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You're either a fool or a liar. I've had funds frozen for months by PayPal with no explanation (eventually released with no apology from them), and I've also disputed recurring PayPal charges stemming from a shit VPS provider who had completely ignored several of my attempts to cancel services. In the latter case, PayPal decided to rule in the shit provider's favor anyhow. I walked away from PayPal permanently after finally getting the last of my money out of that account (again, several months later, and I still never got any of the fraudulent VPS fees refunded), and I will never transact business with them again. In fact, since January of 2012 I've continued to receive an email entitled "First Invoice Overdue Notice" from the shit VPS provider every month. Those emails serve as a nice reminder to encourage folks to avoid PayPal at all costs; people continue to use them out of sheer stupidity.

Paypal Policy - A License To Steal Your Money
Funds Stolen By PayPal
PayPal - Beware of PayPal, 6000 USD seized by Paypal
180-Day Hold Sparks PayPal Suit
Paypal Can and Will seize funds...Atwood Knives
Another PayPal victim $4000.00 seized from my business account.
PayPal Horror Stories

If you get bored, try these as well:

Exhibit A
Exhibit B

So, which is it? Are you a liar, or are you a fool?

Don't enrage your boss, by making excuses, by essentially lying to his face and assuming he is stupid enough to believe your drivel.

In this case there was only one (1) email from Mauro to Rafael. Linus jumped into this thread all by himself. Mauro tried to defend his patch, and he was technically wrong because the patch had unwanted side effects. But you don't publicly call a person an idiot for a single technical error. If I were Mauro's manager, at very least I would have asked him, in private, "Why did you think this is a good patch? Did you have your reasons? Let's talk about them. Or maybe you were tired, or sick? Things happen, I know that. Let's discuss what went wrong."

I'll bet Linus was more pissed off at having his intelligence insulted with this lame excuse

It is both, actually. Linus's email attacks both the technical solution and the Mauro's reaction.

But if I were to start throwing chairs whenever my intelligence is insulted by something I read on the Internet, I'd run out of chairs pretty soon.

If he humbled himself to every fool, and every fool's excuses Linux code would be crap.

Does the phrase "speak softly and carry a big stick" ring any bell? Aside from the political connotations, it points out that your influence is not determined by how much red in the face you can become. Your influence is determined by how much power you wield. Linus has the power; he had no reason, or even right, to publicly scream profanities at a coder who had a single case of poor judgement. Nobody has a right to verbally assault another person; it's an abuse:

Verbal abuse is the use of words to cause harm to the person being spoken to. It is difficult to define and may take many forms. Similarly, the harm caused is often difficult to measure. The most commonly understood form is name-calling. Verbal abuse may consist of shouting, insulting, intimidating, threatening, shaming, demeaning, or derogatory language, among other forms of communication.

Perpetrators of verbal abuse often misuse their authority and prey on those in a subordinate position. Victims of verbal abuse are often told they are to blame for the abuser's behavior and reluctant to take action to end the abuse. Verbal abuse may lead to stress, depression, physical ailments, and other damage.

There is also the legal aspect of workplace harassment. It may be a crime in California.

Content providers keep adding more and more commercials to content, the content gets worse and worse, and they keep driving up subscription costs by demanding more $$$ from cable companies and demanding worthless channels to be bundled together.

TW charges too much, keeps pushing their prime channels to higher priced tiers, and refuses to offer als carte programming to customers.

Comcast is no better than TW, and to add salt to the wound they spy on their customers for the government and the MAFIAA.

DirecTV has poor service, fails to deliver product, and screws customers for cancelling services. I had them for 4 weeks with the promise of internet service. No one installed the internet service. After being passed around DirecTV phone support for 90 minutes, I cancelled my service because they failed to deliver. And I STILL had to pay a $135 early termination fee, despite not signing any contractual agreement.

The industry is getting greedy and corrupt, and consumers are tired of it. Very soon my parents will join the exodus.

Sorry, I did not pull out my whole war-chest on this, and that's my fault. This particular link was (as you rightly point out) not exactly relevant to the topic. I have done the research and currently IT workers according to Federal law are NON-exempt. My links are buried in Email somewhere. However a little bit of searching will find exactly what I'm talking about.

With a quick Google search (which I should have done, not you), here are a few that are more relevant. I used to have the DOL link, but it is not working now. However, the second link below summarizes from a legal perspective that in California at least, you have to past 6 figures to be exempt.

http://redmondmag.com/articles/2008/12/01/the-help-desk-overtime-bomb-is-ticking.aspx

http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/case/it_overtime.html

I am rather annoyed that the Federal (DOL) stuff I had I can't find now. I've dug through these in the past. All I can find now is for California, but I'm certain I had at one time the links to show for the Federal law too.

As per http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/case/it_overtime.html

"California employees in the IT and computer software industry, including computer professionals, IT professionals and computer programmers may be entitled to overtime pay. Both federal law and most state laws require overtime pay for such professional employees who work more than 40 hours per week unless the employee is classified as exempt."

I don't remember signing twice. I don't remember being told about this at all. I believe that, based on all the other underhanded things Best Buy has been caught doing, they will flat out lie to make a buck.

http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/articles/00854/best-buy-watchdogs.html

Sorry if you are an employee there, maybe you should consider workingfor a more ethical employer.

Judging by what these guys say, I can't see how the Computer Software Professionals Exemption doesn't apply to the programmers. Although for that matter I don't see how it doesn't apply to Intel and IBM either.

I remember how much more RAMBUS cost, maybe the price fixing was in the other direction, in order to drive them into the ground.

That's precisely what RMBS alleged.

It's also what the prior AC pointed out: The Feds charged Samsung and settled for $300M, and some Samsung suits went to jail.

I loathe RMBS's submarine patent and JEDEC fuckery as much as the next guy, but the DRAMurai were no better. When the judge at the current trial said "Yeah, we pretty much have to let the jury know about the $300M in fines and prison time for Samsung execs", Samsung was forced to settle. It was either that, or risk treble-damages for wilful violation of RMBS's patents.

I'm against those patents, and vehemently against Rambus' attempts to extend the scope of their RDRAM invention to all forms of SDRAM (which I think was ricockulous), and I think they overreached on DDR/DDR2/DDR3 by manipulating the JEDEC committee, but the DRAM makers shot themselves in the foot by trying to price RMBS out of the market in the late 90s.

A pox on all their houses.

This is not the first time T-Mobile has had issues paying employees for work while they were off the clock. http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/settlements/02742/tmobile.html

Agreed.
Don't ever interface with police unless you have to.
Doing the right thing does not protect you from abusive authority.

Learned that while watching my retired police officer boss get arrested with a face full of mace.
The officer was there to report suspicious materials found on premises. (Kids backpack full of kids cloths and recient homework... phonebills. Thought possible abduction.)
Officer had a bad attitude and my boss didn't want to take his shit.

Oddly enough, everything worked out in the end.
His lawyers were good, and he had an independant witness to testify on his behalf.

http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/settlements/03818/flase_arrest.html

I agree that the article was terrible but the complaint seems justified. His wife isn't alone in having troubles with them. For one, I stumbled across this class action lawsuit, as well as some anecdotal evidence from ex customer service employees stating most of their members didn't realise they were signed up, and 99% of calls to their office were people trying to get off their program. If only he'd avoided the mangled technical explanation the issue he had might be clearer.

I don't think anyone is trying to curtail free speech. The issue is that an insider of the company is manipulating or misrepresenting the stock to his advantage. If the CEO of a company makes a statement regarding the stock, that statement is taken heavily. Expect class-action lawsuit when a CEO misrepresents a stock to investors.

Neither Microsoft nor Best Buy has the best of track records with treating their customers with honesty. Best Buy's alleged bait and switch internal website and the multitude of Microsoft failings with their customers (Windows Genuine "Advantage" and the Vista/IPod issues come to mind immediately) put both corporations at a definite disadvantage as far as character goes. The fact that they have now been accused of working together to try to boost their respective profits through questionable and/or possibly illegal practices should not surprise anybody. Innocent until proven guilty, but talk about starting with one strike against them...

http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/case/sony_rea r_projection_lcd_tv and don't forget the Vaio FX101: they did not last long (broken power connector, malfunctioning memory slot, pcmcia malfunction), our company bought 40+ of those, more than half were binned within 24 months. And then there was that display with a firmware-issue: it stopped working after approx. 13 months (mentioned here on slashdot, don't know where).

So I should trust rebates to work, despite class action lawsuits against Sony, Best Buy, Comp USA, Dell, and others for failing to pay?

That said, I have had good experiences with small ($5-$20) manufacturer rebates in the past. Retailer rebates have earned their foul reputation, and now even the good ones are paying the price for the unscrupulous ones. If only there were some way of lowering prices ahead of time, taking the intent of the rebate into account... Nah, can't be done!

So I should trust rebates to work, despite class action lawsuits against Sony, Best Buy, Comp USA, Dell, and others for failing to pay?

That said, I have had good experiences with small ($5-$20) manufacturer rebates in the past. Retailer rebates have earned their foul reputation, and now even the good ones are paying the price for the unscrupulous ones. If only there were some way of lowering prices ahead of time, taking the intent of the rebate into account... Nah, can't be done!

Yes they have... see here.. https://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/case/ipod_it unes Read ANTITRUST Case against iTunes....

Dear Spammer/Troll,

You have linked to that same site on 3 out of the 4 articles you have posted on. You have even linked to it on that post. And you have recently started blatently karma-whoring so that more people will read your spam.

Your site (and we all know it's yours), repeatedly links to https://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/ for example:

"There is a forming class action lawsuit against AT&T Wireless alleging securities fraud. Affected? Go here."

Which surprise, surprise, has a referrer on the link. Take your spam elsewhere.

https://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/case/fujitsu 1

Other companies at: http://malfeasance.50megs.com/

https://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/case/fujitsu 1

Other companies at: http://malfeasance.50megs.com/

That is a sly page advertising http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/ , ignore this asshole.