Posts by Lucy Stewart
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
"The science isn't settled" ... "the science is uncertain" ... as Frank Luntz has explained, that's exactly the message the sponsor wants.
The trouble is, of course, that at a certain level - i.e. the fine detail - the science isn't settled. There is huge debate over exactly how global warming will affect any number of things. But saying so is interpreted as an admission that the basic concept (increasing greenhouse gas levels lead to increased temperatures) is considered flawed. It does really remind me of the creationist issue; people mistake debate over detail for debate over substance. But we live in a world where all the options are binary. Just keep in mind the rules we're playing under.
-
Coming from a country where credit cards almost never have PINs (according to him), he told me he'd feel very insecure if a PIN could ever be used to authenticate his card, and felt much safer signing instead.
Considering the handwriting observation training of the average shop assistant, and how often people thanked me for bothering to check the signature at all when I worked retail (and the crap I got if I asked them to sign again), that's quite funny.
-
The most charitable thing I can say about dubmuggas comment is that it was a joke in extremely poor taste, so poor it wasn't even clear if it was a joke.
Eh, I'll grant that it was a poorly-worded joke. It's the continued defence that's trollish.
-
so you'd disarm the person then run away...
...and you think i'm making stupid statements ?
Please note the "more seriously", and, yeah, it's about equally as logical as your hypothetical situation.
-
turn your back on an able bodied distressed person who just tried to stab you ?
Then do it at a run.
More seriously, there's a difference between "defend yourself" and "slap some sense into", espeically considering the misogynistic overtones of the latter. Stop constructing tenuous hypothetical scenarios in defence of a stupid statement; it's too late on Friday for that.
Re the earlier earjack: the best defence is a good offence. Wrap the jack and the wire adjacent to it in a good layer of sellotape as soon as you get them. Not hugely aesthetically pleasing, but it prevents a lot of the bending which eventually causes the wires to snap.
It has been my experience that *all* headphones do this, not just Sony, if used often and hard enough; the bugger is that the silencing ones are extremely expensive but still subject to the same fault.
-
Call me old-fashioned, but I've never used eftpos for anything less than $10 nor a credit card for less than $50 (except the few occasions when I've been caught short).
I just remember when retailers had a minimum limit for eftpos transactions (usually $2) which was about the same time as I got my first eftpos card. Because of this, I do feel slightly guilty using it for purchases under this amount, and try to keep some loose change on me or buy something else to top it up, but anything over that I wouldn't think twice.
-
Crossing fingers for the Christchurch thing - I was going to be in Wellington tomorrow, as it happens, but instead I will be listening to forty-five other people talk about their medical summer school projects, which is unlikely to be nearly as interesting. Curses.
-
I'd say probability rather than possibility.
Depending on what you mean by "internal" (i.e. "person who works there" v. "person with access to flash drive owned by person who works there".) But it's scenario with the fewest caveats, assuming the council's firewalling isn't actually completely useless.
The hubby and I are going to Kiwicon this weekend, where I imagine this will be a hot topic of discussion - I'm very curious to see what's floating around...
actually to be precise 66.700.000 as they, for some odd reason, invert commas and full stops..plays havoc with software
This is a European standard - I imagine it's a leftover from the Dutch.
-
But I was also surprised just how much that whole system still relies on cash-in-hand.
Worse than that, "paycheck" is often a literal, not a metaphorical staetement in the US, meaning that companies can dick people around by ensuring they get their pay too late on Friday to bank it, leaving the money in the company's accounts for an extra couple of interest-bearing days. It's almost unbelievably antiquated.
-
SSL is a great example - SSL man-in-the-middle attacks are becoming doable
The holes have been there for a decade or so, the knowledge has just become public more recently. The real problem is people ignoring certificate errors, and your average non-techy person will usually pick convenience over caution. Like most security issues, the one thing you can't fix reliably is the user.