To operate with that bank on-line, you need an Internet acc number (which is different to a normal account number), and at least a password. Additional secret question knowledge is required for 2 answers to set up a new transfer. Then, and only then is the SMS verification code needed. He must of been very slack to have made all that info available to the scammers.
Congrats to the bank to have picked it up. It's not the $45000 'raising a red flag' either. Once they rang me for confirmation because I sent a donation to a German software foundation - it was only $20.
I've had United Community shut down my card because it was used in a Thai ATM. Thailand is not an unusual destination for Australians (for those in other nations playing along). I rang them at my expense (OK, about A$0.5 a minute, but still) and they said they would not unlock the card even though I could verify I was in Thailand and still in possession of the card. For the rest of that trip I had to go into bank branches to withdraw money, with passport and all.
As a side effect, I learned there is a nice Thai lady who works at Siam Commercial Bank with the same birth date as me.
As a more permanent fix, I withdrew my funds out of United Community the day I got back and closed all of my accounts. I'm with NAB now, despite a lot of small complaints (mostly around their internet banking site and SFA branches open on a Saturday) they've performed to expectations. Also, NAB Gold is great for travelling and shopping overseas (0% currency conversion fee).
Given how much is being linked to a cellular number, I actually would support making number portability more difficult (in that securing a process almost always makes that process more difficult/complex).
Something like SIM registration seems like it would go a long way toward combating this sort of hijacking, and should be relatively easy to implement.
We've go the same problem as with the banks. After banks and speed cameras, telco's are the favourite targets of the sensationalist bollocks brigade.
Any move to make it more secure will be met with scorn and venom from anyone who doesn't want to understand why it's happening. Right between signing up for the Vodafail page and complaining about how bad their teclo is.
This just goes to show that you should always have additional protections in place for protecting accounts (in this case, a mobile number) that can be used to control, secure, or otherwise materially modify other important accounts.
I agree, but the average person does not unfortunately.
The average person will view this as the bank trying to get in the way of them and their money. In Australia there will be huge sensationalised reports about the EVIL BANKS stealing from hard working Aussie battlers and keeping all that dastardly profit for themselves where as in reality, the new security measures cost more to implement but the real problem is Bazza from Frankston is too dumb and lazy to learn how to keep his cash secure.
So the system we have is probably the best system we're going to get. Its the worst the dumbest will put up with. They dont care about their own security, hence the bank has to protect them.
In either case, the fraud victim will get their money back, telco's will make it harder to port numbers over. As far as attacks go, this one takes a lot of effort and some money to start. Futher more, it requires the hacker to live in Australia and register their SIM card in Oz (which you require photo ID to buy, well in theory anyway). So to find the attackers, they need to locate the SIM (telco's will turn that over without question) then ask the Telco who bought the SIM and what ID they used.
No doubt. I was in CompUSA yesterday looking at a $1600 Alienware and couldn't believe how awful the display looked compared to the row of 500 dollar tablets the next aisle over. It was obscene.
It was Alienware.
Overpriced crap is to be expected.
I just bought a 24" Dell IPS (1920x1200) and it blows my tablet away, which to be fair, has a very nice screen in it's own right. Even my Asus' laptop screen is on par and I'm pretty sure that's a TN LED (Asus U30SD, A$1150).
The crappiest display I own at the moment is an old Samsung 22" monitor that I just replaced with the 24" Dell and the Samsung is still a damn good monitor despite it's age.
I'm an amateur photographer. I upgraded from a Core 2 Duo laptop which was working GREAT (and I still use) to a Core i5... gasp! DESKTOP! Because I like having a 27" monitor and I use the 8GB of RAM and all 4 cores of my CPU to process photos. And of course, USB ports and SD card readers are nice too.
So, thanks for your suggestions iPad fanboys. I'll stick with my desktop machine for the next few years.
Sorry to break this to you, but he's the 1%.:)
I still have a desktop for gaming. The receptionists and bookkeepers get desktops because they are cheaper and in the case of accounting, does not permit them to easily take data out of the building like a laptop does. The CAD/GIS team use high end desktops because you simply cant get good graphics performance out of laptop, especially onto 2 x 30" monitors, even with SSD's (the old GIS desktops used 10K RPM Raptors). Developers constantly complain their laptops aren't fast enough, OK, developers just constantly complain. Despite most people having laptops, the desktop is not dying, not by a long shot.
The same is true for tablets vs laptops. The laptop is not dying, the tablet will either become an acompanyment to the laptop (much like the smartphone) or it will go away. For portability, I have a 13" laptop and a 10" Android tablet, the Android tablet is fine for a bit of web browsing, watching a movie or typing out a few emails. Its main advantage is that it's fast to turn on. I can log into Nagios at 11 PM and suppress an alerts then deal with in in the morning, but if I'm going to do anything remotely time consuming, such as fixing the cause of that Nagios alert, I'll suck up the 30 seconds it takes my lappy to boot as I'll save that time in a mere 3 or 4 minutes by having a proper KB and mouse as well as a machine powerful enough to do the job quickly.
I have now made over A$950 (US$969) by betting people who thought they could go ipad only that they cant for two weeks. Most broke down in 2 days, the longest lasted 4 days before I caught him and the latest one, 86 minutes before using his laptop (thought he could get away with using his laptop from home, not from this Sysadmin, fastest A$150 I've earned).
Why? Specifically, why shouldn't a Constitutional function of the US government be subsidized out of tax revenues?
By the same token,
Why? Specifically why shouldn't a government department run at a positive balance. Why must it be subsidised via tax revenue. Like Australia Post and many other Australian government services that are pay per use, it doesn't have to make more then $0.01 of profit.
Taxes are for services that cant support themselves or have a net cost to society if they are forced to, As an Australian who has seen the woeful state of the US medical system, there are better things the US can spend it's tax dollars on if the postal service can support itself.
The whole purpose of having a government is to provide services that provide indirect social benefits aside from the direct benefits to their participants
I absolutely agree, but when having that system become self sustaining does not reduce the social benefits there really is no reason not to.
If we are talking about medical services, I can agree 100%, if Australia did not have public health care, it would cost more then health care does in the US, instead I am paying, via tax, 10-20% of what US employers pay private insurers for an employee on my wage.
The logic is to allow a government department to modernise itself. The process is called corporatisation and is designed to allow departments to become more efficient by giving them discretion over their own activities. The department becomes a business under it's own right whilst the Government becomes the (only) shareholder. Ergo, the government writes the departments mandate, in this case postal services while the department decides how best to go about fulfilling that mandate (delivering post).
Granted, you cant corportise everything, but it is ideal for a lot of pay per use government services that suffer from bureaucracy, such as postal services, state power/water providers and so forth. I'd never suggest corporatising health care or the military.
- Yes. A gun is a tool, much like a hammer. Both can be used to do something horrible, but it is the person using it that makes that decision.
No, a gun is a weapon, it has no other purpose then to inflict harm. It was developed with the express purpose of inflicting harm.
This makes it very different to a knife, axe or hammer which were developed as tools to perform specific jobs then retrofitted into a weapon.
Whilst a society believes that guns are not weapons, worse yet maintains the delusions that these weapons are mere tools despite having no other purpose then to inflict harm that a society will continue to suffer the problems of a dysfunctional gun culture such as high murder rates, high accident rates and frequent mass shootings.
Guns are weapons, end of story. Continue to beleive otherwise and guns will not be treated with the respect they deserve.
The problem with sales commissions is that sales guys never get their commissions reduced by the cost of additional support needed to fix the customer problems caused because they sales guys sold them features that don't exist.
This is what "Caveat Emptor" means. You cant trust salespeople. If you get taken for a ride by a new car salesman imagine how badly you'd get shafted by the tailors and fake gem salesmen of Thailand. I've pretty much learned not to listen to salesmen after a certain point. I bought a used car about six months back, here's how it went.
Me: Hi, I'm looking for a car, I saw you had an Astra for sale. Salesman: Yes, but I have this Honda I just got in. M: OK, I'll take a look. S:... M: Mind if I pop the bonnet/opens bonnet, looks for oil leaks S:... M: Mind if we start it up S:... / starts motor. M: / looks for vibration and other issues. S:.... M: Lets take it for a test drive S:... M: / tests gears S:... M:/tests steering S:... M:/tests CV joints S:.... M: Hold on, I'm going to test the brakes/does emergency stop. S:...
I think you get the picture. It's not that the salesman was silent, its the fact that I wasn't listening to a thing they said and tested the vehicle properly. After I was satisfied with the car, I started negotiating but did not commit until I did some research on the model, VIN, etc... "I.E. I told the guy I'd get back to him tomorrow".
Obviously, the salesman is going to direct me towards the vehicle he thinks he'll make the most profit from. I (the customer) have my own requirements but the two are not mutually exclusive. For example, the salesman directed me to another car, one I had not seen advertised. This is because the sooner a used car dealer gets rid of a vehicle, the more money they make. They dont have to advertise, insure or maintain it. The knock on effect of understanding this is that I, as the customer can use this knowledge bargain for a better price.
Car sales are an example of a solicited sale, you go to them because you want to buy a car. Unsolicited salesmen get told.
1) I'm not interested.
2) To fuck off.
3) as above, except with a sledge hammer.
I have zero tolerance for sales calls and door to door salesmen, however because I'm civil person, they get one chance to leave politely.
Or perhaps it means that you think that the other person is being irrationally hateful towards you.
I assume you're referring to my sig.
What it means is when someone refers to me (or anyone esle) as a "hater" they only do so because they lack the ability to rationally and reasonably de-construct my arguments, they simply wish to disagree with them and stop any additional thought on the matter, the exact opposite effect of offering a counterpoint to the points I raised.
If someone believes I am acting with spite or malice towards them, there are much better arguments to use then petty name calling, so once again my point stands.
BTW, not sure what the mod was thinking when they modded this flamebait. Off topic yes, flamebait no.
Let the free market succeed where the USPS only exists by monopoly.
Yep, without a low cost alternative to UPS, FedEx and DHL, prices will all of a sudden drop through the floor.
That was sarcasm in case you didn't get it. The invisible hand is only ever preparing to pull down your pants and give you a wedgie.
The USPS needs to get rid of it's bad, underutilised services and focus on it's core, money making units. Australia Post has managed to compete well with private couriers and are keeping up to date with technology as well as offering new services. Here lies the success of Aus Post, they diversified and now only 50% of their revenue comes from postal services, of the last 5 times I went into a post shop only 1 time was to post something. Why bother posting a cheque to the power company when I can pay it at the post shop (grandma still hasn't figured out how to pay online, but she can give the money to the clerk at the post shop), hell, what we used to call the post office is now the post shop because it's become more of a shop then an office.
If I want to send something across Australia in 24 hours with guaranteed delivery, I'll pay a courier to make sure it gets there on time. I have to do this with some documents and even data as 6 GB takes a long time to transmit but can be contained on 2 DVD's. But if I dont care how long it takes to get there and just want the cheapest option, I'll take Aus Post. I have to ask why the USPS didn't restructure like this years ago.
I've used Outlook for many years in corporate life, and I don't know *anyone* who uses it for more than calendar and email. I tried to use tasks and notes, but somehow no-one could be bothered with those. Even my last MS-only company used sharepoint for contacts, not exchange! (and a spreadsheet for non-company contacts).
I've known a lot of managers who use Tasks and Notes. These people literally live out of Outlook. I dread upgrading them because 5 minutes after I'm done, they will be on the phone complaining that $OBSCURE_FEATURE I've never heard of doesn't work in the latest version.
As for contacts, I've seen people using Exchange, MS Dynamics (CRM) and Scarepoint, they all suck in their own special way. I haven't seen an MS solution for contacts that didn't suck like a hoover.
But the benefit of Exchange is that everyone can collaborate easily (I hate using the word collaborate), The features of the calendar alone are worth it. GMail is the closest thing I've seen to Exchange but even Google doesn't have a product I can effectively run in-house and I'd love to replace Exchange. MS have been very, very smart about getting people into Exchange by making it dirt cheap (Small Business Server, even the full Standard server licenses are cheap).
So if you buy a plan from a telco and your phone gets stolen after a few weeks, you can just cancel the plan immediately at no charge and buy a new plan?
Somehow this seems unlikely.
I think you've misunderstood the GP.
The contract is for the service, the "free" (sarcastic air quotes) is not core to the contract, rather it's an addition. So if you lose the phone, you still have to pay the contract for the service and any MRO (Mobile Repayment Option) you have reaming despite not having the phone you're repaying. The telco is required to give you a second SIM card free of charge however.
What the GP said, is you can get a new contract (essentially an extension) which gives you another "free" phone.
This whole system is positively retarded, the free phone isn't free, rather you pay for it over time. Essentially you've bought the phone on a loan and have to repay that loan regardless of what happens to the phone. Further more it only serves to obfuscate the true cost the services the telco's provide.
I noticed you didn't actually technically retorn anything, just some hand waving.
Actually, he pointed out the problems you have are hardware based, not software based or are entirely imagined. The fact that you didn't know what sample rates are supported on Android proves you dont have a clue about Android.
You failed to retort anything he said, dismissing it and ignoring the fact that your few legitimate complaints are not software based.
The second talks about "user experience" and "feelings" which is bullshit. The author offers no explanation other then it "feels" slow. I doubt he bothered to even time what he was doing to prove there is a real lag, not just imagined lag. I have a Desire Z and Iphone 3GS (for work), Placing them side by side and opening the SMS application on each respective device the Android phone is consistently faster, it just doesn't have the transition animations of the Iphone. Same with the browser, phone, settings, mail et al. all open to a usable state faster then IOS.
You could have at least bought up something legitimate like the TouchWiz lag on early version of Samsungs TouchWiz interface but then you would have to admit
1) it's not a problem with Android.
2) it was fixed almost a year ago.
The TouchWiz lag was a real issue, especially for people who's carriers haven't put out any updates passed 2.2.1 (but again, that's a carrier issue, not an Android issue).
When you run an iOS app stuff like screen transitions get absolute priority over everything else. The app is basically frozen while the screen transitions in order to make it look slick.
This.
Application loading is actually slower on IOS then Android but most people dont notice it because of all the eye candy in the way.
I have a Desire Z (running Cyanogen Mod 7) and I carry an Iphone 3GS (4.3.5 IIRC) for work. Even something as simple as opening the SMS application takes longer on IOS, of course the lack of tranistion animation on the Android phone makes it look longer, but that sub-second delay is less then the screen transition animation time on the Iphone. Putting them side by side, the Android opens the SMS application to a usable state before the Iphone.
The other night, coming back from a bar carrying my Acer, I slipped stepping on a friends boat. I went down, one foot in the water, the other on my knee (torn ligaments and a cast now). Where was the Iconia? Sometime during my fall, I managed to carefully lay it on the deck. I don't even remember doing it. Body broken, tablet fine. Even subconsciously I love this tablet.
I also have an Iconia, despite what I normally say about Acer hardware (their laptops are flimsy as hell) the Iconia has an air of unbreakability around it and I beleive that if you were to accidentally drop it, the Iconia would suffer little damage. The trade off for this is that he Iconia is 600 grams which is to be expected with a mostly metal body.
He doesn't really talk about consoles being doomed per se. He talks about how tablets and smart phones are soon so powerful that they can render the same quality graphics that consoles can
This really says more about the quality of console graphics the the advancement of mobile phones and tablet graphics.
I've got an Acer Iconia, despite having a smaller ppi then my 22" Samsung monitor (1680x1050) but the graphics are the equivalent of 2002/03 era games. Even unmodified Half Life 2 looks better let alone something like Cinematic Mod or ARMA. This is simply because the graphics hardware really is the equivalent of 2002 era PC graphics cards, the same is literally true with consoles, they are utilising 2005 era PC hardware (Xbox 360 = ATI R520/PS3 = Nvidia 7800). It wont be long until phones reach that level of sophistication, they are advancing almost as fast as PC graphics hardware.
Lets not even start comparing it to my new 24" 1920x1200 IPS. That blows the socks off of every other monitor I've used.
He also says the technical limitations again push people to make fun and interesting games instead of just going for the graphics
Here I 100% agree with Lord British, I have BF3 on PC and it's beautiful, but it's an empty beauty, a shallow vain game that rewards time thrown against it, not good sportsmanship or skill. Even a noob gets to level 40 eventually just by being there.
BF3 is not drawing me in like a good game does. Not surprising that I've played more hours of Evil Genius or NOLF in the last week.
Microsoft's strategy in an alternate universe where large swaths of the Windows core are gpl2 or apache, every x86 whiteboxer has their own "Windows Distribution" and their primary leverage consists of the licensing requirements to ship Office out-of-box..
RMS went back in time to stop Microsoft before they could begin, but it went horribly horribly wrong, Microsoft sent their best man back in time to stop him...
Slashdot Mirror
To operate with that bank on-line, you need an Internet acc number (which is different to a normal account number), and at least a password. Additional secret question knowledge is required for 2 answers to set up a new transfer. Then, and only then is the SMS verification code needed. He must of been very slack to have made all that info available to the scammers.
Congrats to the bank to have picked it up. It's not the $45000 'raising a red flag' either. Once they rang me for confirmation because I sent a donation to a German software foundation - it was only $20.
I've had United Community shut down my card because it was used in a Thai ATM. Thailand is not an unusual destination for Australians (for those in other nations playing along). I rang them at my expense (OK, about A$0.5 a minute, but still) and they said they would not unlock the card even though I could verify I was in Thailand and still in possession of the card. For the rest of that trip I had to go into bank branches to withdraw money, with passport and all.
As a side effect, I learned there is a nice Thai lady who works at Siam Commercial Bank with the same birth date as me.
As a more permanent fix, I withdrew my funds out of United Community the day I got back and closed all of my accounts. I'm with NAB now, despite a lot of small complaints (mostly around their internet banking site and SFA branches open on a Saturday) they've performed to expectations. Also, NAB Gold is great for travelling and shopping overseas (0% currency conversion fee).
Given how much is being linked to a cellular number, I actually would support making number portability more difficult (in that securing a process almost always makes that process more difficult/complex).
Something like SIM registration seems like it would go a long way toward combating this sort of hijacking, and should be relatively easy to implement.
We've go the same problem as with the banks. After banks and speed cameras, telco's are the favourite targets of the sensationalist bollocks brigade.
Any move to make it more secure will be met with scorn and venom from anyone who doesn't want to understand why it's happening. Right between signing up for the Vodafail page and complaining about how bad their teclo is.
This just goes to show that you should always have additional protections in place for protecting accounts (in this case, a mobile number) that can be used to control, secure, or otherwise materially modify other important accounts.
I agree, but the average person does not unfortunately.
The average person will view this as the bank trying to get in the way of them and their money. In Australia there will be huge sensationalised reports about the EVIL BANKS stealing from hard working Aussie battlers and keeping all that dastardly profit for themselves where as in reality, the new security measures cost more to implement but the real problem is Bazza from Frankston is too dumb and lazy to learn how to keep his cash secure.
So the system we have is probably the best system we're going to get. Its the worst the dumbest will put up with. They dont care about their own security, hence the bank has to protect them.
In either case, the fraud victim will get their money back, telco's will make it harder to port numbers over. As far as attacks go, this one takes a lot of effort and some money to start. Futher more, it requires the hacker to live in Australia and register their SIM card in Oz (which you require photo ID to buy, well in theory anyway). So to find the attackers, they need to locate the SIM (telco's will turn that over without question) then ask the Telco who bought the SIM and what ID they used.
No doubt. I was in CompUSA yesterday looking at a $1600 Alienware and couldn't believe how awful the display looked compared to the row of 500 dollar tablets the next aisle over. It was obscene.
It was Alienware.
Overpriced crap is to be expected.
I just bought a 24" Dell IPS (1920x1200) and it blows my tablet away, which to be fair, has a very nice screen in it's own right. Even my Asus' laptop screen is on par and I'm pretty sure that's a TN LED (Asus U30SD, A$1150).
The crappiest display I own at the moment is an old Samsung 22" monitor that I just replaced with the 24" Dell and the Samsung is still a damn good monitor despite it's age.
He's the 99% I guess.
I'm an amateur photographer. I upgraded from a Core 2 Duo laptop which was working GREAT (and I still use) to a Core i5... gasp! DESKTOP! Because I like having a 27" monitor and I use the 8GB of RAM and all 4 cores of my CPU to process photos. And of course, USB ports and SD card readers are nice too.
So, thanks for your suggestions iPad fanboys. I'll stick with my desktop machine for the next few years.
Sorry to break this to you, but he's the 1%. :)
I still have a desktop for gaming. The receptionists and bookkeepers get desktops because they are cheaper and in the case of accounting, does not permit them to easily take data out of the building like a laptop does. The CAD/GIS team use high end desktops because you simply cant get good graphics performance out of laptop, especially onto 2 x 30" monitors, even with SSD's (the old GIS desktops used 10K RPM Raptors). Developers constantly complain their laptops aren't fast enough, OK, developers just constantly complain. Despite most people having laptops, the desktop is not dying, not by a long shot.
The same is true for tablets vs laptops. The laptop is not dying, the tablet will either become an acompanyment to the laptop (much like the smartphone) or it will go away. For portability, I have a 13" laptop and a 10" Android tablet, the Android tablet is fine for a bit of web browsing, watching a movie or typing out a few emails. Its main advantage is that it's fast to turn on. I can log into Nagios at 11 PM and suppress an alerts then deal with in in the morning, but if I'm going to do anything remotely time consuming, such as fixing the cause of that Nagios alert, I'll suck up the 30 seconds it takes my lappy to boot as I'll save that time in a mere 3 or 4 minutes by having a proper KB and mouse as well as a machine powerful enough to do the job quickly.
I have now made over A$950 (US$969) by betting people who thought they could go ipad only that they cant for two weeks. Most broke down in 2 days, the longest lasted 4 days before I caught him and the latest one, 86 minutes before using his laptop (thought he could get away with using his laptop from home, not from this Sysadmin, fastest A$150 I've earned).
"Now if they can only re-animate Raymond Burr."
Hire Rosie O'Donnell, trim the excess body hair, and have at it.
They lost 3 people the last time they tried.
By the same token,
Why? Specifically why shouldn't a government department run at a positive balance. Why must it be subsidised via tax revenue. Like Australia Post and many other Australian government services that are pay per use, it doesn't have to make more then $0.01 of profit.
Taxes are for services that cant support themselves or have a net cost to society if they are forced to, As an Australian who has seen the woeful state of the US medical system, there are better things the US can spend it's tax dollars on if the postal service can support itself.
I absolutely agree, but when having that system become self sustaining does not reduce the social benefits there really is no reason not to.
If we are talking about medical services, I can agree 100%, if Australia did not have public health care, it would cost more then health care does in the US, instead I am paying, via tax, 10-20% of what US employers pay private insurers for an employee on my wage.
The logic is to allow a government department to modernise itself. The process is called corporatisation and is designed to allow departments to become more efficient by giving them discretion over their own activities. The department becomes a business under it's own right whilst the Government becomes the (only) shareholder. Ergo, the government writes the departments mandate, in this case postal services while the department decides how best to go about fulfilling that mandate (delivering post).
Granted, you cant corportise everything, but it is ideal for a lot of pay per use government services that suffer from bureaucracy, such as postal services, state power/water providers and so forth. I'd never suggest corporatising health care or the military.
No, a gun is a weapon, it has no other purpose then to inflict harm. It was developed with the express purpose of inflicting harm.
This makes it very different to a knife, axe or hammer which were developed as tools to perform specific jobs then retrofitted into a weapon.
Whilst a society believes that guns are not weapons, worse yet maintains the delusions that these weapons are mere tools despite having no other purpose then to inflict harm that a society will continue to suffer the problems of a dysfunctional gun culture such as high murder rates, high accident rates and frequent mass shootings.
Guns are weapons, end of story. Continue to beleive otherwise and guns will not be treated with the respect they deserve.
This is what "Caveat Emptor" means. You cant trust salespeople. If you get taken for a ride by a new car salesman imagine how badly you'd get shafted by the tailors and fake gem salesmen of Thailand. I've pretty much learned not to listen to salesmen after a certain point. I bought a used car about six months back, here's how it went.
... /opens bonnet, looks for oil leaks ... ... / starts motor. .... ... ... /tests steering ... /tests CV joints .... /does emergency stop. ...
Me: Hi, I'm looking for a car, I saw you had an Astra for sale.
Salesman: Yes, but I have this Honda I just got in.
M: OK, I'll take a look.
S:
M: Mind if I pop the bonnet
S:
M: Mind if we start it up
S:
M: / looks for vibration and other issues.
S:
M: Lets take it for a test drive
S:
M: / tests gears
S:
M:
S:
M:
S:
M: Hold on, I'm going to test the brakes
S:
I think you get the picture. It's not that the salesman was silent, its the fact that I wasn't listening to a thing they said and tested the vehicle properly. After I was satisfied with the car, I started negotiating but did not commit until I did some research on the model, VIN, etc... "I.E. I told the guy I'd get back to him tomorrow".
Obviously, the salesman is going to direct me towards the vehicle he thinks he'll make the most profit from. I (the customer) have my own requirements but the two are not mutually exclusive. For example, the salesman directed me to another car, one I had not seen advertised. This is because the sooner a used car dealer gets rid of a vehicle, the more money they make. They dont have to advertise, insure or maintain it. The knock on effect of understanding this is that I, as the customer can use this knowledge bargain for a better price.
Car sales are an example of a solicited sale, you go to them because you want to buy a car. Unsolicited salesmen get told.
1) I'm not interested.
2) To fuck off.
3) as above, except with a sledge hammer.
I have zero tolerance for sales calls and door to door salesmen, however because I'm civil person, they get one chance to leave politely.
Or perhaps it means that you think that the other person is being irrationally hateful towards you.
I assume you're referring to my sig.
What it means is when someone refers to me (or anyone esle) as a "hater" they only do so because they lack the ability to rationally and reasonably de-construct my arguments, they simply wish to disagree with them and stop any additional thought on the matter, the exact opposite effect of offering a counterpoint to the points I raised.
If someone believes I am acting with spite or malice towards them, there are much better arguments to use then petty name calling, so once again my point stands.
BTW, not sure what the mod was thinking when they modded this flamebait. Off topic yes, flamebait no.
Great, I'm going to have to buy another box of Ice Cream Sandwiches on the way home.
Typical that Google names this release after something I like.
Let the free market succeed where the USPS only exists by monopoly.
Yep, without a low cost alternative to UPS, FedEx and DHL, prices will all of a sudden drop through the floor.
That was sarcasm in case you didn't get it. The invisible hand is only ever preparing to pull down your pants and give you a wedgie.
The USPS needs to get rid of it's bad, underutilised services and focus on it's core, money making units. Australia Post has managed to compete well with private couriers and are keeping up to date with technology as well as offering new services. Here lies the success of Aus Post, they diversified and now only 50% of their revenue comes from postal services, of the last 5 times I went into a post shop only 1 time was to post something. Why bother posting a cheque to the power company when I can pay it at the post shop (grandma still hasn't figured out how to pay online, but she can give the money to the clerk at the post shop), hell, what we used to call the post office is now the post shop because it's become more of a shop then an office.
If I want to send something across Australia in 24 hours with guaranteed delivery, I'll pay a courier to make sure it gets there on time. I have to do this with some documents and even data as 6 GB takes a long time to transmit but can be contained on 2 DVD's. But if I dont care how long it takes to get there and just want the cheapest option, I'll take Aus Post. I have to ask why the USPS didn't restructure like this years ago.
I've known a lot of managers who use Tasks and Notes. These people literally live out of Outlook. I dread upgrading them because 5 minutes after I'm done, they will be on the phone complaining that $OBSCURE_FEATURE I've never heard of doesn't work in the latest version.
As for contacts, I've seen people using Exchange, MS Dynamics (CRM) and Scarepoint, they all suck in their own special way. I haven't seen an MS solution for contacts that didn't suck like a hoover.
But the benefit of Exchange is that everyone can collaborate easily (I hate using the word collaborate), The features of the calendar alone are worth it. GMail is the closest thing I've seen to Exchange but even Google doesn't have a product I can effectively run in-house and I'd love to replace Exchange. MS have been very, very smart about getting people into Exchange by making it dirt cheap (Small Business Server, even the full Standard server licenses are cheap).
Like which decent tablet is significantly cheaper than an iPad?
Asus Transformer,
Toshiba Thrive,
Acer Iconia.
That list is growing too.
Don't come the raw prawn mate. Ozzie auto correct is beaut, best auto correct in the world. Now have a tinny and stop yammering on like a dingbat.
You can do this in OZ too, in fact you can import them from Belgium if you really wanted to :)
But a lot of Aussies are idiots that think their contact phone is "free".
What do you mean by "if you were a criminal".
I can walk into any shopping centre, find a phone repair stall and they'll do it for A$20. You'd have plenty of competitors.
So if you buy a plan from a telco and your phone gets stolen after a few weeks, you can just cancel the plan immediately at no charge and buy a new plan?
Somehow this seems unlikely.
I think you've misunderstood the GP.
The contract is for the service, the "free" (sarcastic air quotes) is not core to the contract, rather it's an addition. So if you lose the phone, you still have to pay the contract for the service and any MRO (Mobile Repayment Option) you have reaming despite not having the phone you're repaying. The telco is required to give you a second SIM card free of charge however.
What the GP said, is you can get a new contract (essentially an extension) which gives you another "free" phone.
This whole system is positively retarded, the free phone isn't free, rather you pay for it over time. Essentially you've bought the phone on a loan and have to repay that loan regardless of what happens to the phone. Further more it only serves to obfuscate the true cost the services the telco's provide.
How will Apple survive now they no longer have anyone to tell them which one of the competitors ideas to steal.
Sorry, I mean which one of the competitors ideas to "innovate(TM)"
Ok, I'll bite on the bait.
A Samsung fan is a device consisting of several oscillating blades to direct air flow made by Samsung.
I noticed you didn't actually technically retorn anything, just some hand waving.
Actually, he pointed out the problems you have are hardware based, not software based or are entirely imagined. The fact that you didn't know what sample rates are supported on Android proves you dont have a clue about Android.
You failed to retort anything he said, dismissing it and ignoring the fact that your few legitimate complaints are not software based.
Guess you're not as picky as many others then: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914 and http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=20278
The first one is over 18 months old.
The second talks about "user experience" and "feelings" which is bullshit. The author offers no explanation other then it "feels" slow. I doubt he bothered to even time what he was doing to prove there is a real lag, not just imagined lag. I have a Desire Z and Iphone 3GS (for work), Placing them side by side and opening the SMS application on each respective device the Android phone is consistently faster, it just doesn't have the transition animations of the Iphone. Same with the browser, phone, settings, mail et al. all open to a usable state faster then IOS.
You could have at least bought up something legitimate like the TouchWiz lag on early version of Samsungs TouchWiz interface but then you would have to admit
1) it's not a problem with Android.
2) it was fixed almost a year ago.
The TouchWiz lag was a real issue, especially for people who's carriers haven't put out any updates passed 2.2.1 (but again, that's a carrier issue, not an Android issue).
This.
Application loading is actually slower on IOS then Android but most people dont notice it because of all the eye candy in the way.
I have a Desire Z (running Cyanogen Mod 7) and I carry an Iphone 3GS (4.3.5 IIRC) for work. Even something as simple as opening the SMS application takes longer on IOS, of course the lack of tranistion animation on the Android phone makes it look longer, but that sub-second delay is less then the screen transition animation time on the Iphone. Putting them side by side, the Android opens the SMS application to a usable state before the Iphone.
The other night, coming back from a bar carrying my Acer, I slipped stepping on a friends boat. I went down, one foot in the water, the other on my knee (torn ligaments and a cast now). Where was the Iconia? Sometime during my fall, I managed to carefully lay it on the deck. I don't even remember doing it. Body broken, tablet fine. Even subconsciously I love this tablet.
I also have an Iconia, despite what I normally say about Acer hardware (their laptops are flimsy as hell) the Iconia has an air of unbreakability around it and I beleive that if you were to accidentally drop it, the Iconia would suffer little damage. The trade off for this is that he Iconia is 600 grams which is to be expected with a mostly metal body.
This really says more about the quality of console graphics the the advancement of mobile phones and tablet graphics.
I've got an Acer Iconia, despite having a smaller ppi then my 22" Samsung monitor (1680x1050) but the graphics are the equivalent of 2002/03 era games. Even unmodified Half Life 2 looks better let alone something like Cinematic Mod or ARMA. This is simply because the graphics hardware really is the equivalent of 2002 era PC graphics cards, the same is literally true with consoles, they are utilising 2005 era PC hardware (Xbox 360 = ATI R520/PS3 = Nvidia 7800). It wont be long until phones reach that level of sophistication, they are advancing almost as fast as PC graphics hardware.
Lets not even start comparing it to my new 24" 1920x1200 IPS. That blows the socks off of every other monitor I've used.
He also says the technical limitations again push people to make fun and interesting games instead of just going for the graphics
Here I 100% agree with Lord British, I have BF3 on PC and it's beautiful, but it's an empty beauty, a shallow vain game that rewards time thrown against it, not good sportsmanship or skill. Even a noob gets to level 40 eventually just by being there.
BF3 is not drawing me in like a good game does. Not surprising that I've played more hours of Evil Genius or NOLF in the last week.
Microsoft's strategy in an alternate universe where large swaths of the Windows core are gpl2 or apache, every x86 whiteboxer has their own "Windows Distribution" and their primary leverage consists of the licensing requirements to ship Office out-of-box..
RMS went back in time to stop Microsoft before they could begin, but it went horribly horribly wrong, Microsoft sent their best man back in time to stop him...
Balmer still wasn't good enough.