Which, in turn, is there for the store's protection, not the cardholder's. Seeing any signature on the back of a card is enough of a "good faith" effort on the store's part to ensure that the Cardholder's Agreement has been signed. Hence, if there's a chargeback, the store isn't liable for the loss. The purchaser is, and the the credit card company is on the hook for getting that money back. That's why the store never cares if you sign it right in front of them.
You're both right in my opinion. A specific embedded-type device should have much, much less bugs than an entire OS. Keep in mind this article talks about all software. I think an application is right in the middle of an embedded microcode and an OS - it's complicated, but with limited goals and uses.
Just today, I got mad at the iPod interface in my car because it crapped out, along with my cell phone's poker program because it lost some data. But I couldn't get too mad, because I'm a software developer myself, and I know that the guys that programmed those things are probably like me - they'd love to write bug-free software, but it's just not happening. We spend much more time writing software than testing it (and that's what's expected). Hell, someone found a bug in my code today that I'm going to have to patch tomorrow.
So the OP has a valid point - until we really start treating software as more of a finished product, and devoting appropriate resources to testing, evaluation and QA, we're going to let buggy code get out to users. If you have something like an auto-update feature, then that makes it a bit more acceptable, but it doesn't solve the root issue.
I thought that everyone was prepared for this - is it not still legal, or at least impossible to prosecute, using your credit card to fund a third-party online payment site like Neteller, and then pointing "gaming" site to your Neteller account? The credit card company then has deniable plausability by never knowing where your Neteller money goes/comes from.
Well yeah, but they're still technically correct. You enter the user's email address, which then gets sent to VaporStream's servers. They send you back a unique ID, which then gets sent along with your message. So the message and header are kept separate on transmission, and could be on seperate physical servers. That ID is still used to get the message to the recipiant, but the data never appears "together" on a network stream.
Three years ago, if you went to the store and dropped $200 or whatever on a PS2, and took it home and plugged it in, what kind of gaming experience would you get? None. You'd get a red screen saying "Please insert a PS2 disc". It didn't seem so ridiculous then, but you had to pay for a certain 'base' product, and then once you have that framework, you then buy the content you want. By doing that, you're not 'wasting' money on shit you don't want.
The exact same thing is happening here except that instead of hardware, it's software. The base code for GT took a lot more man-hours than the car models, and presumably, because of that, it has more worth/value. So you buy the code that can handle the content, and buy the content right after you start it. The same as it's always been with consoles (save for Nintendo products). And if the whole free-market thing works as well as it should, the base code should be cheaper, and after you buy some content, it shouldn't cost you any more that it would have the other way.
I'll be watching this thread closely because there really aren't any great options that I know about. I got a Dell laptop a few months ago and decided since I have a Mac on the network with a 250GB drive attached, I should finally have a proper backup system.
(the Mac comment is also here to let you know that I've been living the last year without having to deal with Windows at home - so I'm used to things 'just working' for the most part)
The first hurdle? XP doesn't even have a backup utility by default. Not XP Home anyway. But it *is* on the XP Home disc - you just have to install it yourself by running NTBkSetup.exe or something ridiculous.
So fine, I get that installed. I then make a Scheduled Task to run once a week. That takes a while to sort out, since you need to have a nonempty password to run a 'privledged' task such as one that uses a network connection. Fine. I make sure to check every option that allows this task to run, including "Wake this computer to run this task".
I put my laptop to sleep every night, so you would expect a backup once a week. As of now, my last backup was on 5/9/06.
So, like the submitter, if anyone knows of something for Windows (why are there so many "get a Mac" comments, let alone "Linux!"?) that is easy (c'mon, backups shouldn't be hard), just post it. Some of us will even pay for the damn software.
Doesn't just seem a little weird that Microsoft is even engaged in an issue concerning playing media? I just seems to me that an operating system should handle memory and program control.
This means that even if you have an HD-DVD disc, an HD-DVD player, a video card that has the right code to process HD-DVD content, and a CPU/GPU powerful enough to handle the type of processing involved, enough memory in the computer, and a monitor capable of displaying HD, you still won't be able to watch an HD-DVD. Why the hell is Microsoft even engaged in this?
I guess I do know the answer, but c'mon, can't the video card be device that controls validation/DRM? Not being able to play valid HD-DVDs, even with all the above equipment, is not a feature of an OS. It should be considered a bug, and a very big one at that.
For what it's worth, that article doesn't mention the speed of the strike, only the acceleration - although 700ns is pretty quick, it doesn't mean it's moving fast if it's only moving 1e-9 meters. Last I heard, jellyfish strike a 2 m/s. Of course, that was in 9th grade biology, and my teacher was crazy as a loon...
Well yeah, that works for some. My original post had my mileage to work (20 miles, in a uniform that was basically a tuxedo without the jacket), so that wasn't an option.
On the 'Security Now!' podcast I listen to, the expert guy mentioned that although in theory each bit added to a key would double the effectiveness of it, it only adds about 9% to the difficulty due to the algorithms used. So a 128-bit key is about 1.09^64 = 248 times harder to break then a 64-bit key.
I would agree that giving a teen a car will probably result in a lack of respect for the car, but saying you should *never* give a teen a car is wrong in my opinion. How else was I supposed to get to work without a car? I wanted to have fun in high school, which means I needed to get a job. I worked to pay the insurance and gas for the thing, and kept the extra for fun. And yes, I was a little reckless - I got in an accident with it, which caused a jump in the insurance as well as a nice $2,000 repair bill. But I was able to pay it off by working. Maybe you're referring to giving a kid a car, plus paying all expenses, but even then, as long as the kid faces reprecussions for accidents/speeding tickets, which I'm sure they would, what's wrong with trusting your teen to respect their property and their money?
As another poster talked about the efficiency thing, I'd like to make a quick comment about the spark/gasoline thing -- this company is claiming that they are creating energy, not deriving it from something else.
Gasoline gets its power from petroleum, which comes from organic matter, which ultimately gets its energy from the sun (including animals - at some point down the food chain it's going to get to herbivores eating plants). In fact, aside from geothermal and geomagnetic energy (which ultimately comes from gravity forming this planet) and nuclear power plants, *all* the energy on this earth comes from the sun. Gasoline is just a very convienent way of storing this energy for later use.
You probably know all this, I just wanted to point out that what this company is claiming is very different from saying they can extract energy from some 'undervalued' source. This is really akin to saying you can create matter from nothingness (seeing as E=mc^2 and all) - a very bold claim that will very likely fail.
I just picked up a Samsunb ML-2010 for $60 at Best Buy. It's mono (like you, I also have a color inkjet I can use if I need color), but c'mon, $60! And no rebate forms to fill out - the price is $60 at the register. It's light on features, but it does have a toner saver option, so an $80 toner cartridge gets you 5,000 pages. The toner that comes with it is rated for 1,000 pages with the 40% "Toner Saver" option turned off.
That might not be an option. I just got an email from my boss today saying I need to read up on ISO compliance since we're going to become an ISO9000 company. The reason is because we do contract work for the government, and we're trying to get some contracts that are only available to ISO9000-compliant companies. So the submitter may be in a similar situation.
As an aside, I'm really glad to see this article. I plan on bookmarking it and printing out the good comments to show to my boss...
FWIW, it's possible (and probable) that they weren't really sharing music on your LAN. iTunes uses Bonjour, which allows zero-configuration sharing. I honestly don't have the technical aptitude to tell you how it works, but I do know it's network-independent. For example, my wireless LAN is encrypted at home, and yet I see "(name)'s LimeWire Tunes" for neighbors who are not on my network (MAC filtering... etc.). And by default, LimeWire will create an iTunes shared playlist if you have iTunes installed. So, the sharing was probably completely accidental.
Wrapping metal around it certainly won't make it easier to read, but it is limited in it's ability to block signals because it's not grounded. Electric fields will still be free to pass through the mesh. Perhaps we should all just get grounding shoe straps....
---
And Joel Androphy, partner at Houston-based law firm Berg & Androphy, said that if a defendant is deceased, civil claimants can't seek punitive damages. Any civil lawsuits would have to be limited to compensatory damages, or those losses that were actually incurred by an individual, he said.
---
For the sake of completeness, even though you probably already know this, 3-digit 'interstates' have another pattern - if the first digit is even, it connects to its namesake twice - meaning it's an alternate route or a beltway (695 is Baltimore's beltway, and the 895 tunnel can be used if the 95 tunnel is backed up), whereas an odd-number means it connects once so it's a spur - usually to a popular destination (using Baltimore as an example again, 395 goes right into downtown, and 195 takes you to BWI airport).
On the east coast there's a fair number of small bridges going over creeks and rivers, but yeah, there's no way that's a correct figure. Maybe if they count overpasses, then sure. We have a few of those every mile in between Baltimore and DC, due to the relativly high population density, and the fact it's usually trivial to build them since it's hilly around here. And I'm sure out in the midwest this number drops a lot so it could even out.
For those who don't feel like fiddling with msconfig, I use Startup Mechanic. It's a free program that detects all startup items, and also has a database of what each item is, so you can find out if it's safe to uninstall. It also runs with a *very* small footprint, and monitors msconfig's files, so whenever you install something like Quicktime, it will let you know that it just tried to add a startup item (you can chooose Yes/No for the change to take place).
Have you never seen a company cut prices for customers?
Only if a competitor does so first
Oh, that clears it up. That means that no company is ever the first in its industry to cut prices, so no company has ever cut prices. Ever. I don't think so.
You're assuming competition where there is none.
I'll agree that there's little competition, but it's still there. I have several broadband options in my area (Comast, Verizon, Earthlink, HughesNet...), and I doubt I'm alone.
Slashdot Mirror
Which, in turn, is there for the store's protection, not the cardholder's. Seeing any signature on the back of a card is enough of a "good faith" effort on the store's part to ensure that the Cardholder's Agreement has been signed. Hence, if there's a chargeback, the store isn't liable for the loss. The purchaser is, and the the credit card company is on the hook for getting that money back. That's why the store never cares if you sign it right in front of them.
Just today, I got mad at the iPod interface in my car because it crapped out, along with my cell phone's poker program because it lost some data. But I couldn't get too mad, because I'm a software developer myself, and I know that the guys that programmed those things are probably like me - they'd love to write bug-free software, but it's just not happening. We spend much more time writing software than testing it (and that's what's expected). Hell, someone found a bug in my code today that I'm going to have to patch tomorrow.
So the OP has a valid point - until we really start treating software as more of a finished product, and devoting appropriate resources to testing, evaluation and QA, we're going to let buggy code get out to users. If you have something like an auto-update feature, then that makes it a bit more acceptable, but it doesn't solve the root issue.
I thought that everyone was prepared for this - is it not still legal, or at least impossible to prosecute, using your credit card to fund a third-party online payment site like Neteller, and then pointing "gaming" site to your Neteller account? The credit card company then has deniable plausability by never knowing where your Neteller money goes/comes from.
Well yeah, but they're still technically correct. You enter the user's email address, which then gets sent to VaporStream's servers. They send you back a unique ID, which then gets sent along with your message. So the message and header are kept separate on transmission, and could be on seperate physical servers. That ID is still used to get the message to the recipiant, but the data never appears "together" on a network stream.
Three years ago, if you went to the store and dropped $200 or whatever on a PS2, and took it home and plugged it in, what kind of gaming experience would you get? None. You'd get a red screen saying "Please insert a PS2 disc". It didn't seem so ridiculous then, but you had to pay for a certain 'base' product, and then once you have that framework, you then buy the content you want. By doing that, you're not 'wasting' money on shit you don't want.
The exact same thing is happening here except that instead of hardware, it's software. The base code for GT took a lot more man-hours than the car models, and presumably, because of that, it has more worth/value. So you buy the code that can handle the content, and buy the content right after you start it. The same as it's always been with consoles (save for Nintendo products). And if the whole free-market thing works as well as it should, the base code should be cheaper, and after you buy some content, it shouldn't cost you any more that it would have the other way.
The first hurdle? XP doesn't even have a backup utility by default. Not XP Home anyway. But it *is* on the XP Home disc - you just have to install it yourself by running NTBkSetup.exe or something ridiculous.
So fine, I get that installed. I then make a Scheduled Task to run once a week. That takes a while to sort out, since you need to have a nonempty password to run a 'privledged' task such as one that uses a network connection. Fine. I make sure to check every option that allows this task to run, including "Wake this computer to run this task".
I put my laptop to sleep every night, so you would expect a backup once a week. As of now, my last backup was on 5/9/06.
So, like the submitter, if anyone knows of something for Windows (why are there so many "get a Mac" comments, let alone "Linux!"?) that is easy (c'mon, backups shouldn't be hard), just post it. Some of us will even pay for the damn software.
1 Ceres article on Wikipedia
Well, if we're bringing history into it, I feel obligated to mention that we've lost planets before, as mentioned in the MSNBC article, and here:
ahref=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Ceresrel=url2 html-5208http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Ceres >
This means that even if you have an HD-DVD disc, an HD-DVD player, a video card that has the right code to process HD-DVD content, and a CPU/GPU powerful enough to handle the type of processing involved, enough memory in the computer, and a monitor capable of displaying HD, you still won't be able to watch an HD-DVD. Why the hell is Microsoft even engaged in this?
I guess I do know the answer, but c'mon, can't the video card be device that controls validation/DRM? Not being able to play valid HD-DVDs, even with all the above equipment, is not a feature of an OS. It should be considered a bug, and a very big one at that.
For what it's worth, that article doesn't mention the speed of the strike, only the acceleration - although 700ns is pretty quick, it doesn't mean it's moving fast if it's only moving 1e-9 meters. Last I heard, jellyfish strike a 2 m/s. Of course, that was in 9th grade biology, and my teacher was crazy as a loon...
Well yeah, that works for some. My original post had my mileage to work (20 miles, in a uniform that was basically a tuxedo without the jacket), so that wasn't an option.
On the 'Security Now!' podcast I listen to, the expert guy mentioned that although in theory each bit added to a key would double the effectiveness of it, it only adds about 9% to the difficulty due to the algorithms used. So a 128-bit key is about 1.09^64 = 248 times harder to break then a 64-bit key.
I would agree that giving a teen a car will probably result in a lack of respect for the car, but saying you should *never* give a teen a car is wrong in my opinion. How else was I supposed to get to work without a car? I wanted to have fun in high school, which means I needed to get a job. I worked to pay the insurance and gas for the thing, and kept the extra for fun. And yes, I was a little reckless - I got in an accident with it, which caused a jump in the insurance as well as a nice $2,000 repair bill. But I was able to pay it off by working. Maybe you're referring to giving a kid a car, plus paying all expenses, but even then, as long as the kid faces reprecussions for accidents/speeding tickets, which I'm sure they would, what's wrong with trusting your teen to respect their property and their money?
Gasoline gets its power from petroleum, which comes from organic matter, which ultimately gets its energy from the sun (including animals - at some point down the food chain it's going to get to herbivores eating plants). In fact, aside from geothermal and geomagnetic energy (which ultimately comes from gravity forming this planet) and nuclear power plants, *all* the energy on this earth comes from the sun. Gasoline is just a very convienent way of storing this energy for later use.
You probably know all this, I just wanted to point out that what this company is claiming is very different from saying they can extract energy from some 'undervalued' source. This is really akin to saying you can create matter from nothingness (seeing as E=mc^2 and all) - a very bold claim that will very likely fail.
As well as most other categories (notice it's a 1st post, and his UID is 3 digits). Woosh!
I just picked up a Samsunb ML-2010 for $60 at Best Buy. It's mono (like you, I also have a color inkjet I can use if I need color), but c'mon, $60! And no rebate forms to fill out - the price is $60 at the register. It's light on features, but it does have a toner saver option, so an $80 toner cartridge gets you 5,000 pages. The toner that comes with it is rated for 1,000 pages with the 40% "Toner Saver" option turned off.
As an aside, I'm really glad to see this article. I plan on bookmarking it and printing out the good comments to show to my boss...
FWIW, it's possible (and probable) that they weren't really sharing music on your LAN. iTunes uses Bonjour, which allows zero-configuration sharing. I honestly don't have the technical aptitude to tell you how it works, but I do know it's network-independent. For example, my wireless LAN is encrypted at home, and yet I see "(name)'s LimeWire Tunes" for neighbors who are not on my network (MAC filtering... etc.). And by default, LimeWire will create an iTunes shared playlist if you have iTunes installed. So, the sharing was probably completely accidental.
Wrapping metal around it certainly won't make it easier to read, but it is limited in it's ability to block signals because it's not grounded. Electric fields will still be free to pass through the mesh. Perhaps we should all just get grounding shoe straps....
---
And Joel Androphy, partner at Houston-based law firm Berg & Androphy, said that if a defendant is deceased, civil claimants can't seek punitive damages. Any civil lawsuits would have to be limited to compensatory damages, or those losses that were actually incurred by an individual, he said.
---
For the sake of completeness, even though you probably already know this, 3-digit 'interstates' have another pattern - if the first digit is even, it connects to its namesake twice - meaning it's an alternate route or a beltway (695 is Baltimore's beltway, and the 895 tunnel can be used if the 95 tunnel is backed up), whereas an odd-number means it connects once so it's a spur - usually to a popular destination (using Baltimore as an example again, 395 goes right into downtown, and 195 takes you to BWI airport).
On the east coast there's a fair number of small bridges going over creeks and rivers, but yeah, there's no way that's a correct figure. Maybe if they count overpasses, then sure. We have a few of those every mile in between Baltimore and DC, due to the relativly high population density, and the fact it's usually trivial to build them since it's hilly around here. And I'm sure out in the midwest this number drops a lot so it could even out.
For those who don't feel like fiddling with msconfig, I use Startup Mechanic. It's a free program that detects all startup items, and also has a database of what each item is, so you can find out if it's safe to uninstall. It also runs with a *very* small footprint, and monitors msconfig's files, so whenever you install something like Quicktime, it will let you know that it just tried to add a startup item (you can chooose Yes/No for the change to take place).
"For directions to the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston on 600 Atlantic Ave, Press 1.
For directions to the Federal Reserve Office in Windosr Locks, on 317 Ellatrasso Turnpike, press 2"
Only if a competitor does so first
Oh, that clears it up. That means that no company is ever the first in its industry to cut prices, so no company has ever cut prices. Ever. I don't think so.
You're assuming competition where there is none.
I'll agree that there's little competition, but it's still there. I have several broadband options in my area (Comast, Verizon, Earthlink, HughesNet...), and I doubt I'm alone.