A friend of mine told me that writing "See Identification" in the signature block on a card would work. It sometimes did, but even then merchants would "compare" my signature and OK it.
A lot of people have talked about writing "See ID" on the back of the card for the merchant to check. I've dealt with this before, and if the merchant is following the proper procedures (visa here), they should make you sign the card before they will accept it. The US Postal service will not accept it at all.
So this should only be a one-off for people who do it, although from my experience and most of the reports here it seems that very few places follow through on this even if they check.
As for the main question, are the sigs useless? Well no, they're not foolproof but act as a line of defense which makes fraud a bit harder, puts off some people from trying it and maybe gets some
fraudsters caught.
First off, this is a post purely about what is allowed under the GPL - I'm not commenting on what's covered by the spirit of open source development.
The post said Nevertheless he's thinking about obfuscating his changelog and only open the source as packages when he's doing a release, which is, as he says, his right under the GPL
A lot of people have spoken about software being written under the GPL being open source and available to others. However, as I understand this case from the quote above, the original poster is talking about using code not released by the forked development, but generated during the development process that may or may not end up in the final version.
However, the GPL applies to modified code that is copied and
distributed. Please see this quote from the GNU GPL FAQ (sorry for the TLAs).
If you commercially distribute binaries not accompanied with source code, the GPL says you must provide a written offer to distribute the source code later. When users non-commercially redistribute the binaries they received from you, they must pass along a copy of this written offer. This means that people who did not get the binaries directly from you can still receive copies of the source code, along with the written offer.
As an example, if I write an application based on an open source software project, but do not distribute it, I have no obligation under the GPL to release the source code for it.
However, if at a later stage I did distribute it, I would have to make the source of what is included in the release available, but not all the code in my repository, for example, unused classes and test harnesses.
So to conclude, I think that the second manager was legally within his rights to obfuscate the code being used during development and only provide source code at relase, as he threatened.
Where we have these in the UK, they come with a warning on the container which says something like 'Don't, under any circumstances, break open the container to see what the heating part is like', so obviously it's impossible to resist doing so.
Unfortunately resulted in burns and gunk on hands, but my curiousity was sated.
The winning bidder was a company called JGR Acquisitions. An attorney representing JGR was mum about his client, dodging reporters' questions as he rushed out of the court room at the close of the auction.
snip
A document the company filed with the court was scarce on information as well, so JGR's business, its owners, its location and its plans for the newly acquired patents all remain mysteries.
Mark X. Mullin, a lawyer for a Dallas law firm representing a company identified as JGR Acquisitions, put forth the winning bid. Mr. Mullin said he would file further details as required by the bankruptcy court.
The mystery company has a real Mr X working for them (well, kinda stretching it). I was most impressed. Anyway, still couldn't dig up anything on JGR at all.
A lot of the discussion, yet again, centres around which country's laws apply.
Lawson believes Canadian privacy law should apply to Abika since it is selling Canadians' information about themselves, but there are hurdles because the firm is based in the United States.
In the UK we have strong data protection laws as well. However, many companies that take our data make us waive the right by saying that we are aware that the data may be moved outside the UK (Bank call centres in India?) and our rights do not apply.
I guess that these may not have been tested yet and may be like click-through EULA that may not always stand up, but our privacy is being gradualy eroded away to whichever country has the weakest privacy laws.
Whoops, just kidding, the memo linked there is wrong; GamesIndustry.biz was apparently hoaxed into putting an EA memo on its site that wasn't actually written by EA. EA has no plans to clean up its act and no plans to compensate its workers. Hope this clears things up.
It would have to be a very different script, almost a different story
Like, maybe, so much of a different story, it ends up as just a bad script with the names and characters from MGS added for extra recognition / box office potential?
The baker has taken $250 that he had to spend on other good and paid it to the glazier. Using your assumption that money held by merchants will just be recycled to other merchants, he would already have spent this anyway at other shops, so nothing is gained by having him spend it at the glazier rather than the milkman, grocers, etc.
However, the baker has lost the money that he would have got by selling the pies that now have glass on them. So if the pies are worth $50 then there is $50 less for him to spend with other merchants. Plus there could be side consequences; if the other baker in the street sees what happens, that the bread of the first baker is ruined, the second baker can hike his proces by 10 cents a loaf as the supply of bread is now lower.
Finally you said The glazier will have $250 more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $250 more to spend with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum
But this does not take account of people losing money, saving money, taking money out of the country, delaying spending it. If money was recycled ad infinitum, there would be an infinite supply. However, if each person in the chain only spends 90% of the money passed to them, quickly the amount of money being recycled falls to just over $87 by the 10th person in the chain.
Look at the company's position on child pornography, he said: "If at any time Kazaa finds that you are using Kazaa to collect or distribute child pornography or other obscene material, [Sharman] reserves the right to permanently bar you and your computers from accessing Kazaa and other Kazaa services."
So, he added, if Sharman can block these users, it can also prevent anyone who shares material without the permission copyright holder, he said. In other words, it has the means to monitor and control what kinds of material are being traded on its network.
My parents have a very old PC which chugs along with a lack of RAM / pocessor / everything. I'm going to be giving them a reconditioned Pentium 3 which should meet their (limited) computing needs, even if they make more use of it than they do now.
However, whereas I'd like to give them a Linux box, they are used to using PCs with a WIndows 95 / XP interface from their PC and the local library. As they, especially my dad, have trouble getting to grips with new tools, I think I will have to compromise and install Windows for them.
I know that even after making it as secure as I can and giving them a quick list of don'ts (open attachements, etc) that it won't be as secure, but as they're both retired there is no business critical data there. I think that their ease of use will be more important than trying to move them away from Windows.
The benchmarks show the 9800 pro in the tables with the newer cards. The results aren't quite as impressive but it's still in the same league, and for half the price I think it will be the card of choice for a while.
By the time thr prices drop there will be more information like this article on the differences / advantages of PCI-E over AGP. Think I'll wait until then before deciding on an upgrade.
We can all watch Matthew Broderick skip class and reminisce about the days when this used to be possible - it'll become a period piece of a bygone age, along with Remains of the Day and Little Women.
The bill would also permit people to use technology to skip objectionable content -- like a gory or sexually explicit scene -- in films, a right that consumers already have. However, under the proposed law, skipping any commercials or promotional announcements would be prohibited.
I guess this means that if I want to watch any of my old VHS tapes, I won't be allowed to purchase a VCR with a fast forward button, or I could skip the trailers.
The motivation for allowing business-method patents, described in this paper from Harvard Law School is that innovations were too easy to copy - essentially the same motivation behind the original idea of patents.
It seems that a good idea in principle may have resulted in legislation that is not working in practice because of a flawed framework / companies taking advantage (your choice). Not that I agree with the idea of business-method patents in the first place, but this may make the idea behind them clearer.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of people have talked about writing "See ID" on the back of the card for the merchant to check. I've dealt with this before, and if the merchant is following the proper procedures (visa here), they should make you sign the card before they will accept it. The US Postal service will not accept it at all.
So this should only be a one-off for people who do it, although from my experience and most of the reports here it seems that very few places follow through on this even if they check.
As for the main question, are the sigs useless? Well no, they're not foolproof but act as a line of defense which makes fraud a bit harder, puts off some people from trying it and maybe gets some fraudsters caught.
First off, this is a post purely about what is allowed under the GPL - I'm not commenting on what's covered by the spirit of open source development.
The post said Nevertheless he's thinking about obfuscating his changelog and only open the source as packages when he's doing a release, which is, as he says, his right under the GPL
A lot of people have spoken about software being written under the GPL being open source and available to others. However, as I understand this case from the quote above, the original poster is talking about using code not released by the forked development, but generated during the development process that may or may not end up in the final version.
However, the GPL applies to modified code that is copied and distributed. Please see this quote from the GNU GPL FAQ (sorry for the TLAs).
If you commercially distribute binaries not accompanied with source code, the GPL says you must provide a written offer to distribute the source code later. When users non-commercially redistribute the binaries they received from you, they must pass along a copy of this written offer. This means that people who did not get the binaries directly from you can still receive copies of the source code, along with the written offer.
As an example, if I write an application based on an open source software project, but do not distribute it, I have no obligation under the GPL to release the source code for it.
However, if at a later stage I did distribute it, I would have to make the source of what is included in the release available, but not all the code in my repository, for example, unused classes and test harnesses.
So to conclude, I think that the second manager was legally within his rights to obfuscate the code being used during development and only provide source code at relase, as he threatened.
Unfortunately resulted in burns and gunk on hands, but my curiousity was sated.
snip
A document the company filed with the court was scarce on information as well, so JGR's business, its owners, its location and its plans for the newly acquired patents all remain mysteries.
This sparked my curiousity so I googled them so see if there was any info. Not too much, but I came across this piece in the New York times on the same story, which says
Mark X. Mullin, a lawyer for a Dallas law firm representing a company identified as JGR Acquisitions, put forth the winning bid. Mr. Mullin said he would file further details as required by the bankruptcy court.
The mystery company has a real Mr X working for them (well, kinda stretching it). I was most impressed. Anyway, still couldn't dig up anything on JGR at all.
Lawson believes Canadian privacy law should apply to Abika since it is selling Canadians' information about themselves, but there are hurdles because the firm is based in the United States.
In the UK we have strong data protection laws as well. However, many companies that take our data make us waive the right by saying that we are aware that the data may be moved outside the UK (Bank call centres in India?) and our rights do not apply.
I guess that these may not have been tested yet and may be like click-through EULA that may not always stand up, but our privacy is being gradualy eroded away to whichever country has the weakest privacy laws.
Whoops, just kidding, the memo linked there is wrong; GamesIndustry.biz was apparently hoaxed into putting an EA memo on its site that wasn't actually written by EA. EA has no plans to clean up its act and no plans to compensate its workers. Hope this clears things up.
Apologies to M
Like, maybe, so much of a different story, it ends up as just a bad script with the names and characters from MGS added for extra recognition / box office potential?
Teens no longer get the unsatisfiable "Write a Novel" want
But I thought that having teenagers with unsatisfiable wants made it even more like real life?
Yes, let's have another look
The baker has taken $250 that he had to spend on other good and paid it to the glazier. Using your assumption that money held by merchants will just be recycled to other merchants, he would already have spent this anyway at other shops, so nothing is gained by having him spend it at the glazier rather than the milkman, grocers, etc.
However, the baker has lost the money that he would have got by selling the pies that now have glass on them. So if the pies are worth $50 then there is $50 less for him to spend with other merchants. Plus there could be side consequences; if the other baker in the street sees what happens, that the bread of the first baker is ruined, the second baker can hike his proces by 10 cents a loaf as the supply of bread is now lower.
Finally you said The glazier will have $250 more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $250 more to spend with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum
But this does not take account of people losing money, saving money, taking money out of the country, delaying spending it. If money was recycled ad infinitum, there would be an infinite supply. However, if each person in the chain only spends 90% of the money passed to them, quickly the amount of money being recycled falls to just over $87 by the 10th person in the chain.
The argument goes that Kazaa can block child-porn traders, so why can't they block file-sharers?
See this story in the register
A small extract
Look at the company's position on child pornography, he said: "If at any time Kazaa finds that you are using Kazaa to collect or distribute child pornography or other obscene material, [Sharman] reserves the right to permanently bar you and your computers from accessing Kazaa and other Kazaa services."
So, he added, if Sharman can block these users, it can also prevent anyone who shares material without the permission copyright holder, he said. In other words, it has the means to monitor and control what kinds of material are being traded on its network.
I'd rather have the $2,900 in a shoebox, thanks
However, whereas I'd like to give them a Linux box, they are used to using PCs with a WIndows 95 / XP interface from their PC and the local library. As they, especially my dad, have trouble getting to grips with new tools, I think I will have to compromise and install Windows for them.
I know that even after making it as secure as I can and giving them a quick list of don'ts (open attachements, etc) that it won't be as secure, but as they're both retired there is no business critical data there. I think that their ease of use will be more important than trying to move them away from Windows.
By the time thr prices drop there will be more information like this article on the differences / advantages of PCI-E over AGP. Think I'll wait until then before deciding on an upgrade.
We can all watch Matthew Broderick skip class and reminisce about the days when this used to be possible - it'll become a period piece of a bygone age, along with Remains of the Day and Little Women.
I guess this means that if I want to watch any of my old VHS tapes, I won't be allowed to purchase a VCR with a fast forward button, or I could skip the trailers.
It seems that a good idea in principle may have resulted in legislation that is not working in practice because of a flawed framework / companies taking advantage (your choice). Not that I agree with the idea of business-method patents in the first place, but this may make the idea behind them clearer.