As others have pointed out, my analogy is not so apt. The situation is more akin to a store's register screwing up because the price entered into the system differed from the price on the shelf. In California, the store is required by law to honor the lowest of the two prices. It is not, as I first said, like a human cashier screwing up and giving the wrong change.
Yeah, as someone else pointed out, my analogy is not so apt. The situation is more like when the REGISTER mis-rings an item, in which case, at least according to California law, the store must honor the lowest of the two prices. This makes sense, there have been studies done showing that stores consistently err on their own side in pricing at the register vs. pricing at the shelf. The problem is worst at stores in poor neighborhoods, not surprising as poor people have fewer options and are less conditioned to make a fuss than the middle or upper class. Also, in a brick and mortar store, there is someone to tell. Not so with Amazon, if you wanted the item, you took the double discount. So, Caveat Vendor.
You sound pretty proud that your library doesn't receive state or federal funding. You've posted exactly that, twice now. Just because your library isn't funded that way, doesn't mean the ones we all go to aren't. Besides, that Federal money is OUR money, and if we the people want to use it to fund libraries that don't censor, then that is our right.
Why do I get the feeling that you are just tooting your own horn here and don't really give a rat's ass about the real issue at hand? After all, not every library can be funded by a rich railroad tycoon.
It doesn't help that there aren't any real unbiased sources for game reviews. The whole industry is so incestuous, no one can trust what anyone says about a game. People would take more risks if they had better information.
I never said that the customers actions, right or wrong, justify Amazon's behavior. I think we can all agree, they don't. Amazon acted in a completely irrational manner, not just immoral. This was a stupid move on their part.
I was paraphrasing what another poster had said about what Amazon could have done. I think what he meant, and what I certainly mean in quoting him, is that if Amazon had wished to persue getting the money, there are MUCH better ways to go about it than simply charging the card. The last bit is important: one test case, to see if they even have a legal leg to stand on. This is just a way of saying, look, even if they really wanted to be complete bastards, there are smarter ways of going about it.
The fun part about this whole thing is, we could debate the morality of the customers' decision 'till the cows come home and not come up with a definitive answer. But Amazon obviously screwed up, big-time. Not just from a moral standpoint, but from a PR standpoint as well. I hope whoever made the decision to charge the cards after the fact gets fired.
Amazing, an AC that reads replies. Well, here's a reply for you. Tone: (Noun) the manner in which speech or writing is expressed. Here's a little vocabulary lesson you may have missed in school: certain words have more than one meaning! Wow!
Here's a neat quote from the page you linked to: I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern without any superhuman authority behind it. No superhuman authority behind ethics? Ouch! sounds like Einstein was a moral relativist.
Here's a hilarious one: I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of moral principles: Never lie, cheat, steal or knowingly spread a venereal disease. Never speed up to hit a pedestrian or, or course, stop to kick a pedestrian who has already been hit. From which it followed, of course, that one would never ever -- on pain of deletion from dozens of Christmas card lists across the country -- vote Republican. Oh man, I hope you aren't a Republican. Because the tone of this quote is fairly insulting to Republicans, wouldn't you say?
For the other side: You know what they say: if God had been a Liberal, we wouldn't have had the ten commandments. We'd have had the ten suggestions. Oh, those wacky liberals with their respect for human dignity and intelligence, and their desire not to use coercion. How quaint.
This one, I just plain like: We would like to believe that we are not in the business of surviving but in being good, and we do not like to admit to ourselves that we are good in order to survive. Sigh. You mean I'm not "good" for the sake of being good, but because being good makes the most sense? How am I going to prop up my ego now?
Finally, morality is ALL relative. Relative to people: The cosmos is neither moral or immoral; only people are. He who would move the world must first move himself.
Oh, I agree that Amazon did the wrong thing by charging customers cards after the fact. Both from a moral and a public relations standpoint, this decision was far worse than any customer's decision to take advantage of an obvious mistake. But your example is not apt. The situation you describe is one where any rational person would believe the discount to be legitimate. In Amazon's case, there is no way anyone could think that two for one meant two for none.
Another post laid out a very rational series of steps that Amazon should have taken. They should have asked for the items back, in the most convenient way possible. Anyone not returning the items should be sent a notification they will be billed. Anyone not paying the bill should be sent notification that they will be sent to a collections agency. After that, a test case should be taken to court to see if there is any chance of legally recovering the money, and based on that either suck up the loss or risk alienating your customers by suing large numbers of them.
To me, this proves yet again that most executives do not in any way deserve the huge compensation they get. Most random people on the street could do a better job of running a big corporation, these shmucks just happen to have jacked off in the same coffin as some other rich ass who got them the job.
Nice. I was being honest, and admitting that I don't know if I would act morally in that situation. Your contribution is to provide a simplistic lecture in a supercilious tone. Gotta love anonymous cowards.
Look at my uid. I've been here since before the karma cap. I neither need karma nor does being modded down hurt me in any way. Thanks for playing, though. Here's a copy of our home game, "Snide comments from the peanut gallery." Enjoy!
Jimmy: Uhh, Mr. McClure, I have a crazy friend who thinks it's wrong to call yourself a scientist if you don't have a sciencey type degree. Is he crazy? Troy: Nooooo, just ignorant. You see, your crazy friend never heard of "The Scientific Method." Just ask this scientician. Scientician: Uhhhh... Troy: He'll tell you that anyone who makes observations, creates theories based on them, tests the predicitons of those theories, and modifies the theories based on the tests is a scientist. Don't kid yourself, Jimmy. If that scientician ever got the chance, he'd study you and everyone you care about.
Wrong. This is like walking into a store, seeing a product marked two-for-one, going to the cash register, having the clerk mis-ring your sale or mis-count your change, and walking off with it.
This is a case of two wrongs not making a right. The customers were as wrong to take advantage of this, same as if they pocketed incorrect change from a clerk mis-ringing their purchase at a brick and mortar retailer. Amazon was wrong to charge their cards without going through a court. Amazon was also stupid, as this is going to cost them in terms of public perception, as well as chargeback fees when people don't accept the charge.
In the situation outlined in your post, would you tell the clerk, or would you pocket the money? This is not a hypothetical question, this kind of situation happens all the time. So the real question is, what have you done in similar situations in the past? Did you take the money, or did you tell the clerk there was an error?
You go in to a big-box store. You see a special two-for one advertised and buy the products. When you get to the register the clerk mis-rings it, punching in the wrong amount. Do you A.) Politely notify the clerk of their mistake and pay the difference, or B.) Walk out knowing you just got away with not paying what you expected to.
I know what I'd do. Even though I hate big, faceless corporations, I'd pay. I wouldn't even think about it. That's just the way I was raised, I guess. Would I do the same thing on Amazon? I'd like to say yes, because I think the morality is pretty clear, but I'm actually unsure of what I would have done in this situation. The real difference is looking somone in the face and knowing, "hey, this person will probably get shit if I do this and their boss finds out." Without that immediate, person to person contact, the urge to put one over on a big corporation when no one will get hurt is pretty tempting.
Sure, and the newspapers had every right to sue. But google has the right to say, "Look, if you want to be listed on our site, you have to let us cache your pages. Don't want to let us cache? Then we aren't listing your site."
Now, they may have the right to do that, but I doubt they will. It doesn't make financial sense for them. They depend on content providers, as much if not more than the content providers depend on them.
Out of curiosity, do you think these newspapers have the right to force google to list them, on their terms, without caching text? Or do you just think the newspapers have the right not to have their content used, without having the right to force google to list them?
Re:Do you really not know what that's spoofing?
on
SCO Vs. Groklaw
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· Score: 1
Yes, but this is slashdot. The least clueful of us would be considered a "huge Internet nerd" by almost anyone else's standards. Not knowing "I like monkeys" is a bit like not knowing "Peanut butter jelly time" or "Numa Numa" but quite a bit less embarassing than say, not knowing AYBABTU.
Forget portable cancer treatments, I want to bust some ghosts. Or at least get paid to blow the crap out of a fancy hotel. Never mind the part about it still needing two miles of pre-acceleration before the plasma wakefield thingamabobby kicks in, that's just a minor hiccup. Proton packs are just around the corner.
Ahhhh, I love the smell of burning ectoplasm in the morning! It smells like victory.
They are doing business with them in the same sense television stations do business with you. They provide you with a free service. In exchange, they deliver your attention to advertisers. Even though you do not pay them, you are an integral part of their business method. Even though these online services do not pay google, google is providing them with a service, delivering hits. In exchange, Google gets the traffic that comes in search of them. If google wants to forgo listing them on Google's servers then that is Google's business. These companies that took google to court want to eat their cake and have it too. They don't want Google to cache their content, but they want Google to list them. The court has ruled they can't cache content, fine. It's not Google's content. But Google no more has to list these companies than you do. Would you enjoy being forced toadvertise for people who not only aren't paying you, but take you to court?
Now, if a court decides Google is a monopoly, and abusing their monopoly power, then that would change things. Google could not will-nilly decide not to list people. But until then, they most certainly can decide what to do with their equipment. Not that they will do that, it would hurt them as much as the people that took them to court. It's just that, from a moral standpoint, I can't see anything wrong with google de-listing anyone that pisses them off, or for any other reason including them just having a bad day. I'd be kind of angry with them if they started doing stuff like that, but I wouldn't say they were doing evil, just being annoying.
Withdrawal of reward is not the same as use of force. There are two issues at hand here, the judge in this case only ruled on one of them, copyright. No ruling is needed on the other, which is whether google wants to continue using their resources that they have paid for to support companies that attack them. In the "Wild West" we had shootouts in the street. The option we are discussing here is the equivalent of taking your ball and going home because you don't like the way the game turned out. Perhaps not the most mature option, but it's your fucking ball!
By your logic, people sued by the recording industry have a moral obligation to continue purchasing music. By what moral reasoning do you arrive at the conclusion thatno longer wanting to do business with people who have sued you is the moral equivalent of forming a lynch mob and hanging someone?
Do you really not know what that's spoofing?
on
SCO Vs. Groklaw
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Google "I like monkeys." Tom took that famous old Internet story and replaced the word "monkey" with "MoGTroll." I can't believe anyone here is unfamiliar with that story. Were you just being funny, and I missed it?
I do cook healthy food for myself, just not every day. Have you looked at how much salt and preservatives are in the brand of frozen dinners I eat? Oh, you haven't and your just making shit up? I see.
As to the stories your parents told you, is that the fault of the individuals involved, or the system that degrades and dehumanizes them? "They're just bad people" as a theory has very little explanatory or predictive power. Understanding the circumstances that lead people to behave in certain ways is far more productive. Unfortunately, this practice conflicts with the fantasy stories people like to tell themselves about why they are "better people" than others who are less fortunate. If we started looking at things rationally, we might feel like we had to do somethign. If we stick to the "They're just bad people" story, then we've absolved ourselves from having to do anything or even feeling empathy. Much easier. I don't have time for cooking every day, others don't have time to empathize with the less fortunate. It's all a matter of priorities, I guess.
No, most people are poor for structural reasons. Our system demands and creates a certain amount of poor people, regardless of good or bad choices. The system is designed to take advantage of the poor. Those that escape had betetr opportunities, they didn't make better choices. To say otherwise is just self-aggrandizement. Selfish people who actually had advantages others didn't need excuses about why they shouldn't have to care about others.
I'm not abusing my body, the frozen meals I eat are relatively healthy. The only way to make a sandwich as cheap as what I eat would be to use ingredients that are themselves cheap and not very nutritious. We're not talking deli rye, high quality meats and vegetables. We're talking bolony and cheese with miracle whip. So why bother? I like something I can throw in a microwave. On weekends I cook, and often times there are leftovers that last until Tuesday or Wednesday, but after that, I'm going to take frozen dinners and maybe take a few extra vitamins.
Have fun up on your high horse. Whatever you've got to tell yourself in order to feel good is no skin off my nose. Personally, I'm more about the compassion and understanding, but to each their own.
Slashdot Mirror
As others have pointed out, my analogy is not so apt. The situation is more akin to a store's register screwing up because the price entered into the system differed from the price on the shelf. In California, the store is required by law to honor the lowest of the two prices. It is not, as I first said, like a human cashier screwing up and giving the wrong change.
Yeah, as someone else pointed out, my analogy is not so apt. The situation is more like when the REGISTER mis-rings an item, in which case, at least according to California law, the store must honor the lowest of the two prices. This makes sense, there have been studies done showing that stores consistently err on their own side in pricing at the register vs. pricing at the shelf. The problem is worst at stores in poor neighborhoods, not surprising as poor people have fewer options and are less conditioned to make a fuss than the middle or upper class. Also, in a brick and mortar store, there is someone to tell. Not so with Amazon, if you wanted the item, you took the double discount. So, Caveat Vendor.
You sound pretty proud that your library doesn't receive state or federal funding. You've posted exactly that, twice now. Just because your library isn't funded that way, doesn't mean the ones we all go to aren't. Besides, that Federal money is OUR money, and if we the people want to use it to fund libraries that don't censor, then that is our right.
Why do I get the feeling that you are just tooting your own horn here and don't really give a rat's ass about the real issue at hand? After all, not every library can be funded by a rich railroad tycoon.
It doesn't help that there aren't any real unbiased sources for game reviews. The whole industry is so incestuous, no one can trust what anyone says about a game. People would take more risks if they had better information.
I never said that the customers actions, right or wrong, justify Amazon's behavior. I think we can all agree, they don't. Amazon acted in a completely irrational manner, not just immoral. This was a stupid move on their part.
I was paraphrasing what another poster had said about what Amazon could have done. I think what he meant, and what I certainly mean in quoting him, is that if Amazon had wished to persue getting the money, there are MUCH better ways to go about it than simply charging the card. The last bit is important: one test case, to see if they even have a legal leg to stand on. This is just a way of saying, look, even if they really wanted to be complete bastards, there are smarter ways of going about it.
Hadn't thought of it that way. Makes sense.
The fun part about this whole thing is, we could debate the morality of the customers' decision 'till the cows come home and not come up with a definitive answer. But Amazon obviously screwed up, big-time. Not just from a moral standpoint, but from a PR standpoint as well. I hope whoever made the decision to charge the cards after the fact gets fired.
Amazing, an AC that reads replies. Well, here's a reply for you.
Tone: (Noun) the manner in which speech or writing is expressed.
Here's a little vocabulary lesson you may have missed in school: certain words have more than one meaning! Wow!
Here's a neat quote from the page you linked to:
I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern without any superhuman authority behind it.
No superhuman authority behind ethics? Ouch! sounds like Einstein was a moral relativist.
Here's a hilarious one:
I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of moral principles: Never lie, cheat, steal or knowingly spread a venereal disease. Never speed up to hit a pedestrian or, or course, stop to kick a pedestrian who has already been hit. From which it followed, of course, that one would never ever -- on pain of deletion from dozens of Christmas card lists across the country -- vote Republican.
Oh man, I hope you aren't a Republican. Because the tone of this quote is fairly insulting to Republicans, wouldn't you say?
For the other side:
You know what they say: if God had been a Liberal, we wouldn't have had the ten commandments. We'd have had the ten suggestions.
Oh, those wacky liberals with their respect for human dignity and intelligence, and their desire not to use coercion. How quaint.
This one, I just plain like:
We would like to believe that we are not in the business of surviving but in being good, and we do not like to admit to ourselves that we are good in order to survive.
Sigh. You mean I'm not "good" for the sake of being good, but because being good makes the most sense? How am I going to prop up my ego now?
Finally, morality is ALL relative. Relative to people:
The cosmos is neither moral or immoral; only people are. He who would move the world must first move himself.
Oh, I agree that Amazon did the wrong thing by charging customers cards after the fact. Both from a moral and a public relations standpoint, this decision was far worse than any customer's decision to take advantage of an obvious mistake. But your example is not apt. The situation you describe is one where any rational person would believe the discount to be legitimate. In Amazon's case, there is no way anyone could think that two for one meant two for none.
Another post laid out a very rational series of steps that Amazon should have taken. They should have asked for the items back, in the most convenient way possible. Anyone not returning the items should be sent a notification they will be billed. Anyone not paying the bill should be sent notification that they will be sent to a collections agency. After that, a test case should be taken to court to see if there is any chance of legally recovering the money, and based on that either suck up the loss or risk alienating your customers by suing large numbers of them.
To me, this proves yet again that most executives do not in any way deserve the huge compensation they get. Most random people on the street could do a better job of running a big corporation, these shmucks just happen to have jacked off in the same coffin as some other rich ass who got them the job.
Nice. I was being honest, and admitting that I don't know if I would act morally in that situation. Your contribution is to provide a simplistic lecture in a supercilious tone. Gotta love anonymous cowards.
Look at my uid. I've been here since before the karma cap. I neither need karma nor does being modded down hurt me in any way. Thanks for playing, though. Here's a copy of our home game, "Snide comments from the peanut gallery." Enjoy!
Jimmy: Uhh, Mr. McClure, I have a crazy friend who thinks it's wrong to call yourself a scientist if you don't have a sciencey type degree. Is he crazy?
Troy: Nooooo, just ignorant. You see, your crazy friend never heard of "The Scientific Method." Just ask this scientician.
Scientician: Uhhhh...
Troy: He'll tell you that anyone who makes observations, creates theories based on them, tests the predicitons of those theories, and modifies the theories based on the tests is a scientist. Don't kid yourself, Jimmy. If that scientician ever got the chance, he'd study you and everyone you care about.
Wrong. This is like walking into a store, seeing a product marked two-for-one, going to the cash register, having the clerk mis-ring your sale or mis-count your change, and walking off with it.
Do you do that?
This is a case of two wrongs not making a right. The customers were as wrong to take advantage of this, same as if they pocketed incorrect change from a clerk mis-ringing their purchase at a brick and mortar retailer. Amazon was wrong to charge their cards without going through a court. Amazon was also stupid, as this is going to cost them in terms of public perception, as well as chargeback fees when people don't accept the charge.
In the situation outlined in your post, would you tell the clerk, or would you pocket the money? This is not a hypothetical question, this kind of situation happens all the time. So the real question is, what have you done in similar situations in the past? Did you take the money, or did you tell the clerk there was an error?
You go in to a big-box store. You see a special two-for one advertised and buy the products. When you get to the register the clerk mis-rings it, punching in the wrong amount. Do you A.) Politely notify the clerk of their mistake and pay the difference, or B.) Walk out knowing you just got away with not paying what you expected to.
I know what I'd do. Even though I hate big, faceless corporations, I'd pay. I wouldn't even think about it. That's just the way I was raised, I guess. Would I do the same thing on Amazon? I'd like to say yes, because I think the morality is pretty clear, but I'm actually unsure of what I would have done in this situation. The real difference is looking somone in the face and knowing, "hey, this person will probably get shit if I do this and their boss finds out." Without that immediate, person to person contact, the urge to put one over on a big corporation when no one will get hurt is pretty tempting.
Sure, and the newspapers had every right to sue. But google has the right to say, "Look, if you want to be listed on our site, you have to let us cache your pages. Don't want to let us cache? Then we aren't listing your site."
Now, they may have the right to do that, but I doubt they will. It doesn't make financial sense for them. They depend on content providers, as much if not more than the content providers depend on them.
Out of curiosity, do you think these newspapers have the right to force google to list them, on their terms, without caching text? Or do you just think the newspapers have the right not to have their content used, without having the right to force google to list them?
Yes, but this is slashdot. The least clueful of us would be considered a "huge Internet nerd" by almost anyone else's standards. Not knowing "I like monkeys" is a bit like not knowing "Peanut butter jelly time" or "Numa Numa" but quite a bit less embarassing than say, not knowing AYBABTU.
Forget portable cancer treatments, I want to bust some ghosts. Or at least get paid to blow the crap out of a fancy hotel. Never mind the part about it still needing two miles of pre-acceleration before the plasma wakefield thingamabobby kicks in, that's just a minor hiccup. Proton packs are just around the corner.
Ahhhh, I love the smell of burning ectoplasm in the morning! It smells like victory.
They are doing business with them in the same sense television stations do business with you. They provide you with a free service. In exchange, they deliver your attention to advertisers. Even though you do not pay them, you are an integral part of their business method. Even though these online services do not pay google, google is providing them with a service, delivering hits. In exchange, Google gets the traffic that comes in search of them. If google wants to forgo listing them on Google's servers then that is Google's business. These companies that took google to court want to eat their cake and have it too. They don't want Google to cache their content, but they want Google to list them. The court has ruled they can't cache content, fine. It's not Google's content. But Google no more has to list these companies than you do. Would you enjoy being forced toadvertise for people who not only aren't paying you, but take you to court?
Now, if a court decides Google is a monopoly, and abusing their monopoly power, then that would change things. Google could not will-nilly decide not to list people. But until then, they most certainly can decide what to do with their equipment. Not that they will do that, it would hurt them as much as the people that took them to court. It's just that, from a moral standpoint, I can't see anything wrong with google de-listing anyone that pisses them off, or for any other reason including them just having a bad day. I'd be kind of angry with them if they started doing stuff like that, but I wouldn't say they were doing evil, just being annoying.
The number of Pamela Joneses has tripled in the last six months.
Withdrawal of reward is not the same as use of force. There are two issues at hand here, the judge in this case only ruled on one of them, copyright. No ruling is needed on the other, which is whether google wants to continue using their resources that they have paid for to support companies that attack them. In the "Wild West" we had shootouts in the street. The option we are discussing here is the equivalent of taking your ball and going home because you don't like the way the game turned out. Perhaps not the most mature option, but it's your fucking ball!
By your logic, people sued by the recording industry have a moral obligation to continue purchasing music. By what moral reasoning do you arrive at the conclusion thatno longer wanting to do business with people who have sued you is the moral equivalent of forming a lynch mob and hanging someone?
Google "I like monkeys." Tom took that famous old Internet story and replaced the word "monkey" with "MoGTroll." I can't believe anyone here is unfamiliar with that story. Were you just being funny, and I missed it?
I do cook healthy food for myself, just not every day. Have you looked at how much salt and preservatives are in the brand of frozen dinners I eat? Oh, you haven't and your just making shit up? I see.
As to the stories your parents told you, is that the fault of the individuals involved, or the system that degrades and dehumanizes them? "They're just bad people" as a theory has very little explanatory or predictive power. Understanding the circumstances that lead people to behave in certain ways is far more productive. Unfortunately, this practice conflicts with the fantasy stories people like to tell themselves about why they are "better people" than others who are less fortunate. If we started looking at things rationally, we might feel like we had to do somethign. If we stick to the "They're just bad people" story, then we've absolved ourselves from having to do anything or even feeling empathy. Much easier. I don't have time for cooking every day, others don't have time to empathize with the less fortunate. It's all a matter of priorities, I guess.
No, most people are poor for structural reasons. Our system demands and creates a certain amount of poor people, regardless of good or bad choices. The system is designed to take advantage of the poor. Those that escape had betetr opportunities, they didn't make better choices. To say otherwise is just self-aggrandizement. Selfish people who actually had advantages others didn't need excuses about why they shouldn't have to care about others.
I'm not abusing my body, the frozen meals I eat are relatively healthy. The only way to make a sandwich as cheap as what I eat would be to use ingredients that are themselves cheap and not very nutritious. We're not talking deli rye, high quality meats and vegetables. We're talking bolony and cheese with miracle whip. So why bother? I like something I can throw in a microwave. On weekends I cook, and often times there are leftovers that last until Tuesday or Wednesday, but after that, I'm going to take frozen dinners and maybe take a few extra vitamins.
Have fun up on your high horse. Whatever you've got to tell yourself in order to feel good is no skin off my nose. Personally, I'm more about the compassion and understanding, but to each their own.
This is the FBI we're talking about, not the CIA or the NSA. They're cops, not spies.