The Register just had a story about how a lot of the new virii are as small as 12kb, and how you could almost silk screen the code for one onto an XL T-shirt.
I would love to have a pair of boxers with this code printed on them, and in large letters overlaying the code, "Let's install my peer-to-peer backdoor client."
Better yet! If everyone stopped selling Windows products, and gave away Linux (which should be free) products instead, Linux Product Sales would... oh... never mind.
The Space Shuttle comes in a lot faster and through far more atmosphere (Think angle of attack, not just vertical height). These guys are just barely getting out into "space", and aren't anywhere near the altitude or velocity required to get to even low earth orbit, so they don't need much heat shielding at all.
Of course LEO isn't a requirement for the X-prize.
I used to have an '86 Tempo. Up until I bought that car, I always did all of my own auto maintenance. (completely rebuilt the engine in my '60 Chevy myself) I did my first tune-up on the Tempo, and after finishing it ran horribly. I took out all the parts, checked them, did everything I could think of and it still coughed and sputtered and wouldn't go above 10 mph. Eased it up the road to the dealership, paid them $60 to hook a serial cable up to the engine from thier diagnostic computer, and 30 seconds later it was purring like it had just come off the assembly line. Basically, any major maintenance, defined by Ford as changing spark plugs or anything else that caused a discontinous performance change, caused the compter to drop to a barely drivable set of parameters to force you to the dealer.
From then on I had the choice, do my own tune-ups for $14 in parts and $60 for a calibration, or give the dealer $50 to do the tune-ups for me.
I'll never own another Ford... not that any of the others are likely to be better, they just haven't screwed me yet.
Yes! My new hobby. After the **AA goes the way of the dino and dodo, I personally will be happy to take a recording of your performance, make copies of it, and sell it to whomever I can get to buy it. Paying you 1% of all profits, and keeping the rest.
After having thought about this some more, I can see a little bit of your side. Of course there is recourse if something "goes wrong". As far as I can figure out there are two things that might happen...
1) PayPal fails to give you money owed to you/takes money from you that it shouldn't - In this case you can sue them. Laws and procedures already on the books cover all of this.
2) PayPal could go bankrupt, and funds it is holding are held to pay creditors. With a bank there are protections in place to prevent this from happening. I think it depends on PayPal's letters of incorporation, and the laws of the state in which they are incorporated. This is one area where a clarification of PayPal's status might have a benefit.
Of course the big catch here is that PayPal provides services to individuals/companies that are too small to get the services from a regular bank. This means that they probably are also too small to mount an effective lawsuit against PayPal. Government oversight would allow an individual to make a complaint, and have government investigators try to resolve the situation.
The massive downside to this includes the fact that your and my tax dollars would now be spent on resolving every trivial little complaint against a single private corporation. I see the calls for greater government regulation, and the vague statement that "something" might go wrong, but I fail to see exactly what specific things people want the government to do with respect to PayPal. PayPal and eBay are both publicly traded companies. This requires a considerable amount of publicly available SEC filings and SEC oversight already.
that's fine for eBay auctions. Unfortunately there isn't any escrow program I've found in "real life". I have never bought or sold anything on eBay, but have used PayPal many times, both buying and selling.
And exactly how is this different from any other payment transaction system? If you have a regular vendor account with a credit card company, and you fill out your credit slip and get the customer to sign it, they walk off with the merchandise, and at the end of the day you go to process all the credit slips you took during the day and that person's doesn't clear, you are in exactly the same position! Yes, if you happen to be in a suitable location (not in the middle of nowhere at a Renaissance Faire), and have the profit margin to afford a dial-up or radio linked instant verification machine, or have the time and right location to phone in every credit transaction for verification, then you can somewhat prevent it. Even then, if you verify the card, they can later dispute the charge, and the credit company seems to always find in thier favor, and you don't get paid. If you take a check from someone, and you deposit that check into your account and it bouces, not only do you not get thier money, but your bank probably charges you an additional $25-$50 bounced check processing fee. And the low-life scum still have whatever it was you sold to them.
So would someone just explain why PayPal is so much worse than the alternatives? Everyone gripes that it's not perfect, and they had problems, but no one admits that they would have had the same or worse problems with any other method of conducting the transaction other than having the customer mail cash, and when the vendor receives it mails the product... do you have any idea how little busness a vendor with those terms would get?
The reason that so many seem to be confused about PayPal not being a bank is because so few people actually understand what a bank really is, or why they are regulated. Most people seem to believe that you give the bank your money, the bank puts it in a vault someplace, and when you want it back, they take it back out of the vault and give it to you. This is essentially what PayPal does, but it is not at all what a bank does. The reason that Paypal is not a bank, and not covered under current banking laws is two-fold.
Current banking laws, the world over, are generally the result of banking and savings and loan crashes and failures. These resulted in many people losing all or part of the money they had invested in the bank. The way that a bank works is that you deposit your money into an account. The bank then loans your money to someone else. When that person repays thier loan, the bank takes a portion of the interest that person paid (her cost for getting the loan) and gives a portion to you as an interest payment on your account. [Non-interest bearing or monthly fee accounts being a way for you to let them use your money for free is an entirely different rant.] Now while they are loaning out your money, you may want to actually use it to buy something. So banks use a pot of un-loaned money to give you back what you deposited when you request it. It should be obvious that there are [primarily] two glaring problems with this set-up. First, if the bank makes a loan to someone who doesn't pay it back, and the person who's money they loaned out wants to withdraw it, the bank has to get that money from the pot of un-loaned money and pay it back later from the banks portion of the interest payments from other loans. If many, many people fail to pay back thier loans this creates a major squeeze on that pot of un-loaned money, and it could run out. The second problem occurs if the first has happened, or is even rumored to possibly be happening. Since the pot of un-loaned money must be significantly smaller than the total deposits for the bank to actually make a profit, and it is in the banks best interest to keep that amount as small as possible (in other words, as much money loaned out and earning interest as possible), situations have happened where people wanted thier money, and the bank didn't actually have that much on hand. This led to runs on banks, and bank failures, and lots of people losing money.
Thus we have banking laws. Almost all banking regulations deal with how large the pot of un-loaned money has to be that a bank is required to keep, with how a bank decides who to loan money to, and how much risk they are allowed to take, or with reporting procedures to make sure that the banks are complying with the above criteria.
Since PayPal never loans money, and all money that is listed in your account is actually on hand for them to pay you at any point, they fall outside almost all of the regulations that banks must follow.
The other thing that people seem to beleive, which boggles my mind, is that banks have regulations against freezing your account if they think there is suspicious activity on the account. In fact, there are no laws or regulations that say they have to give your money back in a specific time period. If they think that there is suspicious or criminal activity they can, and in some cases are required by law to freeze your account and sometimes even confiscate your money. [Al-qaeda, terrorist fund-raising organizations, drug cartels, human trafficing, other fraud, etc.] If they decide to do this, you have no recourse other than to sue them. Exactly the same as PayPal. (This is particularly U.S. centric, since banking laws vary considerably around the world.)
In fact, if PayPal were to be placed under banking laws, the only impact that would have on them is a tremendously higher burden of federal paperwork. As long as they do not make loans, almost none of the other regulations would af
Main Entry: 1manual
Pronunciation: 'man-y&-w&l, -y&l
Function: adjective
1 a : of, relating to, or involving the hands b : worked or done by hand and not by machine
2 : requiring or using physical skill and energy
- manually adverb
Raise your middle finger to the sky, and the BSOD goes away and your machine reboots into Linux, this time.... The 3-finger salute becomes the 1-finger salute it always should have been!
Have you tried the Logitech MX700? An amazing advance over everything else I've ever tried. Extreme sensitivity, massive bandwidth mouse to receiver(comparatively), and recharges the battery while it's in the cradle. That last made the choice for me. I couldn't see paying for something that was going to die on me mid-frag fest, and cost me more in batteries. I've never had the MX700 run out of battery power on me, of course I'm not as young as I used to be...
Except that, the GP poster failed to mention that the ENTIRE burden of fighting the civil charge consists of... signing the back of the mailed citation stating that it was not you driving the vehicle, and naming hte person who was driving the vehicle at the time.
As someone who has seen way more than his share of the results of idiots running red lights, I fully support red light enforcement cameras. As long as the yellow light is timed correctly, (There are very good rules to be followed for this) there is absolutely no excuse for running a red light. And the danger you put yourself and everyone else on the road in is unacceptable.
Speed cameras are a totally different issue of course. There are also very good guidelines for setting speeds. When these are followed a very small percentage of drivers violate that speed, however, in reality speeds are set far, far lower than the guidelines would permit. And so speed cameras are purely for financial gain of the government entity, or to lower vehicle speeds to an unreasonably slow value. If speeds were raised to match the design speed of the roadway, then I might feel better about trying to slow those people who consistently want to drive at speeds higher than what the road was designed to handle.
Actually, I'd rather see Hasbro come out with a version of the game where the squares are labeled Windows, Windows NT, Windows 95, Internet Explorer, etc...
That's why the new trick here in Texas is to steal an SUV, or pickup with a big grill guard, and smash it into the ATM. Makes a nice big mess, and handily pops the hinges on the safe most of the time. If it doesn't pop the hiinges, it at least breaks the safe free from its mountings so it can be picked up and taken away to someplace with a cutting torch. In addition, it generally makes it easy to take the camera/video system, so they can't see who did it. We've had 12 of these crimes happen in the area so far this year.
Unfortunately, they hit the drive through ATM that I use most, and it still hasn't been replaced.:-(
*sigh* I wish people would stop and think, research some facts, and then stop and think again.
This oft repeated, yet completely baseless claim that police officers in the U.S. are some selfless, heroic individuals facing death on daily basis for a pittance salary to protect the safety and comfort of all of us un-appreciative citizens. In fact according to CDC statistics Public Safety isn't even in the top 10 when it comes to dangerous industries in the U.S. In fact in Texas a higher percentage of salespeople die on the job than Police Officers and/or Fire Fighters. Everyone of us in the U.S. is far more heroic and brave every time we get in a car and get out on the highway, where you are far more likely to be killed than an officer is in the line of duty. Especially since a large portion of the on the job fatalities of Police Officers results from driving in the exact same traffic that you are.
As far as pay goes, at least in any metropolitan area, Police make pretty good money. I know that in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex most cities for the past four years have had 0-3% raises for city employees...except for Police, who have averaged 5-8% raises per year over that same time period. Negotiated and enforced by their incredibly stong unions. The average Police Officer in Texas, with benefits included, makes just over $33k annually. With Texas cost-of-living that is not a bad salary. Not enough to raise 4 kids on, but certainly enough for a couple, and in major metropolitan areas pay is considerably more.
Additional compensations that they get are:
1)massive ego and power trips,
2)complete immunity from almost any traffic crime, on or off the job (I used to ride with the Police in my City, and numerous times saw officers let other officers off when they saw the badge in their wallet.),
3)Access to some of the most comprehensive databases of information on everyone. And almost no oversight in who they look up or why,
4)The extreme benefit of the doubt in public opinion, the eyes of other enforcement agencies, and the eyes of the courts when it comes to any suspicion of wrong doing.
Just to name a few.
Police Officers do perform a necessary service, however, so do garbage men, street pavers, sewer workers, electrical linemen, and a whole host of other jobs which don't have anywhere near the same prestige. Also the men who become Police Officers are not some small minority with the will and strength to sacrifice themselves, found after long hard searches. Every time there is an advertisement in our City that we are hiring, we get approximately 20 times more applications for the jobs than there are positions to fill. The last time (last month) we were hiring 6 positions and had 53 applications. This is unlike teachers, which the school district is desperate to find qualified people to fill vacancies for, who often have very similar dangerous situations to deal with, with none of the training, and no gun on thier hip, for essentially the same or lower salary.
And right after its release, hundreds of faked pictures of the bottles with their labels peeled off will be circulating on the net to be drooled over by under-aged nerds.
Slashdot Mirror
The Register just had a story about how a lot of the new virii are as small as 12kb, and how you could almost silk screen the code for one onto an XL T-shirt.
I would love to have a pair of boxers with this code printed on them, and in large letters overlaying the code, "Let's install my peer-to-peer backdoor client."
Ah...*sigh*
You bring back so many good memories... or is that mammaries?
Better yet! If everyone stopped selling Windows products, and gave away Linux (which should be free) products instead, Linux Product Sales would... oh... never mind.
The Space Shuttle comes in a lot faster and through far more atmosphere (Think angle of attack, not just vertical height). These guys are just barely getting out into "space", and aren't anywhere near the altitude or velocity required to get to even low earth orbit, so they don't need much heat shielding at all.
Of course LEO isn't a requirement for the X-prize.
Why yes, I am a rocket scientist.
What does cleaning your keyboard have to do with being eaten by a giant space goat?
Now... back to my bath. Has anyone seen my ducky?
I used to have an '86 Tempo. Up until I bought that car, I always did all of my own auto maintenance. (completely rebuilt the engine in my '60 Chevy myself) I did my first tune-up on the Tempo, and after finishing it ran horribly. I took out all the parts, checked them, did everything I could think of and it still coughed and sputtered and wouldn't go above 10 mph. Eased it up the road to the dealership, paid them $60 to hook a serial cable up to the engine from thier diagnostic computer, and 30 seconds later it was purring like it had just come off the assembly line. Basically, any major maintenance, defined by Ford as changing spark plugs or anything else that caused a discontinous performance change, caused the compter to drop to a barely drivable set of parameters to force you to the dealer.
From then on I had the choice, do my own tune-ups for $14 in parts and $60 for a calibration, or give the dealer $50 to do the tune-ups for me.
I'll never own another Ford... not that any of the others are likely to be better, they just haven't screwed me yet.
Yes! My new hobby. After the **AA goes the way of the dino and dodo, I personally will be happy to take a recording of your performance, make copies of it, and sell it to whomever I can get to buy it. Paying you 1% of all profits, and keeping the rest.
All for the fun and novelty... of course.
After having thought about this some more, I can see a little bit of your side. Of course there is recourse if something "goes wrong". As far as I can figure out there are two things that might happen...
1) PayPal fails to give you money owed to you/takes money from you that it shouldn't - In this case you can sue them. Laws and procedures already on the books cover all of this.
2) PayPal could go bankrupt, and funds it is holding are held to pay creditors. With a bank there are protections in place to prevent this from happening. I think it depends on PayPal's letters of incorporation, and the laws of the state in which they are incorporated. This is one area where a clarification of PayPal's status might have a benefit.
Of course the big catch here is that PayPal provides services to individuals/companies that are too small to get the services from a regular bank. This means that they probably are also too small to mount an effective lawsuit against PayPal. Government oversight would allow an individual to make a complaint, and have government investigators try to resolve the situation.
The massive downside to this includes the fact that your and my tax dollars would now be spent on resolving every trivial little complaint against a single private corporation. I see the calls for greater government regulation, and the vague statement that "something" might go wrong, but I fail to see exactly what specific things people want the government to do with respect to PayPal. PayPal and eBay are both publicly traded companies. This requires a considerable amount of publicly available SEC filings and SEC oversight already.
that's fine for eBay auctions. Unfortunately there isn't any escrow program I've found in "real life". I have never bought or sold anything on eBay, but have used PayPal many times, both buying and selling.
And exactly how is this different from any other payment transaction system? If you have a regular vendor account with a credit card company, and you fill out your credit slip and get the customer to sign it, they walk off with the merchandise, and at the end of the day you go to process all the credit slips you took during the day and that person's doesn't clear, you are in exactly the same position! Yes, if you happen to be in a suitable location (not in the middle of nowhere at a Renaissance Faire), and have the profit margin to afford a dial-up or radio linked instant verification machine, or have the time and right location to phone in every credit transaction for verification, then you can somewhat prevent it. Even then, if you verify the card, they can later dispute the charge, and the credit company seems to always find in thier favor, and you don't get paid. If you take a check from someone, and you deposit that check into your account and it bouces, not only do you not get thier money, but your bank probably charges you an additional $25-$50 bounced check processing fee. And the low-life scum still have whatever it was you sold to them.
So would someone just explain why PayPal is so much worse than the alternatives? Everyone gripes that it's not perfect, and they had problems, but no one admits that they would have had the same or worse problems with any other method of conducting the transaction other than having the customer mail cash, and when the vendor receives it mails the product... do you have any idea how little busness a vendor with those terms would get?
The reason that so many seem to be confused about PayPal not being a bank is because so few people actually understand what a bank really is, or why they are regulated. Most people seem to believe that you give the bank your money, the bank puts it in a vault someplace, and when you want it back, they take it back out of the vault and give it to you. This is essentially what PayPal does, but it is not at all what a bank does. The reason that Paypal is not a bank, and not covered under current banking laws is two-fold.
Current banking laws, the world over, are generally the result of banking and savings and loan crashes and failures. These resulted in many people losing all or part of the money they had invested in the bank. The way that a bank works is that you deposit your money into an account. The bank then loans your money to someone else. When that person repays thier loan, the bank takes a portion of the interest that person paid (her cost for getting the loan) and gives a portion to you as an interest payment on your account. [Non-interest bearing or monthly fee accounts being a way for you to let them use your money for free is an entirely different rant.] Now while they are loaning out your money, you may want to actually use it to buy something. So banks use a pot of un-loaned money to give you back what you deposited when you request it. It should be obvious that there are [primarily] two glaring problems with this set-up. First, if the bank makes a loan to someone who doesn't pay it back, and the person who's money they loaned out wants to withdraw it, the bank has to get that money from the pot of un-loaned money and pay it back later from the banks portion of the interest payments from other loans. If many, many people fail to pay back thier loans this creates a major squeeze on that pot of un-loaned money, and it could run out. The second problem occurs if the first has happened, or is even rumored to possibly be happening. Since the pot of un-loaned money must be significantly smaller than the total deposits for the bank to actually make a profit, and it is in the banks best interest to keep that amount as small as possible (in other words, as much money loaned out and earning interest as possible), situations have happened where people wanted thier money, and the bank didn't actually have that much on hand. This led to runs on banks, and bank failures, and lots of people losing money.
Thus we have banking laws. Almost all banking regulations deal with how large the pot of un-loaned money has to be that a bank is required to keep, with how a bank decides who to loan money to, and how much risk they are allowed to take, or with reporting procedures to make sure that the banks are complying with the above criteria.
Since PayPal never loans money, and all money that is listed in your account is actually on hand for them to pay you at any point, they fall outside almost all of the regulations that banks must follow.
The other thing that people seem to beleive, which boggles my mind, is that banks have regulations against freezing your account if they think there is suspicious activity on the account. In fact, there are no laws or regulations that say they have to give your money back in a specific time period. If they think that there is suspicious or criminal activity they can, and in some cases are required by law to freeze your account and sometimes even confiscate your money. [Al-qaeda, terrorist fund-raising organizations, drug cartels, human trafficing, other fraud, etc.] If they decide to do this, you have no recourse other than to sue them. Exactly the same as PayPal. (This is particularly U.S. centric, since banking laws vary considerably around the world.)
In fact, if PayPal were to be placed under banking laws, the only impact that would have on them is a tremendously higher burden of federal paperwork. As long as they do not make loans, almost none of the other regulations would af
I think you had it right the first time...
For what my plumber charges... he just might be flying in from Delhi for house calls
Loni is still sooo much sexier than Pam...
Raise your middle finger to the sky, and the BSOD goes away and your machine reboots into Linux, this time.... The 3-finger salute becomes the 1-finger salute it always should have been!
Have you tried the Logitech MX700? An amazing advance over everything else I've ever tried. Extreme sensitivity, massive bandwidth mouse to receiver(comparatively), and recharges the battery while it's in the cradle. That last made the choice for me. I couldn't see paying for something that was going to die on me mid-frag fest, and cost me more in batteries. I've never had the MX700 run out of battery power on me, of course I'm not as young as I used to be...
Except that, the GP poster failed to mention that the ENTIRE burden of fighting the civil charge consists of... signing the back of the mailed citation stating that it was not you driving the vehicle, and naming hte person who was driving the vehicle at the time.
As someone who has seen way more than his share of the results of idiots running red lights, I fully support red light enforcement cameras. As long as the yellow light is timed correctly, (There are very good rules to be followed for this) there is absolutely no excuse for running a red light. And the danger you put yourself and everyone else on the road in is unacceptable.
Speed cameras are a totally different issue of course. There are also very good guidelines for setting speeds. When these are followed a very small percentage of drivers violate that speed, however, in reality speeds are set far, far lower than the guidelines would permit. And so speed cameras are purely for financial gain of the government entity, or to lower vehicle speeds to an unreasonably slow value. If speeds were raised to match the design speed of the roadway, then I might feel better about trying to slow those people who consistently want to drive at speeds higher than what the road was designed to handle.
Unless of course you use XFree86 for anything...
Actually, I'd rather see Hasbro come out with a version of the game where the squares are labeled Windows, Windows NT, Windows 95, Internet Explorer, etc...
But at least working for the government, they don't expect much out of you.
ob. "You don't know what it's like out there. I've worked in the private sector--they expect results."
Looking at the choices in the coming election... I think I might actually vote for the asteroid.
That's why the new trick here in Texas is to steal an SUV, or pickup with a big grill guard, and smash it into the ATM. Makes a nice big mess, and handily pops the hinges on the safe most of the time. If it doesn't pop the hiinges, it at least breaks the safe free from its mountings so it can be picked up and taken away to someplace with a cutting torch. In addition, it generally makes it easy to take the camera/video system, so they can't see who did it. We've had 12 of these crimes happen in the area so far this year.
:-(
Unfortunately, they hit the drive through ATM that I use most, and it still hasn't been replaced.
*sigh* I wish people would stop and think, research some facts, and then stop and think again.
This oft repeated, yet completely baseless claim that police officers in the U.S. are some selfless, heroic individuals facing death on daily basis for a pittance salary to protect the safety and comfort of all of us un-appreciative citizens. In fact according to CDC statistics Public Safety isn't even in the top 10 when it comes to dangerous industries in the U.S. In fact in Texas a higher percentage of salespeople die on the job than Police Officers and/or Fire Fighters. Everyone of us in the U.S. is far more heroic and brave every time we get in a car and get out on the highway, where you are far more likely to be killed than an officer is in the line of duty. Especially since a large portion of the on the job fatalities of Police Officers results from driving in the exact same traffic that you are.
As far as pay goes, at least in any metropolitan area, Police make pretty good money. I know that in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex most cities for the past four years have had 0-3% raises for city employees...except for Police, who have averaged 5-8% raises per year over that same time period. Negotiated and enforced by their incredibly stong unions. The average Police Officer in Texas, with benefits included, makes just over $33k annually. With Texas cost-of-living that is not a bad salary. Not enough to raise 4 kids on, but certainly enough for a couple, and in major metropolitan areas pay is considerably more.
Additional compensations that they get are:
1)massive ego and power trips,
2)complete immunity from almost any traffic crime, on or off the job (I used to ride with the Police in my City, and numerous times saw officers let other officers off when they saw the badge in their wallet.),
3)Access to some of the most comprehensive databases of information on everyone. And almost no oversight in who they look up or why,
4)The extreme benefit of the doubt in public opinion, the eyes of other enforcement agencies, and the eyes of the courts when it comes to any suspicion of wrong doing.
Just to name a few.
Police Officers do perform a necessary service, however, so do garbage men, street pavers, sewer workers, electrical linemen, and a whole host of other jobs which don't have anywhere near the same prestige. Also the men who become Police Officers are not some small minority with the will and strength to sacrifice themselves, found after long hard searches. Every time there is an advertisement in our City that we are hiring, we get approximately 20 times more applications for the jobs than there are positions to fill. The last time (last month) we were hiring 6 positions and had 53 applications. This is unlike teachers, which the school district is desperate to find qualified people to fill vacancies for, who often have very similar dangerous situations to deal with, with none of the training, and no gun on thier hip, for essentially the same or lower salary.
Karma whoring clickable link from someone who at work, and so not busy at all. ;-p
Click Here
Oh, oh.... Pilsner Amidala.
And right after its release, hundreds of faked pictures of the bottles with their labels peeled off will be circulating on the net to be drooled over by under-aged nerds.