city recently knows that they aren't written by hand anymore. The officer enters your car information into a hand held device that also prints the ticket on thermal paper. I can't imagine that the cost difference between the devices that print and those that don't was that large, especially considering that Apple is now considering using iPod Express on a permanent basis.
On a second note, the average slashdot reader might have no problem understanding what iPod Express is and that the receipt is supposed to be mailed to you, but not everybody knows what they were getting into. While I was in an Apple store before Christmas, I had the joy of listening to one of the Express employees trying to convince a skeptical customer that an emailed receipt for an in-store purchase is perfectly valid. The employee ended up disappearing briefly and returning with a paper receipt. Based on this Ars article, it looks like this is a common occurance.
While they may not always have stickers, you could just count the number of included languages. If it comes in 47 languages, including Swahili, you probably don't want to waste time looking for your language, much less reading it.
Shockingly, Rite-Aid has the best rebate policy I've ever seen. When you buy an item with a rebate, your receipt has a code on it. You enter the code online, and, once a month, they send you a rebate check for all the codes that you entered. You could still enter the codes by mail if you wanted. Also, it was the fastest rebate I've ever received - about 3 weeks.
A couple of years ago I converted an old desktop into a server. My younger brother, who happeneded to be 10 at the time, wanted to help, so I gave him my Slack install disks (I believe it was version 9.0, but I could be wrong). Aside from some trouble figuring out partitions, I just told him the general idea of what needed to be done and he figured out pretty much everything. At least for me, that was proof enough that Slack has a good installer.
There are alternatives to public blogging that would have allowed both sides to get what they wanted. For instance, require that students use livejournal (or some similar service) for all their blogging needs. Then all entries can be posted with a friends lock that allows only authorized friends to view entries. User info can be guarded the same way. Obviously, as with any compromise, some students are going to have make unwanted changes, but at least both sides are happy.
I bought a few pieces at the Ikea in Burbank two weeks ago. Luckily, we had the foresight to visit on a Tuesday afternoon to pick out what I wanted to buy. There weren't many people there, and it was easy to walk any way you please. However, when we went back on Saturday to actually buy everything, it was next to impossible to navigate the store, even knowing exactly what we wanted and where it was. The marketplace floor was completely filled with people and their carts. Only the main aisle was truly wide enough to navigate a cart through. The real fun came when it was time to load the car.
There was a line of cars well past Ikea and down the road that were waiting to get into the loading area. Idiots were left and right blocking people from leaving their parking spots, then complaining when they couldn't park. Other morons were forcing their way into the line right in front of the entrance. There were two employees trying to direct traffic, but they couldn't do much when half the cars were ignoring their instructions. And, of course, there was the woman who decided to stand in the parking spot directly in front of where she was waiting as soon as it was free, so her husband could park there. Nevermind the SUV that was already being directed into the spot, because *that* spot was for her husband. It took 10 minutes for Ikea guards to convince her to get her yuppie ass out of the spot. For the record, her husband didn't appear until 20 minutes later.
Moral: Ikea is fine on weekdays, but don't expect to get anything done there on weekends.
I once tried to buy a calculator from Staples.com. Not only did you have to enter your zip code to look at search results (which, by the way, changed if you entered a different zip code), but they refused to tell you shipping costs before making the purchase. I figured hey, it's a big store, what the hell. To make a long story short, at no point do they tell you the final total with shipping and tax. You have to wait to get your credit card bill to find out how ridiculous their shipping rates are.
I have *never* seen a colour O'Reilly article/book...althought since this is/., I give it 5 mins before somebody finds one, in some random alternative universe somewhere).
While I don't have a color O'Reilly book, my copy of Practical PostgreSQL, which I bought at Barnes & Noble, has the wrong spine colors. The black part at the top is pink and the large pink area is white with pink writing.
Wow. So the final ad comes complete with typos and illogical statements (how exactly are you supposed to mail one coupon to two people?). If these people are that serious, they should have put together a more professional ad.
This Guy's a Moron
on
Is IRC All Bad?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
A search for words that are more likely than not connected to warez returns 99.9% illegal activity? I wonder what percentage of the word "dumbass" turns up something illegal...
What about emergency vehicles? They regularly speed, as do vehicles around them in an attempt to get out of their way. Setting off red lights would hinder police|ambulances|firetrucks from getting to the emergency fast, even if the emergency vehicles themselves still run lights.
According to the article, you can just restore from an online or local database, which has to be the stupidest feature of this gadget. If something goes wrong, being able to restore from database won't save you in the middle of a restaurant or at a mechanic in the middle of nowhere. Even with this carry-all, you would still need to carry at least one real credit card with you at all times.
Then there's the security for their online database, which just screams "hack me!"....
Slashdot Mirror
It was the same merchant, but the limit was set to the cost of the first purchase and the number was set to expire three days later, at the end of the month. The second purchase was well over the limit on its own, and as well as a couple weeks past the expiration date.
I used to use disposable credit card numbers all the time. Occasionally I would give a friend without a credit card a one time use number so he could buy something online. By accident, he used the same number twice, after it was supposed to be invalid. The charge went through without a problem. These disposable numbers aren't nearly as safe as the banks make them out to be.
It's nice to see someone actually pointing out the very obvious fact that not everybody with a truck drives a significantly larger vehicle than needed. I know from experience just how expensive it is to rent cars, and it makes sense for people like you to own larger vehicles. People also seem to forget just how much more expensive it is to buy/lease a hybrid over the non-hybrid model, and not everyone can afford one. Then there are families with multiple children; trying to smush them all in a smaller, more fuel-efficient hybrid or sedan would result epic disasters. Yes, there are many people driving gigantic suvs without any idea of how drive them or any use for all the space, but there are legitimate needs for larger trucks and suvs.
I'm reasonably sure that the department heads at Adelphia had competitions to determine who could best annoy customers. My biggest peeve was the regular internet outages. At least two or three times a month service would go out, sometimes for multiple days at a time. The worst part was that you had to call each time to REQUEST a refund for the lost days of service. Requests could only be made after service was turned back on. Only about half of my requests were ever approved by the powers that be. Most of the time they knew about the outages when I called, so they should have known for at least those time to credit people's accounts. But hey, they were money sucking leeches.
Maybe things will get better with TimeWarner.
So now we're going to slashdot CmdrTaco?
If you think his articles getting on the front page of /. is bad, you should have seen one of my cs professors handing out a Dvorak article as a prime example. It was the one about Apple vs Apple, so at least it was inane commentary about the lawsuit instead of a crazy idea. But still, this is a top university cs graduate program.
Of course not. I'm willing to bet that the lease/sale contract will specifically cover Toyota if there is an accident during park assist. Since the driver still needs to be controlling the speed, via the brake, the driver must be paying attention and is in a position to prevent an accident. Therefore, without a serious system failure (along the lines of any other manufacturing defect), it will still be the driver's fault.
A few weeks ago I was rear ended. The damage to my car was pretty extensive, so one of my passengers called 911 while I talked to the other driver. He was on hold for well over five minutes. When someone finally answered, he handed the phone to me. I talked for about 4 seconds before being cut off by the operator. The nice version is that if no one was bleeding or dead, she was hanging up to deal with more important calls.
The call centers are vastly understaffed, which isn't Vonage's fault, so people get put on hold. End of story.
If anything, I think biking would be more stressful due to unsafe road conditions. And that's without the people I've seen tailgating bikers by about 5 feet.
During a summer internship I had a one hour train ride every morning and evening. Although I would much rather have had the extra hour of sleep or more time with friends, it was rather relaxing to just sit and read or stare out the window.
Now I have a 2.6 mile drive from my apartment to a parking lot where I go to grad school. Normally it takes about 30 minutes, but today it took an hour, not including time lost when an asshole at the gas station decided to get 2 gallons of gas so she could park her car at the gas station and walk to the dry cleaners. So yeah, commuting can be a relaxing downtime, but it can also be extremely stressful.
This may be slashdot, but there are legitimate reasons to not like the Microsoft laptop mice. Personally, I don't want to have to deal with a usb dongle hanging out of the side of my laptop. I move around a lot, and this poses all sorts of hazards. There is also the convenience of having a bluetooth mouse (assuming you have built in bluetooth) that doesn't require any external dongle to connect. For many people, just this bluetooth connectivity makes it worthwhile. Never having to worry about carrying a charger or a mouse that takes up more space in a laptop bag is an added bonus. You may like your solution, but it is not a good solution for everyone.
On a second note, the average slashdot reader might have no problem understanding what iPod Express is and that the receipt is supposed to be mailed to you, but not everybody knows what they were getting into. While I was in an Apple store before Christmas, I had the joy of listening to one of the Express employees trying to convince a skeptical customer that an emailed receipt for an in-store purchase is perfectly valid. The employee ended up disappearing briefly and returning with a paper receipt. Based on this Ars article, it looks like this is a common occurance.
While they may not always have stickers, you could just count the number of included languages. If it comes in 47 languages, including Swahili, you probably don't want to waste time looking for your language, much less reading it.
Shockingly, Rite-Aid has the best rebate policy I've ever seen. When you buy an item with a rebate, your receipt has a code on it. You enter the code online, and, once a month, they send you a rebate check for all the codes that you entered. You could still enter the codes by mail if you wanted. Also, it was the fastest rebate I've ever received - about 3 weeks.
A couple of years ago I converted an old desktop into a server. My younger brother, who happeneded to be 10 at the time, wanted to help, so I gave him my Slack install disks (I believe it was version 9.0, but I could be wrong). Aside from some trouble figuring out partitions, I just told him the general idea of what needed to be done and he figured out pretty much everything. At least for me, that was proof enough that Slack has a good installer.
There are alternatives to public blogging that would have allowed both sides to get what they wanted. For instance, require that students use livejournal (or some similar service) for all their blogging needs. Then all entries can be posted with a friends lock that allows only authorized friends to view entries. User info can be guarded the same way. Obviously, as with any compromise, some students are going to have make unwanted changes, but at least both sides are happy.
Excellent! We can still go after virtual illegal immigrants!
I bought a few pieces at the Ikea in Burbank two weeks ago. Luckily, we had the foresight to visit on a Tuesday afternoon to pick out what I wanted to buy. There weren't many people there, and it was easy to walk any way you please. However, when we went back on Saturday to actually buy everything, it was next to impossible to navigate the store, even knowing exactly what we wanted and where it was. The marketplace floor was completely filled with people and their carts. Only the main aisle was truly wide enough to navigate a cart through. The real fun came when it was time to load the car.
There was a line of cars well past Ikea and down the road that were waiting to get into the loading area. Idiots were left and right blocking people from leaving their parking spots, then complaining when they couldn't park. Other morons were forcing their way into the line right in front of the entrance. There were two employees trying to direct traffic, but they couldn't do much when half the cars were ignoring their instructions. And, of course, there was the woman who decided to stand in the parking spot directly in front of where she was waiting as soon as it was free, so her husband could park there. Nevermind the SUV that was already being directed into the spot, because *that* spot was for her husband. It took 10 minutes for Ikea guards to convince her to get her yuppie ass out of the spot. For the record, her husband didn't appear until 20 minutes later.
Moral: Ikea is fine on weekdays, but don't expect to get anything done there on weekends.
I once tried to buy a calculator from Staples.com. Not only did you have to enter your zip code to look at search results (which, by the way, changed if you entered a different zip code), but they refused to tell you shipping costs before making the purchase. I figured hey, it's a big store, what the hell. To make a long story short, at no point do they tell you the final total with shipping and tax. You have to wait to get your credit card bill to find out how ridiculous their shipping rates are.
While I don't have a color O'Reilly book, my copy of Practical PostgreSQL, which I bought at Barnes & Noble, has the wrong spine colors. The black part at the top is pink and the large pink area is white with pink writing.
Wow. So the final ad comes complete with typos and illogical statements (how exactly are you supposed to mail one coupon to two people?). If these people are that serious, they should have put together a more professional ad.
A search for words that are more likely than not connected to warez returns 99.9% illegal activity? I wonder what percentage of the word "dumbass" turns up something illegal...
What about emergency vehicles? They regularly speed, as do vehicles around them in an attempt to get out of their way. Setting off red lights would hinder police|ambulances|firetrucks from getting to the emergency fast, even if the emergency vehicles themselves still run lights.
According to the article, you can just restore from an online or local database, which has to be the stupidest feature of this gadget. If something goes wrong, being able to restore from database won't save you in the middle of a restaurant or at a mechanic in the middle of nowhere. Even with this carry-all, you would still need to carry at least one real credit card with you at all times.
Then there's the security for their online database, which just screams "hack me!"....
You just show them the icon for your driver's license and go on your merry way.