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Comment: Re:how many products? (Score 1) 298

by snsh (#46131673) Attached to: Price of Amazon Prime May Jump To $119 a Year

The biggest shame of Prime is that it defaults to free, 2-day shipping for every purchase, including large objects like major appliances that you don't need in 2-days. One heavy item can easily cost Amazon more for expedited shipping than what they charge for the Prime membership fee. It's a huge waste.

Comment: Re: Get a real mail account (Score 1) 388

by snsh (#45944167) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What To Do With Misdirected Email?

Except there is no "correctly spelled domain". You're saying that the owner of "ashley.com" can stake a claim to owning "ashlee.com" or "ashleigh.com". You also presume (incorrectly) that the multinational registered their domain first. Pay attention to context. This thread is about personal names as part of domain names where there's a lot of variation, not about fanciful marks which enjoy stronger trademark protection.


by snsh (#45940527) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What To Do With Misdirected Email?

Nope. For a UDRP to go anywhere, you need to meet a pretty high bar, as in you actually registered a domain with the intent to confuse the public, and have no legitimate claim to it otherwise. And since when does ICANN award damages?

But more to the point, you're basically saying that the recipient of a misdirected email (like the OP) is required to delete it. That's not the law.


by snsh (#45928409) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What To Do With Misdirected Email?

My personal domain name is a variation in the spelling of the name of a multinational company. I get a lot of people's bank statements, hotel reservations, etc. which I suppose come from senders who key in email addresses read to them over the phone, and are prone to typing in the wrong spelling.

The volume of the email has gone way down over time since self-service has become more common. It's not as big a problem as it used to be.

The best part of it, though, is when I get CV/resumes from random job applicants trying to email the company. There's unlimited prank potential when you're dealing with someone who thinks you might offer them a real job.

Comment: The USPS is still way behind (Score 1) 75

by snsh (#45849095) Attached to: Postal Service Starting To Use Mobile Point of Sale Tech

It amazes me how little the USPS "clicknship" website has changed over the past 10+ years. A consumer still cannot go online and print out a stamped, first class envelope, let alone an unstamped mailing label. You still cannot fill out paperwork for certified or registered mail online, instead you have to go to the post office and scribble on one of those adhesive-backed green labels with smudgy ink. If you don't want to verify a mailing address or ZIP+4, it's far easier to type it into Google.com than USPS.com because you can't do an unstructured search for an address without tabbing between Address1, Address2, City, etc. Unless you're sending an Express Mail overnight package, there isn't much you can do from USPS.com.

The USPS need a leader who can really embrace technology, deploy more online self-service tools, and more functional self-service kiosks. Maybe they should just buy out stamps.com for a billion dollars and offer it as a free service to everyone.

Comment: Re:captions (Score 1) 81

by snsh (#45821401) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Effective, Reasonably Priced Conferencing Speech-to-Text?

Youtube is far from the best speech-to-text technology available. The best STT technology is probably owned by the NSA or companies that work with them. Part of the secret sauce to good STT is voice training and speaker recognition, which I don't believe youtube's STT is capable of yet. As far as Youtube is concerned, it's only one person talking throughout each video, so when you have a French dude speaking one sentence, followed by an Irish woman the next sentence, youtube may not dynamically adapt to that.

But besides that, the first thing any STT vendors ask when you start talking to them is about the quality of the recorded sound. If your speakers are not in a low-noise environment with good microphone setups, the results will always be disappointing.

Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU. -- Mt.