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New Yorker Accidentally Gets $1M WebTV Prototype
An anonymous reader sent us to a story that chats about a shipping error causing a million dollar WebTV prototype to get shipped to a NY Bank employee. The creepy part is that the NYPD apparently tracked the package down. I guess I should be thankful the HPD isn't knocking on my door asking about that crate of Transmeta CPUs that somehow got shipped here by mistake last week.
Do we have any true confirmation, or is this just more word of mouth stuff? I mean, there are a lot of more plausible sounding urban legends on this site.
Let's analyse this: Big corporation X, which many people don't understand, and has been recently confirmed to have been doing evil things, has an employee, who accidently sends package Y, which is worth 1,000,000 dollars. This person, Z, who is a complete innocent just trying to get his fair share from company X is shocked/scared/suprised as company X brings in the [Mafia|Police|Military] to get back its 1,000,000 dollars package. Lesson to be learned: really don't trust those large corporations, because they're all evil and secretly control the government.
" Has the NYPD now been reduced to foot soldiers that serve to correct simple clerical errors on behalf of corporate America? "
I don't know. I'd want a signed letter, compelete with a few forms of ID, from this Scott Posner fellow before I'd believe any of this in the slightest. This is an NT security rag^H^H^Hmag...
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
IANAL, but read the law you cite. That law does *not* say you can keep everything you receive in the mail (or via some other delivery service); it simply says that implied contracts where you "indicate consent" by accepting your mail are unenforceable and you are under no obligation to either pay the invoice or return the merchandise at your own expense. It's the same logic used to overturn the other notorious unilateral implied contracts - "shrinkwrap" software license.
You *can* be required to return the merchandise at the shipper's expense.
You *can* be required to return misdelivered merchandise to the delivery agent, so they can complete delivery.
But most importantly, this law doesn't apply because it wasn't invoiced merchandise and this individual was not the intended recepient.
As for the presence of the cops, that's probably just standard procedure when valuable deliveries go astray. It's wildly inappropriate here, but think about what's usually involved in megadollar value shipments. It's not unreasonable for the cops to wonder if there's a connection between the carrier, the recepient, and the missing diamonds.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I'm guessing the shipping computer Blue-Screened at an inopportune time.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
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The article cited in the /. summary does a horrible job of telling the story. Check out this article at the NY Times for a better recap. Seems the NYPD unit involved was the Computer Investigative Unit, which is certainly appropriate due to the fact that this was suspected industrial espionage. At the time, it was suspected that the shipping labels may have been intentionally switched in order to steal the device. In hindsight, the police did overreact since this turned out to be a mistake rather than industrial espionage. To be fair, they didn't know if they were knocking on the door of a pregnant wife (they were) or a corporate spy. Also, the device was in the hand's of the banker's father, who is an attorney. Regardless of our opinions of MS, a prototype of one of their more popular products that is more than a year from market probably is worth $1 million to them or their competitors, and when something like this ends up in NY rather than Seattle, you can bet there will be some pretty beefy law enforcement involved. I'm sure a similar case with a big company like GM, Ford, IBM, Apple, etc. would result in similar police response.
The million dollar valuation is the same one used to show how costly Kevin Mitnick's crimes were. And oh, remember that million dollar-ish document somebody dumpster-dove from a phone company, the one telling how to dial 911 or something? It probably cost MS over a megabuck to develop the new product, but the prototype was not, in and of itself, the thing of real value, and they probably lied to the PD in order to get them to do their dirty work for them.
That "million-dollar" valuation on the proto-board is, I fear, wholy specious. Whilst I'm sure MS spent $1M to produce the board, that cost was almost entirely spent on the _design_. Thus, if they lost the board, they only have to make another from the same design.
Now, a hand-stuffed custom board with a bunch of rework is still an expensive item (maybe $10-50K in engineer's time) and it's rare (they'll probably have a dozen or two of a given rev), but unless it's fabricated from pure gold, the board itself isn't hugely valuable.
It's also misleading to argue that, because the board embodies "trade secrets", its loss could cost the company millions of dollars - its a pretty opaque instanciation of a proprietary design, not that design itself. A prototype board is no more reverse-engineerable than is a production board, and no-one claims that by shipping production hardware they're losing valuable intellectual property.
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
classic anti-microsoft conspiracy slashdot trash. I'm sure I'll get moderated down for this, but who really needs positive karma in a microcosm full of minds that run the gamut from "closed" to "empty"? one time I ordered a whole bunch of computer parts online which UPS kindly misdelivered to some building on 29th st in nyc. as soon as their tracking system notified me of the snafu, I notified UPS - they told me that they could send someone over the next day to try and pick it up, and since that wasn't good enough for Mr. I-Need-It-Now-Bossman, I called my helpful NYPD who said they'd be more than happy to escort me over to pick up my stuff. the NYPD want to help you if youre a NYC resident (unless you're hatian, in which case I guess they just want to anally molest you). let's not get our panties in knots because they helped microsoft.
I know that if you receive unrequested merchandice in your mail, you are entitled to keep it for free. This law was enacted to prevent companies from sending products to people who hadn't requested them, along with a bill requesting payment. If someone does this to you, throw the bill away and keep whatever they sent :)
/. who could commend on the legal issues involved in this kind of thing?
:)
I'm curious as to how this kind of "clerical error" would be dealt with in that kind of context. Do we have any lawyers here on
Even more interesting, as the author noted, was how Micros~1 managed to get the NYPD to knock on this guy's door to retreive the package even 'though no crime was committed. Do they really have that much clout? God help us all if so
Anthony
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
"Hello, sir, this is the NYPD. We have been informed by Microsoft that you have machines here that have been bought for the express purpose of running a Microsoft operating system but you are instead running Linux on them. We would like to come in and confiscate those machines."
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My mom's going to kick you in the face!
Microsoft completed merger talks with industry giant United States of America. Reports are somewhat sketchy at the moment, but it looks like Microsoft will be purchasing a majority share in the USoA. Supporters point to the recent Microsoft controlled actions of the NYPD as further evidence of the MegaCorps takeover. USoA stock skyrocketed on the rumors as investors speculate that for the first time in fifty years USoA may actually turn a profit. Microsoft stock also rose several points as the acquisition of nuclear weapons makes them a formidable world economic player.
Kintanon
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Yeah, hows the ol' senate campaign going? Really? Sure, sure, glad we could help out. Look, there's been a little mix up here, and, haha, was wondering if you could do us a little favor this time? Sure, look, I need to get our shipping mgr. in touch with your police chief, What's that Rudi? No, no, no, just a small operation, nothing big, just a single user, uh voter, yeah; What? Oh, yeah, they are a dime a dozen, hehheh. Sure, just talk with my shipping dept and there'll be more where that came from, lots more, Ok?
Boojum
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/12/biztech/ articles/18tv.html
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I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I guess Mayor Guiliani is just as bad as Mayor Willie Brown here in San Francisco when it comes to catering to big companies at the expense of the taxpaying public. (Please excuse the rag-on-my-mayor tangent - I'm in a really blah mood...must be Monday).
- tokengeekgrrl