Well then they shouldn't choose passwords they can't remember.
So they're supposed to:
* Choose a different password for each application (since one of them might be compromised); * Choose a new password every 42 days or less; * Not use any of the last 24 passwords
Just *how* many passwords do you want them to remember?
I have a password which is a nonsense phrase with a few of the letters changed to numbers and some punctuation. Each time I need to change it I increment one of the numbers.
E.g. IHeardYouL1ekFoob1es@12, IHeardYouL1ekFoob1es@13 and so on.
So, if someone gets a hold of your password, and then it auto-expires, they're defeated... unless they increment the last digit or two. You're right! That's so incredibly secure!
Except, not. If your nonsense phrase is compromised, your entire password scheme is compromised. There is NO POINT to auto-expiring your password if you're just going to increment it. Which is why many auto-expire policies *also* won't let you use a password that is more than a certain percentage the same as your old password.
Actually it's better that they have a password like 89fZ#9I$ on a postit than a password like madison. You could guess madison by looking at their resume, 89fZ#9I$ requires you have physical access to their desk.
And if you work in an open-plan office, everyone has access to your desk. Half the purpose of unique network logons is for accountability. If you want to do something nefarious, you just log on to someone else's account, which you conveniently know the password to from reading it while you were at their desk asking about lunch.
It's better to teach people how to generate a reasonably secure and memorable password ONCE, and encourage them to change it anytime they feel it might have been compromised, rather than to give them arbitrary rules at password creation and every so often afterward without actually teaching them anything about security.
The best, or rather the first option would be to call your local Comcast ISP, and ask them if your details are on the leaked list (as they should have the list in some form).
Actually, the FIRST thing you should do if you have a Comcast account is CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD. Also, change your password for any accounts that use the same password.
While Time Warner, the local cable company, has never tried to force me to install their crapware; if they tried, I would have no trouble handing them my netbook (which lacks an optical drive).
Yeah... TW didn't try to install anything on our computers, either. They used the computer briefly to check that the connection was working, but that's it. No CDs involved.
But as back-up measures, my main box is Linux *and* my optical drives are hidden under a black canvas baby-proofing cover.;-) Baffles adults even more than the toddlers.
It's more problematic than that. Amazon cannot risk rending existing Kindles and books inoperable; they'll have to change the DRM on all their books, etc.
Are they going to have to make changes to the actual readers, though? Can they just do a firmware push? Otherwise, they just change the book files, and leave everything else alone, and it's transparent to the user.
Bilksi has absolutely no bearing on those; an e-book reader is definitely patentable subject matter, despite what IDontBelieve wants to believe.
Also, even the method claims are tied to an e-book reader, which is very likely a particular machine. Bilski left open the question of whether a general-purpose computer is a particular machine, but an e-book reader is hardly a general-purpose computer.
That's kinda freaky... you and morgan_greywolf did exactly the same thing.
Sure it is their job, they may fail. Something which seems clear to them may not be clear to the jury. Should failures have random effect or be corrected?
Ideally, they'd be corrected, but...
How much do you know about questioning in criminal trials? About the kinds of questions that can be asked on direct vs. cross-examination? When an attorney can treat a witness as hostile? How to lay a foundation for a question? What constitutes hearsay? When I was doing mock-trial in high school, we had a list of 14 objections we could use during testimony... that was a manageable subset of the HUNDREDS of objections that can be raised. These objections each represent a way in which juries can be prejudiced with regards to the testimony presented.
It's not feasible to train all jurors on how to ask questions in a manner that doesn't prejudice the trial. So, they'd have to write down their questions and signal the judge, who would then have to determine if a question could be asked in a permissible way, and then ask it. There's no good way to just let the jurors directly examine the witnesses.
At the end of the day, each side gets an attorney, and it's that person's job to present their case. If they don't do their job, a defendant may be able to request a new trial based on incompetent representation, or a criminal may go free. If the DA's office lets too many apparent criminals go free, we may need to look at how that office is staffed and funded. But having the jury jump in with questions is no solution for that problem.
I applaud jurors who try to figure out what kind of person they're trying. For example, if a juror finds out that a woman claiming she was raped had filed false charges in the past, the juror has a moral duty to vote to nullify the trial on moral character grounds unless this time she has firm evidence like wounds indicative of a violent rape.
And the defense attorney will often introduce testimony or evidence of the previous false accusations. If the circumstances are so dissimilar as to seem irrelevant, the prosecution will likely challenge such testimony or evidence, and then the judge decides whether it's admissible.
For example... say the woman is 40 and has charged her (soon-to-be-ex-)husband with rape. He threatened to rape his teenage stepdaughter if his wife didn't give it up for him right then, so, no wounds, no violence, but coercion nonetheless.
When she was in high school, over 20 years ago, she was a bit of a slut. Her father found out, and decided to use this against a business rival, by making her go out with his son, and then claiming he raped her. She confided in a friend about it, and the friend testified, so the guy was found not guilty.
If you, as a juror, go digging and find that she had "previously" accused someone of rape, and then it was found to be a false accusation, but don't get the full story, you'd be prejudiced against her testimony... but it would be perfectly reasonable for a judge, having more thoroughly examined the facts of both cases, to find that there was not enough similarity for it to be relevant to the case at hand.
OTOH, if she accused her boss of rape (just after being denied a promotion), and you find out that a year earlier, at a different employer, she accused her boss of rape (just after being denied a promotion), then it's likely you'll hear that evidence, since those are pretty similar circumstances.
In any event, as a juror, you absolutely have a right to decide, *based on what you hear in the courtroom,* whether you believe a particular witness or not. That's actually part of your job. If the defendant gets on the stand, and you just can't believe them, or you just feel compelled to believe them, you absolutely should take that into account when making your decision (unless you were for some reason predisposed to accept or dismiss what they were going to say).
So getting a feel for what kind of person the defendant is absolutely is part of the process. But doing your own background check on them or their accuser (or anyone else involved in the trial) circumvents their right to a fair trial, by introducing evidence that may have been excluded for good reasons.
An educated jury is fine. A jury that is self-educated on matters pertaining directly to the case may be using a different set of facts or law than the other jurors or the judge in reaching their decision. Since the defendant has a right to be present for the case, and to have his counsel represent him for the entire case, a juror who collects information on his own is circumventing that defendant's constitutional right. His attorney has no opportunity to present evidence that may be relevant to your internet searches (but wasn't relevant to the prosecution's case, and so there was no opportunity to introduce it during the trial).
How is this any different than going to a library and looking up info after court?
It is in the interest of both lawyers to have the most ignorant, moldable, and frankly stupid, set of jurors that they can possibly find.
If they have a bad case. But a good lawyer with a good case wants SMART jurors. I was on such a jury; after the case was over, one of the attorneys for one of the respondents (civil case) mentioned that they wanted the smartest jury they could muster, because they KNEW the case was bunk. And they were right, too... we told the plaintiff's attorney afterward, "You sued the wrong doctor!"
Any application of case law independently by a juror, wherever they derived the knowledge and however correct it is, would be misconduct.
PP well explains the legal foundation for that, but let me take a stab at explaining the practical foundation.
When a lawyer is deciding how to make their case, they will look at *all* the case law that might be relevant. Then, they decide what helps their case, and what doesn't. They also decide what helps the opposite side's case, so they can figure out how to refute it. They do this with all the training and knowledge they've accumulated about how law works.
Then they get into the courtroom. They present their case, including references to precedents which help their case. The other side does the same, and then they get to respond to each other.
It's that last part that is the most important to this issue. Attorneys get to HEAR what case law is being raised by the other side, and RESPOND to how it pertains to the case at hand. If you go and find some other piece of case law that you believe is relevant, whether or not it actually is, the attorneys for each side get no opportunity to present *facts* of their case that may reflect on how that case law is applied. If it's not relevant for some minor technical reason (perhaps due to some *other* case law that you didn't find in your search), they can't tell you that. If there's some piece of evidence that was beyond the scope of the case as presented, but would have addressed that point of case law, you'll never know about it.
That's why the jury is limited to using what is presented to them in deciding the verdict. It's important that EVERYONE be going off the same set of relevant law and facts.
If I was in a jury, I'd be very interested in the relevant case law.
Good! That means you'll be paying close attention when the attorneys and judge present that information to you. After all, it's up to them to decide what is relevant to the case... your job is to understand the law in the context of the facts of the case they've presented.
That's the fundamental problem here, and that's why I think all the people saying things like "the courts just need to get with the times" are wrong (I know you said you're against the whole internet P.I. thing, I'm just segueing now). I really don't believe this is case of old ways of doing things that have to catch up with modern technology.
I generally agree with your point, but I think there is a tech lag issue here too. I think that attorneys presenting cases need to get used to the idea that jurors are going to use the Internet. They're going to have to trust that *most* jurors will understand the rules and abide by them... but they also need to understand that even when you TRY to do this, you can screw up.
So... they need to be doing *daily* searches for info that pertains to their case. They need to know what people are likely to see, whether they're looking for it or not. If Google News picks up a story about an incident in a small town where things like this just never happen, and that incident *happens* to be similar to your case, with accompanying discussion of relevant law etc., you NEED TO KNOW that the jurors may have run across it. Then you need to tell the judge.
Judges, for their part, need to also be aware of the scope of information that one is likely to encounter if they use the internet regularly. That way, they can better instruct juries on how to maintain their integrity, and can better understand information that attorneys bring to them about internet-related information that may be prejudicial to the case.
I think the issue here is that, while people understand newspapers and library research as things that can prejudice a juror, we don't yet understand how the internet can do so, and the implications are different.
For example, it was raised in reference to the Twitter case that, while the juror claims not to have read any feedback on his tweets, the micro-fame gained from the interface may have influenced how he voted in the deliberation room. That's something that attorneys and judges need to be aware of, and need to account for in juror selection and instruction. Perhaps one of the standard questions should be "Do you blog regularly? About what?"
FTR, while I thought it statistically likely that the post was a grammar-o (not really a typo, exactly), I recognized that it might have been a deliberate decision to use the word "stupid" as a noun and include the possessive ahead of it. Didn't confuse me in the slightest.
You know, someone can be a total asshole to everyone he knows, and *still* be innocent. But finding out what his ex and his former employer and his kids say about him on the internet might, just *might*, prejudice a jury against him.
You think those rules don't deserve to be respected? I hope you don't actually end up on a jury.
I take it you've never been on a jury. Do you have any idea how dull jury duty is? I was on a month long trial last summer and it was tedious and awkward. We all had very little in common and the one thing we did have in common was off limits for conversation.
The one jury I was on had very little in common too... which made things *fascinating*. One guy was the head of new technologies for Citibank, and he and his wife were getting ready to adopt a baby from Korea. Another guy was the president of programming for Showtime. One of the women was a security guard, and had some *awesome* stories. Everyone was very different... and we'd go to lunch together, and talk about our lives and stuff that happened to us that had nothing to do with the case, and it was very cool.
That trial only lasted 9 days, but frankly, we were almost sad to break up the party!
Then you apparently have never served on a jury before. Plenty of jury members have their own agendas and many of them believe that their sole job is to convict people. To be honest, I'd take a judge any day.
Me, I'd take a competent lawyer who could get through jury selection without screwing me over.
Sorry--I myself have always wanted to do my civil duty and serve on a jury but know that I will never be able to because of some stupid stuff I did when I was young.
Have you tried petitioning to get your record sealed or expunged or excused or something? I know there are methods to do this, specifically because people do stupid things when they're young.
You're missing the point. A customer was at their website, sitting with a credit card in their hand, and Blizzard didn't give a means to buy the product.
And no, it wasn't remotely pheasible to use his free-trial certificate. Even if he still had it, he lived 20 hours away, making it as much effort to use it as to go to the store.
Um, no, not really, assuming you had voice or text communication with him... he could just give you the number on it.
I mean, I somewhat get your point, but it's not like you can't buy WoW online... you just can't buy it without the box, which is your beef, and is really a common practice for software, including games. You have an expectation that you should be able to buy it instantly online because you can play it online, and it turns out you can't. Some MMOGs you can, but not that one (though I think that's since changed).
Besides, you probably got started playing faster by going out to the store and buying the box, because that's one hell of a big download.;-)
Meanwhile... we bought a car 7 years ago. When we shopped at Nissan, we test-drove an Altima, and then sat down to discuss price (we thought). The dealer started asking us all sorts of questions. When he got to social security number, my husband said, "Why do you need that information?" It was for the loan paperwork.
We didn't ask for a loan, or want a loan... but he WOULD. NOT. talk about price unless we filled out the application.
We bought a Honda.
Same thing happened to my mom around that time when she bought an Infiniti.... only, not being quite so savvy, she went ahead and let them do the application. Totally pointless hit on her credit report. Gah.
So, you got a deal from Nissan, but only because you *were* financing. They didn't want our business if we weren't.
Slashdot Mirror
Well then they shouldn't choose passwords they can't remember.
So they're supposed to:
* Choose a different password for each application (since one of them might be compromised);
* Choose a new password every 42 days or less;
* Not use any of the last 24 passwords
Just *how* many passwords do you want them to remember?
I have a password which is a nonsense phrase with a few of the letters changed to numbers and some punctuation. Each time I need to change it I increment one of the numbers.
E.g. IHeardYouL1ekFoob1es@12, IHeardYouL1ekFoob1es@13 and so on.
So, if someone gets a hold of your password, and then it auto-expires, they're defeated... unless they increment the last digit or two. You're right! That's so incredibly secure!
Except, not. If your nonsense phrase is compromised, your entire password scheme is compromised. There is NO POINT to auto-expiring your password if you're just going to increment it. Which is why many auto-expire policies *also* won't let you use a password that is more than a certain percentage the same as your old password.
Actually it's better that they have a password like 89fZ#9I$ on a postit than a password like madison. You could guess madison by looking at their resume, 89fZ#9I$ requires you have physical access to their desk.
And if you work in an open-plan office, everyone has access to your desk. Half the purpose of unique network logons is for accountability. If you want to do something nefarious, you just log on to someone else's account, which you conveniently know the password to from reading it while you were at their desk asking about lunch.
It's better to teach people how to generate a reasonably secure and memorable password ONCE, and encourage them to change it anytime they feel it might have been compromised, rather than to give them arbitrary rules at password creation and every so often afterward without actually teaching them anything about security.
The best, or rather the first option would be to call your local Comcast ISP, and ask them if your details are on the leaked list (as they should have the list in some form).
Actually, the FIRST thing you should do if you have a Comcast account is CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD. Also, change your password for any accounts that use the same password.
While Time Warner, the local cable company, has never tried to force me to install their crapware; if they tried, I would have no trouble handing them my netbook (which lacks an optical drive).
Yeah... TW didn't try to install anything on our computers, either. They used the computer briefly to check that the connection was working, but that's it. No CDs involved.
But as back-up measures, my main box is Linux *and* my optical drives are hidden under a black canvas baby-proofing cover. ;-) Baffles adults even more than the toddlers.
Obligatory WHOOSH.
Often times things are far more obvious once you've seen them in work than they were before hand.
That doesn't fit my usual definition of "obvious"... but maybe that was your point?
It's more problematic than that. Amazon cannot risk rending existing Kindles and books inoperable; they'll have to change the DRM on all their books, etc.
Are they going to have to make changes to the actual readers, though? Can they just do a firmware push? Otherwise, they just change the book files, and leave everything else alone, and it's transparent to the user.
Bilksi has absolutely no bearing on those; an e-book reader is definitely patentable subject matter, despite what IDontBelieve wants to believe.
Also, even the method claims are tied to an e-book reader, which is very likely a particular machine. Bilski left open the question of whether a general-purpose computer is a particular machine, but an e-book reader is hardly a general-purpose computer.
That's kinda freaky... you and morgan_greywolf did exactly the same thing.
What exactly does trademark protection have to do with patents?
Same department. You know, like... Birth, Marriage, and Death Records.
Sure it is their job, they may fail. Something which seems clear to them may not be clear to the jury. Should failures have random effect or be corrected?
Ideally, they'd be corrected, but...
How much do you know about questioning in criminal trials? About the kinds of questions that can be asked on direct vs. cross-examination? When an attorney can treat a witness as hostile? How to lay a foundation for a question? What constitutes hearsay? When I was doing mock-trial in high school, we had a list of 14 objections we could use during testimony... that was a manageable subset of the HUNDREDS of objections that can be raised. These objections each represent a way in which juries can be prejudiced with regards to the testimony presented.
It's not feasible to train all jurors on how to ask questions in a manner that doesn't prejudice the trial. So, they'd have to write down their questions and signal the judge, who would then have to determine if a question could be asked in a permissible way, and then ask it. There's no good way to just let the jurors directly examine the witnesses.
At the end of the day, each side gets an attorney, and it's that person's job to present their case. If they don't do their job, a defendant may be able to request a new trial based on incompetent representation, or a criminal may go free. If the DA's office lets too many apparent criminals go free, we may need to look at how that office is staffed and funded. But having the jury jump in with questions is no solution for that problem.
I applaud jurors who try to figure out what kind of person they're trying. For example, if a juror finds out that a woman claiming she was raped had filed false charges in the past, the juror has a moral duty to vote to nullify the trial on moral character grounds unless this time she has firm evidence like wounds indicative of a violent rape.
And the defense attorney will often introduce testimony or evidence of the previous false accusations. If the circumstances are so dissimilar as to seem irrelevant, the prosecution will likely challenge such testimony or evidence, and then the judge decides whether it's admissible.
For example... say the woman is 40 and has charged her (soon-to-be-ex-)husband with rape. He threatened to rape his teenage stepdaughter if his wife didn't give it up for him right then, so, no wounds, no violence, but coercion nonetheless.
When she was in high school, over 20 years ago, she was a bit of a slut. Her father found out, and decided to use this against a business rival, by making her go out with his son, and then claiming he raped her. She confided in a friend about it, and the friend testified, so the guy was found not guilty.
If you, as a juror, go digging and find that she had "previously" accused someone of rape, and then it was found to be a false accusation, but don't get the full story, you'd be prejudiced against her testimony... but it would be perfectly reasonable for a judge, having more thoroughly examined the facts of both cases, to find that there was not enough similarity for it to be relevant to the case at hand.
OTOH, if she accused her boss of rape (just after being denied a promotion), and you find out that a year earlier, at a different employer, she accused her boss of rape (just after being denied a promotion), then it's likely you'll hear that evidence, since those are pretty similar circumstances.
In any event, as a juror, you absolutely have a right to decide, *based on what you hear in the courtroom,* whether you believe a particular witness or not. That's actually part of your job. If the defendant gets on the stand, and you just can't believe them, or you just feel compelled to believe them, you absolutely should take that into account when making your decision (unless you were for some reason predisposed to accept or dismiss what they were going to say).
So getting a feel for what kind of person the defendant is absolutely is part of the process. But doing your own background check on them or their accuser (or anyone else involved in the trial) circumvents their right to a fair trial, by introducing evidence that may have been excluded for good reasons.
They're also quite skilled at distorting truth and presenting it in a way that manipulates and misleads a jury to get their desired results.
But, since there's TWO sides, and they want directly opposed results... well, then.
...an educated jury is a havoc-wreaking one?
An educated jury is fine. A jury that is self-educated on matters pertaining directly to the case may be using a different set of facts or law than the other jurors or the judge in reaching their decision. Since the defendant has a right to be present for the case, and to have his counsel represent him for the entire case, a juror who collects information on his own is circumventing that defendant's constitutional right. His attorney has no opportunity to present evidence that may be relevant to your internet searches (but wasn't relevant to the prosecution's case, and so there was no opportunity to introduce it during the trial).
How is this any different than going to a library and looking up info after court?
It's not. They're equally illegal.
It is in the interest of both lawyers to have the most ignorant, moldable, and frankly stupid, set of jurors that they can possibly find.
If they have a bad case. But a good lawyer with a good case wants SMART jurors. I was on such a jury; after the case was over, one of the attorneys for one of the respondents (civil case) mentioned that they wanted the smartest jury they could muster, because they KNEW the case was bunk. And they were right, too... we told the plaintiff's attorney afterward, "You sued the wrong doctor!"
Any application of case law independently by a juror, wherever they derived the knowledge and however correct it is, would be misconduct.
PP well explains the legal foundation for that, but let me take a stab at explaining the practical foundation.
When a lawyer is deciding how to make their case, they will look at *all* the case law that might be relevant. Then, they decide what helps their case, and what doesn't. They also decide what helps the opposite side's case, so they can figure out how to refute it. They do this with all the training and knowledge they've accumulated about how law works.
Then they get into the courtroom. They present their case, including references to precedents which help their case. The other side does the same, and then they get to respond to each other.
It's that last part that is the most important to this issue. Attorneys get to HEAR what case law is being raised by the other side, and RESPOND to how it pertains to the case at hand. If you go and find some other piece of case law that you believe is relevant, whether or not it actually is, the attorneys for each side get no opportunity to present *facts* of their case that may reflect on how that case law is applied. If it's not relevant for some minor technical reason (perhaps due to some *other* case law that you didn't find in your search), they can't tell you that. If there's some piece of evidence that was beyond the scope of the case as presented, but would have addressed that point of case law, you'll never know about it.
That's why the jury is limited to using what is presented to them in deciding the verdict. It's important that EVERYONE be going off the same set of relevant law and facts.
If I was in a jury, I'd be very interested in the relevant case law.
Good! That means you'll be paying close attention when the attorneys and judge present that information to you. After all, it's up to them to decide what is relevant to the case... your job is to understand the law in the context of the facts of the case they've presented.
That's the fundamental problem here, and that's why I think all the people saying things like "the courts just need to get with the times" are wrong (I know you said you're against the whole internet P.I. thing, I'm just segueing now). I really don't believe this is case of old ways of doing things that have to catch up with modern technology.
I generally agree with your point, but I think there is a tech lag issue here too. I think that attorneys presenting cases need to get used to the idea that jurors are going to use the Internet. They're going to have to trust that *most* jurors will understand the rules and abide by them... but they also need to understand that even when you TRY to do this, you can screw up.
So... they need to be doing *daily* searches for info that pertains to their case. They need to know what people are likely to see, whether they're looking for it or not. If Google News picks up a story about an incident in a small town where things like this just never happen, and that incident *happens* to be similar to your case, with accompanying discussion of relevant law etc., you NEED TO KNOW that the jurors may have run across it. Then you need to tell the judge.
Judges, for their part, need to also be aware of the scope of information that one is likely to encounter if they use the internet regularly. That way, they can better instruct juries on how to maintain their integrity, and can better understand information that attorneys bring to them about internet-related information that may be prejudicial to the case.
I think the issue here is that, while people understand newspapers and library research as things that can prejudice a juror, we don't yet understand how the internet can do so, and the implications are different.
For example, it was raised in reference to the Twitter case that, while the juror claims not to have read any feedback on his tweets, the micro-fame gained from the interface may have influenced how he voted in the deliberation room. That's something that attorneys and judges need to be aware of, and need to account for in juror selection and instruction. Perhaps one of the standard questions should be "Do you blog regularly? About what?"
Honestly, this sub-thread is making me wonder if Google is testing out a new grammar-checker by making a /. grammar troll bot.
Don't feel too bad. I got it the first time.
FTR, while I thought it statistically likely that the post was a grammar-o (not really a typo, exactly), I recognized that it might have been a deliberate decision to use the word "stupid" as a noun and include the possessive ahead of it. Didn't confuse me in the slightest.
You know, someone can be a total asshole to everyone he knows, and *still* be innocent. But finding out what his ex and his former employer and his kids say about him on the internet might, just *might*, prejudice a jury against him.
You think those rules don't deserve to be respected? I hope you don't actually end up on a jury.
I take it you've never been on a jury. Do you have any idea how dull jury duty is? I was on a month long trial last summer and it was tedious and awkward. We all had very little in common and the one thing we did have in common was off limits for conversation.
The one jury I was on had very little in common too... which made things *fascinating*. One guy was the head of new technologies for Citibank, and he and his wife were getting ready to adopt a baby from Korea. Another guy was the president of programming for Showtime. One of the women was a security guard, and had some *awesome* stories. Everyone was very different... and we'd go to lunch together, and talk about our lives and stuff that happened to us that had nothing to do with the case, and it was very cool.
That trial only lasted 9 days, but frankly, we were almost sad to break up the party!
Then you apparently have never served on a jury before. Plenty of jury members have their own agendas and many of them believe that their sole job is to convict people. To be honest, I'd take a judge any day.
Me, I'd take a competent lawyer who could get through jury selection without screwing me over.
Sorry--I myself have always wanted to do my civil duty and serve on a jury but know that I will never be able to because of some stupid stuff I did when I was young.
Have you tried petitioning to get your record sealed or expunged or excused or something? I know there are methods to do this, specifically because people do stupid things when they're young.
You're missing the point. A customer was at their website, sitting with a credit card in their hand, and Blizzard didn't give a means to buy the product.
And no, it wasn't remotely pheasible to use his free-trial certificate. Even if he still had it, he lived 20 hours away, making it as much effort to use it as to go to the store.
Um, no, not really, assuming you had voice or text communication with him... he could just give you the number on it.
I mean, I somewhat get your point, but it's not like you can't buy WoW online... you just can't buy it without the box, which is your beef, and is really a common practice for software, including games. You have an expectation that you should be able to buy it instantly online because you can play it online, and it turns out you can't. Some MMOGs you can, but not that one (though I think that's since changed).
Besides, you probably got started playing faster by going out to the store and buying the box, because that's one hell of a big download. ;-)
On a side note "Small minority" is redundant.
Whatchoo talkin' about, Willis?
Meanwhile... we bought a car 7 years ago. When we shopped at Nissan, we test-drove an Altima, and then sat down to discuss price (we thought). The dealer started asking us all sorts of questions. When he got to social security number, my husband said, "Why do you need that information?" It was for the loan paperwork.
We didn't ask for a loan, or want a loan... but he WOULD. NOT. talk about price unless we filled out the application.
We bought a Honda.
Same thing happened to my mom around that time when she bought an Infiniti.... only, not being quite so savvy, she went ahead and let them do the application. Totally pointless hit on her credit report. Gah.
So, you got a deal from Nissan, but only because you *were* financing. They didn't want our business if we weren't.