Isn't there some special online protection plan that can remburse you in case of an online purchase fraud? Why don't people just get one of these cards specifically for ebaying.
Yes, several credit card companies offer plans that "prevent" online fraud (and many other types of fraud) by refunding your money in the event that you are a victim of fraud. In this case, however, this would not have been possible because the seller mentioned in this slashdot article would not accept credit card payments / paypal. Furthermore, all the credit cards with fraud protection that I have seen have a limit to how much they will cover in a year's time or how much you can claim at once. Your fraud protection might have a $1000 a year limit and a maximum of $300 per fraud. Meaning, with expensive items you don't get great protection anyway.
What I really wish for is an offline protection plan that can crack skulls in case of an online purchase fraud.
You never know, they might have been waiting for this announcement just so they could trump Doom3 by a day! If only I could afford a graphics card to actually run Doom on:/
I thought I'd be helpful and throw together some specs and prices for you to purchase in order to play Doom 3.
$1000 - 1 Pentium 4 3.4Ghz (800Mhz FSB) w/ 2MB L2 $1078 - 2 Gigabyte GeFORCE Ultra 256MB @ $539 (for SLI) $420 - 4 WD360 Hard Drives @ $110 (about 70GB Total) $400 - 1 RAID 10 Controller Card $450 - 1 Intel e7525 Motherboard with dual PCI Express $800 - 2 Corsair TwinX1024-4400PT @ $400 $2793 - 3 nVentiv Prometeia Mach II @ $931 (1 for CPU 2 for GPUs) $100 - 1 Antec 550W True Power Supply $150 - 1 Computer Case with GOOD Airflow $2258 - 1 Samsung 24inc LCD Monitor (1920 x 1200) $200 - 1 12x DVD Burner ------------------- $9649 - Total
Could it be that Intel is keeping DDR2-667 support for yet another revision of their new chipsets even though the memory support is clearly here today?
I'm suprised one must even ask this question, because the answer is absolutely Intel would do something like this. Keep in mind that the benefit of locking overclocking to only 10% is twofold for Intel. Not only do you disguise the now revealed fact that DDR2 is ready for faster speeds, but you stop people from buying cheaper chips and overclocking them. At least, that's what intel intended before the mobo manufactureres bypassed the locking. Think about it in this theoretical situation, why should I buy the $1000 3.4Ghz chip when I can buy the $500 3.2Ghz chip and overclock it 200Mhz?
Re:can always get your /.
on
WiFi Gone Wild
·
· Score: 1
What the state is hoping to accomplish is that by giving truckers more amenities along the road they will be more willing to follow the regs and less likely to "push it".
Sorry to go off topic but I hope the truckers do continue to push it! Not meaning that I wish they would drive without rest, but the Texas Trucking Lobby pushes HARD on the Texas state gov to raise speed limits and pushes hard on the local govs to give drivers 5 or 10 over the speed limit when pulled over. And I like to go fast.
Re:can always get your /.
on
WiFi Gone Wild
·
· Score: 1
Now, nerds in texas can always get their/. fix when traveling. They just have to stop of at a rest area, get some vending machine food, a soda, stop off at mr. porclyn and/.
Although, hopefully not all at the same time.
This brings up an interesting problem with the proposed hotspots. Only people traveling can really take advantage of them. You see, I live in Texas and have traveled all around the state. Most of Texas is not populated and you drive hours without seeing anything but rest stops (and even those are about 100 miles apart). Thus, you won't have a bunch of nerds congregating at the rest stops because they are simply too far away from any cities. Hours away, in some cases. So for people who are traveling this will be a nice plus, but if you visit the rest stations here in Texas you won't see very many nerdy looking people. Furthermore, rest stops in Texas (and I would assume everywhere else) as only on major highways. If you are going somewhere that there is no major highway then you will not see a rest stop, and thus will not see a WiFi rest stop. I just can't see the practical use of this.
And no, before you ask, I do not plan to 'ride my horse' to a rest stop and use my old laptop full of prarie grass and dust. I wear boots by choice and all the farm animals I have raised were by choice as well! Texas is more civilized than you would think!
...bring a family member into the home and keeping your current job / profession. Meaning, why not have "grandma" or "grandpa" come live or stay with you? Or maybe be a nanny during the daytime? I'm not saying to replace yourself with another family member, but anyway family influence is a positive one, and it may allow you to keep things the way they are now.
Re:brings to mind an old question I once had.
on
GPU Gems
·
· Score: 2, Informative
if computer video hardware was designed in such a way that when graphics were not being processed, the GPU could be used for general number crunching. In other words, if it is possible to do load balancing between the GPU and the CPU.
While it would probably be possible to use a GPU for general purpose number crunching, I believe it would make the GPU unable to send a signal to your monitor at the same time.
I asked the same question back in the days of RC5-64 and I was told that it was not feasible for just that video signal reason. I was told I would not be able to use my video card while it was crunching.
Correct me if I am wrong, though!
Re:Thinking of Switching to a OSX for a laptop
on
Fix a Troubled Mac
·
· Score: 1
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I agree with you that they need to lighten up a bit, but based on history they will not. Remember the whole 'crisis' over video recorders way back in the day? A more contemporary example is the TiVO controversy, with many broadcast networks saying that TiVO will end their business model and cable will be the only option for TV, which is simply untrue. New technology often spurs fear because people fear what certain things _might_ be used for. Just like a gun, it _might_ be used for illegal purposes, but it might not as well. But what _might_ happen is not a good excuse for stifling technological development
The trade group, which represents the five largest recording companies, has settled more than 400 of those cases for around $3,000 each.
I know that file sharing of unlicensed copyrighted works is illegal, but the practice of threatening lawsuits left and right still bothers me. As many of you are aware, a number of the people already sued did not have the financial ability to fund a lawyer even if they wanted to. The question is, what happens if a company (like DirecTV mentioned here) starts blanket suing for something that is not necessarily illegal? These corporations have deep pockets, and they could threaten to sue the crap out of you for looking at them cock-eyed, to which many people would have to settle out of court (I'm not being literal). If you can't afford a lawyer then what do you do? 'Admit' to wrong-doing you didn't committ? Again, I realize that a lot of file sharing IS illegal, but the whole blanket lawsuit thing does raise some interesting (or scary?) questions.
I'll assume for the moment that you are being serious in your comments...
Naw, I wasn't being serious, I was trying to be funny actually, but I failed evidently! I really did think the reference to "having a burger at Microsoft's" was funny though!
Microsoft decided to submit their "Caller ID" anti-spam proposal as a draft to the IETF. This proposal tries to tie in IP addresses to the domain of the sender just like SPF does. To make things even more interesting, looks like SPF and MSFT's Caller-ID proposals are merging.
Great! As if Microsoft controlling virtually the entire desktop computer industry is not enough! Now they feel that they should control e-mail as well! How soon before I drive a Microsoft car or stop in for a burger at Microsoft's?
They've already taken a stab at the video game industry, remeber?
Now, looking around today, I see almost everyone predicting SCO's imminent doom instead.
You must remember that back in the days of the OJ trial many thought he would be convicted, but he wasn't. And people have said so often how Apple will die soon / tomorrow / whatever. So I would hesitate to predicate SCO's doom just yet... but a man can dream!
No, if you would have read the article you would be aware that the Publisher has already settled with SCO, which prevents them from suing SCO or collecting any further damages.
Controversial UNIX vendor The SCO Group apparently has paid to settle a copyright infringement complaint from San Francisco publisher No Starch Press.
While software patents have become increasingly common in the past few years--leading to long and contentious strings of litigation over seemingly basic computing techniques--not all companies are taking Apple's approach.
A RealNetworks spokesman said his company had not sought any directly comparable interface patents for its 10-year-old media player software, for example.
Of course RealNetworks has not sought any interface patents! How could you patent bloat, resource-hogging, and un-usability!?!?
His whole article centers around the difficulty in setting Nautilus to browse files / folders in a single window, which he uses as a basis to bash GNOME 2.6 as a whole.
The only way to change the default behavior of Nautilus is to set an obscure registry key via the command line or the registry editor. Not even that abomination of operating systems, Windows 95, made users retreat to the registry editor to use a single window to navigate folders. I can only assume that the GNOME developers decided to make Nautilus a worse Windows than Windows. I toast their rousing success.
Also, he says
It was deliberately designed to protect users who are invariably too incompetent to pick their own colors but are smart enough to memorize shift-clicks and keystrokes or edit the registry to get Nautilus to work the way they like.
And Lastly, he says
But it turns out there is no preference setting that tells Nautilus to use a single window to browse folders.
All this is actually kind of funny... because couldn't all of his arguments be fix by simply... adding the option to browse in a single window as a menu option???
Seems like a trivial complaint to bash GNOME as a whole... and one that can be fixed easily.
Very true.. that would be descrimination based on colour. But where do you draw the line? Perhaps I want to use the female restroom at work. I can't? I'm being denied! Sexual descrimination!
I'm going to take this opportunity to show anything Apple does is rated absolutely great on Slashdot but anything similar Microsoft does is evil.
The Slashdot article about "Janus", found here, contains a similar discussion about DRM, but with a focus on Microsoft (since "Janus" is Microsoft technology).
There is a post very similar to the parent of my reply, stating that Microsoft is not the one pushing for DRM, it is the media giants (RIAA, MPAA). Of course, since it was defending Microsoft's DRM, it was not moderated very high. But the parent to my reply is rated +5 and says almost the same thing (but is defending Apple).
And there was a lot of Microsoft bashing regarding the proposed DRM, moderated very highly of course, which can be found here, here, and here. But if you bash Apple on Slashdot for their DRM, you will be moderated -1 in a few seconds.
I know this will get moderated straight to -1, but I am not attempting to start a flame war, I would actually like to start a discussion and have someone explain to me exactly why Apple DRM is wonderful but Microsoft DRM is wrong. Keep in mind that I am not trying to defend Microsoft's DRM, my position is that BOTH DRMs are bad. Anyway, my real question is, what makes Apple so perfect and Microsoft so wrong?
Maybe this is the over-seas company doing the faxing? I don't know, I can't read Russian , so I can't verify if the company discussed in the article is the same as this one.
Oh and BTW the number for the company that is doing the faxing is 1-800-328-9795 for those who don't want to RTFA.
True, but allow me to expand on your point a little bit. It will also not make any difference because American laws have no jurisdiction in other countries (unfortunately =P). If spammers really worry about this law (which they won't), all the must do is move their operations over seas. And in a spammer's case, moving over seas doesn't even involve literally moving himself / herself and family over there. Everything can be done remotely. I don't know what system would work best to fix the problem, that is an argument for another day, but I know for sure the US federal laws are not going to be the answer.
Why not spend less time figuring out the limitations and more time working to break those limitations? Or maybe limitations need to be set in order to break them!
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't there some special online protection plan that can remburse you in case of an online purchase fraud? Why don't people just get one of these cards specifically for ebaying.
Yes, several credit card companies offer plans that "prevent" online fraud (and many other types of fraud) by refunding your money in the event that you are a victim of fraud. In this case, however, this would not have been possible because the seller mentioned in this slashdot article would not accept credit card payments / paypal. Furthermore, all the credit cards with fraud protection that I have seen have a limit to how much they will cover in a year's time or how much you can claim at once. Your fraud protection might have a $1000 a year limit and a maximum of $300 per fraud. Meaning, with expensive items you don't get great protection anyway.
What I really wish for is an offline protection plan that can crack skulls in case of an online purchase fraud.
You never know, they might have been waiting for this announcement just so they could trump Doom3 by a day! :/
If only I could afford a graphics card to actually run Doom on
I thought I'd be helpful and throw together some specs and prices for you to purchase in order to play Doom 3.
$1000 - 1 Pentium 4 3.4Ghz (800Mhz FSB) w/ 2MB L2
$1078 - 2 Gigabyte GeFORCE Ultra 256MB @ $539 (for SLI)
$420 - 4 WD360 Hard Drives @ $110 (about 70GB Total)
$400 - 1 RAID 10 Controller Card
$450 - 1 Intel e7525 Motherboard with dual PCI Express
$800 - 2 Corsair TwinX1024-4400PT @ $400
$2793 - 3 nVentiv Prometeia Mach II @ $931 (1 for CPU 2 for GPUs)
$100 - 1 Antec 550W True Power Supply
$150 - 1 Computer Case with GOOD Airflow
$2258 - 1 Samsung 24inc LCD Monitor (1920 x 1200)
$200 - 1 12x DVD Burner
-------------------
$9649 - Total
I know I've got mine on order!
Could it be that Intel is keeping DDR2-667 support for yet another revision of their new chipsets even though the memory support is clearly here today?
I'm suprised one must even ask this question, because the answer is absolutely Intel would do something like this. Keep in mind that the benefit of locking overclocking to only 10% is twofold for Intel. Not only do you disguise the now revealed fact that DDR2 is ready for faster speeds, but you stop people from buying cheaper chips and overclocking them. At least, that's what intel intended before the mobo manufactureres bypassed the locking. Think about it in this theoretical situation, why should I buy the $1000 3.4Ghz chip when I can buy the $500 3.2Ghz chip and overclock it 200Mhz?
What the state is hoping to accomplish is that by giving truckers more amenities along the road they will be more willing to follow the regs and less likely to "push it".
Sorry to go off topic but I hope the truckers do continue to push it! Not meaning that I wish they would drive without rest, but the Texas Trucking Lobby pushes HARD on the Texas state gov to raise speed limits and pushes hard on the local govs to give drivers 5 or 10 over the speed limit when pulled over. And I like to go fast.
Now, nerds in texas can always get their /. fix when traveling. They just have to stop of at a rest area, get some vending machine food, a soda, stop off at mr. porclyn and /.
Although, hopefully not all at the same time.
This brings up an interesting problem with the proposed hotspots. Only people traveling can really take advantage of them. You see, I live in Texas and have traveled all around the state. Most of Texas is not populated and you drive hours without seeing anything but rest stops (and even those are about 100 miles apart). Thus, you won't have a bunch of nerds congregating at the rest stops because they are simply too far away from any cities. Hours away, in some cases. So for people who are traveling this will be a nice plus, but if you visit the rest stations here in Texas you won't see very many nerdy looking people. Furthermore, rest stops in Texas (and I would assume everywhere else) as only on major highways. If you are going somewhere that there is no major highway then you will not see a rest stop, and thus will not see a WiFi rest stop. I just can't see the practical use of this.
And no, before you ask, I do not plan to 'ride my horse' to a rest stop and use my old laptop full of prarie grass and dust. I wear boots by choice and all the farm animals I have raised were by choice as well! Texas is more civilized than you would think!
It's an Internet browser that people used back in the olden days. Just after the Internet was invented.
You mean right after Al Gore invented it?
Am I the only one who opted for immortality only to end up with a game over screen?
Damn those stupid beads.
...bring a family member into the home and keeping your current job / profession. Meaning, why not have "grandma" or "grandpa" come live or stay with you? Or maybe be a nanny during the daytime? I'm not saying to replace yourself with another family member, but anyway family influence is a positive one, and it may allow you to keep things the way they are now.
if computer video hardware was designed in such a way that when graphics were not being processed, the GPU could be used for general number crunching. In other words, if it is possible to do load balancing between the GPU and the CPU.
While it would probably be possible to use a GPU for general purpose number crunching, I believe it would make the GPU unable to send a signal to your monitor at the same time.
I asked the same question back in the days of RC5-64 and I was told that it was not feasible for just that video signal reason. I was told I would not be able to use my video card while it was crunching.
Correct me if I am wrong, though!
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
They just need to give up...
I agree with you that they need to lighten up a bit, but based on history they will not. Remember the whole 'crisis' over video recorders way back in the day? A more contemporary example is the TiVO controversy, with many broadcast networks saying that TiVO will end their business model and cable will be the only option for TV, which is simply untrue. New technology often spurs fear because people fear what certain things _might_ be used for. Just like a gun, it _might_ be used for illegal purposes, but it might not as well. But what _might_ happen is not a good excuse for stifling technological development
The trade group, which represents the five largest recording companies, has settled more than 400 of those cases for around $3,000 each.
I know that file sharing of unlicensed copyrighted works is illegal, but the practice of threatening lawsuits left and right still bothers me. As many of you are aware, a number of the people already sued did not have the financial ability to fund a lawyer even if they wanted to. The question is, what happens if a company (like DirecTV mentioned here) starts blanket suing for something that is not necessarily illegal? These corporations have deep pockets, and they could threaten to sue the crap out of you for looking at them cock-eyed, to which many people would have to settle out of court (I'm not being literal). If you can't afford a lawyer then what do you do? 'Admit' to wrong-doing you didn't committ? Again, I realize that a lot of file sharing IS illegal, but the whole blanket lawsuit thing does raise some interesting (or scary?) questions.
Throw it, naturally.
Compete for the X-Prize with it?
*ducks*
I'll assume for the moment that you are being serious in your comments...
Naw, I wasn't being serious, I was trying to be funny actually, but I failed evidently! I really did think the reference to "having a burger at Microsoft's" was funny though!
Microsoft decided to submit their "Caller ID" anti-spam proposal as a draft to the IETF. This proposal tries to tie in IP addresses to the domain of the sender just like SPF does. To make things even more interesting, looks like SPF and MSFT's Caller-ID proposals are merging.
Great! As if Microsoft controlling virtually the entire desktop computer industry is not enough! Now they feel that they should control e-mail as well! How soon before I drive a Microsoft car or stop in for a burger at Microsoft's?
They've already taken a stab at the video game industry, remeber?
Now, looking around today, I see almost everyone predicting SCO's imminent doom instead.
You must remember that back in the days of the OJ trial many thought he would be convicted, but he wasn't. And people have said so often how Apple will die soon / tomorrow / whatever. So I would hesitate to predicate SCO's doom just yet... but a man can dream!
No, if you would have read the article you would be aware that the Publisher has already settled with SCO, which prevents them from suing SCO or collecting any further damages.
Controversial UNIX vendor The SCO Group apparently has paid to settle a copyright infringement complaint from San Francisco publisher No Starch Press.
While software patents have become increasingly common in the past few years--leading to long and contentious strings of litigation over seemingly basic computing techniques--not all companies are taking Apple's approach.
A RealNetworks spokesman said his company had not sought any directly comparable interface patents for its 10-year-old media player software, for example.
Of course RealNetworks has not sought any interface patents! How could you patent bloat, resource-hogging, and un-usability!?!?
His whole article centers around the difficulty in setting Nautilus to browse files / folders in a single window, which he uses as a basis to bash GNOME 2.6 as a whole.
The only way to change the default behavior of Nautilus is to set an obscure registry key via the command line or the registry editor. Not even that abomination of operating systems, Windows 95, made users retreat to the registry editor to use a single window to navigate folders. I can only assume that the GNOME developers decided to make Nautilus a worse Windows than Windows. I toast their rousing success.
Also, he says
It was deliberately designed to protect users who are invariably too incompetent to pick their own colors but are smart enough to memorize shift-clicks and keystrokes or edit the registry to get Nautilus to work the way they like.
And Lastly, he says
But it turns out there is no preference setting that tells Nautilus to use a single window to browse folders.
All this is actually kind of funny... because couldn't all of his arguments be fix by simply... adding the option to browse in a single window as a menu option???
Seems like a trivial complaint to bash GNOME as a whole... and one that can be fixed easily.
Very true.. that would be descrimination based on colour. But where do you draw the line? Perhaps I want to use the female restroom at work. I can't? I'm being denied! Sexual descrimination!
Actually, denying you the 'right' to use the women's restroom if you are a man is sexual discrimination, at least according to the The Undergraduate Council at Harvard University.
I'm going to take this opportunity to show anything Apple does is rated absolutely great on Slashdot but anything similar Microsoft does is evil.
The Slashdot article about "Janus", found here, contains a similar discussion about DRM, but with a focus on Microsoft (since "Janus" is Microsoft technology).
There is a post very similar to the parent of my reply, stating that Microsoft is not the one pushing for DRM, it is the media giants (RIAA, MPAA). Of course, since it was defending Microsoft's DRM, it was not moderated very high. But the parent to my reply is rated +5 and says almost the same thing (but is defending Apple).
And there was a lot of Microsoft bashing regarding the proposed DRM, moderated very highly of course, which can be found here, here, and here. But if you bash Apple on Slashdot for their DRM, you will be moderated -1 in a few seconds.
I know this will get moderated straight to -1, but I am not attempting to start a flame war, I would actually like to start a discussion and have someone explain to me exactly why Apple DRM is wonderful but Microsoft DRM is wrong. Keep in mind that I am not trying to defend Microsoft's DRM, my position is that BOTH DRMs are bad. Anyway, my real question is, what makes Apple so perfect and Microsoft so wrong?
There is a Google cache here, however.
Maybe this is the over-seas company doing the faxing? I don't know, I can't read Russian , so I can't verify if the company discussed in the article is the same as this one.
Oh and BTW the number for the company that is doing the faxing is 1-800-328-9795 for those who don't want to RTFA.
True, but allow me to expand on your point a little bit. It will also not make any difference because American laws have no jurisdiction in other countries (unfortunately =P). If spammers really worry about this law (which they won't), all the must do is move their operations over seas. And in a spammer's case, moving over seas doesn't even involve literally moving himself / herself and family over there. Everything can be done remotely. I don't know what system would work best to fix the problem, that is an argument for another day, but I know for sure the US federal laws are not going to be the answer.
Why not spend less time figuring out the limitations and more time working to break those limitations? Or maybe limitations need to be set in order to break them!