...favor of immunizing all children and food service employees...
I agree.
Though it is funny that you mention that. I've worked in the hospitality industry for many years, and since I started (~10 years ago), I haven't had the flu once and the common cold maybe 2 or 3 times. No other illness other than of the self-induced variety. Personally I attribute that to being exposed to the guest's germs (via handling used plates, glassesware, handshakes, etc) and subsequently having built up a good resistance. I think there might be something to that, as many of our new hires (that have never worked in the industry) seem to experience a dubiously higher susceptibility to infection for the first month or two on the job -- and then afterwards get sick less often that I believe is usual.
FWIW, its possible there is no causation and its all a fun coincidence. I am in my mid-twenties and I've never had any childhood disease, including chicken pox, though I've been repeatedly directly exposed. Maybe I've just got a good immune system.
Not exactly. What I mean is that I think a person could reasonably expect to be sued if the copyright owner asked for the link to be removed and the person refused. Especially so if the link content is video or audio -- thats costing somebody some bandwidth without the benefit of the ad-impressions, which are likely intended to cover that cost. The 'guilty' parties shouldn't be sued for copyright infringement, they should be sued for theft-of-service. They should be sued for copyright infringement only if they save a local copy of the content and publish it on their website. I have no idea if that is actually how it would go down in the courtroom, though.
I don't really see this as all that big of a deal. This DOES NOT 'make the whole internet illegal', as some of the more melodramatic slashdotters seem to think. I mean really, if a copyright holder contacts me and asks me to remove a link (to their content) on my website, I'll just take it down. No reason for the other party to sue. They'd have a right to sue if I refused, and that's all this case really proves. I would question the motives of anyone who WOULD refuse to remove such a link. Sounds to me like some jerk refused because "they can't make me", and the court proved him wrong.
OTOH, if I was automatically slapped with a lawsuit without so much as a request to remove the offending link... well thats something different. I'd contact the copyright holder and let them know that I am willing to remove the link, and I would appreciate it if they would drop the lawsuit. If they refused, I would still remove the link, and I'd countersue for harrassment, or something along those lines. The result: at worst they lose the case and are forced to pay court costs. IANAL, but common sense tells me this is how such cases will pan out.
And that's all that should matter. If she's at fault even 1%, she shouldn't be able to collect damages. In this particular lawsuit I agree with you, however that is not true for every negligence suit. It really does depend on the situation. Perhaps McDonald's should have been forced to pay even if they were only at 1% fault? The legal system is set up to allow the judge to make that decision based off circumstance, with a bias toward consumer protection since that is the nature of the lawsuit. In the hot coffee lawsuit, I agree with the 'fault percentage' that judge assigned to the plaintiff and defendant. (20% and 80% respectively, if I recall...) I don't agree with the dollar amount the the defendant had to pay, though.
There's no room in this world for "I spilled coffee on myself, give me $8 million". If the courts are an injure-yourself-for-profit venue, then they should all be closed immediately. Again I agree, but it almost begs the question -- are you an American? (I am.) If so, you are damn idealistic, and I admire that. But I believe the real problem is that the judge is almost forced to reward the plaintiff if the complaint has even a shred of legal legitimacy, in order to avoid setting a precedent that allows businesses to unfairly insulate themselves against real, honest to God negligence suit. If that is in fact the choice the judge REALLY has to make, then acquiescing to the plaintiffs cause is really the best option, every time. To do otherwise may conflict with consumer protection laws for all I know. This is only my opinion, just food for thought.
I agree with everything you've stated in this thread, and have used the same statements in a similar argument. With that said, I've heard the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit stated as such:
1) Lady spills hot coffee on herself, incidentally burning the hell out of herself. There doesn't appear to be any warning label on the container. 2) Lawyer hears this story and suggests a lawsuit because McDonald's didn't explicitly indemnify itself with a 'proper' warning label (ala the Surgeon General's Warning required on cigarette packs). 3) Profit!
I don't know whether there was really a warning on the coffee cup at the time of incident or not, but it certainly sets the stage for profitable frivolous lawsuits.
My guess is that what is happening with Nintendo is that the law firm representing the Class Action heard of someone breaking their TV with the Wiimote, thumbed through the Wii manual and failed to find any verbiage to the tune of:
"Do not whip the Wiimote around like a wildman and/or complete idiot. Such actions may cause irreversable damage to the Wiimote and/or surrounding property. Nintendo and/or its affiliates cannot be held responsible for any damage resulting from use of the Wiimote inconsistent with the recommended guidelines."
Then what probably happened is that with loophole in hand, the law firm decided to start a Class Action suit against Nintendo for negligence, because Nintendo did not explicitly indemnify itself.
I haven't been able to find a Wii of my own yet, so I don't know exactly what the Wii manual says. Anyone please feel free to correct me.
As an aside, I've scanned through many EULAs in my day as a computer nerd, and every single one of them has had indemnification verbiage of some sort. With such a practice becoming commonplace in the tech sector, explicit indemnification could possibly be interpreted as the de-facto standard. If that is the case, then is it really a surprise that Nintendo is being sued for failing to provide the proper CYAs?
How about talking in the context of Earth Days, Martian Days, Venusian Days, etc? I think its pretty understandable, moreso if the wikipedia pages ever turn up;-)
Perhaps in addition then, we need to make it totally illegal for any congressman or committee to include any rider or extra verbiage to a bill that does not fit the context of the bill itself. That should eliminate a good percentage of pork.
No, most people that voted reelected Bush. And even that is still a subject of controversy.
The percentage of people who DID vote for him is a minority in the US.
I am a self-admitted google fanboy. I use the personalized search, gmail, etc etc. No apologies from me on that. I think they are a great company and I use their products every day, for free. The ads are mostly relavant and non-intrusive. Maybe that makes me a Google apologist. With that in mind, try paris france hotels hilton.
That seemed to work pretty well. The whole first page (didn't look further) as all about the hotel, not the person.
I've found that if you know how to ask google what it is you want, you will almost always get it. It may not be your first choice in keywords, but key, it works fine for me. YMMV, however.
OTOH, I use google for pretty specific searches (i.e. very specific computer problems), while I will surf Wikipedia for broad topics.
Sometimes I can spend hours and hours just playing wikipedia. They get more of my time the google does in that regard;-)
I've been meaning to pick up the Simillarion as I've heard nothing but good things... perhaps this will be the viral marketing ploy that will motivate me enough to grab a copy.
I highly recommend that you do. I scored a used hardcover copy on Amazon for under USD $20. As another poster mentioned, LOTR is but a footnote in the Tolkien universe's history. I've heard people liken the Silmarillion to the bible in that it can be a rather dry history, and that may be a vaild complaint. In my experience, though, it gets better every time through. The books included in the Silmarillion span from the creation of that universe up to the rise of Gondor. IMHO it gives the Elvish race much more depth (and also Men, to a lesser extent) than LOTR, and makes the friction between Elrond and Aragorn much more poignant.
Plus, thats how I found out who Elbereth really is and why people go around invoking her name all the time;-)
Actually, you can use Xgl/compiz" with KDE. This works on SuSE 10.1/KDE 3.5.4, but you can probably coax your distro-of-choice to play nice without too much trouble.
The only thing that sucks is the lack of a GUI configuration window (to my knowledge), so you'll have to edit the compiz config by hand.
If you have a beefy, supported graphics chipset, you could replace X/kwin with Xgl/compiz. Its kind of neat. Much to my surprise, I haven't had to restart X once since I set it up... like 2 months ago.
Hmm, not sure where you are coming from. I didn't mean to imply that if banks did what I suggested that they then would be justified in hanging the phished customer out to dry.
All I meant is that the likelihood a customer is going to be phished at all goes down quite considerably if the customer knows their bank won't email them. By default then, any email they receive that claims to be from said bank is an obvious scam. Simple as that.
But, to answer your question -- It would be in poor taste for the bank to assume that the customer IS the phisher. If it was in fact true, the burden of proof would fall on the bank to prove you ARE the phisher. The burden of proof would not fall upon yourself to prove you are innocent. Well, at least that is how it SHOULD work, here in the U.S. anyway. Of course, the times, they are a-changin'. YMMV.
Thats all fine and good if you sift through your inbox every day. I don't, so I'd be screwed anyway...
If you are running into such overdraft issues, its likely the bank will do more than just shoot you off an e-mail and absolve themselves of further obligation. That depends on the bank though, so YMMV.
If you are that worried about it, check your balance via telephone or web everyday. That is what I do, and that works just fine;-) ** I realize for the uber-paranoid, this probably isn't any better an option.
One major problem I have is that sensitive information _could_ be included in the email, which increases the risk that it could itself be viewed via a man-in-the-middle attack if its not protected with PGP. I don't necessarily trust the bank and/or its infrastructure developers not to screw that up. I stand by my original statement that I'd rather not get any communication from my financial institutions via email and I urge others to consider doing the same. Its just one more unnecessary point of failure, security-wise.
Besides, personally I HAVE received phishing e-mails disguised as one of my banks. I considered them suspect, and sure enough every one of them turned out not to be legitimate. I only knew that by doing a nslookup on the target urls' IPs.
Would you expect the average computer user to be savvy enough to do that? Allowing financial institutions to communicate via e-mail is why phishing works at all, IMHO.
Really? Mot my snail mail. Far less noise than e-mail.
Its magically more secure because its less likely that phishers will waste the postage, for one. Additionally, you should already be receiving periodic statements from your bank. Any non-emergency communication from the bank is typically conveniently included in said statement.
I hope this makes my original point a bit more clear.
Though the parent is funny, I am not sure why it got +4 Funny instead of +4 Insightful. This is EXACTLY what financial institutions should be doing!! It would work like gangbusters.
Another approach that I think would work well for financial institutions is to make it unequivocally clear that they will never never ever in a million years contact their customers by any method besides snail mail. The customer should be required to sign a sheet saying they understand this before they are allowed to open an account, and it should be the responsibility of the financial institution to make sure that the customer is TOLD this, not just handed a piece of fine print to sign. I have been using online banking at 3 different institutions for approximately 5 years, and I am absolutely sure that in that time I have never recieved any e-mail from them for any reason. Paypal on the other hand... I've gotten both legitimate email and phishers.... so I just blacklist anything with paypal in the subject or content. Sure, it means they have no way to get ahold of me besides snail mail, but they shouldn't need to.
But, perhaps I am a little too idealistic.../me sighs
Am I the only one that finds it stupid that these "cyber terrorists" attacked sites associated with NASA?
At first glance I have to agree! But, well, it was enough to get it displayed to the 1 million+ slashbot army!
I wouldn't be THAT surprised to see this story on CNN.com or MSNBC.com to tell the truth.
Now, when it makes ABC World News Tonight or hell, even FOX News, I'll be impressed.
Okay, look gfxguy. In your previous few posts you talk about RIGHTS. First, Chilean people that are not naturalized U.S. Citizens have virtually no rights in the U.S. outside international law and treaties, certainly not in the context of the First Amendment of the Constitution. So talking about legal rights in the context of this very specific occurance is just dumb and borderline trolling. Second, the posters that you are arguing against are mostly referring to MORAL rights, which is a very different thing than LEGAL rights. There is a lot more gray area there, if you haven't noticed from the replies you have received thus far. Hypothetically speaking, if Congress outlawed the 1st Amendment, would you then call someone a jerk for breaking the law and asserting their inalienable right to free speech?
...but I'll fight against anybody who defaces somebody elses property (thus taking away their free speech)
Obviously there was a security hole. The owners of the site are now aware of it. They will be better off for having it exposed, assuming there is no data loss.
...and I'll fight against anybody who thinks they have a RIGHT to a forum for their speech.
Like yourself, for instance? Perhaps you should excercise better judgement in picking your battles. I guess I've been had by a troll, so I should take my own advice. But lastly, FWIW, I agree with you in principle but the way of the world is not so black and white. You've had ample opportunity to chime in on this subject, so do me a favor and STFU.
Right. Its implicit based off the existing organization of our government as prescribed by the Constitution. The fact that the author felt it necessary to illustrate the point in writing leads me to believe that something is amiss...
Slashdot Mirror
...favor of immunizing all children and food service employees...
I agree.
Though it is funny that you mention that. I've worked in the hospitality industry for many years, and since I started (~10 years ago), I haven't had the flu once and the common cold maybe 2 or 3 times. No other illness other than of the self-induced variety. Personally I attribute that to being exposed to the guest's germs (via handling used plates, glassesware, handshakes, etc) and subsequently having built up a good resistance. I think there might be something to that, as many of our new hires (that have never worked in the industry) seem to experience a dubiously higher susceptibility to infection for the first month or two on the job -- and then afterwards get sick less often that I believe is usual.
FWIW, its possible there is no causation and its all a fun coincidence. I am in my mid-twenties and I've never had any childhood disease, including chicken pox, though I've been repeatedly directly exposed. Maybe I've just got a good immune system.
Not exactly. What I mean is that I think a person could reasonably expect to be sued if the copyright owner asked for the link to be removed and the person refused. Especially so if the link content is video or audio -- thats costing somebody some bandwidth without the benefit of the ad-impressions, which are likely intended to cover that cost. The 'guilty' parties shouldn't be sued for copyright infringement, they should be sued for theft-of-service. They should be sued for copyright infringement only if they save a local copy of the content and publish it on their website. I have no idea if that is actually how it would go down in the courtroom, though.
I hope this clears things up.
I don't really see this as all that big of a deal. This DOES NOT 'make the whole internet illegal', as some of the more melodramatic slashdotters seem to think. I mean really, if a copyright holder contacts me and asks me to remove a link (to their content) on my website, I'll just take it down. No reason for the other party to sue. They'd have a right to sue if I refused, and that's all this case really proves. I would question the motives of anyone who WOULD refuse to remove such a link. Sounds to me like some jerk refused because "they can't make me", and the court proved him wrong. OTOH, if I was automatically slapped with a lawsuit without so much as a request to remove the offending link... well thats something different. I'd contact the copyright holder and let them know that I am willing to remove the link, and I would appreciate it if they would drop the lawsuit. If they refused, I would still remove the link, and I'd countersue for harrassment, or something along those lines. The result: at worst they lose the case and are forced to pay court costs. IANAL, but common sense tells me this is how such cases will pan out.
And that's all that should matter. If she's at fault even 1%, she shouldn't be able to collect damages.
In this particular lawsuit I agree with you, however that is not true for every negligence suit. It really does depend on the situation. Perhaps McDonald's should have been forced to pay even if they were only at 1% fault? The legal system is set up to allow the judge to make that decision based off circumstance, with a bias toward consumer protection since that is the nature of the lawsuit. In the hot coffee lawsuit, I agree with the 'fault percentage' that judge assigned to the plaintiff and defendant. (20% and 80% respectively, if I recall...)
I don't agree with the dollar amount the the defendant had to pay, though.
There's no room in this world for "I spilled coffee on myself, give me $8 million". If the courts are an injure-yourself-for-profit venue, then they should all be closed immediately.
Again I agree, but it almost begs the question -- are you an American? (I am.) If so, you are damn idealistic, and I admire that. But I believe the real problem is that the judge is almost forced to reward the plaintiff if the complaint has even a shred of legal legitimacy, in order to avoid setting a precedent that allows businesses to unfairly insulate themselves against real, honest to God negligence suit. If that is in fact the choice the judge REALLY has to make, then acquiescing to the plaintiffs cause is really the best option, every time. To do otherwise may conflict with consumer protection laws for all I know. This is only my opinion, just food for thought.
I agree with everything you've stated in this thread, and have used the same statements in a similar argument. With that said, I've heard the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit stated as such:
1) Lady spills hot coffee on herself, incidentally burning the hell out of herself. There doesn't appear to be any warning label on the container.
2) Lawyer hears this story and suggests a lawsuit because McDonald's didn't explicitly indemnify itself with a 'proper' warning label
(ala the Surgeon General's Warning required on cigarette packs).
3) Profit!
I don't know whether there was really a warning on the coffee cup at the time of incident or not, but it certainly sets the stage for profitable frivolous lawsuits.
My guess is that what is happening with Nintendo is that the law firm representing the Class Action heard of someone breaking their TV with the Wiimote, thumbed through the Wii manual and failed to find any verbiage to the tune of:
"Do not whip the Wiimote around like a wildman and/or complete idiot. Such actions may cause irreversable damage to the Wiimote and/or surrounding property. Nintendo and/or its affiliates cannot be held responsible for any damage resulting from use of the Wiimote inconsistent with the recommended guidelines."
Then what probably happened is that with loophole in hand, the law firm decided to start a Class Action suit against Nintendo for negligence, because Nintendo did not explicitly indemnify itself.
I haven't been able to find a Wii of my own yet, so I don't know exactly what the Wii manual says. Anyone please feel free to correct me.
As an aside, I've scanned through many EULAs in my day as a computer nerd, and every single one of them has had indemnification verbiage of some sort. With such a practice becoming commonplace in the tech sector, explicit indemnification could possibly be interpreted as the de-facto standard. If that is the case, then is it really a surprise that Nintendo is being sued for failing to provide the proper CYAs?
How about talking in the context of Earth Days, Martian Days, Venusian Days, etc? I think its pretty understandable, moreso if the wikipedia pages ever turn up ;-)
Perhaps in addition then, we need to make it totally illegal for any congressman or committee to include any rider or extra verbiage to a bill that does not fit the context of the bill itself. That should eliminate a good percentage of pork.
No, most people that voted reelected Bush. And even that is still a subject of controversy. The percentage of people who DID vote for him is a minority in the US.
... or perhaps a slightly more clever Forrest Gump?
.... sweet!
Oh no, not another internet meme!
I am a self-admitted google fanboy. I use the personalized search, gmail, etc etc. No apologies from me on that. I think they are a great company and I use their products every day, for free. The ads are mostly relavant and non-intrusive. Maybe that makes me a Google apologist. With that in mind, try paris france hotels hilton.
;-)
That seemed to work pretty well. The whole first page (didn't look further) as all about the hotel, not the person.
I've found that if you know how to ask google what it is you want, you will almost always get it. It may not be your first choice in keywords, but key, it works fine for me. YMMV, however.
OTOH, I use google for pretty specific searches (i.e. very specific computer problems), while I will surf Wikipedia for broad topics. Sometimes I can spend hours and hours just playing wikipedia. They get more of my time the google does in that regard
I've been meaning to pick up the Simillarion as I've heard nothing but good things... perhaps this will be the viral marketing ploy that will motivate me enough to grab a copy.
;-)
I highly recommend that you do. I scored a used hardcover copy on Amazon for under USD $20. As another poster mentioned, LOTR is but a footnote in the Tolkien universe's history. I've heard people liken the Silmarillion to the bible in that it can be a rather dry history, and that may be a vaild complaint. In my experience, though, it gets better every time through. The books included in the Silmarillion span from the creation of that universe up to the rise of Gondor. IMHO it gives the Elvish race much more depth (and also Men, to a lesser extent) than LOTR, and makes the friction between Elrond and Aragorn much more poignant.
Plus, thats how I found out who Elbereth really is and why people go around invoking her name all the time
Actually, you can use Xgl/compiz" with KDE. This works on SuSE 10.1/KDE 3.5.4, but you can probably coax your distro-of-choice to play nice without too much trouble.
The only thing that sucks is the lack of a GUI configuration window (to my knowledge), so you'll have to edit the compiz config by hand.
Ouch!
If you have a beefy, supported graphics chipset, you could replace X/kwin with Xgl/compiz. Its kind of neat. Much to my surprise, I haven't had to restart X once since I set it up... like 2 months ago.
Hmm, not sure where you are coming from. I didn't mean to imply that if banks did what I suggested that they then would be justified in hanging the phished customer out to dry.
All I meant is that the likelihood a customer is going to be phished at all goes down quite considerably if the customer knows their bank won't email them. By default then, any email they receive that claims to be from said bank is an obvious scam. Simple as that.
But, to answer your question -- It would be in poor taste for the bank to assume that the customer IS the phisher. If it was in fact true, the burden of proof would fall on the bank to prove you ARE the phisher. The burden of proof would not fall upon yourself to prove you are innocent. Well, at least that is how it SHOULD work, here in the U.S. anyway. Of course, the times, they are a-changin'. YMMV.
Good answer, I hadn't thought of that.
;-)
Though if that really happened, it kinda would be +4 Funny, to me at least
Thats all fine and good if you sift through your inbox every day. I don't, so I'd be screwed anyway...
;-)
If you are running into such overdraft issues, its likely the bank will do more than just shoot you off an e-mail and absolve themselves of further obligation. That depends on the bank though, so YMMV.
If you are that worried about it, check your balance via telephone or web everyday. That is what I do, and that works just fine
** I realize for the uber-paranoid, this probably isn't any better an option.
One major problem I have is that sensitive information _could_ be included in the email, which increases the risk that it could itself be viewed via a man-in-the-middle attack if its not protected with PGP. I don't necessarily trust the bank and/or its infrastructure developers not to screw that up. I stand by my original statement that I'd rather not get any communication from my financial institutions via email and I urge others to consider doing the same. Its just one more unnecessary point of failure, security-wise.
Besides, personally I HAVE received phishing e-mails disguised as one of my banks. I considered them suspect, and sure enough every one of them turned out not to be legitimate. I only knew that by doing a nslookup on the target urls' IPs.
Would you expect the average computer user to be savvy enough to do that? Allowing financial institutions to communicate via e-mail is why phishing works at all, IMHO.
Really? Mot my snail mail. Far less noise than e-mail.
Its magically more secure because its less likely that phishers will waste the postage, for one. Additionally, you should already be receiving periodic statements from your bank. Any non-emergency communication from the bank is typically conveniently included in said statement.
I hope this makes my original point a bit more clear.
Though the parent is funny, I am not sure why it got +4 Funny instead of +4 Insightful. This is EXACTLY what financial institutions should be doing!! It would work like gangbusters.
/me sighs
Another approach that I think would work well for financial institutions is to make it unequivocally clear that they will never never ever in a million years contact their customers by any method besides snail mail. The customer should be required to sign a sheet saying they understand this before they are allowed to open an account, and it should be the responsibility of the financial institution to make sure that the customer is TOLD this, not just handed a piece of fine print to sign. I have been using online banking at 3 different institutions for approximately 5 years, and I am absolutely sure that in that time I have never recieved any e-mail from them for any reason. Paypal on the other hand... I've gotten both legitimate email and phishers.... so I just blacklist anything with paypal in the subject or content. Sure, it means they have no way to get ahold of me besides snail mail, but they shouldn't need to.
But, perhaps I am a little too idealistic...
erm... isn't that already a part of how data compression algorithms like ZIP work right now?
Am I the only one that finds it stupid that these "cyber terrorists" attacked sites associated with NASA? At first glance I have to agree! But, well, it was enough to get it displayed to the 1 million+ slashbot army!
I wouldn't be THAT surprised to see this story on CNN.com or MSNBC.com to tell the truth.
Now, when it makes ABC World News Tonight or hell, even FOX News, I'll be impressed.
Okay, look gfxguy. In your previous few posts you talk about RIGHTS. First, Chilean people that are not naturalized U.S. Citizens have virtually no rights in the U.S. outside international law and treaties, certainly not in the context of the First Amendment of the Constitution. So talking about legal rights in the context of this very specific occurance is just dumb and borderline trolling. Second, the posters that you are arguing against are mostly referring to MORAL rights, which is a very different thing than LEGAL rights. There is a lot more gray area there, if you haven't noticed from the replies you have received thus far. Hypothetically speaking, if Congress outlawed the 1st Amendment, would you then call someone a jerk for breaking the law and asserting their inalienable right to free speech?
...but I'll fight against anybody who defaces somebody elses property (thus taking away their free speech)
...and I'll fight against anybody who thinks they have a RIGHT to a forum for their speech.
Obviously there was a security hole. The owners of the site are now aware of it. They will be better off for having it exposed, assuming there is no data loss.
Like yourself, for instance? Perhaps you should excercise better judgement in picking your battles. I guess I've been had by a troll, so I should take my own advice. But lastly, FWIW, I agree with you in principle but the way of the world is not so black and white. You've had ample opportunity to chime in on this subject, so do me a favor and STFU.
Right. Its implicit based off the existing organization of our government as prescribed by the Constitution. The fact that the author felt it necessary to illustrate the point in writing leads me to believe that something is amiss...
Which the Islamists then blow up.
s/Islamists/terrorists/;
Fixed it for you. There is a world of difference between the two. I hope you recognize the distinction.
"It's time for full frontal!"
"Yeah, put 'em on the glass!"
Spacecataz