Google has done nothing so far to earn our distrust.
They have begun to scan several thousand books cover to cover, without the permission of the author or the publisher, and arguably in violation of copyright law.
That's enough for me to be wary of trusting them. Granted, their record is better than Microsoft's, but it still leaves something to be desired.
This is slightly off-topic, but your bus system leaves something to be desired. Ours runs about 21 hours a day, year-round. (They stop between roughly 2 AM and 5 AM.)
At what point does a company get the prestige of changing from "parasitic" to "legitimate?" Are Google and Yahoo parasitic companies because they rely on the infrastructrue of users and the sites they index, instead of running fiber from their data centers to everybody else?
I would also argue that your argument that Vonage "has no network" is incorrect. If they have no network, how do they bridge the calls to POTS?
Finally, the FCC ruling requires Vonage (in only four months) to perform the miraculous feat of being able to locate a subscriber regardless of where in the world they're connected, and magically send emergency services to their door. Presumably, they must do this without asking the customer where they are, since this is what they were doing before the ruling. Are you proposing that if I fly overseas with a Vonage box and call 911 in London, they have to send a bobby to my door, without asking where I am?
Yes, 911 is important, but requiring an innovative company to do the impossible in order to stay in business strikes me as patently unfair.
Wow, ever thought of re-directing their anger to the CEOs and Managers who took the decision to outsource those jobs in the first place?
Yes. The call center worker refused to transfer me.
Seriously.
I think I've been completely polite and respectful when I get a call center employee named "David" with a strong foreign accent. I've never said they were rat eaters or stealing American jobs. In fact, I'm pretty happy that they're making a successful living.
The fact remains that I simply cannot remember the last time I spoke to a competent employee in a call center, regardless of where the call was answered.
I saw a TV documentary once on a music-on-hold DJ for a fairly well-known company (sadly, I don't remember which company). You could break out of the hold queue to request a song, and when you returned, you'd keep your place in line.
I think you're mistaken, for two reasons. First, IVR systems are inherently nested. Nested menus require a person to drill-down to get to the appropriate queue, often having to choose "the best option" when none of the items presented describe their problem. Second, a well-trained customer service representative is able to translate a customer's problem into a queue much more easily than an IVR system. You simply can't tell a state-of-the-art IVR system "My cell phone bill has a $315 charge that I don't understand. Can you explain it to me?" and expect it to direct you the appropriate queue.
IVR systems may be good for some things, but speed for the customer is not one of them.
Re:Is AJAX secure (https)?
on
Ajax in Action
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· Score: 1
I do not know how to have a HTTP page, and a HTTPS Javascript transaction.
Each paper ballot should have...a special user ID and passphrase
This doesn't work because we want the voter to know who they voted for, but we don't want them to be able to prove that to anybody else. If they can, that opens up the potential for intimidation or vote-buying.
If you want to call a company but don't want your phone number to come up, all you have to do is enter *67 (or something) before you call them.
*67 blocks Caller ID, but a totally different system, called ANI, is used by toll-free number owners. Just like 911, you can't block your number from appearing in the records of a company with ANI access.
Re:I think I buy into this "ajax" thing
on
Ajax in Action
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· Score: 1
web browers are (fundamentally) shitty application platforms, for very important reasons that will not go away.
Netscape didn't believe that, and Microsoft was scared enough to kill them off by releasing a free web browser on every platform that Netscape supported, so the Windows revenue stream would continue. In fact, the point of ActiveX is arguably to support applications in the browser.
Google doesn't seem to believe that it's a terrible platform either.
The two value types can have different semantic meanings. Typically, empty strings signify that no value applies for the column, while NULLs signify that the value is unknown.
Say you have a table with a MiddleName column. Using the rule above, if you store NULL, that means you don't know what the person's middle name is. in contrast, if you store the empty string, it means the person doesn't have a middle name.
The distinction is controversial, and some database administrators feel that distinguishing between NULL and the empty string adds unnecessary complexity to an application.
Disclaimer: While I'm confident that I know a little more about databases than the average developer, IANADBA.
Actually, people are reporting that once the XCP EULA opens and they click "no," the CD ejects, but once it's re-inserted, the EULA doesn't ever appear again. How could that happen if, as they claim, nothing was installed on the computer?
The original Office XML format was never adopted by the FOSS community because it was patent-encumbered. Microsoft was just about ready to charge storage companies a royalty for formatting their drives with FAT.
But I'm betting that the artists themselves don't give a wet slap about this either way.
The leader of the band Switchfoot, a fairly well-known Christian rock band, posted instructions on bypassing copy protection on their Nothing is Sound CD. The post was on Sony's own forums, exactly two months ago today and before anybody realized XCP contained a rootkit. Naturally, the thread was deleted a couple of days later. However, the band is continuing to apologize for the problems on the forums.
I partly agree, though - it would be incredibly cool to see Switchfoot find a way out of their Sony BMG contract.
Slashdot Mirror
Google has done nothing so far to earn our distrust.
They have begun to scan several thousand books cover to cover, without the permission of the author or the publisher, and arguably in violation of copyright law.
That's enough for me to be wary of trusting them. Granted, their record is better than Microsoft's, but it still leaves something to be desired.
The closed version has these words also.
This is slightly off-topic, but your bus system leaves something to be desired. Ours runs about 21 hours a day, year-round. (They stop between roughly 2 AM and 5 AM.)
They could scan your PDF417-encoded or RFID-embedded government ID, and refuse to board you if you don't let them.
Most Vonage adapters will presumably be kept indoors. GPS doesn't work very well indoors.
At what point does a company get the prestige of changing from "parasitic" to "legitimate?" Are Google and Yahoo parasitic companies because they rely on the infrastructrue of users and the sites they index, instead of running fiber from their data centers to everybody else?
I would also argue that your argument that Vonage "has no network" is incorrect. If they have no network, how do they bridge the calls to POTS?
Finally, the FCC ruling requires Vonage (in only four months) to perform the miraculous feat of being able to locate a subscriber regardless of where in the world they're connected, and magically send emergency services to their door. Presumably, they must do this without asking the customer where they are, since this is what they were doing before the ruling. Are you proposing that if I fly overseas with a Vonage box and call 911 in London, they have to send a bobby to my door, without asking where I am?
Yes, 911 is important, but requiring an innovative company to do the impossible in order to stay in business strikes me as patently unfair.
I'd like to see it with 1.5 Final. Tomorrow/today has been strongly rumored to be release day for a while now.
Open Document files are zipped. Does Firefox support built-in unzipping?
Wow, ever thought of re-directing their anger to the CEOs and Managers who took the decision to outsource those jobs in the first place?
Yes. The call center worker refused to transfer me.
Seriously.
I think I've been completely polite and respectful when I get a call center employee named "David" with a strong foreign accent. I've never said they were rat eaters or stealing American jobs. In fact, I'm pretty happy that they're making a successful living.
The fact remains that I simply cannot remember the last time I spoke to a competent employee in a call center, regardless of where the call was answered.
I saw a TV documentary once on a music-on-hold DJ for a fairly well-known company (sadly, I don't remember which company). You could break out of the hold queue to request a song, and when you returned, you'd keep your place in line.
I think you're mistaken, for two reasons. First, IVR systems are inherently nested. Nested menus require a person to drill-down to get to the appropriate queue, often having to choose "the best option" when none of the items presented describe their problem. Second, a well-trained customer service representative is able to translate a customer's problem into a queue much more easily than an IVR system. You simply can't tell a state-of-the-art IVR system "My cell phone bill has a $315 charge that I don't understand. Can you explain it to me?" and expect it to direct you the appropriate queue.
IVR systems may be good for some things, but speed for the customer is not one of them.
I do not know how to have a HTTP page, and a HTTPS Javascript transaction.
This is just a wild, totally unconfirmed guess, but it might be JavaScript security blocking the call because it's going to a different server. I believe http://www.foobar.com/ and https://www.foobar.com/ are as different as http://www.google.com/ and http://www.msn.com/ as far as JavaScript is concerned.
Each paper ballot should have...a special user ID and passphrase
This doesn't work because we want the voter to know who they voted for, but we don't want them to be able to prove that to anybody else. If they can, that opens up the potential for intimidation or vote-buying.
If you want to call a company but don't want your phone number to come up, all you have to do is enter *67 (or something) before you call them.
*67 blocks Caller ID, but a totally different system, called ANI, is used by toll-free number owners. Just like 911, you can't block your number from appearing in the records of a company with ANI access.
Yawn.
web browers are (fundamentally) shitty application platforms, for very important reasons that will not go away.
Netscape didn't believe that, and Microsoft was scared enough to kill them off by releasing a free web browser on every platform that Netscape supported, so the Windows revenue stream would continue. In fact, the point of ActiveX is arguably to support applications in the browser.
Google doesn't seem to believe that it's a terrible platform either.
The two value types can have different semantic meanings. Typically, empty strings signify that no value applies for the column, while NULLs signify that the value is unknown.
Say you have a table with a MiddleName column. Using the rule above, if you store NULL, that means you don't know what the person's middle name is. in contrast, if you store the empty string, it means the person doesn't have a middle name.
The distinction is controversial, and some database administrators feel that distinguishing between NULL and the empty string adds unnecessary complexity to an application.
Disclaimer: While I'm confident that I know a little more about databases than the average developer, IANADBA.
So, Slashdot seemed to think that a T-Mobile ad was appropriate.
"What makes a cellphone cool?"
A. Beige antenna
B. Real buttons
C. Bluetooth technology
Can I get a "CowboyNeal" option?
Actually, people are reporting that once the XCP EULA opens and they click "no," the CD ejects, but once it's re-inserted, the EULA doesn't ever appear again. How could that happen if, as they claim, nothing was installed on the computer?
I stand corrected.
The original Office XML format was never adopted by the FOSS community because it was patent-encumbered. Microsoft was just about ready to charge storage companies a royalty for formatting their drives with FAT.
But I'm betting that the artists themselves don't give a wet slap about this either way.
The leader of the band Switchfoot, a fairly well-known Christian rock band, posted instructions on bypassing copy protection on their Nothing is Sound CD. The post was on Sony's own forums, exactly two months ago today and before anybody realized XCP contained a rootkit. Naturally, the thread was deleted a couple of days later. However, the band is continuing to apologize for the problems on the forums.
I partly agree, though - it would be incredibly cool to see Switchfoot find a way out of their Sony BMG contract.
Not even IM windows (I'm using skype) can't steal the focus.
I despise this feature. I simply don't see the taskbar when I'm working unless I look for it. Is there an easy way to turn it off?
Hey, cool. The ??? is actually meaningful for a change.
And of course, real /.rs do the MIME encoding in their head.
G UgTUlNRSBlbmNvZGluZyBpbiB0aGVpciBoZWFkLg==
Or, as I like to say,
QW5kIG9mIGNvdXJzZSwgPGI+cmVhbDwvYj4gLy5ycyBkbyB0a