I guess it's the same people that blare their radio in the car with the windows rolled all the way down. I guess it's the same people who... don't lower their radio when it could be annoying other people. Or the people who don't wear headphones while listening to music and/or talk on a speakerphone in an "open concept" or cubicle-style office. Argh.
There is very little that is more annoying than a cell phone ringing in the middle of a class, a meeting, or a movie. In peoples' defence, sometimes it's possible to forget to turn it off or mistakenly think that you already have. What's really annoying is when people insist on taking the call no matter where they are. There's nothing like being rude to everyone present while at the same time declaring that your time is worth so little that you must be instantly accessible to anyone who wants to chat -- on-call professions like doctors aside, of course.
Yet ringtones are somtimes very appropriate. At one of my college lectures, the prof had gotten totally sick of phones going off in her class and spent the first 10min of class ranting and warning that if a cell phone went off in that class, the person whose cell it was would fail that day's quiz. Well, one girl was inconsiderate enough to come to class about 20min after it had started. I know there are legitimate reasons for being late, but this particular girl thought the world ran to her schedule. Having missed the prof's rant and just being generally inconsiderate, her cell phone did go off during class. What set us all to laughing is that the tune it was playing was "Shut up" by Black Eyed Peas. Was there ever a more appropriate tune for a cell phone ringtone?
Something similar happened while I was in the car once, in Ottawa, Canada, albeit not while I was driving. My (now ex-) boyfriend had borrowed his parents' car to pick up my mother and I from a pub where we had had a few drinks (and hence did not want to risk driving home). We ended up coming to a stop at a red light while paralell with a cop car. Once the light turned green, we continued on our merry way in textbook-approved driving fashion. After a few blocks, the cop car pulls up behind us and switches on the lights & sirens. So my ex pulls over, rolls down the window, co-operates with a request to see liscence, registration, & insurance, even though we hadn't yet been informed as to why we'd been pulled over.
The first thing the cop says is, "This isn't your car." No, my ex replies, it's his parents' car, you'll note that the last names on his liscence & insurance are the same. (Furthermore, if they'd run the info instead of standing beside the window looking at the cards, they'd have noticed that he was insured on the car even though he's not the owner.) Then the cop says, "I smell alcohol." Well, sure, my ex replies, he's the DD for his girlfriend and her mother. He even offered to take a sobriety test, although they never took him up on the offer. After harassing him for a little longer about anything the cop could think of, my ex had to ask why, exactly, we were pulled over, and when the cop couldn't think of a reason, she let us leave.
I've heard the horrible stories of black people being pulled over by white cops for no reason, but both the cop and everyone in our car were white. We should all have been flying under the police radar... I mean, none of us even had records. The only thing I can think of was that the cop wanted to throw some weight around. I only wish that we'd had a video recorder in the car. However, what does it say about the police force in any city when you need a video recorder in your car to protect you from the cops and not from the criminals?
Has anyone who skips the check ever had occasion to return anything?
We don't have a Fry's where I live, but we do have a Best Buy with those annoying door-checkers who mark your reciept. I just checked one of my receipts with the return policy on the back, and it makes no mention of a marked receipt being a prerequisite to returns. It makes sense, really, considering that they only check about half of the customers anyway, maybe less than that when it's really busy.
I always thought the whole thing was kind of silly, anyway -- isn't the whole point of those electronic detectors at the front door to keep people from walking out with stolen merchandise? Maybe it makes sense with large items that they can't de-magnetize, or that you have to pay for and then pick up somewhere other than the cash... But really, aren't you more likely to swipe a DVD than a 44" plasma tv? And even if your friend the cashier is deactivating the electronic tags for you, wouldn't you put that stuff in your purse/pocket/backpack to keep the door-checkers from seeing it if/when they check your receipt? The way I see it, door-checkers do diddly for theft protection, they probably cost more to employ than you get in theft protection, and they piss off the people who aren't stealing by the whole guilty-before-proven-innocent attitude.
And how could your lawyer defend you against a law that the government claims exists, but doesn't make available anywhere?
More importantly, how do you even know if you are breaking a law? Ignorance of a law is not a valid reason in court for why you broke said law. This makes sense to me, because people should be at least passingly familiar with the laws of their country, and it keeps people from claiming ignorance to protect themselves from being convicted for crimes like murder, for example. But if you have "secret" laws, how do you know if you're breaking them?
How then do you keep law-abiding citizens (except in the case of the "secret law", obviously) from cluttering up the jails because they can't prove their innocence because they can't examine the law, while at the same time lifelong criminals with good lawyers are getting off scott free?
Virus venders.. hmmm For just £39.95 a month, you too can recieve the latest virii, trojans and worms directly to your inbox.
The companies charging for viruses would eventually go out of business to the companies that provide better viruses for free and only charge for tech support...
This new campaign is only there to scare you, because Microsoft is assuming if you pirate their software you'll be too afraid to call them.
What Microsoft is effectively doing is making a re-install of Windows a bigger pain in the ass than it already is. I've never had to activate Windows over the phone, knock on wood, but I have had to re-activate Norton AntiVirus (too many installs). I was tied to my phone for an hour and a half as I was put on hold and shuffled from one department to another. I didn't have to deal with anyone who was ESL, but that could just have been luck. The amount of time I spent on the phone was horrible, considering that I only ever talked to a real person for about 5min total, but being tied to my phone meant that I couldn't work on the gazillion other things I had to do. If you have to go through this kind of treatment every time you have to re-install your OS (and since this is Windows, that'll end up being pretty often), it will not surprise me at all if Mac and Linux suddenly gobble up a huge market share.
one good example is Unseen University...it's only after reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver did I realise Pratchet was riffing on the Invisible College, the precursor to the Royal Society
That's what makes Pratchett re-readable, whereas I find that I can only read any of Asprin's stuff once. The humor of Pratchett's work changes as you grow and expand your knowledge. Asprin's stuff, although not bad in and of itself, is so self-contained that you learn very little upon reading it more than once.
I'm sick of their "the stuntman will starve if you download a movie!!" argument, when actors make millions per movie (eg., Brad Pitt earned $17.5M for Troy).
Tell me about it. I work in the industry, and I'm currrently being paid just enough to keep me above the official poverty line. (This has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of my work, btw, it's the going rate for what I do, unfortunately.) If they didn't pay $17.5M for Brad Pitt, then they might be able to afford to pay their other employees decent salaries. Just a thought.
If so much unwatchable crap wasn't churned out by Hollywood every year and they didn't charge $12 to go see the movies in theatres and $50 for the extended-edition DVD with features that nobody cares about, then people might actually be willing to support the industry by actually going to see the films. Piracy is always going to exist in every industry because the pirates are always one step ahead. Why not try to improve the quality of the end product so that people see it as something actually worth paying for? Hell, that's one of the reasons that there's so many pirated copies of Windows out there -- nobody wants to pay that much money for such a poor product.
Credit card transactions are completely auditable. When dozens of people complain that they didn't authorize those $24 transactions, the issuing banks are going to go back to the merchant who performed them, and his acquirer is going to notice the extraordinarily high level of complaints, *and* that they're all for sub-$25 transactions. The theif will be in prison very shortly, and the cardholders won't be out a dime.
Sure, if you're only taking into account the "people scanning your card without your knowledge" threat. But have you ever had your purse/wallet stolen or been pickpocketed? I have, and let me tell you, it can be a real bitch to remember, let alone prove, which transactions were yours and which were someone else's. It can be especially difficult if, like me, you don't use your wallet very often and have no idea how long it's been missing from your purse/backpack/pocket/whatever -- and if, like most people, you stow your credit card receipts in your wallet -- which has just been stolen.
Granted, credit card companies are good about red-flagging charges on your account that are large and/or atypical. But a bunch of if the credit card company removes the unauthorized charges from your account, they have to absorb the cost of that somehow. All of those absorbed costs eventually work their way back to the consumer.
Further, how hard is it for someone to do this now? Collect card numbers by working at a store, shoulder surfing, breaking into databases, or buying them from someone else who has done that, and you can spend lots more then $24 of peoples' money, and do it in a fashion that's far less traceable.
Okay, so the old threats still exist, but now they're adding new ones. How exactly is this better?
Our hope is that the contactless payment feature will drive added convenience and speed to consumers...
The thing is, most of the time it's not the swiping of the card that takes the time when you're in the checkout line. The cashier has to scan every item you're purchasing into the computer (assuming they're not still working out the old SKU method or on an even older "just enter the cost on the price tag" kind of register), giving you lots of time to rummage through your purse or wallet to look for your credit card. The actual swiping of the card takes about a second. Then, because the information is transmitted over an old-fashioned phone line for approval by the bank, you have to wait for that to be processed at both ends. And then you have to sign for the purchase (because, come on, a good portion of your Visa purchases are probably over $25), at which time you're supposed to pass over your card to the cashier anyway so that they can compare signatures. So how much time will not having to stripe your credit card really save you?
So, if the lack of striping doesn't save you much (if any) time and it makes your credit card that much less secure (as so many other/.ers have pointed out), what is the advantage to the average credit card user of having this feature? Maybe, maybe if they took away the "no signature for under $25" feature, which would remove a massive theft risk, and made the credit cards pin-accessible only so that you never had to get your card out of your purse/wallet (and really, how often do people check your signature in the first place?), maybe then it might be worth the cost it would take to implement it, but only by a very small margin. And although it may be a "free" service on your card, don't forget that interest rates and yearly charges are affected by every new technology that Visa has to pay to put into place. They're also affected by how much credit card fraud the companies have to write off. You might not see the costs up front, but they are there, just waiting to take a sizeable chunk out of your hard-earned paycheck.
You also have to take into account that a lot of the readers of/., like myself, are not American. We have no say in how the US is run, and very little influence in the States short of attacking you with all of our military might -- and hey, I'm Canadian, we have more submarines in the West Edmonton Mall than we do in our navy.
I have to say Win 95 was the most painfull installation I have ever done -partly because it was an upgrade version. So I'd have to install DOS, then Win3.1, then upgrade that to Win 95 -after I found my boot floppy with the driver for the CD ROM drive.
CD-ROM drive, what is this CD-ROM drive? I remember having to install all of that off of floppies, although I don't remember if that was because it wasn't available on CD, or if I just couldn't afford to buy a drive at the time.
Although Windows XP is more of a pain to install than, say, 2000, in comparison to some of the early versions of Windows, XP seems really, really user-friendly. IMHO, the only thing that could possibly have made the early versions easier to install than XP is that there was less available to install (drivers, service packs, etc.). But it certainly didn't keep the old versions from being time-consuming and bloody difficult to install for the average user.
Davis said troubling areas included... little training available for employees responsible for security.
Why am I so unsurprised? Oh, right, because only last year was I hired by the government to design a monthly calendar that federal employees were supposed to post in their cubicles, each month with its own little message like "don't write down your passwords on sticky notes and stick them to your monitor." An incredibly secure system doesn't mean bubkes if the people using the system are totally lacking in common sense. Unfortunately, common sense isn't.
Well, I don't remember people complaining too much about Princess Diana, and I know that we ladies aren't exactly bemoaning Prince William or even Prince Harry's looks. Granted, there are some pretty ugly royals, but there are rotten apples on every family tree.
No idea. The guy was his friend before my brother moved in to help him out with the rent, and over time he just got weirder. Once my brother and him had fought it out, both with words and fists, it was revealed that the guy would vandalize the stuff in my brother's room when my brother had done something to annoy him, like forget to get out a new roll of toilet paper when the old one was used up. Not a very effective method of getting his point accross, if you ask me, considering that he had blamed anything that happened to my brother's stuff on the dog.
The moral of this story is: webcam's aren't just for theft security anymore!
About three years ago, my brother had a roomie that he suspected was vandalising some of my brother's property. Of course, because they had a dog that was allowed to roam through the entire house, my brother couldn't prove that it had been the roomie and not the dog, becuase all of the destruction was well within the realm of a dog's capabilities. So he set up a webcam on his computer to start recording when there was motion in the room, and then storing the video on his web server. This allowed him to catch his roommate dumping a the bowl of leftover Kraft Dinner that had been left on the desk all over/into my brother's keyboard while my brother was at work.
A lot of people leave their computer(s) running when they're not around, and a lot of people have webcams sitting around that 99% of the time aren't even plugged in. I know that this is the case for me, at any rate. It's really easy to miss yet another piece of computer-related clutter on an already messy surface. Although I have to admit, it doesn't take all that much effort to look around for cameras before perpetrating a crime and "accidentally" knock them so that they're not pointed at the area where the crime will be comitted... Not that this would have helped the burglar any, since all it had to capture was him breaking in to prove at least breaking-and-entering, but when someone has a legit reason to be in the room and foils themself through sheer lack of attention... That's pretty stupid, I have to agree.
Even the "final" approved script gets changed during filming because of (A) inspiration of the director to expand a scene, add a new scene, etc., or (B) the discovery that a scene that reads brilliantly on the page just doesn't work when filmed.
As someone who works in the film/television industry, I can tell you with 100% certainty that even if Adams wrote the final screenplay that was approved by all and sundry, and even if none of the above is true (which all of it is), there is no way that Adams' screenplay would have made it to the big screen totally unmodified. Actors mess up/change their lines on a daily basis. Scenes/lines get left on the cutting room floor because they just don't work well in the final cut, or because they don't fit in an AA (vs. R) rating, or because there was dirt in the lens that screwed up the shot and it's not worth stretching the budget to have it digitally cleaned up. Something unexpected happens, which influences the budget, which means that some of the effects that people consider so necessary these days cannot be paid for.
For all of you purists out there, there is NO SUCH THING as a film going from script to screen without being changed somewhat. Even if the author of the original novel wrote the script, directed the film AND supervised every single frame of editing, life's little practicalities get in the way. I mean, look at Interview With The Vampire, where both the original novel and the screenplay were written by Anne Rice -- and still the movie was not entirely accurate to the book.
I get really tired of people complaining that movies based on novels/comic books are not completely accurate to the original source. It's not like it is impossible to enjoy a movie for itself without comparing it to the book. It's as if the works of their favorite authors didn't go through upteen revisions to satisfy the author, the editor, and the publisher before the final product was delivered. The medium and the intended market do influence the story, that is true, but it is just as true for paper as it is for moving pictures. Compromises between budget, time, and accuracy have to be made when bringing something to the big screen. Yet I don't hear anyone complaining that the sales of their favorite book/comic book/whatever went through the roof once the movie came out, enabling the author to gain the popularity and the finances necessary to produce more work.
Sorry for the rant, but I do have to work in this business, and hence every single complaint from the people I know (with the exception of the people I work with) about this kind of thing gets funneled my way. Kind of like how every teacher out there has got to be tired of hearing people complain about the education system, or people working in the government is tired of hearing people complain about beaurocratic red tape.
... to keep people from circulating copied media. Considering how much the industry pays to implement these so-called protection methods, they're taking the 4% loss and adding however much it costs to "thwart 97% of existing DVD copying software"... And then someone will write new software, which will happen in no time flat, and poof, an investment in this protection method goes out the window.
I think that the money would be put to a much better purpose by taking the loss of actually allowing people to return opened media.
Media, whether it be VHS, CD, DVD, software, audio, or video, is one of the few products out there that you can't return if you don't like it. Too many pieces of software/music/video do not live up to their hype, which makes the buyer wary of purchasing anything that they can't return. A lot of people, after trying out a program/album/movie through whatever means, will go out to buy/keep a legit copy. However, most people aren't going to pick up a piece of media that they haven't tried out if they know they can't return it if they don't like it. When you make it impossible to return things, you force people to evaluate their potential investments through other means -- tape-swapping, file-sharing, whatever. If you make the means of that investigation more difficult and/or illegal, there is a backlash of opinion toward the media industry, and now the average joe will to out of their way not to spend money on media! In so many ways, the media industry is just shooting itself in the foot, here.
A lot of this could be avoided by just making it possible to return opened media. But, oh no, people might open the media, rip it, and then return the media for a full refund! So? There are enough copies out there of just about any media you could name circulated online that if someone really didn't want to pay for a piece of media in the first place, they wouldn't have to. Or, God forbid, they borrow a legit copy of something from work or from a friend, and then use/watch/listen to that.
What it boils down to is that people who are going to use illegitimate sources of media will do so whether you make it difficult/illegal or not. What the industry is doing right now is alienating their supporters through their business practices. Doesn't that account for more than a 4% loss?
IMHO, it's not the people out there who are backing up their own purchased DVD's or even sharing them with their friends that costs the industry the most money. Swapping MP3's or ripped DVD's can be compared to tape-swapping and lending out of personal media in how it influences how many people will actually end up purchasing a legit copy.
It's when the DVD's get copied and sold that they really cost the industry money -- why buy a movie for $15 when you can get what appears to be exactly the same thing for $3? If it's not legal in your country to pirate media, then you can always import media from countries where it is legal.
It really won't help the legit media industry in the long run to trample over people's personal rights and freedoms -- that'll make people disagree with their statements on general principle, even if the industry might actually, at some time in the future, have a legitimate point to make. If they concentrated on stopping the sales of pirated media, then they could disable an industry that is taking away from their profits without stomping on people's personal rights. Then they might have a leg to stand on with a populace that is, by and large, fed up with their posessive, money-grabbing attitude. They've cried wolf one too many times about piracy impinging on their profits, and I know that I, at the very least, am willing to let them get eaten by the big bad wolf rather than listen to them whine one more time.
When I lived in residence at college, and this is four years ago now, every single room that I visited had a computer, no matter what program the student was in. Granted, some of the computers were ancient and only capable of running text programs. Some people had two or three machines, each running a different OS, as well as one or more gaming systems, a TV, and a stereo (or their surround-sound computer speakers hooked up to all of their devices).
If a student didn't have a computer when they moved in, they bought one as soon as they realized how inadequate the computer labs at the school were. No matter how many machines are available for student use at any given school, the administration is always trying to play catch-up with the demand for equipment. It's so much easier to have your own computer.
Also, school computer labs are rarely open 24-7, which makes it extremely difficult for students to pull all-nighters, which is a staple for anyone in post-secondary education!
When was the last time you went to a LAN party that was being hosted at a location that didn't already have a server? That's one of the primary deciding factors when deciding where the party's going to be! I know that if I had to choose between Location A, which already had a server, and Location B, to which I'd have to drag my PC and a server of any kind, no matter how portable, I'd pick Location A.
Following that logic, if everyone's just using whatever server is available at the LAN party's location, then nobody's going to lug the Suitcase Server anywhere. It'll end up staying in one location, at which point it becomes just another pretty case mod. And since most servers are in a basement, closet, server room, or similar location where very few people ever go, you wouldn't even get to show off the mod. You might as well save some money and go with the plain old ugly beige box.
I work for a really small company, and my manager only has one person to manage -- me. You'd think that this would make things easier, but I am so frustrated with my manager that I'm desperately trying to find another job. The only reason I haven't out and outright quit is that I need a paycheck. So here's what I've learned from my manager's mistakes:
1) Don't make the client your only priority. Tight deadlines and multiple tasks may look great on paper, but there's only so much that employees can do in their eight (or whatever) hours a day.
2) If, for whatever reason, a deadline is approaching and a project has fallen behind, hire or assign more people to that job. This must be done without affecting the other projects you're managing, though.
3) When your underlings complain that their computer/printer/whatever is down and hence they cannot complete their assigned tasks until it is fixed, do not dismiss this out of hand and/or assume that this is just the employee angling for a prettier machine. Check and see if the machine is actually in need of repair. Important note: No matter how much of a geek you are, don't fix the problem yourself! It's not your job and takes time away from the stuff you're supposed to be doing. That's what tech support and warranties are for.
4) When planning how long a task will take to be completed, take into account that employees may be working on more than one project at a time. What would take three days if an employee was otherwise unoccupied will take much longer if the employee has six other tasks with deadlines looming.
5) Unless it is entirely unavoidable, do not have multiple deadlines on the same day! Your employees only have so many hands, and deadlines always seem to mean a whack of paperwork on top of the final product delivery.
6) Unless you suspect something against company rules (i.e. leaking confidential information, prohibited substances in the office, etc.), do NOT go through an employee's filing system or desk drawers without their permission. It doesn't matter that the company nominally owns everything in the office, it's just freaking rude, OK?
I know that these guidelines all probably seem pretty self-evident, but my boss ignores them and it drives me up the wall.
I work at a production company (television, internet video, corporate video, etc.). In one of our offices, there is a laptop connected to an external monitor and keyboard. All the parts of this setup are visible on top of the desk. The laptop belongs to Boss A, although more than one person has access to it. One day he was out of town on business, so he disconnected the laptop and took it with him, leaving the monitor and keyboard on the desk.
Boss B came into the edit suite later that day and proceeded to have this conversation with me:
Boss B: "I can't get that computer in the office to start up." Me: "Didn't Boss A take the laptop with him on his business trip?" Boss B: "Why does it matter where the laptop is?" Me: "Well, the monitor in there is just a screen... Without the laptop, there's no actual computer hooked up to it." Boss B: "Oh, so it's a hard drive thing, then, is it?"
It's not the people who have no access to computers and don't understand them that scare me. It's the people who use computers every single day and still don't manage to learn anything about them that I find so frightening.
Only today did I have to explain to Boss B how to cut and paste a link into her web browser. I fear for the fate of humanity.
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I guess it's the same people that blare their radio in the car with the windows rolled all the way down.
I guess it's the same people who... don't lower their radio when it could be annoying other people.
Or the people who don't wear headphones while listening to music and/or talk on a speakerphone in an "open concept" or cubicle-style office. Argh.
There is very little that is more annoying than a cell phone ringing in the middle of a class, a meeting, or a movie. In peoples' defence, sometimes it's possible to forget to turn it off or mistakenly think that you already have. What's really annoying is when people insist on taking the call no matter where they are. There's nothing like being rude to everyone present while at the same time declaring that your time is worth so little that you must be instantly accessible to anyone who wants to chat -- on-call professions like doctors aside, of course.
Yet ringtones are somtimes very appropriate. At one of my college lectures, the prof had gotten totally sick of phones going off in her class and spent the first 10min of class ranting and warning that if a cell phone went off in that class, the person whose cell it was would fail that day's quiz. Well, one girl was inconsiderate enough to come to class about 20min after it had started. I know there are legitimate reasons for being late, but this particular girl thought the world ran to her schedule. Having missed the prof's rant and just being generally inconsiderate, her cell phone did go off during class. What set us all to laughing is that the tune it was playing was "Shut up" by Black Eyed Peas. Was there ever a more appropriate tune for a cell phone ringtone?
Something similar happened while I was in the car once, in Ottawa, Canada, albeit not while I was driving. My (now ex-) boyfriend had borrowed his parents' car to pick up my mother and I from a pub where we had had a few drinks (and hence did not want to risk driving home). We ended up coming to a stop at a red light while paralell with a cop car. Once the light turned green, we continued on our merry way in textbook-approved driving fashion. After a few blocks, the cop car pulls up behind us and switches on the lights & sirens. So my ex pulls over, rolls down the window, co-operates with a request to see liscence, registration, & insurance, even though we hadn't yet been informed as to why we'd been pulled over.
The first thing the cop says is, "This isn't your car." No, my ex replies, it's his parents' car, you'll note that the last names on his liscence & insurance are the same. (Furthermore, if they'd run the info instead of standing beside the window looking at the cards, they'd have noticed that he was insured on the car even though he's not the owner.) Then the cop says, "I smell alcohol." Well, sure, my ex replies, he's the DD for his girlfriend and her mother. He even offered to take a sobriety test, although they never took him up on the offer. After harassing him for a little longer about anything the cop could think of, my ex had to ask why, exactly, we were pulled over, and when the cop couldn't think of a reason, she let us leave.
I've heard the horrible stories of black people being pulled over by white cops for no reason, but both the cop and everyone in our car were white. We should all have been flying under the police radar... I mean, none of us even had records. The only thing I can think of was that the cop wanted to throw some weight around. I only wish that we'd had a video recorder in the car. However, what does it say about the police force in any city when you need a video recorder in your car to protect you from the cops and not from the criminals?
Has anyone who skips the check ever had occasion to return anything?
We don't have a Fry's where I live, but we do have a Best Buy with those annoying door-checkers who mark your reciept. I just checked one of my receipts with the return policy on the back, and it makes no mention of a marked receipt being a prerequisite to returns. It makes sense, really, considering that they only check about half of the customers anyway, maybe less than that when it's really busy.
I always thought the whole thing was kind of silly, anyway -- isn't the whole point of those electronic detectors at the front door to keep people from walking out with stolen merchandise? Maybe it makes sense with large items that they can't de-magnetize, or that you have to pay for and then pick up somewhere other than the cash... But really, aren't you more likely to swipe a DVD than a 44" plasma tv? And even if your friend the cashier is deactivating the electronic tags for you, wouldn't you put that stuff in your purse/pocket/backpack to keep the door-checkers from seeing it if/when they check your receipt? The way I see it, door-checkers do diddly for theft protection, they probably cost more to employ than you get in theft protection, and they piss off the people who aren't stealing by the whole guilty-before-proven-innocent attitude.
And how could your lawyer defend you against a law that the government claims exists, but doesn't make available anywhere?
More importantly, how do you even know if you are breaking a law? Ignorance of a law is not a valid reason in court for why you broke said law. This makes sense to me, because people should be at least passingly familiar with the laws of their country, and it keeps people from claiming ignorance to protect themselves from being convicted for crimes like murder, for example. But if you have "secret" laws, how do you know if you're breaking them?
How then do you keep law-abiding citizens (except in the case of the "secret law", obviously) from cluttering up the jails because they can't prove their innocence because they can't examine the law, while at the same time lifelong criminals with good lawyers are getting off scott free?
Virus venders.. hmmm For just £39.95 a month, you too can recieve the latest virii, trojans and worms directly to your inbox.
The companies charging for viruses would eventually go out of business to the companies that provide better viruses for free and only charge for tech support...
This new campaign is only there to scare you, because Microsoft is assuming if you pirate their software you'll be too afraid to call them.
What Microsoft is effectively doing is making a re-install of Windows a bigger pain in the ass than it already is. I've never had to activate Windows over the phone, knock on wood, but I have had to re-activate Norton AntiVirus (too many installs). I was tied to my phone for an hour and a half as I was put on hold and shuffled from one department to another. I didn't have to deal with anyone who was ESL, but that could just have been luck. The amount of time I spent on the phone was horrible, considering that I only ever talked to a real person for about 5min total, but being tied to my phone meant that I couldn't work on the gazillion other things I had to do. If you have to go through this kind of treatment every time you have to re-install your OS (and since this is Windows, that'll end up being pretty often), it will not surprise me at all if Mac and Linux suddenly gobble up a huge market share.
one good example is Unseen University...it's only after reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver did I realise Pratchet was riffing on the Invisible College, the precursor to the Royal Society
That's what makes Pratchett re-readable, whereas I find that I can only read any of Asprin's stuff once. The humor of Pratchett's work changes as you grow and expand your knowledge. Asprin's stuff, although not bad in and of itself, is so self-contained that you learn very little upon reading it more than once.
I'm sick of their "the stuntman will starve if you download a movie!!" argument, when actors make millions per movie (eg., Brad Pitt earned $17.5M for Troy).
Tell me about it. I work in the industry, and I'm currrently being paid just enough to keep me above the official poverty line. (This has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of my work, btw, it's the going rate for what I do, unfortunately.) If they didn't pay $17.5M for Brad Pitt, then they might be able to afford to pay their other employees decent salaries. Just a thought.
If so much unwatchable crap wasn't churned out by Hollywood every year and they didn't charge $12 to go see the movies in theatres and $50 for the extended-edition DVD with features that nobody cares about, then people might actually be willing to support the industry by actually going to see the films. Piracy is always going to exist in every industry because the pirates are always one step ahead. Why not try to improve the quality of the end product so that people see it as something actually worth paying for? Hell, that's one of the reasons that there's so many pirated copies of Windows out there -- nobody wants to pay that much money for such a poor product.
Credit card transactions are completely auditable. When dozens of people complain that they didn't authorize those $24 transactions, the issuing banks are going to go back to the merchant who performed them, and his acquirer is going to notice the extraordinarily high level of complaints, *and* that they're all for sub-$25 transactions. The theif will be in prison very shortly, and the cardholders won't be out a dime.
Sure, if you're only taking into account the "people scanning your card without your knowledge" threat. But have you ever had your purse/wallet stolen or been pickpocketed? I have, and let me tell you, it can be a real bitch to remember, let alone prove, which transactions were yours and which were someone else's. It can be especially difficult if, like me, you don't use your wallet very often and have no idea how long it's been missing from your purse/backpack/pocket/whatever -- and if, like most people, you stow your credit card receipts in your wallet -- which has just been stolen. Granted, credit card companies are good about red-flagging charges on your account that are large and/or atypical. But a bunch of if the credit card company removes the unauthorized charges from your account, they have to absorb the cost of that somehow. All of those absorbed costs eventually work their way back to the consumer.
Further, how hard is it for someone to do this now? Collect card numbers by working at a store, shoulder surfing, breaking into databases, or buying them from someone else who has done that, and you can spend lots more then $24 of peoples' money, and do it in a fashion that's far less traceable.
Okay, so the old threats still exist, but now they're adding new ones. How exactly is this better?
Our hope is that the contactless payment feature will drive added convenience and speed to consumers...
/.ers have pointed out), what is the advantage to the average credit card user of having this feature? Maybe, maybe if they took away the "no signature for under $25" feature, which would remove a massive theft risk, and made the credit cards pin-accessible only so that you never had to get your card out of your purse/wallet (and really, how often do people check your signature in the first place?), maybe then it might be worth the cost it would take to implement it, but only by a very small margin. And although it may be a "free" service on your card, don't forget that interest rates and yearly charges are affected by every new technology that Visa has to pay to put into place. They're also affected by how much credit card fraud the companies have to write off. You might not see the costs up front, but they are there, just waiting to take a sizeable chunk out of your hard-earned paycheck.
The thing is, most of the time it's not the swiping of the card that takes the time when you're in the checkout line. The cashier has to scan every item you're purchasing into the computer (assuming they're not still working out the old SKU method or on an even older "just enter the cost on the price tag" kind of register), giving you lots of time to rummage through your purse or wallet to look for your credit card. The actual swiping of the card takes about a second. Then, because the information is transmitted over an old-fashioned phone line for approval by the bank, you have to wait for that to be processed at both ends. And then you have to sign for the purchase (because, come on, a good portion of your Visa purchases are probably over $25), at which time you're supposed to pass over your card to the cashier anyway so that they can compare signatures. So how much time will not having to stripe your credit card really save you?
So, if the lack of striping doesn't save you much (if any) time and it makes your credit card that much less secure (as so many other
You also have to take into account that a lot of the readers of /., like myself, are not American. We have no say in how the US is run, and very little influence in the States short of attacking you with all of our military might -- and hey, I'm Canadian, we have more submarines in the West Edmonton Mall than we do in our navy.
I have to say Win 95 was the most painfull installation I have ever done -partly because it was an upgrade version. So I'd have to install DOS, then Win3.1, then upgrade that to Win 95 -after I found my boot floppy with the driver for the CD ROM drive.
CD-ROM drive, what is this CD-ROM drive? I remember having to install all of that off of floppies, although I don't remember if that was because it wasn't available on CD, or if I just couldn't afford to buy a drive at the time.
Although Windows XP is more of a pain to install than, say, 2000, in comparison to some of the early versions of Windows, XP seems really, really user-friendly. IMHO, the only thing that could possibly have made the early versions easier to install than XP is that there was less available to install (drivers, service packs, etc.). But it certainly didn't keep the old versions from being time-consuming and bloody difficult to install for the average user.
Davis said troubling areas included... little training available for employees responsible for security.
Why am I so unsurprised? Oh, right, because only last year was I hired by the government to design a monthly calendar that federal employees were supposed to post in their cubicles, each month with its own little message like "don't write down your passwords on sticky notes and stick them to your monitor." An incredibly secure system doesn't mean bubkes if the people using the system are totally lacking in common sense. Unfortunately, common sense isn't.
Not to mention the whole royal family...
Well, I don't remember people complaining too much about Princess Diana, and I know that we ladies aren't exactly bemoaning Prince William or even Prince Harry's looks. Granted, there are some pretty ugly royals, but there are rotten apples on every family tree.
No idea. The guy was his friend before my brother moved in to help him out with the rent, and over time he just got weirder. Once my brother and him had fought it out, both with words and fists, it was revealed that the guy would vandalize the stuff in my brother's room when my brother had done something to annoy him, like forget to get out a new roll of toilet paper when the old one was used up. Not a very effective method of getting his point accross, if you ask me, considering that he had blamed anything that happened to my brother's stuff on the dog.
The moral of this story is: webcam's aren't just for theft security anymore!
About three years ago, my brother had a roomie that he suspected was vandalising some of my brother's property. Of course, because they had a dog that was allowed to roam through the entire house, my brother couldn't prove that it had been the roomie and not the dog, becuase all of the destruction was well within the realm of a dog's capabilities. So he set up a webcam on his computer to start recording when there was motion in the room, and then storing the video on his web server. This allowed him to catch his roommate dumping a the bowl of leftover Kraft Dinner that had been left on the desk all over/into my brother's keyboard while my brother was at work.
A lot of people leave their computer(s) running when they're not around, and a lot of people have webcams sitting around that 99% of the time aren't even plugged in. I know that this is the case for me, at any rate. It's really easy to miss yet another piece of computer-related clutter on an already messy surface. Although I have to admit, it doesn't take all that much effort to look around for cameras before perpetrating a crime and "accidentally" knock them so that they're not pointed at the area where the crime will be comitted... Not that this would have helped the burglar any, since all it had to capture was him breaking in to prove at least breaking-and-entering, but when someone has a legit reason to be in the room and foils themself through sheer lack of attention... That's pretty stupid, I have to agree.
Even the "final" approved script gets changed during filming because of (A) inspiration of the director to expand a scene, add a new scene, etc., or (B) the discovery that a scene that reads brilliantly on the page just doesn't work when filmed.
As someone who works in the film/television industry, I can tell you with 100% certainty that even if Adams wrote the final screenplay that was approved by all and sundry, and even if none of the above is true (which all of it is), there is no way that Adams' screenplay would have made it to the big screen totally unmodified. Actors mess up/change their lines on a daily basis. Scenes/lines get left on the cutting room floor because they just don't work well in the final cut, or because they don't fit in an AA (vs. R) rating, or because there was dirt in the lens that screwed up the shot and it's not worth stretching the budget to have it digitally cleaned up. Something unexpected happens, which influences the budget, which means that some of the effects that people consider so necessary these days cannot be paid for.
For all of you purists out there, there is NO SUCH THING as a film going from script to screen without being changed somewhat. Even if the author of the original novel wrote the script, directed the film AND supervised every single frame of editing, life's little practicalities get in the way. I mean, look at Interview With The Vampire, where both the original novel and the screenplay were written by Anne Rice -- and still the movie was not entirely accurate to the book.
I get really tired of people complaining that movies based on novels/comic books are not completely accurate to the original source. It's not like it is impossible to enjoy a movie for itself without comparing it to the book. It's as if the works of their favorite authors didn't go through upteen revisions to satisfy the author, the editor, and the publisher before the final product was delivered. The medium and the intended market do influence the story, that is true, but it is just as true for paper as it is for moving pictures. Compromises between budget, time, and accuracy have to be made when bringing something to the big screen. Yet I don't hear anyone complaining that the sales of their favorite book/comic book/whatever went through the roof once the movie came out, enabling the author to gain the popularity and the finances necessary to produce more work.
Sorry for the rant, but I do have to work in this business, and hence every single complaint from the people I know (with the exception of the people I work with) about this kind of thing gets funneled my way. Kind of like how every teacher out there has got to be tired of hearing people complain about the education system, or people working in the government is tired of hearing people complain about beaurocratic red tape.
There are many in our society that vehemently oppose anything with 'nuclear' or 'atomic' in the name...
Well, I'm totally screwed then, aren't I?
... to keep people from circulating copied media. Considering how much the industry pays to implement these so-called protection methods, they're taking the 4% loss and adding however much it costs to "thwart 97% of existing DVD copying software"... And then someone will write new software, which will happen in no time flat, and poof, an investment in this protection method goes out the window.
I think that the money would be put to a much better purpose by taking the loss of actually allowing people to return opened media.
Media, whether it be VHS, CD, DVD, software, audio, or video, is one of the few products out there that you can't return if you don't like it. Too many pieces of software/music/video do not live up to their hype, which makes the buyer wary of purchasing anything that they can't return. A lot of people, after trying out a program/album/movie through whatever means, will go out to buy/keep a legit copy. However, most people aren't going to pick up a piece of media that they haven't tried out if they know they can't return it if they don't like it. When you make it impossible to return things, you force people to evaluate their potential investments through other means -- tape-swapping, file-sharing, whatever. If you make the means of that investigation more difficult and/or illegal, there is a backlash of opinion toward the media industry, and now the average joe will to out of their way not to spend money on media! In so many ways, the media industry is just shooting itself in the foot, here.
A lot of this could be avoided by just making it possible to return opened media. But, oh no, people might open the media, rip it, and then return the media for a full refund! So? There are enough copies out there of just about any media you could name circulated online that if someone really didn't want to pay for a piece of media in the first place, they wouldn't have to. Or, God forbid, they borrow a legit copy of something from work or from a friend, and then use/watch/listen to that.
What it boils down to is that people who are going to use illegitimate sources of media will do so whether you make it difficult/illegal or not. What the industry is doing right now is alienating their supporters through their business practices. Doesn't that account for more than a 4% loss?
IMHO, it's not the people out there who are backing up their own purchased DVD's or even sharing them with their friends that costs the industry the most money. Swapping MP3's or ripped DVD's can be compared to tape-swapping and lending out of personal media in how it influences how many people will actually end up purchasing a legit copy.
It's when the DVD's get copied and sold that they really cost the industry money -- why buy a movie for $15 when you can get what appears to be exactly the same thing for $3? If it's not legal in your country to pirate media, then you can always import media from countries where it is legal.
It really won't help the legit media industry in the long run to trample over people's personal rights and freedoms -- that'll make people disagree with their statements on general principle, even if the industry might actually, at some time in the future, have a legitimate point to make. If they concentrated on stopping the sales of pirated media, then they could disable an industry that is taking away from their profits without stomping on people's personal rights. Then they might have a leg to stand on with a populace that is, by and large, fed up with their posessive, money-grabbing attitude. They've cried wolf one too many times about piracy impinging on their profits, and I know that I, at the very least, am willing to let them get eaten by the big bad wolf rather than listen to them whine one more time.
When I lived in residence at college, and this is four years ago now, every single room that I visited had a computer, no matter what program the student was in. Granted, some of the computers were ancient and only capable of running text programs. Some people had two or three machines, each running a different OS, as well as one or more gaming systems, a TV, and a stereo (or their surround-sound computer speakers hooked up to all of their devices). If a student didn't have a computer when they moved in, they bought one as soon as they realized how inadequate the computer labs at the school were. No matter how many machines are available for student use at any given school, the administration is always trying to play catch-up with the demand for equipment. It's so much easier to have your own computer. Also, school computer labs are rarely open 24-7, which makes it extremely difficult for students to pull all-nighters, which is a staple for anyone in post-secondary education!
I think this is intended for a LAN party server.
When was the last time you went to a LAN party that was being hosted at a location that didn't already have a server? That's one of the primary deciding factors when deciding where the party's going to be! I know that if I had to choose between Location A, which already had a server, and Location B, to which I'd have to drag my PC and a server of any kind, no matter how portable, I'd pick Location A.
Following that logic, if everyone's just using whatever server is available at the LAN party's location, then nobody's going to lug the Suitcase Server anywhere. It'll end up staying in one location, at which point it becomes just another pretty case mod. And since most servers are in a basement, closet, server room, or similar location where very few people ever go, you wouldn't even get to show off the mod. You might as well save some money and go with the plain old ugly beige box.
I work for a really small company, and my manager only has one person to manage -- me. You'd think that this would make things easier, but I am so frustrated with my manager that I'm desperately trying to find another job. The only reason I haven't out and outright quit is that I need a paycheck. So here's what I've learned from my manager's mistakes:
1) Don't make the client your only priority. Tight deadlines and multiple tasks may look great on paper, but there's only so much that employees can do in their eight (or whatever) hours a day.
2) If, for whatever reason, a deadline is approaching and a project has fallen behind, hire or assign more people to that job. This must be done without affecting the other projects you're managing, though.
3) When your underlings complain that their computer/printer/whatever is down and hence they cannot complete their assigned tasks until it is fixed, do not dismiss this out of hand and/or assume that this is just the employee angling for a prettier machine. Check and see if the machine is actually in need of repair. Important note: No matter how much of a geek you are, don't fix the problem yourself! It's not your job and takes time away from the stuff you're supposed to be doing. That's what tech support and warranties are for.
4) When planning how long a task will take to be completed, take into account that employees may be working on more than one project at a time. What would take three days if an employee was otherwise unoccupied will take much longer if the employee has six other tasks with deadlines looming.
5) Unless it is entirely unavoidable, do not have multiple deadlines on the same day! Your employees only have so many hands, and deadlines always seem to mean a whack of paperwork on top of the final product delivery.
6) Unless you suspect something against company rules (i.e. leaking confidential information, prohibited substances in the office, etc.), do NOT go through an employee's filing system or desk drawers without their permission. It doesn't matter that the company nominally owns everything in the office, it's just freaking rude, OK?
I know that these guidelines all probably seem pretty self-evident, but my boss ignores them and it drives me up the wall.
I work at a production company (television, internet video, corporate video, etc.). In one of our offices, there is a laptop connected to an external monitor and keyboard. All the parts of this setup are visible on top of the desk. The laptop belongs to Boss A, although more than one person has access to it. One day he was out of town on business, so he disconnected the laptop and took it with him, leaving the monitor and keyboard on the desk.
Boss B came into the edit suite later that day and proceeded to have this conversation with me:
Boss B: "I can't get that computer in the office to start up."
Me: "Didn't Boss A take the laptop with him on his business trip?"
Boss B: "Why does it matter where the laptop is?"
Me: "Well, the monitor in there is just a screen... Without the laptop, there's no actual computer hooked up to it."
Boss B: "Oh, so it's a hard drive thing, then, is it?"
It's not the people who have no access to computers and don't understand them that scare me. It's the people who use computers every single day and still don't manage to learn anything about them that I find so frightening.
Only today did I have to explain to Boss B how to cut and paste a link into her web browser. I fear for the fate of humanity.