"Having done work for large banks in the past, I'm familiar with the systems they run in their mainframe room."
So am I. I have a pretty good idea what sort of systems they probably use. I can practically visualize the JCL and REXX involved in that nightmare, unfortunately. But I haven't yet seen a post by anyone who actually knows what's going on.
My bet is, a mix of standard systems and homemade cobol on a 390. Also, I'll bet it was a problem with a process in the business domain, and not necessarily a software bug. But I don't know, and I don't know anybody who does know, and the bank isn't talking.
"Damn, you city people are expensive. My 3 bedroom home only runs 500 a month."
Well, in the city you can conceivably find jobs that can pay for pricier housing, whereas out in the sticks, housing may be a lot cheaper, but there is no way to pay for it. Oh, you're going to commute? I consider that to be a waste of life, not a benefit. Maybe you've carved out some niche where you can live out of town and still feed yourself.
"Renting really is throwing away money each month, whereas at least with a mortgage a percentage each month is added directly onto your net worth. "
There are other arguments. For instance, it can be a liability to be early into a mortgage and suddenly want to move to a better job market. Or if you are still trying to figure out how to live where you want to live, but are putting up with a crappy town for a while.
Equity is what's good about a mortgage, if you live in a place with an appreciating value.
Renting works out to be a good deal for the guy in a divorce situation. Far better to walk away from a lease than to spend the next 30 years buying someone a house.
Renting isn't always a bad option, buying isn't always a good one.
How plentiful are $70K/yr jobs in Saskatchewan, by the way? What sort of location has those $35K homes? Is it realistic for an American to want to live there?
>If you can learn discipline -- where "savings" >means "that stack of money that keeps growing and >that I will never touch unless my child is dying"
That's a good strategy and everything, but I learned that it would be better to go ahead and let that savings account go to about zero, if I can use it to get completely out of debt.
If I had a "child is dying" incident, I'm sure it will mean going into debt anyway, and it can't hurt to have zero debt in a situation like that.
"I've seen stuff start transfer on a Wednesday and take until the following Tuesday to show in the account, that is just sad."
It would be sadder if the transfer was instant, but turned out 5 days later to have been bogus, and they take the money out of your account. Oh, you emptied your account already? Don't you see the problem from the bank's point of view? Maybe everybody who has ever written a check to YOU has been good for it, but the bank hasn't been that lucky, and neither have I.
The alternative is to take responsibility for what is deposited into your account. If you get a bad check, it's your problem, not the bank's.
Would you rather wait 5 days and have a guarantee of your cash, or would you rather vouch for every instrument presented in order to get your cash earlier? You can probably arrange it like that with your bank.
"There was a bizarre hit and run that took place in San Francisco on Tuesday between a 3-year-old girl and a Segway."
This incident only seems bizarre to someone who has never been in San Francisco.
Sure the *segways* are kind-of new. But between the foot and bike traffic, the insane hills, those (kinda fun!) little electric cars and the, uh, motorcycle car things, and the scooters, the way people drive and the way pedestrians just walk in the streets whenever they want, it's amazing that you don't see more accidents.
The right thing to do would be to make the control panel *be identical* to what the users want. Switches on a panel. Not pictures of switches on a lcd panel. Real switches on a real panel. Behind the panel, put your computerized system.
I'm a musician, and I play a lot of computerized musical instruments. But under my fingers I want a piano keyboard. I want real footswitches and pedals under my feet. I want a control panel with knobs and sliders. I *also* want a querty keyboard and a trackball, but not really when I'm playing.
I don't think it's quaint and old fashioned. I think it's practical.
"I think most Americans haven't a beginning of a clue how it is the rest of the world don't like them anymore."
To their point of view, nobody really important has said anything that would lead them to such a conclusion.
For example, "First World" national leaders aren't inferring the illegitimacy of the US governmnt, say, openly and formally, in the forums where such statements would be taken seriously.
Americans are permitted to travel to and within these countries where they are supposedly not liked.
Those countries continue to trade with the US.
No military opposition to the US forces has been raised by any nations that were not already considered enemies prior to the current circumstances.
Basically, the idea that America is "not liked" in the world, in general, has not occurred to them. It may appear ridiculously, painfully obvious to you and me, but not everyone sees it that way.
"I did alot of reading on the subject and here's some things I learned."
You did not do enough reading to learn that Dissociative Identity Disorder is not at all the same thing as Schizophrenia! You might want to look into BPD and DID, and stop getting your medical advice from comic books or the National Enquirer.
In case you haven't noticed, the US is testing the theory that it alone rules the world. The question is on the table, and the answer so far is pretty much, "US RULES OK!"
The only people really fighting the notion amount to a rather pathetic resistance. There's certainly no "First world" opposition to the expansion of the US empire. Dissent, yes, but no nation is so far willing to put their own military in harm's way in an attempt to stop the US. Nobody's even willing to cease trade, or take any other meaningful action for that matter.
> stop pissing off most of the world by invading >sovereign countries
If the rest of the world were truly upset about an invasion they should have raised a military opposition to it. You don't stop a war by wishing it would stop, or simply saying you oppose it. You have to fight fire with fire. None of the countries that supposedly opposed the US made any committment of this nature.
If you don't believe in the use of force, there are still diplomatic methods that were not explored. For example, no "first world" leader has yet taken the podium and formally denounced the United States or declared the illegitimacy of its military adventures. Likewise, no "first world" nation has ceased trade with the US, nor demanded that American businesspeople and tourists exit its borders.
Nothing at all of that nature. Just hollow words of dissent with no action, which I interpret as support...
Stop claiming that "most of the world" is pissed off unless you can show evidence that they are more than "mildly annoyed, but still okay with it." The US is not acting alone. It ventures with the support, or at least the complicity, of every nation that had a standing army.
The American people would NOT have invaded Iraq, had it meant killing Europeans to get there. But, Germany, France, and Russia decided not to blockade the Persian Gulf, didn't they? Right, the question was never on the table. But if you want to SAY you oppose a military operation, you have a responsibility to raise some opposition to it -- which, generally means, a military committment, and may require sacrifices, such as lives, broken treaties, or economic consequences.
I don't think you can have your cake and eat it too, when it comes to war.
It would be good closure to know whether the actions our hero took, constitute a crime. It would be a completely separate crime. The original fraud might be a mitigating factor, or it might not. It would suck to have to explain to the court why you told customs that your $2.50 worth of stuff was a $2000.00 computer. It would REALLY suck if you weren't allowed to tell the jury about the supposed scammer, but still had to explain what you did.
The original scammer may have been guilty of attempted fraud, but our hero might be guilty also! Not by me, of course, but you might want to run it by the feds or the customs folks, who are not known for their sense of humor, or a geek ethic of right and wrong.
"but at this point, if he wanted to, our fraudster could transfer 2000 dollars to the seller of 'laptop' and then all hell breaks loose"
There's a couple of ways I can think that this could seriously backfire. It occurred to me that it was however unlikely, possible that it wasn't a fraud in the first place. I KNOW better, of course, but there you go -- he pays for the merchandise and our hero, who decided that two wrongs make a right, might end up in a lot of trouble!
Also, the *scammer* does not have to be the one to pay. THis could be ugly.
"Not enough people in the world use Macintosh for writing mac adware/trojans pallatable."
I don't know what you mean by "pallatable", but there are orders of magnitude more Mac users today than there were total PC users between, oh say, 1988 and 1992 when there was no shortage of PC viruses.
"A really cheap bicycle lock can be broken very easily, sometimes with cheap wire-cutters or picked with a hairpin."
Yes indeed.
I had a shop jack that was bicycle locked to an anchored steel pole. I didn't have the combination to the lock, so when I set out to liberate my jack, I prepared for the worst. I was ready to use the torch, a cutoff wheel from my bench grinder, heat/hammer/chisel. As it turned out, all I had to do was smack the chain with my hammer, using the jack base as an anvil. This was not a particularly cheap bicycle chain. But it was still a piece of crap. I don't think a motivated thief with a sawzall or a cutting disc will have much trouble with a U-lock. What's the Rockwell hardness of a Kryptonite lock?
"How about seizing all the stock that you purchased, for starters? If it happens more than once, you get barred from owning any more stock? If I get caught speeding too many times, my license gets taken away... "
Influence your representatives in Congress to propose such a law, find some way to make the law not unconstitutional (the way you word it, it almost certainly is unconstitutional), and voilà, law of the land is according to your agenda!
Don't have any influence on your representatives? Too bad. Keep voting, and maybe eventually, the people will get back some control of government.
Sue a college music major, whose shared folder contains original works that he or she holds the sole copyright to.
When they cross that that line, they are into Racketeering and Corruption territory, and illegally stifling competition, not to mention infringing on the rights of the individual.
It would only take one fuckup like this, involving the wrong person, to be the total undoing of the RIAA.
Slashdot Mirror
"Having done work for large banks in the past, I'm familiar with the systems they run in their mainframe room."
So am I. I have a pretty good idea what sort of systems they probably use. I can practically visualize the JCL and REXX involved in that nightmare, unfortunately. But I haven't yet seen a post by anyone who actually knows what's going on.
My bet is, a mix of standard systems and homemade cobol on a 390. Also, I'll bet it was a problem with a process in the business domain, and not necessarily a software bug. But I don't know, and I don't know anybody who does know, and the bank isn't talking.
"With the math done correctly, 30k is $1,750 per month."
That only sounds like a decent wage in places where $30K salaries are rare.
I have co-workers who pay more than that for housing costs. Granted, they live in San Francisco.
"Damn, you city people are expensive. My 3 bedroom home only runs 500 a month."
Well, in the city you can conceivably find jobs that can pay for pricier housing, whereas out in the sticks, housing may be a lot cheaper, but there is no way to pay for it. Oh, you're going to commute? I consider that to be a waste of life, not a benefit. Maybe you've carved out some niche where you can live out of town and still feed yourself.
"Renting really is throwing away money each month, whereas at least with a mortgage a percentage each month is added directly onto your net worth.
"
There are other arguments. For instance, it can be a liability to be early into a mortgage and suddenly want to move to a better job market. Or if you are still trying to figure out how to live where you want to live, but are putting up with a crappy town for a while.
Equity is what's good about a mortgage, if you live in a place with an appreciating value.
Renting works out to be a good deal for the guy in a divorce situation. Far better to walk away from a lease than to spend the next 30 years buying someone a house.
Renting isn't always a bad option, buying isn't always a good one.
How plentiful are $70K/yr jobs in Saskatchewan, by the way? What sort of location has those $35K homes? Is it realistic for an American to want to live there?
"The biggest expense right now is rent, and second to that is the G/F. Girls are expensive, can I get an Amen?"
Boo.
The good ones are self-sufficient.
"At 30k annual and assuming 70% take home, you're bringing in around $3600/month."
You overestimate the takehome percentage. 30K is probably less than $1000 every two weeks.
>If you can learn discipline -- where "savings"
>means "that stack of money that keeps growing and
>that I will never touch unless my child is dying"
That's a good strategy and everything, but I learned that it would be better to go ahead and let that savings account go to about zero, if I can use it to get completely out of debt.
If I had a "child is dying" incident, I'm sure it will mean going into debt anyway, and it can't hurt to have zero debt in a situation like that.
"This question has "newbie" written all over. Bank applications run on true and tested OSes written decades ago. "
So, which one was it? Do you know, or do you just feel the need to belittle the person who asked?
You don't know what system this particular bank ran, what its uptime was, or when it was installed.
You are just guessing, and are no more qualified to answer the question that the O.P. you responded to!
"I've seen stuff start transfer on a Wednesday and take until the following Tuesday to show in the account, that is just sad."
It would be sadder if the transfer was instant, but turned out 5 days later to have been bogus, and they take the money out of your account. Oh, you emptied your account already? Don't you see the problem from the bank's point of view? Maybe everybody who has ever written a check to YOU has been good for it, but the bank hasn't been that lucky, and neither have I.
The alternative is to take responsibility for what is deposited into your account. If you get a bad check, it's your problem, not the bank's.
Would you rather wait 5 days and have a guarantee of your cash, or would you rather vouch for every instrument presented in order to get your cash earlier? You can probably arrange it like that with your bank.
"There was a bizarre hit and run that took place in San Francisco on Tuesday between a 3-year-old girl and a Segway."
This incident only seems bizarre to someone who has never been in San Francisco.
Sure the *segways* are kind-of new. But between the foot and bike traffic, the insane hills, those (kinda fun!) little electric cars and the, uh, motorcycle car things, and the scooters, the way people drive and the way pedestrians just walk in the streets whenever they want, it's amazing that you don't see more accidents.
The right thing to do would be to make the control panel *be identical* to what the users want. Switches on a panel. Not pictures of switches on a lcd panel. Real switches on a real panel. Behind the panel, put your computerized system.
I'm a musician, and I play a lot of computerized musical instruments. But under my fingers I want a piano keyboard. I want real footswitches and pedals under my feet. I want a control panel with knobs and sliders. I *also* want a querty keyboard and a trackball, but not really when I'm playing.
I don't think it's quaint and old fashioned. I think it's practical.
"I think most Americans haven't a beginning of a clue how it is the rest of the world don't like them anymore."
To their point of view, nobody really important has said anything that would lead them to such a conclusion.
For example, "First World" national leaders aren't inferring the illegitimacy of the US governmnt, say, openly and formally, in the forums where such statements would be taken seriously.
Americans are permitted to travel to and within these countries where they are supposedly not liked.
Those countries continue to trade with the US.
No military opposition to the US forces has been raised by any nations that were not already considered enemies prior to the current circumstances.
Basically, the idea that America is "not liked" in the world, in general, has not occurred to them. It may appear ridiculously, painfully obvious to you and me, but not everyone sees it that way.
"I did alot of reading on the subject and here's some things I learned."
You did not do enough reading to learn that Dissociative Identity Disorder is not at all the same thing as Schizophrenia! You might want to look into BPD and DID, and stop getting your medical advice from comic books or the National Enquirer.
> America isn't the world.
In case you haven't noticed, the US is testing the theory that it alone rules the world. The question is on the table, and the answer so far is pretty much, "US RULES OK!"
The only people really fighting the notion amount to a rather pathetic resistance. There's certainly no "First world" opposition to the expansion of the US empire. Dissent, yes, but no nation is so far willing to put their own military in harm's way in an attempt to stop the US. Nobody's even willing to cease trade, or take any other meaningful action for that matter.
> stop pissing off most of the world by invading
>sovereign countries
If the rest of the world were truly upset about an invasion they should have raised a military opposition to it. You don't stop a war by wishing it would stop, or simply saying you oppose it. You have to fight fire with fire. None of the countries that supposedly opposed the US made any committment of this nature.
If you don't believe in the use of force, there are still diplomatic methods that were not explored. For example, no "first world" leader has yet taken the podium and formally denounced the United States or declared the illegitimacy of its military adventures. Likewise, no "first world" nation has ceased trade with the US, nor demanded that American businesspeople and tourists exit its borders.
Nothing at all of that nature. Just hollow words of dissent with no action, which I interpret as support...
Stop claiming that "most of the world" is pissed off unless you can show evidence that they are more than "mildly annoyed, but still okay with it." The US is not acting alone. It ventures with the support, or at least the complicity, of every nation that had a standing army.
The American people would NOT have invaded Iraq, had it meant killing Europeans to get there. But, Germany, France, and Russia decided not to blockade the Persian Gulf, didn't they? Right, the question was never on the table. But if you want to SAY you oppose a military operation, you have a responsibility to raise some opposition to it -- which, generally means, a military committment, and may require sacrifices, such as lives, broken treaties, or economic consequences.
I don't think you can have your cake and eat it too, when it comes to war.
"Escrow services are always scams. You'd have to be stupid to fall for them."
Practially every real estate transaction uses one to protect the title transfer.
> It's a scam and everyone knows it.
It would be good closure to know whether the actions our hero took, constitute a crime. It would be a completely separate crime. The original fraud might be a mitigating factor, or it might not. It would suck to have to explain to the court why you told customs that your $2.50 worth of stuff was a $2000.00 computer. It would REALLY suck if you weren't allowed to tell the jury about the supposed scammer, but still had to explain what you did.
The problem is, two wrongs don't make a right.
The original scammer may have been guilty of attempted fraud, but our hero might be guilty also!
Not by me, of course, but you might want to run it by the feds or the customs folks, who are not known for their sense of humor, or a geek ethic of right and wrong.
"but at this point, if he wanted to, our fraudster could transfer 2000 dollars to the seller of 'laptop' and then all hell breaks loose"
There's a couple of ways I can think that this could seriously backfire. It occurred to me that it was however unlikely, possible that it wasn't a fraud in the first place. I KNOW better, of course, but there you go -- he pays for the merchandise and our hero, who decided that two wrongs make a right, might end up in a lot of trouble!
Also, the *scammer* does not have to be the one to pay. THis could be ugly.
"Not enough people in the world use Macintosh for writing mac adware/trojans pallatable."
I don't know what you mean by "pallatable", but there are orders of magnitude more Mac users today than there were total PC users between, oh say, 1988 and 1992 when there was no shortage of PC viruses.
>Ozone is poisonous.
Yes, but, don't you wish you could freeze it!
"A really cheap bicycle lock can be broken very easily, sometimes with cheap wire-cutters or picked with a hairpin."
Yes indeed.
I had a shop jack that was bicycle locked to an anchored steel pole. I didn't have the combination to the lock, so when I set out to liberate my jack, I prepared for the worst. I was ready to use the torch, a cutoff wheel from my bench grinder, heat/hammer/chisel. As it turned out, all I had to do was smack the chain with my hammer, using the jack base as an anvil. This was not a particularly cheap bicycle chain. But it was still a piece of crap. I don't think a motivated thief with a sawzall or a cutting disc will have much trouble with a U-lock. What's the Rockwell hardness of a Kryptonite lock?
"How about seizing all the stock that you purchased, for starters? If it happens more than once, you get barred from owning any more stock? If I get caught speeding too many times, my license gets taken away... "
Influence your representatives in Congress to propose such a law, find some way to make the law not unconstitutional (the way you word it, it almost certainly is unconstitutional), and voilà, law of the land is according to your agenda!
Don't have any influence on your representatives? Too bad. Keep voting, and maybe eventually, the people will get back some control of government.
Après moi le déluge.
I want them to fuck up like so:
Sue a college music major, whose shared folder contains original works that he or she holds the sole copyright to.
When they cross that that line, they are into Racketeering and Corruption territory, and illegally stifling competition, not to mention infringing on the rights of the individual.
It would only take one fuckup like this, involving the wrong person, to be the total undoing of the RIAA.