The funny thing is that the terrorists (that the US cares about) are only attacking the US and those who collude with the US. A refusal to cooperate with the US is likely the safer position to take. The only information about terrorists the US is going to withold is that which concerns any danger that countries incur by continuing relations with the US.
I doubt this is political. Paypal is notorious for freezing accounts based on some internal drone's mistake or a some programmed tripwire.
No, Paypal is notorious for giving drones and programmed tripwires the ability to freeze accounts without having an established process for redress. This is a political decision on their part.
If I may defend EA on one point, they do actually make it very clear they will shut down the service anytime they feel like it. In fact I think it's on the back of the game boxes as well. This isn't a surprise.
Just because they say they'll be a dick someday doesn't change the fact that when that day comes they will indeed be dicks.
It may have been just one mis-judgment in a long career of good judgments, but the TSA is so fucked up as it is we don't need someone who may be going on personal vendettas via airline security.
Absolutely. I prefer a standard of putting people in charge who are not prone to grave errors in judgment. That eliminates everybody who has been caught for such.
Exactly. I wish there was an account-based blacklist I could add sites to, but until then I'm happy to X out every nabble, osdir, mail-archive.com, and the rest of the lame republishers out there in hopes that they lose pagerank.
Following is the IRS information on being a 501(c)(3); note that the first paragraph states "[...]it may not be an action organization, i.e., it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities[...]"
I think you're reading the paragraph too narrowly. Not only are 501(c)(3) organizations allowed to lobby--just not to be their "substantial" purpose--but there are 26 kinds of exempt organizations. I'm sure there are fine points hither and thither and I can't find any details that say the contest was restricted to (c)(3)'s, but for example 501(c)(4) organizations are absolutely allowed to lobby.
Kind of besides the point, though. After Zynga and all the other Facebook scammers have raped peoples' goodwill over the past while, it makes absolute sense that Chase would use this as free/cheap market research, keep the decision process secret, and award the prizes to "reflect those organizations that received the most votes among eligible participants." Not to who actually received the most votes, mind you. Why would they give all that voting data up?
Furthermore, the contest ended before FB changed their privacy rules, so Chase now has all of the Facebook data of everybody who installed the app as well as the data of every friend of everybody who installed the app.
See, AT&T? It's right where you printed it. Unlimited data for a predetermined cost.
Except that they didn't print "Unlimited data," what I see in your pasted text is "Data Unlimited." Perhaps it's a distinction without a trademark, but you can be your bippy they'd use it if it came down to it.
It gets disheartening to flag 30 bad ads in a row from the same user only to come back the next day and see the same user with another 100+ bad ads. You get burnt out and just give up after a while.
You don't have to flag every ad. If it's the same user/agency/account, you can send the URL to one of the ads to abuse@craigslist saying that they are overposting and vote for them to be banned that way (and they will). Irrelevant keywords are absolutely prohibited, should be flagged, and habitual posting of them should get the bad ads sent to abuse@.
Furthermore, the more an account gets their ads flagged off, the fewer flags it takes to bring down subsequent ads. For egregious offenders (who are not submitted to abuse@), repeated flagging can make their accounts very brittle, such that the number of flags necessary to bring an ad down is reduced from hundreds or thousands (depending on region) to just a few. Eventually, their ads can be brought down with just one flag, and then they're subject to the banhammer.
By the way, that some ads are paid (jobs in some areas, housing in some areas, adult gigs) does not immune them to flagging.
Point being, the more "community" helps out on Craigslist this way (I mean really, the flag links are right there in the ad), the less we all get burned out due to the increased effectiveness of the flagging system due to network effects.
It's almost all shady brokerage firms (one was a total bait and switch job) that neglect key details, such as addresses, in their listings.
Via the Craigslist TOU, it's your responsibility as a reader to flag bad ads. Community moderation is the price we all pay for Craigslist to remain as (mostly) free as it is. If spammers are able to keep ads up, it's because people--possibly people like you--aren't flagging bad ads.
Put it in perspective for once, and quit arguing that there are big-bad-scaries out there who can only be fought by lawless thugs who will just do the right thing, trust us.
Well, that would involve admitting that terrorists don't hate us for "our freedom," but for US foreign policy and the actions of corporations that the US gives safe harbor, i.e. things the average American has nothing to do with but is at risk of being a victim of their effects.
makes me question how much of the bashing of MS is legitimate.
Sure it's "legitimate," but consider the possibility that Slashdot is narcissistic in this regard. They've identified so much with an anti-Microsoft perspective that they are stuck with being critical even if Microsoft improves. Their identity comes before anything else, and they are pathologically driven to post submissions such as this one in order to protect The Slashdot at all costs. In other words, par for the course.
This is why I find it amusing when people say that a socialized medical system is inherently more efficient than a US-style system.
Tell us, who are these "people" who say that socialized medicine is inherently more efficient than a privatized one? Most of what I've read illustrates the difference in patient satisfaction or in terms of patient costs. Unless you've completely made up this "efficient" assertion, I really would like to see how that is quantified.
However, I simply cannot deny that if there were a truly effective way to immediately shut down this behavior, there would be much less of it, nor can I deny that this would be a benefit to everyone else.
If you are in the left lane and someone can't get past you, you are impeding traffic. Keep to the right, you have no idea why someone else might be in a hurry and it is the height of arrogance to take it upon yourself to decide.
more hardware support and more functional tasks with scope creep means larger code base. nothing to see here, move along.
In my experience, it's harder to strip the kernel of unneeded cruft in Linux than in FreeBSD. Seriously, rebuilding a FreeBSD kernel took me about 5min to learn back when I didn't know hardly anything about Unix, but to this day (12yrs later) I still have never done it with Linux. I always abandon it halfway through and go, "oh well."
It doesn't even matter. Everything I ever look for on Ebay is at least twice what I would find it anywhere else. The convenience-tax pricing at Ebay increases faster than the price of cigarettes in Manhattan.
You say I didn't lay out the entire situation, so say what I missed or your criticism rings pretty hollow. I see no mention of the "facts" that I failed to bring to the discussion.
It's not my place to lay out the entire landscape. You could have missed things that I didn't identify, in which case you could just say, "Oh, but what about THIS? Gotcha!" My critique only says that your sense of the story is incomplete and leaves out entire swaths of forces operating here. Say that rings hollow if you want, it only illustrates the vacuity of the terms so far, all of which were laid out by you.
Of course, why would i be serious about leaping to the most obvious and reasonable conclusion? Should I instead assume it was a grand conspiracy involving men sitting around a board room table puffing on cigars and plotting world domination? What exactly do you think Amazon was trying to accomplish here, if this wasn't just an honest case of bad judgment on the part of whoever made the call?
Two fallacies here: arguing from authority, that Amazon's response--which you agree with--is the "most obvious and reasonable;" and a false dichotomy, that either it's a "grunt" or a "grand conspiracy." You missed a huge middle ground there. Wait, maybe the first one is actually a foregone conclusion, that the thing you agree with is the most obvious and reasonable. I'll give you "obvious" on your terms, given your logic so far.
I would have assumed that Amazon can't just decide to distribute someone else's intellectual property and then reimburse them after the fact without having reached some prior agreement on the amount of money to be reimbursed or having gained permission in the first place.
This approach works for the RIAA and has for every other rights-infringement case so far in the USA. Settlements are common here, especially since the penalties are statutory. And what are you, a law-enforcement officer? Knowing the law and/or one's rights does not require formal training.
Also, "the number of people screwed"? Really? Who exactly got "screwed" by this?
You're minimizing the effects of this. I can't tell you that everybody who didn't file a lawsuit was just fine with the aftermath any more than you can. I'm pretty sure the rescission of the book countered every one of their expectations, though.
If you're picking your battles, as a reasonable person, there's just no way you pick this one.
Again you're using your own ethics as your benchmark for "reasonable." What makes this a bad battle? THAT is your unanswered question here, and I think the fact that this is the first instance of something like this happening is a great reason not to let it take root nor provide a slippery slope.
You seem to be arguing that whatever the corporation decided is good enough and it's the customer's role to accept it. I don't agree.
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The funny thing is that the terrorists (that the US cares about) are only attacking the US and those who collude with the US. A refusal to cooperate with the US is likely the safer position to take. The only information about terrorists the US is going to withold is that which concerns any danger that countries incur by continuing relations with the US.
I doubt this is political. Paypal is notorious for freezing accounts based on some internal drone's mistake or a some programmed tripwire.
No, Paypal is notorious for giving drones and programmed tripwires the ability to freeze accounts without having an established process for redress. This is a political decision on their part.
If I may defend EA on one point, they do actually make it very clear they will shut down the service anytime they feel like it. In fact I think it's on the back of the game boxes as well. This isn't a surprise.
Just because they say they'll be a dick someday doesn't change the fact that when that day comes they will indeed be dicks.
It may have been just one mis-judgment in a long career of good judgments, but the TSA is so fucked up as it is we don't need someone who may be going on personal vendettas via airline security.
Absolutely. I prefer a standard of putting people in charge who are not prone to grave errors in judgment. That eliminates everybody who has been caught for such.
there's a promote button and a remove button.
Exactly. I wish there was an account-based blacklist I could add sites to, but until then I'm happy to X out every nabble, osdir, mail-archive.com, and the rest of the lame republishers out there in hopes that they lose pagerank.
"Its a civil matter, Sir"
There's no such thing as a civil felony.
Following is the IRS information on being a 501(c)(3); note that the first paragraph states "[...]it may not be an action organization, i.e., it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities[...]"
I think you're reading the paragraph too narrowly. Not only are 501(c)(3) organizations allowed to lobby--just not to be their "substantial" purpose--but there are 26 kinds of exempt organizations. I'm sure there are fine points hither and thither and I can't find any details that say the contest was restricted to (c)(3)'s, but for example 501(c)(4) organizations are absolutely allowed to lobby.
Kind of besides the point, though. After Zynga and all the other Facebook scammers have raped peoples' goodwill over the past while, it makes absolute sense that Chase would use this as free/cheap market research, keep the decision process secret, and award the prizes to "reflect those organizations that received the most votes among eligible participants." Not to who actually received the most votes, mind you. Why would they give all that voting data up?
Furthermore, the contest ended before FB changed their privacy rules, so Chase now has all of the Facebook data of everybody who installed the app as well as the data of every friend of everybody who installed the app.
They can remove the wikileaks domains and compel ISPs to filter all traffic to and from any IP addresses that resolve to the wikileak servers.
Oh, you mean like when Bad Country uses their national firewall to block access to websites deemed unsavory?
See, AT&T? It's right where you printed it. Unlimited data for a predetermined cost.
Except that they didn't print "Unlimited data," what I see in your pasted text is "Data Unlimited." Perhaps it's a distinction without a trademark, but you can be your bippy they'd use it if it came down to it.
It gets disheartening to flag 30 bad ads in a row from the same user only to come back the next day and see the same user with another 100+ bad ads. You get burnt out and just give up after a while.
You don't have to flag every ad. If it's the same user/agency/account, you can send the URL to one of the ads to abuse@craigslist saying that they are overposting and vote for them to be banned that way (and they will). Irrelevant keywords are absolutely prohibited, should be flagged, and habitual posting of them should get the bad ads sent to abuse@.
Furthermore, the more an account gets their ads flagged off, the fewer flags it takes to bring down subsequent ads. For egregious offenders (who are not submitted to abuse@), repeated flagging can make their accounts very brittle, such that the number of flags necessary to bring an ad down is reduced from hundreds or thousands (depending on region) to just a few. Eventually, their ads can be brought down with just one flag, and then they're subject to the banhammer.
By the way, that some ads are paid (jobs in some areas, housing in some areas, adult gigs) does not immune them to flagging.
Point being, the more "community" helps out on Craigslist this way (I mean really, the flag links are right there in the ad), the less we all get burned out due to the increased effectiveness of the flagging system due to network effects.
It's almost all shady brokerage firms (one was a total bait and switch job) that neglect key details, such as addresses, in their listings.
Via the Craigslist TOU, it's your responsibility as a reader to flag bad ads. Community moderation is the price we all pay for Craigslist to remain as (mostly) free as it is. If spammers are able to keep ads up, it's because people--possibly people like you--aren't flagging bad ads.
Just a reminder: both of these excellent senators are considered by the media to be on the extreme far-left.
Actually, they're considered by Congress itself to be on the extreme far-left.
Especially if Flash exists and works the same on all browser.
Flash does not work the same on all browsers, not by a long shot.
The DROID with no contract is $560.
Is this really relevant to your ETF math, or are you just accepting their MSRP figure as a good starting point?
There's no reason why the server side can't convert to the alternative formats.
Maybe if you treated me like a customer I would feel some loyalty.
Ha ha, liar! Your loyalty is perfectly predictable and dependable. You're taking your business nowhere else.
Put it in perspective for once, and quit arguing that there are big-bad-scaries out there who can only be fought by lawless thugs who will just do the right thing, trust us.
Well, that would involve admitting that terrorists don't hate us for "our freedom," but for US foreign policy and the actions of corporations that the US gives safe harbor, i.e. things the average American has nothing to do with but is at risk of being a victim of their effects.
makes me question how much of the bashing of MS is legitimate.
Sure it's "legitimate," but consider the possibility that Slashdot is narcissistic in this regard. They've identified so much with an anti-Microsoft perspective that they are stuck with being critical even if Microsoft improves. Their identity comes before anything else, and they are pathologically driven to post submissions such as this one in order to protect The Slashdot at all costs. In other words, par for the course.
That's a bit harsh. Couldn't they just have fired him?
You cannot fire that which does not work.
This is why I find it amusing when people say that a socialized medical system is inherently more efficient than a US-style system.
Tell us, who are these "people" who say that socialized medicine is inherently more efficient than a privatized one? Most of what I've read illustrates the difference in patient satisfaction or in terms of patient costs. Unless you've completely made up this "efficient" assertion, I really would like to see how that is quantified.
However, I simply cannot deny that if there were a truly effective way to immediately shut down this behavior, there would be much less of it, nor can I deny that this would be a benefit to everyone else.
If you are in the left lane and someone can't get past you, you are impeding traffic. Keep to the right, you have no idea why someone else might be in a hurry and it is the height of arrogance to take it upon yourself to decide.
BIND, like Sendmail, is one of those legacy pieces of Berkeley software from the 1980s that should have been retired a long time ago.
You don't know what you're talking about.
more hardware support and more functional tasks with scope creep means larger code base. nothing to see here, move along.
In my experience, it's harder to strip the kernel of unneeded cruft in Linux than in FreeBSD. Seriously, rebuilding a FreeBSD kernel took me about 5min to learn back when I didn't know hardly anything about Unix, but to this day (12yrs later) I still have never done it with Linux. I always abandon it halfway through and go, "oh well."
It doesn't even matter. Everything I ever look for on Ebay is at least twice what I would find it anywhere else. The convenience-tax pricing at Ebay increases faster than the price of cigarettes in Manhattan.
You say I didn't lay out the entire situation, so say what I missed or your criticism rings pretty hollow. I see no mention of the "facts" that I failed to bring to the discussion.
It's not my place to lay out the entire landscape. You could have missed things that I didn't identify, in which case you could just say, "Oh, but what about THIS? Gotcha!" My critique only says that your sense of the story is incomplete and leaves out entire swaths of forces operating here. Say that rings hollow if you want, it only illustrates the vacuity of the terms so far, all of which were laid out by you.
Of course, why would i be serious about leaping to the most obvious and reasonable conclusion? Should I instead assume it was a grand conspiracy involving men sitting around a board room table puffing on cigars and plotting world domination? What exactly do you think Amazon was trying to accomplish here, if this wasn't just an honest case of bad judgment on the part of whoever made the call?
Two fallacies here: arguing from authority, that Amazon's response--which you agree with--is the "most obvious and reasonable;" and a false dichotomy, that either it's a "grunt" or a "grand conspiracy." You missed a huge middle ground there. Wait, maybe the first one is actually a foregone conclusion, that the thing you agree with is the most obvious and reasonable. I'll give you "obvious" on your terms, given your logic so far.
I would have assumed that Amazon can't just decide to distribute someone else's intellectual property and then reimburse them after the fact without having reached some prior agreement on the amount of money to be reimbursed or having gained permission in the first place.
This approach works for the RIAA and has for every other rights-infringement case so far in the USA. Settlements are common here, especially since the penalties are statutory. And what are you, a law-enforcement officer? Knowing the law and/or one's rights does not require formal training.
Also, "the number of people screwed"? Really? Who exactly got "screwed" by this?
You're minimizing the effects of this. I can't tell you that everybody who didn't file a lawsuit was just fine with the aftermath any more than you can. I'm pretty sure the rescission of the book countered every one of their expectations, though.
If you're picking your battles, as a reasonable person, there's just no way you pick this one.
Again you're using your own ethics as your benchmark for "reasonable." What makes this a bad battle? THAT is your unanswered question here, and I think the fact that this is the first instance of something like this happening is a great reason not to let it take root nor provide a slippery slope.
You seem to be arguing that whatever the corporation decided is good enough and it's the customer's role to accept it. I don't agree.