If I just walk out the door, what are they going to do?
It appears they can park behind your parking space to prevent you from pulling out. And if not supplying ID gets you arrested, what do you think actual resistance would lead to?
It looks like the author of the fine blog will be talking to his lawyer, so you shouldn't need to talk to yours, yet.
The Wal*Marts I've been to don't automatically check bags & receipts at the door. After all, their checkers see every item being loaded in the bags, and so do their security cameras. And their greeters can do cursory once-overs if they need to.
Wal*Mart does, however, object strongly to a customer taking recently purchased&bagged items back into the store...
Not enough. How many times have the police of various jurisdictions arrested someone for murder after their suspect called 911 to get help for the victim?
BTW, in many states you are not required to carry or produce identification, but if you refuse the police have the option of 'detaining' you for 72 hours to determine your identity.
You're not required to produce ID, but if you don't you could go to jail for three days!?
This is the same sort of logic that says that being on the sex offender list isn't a punishment, but the authorities can severely limit freedom of movement for someone if his name is on that list.
You're already in the store, near the exit, when they do their standard bag search. They can't refuse entry if you're already inside and trying to get out.
Sure, they can make you vacate the premises. But it's no good to them to have such a policy unless they can make you vacate the premises without the stuff you just bought and/or shoplifted.
It appears that the law clears stores of wrongdoing if they hold you against your will because they think you might be shoplifting and you're acting "suspicious."
Disclaimer: the bag checks severely annoy me as well, especially at electronics stores.
I don't know. Warehouse stores do it that way, but I think places like Circuit City and Best Buy sometimes place those signs by or at or on the check-out--meaning that, if you didn't already know they do that and you don't want to submit to a check of your shopping bags, you may have to abandon your cart and its contents. (Things that aren't shopping bags aren't automatically searched. I was once waved through a store exit after an electronic tag went off; I guess at Best Buy, cashier error is as likely to trigger tags as shoplifting.)
Or they put the nice big signs at customer service--which, while it is often (though not always) near the door, is not a place people automatically look. Sometimes it's even on the wrong side of the check-out, esp. if you've already started shopping.
Yeah, this sounds like something American government might do. We already do this with the (major) record labels and radio stations. We could arrange it for broadband: every broadband account has to pay extra money to the RIAA and MPAA, and then the RIAA and MPAA will at least consider going easier on the ISPs and webpages.
I wouldn't say this is a good idea: when you read about what's going on between internet radio and Soundexchange, you see how this idea will work in practice. But it's an idea...
Were these batteries exposed to water? Maybe--there has been a lot of rain in the Southern Plains this year. Tropical Storm Erin just passed through, but there was enough rain before that.
Were they exposed to heat? Yes. It's been a very hot summer this year, or at least this month, in the Southern Plains when it hasn't been raining. Nineties or 100s(Fahrenheit).
Corrosive chemicals? Probably not. But these batteries are li-poly! They can explode without help from other chemicals.
The problem is, unless you are rich, you likely do not have a lawyer of your own except on special occasions. Normal people can't afford to put them on retainer continually. And even when they do get a lawyer, lawyers worth the name can be hundreds of dollars an hour.
Shrinkwrap contracts tend to be applied to relatively inexpensive items. You really need to be devoted to your principles if you want to spend $10,000 to fight a $1000 shrinkwrap contract--and that would be expensive for shrinkwrap contracting.
In short--de jure, illegal, maybe; but de facto, the only way for most of us to fight it is to ignore it outright.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, worth the title or otherwise.
Touche.
Apple simply doesn't care much about the business market yet--think of the Mac vs. PC ads, where they try to depict PC as a serious business computer, unlike the Mac. If Apple wanted the business market, they would try harder to sell computers there.
They could've made ways to sync iPhones without iTunes. There is a program called iSync that works on Macs; that would be reasonable for syncing a business phone. But Apple hasn't ported it to Windows; instead, they create a security hole in iTunes by letting it attach to MS Outlook! [grrr]
If there were more Apples in businesses, then serious business iPhones--or maybe MacPhones--might be more practical.
One more point: Steve Jobs has announced that the iPhone is the next iPod, which would also explain the iPhone-iTunes connection sufficiently. Jobs was thinking in terms of "entertainment device that makes phone calls." This, again, may be a little like making phones that play Solitare, except there already are business phones that play Solitare.
The phone itself costs $600. That's already steep. If he already had a cell-phone plan from T-Mobile, you can understand why he'd want to just buy an iPhone to put on it, and not an at&t contract...
I think the $64,000 question is, will Radio Shack ever sell phones that haven't already been tied to a carrier? Not "Sprint" phones or "at&t" phones or "Verizon" phones--just Optimus phones, SIM chip sold separately?
And where does one buy a hardline phone, if not the service providers?
Who knows, maybe someday you'll be able to buy a cell phone in your local supermarket--a cell phone not marked "Tracfone." [grin]
That's the improved Jaguar, the one that's got the hints, that did that naughty grille. Parent was railing against Jaguar before Ford bought it, the one that built classy V-12 sports cars.
Apple doesn't sell business iPhones yet because iPhones have to be activated through iTunes and use iTunes to organize. You yourself may have no problem with that, but I can imagine some companies not wanting to put iTunes on their servers (assuming they even can) simply so their employees can use iPhones. It would be risky for business productivity--it would be like having a business phone activate and be organized through MS's Solitare program.
No. When Engadget tested the corporate software hack, they switched their iPhone to T-Mobile using an already-on T-Mobile SIM. They got bars, and it appears that it worked fine.
Maybe Apple could consider issuing iPhone 2.0 to T-Mobile in two years. The thing is, T-Mobile exists in Europe, where phones are prohibited from being locked down absolutely, and there might be European outrage if they heard T-Mobile America had it and T-Mobile Europe couldn't. Contrariwise, at&t is all-American: if one wants to lock in an advanced GSM phone exclusively, at&t is the place to go.
You may have noticed an article from a New Jersey paper about his exploit in the/. summary. The Associated Press has picked it up from there. There's no hiding this now.
No. This is not making imitation iPhones with more features than real ones; this is modifying real iPhones to do what real iPhones can't normally do--namely, work outside AT&T--without gaining any other features.
If you want to switch from AT&T to another carrier and you have a really expensive iPhone, a working phone with a few of the fancier features nonfunctional is still more useful than a phone that won't work on the other network at all.
There is still voicemail--it just reverts to normal non-visual voicemail. There is still SMS--and on a phone which can use outright e-mail, why do you need SMS?
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It appears they can park behind your parking space to prevent you from pulling out. And if not supplying ID gets you arrested, what do you think actual resistance would lead to?
It looks like the author of the fine blog will be talking to his lawyer, so you shouldn't need to talk to yours, yet.
The Wal*Marts I've been to don't automatically check bags & receipts at the door. After all, their checkers see every item being loaded in the bags, and so do their security cameras. And their greeters can do cursory once-overs if they need to.
Wal*Mart does, however, object strongly to a customer taking recently purchased&bagged items back into the store...
Not enough. How many times have the police of various jurisdictions arrested someone for murder after their suspect called 911 to get help for the victim?
You're not required to produce ID, but if you don't you could go to jail for three days!?
This is the same sort of logic that says that being on the sex offender list isn't a punishment, but the authorities can severely limit freedom of movement for someone if his name is on that list.
You're already in the store, near the exit, when they do their standard bag search. They can't refuse entry if you're already inside and trying to get out.
Sure, they can make you vacate the premises. But it's no good to them to have such a policy unless they can make you vacate the premises without the stuff you just bought and/or shoplifted.
It appears that the law clears stores of wrongdoing if they hold you against your will because they think you might be shoplifting and you're acting "suspicious."
Disclaimer: the bag checks severely annoy me as well, especially at electronics stores.
I don't know. Warehouse stores do it that way, but I think places like Circuit City and Best Buy sometimes place those signs by or at or on the check-out--meaning that, if you didn't already know they do that and you don't want to submit to a check of your shopping bags, you may have to abandon your cart and its contents. (Things that aren't shopping bags aren't automatically searched. I was once waved through a store exit after an electronic tag went off; I guess at Best Buy, cashier error is as likely to trigger tags as shoplifting.)
Or they put the nice big signs at customer service--which, while it is often (though not always) near the door, is not a place people automatically look. Sometimes it's even on the wrong side of the check-out, esp. if you've already started shopping.
Yeah, but it looks like the actions of Circuit City and the cops have caused the fella in question to foam and rise.
Yeah, this sounds like something American government might do. We already do this with the (major) record labels and radio stations. We could arrange it for broadband: every broadband account has to pay extra money to the RIAA and MPAA, and then the RIAA and MPAA will at least consider going easier on the ISPs and webpages.
I wouldn't say this is a good idea: when you read about what's going on between internet radio and Soundexchange, you see how this idea will work in practice. But it's an idea...
I think parent was talking of hacking "Content Security Systems," not Cascading Style Sheets.
Ah, the Holy Grail: hacking GSM phones to work on CDMA networks. How does one rig a SIM card to work on a network that uses something else?
This is the fella who unlocks iPhones with soldering irons. I'm sure some of the value is from Holtz's hand-soldering.
Were these batteries exposed to water? Maybe--there has been a lot of rain in the Southern Plains this year. Tropical Storm Erin just passed through, but there was enough rain before that.
Were they exposed to heat? Yes. It's been a very hot summer this year, or at least this month, in the Southern Plains when it hasn't been raining. Nineties or 100s(Fahrenheit).
Corrosive chemicals? Probably not. But these batteries are li-poly! They can explode without help from other chemicals.
The problem is, unless you are rich, you likely do not have a lawyer of your own except on special occasions. Normal people can't afford to put them on retainer continually. And even when they do get a lawyer, lawyers worth the name can be hundreds of dollars an hour.
Shrinkwrap contracts tend to be applied to relatively inexpensive items. You really need to be devoted to your principles if you want to spend $10,000 to fight a $1000 shrinkwrap contract--and that would be expensive for shrinkwrap contracting.
In short--de jure, illegal, maybe; but de facto, the only way for most of us to fight it is to ignore it outright.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, worth the title or otherwise.
Touche.
Apple simply doesn't care much about the business market yet--think of the Mac vs. PC ads, where they try to depict PC as a serious business computer, unlike the Mac. If Apple wanted the business market, they would try harder to sell computers there.
They could've made ways to sync iPhones without iTunes. There is a program called iSync that works on Macs; that would be reasonable for syncing a business phone. But Apple hasn't ported it to Windows; instead, they create a security hole in iTunes by letting it attach to MS Outlook! [grrr]
If there were more Apples in businesses, then serious business iPhones--or maybe MacPhones--might be more practical.
One more point: Steve Jobs has announced that the iPhone is the next iPod, which would also explain the iPhone-iTunes connection sufficiently. Jobs was thinking in terms of "entertainment device that makes phone calls." This, again, may be a little like making phones that play Solitare, except there already are business phones that play Solitare.
The phone itself costs $600. That's already steep. If he already had a cell-phone plan from T-Mobile, you can understand why he'd want to just buy an iPhone to put on it, and not an at&t contract...
I think the $64,000 question is, will Radio Shack ever sell phones that haven't already been tied to a carrier? Not "Sprint" phones or "at&t" phones or "Verizon" phones--just Optimus phones, SIM chip sold separately?
And where does one buy a hardline phone, if not the service providers?
Who knows, maybe someday you'll be able to buy a cell phone in your local supermarket--a cell phone not marked "Tracfone." [grin]
That's the improved Jaguar, the one that's got the hints, that did that naughty grille. Parent was railing against Jaguar before Ford bought it, the one that built classy V-12 sports cars.
Apple doesn't sell business iPhones yet because iPhones have to be activated through iTunes and use iTunes to organize. You yourself may have no problem with that, but I can imagine some companies not wanting to put iTunes on their servers (assuming they even can) simply so their employees can use iPhones. It would be risky for business productivity--it would be like having a business phone activate and be organized through MS's Solitare program.
No. When Engadget tested the corporate software hack, they switched their iPhone to T-Mobile using an already-on T-Mobile SIM. They got bars, and it appears that it worked fine.
Maybe Apple could consider issuing iPhone 2.0 to T-Mobile in two years. The thing is, T-Mobile exists in Europe, where phones are prohibited from being locked down absolutely, and there might be European outrage if they heard T-Mobile America had it and T-Mobile Europe couldn't. Contrariwise, at&t is all-American: if one wants to lock in an advanced GSM phone exclusively, at&t is the place to go.
You may have noticed an article from a New Jersey paper about his exploit in the /. summary. The Associated Press has picked it up from there. There's no hiding this now.
If he gets sued by the major North American corps., he'll run through that money quickly.
No. This is not making imitation iPhones with more features than real ones; this is modifying real iPhones to do what real iPhones can't normally do--namely, work outside AT&T--without gaining any other features.
If you want to switch from AT&T to another carrier and you have a really expensive iPhone, a working phone with a few of the fancier features nonfunctional is still more useful than a phone that won't work on the other network at all.
There is still voicemail--it just reverts to normal non-visual voicemail. There is still SMS--and on a phone which can use outright e-mail, why do you need SMS?
Having no camera is an advantage. If you can prove your phone has no camera, you can use it in places where cameras are forbidden.