Did you pay for the item using your credit card through Paypal or using your checking account? If you used your credit card you could have done a chargeback through the credit card company and bypassed Paypal's bullshit. Of course you'd lose your paypal account for doing this but that's a small price to pay to recover $100, IMHO anyway.
My account was closed for me when I sold an item to someone on eBay who later claimed that he never received the item. Paypal locked my account over this dispute and claimed that I needed to provide them with a tracking number to get the block removed. I did so and then the buyer changed his story from "I never received it" to "he sent me an empty box"
In spite of the fact that his story changed once confronted with the tracking number they still sided with the him and permanently blocked my account until I "repay" them for the money they reimbursed him. If I hadn't already transferred the funds into my checking account I would have lost them and the item I was selling.
... when is/. going to re-enable the direct credit card payment option for those who want to subscribe? I was a subscriber for the longest time until this option went away. Not everybody is willing to do business with Paypal or has the ability to do so.
If I remember a cell phone antenna can only handle 64 simultaneous phone calls.
It's not quite that simple. With GSM you have a number of different radio channels. Each channel supports 8 full rate or 16 half-rate calls. The capacity of a given cell site is going to depend on how much licensed spectrum the carrier has in the local area, i.e: how many channels they can allocate to each cell site for voice services.
CDMA works a little bit differently. The theoretical capacity of a given channel is close to 64 calls but not exactly 64. The reason for this is because each channel has 64 pseudo-random noise codes (PNs) available to it but some of them need to be used for broadcast messages and the pilot channel. PNs assigned for these purposes are thus unavailable for voice services.
CMDA rarely runs close to this theoretical limit because it can cause problems with mobiles that are located in fringe signal areas. The calls that share the same channel as yours appear as nothing more than noise to your cell phone. This means that each new call added to a given channel has the effect of lowering the signal to noise ratio for all existing calls that are sharing that channel. If you add too many calls to one channel you'll wind up with dropped calls because the signal to noise ratio will drop too much for the mobiles located in fringe signal areas. The near-far problem is a result of this phenomena.
Because of this, it's pretty rare for a CDMA carrier to run their network at anything close to the theoretical capacity. This doesn't mean that each cell site is limited to ~64 calls though. Assuming the carrier has enough spectrum available they can easily deploy more than one channel to each cell site, thus increasing the overall capacity of the network.
also you can hook 2 or more regular phones to a cellphone. I do it all the time with my bluetooth to phone adapter. Wife and I pick up 2 cordless phones and talk to my brother in florida.
I thought about doing that but found it easier to use just three way calling when the girlfriend and I want to talk to someone at the same time. She's on the same network so the extra call doesn't use any minutes.
Generators. It's easier to deploy a generator to a single central office serving an entire community than it is to deploy generators to the several different cell phone towers that are required to cover that entire community.
You worry about the calls cutting out, cuts here and there in the quality, and not being able to hear a question over the phone just looks bad.
Sounds like your carrier has network issues in your area. I've been wireless only for the last six years, using two different carriers in that timeframe (T-Mobile and Verizon) and I've never encountered anything like that.
You have no point... We are talking about the EULA for Win7, try again...
And does the EULA for Win 7 contain such a provision or are you just talking out of your ass to try and support an argument that isn't grounded in reality? I can't find the Win 7 EULA on Microsoft's page but I just read through the entire Vista EULA and they don't have a single provision relating to taking your licensed software across international lines.
Sounds like a good plan to me, what exactly is stopping them from doing this again?
The fact that it's not in the EULA? Common sense? A desire not to piss off people who travel?
If you are buying a 'RETAIL' copy do you really think Microsoft isn't above checking up on your copy if it looks like it might be being used counter to the EULA because THEY already do that all the time!
What part of the EULA says I can't take my laptop with the legally purchased copy of XP across international lines? What, are they gonna monitor it to make sure that I don't stay in the target country longer than a tourist visa would allow?
If I could file a lawsuit to force slashdot to reveal the IP and email of every user that has ever insulted me and then sue them for 5000 each I'd be a very rich and happy man...
There's a bit of a difference being someone saying "ae1294 is a jackass" (insult) and someone saying "ae1294 touches children" (slander). Whether or not what the blogger did qualifies as a simple insult or active slander is for the courts to decide. Hard to get to that point if the person remains anonymous.
I don't have much sympathy for the blog author anyway. If she had the user agreement she would have known that Google has to respond to a valid subpoena. If she had been smart she would have used a proxy and made sure they didn't know who she was either.
Speaking from the experience of being charged with them, New York State also has a few different computer crime laws. The simplest one is a misdemeanor, "Unauthorized use of a computer". All that's required to commit this crime is to bypass a security system (wi-fi encryption, username/password prompt, etc.) without authorization to do so from the owner of said system. Then there's "computer trespass", a felony. The only difference between the two? Unauthorized use of a computer merely requires that you gain access to the system. Computer trespass requires that you use that access to access "computer material" (i.e: data).
So, breaking your neighbors WEP encryption and logging onto his network is a misdemeanor. Using this access to browse onto his c$ share and download his secret porn stash bumps it up to a felony.
Pharma has us paying double for drugs compared to outside our borders while they try to kill health care reform.
Umm, why don't you learn a little bit about politics before you open your mouth and insert your foot? Pharma loves the health care "reform" bill. They've already cut a deal with the Obama administration. The administration agreed to oppose any efforts by Congress to use governmental buying power to purchase drugs at lower prices. In exchange the industry offered up a generic promise that they'd reduce costs by $80 billion over the next ten years.
That's your "change" boys and girls. Secret back room deals with an industry that Obama spent most of his campaign attacking and vilifying. Amazing how the more things change the more they stay the same, isn't it?
The only difference between the systems is that one is decimal-friendly and consistent, and another is not.
That's not true. One was designed by the French and the other was not. That's all most Americans need to hear. I've often thought we should invent our own base ten measurement system and impose it on the rest of the world out of sheer spite;) If they do make us switch to metric then the least we can do is come up with new names for the measurements. Millifreedom, centifreedom, freedom and kilofreedom sounds like a good replacement for millimeters, centimeters, meters and kilometers. Celsius could be replaced with "Jefferson's" and kilograms with "Franklin's". Still trying to come up with a good wholesome name for liters -- any suggestions?
No no... that's not how this works.. you allow a a few million copies to be sold to Americans then you release a security fix that automaticlly installs and disables any copy that is located anywhere in America based on it's IP address
Something tells me that if Microsoft did that they'd have a whole lot of pissed off traveling business executives/government employees on their hands......
sers in an enterprise environment frankly shouldn't have access to install software at all.
Unfortunately it's rarely that simple. I've worked in two "enterprise" environments in my IT career. One (my current job) makes this fairly easy to implement -- most of our operations run around web based database apps and Office. Very easy to lock users into restricted accounts.
The other enterprise I worked for was an insurance agency. The insurance industry has so much legacy software that restricting users to non-admin accounts is not possible unless you are willing to sacrifice needed functionality. Many of these legacy apps come directly from the insurance companies that you do business with and there is no alternative. You either use them or you don't write business with that particular company.
I eventually had to settle for imaging our workstations and restoring them from the image whenever the user managed to fuck them up. Not the ideal solution but it was the best I could do in that situation.
but shouldn't we be more concerned about true security?
What is "true security" against the main threat of the modern era: social engineering? How does your operating system protect you from from responding to that e-mail you've just received from your long lost uncle in Nigeria? How do you protect a user that will click on the user account control pop-up as many times as is required to install that cool "weather forecasting" program that sits in his task tray?
Or were you referring to "true security" in the context of firearms, expendable redshirts and moats filled with laser wielding sharks?;)
In the UK, they have the same rights of entry as a door-to-door salesman. You tell them to get lost, and use reasonable force to eject them from your premises if they refuse to leave.
Growing up my Grandfather ran his own business that was frequently visited by door-to-door salesman that refused to take a hint. One particularly persistent fellow refused three polite requests to leave, so Grandpa tried a different approach:
Grandpa: Dave, get the shotgun.
Dave: Huh?
Grandpa: You HEARD me, go get the shotgun.
Needless to say we never saw that particular salesman or anybody from his company ever again;)
I'll go buy myself a ticket as soon as the proceeds from my uncle's estate come in
Why wait? I'm gonna book my flight now using my Visa card. Yeah, it's over my limit and I'll never be able to pay it back, but so what? It works for Washington and Wall Street;)
They were stupid to believe that a crazy huge marketing campaign could keep a fundamentally flawed service alive forever.
Why is that stupid? It works for the two major political parties in the United States. Why wouldn't it work for AOL?;)
Their crowning achievement was convincing TW (somehow) that they were worth $7000/U.S. household.
You mean a service that charges $239.40 a year ($19.95/mo) for each subscriber isn't worth $7,000 per American household? All they'd have to do to make that much money is have zero expenses and sign up every single household for 30 years.
My understanding is that if you refuse them access, they'll show up with a sheriff and a court order allowing them access.
Based on what? The word of a disgruntled ex-employee? If that's all the "evidence" they have (as is often the case) I should think that a sufficiently competent attorney would be able to fight any order allowing them access to your computer systems. Of course competent attorneys cost money and this may be one of the reasons why we rarely hear about them going after large enterprises with the resources to wage a legal battle......
Slashdot Mirror
yet it still spews emails now and again over service updates and other folderol.
Sure those aren't phishing attempts? Over 90% of the e-mail that I receive "from" Paypal usually is.....
Did you pay for the item using your credit card through Paypal or using your checking account? If you used your credit card you could have done a chargeback through the credit card company and bypassed Paypal's bullshit. Of course you'd lose your paypal account for doing this but that's a small price to pay to recover $100, IMHO anyway.
I think I'm just going to close my Paypal now
My account was closed for me when I sold an item to someone on eBay who later claimed that he never received the item. Paypal locked my account over this dispute and claimed that I needed to provide them with a tracking number to get the block removed. I did so and then the buyer changed his story from "I never received it" to "he sent me an empty box"
In spite of the fact that his story changed once confronted with the tracking number they still sided with the him and permanently blocked my account until I "repay" them for the money they reimbursed him. If I hadn't already transferred the funds into my checking account I would have lost them and the item I was selling.
As far as I'm concerned Paypal can burn in hell.
... when is /. going to re-enable the direct credit card payment option for those who want to subscribe? I was a subscriber for the longest time until this option went away. Not everybody is willing to do business with Paypal or has the ability to do so.
If I remember a cell phone antenna can only handle 64 simultaneous phone calls.
It's not quite that simple. With GSM you have a number of different radio channels. Each channel supports 8 full rate or 16 half-rate calls. The capacity of a given cell site is going to depend on how much licensed spectrum the carrier has in the local area, i.e: how many channels they can allocate to each cell site for voice services.
CDMA works a little bit differently. The theoretical capacity of a given channel is close to 64 calls but not exactly 64. The reason for this is because each channel has 64 pseudo-random noise codes (PNs) available to it but some of them need to be used for broadcast messages and the pilot channel. PNs assigned for these purposes are thus unavailable for voice services.
CMDA rarely runs close to this theoretical limit because it can cause problems with mobiles that are located in fringe signal areas. The calls that share the same channel as yours appear as nothing more than noise to your cell phone. This means that each new call added to a given channel has the effect of lowering the signal to noise ratio for all existing calls that are sharing that channel. If you add too many calls to one channel you'll wind up with dropped calls because the signal to noise ratio will drop too much for the mobiles located in fringe signal areas. The near-far problem is a result of this phenomena.
Because of this, it's pretty rare for a CDMA carrier to run their network at anything close to the theoretical capacity. This doesn't mean that each cell site is limited to ~64 calls though. Assuming the carrier has enough spectrum available they can easily deploy more than one channel to each cell site, thus increasing the overall capacity of the network.
also you can hook 2 or more regular phones to a cellphone. I do it all the time with my bluetooth to phone adapter. Wife and I pick up 2 cordless phones and talk to my brother in florida.
I thought about doing that but found it easier to use just three way calling when the girlfriend and I want to talk to someone at the same time. She's on the same network so the extra call doesn't use any minutes.
FTTH anyone? Landline phones and the supporting copper infrastructure should have been thrown out years ago.
Did you even listen to what he said regarding bus-powered communications? FTTH generally requires power at the home.
But we all know how the US and it's little bitch, the UK
I hope you realize that you are an asshole :)
What magic keeps the POTS working?
Generators. It's easier to deploy a generator to a single central office serving an entire community than it is to deploy generators to the several different cell phone towers that are required to cover that entire community.
You worry about the calls cutting out, cuts here and there in the quality, and not being able to hear a question over the phone just looks bad.
Sounds like your carrier has network issues in your area. I've been wireless only for the last six years, using two different carriers in that timeframe (T-Mobile and Verizon) and I've never encountered anything like that.
You have no point... We are talking about the EULA for Win7, try again...
And does the EULA for Win 7 contain such a provision or are you just talking out of your ass to try and support an argument that isn't grounded in reality? I can't find the Win 7 EULA on Microsoft's page but I just read through the entire Vista EULA and they don't have a single provision relating to taking your licensed software across international lines.
Sounds like a good plan to me, what exactly is stopping them from doing this again?
The fact that it's not in the EULA? Common sense? A desire not to piss off people who travel?
We will see, if it does you owe me 20 bucks....
I prefer to make my bets for beer.
Isn't that what Apple is supposed to enable the functionally illiterate to do?
Fixed that for you :)
If you are buying a 'RETAIL' copy do you really think Microsoft isn't above checking up on your copy if it looks like it might be being used counter to the EULA because THEY already do that all the time!
What part of the EULA says I can't take my laptop with the legally purchased copy of XP across international lines? What, are they gonna monitor it to make sure that I don't stay in the target country longer than a tourist visa would allow?
If I could file a lawsuit to force slashdot to reveal the IP and email of every user that has ever insulted me and then sue them for 5000 each I'd be a very rich and happy man...
There's a bit of a difference being someone saying "ae1294 is a jackass" (insult) and someone saying "ae1294 touches children" (slander). Whether or not what the blogger did qualifies as a simple insult or active slander is for the courts to decide. Hard to get to that point if the person remains anonymous.
I don't have much sympathy for the blog author anyway. If she had the user agreement she would have known that Google has to respond to a valid subpoena. If she had been smart she would have used a proxy and made sure they didn't know who she was either.
Government employees are always fired when their actions (or inaction) embarrass their political masters
Fixed that for you :)
Speaking from the experience of being charged with them, New York State also has a few different computer crime laws. The simplest one is a misdemeanor, "Unauthorized use of a computer". All that's required to commit this crime is to bypass a security system (wi-fi encryption, username/password prompt, etc.) without authorization to do so from the owner of said system. Then there's "computer trespass", a felony. The only difference between the two? Unauthorized use of a computer merely requires that you gain access to the system. Computer trespass requires that you use that access to access "computer material" (i.e: data).
So, breaking your neighbors WEP encryption and logging onto his network is a misdemeanor. Using this access to browse onto his c$ share and download his secret porn stash bumps it up to a felony.
Pharma has us paying double for drugs compared to outside our borders while they try to kill health care reform.
Umm, why don't you learn a little bit about politics before you open your mouth and insert your foot? Pharma loves the health care "reform" bill. They've already cut a deal with the Obama administration. The administration agreed to oppose any efforts by Congress to use governmental buying power to purchase drugs at lower prices. In exchange the industry offered up a generic promise that they'd reduce costs by $80 billion over the next ten years.
That's your "change" boys and girls. Secret back room deals with an industry that Obama spent most of his campaign attacking and vilifying. Amazing how the more things change the more they stay the same, isn't it?
12 inches in a foot, but 3 feet in a yard - why?
We prefer to ask "Why not?" ;)
The only difference between the systems is that one is decimal-friendly and consistent, and another is not.
That's not true. One was designed by the French and the other was not. That's all most Americans need to hear. I've often thought we should invent our own base ten measurement system and impose it on the rest of the world out of sheer spite ;) If they do make us switch to metric then the least we can do is come up with new names for the measurements. Millifreedom, centifreedom, freedom and kilofreedom sounds like a good replacement for millimeters, centimeters, meters and kilometers. Celsius could be replaced with "Jefferson's" and kilograms with "Franklin's". Still trying to come up with a good wholesome name for liters -- any suggestions?
No no... that's not how this works.. you allow a a few million copies to be sold to Americans then you release a security fix that automaticlly installs and disables any copy that is located anywhere in America based on it's IP address
Something tells me that if Microsoft did that they'd have a whole lot of pissed off traveling business executives/government employees on their hands......
I probably should have said "Government doesn't regard your rights as inviolable", because it's hardly unique to the UK......
sers in an enterprise environment frankly shouldn't have access to install software at all.
Unfortunately it's rarely that simple. I've worked in two "enterprise" environments in my IT career. One (my current job) makes this fairly easy to implement -- most of our operations run around web based database apps and Office. Very easy to lock users into restricted accounts.
The other enterprise I worked for was an insurance agency. The insurance industry has so much legacy software that restricting users to non-admin accounts is not possible unless you are willing to sacrifice needed functionality. Many of these legacy apps come directly from the insurance companies that you do business with and there is no alternative. You either use them or you don't write business with that particular company.
I eventually had to settle for imaging our workstations and restoring them from the image whenever the user managed to fuck them up. Not the ideal solution but it was the best I could do in that situation.
but shouldn't we be more concerned about true security?
What is "true security" against the main threat of the modern era: social engineering? How does your operating system protect you from from responding to that e-mail you've just received from your long lost uncle in Nigeria? How do you protect a user that will click on the user account control pop-up as many times as is required to install that cool "weather forecasting" program that sits in his task tray?
Or were you referring to "true security" in the context of firearms, expendable redshirts and moats filled with laser wielding sharks? ;)
In the UK, they have the same rights of entry as a door-to-door salesman. You tell them to get lost, and use reasonable force to eject them from your premises if they refuse to leave.
Growing up my Grandfather ran his own business that was frequently visited by door-to-door salesman that refused to take a hint. One particularly persistent fellow refused three polite requests to leave, so Grandpa tried a different approach:
Grandpa: Dave, get the shotgun.
Dave: Huh?
Grandpa: You HEARD me, go get the shotgun.
Needless to say we never saw that particular salesman or anybody from his company ever again ;)
I'll go buy myself a ticket as soon as the proceeds from my uncle's estate come in
Why wait? I'm gonna book my flight now using my Visa card. Yeah, it's over my limit and I'll never be able to pay it back, but so what? It works for Washington and Wall Street ;)
They were stupid to believe that a crazy huge marketing campaign could keep a fundamentally flawed service alive forever.
Why is that stupid? It works for the two major political parties in the United States. Why wouldn't it work for AOL? ;)
Their crowning achievement was convincing TW (somehow) that they were worth $7000/U.S. household.
You mean a service that charges $239.40 a year ($19.95/mo) for each subscriber isn't worth $7,000 per American household? All they'd have to do to make that much money is have zero expenses and sign up every single household for 30 years.
My understanding is that if you refuse them access, they'll show up with a sheriff and a court order allowing them access.
Based on what? The word of a disgruntled ex-employee? If that's all the "evidence" they have (as is often the case) I should think that a sufficiently competent attorney would be able to fight any order allowing them access to your computer systems. Of course competent attorneys cost money and this may be one of the reasons why we rarely hear about them going after large enterprises with the resources to wage a legal battle......