Another addition to The List
J.D. Baldwin
I keep a running list of Software Whose Developers Need To Be Beaten
With Carbon Rods. Today's addition is those dumb fucks at "Erny."
(That's a rotting, BTW.) I spend a good chunk of last week flailing
around trying to get the proxy settings reset, both manually and
automatically, and having all of my "suggestions" ignored -- wait, no,
actually, it was a million times more frustrating than that: all of
my input was *mostly* ignored, not completely. Leaving me to try to
figure out just when it was and wasn't.
Today, I was informed by one of my cow-orkers that Erny "support" told
him that any resettings of these parameters are cheerfully ignored for
24 hours as long as certain files exist under one's "Documents and
Settings." Delete those, and the new settings will "take." This is
not documented anywhere with the product.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I remember when computers
were frustrating because they *did* exactly what you told them to.
That actually seems sort of quaint now.
--
_+_ From the catapult of |If anyone disagrees with any statement I make, I
_|70|___:)=}- J.D. Baldwin |am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also
\ / bal...@panix.com|to deny under oath that I ever made it. -T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
David P. Murphy
> I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I remember when computers
> were frustrating because they *did* exactly what you told them to.
> That actually seems sort of quaint now.
I feel obliged to point out that the computer was, in fact,
doing exactly what it was told. You were simply unaware
of everything it had been told to do.
ok
dpm
--
David P. Murphy http://www.myths.com/~dpm/
systems programmer ftp://ftp.myths.com
mailto:d...@myths.com (personal)
COGITO ERGO DISCLAMO mailto:Murphy...@emc.com (work)
Jay Mottern
$1...@reader2.panix.com:
(snip)
> I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I remember when computers
> were frustrating because they *did* exactly what you told them to.
> That actually seems sort of quaint now.
Indeed. I'm getting so, so tired of the digital versions of spastic
ostriches wrapped in cotton candy insisting that they know better than I.
I miss DOS 3.3.
-Jay
Coyote
> him that any resettings of these parameters are cheerfully ignored for
> 24 hours as long as certain files exist under one's "Documents and
> Settings."
Might I mention the wonderful way Jva2x (now that's an interesting rot... it
becomes Java 2.x?) handles tebhc cbyvpl updates... According to TFM,
"...changes will be applied at a random interval, but within 90 minutes" Of
course, you can change this, but first it will take up to 90 minutes for
THAT change to apply.
This does not help when you are desperately trying to get the damn day over
with.
-
No Sig, No Horse, No Moustache. Hail Eris!
-Yote.
Coyote
> Windows Update's polling method would be classified as a bug had it
> not been fully described in The Fine Manual.
>
Not WU... Domain GP. As in "you make certain changes to it and while they
take their good ol' time applying your lusers can't log on to the
workstations." This is a firehouse and certain workstations are just a _bit_
critical. Then again, I was making changes at the chief's request to prevent
certain users from logging on with their personal profiles at the dedicated
engine bay station to browse Teh Intarweb (as opposed to putting out burning
buildings.)
ObWindowsUpdate: SUS works reasonably well at that place when $ADMIN
remembers to approve the updates. And no, I'm not the default value of
$ADMIN.
-Yote.
Disclaimer: Due to feline interference, this post may contain typographical
errors.
David Haller
> I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I remember when computers
> were frustrating because they *did* exactly what you told them to.
And that is frustrating exactly why? And what else are computers there
for, pretty please?
-dnh, interpreting rm -f as "rm and *fsckit*"
--
Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way
before it is understood. -- BSD fortune file
TimC
> J.D. Baldwin <INVALID...@example.com.invalid> wrote:
>> I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I remember when computers
>> were frustrating because they *did* exactly what you told them to.
>
> And that is frustrating exactly why? And what else are computers there
> for, pretty please?
>
> -dnh, interpreting rm -f as "rm and *fsckit*"
I'm sure you've heard the instructions given to 1st year undergrads
upon entering the UNIX lab to read their mail?
'rm -rf ~ means "Read Mail; forced read of *my* mail"'
--
TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/
I'm not a procrastinator! I'm temporally challenged!
Kevin
>> were frustrating because they *did* exactly what you told them to.
>> That actually seems sort of quaint now.
>Indeed. I'm getting so, so tired of the digital versions of spastic
>ostriches wrapped in cotton candy insisting that they know better than I.
>I miss DOS 3.3.
Ah... the good old days. Where knowing how to use chkdsk/scandisk made you a
minor deity and programming in GW-Basic made you a god. Eagerly awaiting
floppy disks with *gasp* colorful EGA shareware games you ordered through
the mail. Browsing Computer Shopper magazines bigger than Sears catalogs.
Amazing your friends *whoo-eee* by demonstrating how you could download
files with your powerful 2400 baud modem from a local Bee Bee Ess.
The Wright Brothers might feel the same way about modern aviation. I wonder
what the world would be like if Bill Gates had stepped in front of a truck
before starting Windows?
Kevin
Robert Sneddon
<ke...@at.kevingoebel> writes
>
>Ah... the good old days. Where knowing how to use chkdsk/scandisk made you a
>minor deity
Knowest thou of the magical runes "G=C800:5", chela?
> and programming in GW-Basic made you a god.
Needed a quick-and-dirty program yesterday. Found a copy of God's
Wonderful Basic in the web, downloaded it (all 79 kilobytes of it) and
started spaghetting away, laughing madly. It works (running under W2kPro
on a 1600 Athlon), nobody else will ever see it and I'm a happy bunny.
--
Email me via nojay (at) nojay (dot) fsnet (dot) co (dot) uk
This address no longer accepts HTML posts.
Robert Sneddon
br...@fangorn.xs4all.nl
> Needed a quick-and-dirty program yesterday. Found a copy of God's
> Wonderful Basic in the web, downloaded it (all 79 kilobytes of it) and
> started spaghetting away, laughing madly. It works (running under W2kPro
> on a 1600 Athlon), nobody else will ever see it and I'm a happy bunny.
Famous last words. 6 months from now it'll be mission critical with you
as the sole maintainer...
Bram
TimC
> In article <289700pu8fda0l5ri...@4ax.com>, Kevin
> <ke...@at.kevingoebel> writes
>>
>>Ah... the good old days. Where knowing how to use chkdsk/scandisk made you a
>>minor deity
>
> Knowest thou of the magical runes "G=C800:5", chela?
Something to do with VGA?
Quite a fan of the ol' sys 64738 myself.
--
TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/
But if I ever have a child, I will certainly be naming it "Sun
Microsystems". -- Hipatia
Stig Morten Valstad
>
>I keep a running list of Software Whose Developers Need To Be Beaten
>With Carbon Rods. Today's addition is those dumb fucks at "Erny."
>(That's a rotting, BTW.)
I fully agree with you on their developers, but will also
include their sales department. I once bought something from
them - a product that was actually made by a competitor they
had bought out. First off they tried very hard to dissuade
me from buying this product because their own product could
do so much more and cost the same (except it couldn't read
the files belonging to the other product which was what I
needed, but never mind that). Anyway, *FREE* with my
purchase I got one month completely free access to their
permium content service gold something. I looked into it
and found it of no interest to me so I went and filled in
the web form saying that I was not in any way interested
in a continuing subscription to their service and got a
confirmation that my subscription was indeed cancelled. A
bit later I noticed that they had charged my card again as
if I was subscribing to their service. In the end I had to
threaten with legal action to get them to stop my subscription.
--
Stig M. Valstad
"The cartesian product is not necessarily your friend." coworker
Robert Sneddon
.au>, TimC <tcon...@no.astro.spam.swin.accepted.edu.here.au> writes
>Robert Sneddon (aka Bruce) was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:
>
>
>Something to do with VGA?
VGA? That's that high-res 640x480 screen thingy, ain't it? All sorts of
fancy-schmacy colors, eh? It'll never catch on. CGA is good enough for
me and it should be good enough for you, you young whippersnapper.
(Severely dated UI follows. Avert your eyes if you might find it still
useful)Vg'f gur OVBF ragel cbvag sbe gur Jrfgrea Qvtvgny VFN ZSZ naq EYY
uneq qvfx pbagebyyref gb ersbezng n qevir. Lbh trg gb vg ivn gur QBF
QROHT pbzznaq. Cbjreshy, pelcgvp naq qnatrebhf, cyhf n pbzznaq yvar
ragel gung ybbxf yvxr yvar abvfr. Jung'f abg gb ybir?
My walking frame? Over by the wheelchair ramp, thanks.
David Skinner
no...@nospam.demon.co.uk says...
> In article <289700pu8fda0l5ri...@4ax.com>, Kevin
> <ke...@at.kevingoebel> writes
> >
> >Ah... the good old days. Where knowing how to use chkdsk/scandisk made you a
> >minor deity
>
> Knowest thou of the magical runes "G=C800:5", chela?
Now *that* has awakened a memory or two of the second-most-unreliable IT
classroom at my first orkplace. Thanks, I think.
Robert Sneddon
Skinner <drsk...@ntlworldERASETHIS.com> writes
>> Knowest thou of the magical runes "G=C800:5", chela?
>
>Now *that* has awakened a memory or two of the second-most-unreliable IT
>classroom at my first orkplace. Thanks, I think.
Some things get burned into your brain and your fingers. Does the word
"Spinrite" evoke any similar memories?
Patrick R. Wade
>
>I'm loving this picture. (Presumably) the fire chief calling the shots
>over network administration. Firemen surfing the web on mission-
>critical terminals. Everything running in a W2K domain.
>
A fellow BOFH of mine has a good friend who is a developer for a company
that makes 911 databases; it's the tool that's supposed to allow the
call center droid to find out the route to your house. All of the above
applies, the DB server typically runs on one of the droids' wankstations,
they typically use the wankstation to surf for pr0n and typically have a
gator infestation, and on top of that the design is brain-damaged[0] in
such a way that failure or corruption of any node tends to propagate
throughout the local network. Moreover, FOAF's duties include on-call
upper-tier tech support; this typically translates to getting phone calls
in the early dark to explain to the droids how to reboot[1].
[0] Over the objections of FOAF and most of his cow-orkers. The Grand
Vision of The All-Wise Project Leader Is Not To Be Questioned, alas.
[1] The support policy they give to the droids is "if it doesn't work,
call tech support". This does lead to frequent calls over trivial
issues, but in final analysis is probably better than cleaning up
after the troubleshooting efforts of power lusers.
--
I've seen video of some loon hammering a nail into his own testicle.
Mind you, I've had days when that would seem like a reasonable
alternative to being a sysadmin.
- Lionel, in the Monastery
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, Toni Lassila <tlas...@cc.hut.fi> wrote:
> I'm loving this picture. (Presumably) the fire chief calling the
> shots over network administration. Firemen surfing the web on
I am trying to imagine what constitutes a "mission-critical
terminal[]" in a firehouse. Are the pumpers now being controlled by
Windoze boxes? Do the firemen have to wait four or five minutes for
their SCBAs to boot before going into the burning structure?
If all the computers go down, some paperwork might get delayed or
lost, but fire departments large and small tend to be organized for
maximum flexibility and efficiency, mainly because they have to take
their jobs seriously. Compare and contrast with your own workplace.
Peter Corlett
> [...] A bit later I noticed that they had charged my card again as if I
> was subscribing to their service. In the end I had to threaten with legal
> action to get them to stop my subscription.
Surely a monthly chargeback for such fraudulent charges would be more useful
in helping said companly lose their merchant account?
Joe Zeff
<no...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> (Severely dated UI follows. Avert your eyes if you might find it still
>useful)Vg'f gur OVBF ragel cbvag sbe gur Jrfgrea Qvtvgny VFN ZSZ naq EYY
>uneq qvfx pbagebyyref gb ersbezng n qevir.
I thought so. Yes, I remember doing that; I also remember
threatinging to do that to a friend's computer if he changed they way
*my* computer was set up *one* *more* *time.*
--
Joe Zeff
The Guy With the Sideburns
LART them all and let sysadmin sort it out!
http://www.lasfs.org http://home.earthlink.net/~sidebrnz
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
at 02:54 PM, Robert Sneddon <no...@nospam.demon.co.uk> said:
>It'll never catch on. CGA is good enough for me
Maybe, but the rest of the world is going to MCGA.
> (Severely dated UI follows. Avert your eyes if you might find it
>still useful)
ITYM do a Richard Corey if you might still find it useful. Bletch.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
Reply to domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+bspfh to contact me.
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
on 01/13/2004
at 04:16 AM, TimC
<tcon...@no.astro.spam.swin.accepted.edu.here.au> said:
>'rm -rf ~ means "Read Mail; forced read of *my* mail"'
So I was wrong when I told them that it meant read manual, real fast?
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
at 02:13 AM, Kevin <kevin at kevingoebel dot com> said:
>The Wright Brothers might feel the same way about modern aviation. I
>wonder what the world would be like if Bill Gates had stepped in
>front of a truck before starting Windows?
Steve Jobs would have been a lot wealthier. Xerox might have stayed in
the market. Various scientific/engineering workstations would
eventually have become available at consumer prices. OS/2 would have
taken a different course.
Or we'd all be using TopView :-(
LooseChanj
sensational claim that:
> You know that Gibson is still around, & now spouts clueless rubbish
> about network security?
There's still a network? I thought it was supposed to be swallowed up and
spit out by script kiddies using them new fangled raw sockets XP shipped
with.
--
This is a siggy | To E-mail, do note | This space is for rent
It's properly formatted | who you mean to reply-to | Inquire within if you
No person, none, care | and it will reach me | Would like your ad here
David P. Murphy
> Word has it that on Tue, 13 Jan 2004 02:13:52 -0600, in this august
> forum, Kevin <kevin at kevingoebel dot com> said:
>>The Wright Brothers might feel the same way about modern aviation. I wonder
>>what the world would be like if Bill Gates had stepped in front of a truck
>>before starting Windows?
> A lot fucking nicer.
But we wouldn't know it!
Which of course leads to the certain realization that this world *is* better
than $ALTERNATE_REALITY in which $BIGGER_DICK_THAN_GATES survived.
Graham Reed
> It's the BIOS entry point for the Western Digital ISA MFM and RLL
> hard disk controllers to reformat a drive.
*shudder*
Thanks. I really wanted to remember that. *twitch*twitch*twitch*
And entering in the tables of bad sectors from the list on top of the
drive. Hand-written. Barely legible.
My fault for un-EBG-13ing, anyway.
--
"Dead people don't spam."
TimC
> In article <slrn-0.9.7.4-15062-2...@hexane.ssi.swin.edu
> .au>, TimC <tcon...@no.astro.spam.swin.accepted.edu.here.au> writes
>>Robert Sneddon (aka Bruce) was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:
>>
>>> Knowest thou of the magical runes "G=C800:5", chela?
>>
>>Something to do with VGA?
>
> VGA? That's that high-res 640x480 screen thingy, ain't it? All sorts of
> fancy-schmacy colors, eh? It'll never catch on. CGA is good enough for
> me and it should be good enough for you, you young whippersnapper.
Apologies for making myself look like a young whippersnapper. I
actually meant EGA, but something went wrong between brain and
keyboard.
--
TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/
Love makes the world go 'round, with a little help from intrinsic
angular momentum.
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, Toni Lassila <tlas...@cc.hut.fi> wrote,
quoting me:
> >I am trying to imagine what constitutes a "mission-critical
> >terminal[]" in a firehouse. Are the pumpers now being controlled by
> >Windoze boxes? Do the firemen have to wait four or five minutes for
> >their SCBAs to boot before going into the burning structure?
>
Those would (theoretically) be useful for dispatchers, but it's
unlikely that a fire officer will be consulting such a database with
the terminal on his desk from the front right seat of a ladder truck.
Fire departments across the world are getting along just fine with a
legacy routing database known as a "map." It's highly portable and
crash-resistant, and it has the distinct advantage that if you make a
minor screw-up enroute to the scene, it won't automatically be
documented for the patient's lawyers to seize upon later.
Trying to invent a Mapquest "Driving Directions" program for 911
dispatcher use sounds to me like one of those Transcendently Bad Ideas
on multiple levels. It's possible that such a system *might*, once in
a thousand or so runs, get the crews on scene maybe ten or fifteen
seconds earlier, but if they start putting too much trust in it, it's
going to start killing people sooner or later, probably sooner.
> Surely there must be some fscking reason to have a whole network of
> computers in the firehouse? Or does it exist solely for the
> amusement of firefighters during the boring hours of the night when
> nothing is happening? Must the crutch and inconvenience of computer
> networks be introduced in every area possible?
There are all kinds of post-incident reports to be filed, and a
computerized form with lots of the information pre-populated is a nice
time-saver. But that's just the paperwork -- I fail to see how such a
thing could be "mission critical" in the sense in which I use that
term.
> Hell, maybe surfing for porn *is* the mission-critical task.
I wouldn't rule it out.
Steve VanDevender
> I keep a running list of Software Whose Developers Need To Be Beaten
> With Carbon Rods. Today's addition is those dumb fucks at "Erny."
They really ought to have competition named "Oreg."
--
Steve VanDevender "I ride the big iron" http://hexadecimal.uoregon.edu/
ste...@hexadecimal.uoregon.edu PGP keyprint 4AD7AF61F0B9DE87 522902969C0A7EE8
Little things break, circuitry burns / Time flies while my little world turns
Every day comes, every day goes / 100 years and nobody shows -- Happy Rhodes
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, Jasper Janssen <jas...@jjanssen.org> wrote:
> Or, *shudder*, the world in which both Steves were bought out from
> Apple before the end of the eighties, and where Apple, led by a man
> we never heard from before he became CEO there, name of Steve
> Ballmer, rules the world of computer hardware *and* software with an
> iron fist.
I believe that timeline was already described by one Pierre Boulle.
br...@fangorn.xs4all.nl
> My credit card company in a similar situation: "Chargeback? But sir, you
> authorised these people to charge your card!"
Let me guess: mastercard.nl, via some bank?
Bram
Aquarion
> Word has it that on Mon, 12 Jan 2004 16:08:35 +0000 (UTC), in this
> august forum, INVALID...@example.com.invalid (J.D. Baldwin) said:
>
>>I keep a running list of Software Whose Developers Need To Be Beaten
>>With Carbon Rods. Today's addition is those dumb fucks at "Erny."
>
Funny photo, which I can't find now, of the Erny HQ's front plaque
containing the logo, under which someone had stuck a post-it reading
"Buffering". Yet I digress.
The day I found anything using erny-tech useful again was the day that
the Helix initiative actually produced something that worked.
--
Aquarion, http://www.aquarionics.com, aqua...@suespammers.org
Morgan's First Law
To a first approximation, no deals close.
<http://www.edge.org/q2004/q04_print.html>
Peter Corlett
[...]
> The day I found anything using erny-tech useful again was the day that
> the Helix initiative actually produced something that worked.
I'd complain to the BBC about restricting their streams to Erny format,
except that I don't actually pay the TV Licence. Yes, this means I'm not
entitled to watch the video streams[0]. I *am* entitled to listen to the
radio streams, however.
I have a small list of things that the BBC need to do before I'd consider
buying a licence[1]. Hell freezing over seems more likely.
[0] I don't see this as being a problem. It combines the worst bits of
television (brain-numbing pap) with the worst kind of network for
latency- and bandwidth-sensitive data.
[1] Installing a DTTV transmitter in the area, alternatively they could put
something on analogue that isn't wall-to-wall dreck in an apparent
attempt to get people to switch to the digital service that's not
available in my area. Improving DAB bitrates to better than Long Wave.
Telling Erny where to stick their product and reinstating the Ogg
streams. I'm sure I'll think of more...
Peter Corlett
[...]
> My credit card company in a similar situation: "Chargeback? But sir, you
> authorised these people to charge your card!"
I didn't realise there was only one credit card issuer in the Netherlands
and/or you couldn't take your business elsewhere.
Last time I had a card issuer that wasn't taking the hint, sending the
payment of the disputed account along with a threat to sue[0] sharpened the
company's mind enough to actually bother to look into the transaction in
question.
This was, admittedly, the UK. Perhaps you don't have that option.
[0] And one that is clearly part of due process before issuing the claim,
rather than a mere bluff.
br...@fangorn.xs4all.nl
> On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 08:22:24 +0000 (UTC), br...@fangorn.xs4all.nl wrote:
>>Let me guess: mastercard.nl, via some bank?
:-)
> But yeah. Postbankcard,
Strike one
> which used to be a Eurocard when my parents first
> got one, was a Eurocard/Mastercard when I first got one,
Strike two
> and is now just a Mastercard.
And strike three
> So is that really their policy and not just clueless phone
> operator? *Damn*. All cards suck, but some suck more than others.
Yeah. The damn cards are practically given away for free, but their T&C
suck. I have one through my bank (SNS), but it's strictly backup to the
Visa (ANWB branded).
Visa works like a proper CC: you have a line of credit, you charge your
purchases against it, at the end of the month you get a bill detailing
the charges, and you have about a month to pay it (in full or in part,
your choice) so you get about a months' float on the balance. I haven't
had to contest charges with them, but from what
I hear of people who did, and from their manual, it seems fairly easy:
copy of the bill, highlight the contested charge, put in an explanation
and mail it to them. Deduct from payment, if it turns out you do have to
pay you can settle it when solved. Pretty decent phone support, too. No
charges for out-of-EU transactions, and only 1% or E2.50 (if I remember
correctly) fee on ATM withdrawls if you have a positive balance (easy to
create before you go on a trip).
Contrast this to MC: Unclear line of credit, automatically deducted from
your bank acount, first thing you'll know of the charges is your bank
statement, and good luck getting that money back from, well, whomever
you can eventually manage to interest in your woes. The bank doesn't
really care, and the Postbank doubly so, as it's MC's problem. MC
doesn't really give a shit as it's the bank's problem. Oh, and
per-transaction charges for out-of-EU transactions, and considerably
worse rates for getting cash from an ATM.
I'm thinking of ditching it altogether if I can find a good deal on
another card, maybe Amex.
And why the hell doesn't anyone offer an airline-branded (ie. frequent
flier miles accruing) CC in NL? Preferably Star Alliance
(UAL/Lufthansa/AC/...), but even KLM would do.
Bram
Eric Schwartz
> Contrast this to MC: Unclear line of credit, automatically deducted from
> your bank acount, first thing you'll know of the charges is your bank
> statement, and good luck getting that money back from, well, whomever
> you can eventually manage to interest in your woes.
FYI, in the US, there are plenty of real MasterCard credit cards that
operate the way you describe Visa operating in .nl. What you describe
is what is commonly called a 'check card', and yes, it does suck for
the reasons described above (except that I can check my bank statement
online at any time to see what charges have been made with it).
Both Visa and MC offer both types of cards here. Is is it that
MasterCard only does the one type, or perhaps just that the evolution
of the OP's account just happened to go that way?
-=Eric
--
Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million
typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare.
-- Blair Houghton.
Curious Gene
> Funny photo, which I can't find now, of the Erny HQ's front plaque
> containing the logo, under which someone had stuck a post-it reading
> "Buffering". Yet I digress.
This may not be exactly what you were referring to, but it should
serve:
http://cooler.irk.ru/pic15/0911real_buffering.jpg
--
:: Curious Gene :: IT Guy :: curi...@23.org ::
Go away. Go fight evil on aisle 12.
Thomas W. Strong Jr.
> In the previous article, Jasper Janssen <jas...@jjanssen.org> wrote:
> > Or, *shudder*, the world in which both Steves were bought out from
> > Apple before the end of the eighties, and where Apple, led by a man
> > we never heard from before he became CEO there, name of Steve
> > Ballmer, rules the world of computer hardware *and* software with an
> > iron fist.
> I believe that timeline was already described by one Pierre Boulle.
Wow, I completely missed that the first time around. Now that you mention
it, I can see the parallels between the situation you describe and the
Colonel building the bridge.
--
Thomas W. Strong Jr. <str...@dementia.org>
http://www.tomstrong.org/
Jim
> Or, *shudder*, the world in which both Steves were bought out from Apple
> before the end of the eighties, and where Apple, led by a man we never
> heard from before he became CEO there, name of Steve Ballmer, rules the
> world of computer hardware *and* software with an iron fist.
I have seen that world.
It is scary.
It looks like this:
<http://www.windowscrash.com/albums/movies/domopers_hi.mov>
Jim
--
j...@magrathea.plus.com AIM/iChat:JCAndrew2 - now with iSight!
"We deal in the moral equivalent of black holes, where the normal
laws of right and wrong break down; beyond those metaphysical
event horizons there exist ... special circumstances" - Use Of Weapons
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, Thomas W. Strong Jr. <str...@dementia.org>
wrote, quoting me:
> > I believe that timeline was already described by one Pierre Boulle.
>
> Wow, I completely missed that the first time around. Now that you
> mention it, I can see the parallels between the situation you
> describe and the Colonel building the bridge.
This is a little scary, because just after I sent that, I looked up
his name to make sure I didn't forget an accent aigu on that, and I
saw that he wrote that other novel, too (which I hadn't realized when
posting) and I had almost the identical thought, right down to the
same character and activity.
I am of course sure that you know what I meant. And just in case you
(or anyone else) weren't, this sums it up nicely:
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/001_300/222.html
Scott Packard
> Trying to invent a Mapquest "Driving Directions" program for 911
> dispatcher use sounds to me like one of those Transcendently Bad Ideas
> on multiple levels. It's possible that such a system *might*, once in
> a thousand or so runs, get the crews on scene maybe ten or fifteen
> seconds earlier, but if they start putting too much trust in it, it's
> going to start killing people sooner or later, probably sooner.
Yeah, but if they implemented it then they could replace the
"highly-paid and trained" firefighters with firefighting technicians
and associates, and Redmond could collect more fees.
>
>> Surely there must be some fscking reason to have a whole network of
>> computers in the firehouse? Or does it exist solely for the
>> amusement of firefighters during the boring hours of the night when
>> nothing is happening? Must the crutch and inconvenience of computer
>> networks be introduced in every area possible?
What JD said, plus, as I found out recently, there is a *ton* of
contracter work done to fight larger fires. You want a dozer?
Skip-loader? Dump truck? Water truck? Pumps? All that stuff has to
be contracted out, including personnel to operate it. You are
*not allowed* to just show up at a fire and get hired. So I imagine
the logistics are hair-pulling. You could kind-of call this
mission-critical. Everybody's got to be called, scheduled, and
accounted for (so they won't underpay/overpay).
Regards, Scott
David P. Murphy
> Yep. That's exactly how in $JOB[-1], I suddenly had to get
> change control approval to reboot my desktop machine.
How were they able to hide the power cord from you?
br...@fangorn.xs4all.nl
> br...@fangorn.xs4all.nl writes:
>> Contrast this to MC: Unclear line of credit, automatically deducted from
> FYI, in the US, there are plenty of real MasterCard credit cards that
> operate the way you describe Visa operating in .nl. What you describe
> is what is commonly called a 'check card', and yes, it does suck for
MC does offer "true" CC in the Netherlands, but to achieve market
penetration they did the above deal with just about every bank. The
'true' CC are fairly rare. For all practical intents and purposes it
is a true credit card. It is definitely distinct from an ATM/bank card
(we don't have checks anymore), and if you present it anywhere it will
fully process as a normal CC. CC payments are withdrawn from your account
in batch, on a single day each month. It's just that the normal CC
protections and conveniences (partial payment, easy disputing of payments,
etc).
Bram
Eric Schwartz
> MC does offer "true" CC in the Netherlands, but to achieve market
> penetration they did the above deal with just about every bank. The
> 'true' CC are fairly rare. For all practical intents and purposes it
> is a true credit card.
Well, you say that, but...
> It is definitely distinct from an ATM/bank card (we don't have
> checks anymore)
We do, but I maybe write one a month (if I forget to bring cash to my
dojo).
> and if you present it anywhere it will fully
> process as a normal CC. CC payments are withdrawn from your account
> in batch, on a single day each month.
This is different-- if I were to buy a sandwich with my Visa check
card, I'd expect the transaction to show up no later than the end of
the next business day (depending on when the merchant submitted the
reciepts to their bank). So you can buy DFL$tons of stuff and you'll
never see it on your bill until the bank deducts that money from your
account on Magic Bill Day?
> It's just that the normal CC
> protections and conveniences (partial payment, easy disputing of
> payments, etc).
So obviously it's *not* a true credit card. Similar to .us, which is
why I only use mine to pay for lunch, and other sundries.
Chris Miller
>
> In the previous article, Toni Lassila <tlas...@cc.hut.fi> wrote,
> quoting me:
>> Surely there must be some fscking reason to have a whole network of
>> computers in the firehouse? Or does it exist solely for the
>> amusement of firefighters during the boring hours of the night when
>> nothing is happening? Must the crutch and inconvenience of computer
>> networks be introduced in every area possible?
>
> There are all kinds of post-incident reports to be filed, and a
> computerized form with lots of the information pre-populated is a nice
> time-saver. But that's just the paperwork -- I fail to see how such a
> thing could be "mission critical" in the sense in which I use that
> term.
If any of this is UI, piss off now. I'm not going to bother rotting it.
Having worked [0] in a firehouse in palm-beach.co.fl.us some ten-plus years
ago, here's the deal as I remember it. The network was there for
documentation, recreation [1], and training. The bay computer (which ISTR is
what started all this, upthread) was considered mission-critical by the chiefs
and dispatch but was mostly a laugh to the smokeaters... The idea was that the
tones [2] would alert that a call was coming in; dispatch would announce the
call; then the bay computer would spit out a single sheet that the driver or
ell-tee would grab on the way to the truck.
On that sheet was the call notes that 911 got, the address of the call, plus
some basic zoning information [3] so they knew in advance what to expect from
potential hazardous materials.
There was talk about printing a map on that sheet too to replace the
ubiquitious mapbook, and I know the guys in the firehouse I worked in wanted
a call history[4].
Dunno what procedure is these days.
[0] FSVO. The Battalion chief hired me on weekends and whenever I wasn't in
class to do data entry and general network stuff.
[1] Yep, porn surfing was a large part of this. Sometimes in groups.
[2] Remember that old 'Emergency!' show? Same things. [5]
[3] Residential, commercial, industrial, etc.
[4] To ID jokesters, old folks just looking for attention, etc.
[5] Turns out they're for routing. Each station had a unique two-tone ID.
br...@fangorn.xs4all.nl
> reciepts to their bank). So you can buy DFL$tons of stuff and you'll
> never see it on your bill until the bank deducts that money from your
> account on Magic Bill Day?
Well, these days you buy EUR_tons_of_stuff, but yes, that's the idea.
> So obviously it's *not* a true credit card. Similar to .us, which is
> why I only use mine to pay for lunch, and other sundries.
Sort of, exactly. Which is why it's a backup card for me. It's cheap
enough (I think E10/yr or so) to keep it as a spare, but I don't like
the lack of protection.
Bram
Mads Peter Bach
> Visa works like a proper CC: you have a line of credit, you charge your
> purchases against it, at the end of the month you get a bill detailing
> the charges, and you have about a month to pay it (in full or in part,
> your choice) so you get about a months' float on the balance.
> Contrast this to MC: Unclear line of credit, automatically deducted from
> your bank acount, first thing you'll know of the charges is your bank
> statement, and good luck getting that money back from, well, whomever
> you can eventually manage to interest in your woes.
Hmmmm! That's quite interesting. In .dk, it's usually the other way round.
You can get a combined Visa/bank debit card, but Master cards are proper
CCs. I wonder why .dk and .nl banks are the reverse of each other on that
point.
--
Best Regards,
Mads Bach
# whois MPB...@whois.dk-hostmaster.dk
Lumber Cartel Unit #1825 (TINLC)
Garrett Wollman
<br...@fangorn.xs4all.nl> wrote:
>Sort of, exactly. Which is why it's a backup card for me. It's cheap
>enough (I think E10/yr or so) to keep it as a spare, but I don't like
>the lack of protection.
I would be surprised if there is anyone in .us who is still paying for
any sort of card. Annual fees went out of fashion at least two
recessions ago.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | As the Constitution endures, persons in every
wol...@lcs.mit.edu | generation can invoke its principles in their own
Opinions not those of| search for greater freedom.
MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA| - A. Kennedy, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. ___ (2003)
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, Peter H. Coffin <hel...@ninehells.com>
wrote, quoting me:
> > Trying to invent a Mapquest "Driving Directions" program for 911
> > dispatcher use sounds to me like one of those Transcendently Bad
> > Ideas on multiple levels. It's possible that such a system *might*,
> > once in a thousand or so runs, get the crews on scene maybe ten or
> > fifteen seconds earlier, but if they start putting too much trust in
> > it, it's going to start killing people sooner or later, probably
> > sooner.
>
> then paper. For finding "170 Fernlawn Lane", in one maze-like
> subdivision filled with cul-du-sacs and curving traffic-calmed
> streets, of undoubtedly several all-but-identically-named
> subdivisions which do not internally interconnect, yeah, I can see
> that an up-to-date routing database may come in very handy.
An "up-to-date routing database" for McMansion subdivision streets?
Sure, and while we're at it, why don't we have the fire wagons pulled
to the scene by teams of unicorns?
When every community in the U.S. can get its 911 phone-number ->
address -> listed occupant database -- or even the call history
database -- up-to-date, then we'll get back to this wacky "Computer!
Direct me to the scene!" idea.
> [...]
> >> Hell, maybe surfing for porn *is* the mission-critical task.
> >
> > I wouldn't rule it out.
>
> Managers decide what's mission-critical, not people doing the work.
Oh, my, you *are* living in a fantasy world, aren't you?
br...@fangorn.xs4all.nl
>>Sort of, exactly. Which is why it's a backup card for me. It's cheap
>>enough (I think E10/yr or so) to keep it as a spare, but I don't like
>>the lack of protection.
> I would be surprised if there is anyone in .us who is still paying for
> any sort of card. Annual fees went out of fashion at least two
> recessions ago.
Yeah. Most stuff happens 50 years later here, which is why .nl is a
wonderful place to live in once that final trumpet sounds, but can be a
bit frustrating otherwise. Like when having to drive like a maniac to
make it to a store before the 6PM closing time. Although at least most
supermarkets are now open until 8, some even until 9 or 10PM.
Bram
br...@fangorn.xs4all.nl
> Hmmmm! That's quite interesting. In .dk, it's usually the other way round.
> You can get a combined Visa/bank debit card, but Master cards are proper
> CCs. I wonder why .dk and .nl banks are the reverse of each other on that
> point.
The .nl and .dk versions of a card making different deals and
positioning themselves differently in the local markets?
Bram
Jim
> Needed a quick-and-dirty program yesterday. Found a copy of God's
> Wonderful Basic...
I've always though of it as 'Gone Wrong BASIC' but then my only semi-
serious use of it was on an Amstrad PCW8256.
Jim
--
j...@magrathea.plus.com -*- Grey...@mac.com
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, Garrett Wollman <wol...@lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
> I would be surprised if there is anyone in .us who is still paying
> for any sort of card. Annual fees went out of fashion at least two
> recessions ago.
AmEx still charges a pretty hefty fee, and so do those cards the
airlines issue where you get FF mileage credit for every purchase.
David P. Murphy
> In the previous article, Peter H. Coffin <hel...@ninehells.com>
>> Managers decide what's mission-critical, not people doing the work.
> Oh, my, you *are* living in a fantasy world, aren't you?
What he said sounds perfectly normal to me.
David P. Murphy
> Having worked [0] in a firehouse in palm-beach.co.fl.us some ten-plus years
> ago, here's the deal as I remember it.
>
> [2] Remember that old 'Emergency!' show?
We of course all have opinions about computer users seen on televison,
and my brother (Commander, USN) has opinions about shows such as "JAG"
and "SuperCarrier" . . . what was your (and your co-workers) thoughts
on "Emergency!"? I remember it somewhat fondly from my youth, although
they sure as hell thought starting an IV with D5W couldn't be beat.
Yeah, I've read http://www.jumptheshark.com/e/emergency.htm
but I'd still like to hear from others.
Scott Packard
> and "SuperCarrier" . . . what was your (and your co-workers) thoughts
> on "Emergency!"? I remember it somewhat fondly from my youth, although
> they sure as hell thought starting an IV with D5W couldn't be beat.
Don't forget the EKG strip. Which actually came out without the
incompetent operator/computer user banter, every time.
Back then I didn't notice much about Dixie beyond her being very cute
and pointed, but I imagine today they'd have written the show with
Dixie's skirt hitting the floor almost as often as the victim's arses did.
And, hey, I don't recall any short-term actor tours, unlike today's
shows. Most footage not on a sound-stage but on-location.[1]
- Scott
[1] Their studies probably say the audience doesn't notice this.
Chris Miller
> what was your (and your co-workers) thoughts on "Emergency!"?
Keeping in mind that I was something like - err... five? when the show went
off the air, I've always thought it was a decent show. The guys I worked
with, tho, had mixed reviews, IIRC, ranging from comedic to serious drama.
--Chris
Maarten Wiltink
news:slrnc0dk8j...@panther.bitflood.net...
[...]
> ISTR that AmEx charges fees for their charge cards, but not for cards
> with revolving credit and an associated APR. Which makes sense, because
> you have to make money somehow for that sort of service.
I thought credit card companies made money by charging the shop-owner
5% on each transaction? With a minimum of something like one or two
dollars? (You _don't_ charge a single hot dog here.)
Tebrgwrf,
Maarten Wiltink
Maarten Wiltink
news:bu6ajn$qh$3...@allhats.xcski.com...
> J.D. Baldwin <INVALID...@example.com.invalid> wrote:
>> In the previous article, Peter H. Coffin <hel...@ninehells.com>
>>> Managers decide what's mission-critical, not people doing the work.
>> Oh, my, you *are* living in a fantasy world, aren't you?
> What he said sounds perfectly normal to me.
"Usual". Not "normal".
Tebrgwrf,
Maarten Wiltink
David P. Murphy
> I thought credit card companies made money by charging the shop-owner
> 5% on each transaction? With a minimum of something like one or two
> dollars? (You _don't_ charge a single hot dog here.)
Credit card companies might *charge* shop owners, but they *make money*
by people paying huge amounts of interest (and late fees) over painfully
long periods of time.
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
at 11:54 AM, Eric Schwartz <emsc...@pobox.com> said:
>FYI, in the US, there are plenty of real MasterCard credit cards that
>operate the way you describe Visa operating in .nl. What you
>describe is what is commonly called a 'check card',
The only term that I've seen for it is "debit card". Note that the US
consumer protection laws are much weaker for debit cards than for
credit cards; I refuse to get one.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
Reply to domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+bspfh to contact me.
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)
Jay Mottern
$eer$1...@reader2.panix.com:
> There are all kinds of post-incident reports to be filed, and a
> computerized form with lots of the information pre-populated is a nice
> time-saver. But that's just the paperwork -- I fail to see how such a
> thing could be "mission critical" in the sense in which I use that
> term.
Our local FD, for which I used to work, had/has but one app I'd consider
mission-critical, and that is a hazmat program. It has the plans and
construction details of most every building in town, whether or not there
are known hazards such as chemicals, pony wall construction in the
basement, and so on. Even when I was there in the late 90s they already
had a laptop running this app in every battalion chief's buggy. It could
save firefighter's lives at a fire scene.
Nowadays their CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch, not the other one) app has
become semi-critical, in that they now have networked computers mounted
in all the rigs and can do real-time updating of personnel status which
helps them to keep track of people. Losing somebody inside of a burning
building is not good. I don't know that they actually are using the
system in this way, which is why I only said semi-critical.
-Jay
--
[Spam is} kind of like the aggressive panhandling of the digital realm. -
Donovan Hill in NANAE
Eric Schwartz
> In <etoeku2...@fc.hp.com>, on 01/14/2004
> at 11:54 AM, Eric Schwartz <emsc...@pobox.com> said:
>>FYI, in the US, there are plenty of real MasterCard credit cards that
>>operate the way you describe Visa operating in .nl. What you
>>describe is what is commonly called a 'check card',
>
> The only term that I've seen for it is "debit card".
Yeah, I've seen that too. Still, 90% of the teevee commercials use
the term "check card" (as in "use your VISA check card to pay for
$stuff"), probably because most consumers can barely handle the
concept of 'credit'; once you start talking about 'debit' as well, you
might as well hand them their own "out to lunch" sign.
> Note that the US consumer protection laws are much weaker for debit
> cards than for credit cards; I refuse to get one.
As I said, I'll buy a sandwich with one, but nothing more expensive.
ISTR someone proposing a law to give debit card users the same
protections credit card users enjoy, but I still prefer having the
leverage of "I haven't paid you yet" on my side.
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, David P. Murphy <d...@myths.com> wrote,
quoting me:
> > In the previous article, Peter H. Coffin <hel...@ninehells.com>
>
> >> Managers decide what's mission-critical, not people doing the work.
>
> > Oh, my, you *are* living in a fantasy world, aren't you?
>
> What he said sounds perfectly normal to me.
"Normal" for some reasonable meaning of that word, I guess, but I'm
used to monks being more precise, and more cynical, than that. The
mission critical items are, tautologically, what they *are*. Managers
often identify what they consider to be the mission-critical things,
and in some organizations, sometimes, they even get some of them
right. Or so I have heard, anyway.
Ross Ridge
> What you describe is what is commonly called a 'check card' ...
>"Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> writes:
> The only term that I've seen for it is "debit card".
Eric Schwartz <emsc...@pobox.com> wrote:
>Yeah, I've seen that too. Still, 90% of the teevee commercials use
>the term "check card" (as in "use your VISA check card to pay for
>$stuff"), probably because most consumers can barely handle the
>concept of 'credit'; once you start talking about 'debit' as well, you
>might as well hand them their own "out to lunch" sign.
Well, they're called check cards because VISA/Mastercard wants them to
replace cheques. More specifically though, they're actually what's called
"offline debit cards" because they don't debit the bank account at the
time of time transaction. In Canada all the debit cards are "online
debit cards" because the money transfered out your bank account, and
into the store's bank account, within seconds of you entering your PIN
into the store's debit terminal. Except for the times when the whole
process takes minutes as I wait in line behind some guy who's repeatly
trying to get his card to work so he can buy a pack of gum.
Ross Ridge
--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] rri...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/u/rridge/
db //
Jim
> On Thu, 15 Jan 2004 12:50:24 +0000, Jim <j...@odin.magrathea.local> wrote:
>
>>I've always though of it as 'Gone Wrong BASIC' but then my only semi-
>>serious use of it was on an Amstrad PCW8256.
>
>
It has to be said that BASIC on my BBC Micro is the least-suckiest
version of the language I've used. Lovely little machine as well. I
still fire it up from time-to-time to play 'Elite' and 'Exile'...
Russ Price
> For finding routine things, I'm sure maps are best, first mental then
> paper. For finding "170 Fernlawn Lane", in one maze-like subdivision
> filled with cul-du-sacs and curving traffic-calmed streets, of
> undoubtedly several all-but-identically-named subdivisions which do not
> internally interconnect, yeah, I can see that an up-to-date routing
> database may come in very handy.
I've occasionally run into similar problems on long bike rides. There's
nothing quite like trying to duck into a subdivision [1] to bypass a
traffic-choked road, only to find that You Can't Get There From Here.
When that happens, I start thinking about finding the idiot who planned
the subdivision, and doing something to him involving rabid chipmunks,
an angle grinder, and epoxy.
And then there is that abomination known as the "gated community."
If you're really interested in your community, DON'T FSCKING WALL
YOURSELF OFF FROM IT!
Russ
[1] As a bonus, the subdivision is usually named after that which was
destroyed in order to build it; there's one near me called "Windy Hill
Farm" that follows this principle. It used to be an actual horse farm.
--
"If Darl McBride was in charge, he'd probably make marriage
unconstitutional too, since clearly it de-emphasizes the commercial
nature of normal human interaction, and probably is a major impediment
to the commercial growth of prostitution." -Linus Torvalds
David P. Murphy
> I've occasionally run into similar problems on long bike rides. There's
> nothing quite like trying to duck into a subdivision [1] to bypass a
> traffic-choked road, only to find that You Can't Get There From Here.
>
> When that happens, I start thinking about finding the idiot who planned
> the subdivision, and doing something to him involving rabid chipmunks,
> an angle grinder, and epoxy.
I can't tell if you're aware that that is done intentionally.
Russ Price
> Russ Price <ro...@fubegra.no-ip.org> wrote:
>> When that happens, I start thinking about finding the idiot who planned
>> the subdivision, and doing something to him involving rabid chipmunks,
>> an angle grinder, and epoxy.
>
> I can't tell if you're aware that that is done intentionally.
I am aware of that, but that doesn't make it any less luserish. I find
that I like the older part of town much better - the streets actually
have a somewhat sensible layout, modulo the northeast-to-southwest rail
line that does funny things to the grid.
Somewhere along the line, a combination of elitism and the siege
mentality set in, even though this area was never what one would call
poverty-stricken. Thus, all of the new subdivisions follow the You
Can't Get There From Here principle. Sigh.
Then, of course, the newcomers couldn't bear the thought of dealing with
water softeners, and just *had* to get Chicago water. Now our water
bills have quadrupled, and we have the fun of summer water restrictions.
Furrrrrrrrrfu!
Russ
--
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so
long as I'm the dictator." -George W. Bush
Ross Ridge
>Well, they're called check cards because VISA/Mastercard wants them to
>replace cheques. More specifically though, they're actually what's called
>"offline debit cards" because they don't debit the bank account at the
>time of time transaction. In Canada all the debit cards are "online
>debit cards" because the money transfered out your bank account, and
>into the store's bank account, within seconds of you entering your PIN
>into the store's debit terminal. Except for the times when the whole
>process takes minutes as I wait in line behind some guy who's repeatly
>>trying to get his card to work so he can buy a pack of gum.
Jasper Janssen <jas...@jjanssen.org> wrote:
>In .nl, that's what we use our regular bank cards for.
In Canada it works the same way, most bank ATM cards are work as debit
cards because the same consortium that handles the inter-bank ATM network
also handles the point-of-sale debit network. (Though my own bank card
doesn't work as either an ATM card or a debit card.)
> You can pay with them nearly everywhere, though due to fees charged
> to the shopowner sometimes with a minimum purchase of 10-20 euros.
Fees to the shopowner must be lower here, because most stores don't
have don't seem to have minimum purchase requirements.
Interestly fees charged for stores in the US for online debit was quite
high, and Wal-Mart and other retail stores led a successful class-action
suit, settled out of court, against Mastercard and Visa to get the fees
associated with these cards lowered, and gain the right to not accept
them at all. In fact, Wal-Mart announced that they won't be accepting
Mastercard online debit starting next month.
>Lately, the "chip cards" that were introduced a long time ago (to fill
>that small-purchases gap) are starting to make their appearance for actual
>usage. Essentially an electronic wallet, with the chip either residing on
>a separate card or on your bank card, which need to be charged from your
>bank account at a device that sometimes accompanies ATMs.
We don't have those here, but there's essentially no small-purchase gap
to fill. They might catch on in the US, though, since their check cards
are generally only accepted in stores with high enough margins that they
can also accept credit cards.
>Then there are the credit cards, in both classic credit card and in the
>nearly-a-debit-card incarnation, which is a debit card that accumulates
>into a once-a-month payment.
This later device sounds like what's called a "charge card" here and in
the US, like the standard American Express card, but with a manditory
automatic withdrawl payment system.
David P. Murphy
> David P. Murphy <d...@myths.com> wrote:
>> Russ Price <ro...@fubegra.no-ip.org> wrote:
>>> When that happens, I start thinking about finding the idiot who planned
>>> the subdivision, and doing something to him involving rabid chipmunks,
>>> an angle grinder, and epoxy.
>> I can't tell if you're aware that that is done intentionally.
> I am aware of that, but that doesn't make it any less luserish. I find
> that I like the older part of town much better - the streets actually
> have a somewhat sensible layout, modulo the northeast-to-southwest rail
> line that does funny things to the grid.
>
> Somewhere along the line, a combination of elitism and the siege
> mentality set in, even though this area was never what one would call
> poverty-stricken. Thus, all of the new subdivisions follow the You
> Can't Get There From Here principle. Sigh.
You are not looking at this from a traffic engineer's point of view.
Mike Andrews
> > I am aware of that, but that doesn't make it any less luserish. I find
> > that I like the older part of town much better - the streets actually
> > have a somewhat sensible layout, modulo the northeast-to-southwest rail
> > line that does funny things to the grid.
> > Somewhere along the line, a combination of elitism and the siege
> > mentality set in, even though this area was never what one would call
> > poverty-stricken. Thus, all of the new subdivisions follow the You
> > Can't Get There From Here principle. Sigh.
> You are not looking at this from a traffic engineer's point of view.
In My Experience, which includes >25 years with WeBuildHighways, a
traffic engineer's point of view involves trying to see out through
intestine and abdominal wall.
--
Q276304 - Error Message: Your Password Must Be at Least 18770 Characters
and Cannot Repeat Any of Your Previous 30689 Passwords -- RISKS 21.37
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, Russ Price <ro...@fubegra.no-ip.org> wrote,
quoting David P. Murphy <d...@myths.com>:
> > Russ Price <ro...@fubegra.no-ip.org> wrote:
> >> When that happens, I start thinking about finding the idiot who
> >> planned the subdivision, and doing something to him involving
> >> rabid chipmunks, an angle grinder, and epoxy.
> >
> > I can't tell if you're aware that that is done intentionally.
>
> I am aware of that, but that doesn't make it any less luserish. I
> find that I like the older part of town much better - the streets
> actually have a somewhat sensible layout, modulo the northeast-to-
> southwest rail line that does funny things to the grid.
Well, I find these things irritating, too, but after all, people built
those places (or, rather, caused them to be built) moved in there so
they'd have a place to live, not for the convenience of people who
want to bypass traffic on the main thoroughfares. I'd say that the
attitude that they "owe" you such a bypass is rather luserish on its
face.
There are two such weirdly laid-out "bypasses" between me and places I
might want to go; I have taken the trouble to learn the routes through
them in case I might need them someday. It's only come up once or
twice.
> Then, of course, the newcomers couldn't bear the thought of dealing
> with water softeners, and just *had* to get Chicago water. Now our
> water bills have quadrupled, and we have the fun of summer water
> restrictions.
Summer water restrictions ... in the midwest? Boy, you have to fuck
up your infrastructure pretty severely to arrive at *that*
destination.
Patrick R. Wade
>
>Well, I find these things irritating, too, but after all, people built
>those places (or, rather, caused them to be built) moved in there so
>they'd have a place to live, not for the convenience of people who
>want to bypass traffic on the main thoroughfares. I'd say that the
>attitude that they "owe" you such a bypass is rather luserish on its
>face.
>
Erm, no. The people who built those places did so to sell them and
turn a profit, and the people who bought them did so because they
considered a McMansion preferable to yet another apartment. I have
never once heard a resident of such a subdivision extoll the virtues
of its brain-damaged street system ; rather, the street system, which
is a danger to the lives of its occupants in an emergency and a present
inconvenience to them any time they want to go somewhere other than the
default route, is a sort of cost one chooses to tolerate in the
cost-benefit analysis of choosing a McMansion over another solution.
Moreover, the street system, because of its role in providing public
services and because of the impact its design has on the larger
traffic situation in a town, is an interface between the rights of
the subdivision dwellers and the rights of the public, and for the
public to expect it to conform to usability standards is not inappropriate.
--
"That time in Seattle... was a nightmare. I came out of it dead broke,
without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of
UNIX." "Well, that's something," Avi says. "Normally those two are
mutually exclusive." --Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"
Peter Corlett
> Jim <j...@odin.magrathea.local> wrote:
>> I've always though of it as 'Gone Wrong BASIC' but then my only semi-
>> serious use of it was on an Amstrad PCW8256.
BBC BASIC does of course have an interesting approach to heap management,
which can be Fun! and Exciting! for anybody trying to do much string
processing.
All Software Sucks.
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, Patrick R. Wade <pa...@efn.org> wrote:
> Erm, no. The people who built those places did so to sell them and
> turn a profit, and the people who bought them did so because they
> considered a McMansion preferable to yet another apartment. I have
> never once heard a resident of such a subdivision extoll the virtues
> of its brain-damaged street system ;
Oh, I hear it all the time. Many residents of a neighborhood 'round
here recently agitated to have its nice, straight "grid-fitting"
streets turned into a setup like this. (The opportunity arose because
a large building was condemned around the time that major road repairs
were scheduled there, which would have been a good opportunity to get
that done.) They -- or at least the group claiming to speak for the
residents -- were more than willing to pay a property tax assessment
for the improvement. There was some opposition, to be sure, but it
was always framed in a "not worth the cost" context rather than a
"this is a bad idea" context. (It didn't happen.)
> rather, the street system, which is a danger to the lives of its
> occupants in an emergency
Bit of an exaggeration, that, I think.
> and a present inconvenience to them any time they want to go
> somewhere other than the default route,
Most neighborhoods in my hometown (a sizable suburb of a mid-sized
midwestern city) have that "problem" at least to some degree, whether
their streets are straight or not.
> is a sort of cost one chooses to tolerate in the cost-benefit
> analysis of choosing a McMansion over another solution.
A few years ago, I heard a recent import into my neighborhood mention
that her family would have liked to have moved into the nearby
subdivision with the "traffic-calming" streets (but couldn't quite
justify or afford the added expense), and it was clear that she
considered such a layout to be a positive aspect of the neighborhood.
And I recall the realtor who showed me around town -- okay, this was
seven years ago, but still -- mentioned that similar houses will
typically sell for substantially higher prices in such subdivisions.
If that is true (and I have no reason to doubt his word or his
expertise) then that pretty well settles the question of whether
people consider it a bug or a feature.
I repeat that *I* consider it a bug, and would find such a setup more
annoying than helpful. That said, I've lived directly off of a busy
road, and if a subdivision is built in a location that would render it
convenient for people to use it as a thoroughfare, I can certainly
sympathize with the desire to raise obstacles to such use.
> Moreover, the street system, because of its role in providing public
> services and because of the impact its design has on the larger
> traffic situation in a town, is an interface between the rights of
> the subdivision dwellers and the rights of the public, and for the
> public to expect it to conform to usability standards is not
> inappropriate.
"Usability" is all in the definition. "The public" isn't supposed to
be blowing through residential areas at 50+ mph to avoid a controlled
intersection, but that is precisely what happens in the neighborhood I
mentioned above. (And that *really* endangers lives, with no
exaggeration about it.) The main thoroughfares exist to get you
through that segment of town; the little residential side streets
exist for the purpose of getting residents to and from their houses.
Now, what I wish the codes would make mandatory for these setups is
bike / pedestrian access out in all directions, even if motor vehicle
traffic is restricted to the twisty maze.
jeff shultz
wrote:
>, and the people who bought them did so because they
>considered a McMansion preferable to yet another apartment.
As an apartment dweller, I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment!
--
Jeff Shultz
I think the natural reaction one has to their mail
being blocked for what they think are inappropriate
reasons is first to say, "WTF?" and then to issue
the missle launch codes.--- Robin Lynn Frank on nanog
Remove obvious to e-mail me.
david parsons
J.D. Baldwin <ne...@baldwin.users.panix.com> wrote:
>Summer water restrictions ... in the midwest? Boy, you have to fuck
>up your infrastructure pretty severely to arrive at *that*
>destination.
Well, if you pave over entire watersheds and then try to get water
from the local big city, that's what tends to happen. And you get
some really spectacular flooding, too, followed by the cries for
government assistance from the we-hate-the-evil-nanny-state(tm)
suburbs.
____
david parsons \bi/ For some reason, Chicago hasn't formed a standing
\/ army and cut the water supply to the suburbs yet.
Maarten Wiltink
news:bu91ie$p4i$2...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca...
> rri...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Ross Ridge) wrote:
[...]
>> You can pay with them nearly everywhere, though due to fees charged
>> to the shopowner sometimes with a minimum purchase of 10-20 euros.
Recommended (by the clearing house, I think) minimum is EUR 15,-.
Which is not unreasonable as the fixed cost per transaction is something
like 40 cents. Now *that* is unreasonable. It should be 5 or so.
> Fees to the shopowner must be lower here, because most stores don't
> have don't seem to have minimum purchase requirements.
Some do, some don't. For some time, only the poshest-image one of the
national supermarket chains didn't. But I think most all abandonded
it before the current Big Supermarket Trench War (1500 prices lowered
now! No, 1800! Permanently! (Yeah, right)).
Tebrgwrf,
Maarten Wiltink
Garrett Wollman
Ross Ridge <rri...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>Fees to the shopowner must be lower here, because most stores don't
>have don't seem to have minimum purchase requirements.
Merchant agreements tend to prohibit it. They normally also prohibit
differential pricing. (The merchant can give you a discount off the
advertised price for paying in cash, but they can't surcharge you for
not paying in cash.)
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | As the Constitution endures, persons in every
wol...@lcs.mit.edu | generation can invoke its principles in their own
Opinions not those of| search for greater freedom.
MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA| - A. Kennedy, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. ___ (2003)
Graham Reed
> Fees to the shopowner must be lower here, because most stores don't
> have don't seem to have minimum purchase requirements.
I believe the Interac merchant fees are flat-rate. (Interac being the
inter-bank ATM network which also handles the debit card system. And
who does NOT operate any credit cards.)
What the basis of the flat-rate is, I don't know (size of store,
annual earnings, number of registers, ...). But I've asked several
shopowners if they mind small purchases on Interac, and they say it
doesn't matter, go ahead and use the card.
So, basically, once a merchant gets Interac Diret Payment (tm I'm
sure), they don't care WHAT you put on it. The only exception is "TTC
Authorized Ticket Sellers", who keep the money for the TTC in a
separate jar from the regular till.
Hmmm, if my Mom's gotten stuck doing the books for her current
orkplace, she'd know.
--
"Dead people don't spam."
Alex Priem
>Lately, the "chip cards" that were introduced a long time ago (to fill
>that small-purchases gap) are starting to make their appearance for actual
>usage.
Somewhere in your advertisement speech you forgot to mention that the risk
for a non-functioning chip card is on the owner, not on the bank. Given that
your "chip card" bears a striking resemblance to chip cards for phones,
which are usually a one-time card (either they're unreadable after spending
three months in my wallet, or the phone company has decided that *those* cards
are waaaay over date), I don't find it strange that 'chip cards' haven't
got much acceptance from the general public.
But go ahead, burn your money if want to stay ahead.
And apart from all that, I *like* being anomymous. You get that for free when
you use cash. You know, those outdated flaps of paper and metal thingies.
>The killer app is that most if not all parking fee devices now accept
>these chip cards,
:s/accepts/require/ , at least in certain dutch cities (Nijmegen being one of
them).
Nice way of forcing people to 'use' chip cards.
Alex
Joe Zeff
<maa...@kittensandcats.net> wrote:
>. But I think most all abandonded
>it before the current Big Supermarket Trench War (1500 prices lowered
>now! No, 1800! Permanently! (Yeah, right)).
You don't understand. Instead of putting the prices over the items,
they now put them below. Thus, the prices are lowered.
--
Joe Zeff
The Guy With the Sideburns
I don't do hardware. Or rather, I don't usually get asked to do
hardware things a second time.
http://www.lasfs.org http://home.earthlink.net/~sidebrnz
Russ Price
> Summer water restrictions ... in the midwest? Boy, you have to fuck
> up your infrastructure pretty severely to arrive at *that*
> destination.
Any town that hooks up to Lake Michigan water these days is required to
have water restrictions, so as not to drain said lake dry. There are
international treaties regarding the Great Lakes that specify how much
water each state/province is allowed to use. Of course, Chicago itself
has a lot of loopholes grandfathered in; some parts of the city still
have unmetered water in residences, but the city is looking to change
that, and any new house gets a meter.
Then there's the matter of whether or not a town will even be allowed to
hook into lake water. If no part of the town is within the Lake
Michigan drainage basin, it is unlikely to get lake water, but it can
happen due to mysterious political processes.
When we had well water, there was enough available in the aquifer that
restrictions weren't necessary. However, the calcium and iron levels
were high enough that, at the very least, a softener was necessary, and
some people also had iron filters. Some Chicago-area towns with well
water did have restrictions during droughts.
Russ
--
"There's an advertising billboard on my commute to work. It reads
'CLAMATO y CERVEZA'
I've quit eating breakfast until it's gone." -D. J. Trindle
Andy Fawcett
> "Ross Ridge" <rri...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote in message
> news:bu91ie$p4i$2...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca...
>> rri...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Ross Ridge) wrote:
> [...]
>>> You can pay with them nearly everywhere, though due to fees charged
>>> to the shopowner sometimes with a minimum purchase of 10-20 euros.
>
> Recommended (by the clearing house, I think) minimum is EUR 15,-.
> Which is not unreasonable as the fixed cost per transaction is
> something like 40 cents. Now *that* is unreasonable. It should be 5 or
> so.
Over here in FrostyTheSnowmanLand, almost everyone uses a
'pankkikortti' (not exactly a bank debit card, but close enough in
practice) for everything over about EUR5, although I am not sure how
well this limit is policed.
It was quite a shock after coming from the UK to find that:
1. There's no paper personal cheques. They phased those out years ago.
2. Cash is accepted, but plastic is preferable
3. Prices can be such as EUR1.89, but we don't have the one and two cent
coins, so it's impossible to pay the correct amount with cash, or
receive change. For this reason, total payments are rounded to the
nearest 5 cent unit. (If you pay by plastic you pay the correct amount)
For any of this to be UI, you have to be fluent in Klingon, and also be
trained in the ancient runes of "ei on vituun plussakortti"[1]
A.
[1] "no I don't have a fscking plussakortti[2]" in Finnish
[2] In-store bonus card, show it when you pay and build up 'credits' for
which they send you money-off coupons every month.
--
Andy Fawcett - an...@athame.co.uk
"In an open world without walls and fences,
we wouldn't need Windows and Gates." -- anon
Kevin
>>those places (or, rather, caused them to be built) moved in there so
>>they'd have a place to live, not for the convenience of people who
>>want to bypass traffic on the main thoroughfares. I'd say that the
>>attitude that they "owe" you such a bypass is rather luserish on its
>>face.
>Erm, no. The people who built those places did so to sell them and
>turn a profit, and the people who bought them did so because they
>considered a McMansion preferable to yet another apartment. I have
>never once heard a resident of such a subdivision extoll the virtues
>of its brain-damaged street system ; rather, the street system, which
>is a danger to the lives of its occupants in an emergency and a present
>inconvenience to them any time they want to go somewhere other than the
>default route, is a sort of cost one chooses to tolerate in the
>cost-benefit analysis of choosing a McMansion over another solution.
Enough homeowners have an extreme dislike of passing traffic to finance the
existence of many cul-de-sacs by purchasing a multi-hundred-thousand dollar
home. Some want safety for their kids - no lusers cutting through the
neighborhood at 15+mph over the speed limit during the day because a traffic
jam on the main drag is making them late for work or the bar.
Some prefer not to have 16-21yr old lusers attempting to evade the police
during the night at even higher speeds because their license is suspended or
they have beer in the car or it is past curfew hours.
>Moreover, the street system, because of its role in providing public
>services and because of the impact its design has on the larger
>traffic situation in a town, is an interface between the rights of
>the subdivision dwellers and the rights of the public, and for the
>public to expect it to conform to usability standards is not inappropriate.
Tis the public that pays the municipal planners and engineers who design and
approve cul-de-sacs. In my town rapid suburban growth has generated a lot of
temporary (FSVO - occasionally several years) dead end streets until the
next farmer's field is purchased, divided up and paved over.
My parents purchased two consecutive homes on corner lots of through
streets. The first was through ignorance of how late major traffic would run
on the street the house faced. The second home was a rushed purchase - our
lovely city hall was in bed with the local Catholic-run city hospital and
used the threat of eminent domain to expand a critically necessary building
expansion - and our first home's lot ended up being an independent building
housing a clinic. If I ever am able to finance the purchase of my own home,
I will give cul-de-sacs priority.
The number of times a local driver inavertantly strays into the same
cul-de-sac determines their luser-on-wheels status.
Kevin
Alan J Rosenthal
>ObOffTopic: Just what is fairy cake, anyway. Is it just a British
>name for something I'd know by a different name,
Yes it is, but I forget what it's called here. Hope that helps.
By the way, the item "hundreds and thousands" is what I would call "sprinkles".
But I don't know the geographical distribution of the term "sprinkles"...
Hm, [gets a jar out of a cabinet]. Well, this doesn't help. The label says:
Rainbow
Décors
Arc-En-Ciel
That's supposed to be a bilingual label. But I _think_, by the typography,
that it's supposed to be "Rainbow Décors" in English and "Décors arc-en-ciel"
in French. And I don't think that "décors" is the standard term for these
things in English. (The "rainbow" bit would be a reference to the fact that
they're all different colours, cf a jar of "red décors" and another jar of
"blue décors", etc.)
Bah, let's talk about renaming the "Supersedes" header again.
Peter Corlett
[...]
> Plus they usually hook up via a phone modem at small stores (if the
> owner's making a phone call, you often have to wait), which means usage
> costs (particularly the phone company's starting fee) too. Unless they
> operate a 0800 (FreePhone)?
Usually an 0845 ("local rate") or 0870 ("national rate") in the UK. Except
that neither are charged at the same price of a local or long-distance call,
and are also not free even if you're on a free local/national call tariff.
0845 is 4p/min, 0870 is 8p/min, both with a 5p minimum. So you're usually
looking at 5-10p per auth.
But a credit card company offering an 0800? Do you think they're made of
money? Oh, yeah...
Garrett Wollman
Andy Fawcett <an...@athame.co.uk> wrote:
>It was quite a shock after coming from the UK to find that:
>
>1. There's no paper personal cheques. They phased those out years ago.
That was true (including the ``years ago'' part) even when I was there
fifteen (!) years ago. All of those sorts of transactions were made
with a little three-part carbonless form called a ``pankkisiirto''
(or, in the Other Mother Tongue, ``bankgiro''). Bills even came
printed on the things -- just endorse and stick in the drop-box to
pay. On the back of the form there's a listing of correct way to
abbreviate all seven banks (also in both national languages, except
for the one that's always in Swedish). (This interlude brought to you
by the Drawer of Fifteen-Year-Old Crap I Brought Back from Finland.
Excuse me while I go sneeze.)
Garrett Wollman
>coins, so it's impossible to pay the correct amount with cash, or
>receive change. For this reason, total payments are rounded to the
>nearest 5 cent unit. (If you pay by plastic you pay the correct amount)
That was true even when prices were denominated in FIM. I have in a
jar somewhere an example of the last one-penny coin issued -- it was
made out of aluminum (or some other very light metal), was about 5 mm
in diameter, and weighed next to nothing. (It was very similar in
construction to, but smaller than, the five-pence coin circulating
when I was there in 1988-89.) Of course, in 1989 FIM 1 was about
equal to USD 0.20, so FIM 0.01 would have been especially pointless.
Niklas Karlsson
> In article <buals1$2l42$1...@hex.athame.co.uk>,
> Andy Fawcett <an...@athame.co.uk> wrote:
>>It was quite a shock after coming from the UK to find that:
>>
>>1. There's no paper personal cheques. They phased those out years ago.
>
> That was true (including the ``years ago'' part) even when I was there
> fifteen (!) years ago. All of those sorts of transactions were made
> with a little three-part carbonless form called a ``pankkisiirto''
> (or, in the Other Mother Tongue, ``bankgiro''). Bills even came
> printed on the things -- just endorse and stick in the drop-box to
> pay.
This is also true in Sweden - though since the mid-to-late 90s all
Internet banking systems in .se worth their while also have an
integrated way to make both postgiro and bankgiro payments, which covers
basically *all* bills, including payments for postal-order shops and
such.
The ways of doing financial stuff in .uk felt oddly quaint when I moved
here. Sure, you can pay some bills by direct bank transfer, but
a) it takes AGES AND AGES to clear compared to what I'm used to
b) a much larger proportion of companies/services seem to rely on or at
least prefer credit/debit card.
Of course, there's also direct debit (which exists in .se, but isn't
quite as common).
Niklas
--
"It's not a philosophy if it doesn't involve explosives."
-- Ilfar
Andy Fawcett
> In article <buals1$2l42$1...@hex.athame.co.uk>,
> Andy Fawcett <an...@athame.co.uk> wrote:
>>It was quite a shock after coming from the UK to find that:
>>
>>1. There's no paper personal cheques. They phased those out years ago.
>
> That was true (including the ``years ago'' part) even when I was there
> fifteen (!) years ago.
heh.
> All of those sorts of transactions were made with a little three-part
> carbonless form called a ``pankkisiirto'' (or, in the Other Mother
> Tongue, ``bankgiro'').
I believe they still exist, but nobody ever sees them. A bit like M$
refund payments really.
> Bills even came printed on the things -- just endorse and stick in
> the drop-box to pay.
Bills now come in the form of a single paper, with a giro-like transfer
slip, account numbers and a payment code for reference.
Enter online banking, "pay bill", enter payers a/c, enter payment code,
enter value, click accept. Bill paid.
And even the tiniest of establishments can issue bills this way.
Or you can walk up to one of the many public payment systems, and
effectively do the same thing.
> On the back of the form there's a listing of correct way to
> abbreviate all seven banks (also in both national languages, except
> for the one that's always in Swedish).
Yeah, official docus are fun here. Especially if you speak little of
either Finnish or Swedish :)
> (This interlude brought to you by the Drawer of Fifteen-Year-Old Crap
> I Brought Back from Finland. Excuse me while I go sneeze.)
3 years here now, still loving it, still don't understand the language!
"Iso tuoppi, kiitos!"
Niklas Karlsson
[snip description of a billing situation essentially identical to in .se]
> 3 years here now, still loving it, still don't understand the language!
>
> "Iso tuoppi, kiitos!"
It's quite interesting to see someone in basically the exact opposite
situation from mine. I barely understand a word of Finnish, but I
(obviously) understand Swedish.
I finally managed to persuade my bank here to upgrade my account to the
point where I at least get a debit card and a cheque book. I can't
believe the banking industry here...
Niklas
--
"IMO, the primary historical significance of Unix is that it marks the time in
computer history where CPUs became so cheap that it was possible to build an
operating system without adult supervision."
-- Russ Holsclaw in a.f.c
Andy Fawcett
> In article <buals1$2l42$1...@hex.athame.co.uk>,
> Andy Fawcett <an...@athame.co.uk> wrote:
>>3. Prices can be such as EUR1.89, but we don't have the one and two
>>cent coins, so it's impossible to pay the correct amount with cash, or
>>receive change. For this reason, total payments are rounded to the
>>nearest 5 cent unit. (If you pay by plastic you pay the correct
>>amount)
>
> That was true even when prices were denominated in FIM.
Yup.
I was here for a year or so of Finnmarks, before we took the Euro on
board. So, after ~27 years of Pounds and Pence (and several more before
that of Pounds, Shillings and Pence), I learned a new currency.
Only for the bastards to change it before I got fully used to it!
> I have in a jar somewhere an example of the last one-penny coin issued
> -- it was made out of aluminum (or some other very light metal), was
> about 5 mm in diameter, and weighed next to nothing. (It was very
> similar in construction to, but smaller than, the five-pence coin
> circulating when I was there in 1988-89.)
Ok, I now get an image of it.
> Of course, in 1989 FIM 1 was about equal to USD 0.20, so FIM 0.01
> would have been especially pointless.
This is the country that devalued 100 to 1, 40 years ago. And would
probably have needed to do it again if they'd not joined the EMU.
Talking of which, when we moved apartment last year we found a 1963 One
Mark note. Very good condition, but effectively worth squat on the
currency market.
Finns, love them, hate them, it doesn't matter. Just pass the viina, and
throw some water on the stove, and you'll be friends for the next few
hours at least.
Ross Ridge
>Fees to the shopowner must be lower here, because most stores don't
>have don't seem to have minimum purchase requirements.
Garrett Wollman <wol...@lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
>Merchant agreements tend to prohibit it.
For the Canadian Interac online debit cards, the store owners do seem
to be allowed set a minimum purchase requirement. Unlike like with US
check cards, they aren't handled through the same system and merchant
agreements that handle credit cards.
> They normally also prohibit differential pricing. (The merchant
>can give you a discount off the advertised price for paying in cash,
>but they can't surcharge you for not paying in cash.)
They aren't however allowed to pass whatever the fee is on to the
consumer.
Maarten Wiltink
news:hcpi00lfrdbpsd3tc...@4ax.com...
> [Pin, pin, pin pin..]
>> Recommended (by the clearing house, I think) minimum is EUR 15,-.
>> Which is not unreasonable as the fixed cost per transaction is
>> something like 40 cents. Now *that* is unreasonable. It should
>> be 5 or so.
> Plus they usually hook up via a phone modem at small stores (if the
> owner's making a phone call, you often have to wait), which means
> usage costs (particularly the phone company's starting fee) too.
> Unless they operate a 0800 (FreePhone)?
Usually dedicated flat-rate ISDN, IIAMN.
Tebrgwrf,
Maarten Wiltink
br...@fangorn.xs4all.nl
> J.D. Baldwin staggered into the Black Sun and said:
>> ... subdivision with the "traffic-calming" streets ...
> That's one of the great lies of our time, but I'm guessing that they're
> not allowed to use truthful expressions like "traffic-pissing-off"
> streets in official documents.
"We don't think of them as obstacles, but as opportunities to have some
fun."
I made it one of the criteria for selecting a company car some years ago:
take the two on my shortlist out for a testdrive, find a "traffic
calmed" subdivision, and floor it. One that can go fastest without the
trailer hitch bottoming out wins.
Bram
Egroeg Ltreahcs
> (And I also want a cookie.)
HAVE A COOKIE
--
Egroeg
Caffeine is *not* a substitute for sheep.
Andy Fawcett
> In article <bubqr1$9fc$1...@hex.athame.co.uk>, Andy Fawcett wrote:
>
> [snip description of a billing situation essentially identical to in
> [.se]
>
>> 3 years here now, still loving it, still don't understand the
>> language!
>>
>> "Iso tuoppi, kiitos!"
>
> It's quite interesting to see someone in basically the exact opposite
> situation from mine. I barely understand a word of Finnish, but I
> (obviously) understand Swedish.
Nobody understands Finnish, I'm sure they adlib all day long.
My Swedish is possibly a little better than my Finnish, because even my
10 week old puppy understands me when I speak it. As do the cats. One
of the cats even "Hämta hämta"s to command[1].
But it's not easy. I live in Helsinki, where just about everyone
understands English even if they don't speak it. I work for a Finnish
company, but the internal language used is English, because our market
is worldwide. At home we speak English because my SO is fluent in it,
and I'm not in either Finnish or Swedish[2].
It's easier just to not bother trying most of the time, even though I
have learned to pronounce "anteeksi, en ymmärrä suomea"[3] perfectly[4]
> I finally managed to persuade my bank here to upgrade my account to
> the point where I at least get a debit card and a cheque book. I can't
> believe the banking industry here...
A.
[1] That would be Zappa, the amazing fetching cat.
[2] Her first language.
[3] "Sorry, I don't understand Finnish"
[4] pronounced so well that I am often not believed. See, it IS
difficult!
Patrick R. Wade
>Andy Fawcett staggered into the Black Sun and said:
>>3 years here now, still loving it, still don't understand the language!
>>
>>"Iso tuoppi, kiitos!"
>
>
Yes. They are to be small, cute, and fuzzy. I believe i've also seen
a .sig with a reference to the purr frequency standard, too...
--
UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this
IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER
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Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
at 02:28 PM, Eric Schwartz <emsc...@pobox.com> said:
>As I said, I'll buy a sandwich with one, but nothing more expensive.
The risk is not using it, but having it at all.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
Reply to domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+bspfh to contact me.
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)