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Comment Re:Progress on this front is good (Score 1) 144

There are already drugs that inhibit CD4+T lymphocite binding in addition to drugs that stop reverse transcriptase against HIV RNA and yet STILL more drugs that inhibit the protein folding process HIV needs to change into a useful virion. Presuming this antibody does work, what then? Does at least cover HIV1 as well as HIV2?

Comment Customers in the US are protected by Regulation E (Score 3, Informative) 220

You are NOT liable for debit fraud over $50 on your account, provided you notify the bank within 3 days of it occurring. The $50 exemption for banks is to incentivize you to report fraud quickly rather than waiting until the end of the statement cycle and looking at the paper, long after the fraudster has disappeared.

If your credit sucks too much to get a real credit card through a credit union---go get a secured credit card from people like Public Savings Bank or a credit union that offers secured credit cards. You put up a security deposit and that's your credit line. If you close the account, you get the deposit back. If you get the secured card through some banks like CapOne, etc---they may unsecure the card after a while and return your deposit, which means then you have an unsecured credit card with a credit line.

Nonetheless... good luck with some of these banks in getting NSF funds due to fraud reversed. Large banks generally do whatever they can to keep their fee income, including pissing you off to the point where you close your account and take all your business away. Large national and regional banks as a whole only get concerned if you're a large customer that has significant deposits; mostly because branch managers do get graded on retail stats like how many new accounts opened and products purchased, etc. Losing a big depositor makes weekly stats look ugly, so they will bend over to save you. They really don't care much about the depositor who can barely keep $1,000/£500 in the bank.

The same goes with lending products. Customers with excellent credit (which the banks checks periodically by doing soft pulls on the credit bureaus), revolve their accounts somewhat and generate lots of transaction volume are woo'd and if you call to cancel a card--you will get xfer'd to a "customer save" department... ALWAYS manned by native English speakers, where they try to save the account from closure. Contrast that with borrowers with mediocre credit, make only minimum payments, late-pay or don't use their accounts much at all, the bank is happy to see them go.

You should always use a credit card when making purchases because it's the bank's money on the line, not your own and if you detect fraud, you can ask for a chargeback. Chargebacks cause the merchant to get money wiped off their credit card remittances for the amount of the chargeback.

I did a chargeback once when a kid at Starbucks rang up my coffee, twice, on two tickets. I only got one receipt but when I checked my credit card statement... two transactions for the same money for the same day hit my account. I clicked on the charge and clicked "Contest charge" and explained why I thought it was wrong. The next day the charge was gone off my statement, and that Starbucks store got $4.96 wiped off their credit card remittances for charging me twice, which leaves it to their store manager to search their records to find out why they got a chargeback and who caused it to happen, etc.

You can't easily do chargebacks with debit cards because you have to fight your bank. With credit cards it's easy, because Visa/MC/Amex/DISC build purchase protection into their credit card contracts.

Comment It's the sun (Score 1) 601

It bakes law enforcement brains in Florida.

I'd like to see this same experiment done on Philadelphia's extensive transit system (SEPTA). Considering that it's pretty easy for the homeless to urinate just about everyone in the system and go unpunished for it... I bet photography is also on the list of least concerns.

Comment Re:Speed (Score 1) 237

You're not going to see any speed gain from *just* switching to C++ from C. A direct translation of code from C to some other language invariably never accomplishes this. The compilation of Compiz will also be slower if it was just a language change, anyway.***

*** Unless the authors also did a major refactor and performance enhancement job while they were sifting through the code, which is what I always strive to do when I have to refactor an entire project from scratch, but in a time crunch or to get new features out quickly... might not be able to do.

I haven't finished RTFA (it's in another tab), but I would have thought if massive performance changes were being made to the code---surely that would be at the forefront of any refactor announcement. Most developers love to parade their performance boosting efforts at release time.

I would not expect Compiz 0.10 (or 1.0) to be much different than previous releases except for already announced feature-change that's being baked into the new code.

Comment Great - Time to hold off upgrading Compiz (Score 1) 237

The language and dependency changes aside, how much do you want to bet there will be problems in every package distro?

After 2 and a half years of getting Compiz sorted in SuSE, RH, Slackware so you have a 50% or better chance of it working out of the box when you install a distro, not having to dig through massive tweaking to get it operating... I'm expecting a step or two backwards in the "installability" department for a while.

Comment Got an iPhone? (Score 1) 499

If you got an iPhone or a Driod, you can get WiFi-Fo-Fum. Go into your router settings and make sure you're broadcasting your SSID and lock on to it on the smartphone. I've found dead spots in my rowhome (3 stories) where there were just Faraday-like dead spots in my house and one was near my basement PC. Repositioned the antenna and all was back to normal. I also can't walk near the spots when I'm using my mobile or the calls cut off, too.

Submission + - Dell Sold Millions of Faulty Optiplex Workstations (nytimes.com)

christoofar writes: In a damning condemnation of Dell by the NYT, your half-decade long nightmare with corporate Dell Optiplex computers with their impossible-to-figure-out driver updates and difficult mobo upgrading methods and fighting the mysteriously-odd dead computer in your IT department was all for nought. The major problem that affects millions of Dell Optiplex workstations delivered between 2003 and 2005 were faulty capacitors manufactured by Nichicon, a Japanese supplier. E-mails now unsealed in the lawsuit customers filed against Dell revealed that Support Engineers and Sales both knew of the problem, but Dell emphasized "ambiguity" when discussing support problems with customers related to the broken computers.

Comment In Pennsylvania There Is No Doubt (Score 1) 284

The latest edition to Pennsylvania's vast natural gas reserves, the Mercellus Shale find, is our only hope in this state to recover from de-investment since the steel industry was obliterated in the 1970s, and the coal industry before that.

Since NatGas prices are now trading at obscenely low levels, I'm hoping for more expansion (and driller taxation) in my state to at least make up somewhat for 30 years of economic decline, and the expectation is that NatGas prices now have nowhere to go but back up after perhaps another 12-20 month plateau until more coal-fired power plants are retired and gas-generated electricity expands.

Home consumption of natural gas in Pennsylvania is starting to expand after years of decline. Most PA electric companies will be allowed to jack up rates starting in 2011, which means any homeowner who moved off gas or oil heat to cheap and ineffecient forced-air electric heating elements to save money will now be royally screwed.

There's a lot of local companies around the Philadelphia area who are making a mint converting newer houses off electric heating back on to Natural Gas and those who are giving up oil heat are picking forced-air gas furnaces instead.

I am soon to buy a new home, and not only does my water heater and my furnace run off gas, but I will be switching my 240V electric clothes dryer (120V powers the motor, 240V goes to the heating element) to a low power 120V electric/gas dryer. Gas clothes dryers also dry your clothes quicker than all-electric models do with a more even application of heat.

Comment The reason why the stock prices went to zero (Score 4, Informative) 411

The problem wasn't the NYSE. The problem was that when the NYSE decided to execute trading delays, the other markets replied "the computer sez no" and kept on trading at high speed. Because there weren't enough buyers at the time to satisfy all the selling, all the market sellers saw their prices plummet because the computers were programmed to find a buyer no matter what the price, as long as the transaction would clear.

So... what's the problem? If you picked up Accenture at a penny a share you should be fuckin' lucky. I wouldn't shiv that stock off to a homeless man for a nickel.

Comment Print the usage on the fucking bill? (Score 1) 199

I still opt to get paper statements from Comcast because I love killing trees and it takes them longer to get my money. But print or online, if they are going to cap usage and nag users about their useage, why not print the bar graph on the top of Page 1 on the PDF version and the print version of the bill?

My electric company does it. My gas company does it. My water utility does it. Comcast is just another utility bill really. Print the stupid usage on the bill and call it a day.

Why do I need to waste 15 minutes of my life figuring out another "tool" on their site when I have better things to do with my time? I read every bill I get and pay them religiously. If I saw that I went crazy with my bandwidth, I'll check my LAN and WLAN to see what's up---maybe someone cracked my wireless key and is doing a drive-by. Maybe I'm downloading way too much porn than I thought I should... who cares?

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One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor... is to discourage... from expecting too much from mathematics. -- N. Wiener

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