Yes. That is a dramatic version of what I meant. The biggest hit many people would take would be in that it is very common for credit cards to raise their interest rates from a very good 20% if you have a bounced payment. For all of those people that carry credit card debt, this can be a very expensive problem. But the numerous overdrafts and penalties from those that got the bad checks can easily add up to hundreds of dollars that is not covered by the zero liability*.
Of course you are STILL wrong. The peripheral liability caused by having insufficient funds in your in your checking account is dramatically greater than that of having a credit card maxed out. So, no there is not a $50 cap on liability. Saying that there is a $50 cap on liability is marketing speak. In fact what they mean is that there is a $50 cap on liability to your bank. The liability to other entities caused by insufficient funds does not have any cap at all.
If you can point me to the spot where they agree to pay any and all bounced check fees/penalties, and all interest that is added to an account due to increased rates from a bounced check, I will concede defeat in this debate.
Which is NOT all of the liability that is associated with fraudulent use of a 'check card'. What part of money not being in your checking account causing all sorts of peripheral liability don't you get?
This isn't a case of some people spreading FUD. It is a case of other people buying into marketing lies hook line and sinker.
"Look at what I originally said to the person. I explained the steps in my first statement. They ignored the steps and thought "Explorer! I know that!" That's where the stupidity comes in."
If you think that is "stupidity", you should just get a "Nick Burns" name tag and call it a day. You are not even close to being qualified to work in tech support. They left clicked with their right hand instead of right clicked with their right hand. This is not an unreasonable thing to do. Particularly if you believe you know where your going.
"The file was an email attachment. They would have had to save it to their computer and then check the file properties. Nowhere in that time did they notice the filename? This is coming from a "tech support" person, too. That's the point."
Honestly, I know that I have downloaded lots of files without really looking at the filename until after the download is complete. Why? Because I knew where the file would download to, so I knew I would be able to find it. And, per you, he did find the file. As for the "tech support" title of the user, that can mean a lot of things. I know in my tech support days, I worked with a guy named Mike doing insurance rating software. Mike wasn't that good with DOS, and I could definitely see him making this mistake. He was on the other hand a master with insurance rating. What this meant was that he could close out 95% of his calls in a very short amount of time because he could do the math by hand, and verify that the software was in fact correct. Of the other 5%, he cold often see how the software incorrectly came up with its number by changing the order of the calculations. His ability to proof read multiple pages of data to verify against other multi page documents in varying formats at a glance, meant that he could often spot user entry errors before he even finished walking the 20 feet back to his desk.
So, not only is your example necessarily an example of a person that is stupid, but might not even be an example of someone being a poor tech support person.
What I do have to wonder is why he could not find the filename through your expert guidance as a tech support person. Perhaps it was just another "Nick Burns" moment.
I have talked to some dumb people during my tech support days, but I don't think your examples are very good.
"A tech support rep for another company emailed saying our upgrader didn't work for him. I asked him what the filename of the upgrader was. He replied with the file version and all the other information about the file, but said he couldn't find the filename... "
Under windows, when viewed by right clicking and selecting properties, the filename is in the same place as the "Title" of a shortcut. Try it. Open the properties of a file, and next to it open the properties of a shortcut. The 'General' tabs look almost identical, but in one, the untitled field is a filename, and in the other untitled field it is a title. This is not really a failing of the user, but a crappy UI choice made by Microsoft.
---
"Me: Here is your registration code: Alpha One Five...
User: Alpha? Where's the alpha key? I don't see that... "
It is not really reasonable to expect your average person to memorize a code that they do not use. Yes, they can figure it out because the code is that the first letter of the word is the letter you want them to have, but 100% of the time that I have had someone try to issue me military code, they have out of the blue started spouting off the code when I was expecting to hear letters. This is a failing of the the speaker. Not the listener. It also does not make sense for most people to learn the code because they do not deal with strings of random letters in their day to day lives. In the military it makes sense. In the private sector it does not. Tech support people get confused because they DO deal with strings of random numbers in a day to day basis. But then the point of tech support is for the tech support person to make life easier for the user, not the other way around.
---
"A user wanted to use a camera with our software, but said it wasn't showing up as an option. I asked her if the camera was plugged in; she said no, but said "that shouldn't matter"... "
Ok, unless it had wifi, you have a good example.
---
"Me: Open up Windows Explorer by right clicking Start and going to Explore. Do you see our program folder under C:\Program Files\?
User: I don't understand what you're talking about! ALL I SEE IS GOOGLE!
Me: Not Internet Explorer. Windows Explorer. Right click on Start and go to Explore. "
This is again, a crappy UI decision by Microsoft, not a stupid user. Come on, they are both named 'Explorer'. If you type a filepath in either one, you get the files on your drive. If type a URL in either application, you get a web page displayed. They both have forward and back buttons, and an address bar. In fact, when the internet first started to take off with the public, MS was very clear on thier intent to blur the line so that users would not be sure as to whether they were accessing things locally or on the internet.
"Check cards require a PIN to get cash out of an ATM. They require a signature for purchases over $25 in most places."
The problem isn't that the good guys can use a secure method to access there money. The problem is that the bad guys can use an insecure method.
"ie you can dispute the charge just like a credit card."
The difference is that you are trying to get your money back, instead of refusing to pay for someone else's charges. You also recieve no protection from the cost that cascade from the original fraud. Neither Visa nor your bank are going to pay the increased interest charges on other loans when they triple in cost due to their insecure card.
"In some respects they are really just credit cards secured by your bank account... you post a transaction via credit and it gets processed by VISA et al whom draws from your bank account to cover the charge."
No, it is a credit card that is secured by *you* that can later be disputed with your bank. This is fundamentally different.
"IMHO it's much better than cash if you like to have a paper trail to help do your taxes later.... receipts always fade and are difficult to store.. logging on to your bank website and downloading your transaction data is much more convenient and easier to run reports on."
No, carrying a credit card is better than carrying cash, as you get all of the same benefits without the increased risk. About the only people that a 'check card' makes sense for is people with credit so bad that they just cannot get a credit card. These people are few and far between.
Either you did not read what you linked to, or you did not understand what it said. Yes, they gave their policy a secure sounding name, but if you read the policy, it is not even close to being "Zero Liability". The Astrix next to the name should have given you a clue that you should read the details a little more critically.
Because this was not credit card fraud. It was debit card fraud. Given that regular debit cards need a pin to access the account, it means that this was 'check card' fraud. I don't know why anyone would be surprised by this since Visa advertises that these cards are easy to commit fraud with. This was inevitable, and will only get worse until people start to raise a stink with their bank for trying to screw them by issuing 'check cards' instead of regular atm cards.
It always amazes me how many people think it's a good idea to carry a card that give access to their checking account with no pin, no id, and not even a signature.
You have it a little wrong. I expect your DVD player to (ahem) "modify" the contact of the DVD I sold you in specific, expected ways. In fact, most (All?) of those modification can be blocked from my end when I master the DVD. So, no, DVD players do not modify the movies. They just let you use the interactivity that I put into the product I sold you.
Basically, the receiver of media does not technically have the right to make derivative works, and they certainly don't have the right to redistribute those derivative works without the copyright holders express permission.
I new that the clock kept way better accuracy than necessary. I did not realize that the receiver would take enough power to matter. Thanks for the info.
Yeah, I used to organize all of my CDs by color. At first, I did it as a joke, so that when people would try to find one of my CDs I could ask them, "What color is it?" Silly, Yes, but it I found it humorous. Very quickly I realized that I had memorized all of the CD spine colors long before the reorganization. It turned out to be a very efficient way to catalog the CDs, as long as I was the only one looking for them. Of course, now they are all in boxes, stored as backups, in case my hard drive fails.
I have had one that didn't work at all, one that worked all the time, and one that was intermittent. With the intermittent one, I actually read the manual, and found that it only tries to sync twice a day, so if you can't get a signal during the couple of minutes that it tries each day, the clock has to wait until the next cycle. Why they built it this way, I don't know, and I doubt that they all work this way, but it took about 3 days for it to get it's first signal.
You know, prior to the 360, I would agree that they made good hardware. The 360 on the other hand has been notoriously unreliable, AND it has a tendency to destroy it's own media.
It is clear that the sex offenders databases are specifically designed to have people killed. If they were designed to 'protect the children' they would contain data on murderers. I'm actually surprised that murders don't happen more often.
Of course they don't get to make a contract with you that says they get to make derivative works from MY content. This isn't disagreeing with your post. Just pointing out that while your ISP can screw you, it is illegal for them to create derivative works that they have not contracted for without the copyright holders permission.
None of the 'times' or 'percentages' you listed are in direct contradiction with the number 69. Your point would make much more of an impact if you had real numbers.
This has been bugging me. The pro XO people don't seem to be able to agree on what the XO is for. Half say it is so that the kids can learn to code, and half say that it is not. Clearly the purpose of this machine has at the very best, not been well explained by the group making it, and at worst, not considered.
This is why when I hear people say they are not voting because they don't like the candidates, I tell them to vote 3rd party. We will never convince people that voting 3rd party isn't 'throwing away your vote' in our current situation. So, people who are voting for the perceived lesser of two evils are not the ones you want to talk to about 3rd parties. It's the ones that have decided that they WANT to 'throw away their vote' that you want to talk to. These people have already decided that they are not going to influence the election. So, they have nothing to lose by voting third party. Don't try to convince them that the third party can win. Just try to convince them that 5% of votes going to a third party will scare the shit out of the two main parties, which will get them to behave a little better.
Now, we all know that getting a third party candidate elected is a chicken and egg problem. People don't want to vote for a candidate that cannot win, and the candidate cannot win because people don't vote for them. If enough traditionally non-voters were to vote for third party candidates, you could see a turn in this. The trick is not to over promise. Don't promise a win. Don't even imply a possible win. Just point out that even 5% of the vote would scare the two incumbent parties. It doesn't even matter which third party they vote for, since the third party isn't going to win anyway.
Now, that is interesting. Thanks for the link. It is a real shame the they didn't advertise this feature more. It sounds like it was something that was added later in the product life, after most of the reviews had stopped.
You are mostly correct. The king's invisible clothes though is the the fact that except for the hard sciences where you can actually look at the numbers and other data, 'primary sources' are totally unreliable. The fact that the 'primary source' wrote their opinion piece in a book instead of on the internet doesn't make it any more reliable.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. That is a dramatic version of what I meant. The biggest hit many people would take would be in that it is very common for credit cards to raise their interest rates from a very good 20% if you have a bounced payment. For all of those people that carry credit card debt, this can be a very expensive problem. But the numerous overdrafts and penalties from those that got the bad checks can easily add up to hundreds of dollars that is not covered by the zero liability*.
Of course you are STILL wrong. The peripheral liability caused by having insufficient funds in your in your checking account is dramatically greater than that of having a credit card maxed out. So, no there is not a $50 cap on liability. Saying that there is a $50 cap on liability is marketing speak. In fact what they mean is that there is a $50 cap on liability to your bank. The liability to other entities caused by insufficient funds does not have any cap at all.
If you can point me to the spot where they agree to pay any and all bounced check fees/penalties, and all interest that is added to an account due to increased rates from a bounced check, I will concede defeat in this debate.
Which is NOT all of the liability that is associated with fraudulent use of a 'check card'. What part of money not being in your checking account causing all sorts of peripheral liability don't you get?
This isn't a case of some people spreading FUD. It is a case of other people buying into marketing lies hook line and sinker.
"Look at what I originally said to the person. I explained the steps in my first statement. They ignored the steps and thought "Explorer! I know that!" That's where the stupidity comes in."
If you think that is "stupidity", you should just get a "Nick Burns" name tag and call it a day. You are not even close to being qualified to work in tech support. They left clicked with their right hand instead of right clicked with their right hand. This is not an unreasonable thing to do. Particularly if you believe you know where your going.
"The file was an email attachment. They would have had to save it to their computer and then check the file properties. Nowhere in that time did they notice the filename? This is coming from a "tech support" person, too. That's the point."
Honestly, I know that I have downloaded lots of files without really looking at the filename until after the download is complete. Why? Because I knew where the file would download to, so I knew I would be able to find it. And, per you, he did find the file. As for the "tech support" title of the user, that can mean a lot of things. I know in my tech support days, I worked with a guy named Mike doing insurance rating software. Mike wasn't that good with DOS, and I could definitely see him making this mistake. He was on the other hand a master with insurance rating. What this meant was that he could close out 95% of his calls in a very short amount of time because he could do the math by hand, and verify that the software was in fact correct. Of the other 5%, he cold often see how the software incorrectly came up with its number by changing the order of the calculations. His ability to proof read multiple pages of data to verify against other multi page documents in varying formats at a glance, meant that he could often spot user entry errors before he even finished walking the 20 feet back to his desk.
So, not only is your example necessarily an example of a person that is stupid, but might not even be an example of someone being a poor tech support person.
What I do have to wonder is why he could not find the filename through your expert guidance as a tech support person. Perhaps it was just another "Nick Burns" moment.
I have talked to some dumb people during my tech support days, but I don't think your examples are very good.
"A tech support rep for another company emailed saying our upgrader didn't work for him. I asked him what the filename of the upgrader was. He replied with the file version and all the other information about the file, but said he couldn't find the filename... "
Under windows, when viewed by right clicking and selecting properties, the filename is in the same place as the "Title" of a shortcut. Try it. Open the properties of a file, and next to it open the properties of a shortcut. The 'General' tabs look almost identical, but in one, the untitled field is a filename, and in the other untitled field it is a title. This is not really a failing of the user, but a crappy UI choice made by Microsoft.
---
"Me: Here is your registration code: Alpha One Five...
User: Alpha? Where's the alpha key? I don't see that...
"
It is not really reasonable to expect your average person to memorize a code that they do not use. Yes, they can figure it out because the code is that the first letter of the word is the letter you want them to have, but 100% of the time that I have had someone try to issue me military code, they have out of the blue started spouting off the code when I was expecting to hear letters. This is a failing of the the speaker. Not the listener. It also does not make sense for most people to learn the code because they do not deal with strings of random letters in their day to day lives. In the military it makes sense. In the private sector it does not. Tech support people get confused because they DO deal with strings of random numbers in a day to day basis. But then the point of tech support is for the tech support person to make life easier for the user, not the other way around.
---
"A user wanted to use a camera with our software, but said it wasn't showing up as an option. I asked her if the camera was plugged in; she said no, but said "that shouldn't matter"... "
Ok, unless it had wifi, you have a good example.
---
"Me: Open up Windows Explorer by right clicking Start and going to Explore. Do you see our program folder under C:\Program Files\?
User: I don't understand what you're talking about! ALL I SEE IS GOOGLE!
Me: Not Internet Explorer. Windows Explorer. Right click on Start and go to Explore. "
This is again, a crappy UI decision by Microsoft, not a stupid user. Come on, they are both named 'Explorer'. If you type a filepath in either one, you get the files on your drive. If type a URL in either application, you get a web page displayed. They both have forward and back buttons, and an address bar. In fact, when the internet first started to take off with the public, MS was very clear on thier intent to blur the line so that users would not be sure as to whether they were accessing things locally or on the internet.
"Check cards require a PIN to get cash out of an ATM. They require a signature for purchases over $25 in most places."
The problem isn't that the good guys can use a secure method to access there money. The problem is that the bad guys can use an insecure method.
"ie you can dispute the charge just like a credit card."
The difference is that you are trying to get your money back, instead of refusing to pay for someone else's charges. You also recieve no protection from the cost that cascade from the original fraud. Neither Visa nor your bank are going to pay the increased interest charges on other loans when they triple in cost due to their insecure card.
"In some respects they are really just credit cards secured by your bank account... you post a transaction via credit and it gets processed by VISA et al whom draws from your bank account to cover the charge."
No, it is a credit card that is secured by *you* that can later be disputed with your bank. This is fundamentally different.
"IMHO it's much better than cash if you like to have a paper trail to help do your taxes later.... receipts always fade and are difficult to store.. logging on to your bank website and downloading your transaction data is much more convenient and easier to run reports on."
No, carrying a credit card is better than carrying cash, as you get all of the same benefits without the increased risk. About the only people that a 'check card' makes sense for is people with credit so bad that they just cannot get a credit card. These people are few and far between.
Either you did not read what you linked to, or you did not understand what it said. Yes, they gave their policy a secure sounding name, but if you read the policy, it is not even close to being "Zero Liability". The Astrix next to the name should have given you a clue that you should read the details a little more critically.
Huh, I would have thought that the Kennedy brothers would have prevented that phrase from ever carrying shock value again, so don't give up hope.
Because this was not credit card fraud. It was debit card fraud. Given that regular debit cards need a pin to access the account, it means that this was 'check card' fraud. I don't know why anyone would be surprised by this since Visa advertises that these cards are easy to commit fraud with. This was inevitable, and will only get worse until people start to raise a stink with their bank for trying to screw them by issuing 'check cards' instead of regular atm cards.
It always amazes me how many people think it's a good idea to carry a card that give access to their checking account with no pin, no id, and not even a signature.
You have it a little wrong. I expect your DVD player to (ahem) "modify" the contact of the DVD I sold you in specific, expected ways. In fact, most (All?) of those modification can be blocked from my end when I master the DVD. So, no, DVD players do not modify the movies. They just let you use the interactivity that I put into the product I sold you.
Basically, the receiver of media does not technically have the right to make derivative works, and they certainly don't have the right to redistribute those derivative works without the copyright holders express permission.
ISPs commit copyright violation by delivering unauthorized derivative works.
I new that the clock kept way better accuracy than necessary. I did not realize that the receiver would take enough power to matter. Thanks for the info.
Yeah, I used to organize all of my CDs by color. At first, I did it as a joke, so that when people would try to find one of my CDs I could ask them, "What color is it?" Silly, Yes, but it I found it humorous. Very quickly I realized that I had memorized all of the CD spine colors long before the reorganization. It turned out to be a very efficient way to catalog the CDs, as long as I was the only one looking for them. Of course, now they are all in boxes, stored as backups, in case my hard drive fails.
I have had one that didn't work at all, one that worked all the time, and one that was intermittent. With the intermittent one, I actually read the manual, and found that it only tries to sync twice a day, so if you can't get a signal during the couple of minutes that it tries each day, the clock has to wait until the next cycle. Why they built it this way, I don't know, and I doubt that they all work this way, but it took about 3 days for it to get it's first signal.
You know, prior to the 360, I would agree that they made good hardware. The 360 on the other hand has been notoriously unreliable, AND it has a tendency to destroy it's own media.
It is clear that the sex offenders databases are specifically designed to have people killed. If they were designed to 'protect the children' they would contain data on murderers. I'm actually surprised that murders don't happen more often.
Of course they don't get to make a contract with you that says they get to make derivative works from MY content. This isn't disagreeing with your post. Just pointing out that while your ISP can screw you, it is illegal for them to create derivative works that they have not contracted for without the copyright holders permission.
Of course it is, after all, it's "on a computer", so it has different rules than all of the other forms of correspondence that came before it.
None of the 'times' or 'percentages' you listed are in direct contradiction with the number 69. Your point would make much more of an impact if you had real numbers.
This has been bugging me. The pro XO people don't seem to be able to agree on what the XO is for. Half say it is so that the kids can learn to code, and half say that it is not. Clearly the purpose of this machine has at the very best, not been well explained by the group making it, and at worst, not considered.
Hey, don't forget that they work that 7am to 11pm 368 days a year. And if you say I'm wrong, your a bad person!
This is why when I hear people say they are not voting because they don't like the candidates, I tell them to vote 3rd party. We will never convince people that voting 3rd party isn't 'throwing away your vote' in our current situation. So, people who are voting for the perceived lesser of two evils are not the ones you want to talk to about 3rd parties. It's the ones that have decided that they WANT to 'throw away their vote' that you want to talk to. These people have already decided that they are not going to influence the election. So, they have nothing to lose by voting third party. Don't try to convince them that the third party can win. Just try to convince them that 5% of votes going to a third party will scare the shit out of the two main parties, which will get them to behave a little better.
Now, we all know that getting a third party candidate elected is a chicken and egg problem. People don't want to vote for a candidate that cannot win, and the candidate cannot win because people don't vote for them. If enough traditionally non-voters were to vote for third party candidates, you could see a turn in this. The trick is not to over promise. Don't promise a win. Don't even imply a possible win. Just point out that even 5% of the vote would scare the two incumbent parties. It doesn't even matter which third party they vote for, since the third party isn't going to win anyway.
That would be Duke Williams.
Now, that is interesting. Thanks for the link. It is a real shame the they didn't advertise this feature more. It sounds like it was something that was added later in the product life, after most of the reviews had stopped.
You are mostly correct. The king's invisible clothes though is the the fact that except for the hard sciences where you can actually look at the numbers and other data, 'primary sources' are totally unreliable. The fact that the 'primary source' wrote their opinion piece in a book instead of on the internet doesn't make it any more reliable.