See, I really disagree with this, as it basically implies that "any contract you ever sign is bullshit."
Where did I say that? There is no contract. At most, there is a EULA which is non-negotiable and is not even presented until after the purchase is completed. A contract is a documented agreement between two parties for an exchange of money, goods, services, etc. The EULA is not even presented until after that exchange has been copleted. How can it be a contract?
If you install a piece of software, you click through an agreement. You are party to a contract(-ish thing, to get technical).
No, I click the let-me-use-what-I-have-already-paid-for button that is labeled "agree".
If one of the clauses is that you cannot resale the software, and you have agreed to that clause, then why do you all of a sudden feel entitled to sue because you should be able to resell the software (when you agreed that you wouldn't per the contract)?
You didn't read my post, did you? Why are you responding to it? Did you miss the paragraph about the EULA explicitly stating "You may permanently transfer all of your rights and obligations..."?
Isn't one of my rights the ability to use the key that is part of the package?
Don't give me bullshit about how you didn't see the license until you bought the software, because you can still return the software if it's not been installed yet. It's the law.
The bullshit part is the part about returning it. Most stores will not accept returns of opened software. Mail-order stores will not pay shipping for the return or refund the original shipping cost even if they were to accept the return. It's not the law; it's a provision of the EULA which the vendors were not a party to.
I just got done with a software licenses class at my law school (wrote my paper on open source licenses, actually), and while I may not like the terms of these clickware license agreements, in my opinion they are valid and we should follow them or stop buying the software / return it and let the companies we don't like how they do business.
That's your opinion, good. My opinion is that they are only as valid as we allow them to be. They are unconscionable, primarily because they are not presented until after the sale is complete and attempt to impose conditions and restrictions that were not agreed upon at the time of the sale. Making it unusable by not accepting the EULA after I have purchased it and installed it has wasted my time and money. Those conditions and restrictions should be presented in full at the time of the sale.
Thoughts? I'd love it if there were some argument to make me switch sides on this issue, as I really want to be on the other side, but I don't think the better arguments are on the other side. I think they're on the side of "obey the terms of the contract."
In general, I'm on the side of "obey the law". I don't know where exactly the law stands on this yet. A EULA is not law. A EULA is a post-sale unilaterally imposed non-negotiable statement of restrictions and conditions with the appearance of a contract that must be agreed to in order to use what was already purchased. Contract law may be relevant to this, but first we have to determine if a EULA really is a full-fledged contract. My opinion is that it is not.
I would hope it is the other way around, that companies (such as Blizzard for WoW) would no longer be allowed to prohibit the re-use of the keys that come with the software. Since the key is what allows the software to be used, the software is useless without the key. Since the key is part of the software package, it should be usable by the rightful owner, whether that is the original owner or the second owner or the third owner, and so on.
Skirting this by saying the key allows you to create an account and that the account is non-transferable is bogus as long as the key can only be used to create only one account.
I did buy a "like new" copy of WoW on ebay a couple years ago. I was a bit put out when the key was rejected due to having already been used. After reading the EULA thoroughly (not that I agree to a unilateral after-purchase change of conditions), I argued with Blizzard about my non-working key. After talking with a lawyer friend, and him sending them a letter, they sent me a new key.
One of they key points in their EULA was the paragraph:
You may permanently transfer all of your rights and obligations under the License Agreement to another by physically transferring the original media (e.g., the CD-ROM or DVD you purchased), all original packaging, and all Manuals or other documentation distributed with the Game; provided, however, that you permanently delete all copies and installations of the Game in your possession or control
The key is part of the "other documentation" and must be transferred to the new owner. Preventing someone from using it just because they are not the original owner of it is contrary to the first-sale doctrine.
Furthermore, there is nothing in the EULA indicating any possibility that the key cannot be used by its rightful owner. The only place that is mentioned is the Terms of Use which are displayed when you go to use the key. Prohibiting subsequent owners from using the key completely destroys the intended use of the software, so should not be allowed as long as first-sale doctrine principals apply.
I get exercise; I just can't bike to work. Despite what some others have said, I remain scared to attempt to ride my bike on the main roads out here. For the past month, there have been bicyclists or pedestrians hit by cars at least once every 3-4 days.
My town has plans to build a good sized park just a couple blocks away, on my side of the main road even. construction is supposed to start later this year. I'll be happy when that's done, since I currently have to drive 5 miles to reach the closest park (which is only 2 miles away on the map, if you don't count the houses, fences, dead-end roads, and waters in the way).
Nope, not a mcmansion. It's an older house in an area of 1/2 to 1 acre plots where the town just grew up around us (we just got forcably annexed a couple years ago). Unfortunately, due to the haphazard growth, there was practically no intelligent planning involved in the road design.
Actually, I had not thought of that. Public transport is right out, though; I've tried it, and it just isn't worth the pain and the additional 45 minutes it adds to my commute.
I'll have to start looking around at parking options a mile or two from my office. That sounds like something workable. The roads there are a lot less unfriendly than near my home.
Something about having to commute almost two miles to work by bicycle every day, I suspect.
I wish my commute was only two miles; I'd be happy to ride a bike, then. Well, if here was a safe path to do so, because I'd be scared to ride it on the roads around here. And sidewalks are practically non-existent except near retail stores.
However, my commute is 15 miles each way; even with optimum conditions I figure that would take me 2 hours (lots of hills) which would have me leaving home absurdly early in the morning and returning home about the time the kids go to bed.
I would love to live closer to work, but I can't afford the houses there. We looked hard for something closer before settling for the house we're in now. I love the area we're in, but there's just no good (safe) place to ride bikes except up and down the 1/2 mile dead-end road we live on. It's better than a stationary bike, but it would be even better if we could actually go somewhere without having to pile into the car. The road we connect onto, I have crossed on foot twice, with a crosswalk and signals, and will never do so again short of an emergency (a red light does mean "stop" doesn't it? I always thought so).
So, to sum up my confused rambling, sometimes you just don't have a reasonable alternative to using the car, even to go just a mile down the road.
Do what most people who use a generator do, install a switch in your electrical panel that allows you to plug your generator into it when needed. They typically have 2-6 switches that you redirect the feed for existing breakers to, so those selected breakers can have the option to be powered by the generator or the main line. I have the refrigerator, gas furnace fan, water pump, under-house sump pump, and the light circuits for a few rooms connected through that.
I don't see any reason you couldn't plug solar into there instead of a generator. I had never thought of trying that. I suppose that since I planned it for emergencies, I generally wouldn't expect the sun to be shining then (rain/snow/ice storms), but I like the idea.
The panel typically costs $200-$600 and the electrician to install it another $200-$600.
The first article linked to sounds to me like if a state employee violates copyright as part of his job, the state can't be sued but will fire the employee who can *then* be sued. Sucks to be that employee...
Checking wikipedia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit) you can see that 130 km/h (80.8 mph) is pretty much a worldwide upper limit on major freeway speed limits. In fact, only Indonesia breaks that, and only by 10 km/h (6.2 mph), and only Germany does not have an explicit upper limit, and even then only on certain major freeways. Considering that maximum allowed limit, considering all the freeways that are set lower than the maximum allowed limit, and considering all the in-city roads that overwhelmingly outnumber those freeways in total mileage, then I'll stick with the 99.99% number.
I don't know what most Americans would accept, but I suspect that the price of the vehicle would play a much larger role in the decision than the specs as long as the specs met their needs.
The couple times I have been to the dealer looking at new cars, they tried to wow me with all the impressive numbers. None of those times were they able to answer my question "and just where would I need that?". I always ended up with a cheaper car that met my needs: driving on U.S. roads, both city and highway. I have yet to find a place where I need such acceleration or any place where I can achieve those speeds without getting a huge ticket and probably jail time.
Who in the mainstream public goes 125mph and 0-60 in 8 seconds? Who in the mainstream public goes 100mph? The mainstream public travels on city roads in the 30-55mph range and highways in the 50-80mph range. The mainstream public needs to accelerate no faster than the car in front of them. I questioned the specs specifically because they did not appear relevant to the mainstream. You obviously aren't mainstream; where are you driving anyway?
I live in Dallas. The speed-limit of 60 on the freeways is meaningless. Unless there is a traffic jam people are going 70+ in the slow lane. Most large cities are the same way.
I used to live in Dallas. Usually, the only time I saw that kind of speed was between 11pm and 5am. Otherwise, it was more like 30-50 mph most of the time. Back then I had a car that would struggle to hit 70; I seldom had to worry about it.
Checking wikipedia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit) you can see that 130 km/h (80.8 mph) is pretty much a worldwide upper limit on major freeway speed limits. In fact, only Indonesia breaks that, and only by 10 km/h (6.2 mph), and only Germany does not have an explicit upper limit.
Considering that maximum allowed limit, considering all the freeways that are set lower than the maximum allowed limit, and considering all the in-city roads that overwhelmingly outnumber those freeways in total mileage, then I'll stick with the 99.99% number.
How far do I travel in 6 seconds on the on-ramp? Oh, maybe 50-100 feet or so, I'd guess, on a good day.
It takes me 2-5 minutes to merge into highway traffic regardless of the length of the on-ramp. Traveling at 5 MPH trying to find a gap between all the other cars while some of those cars are trying to merge onto the off-ramp takes a good amount of time.
If I entered the on-ramp at 30 MPH, I'd leave skid marks from braking to avoid hitting the cars in front of me. Some days I don't even come close to reaching 60 in the 14 miles I drive on the highway.
To be fair, there are also some days where I've hit 80 before moving over and slowing down once I realized how fast I was going. Though in general, if we're going 60 for a long stretch, I'm happy.
I would love to get 100 MPG, but why do they require acceleration to 60 in 12 seconds? 15-20 seconds would be just fine. And more importantly, why do they require a minimum top speed of 100 MPH? 80 MPH would be more than sufficient for 99.99% of roads worldwide. I'd be happy with 100 MPG even if I could never get it over 75 MPH.
Of course I'd be happy if most of the cars on the highway would drive the same speed, instead of having some people driving slow in the fast lanes and other people constantly swerving across lanes to maintain their speed 10-20 MPH over the general traffic flow.
I'm not advocating artificially restricting the speed capabilities; I'm just questioning why they make such a high speed (that only police cars and people running from police cars need) a requirement.
I did the exact same thing when my first ISP got sold to a bigger service which promptly lost the accounts. The nice thing is that when I move cross-country, I still have the same address and domain no matter what ISP I end up on.
I still use some web mail services, but only for all the junk-mail sign-ups I have to do to do any online ordering.
In my area (eastern PA) there is discussion in some counties about banning the new LED type billboards as they believe they will distract motorists.
The LED strobes on school buses, trash trucks, and all manner of construction worker pickup trucks are very distracting to me. Even from a long distance away, they drag my eyes away from what I *should* be paying attention to: the vehicles and pedestrians near and ahead of me.
In all those pictures, I don't see any buildup of dust in front of the rocks, though there is plenty on the sides of the paths. Usually, when I push something through the dirt/mud/snow/whatever, I end up with a good buildup in front, too. I wonder where that has gone.
Most DVDs I get already have unskippable advertising. I suppose the new part is to allow you to skip if you have somehow connected your DVD player to the internet? I haven't seen one yet with a network card or even a modem.
Anyway, my solution has been to use my computer to rip the DVD, strip out all the locks and usually the ads too, and burn it to a new disc. This has many benefits:
it doesn't matter if the kids scratch the disc, I can replace it easily
I can go straight to the movie after putting the disc in the player
I don't have to watch the FBI warning (I have one disc that has 3.5 minutes of warnings from various conutries that was unskippable! They really expect me to sit through that?)
With VHS, I could just fast forward through the ads. With DVD, if you are going to make the ads unskippable and thus make me take the effort to correct that, I'm going to just remove the ads altogether from my copy. You lose ground by being too greedy.
Yeah, I only named two. How many would be sufficient for you? Those were examples of types of jobs where it mattered, and both of those examples have a very large number of people employed across the country. As for the size of the city, how large does the city have to be before it becomes a non-issue? I live in a city with a population of 106,000, and my wife often encounters people that she met through her job and who she has to maintain her on-the-job behavior for, sometimes once every week or two, sometimes a few in a day; the point is that you never know when or where that encounter will occur. I grew up in a town of about 30,000, and any time I got out of the house (not counting school) I inevitably encountered at least one person I knew by sight even if not by name. I'm sure that is even more common in smaller towns. The majority of the world (or even the US) does not live in NYC or LA.
I certainly agree that the police profession's example is somewhat sullied, but that doesn't change the fact that they have a very public role and are supposed to set a good example even off duty, and the vast majority of them do. The ones that don't, the ones you hear about, are a tiny minority giving the rest a bad rap.
It's part of the job requirement; if you don't like it, find a different job, because you are obviously not suited for that one. The original post stated that off-the-job behavior was no business of the employer; I was showing some examples of some professions where it is their business. I am not saying it is always the business of every employer.
It can affect job performance, and not in any way that can be measured. If you're slightly drunk at a bar and acting up a bit, someone who sees you there and who you're counseling about alcoholism isn't going to pay much attention to you after that (there you go; another job example). If you're yelling and screaming at someone who scratched your car in the parking lot, instead of talking calmly and getting the police if needed, how do you think your student (who was out shopping with his mom and saw you there) will react in school the next day when you tell him to calm down after he flies into a rage when someone pokes him?
Any profession where you are holding up your own behavior as an example will typically require you to maintain that behavior in public even when off duty. If you don't, you are making your own job that much harder when someone you work with sees you acting contrary to that example.
There are a lot of professions where a person's private life does very often get associated with their work life, and their employer wants to control what gets associated with the company. Some examples are teachers and police officers. These people have very strict behavior requirements on the job. One very important quality is that their students and the general public respect them and trust them. Even when off duty, they often encounter people that they deal with as part of their job, and they have to maintain their on-the-job relationship. Since they can not predict when that may happen, that usually means "any time you are in a non-private location".
Theoretically, what you do on your own time is no business of your employer. Unfortunately, it can still affect your on-the-job performance. So, if you want to stay employed, you often have to restrict your off-the-job activities to either a very controlled private environment or to what is acceptable on-the-job.
My wife is in such a position, and while I understand her employers requirements, some of them chafe, and some of them I disagree with. But, she likes her job and for now at least is willing to abide by those restrictions in public.
If Sprint does this, I'll be really upset. I can't even get that information for my own phone. My statements contain only "incoming" for incoming calls, so I can't see who all called me. I have even asked customer service, and they say they cannot provide that information.
and before anyone calls me on it, yes I know NZ is not "a European city". I don't know if similar swimming instructions would have existed for going to a NZ city. They obviously don't now, though.
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Where did I say that? There is no contract. At most, there is a EULA which is non-negotiable and is not even presented until after the purchase is completed. A contract is a documented agreement between two parties for an exchange of money, goods, services, etc. The EULA is not even presented until after that exchange has been copleted. How can it be a contract?
If you install a piece of software, you click through an agreement. You are party to a contract(-ish thing, to get technical).
No, I click the let-me-use-what-I-have-already-paid-for button that is labeled "agree".
If one of the clauses is that you cannot resale the software, and you have agreed to that clause, then why do you all of a sudden feel entitled to sue because you should be able to resell the software (when you agreed that you wouldn't per the contract)?
You didn't read my post, did you? Why are you responding to it? Did you miss the paragraph about the EULA explicitly stating "You may permanently transfer all of your rights and obligations..."? Isn't one of my rights the ability to use the key that is part of the package?
Don't give me bullshit about how you didn't see the license until you bought the software, because you can still return the software if it's not been installed yet. It's the law.
The bullshit part is the part about returning it. Most stores will not accept returns of opened software. Mail-order stores will not pay shipping for the return or refund the original shipping cost even if they were to accept the return. It's not the law; it's a provision of the EULA which the vendors were not a party to.
I just got done with a software licenses class at my law school (wrote my paper on open source licenses, actually), and while I may not like the terms of these clickware license agreements, in my opinion they are valid and we should follow them or stop buying the software / return it and let the companies we don't like how they do business.
That's your opinion, good. My opinion is that they are only as valid as we allow them to be. They are unconscionable, primarily because they are not presented until after the sale is complete and attempt to impose conditions and restrictions that were not agreed upon at the time of the sale. Making it unusable by not accepting the EULA after I have purchased it and installed it has wasted my time and money. Those conditions and restrictions should be presented in full at the time of the sale.
Thoughts? I'd love it if there were some argument to make me switch sides on this issue, as I really want to be on the other side, but I don't think the better arguments are on the other side. I think they're on the side of "obey the terms of the contract."
In general, I'm on the side of "obey the law". I don't know where exactly the law stands on this yet. A EULA is not law. A EULA is a post-sale unilaterally imposed non-negotiable statement of restrictions and conditions with the appearance of a contract that must be agreed to in order to use what was already purchased. Contract law may be relevant to this, but first we have to determine if a EULA really is a full-fledged contract. My opinion is that it is not.
Skirting this by saying the key allows you to create an account and that the account is non-transferable is bogus as long as the key can only be used to create only one account.
I did buy a "like new" copy of WoW on ebay a couple years ago. I was a bit put out when the key was rejected due to having already been used. After reading the EULA thoroughly (not that I agree to a unilateral after-purchase change of conditions), I argued with Blizzard about my non-working key. After talking with a lawyer friend, and him sending them a letter, they sent me a new key.
One of they key points in their EULA was the paragraph:
You may permanently transfer all of your rights and obligations under the License Agreement to another by physically transferring the original media (e.g., the CD-ROM or DVD you purchased), all original packaging, and all Manuals or other documentation distributed with the Game; provided, however, that you permanently delete all copies and installations of the Game in your possession or control
The key is part of the "other documentation" and must be transferred to the new owner. Preventing someone from using it just because they are not the original owner of it is contrary to the first-sale doctrine.
Furthermore, there is nothing in the EULA indicating any possibility that the key cannot be used by its rightful owner. The only place that is mentioned is the Terms of Use which are displayed when you go to use the key. Prohibiting subsequent owners from using the key completely destroys the intended use of the software, so should not be allowed as long as first-sale doctrine principals apply.
My town has plans to build a good sized park just a couple blocks away, on my side of the main road even. construction is supposed to start later this year. I'll be happy when that's done, since I currently have to drive 5 miles to reach the closest park (which is only 2 miles away on the map, if you don't count the houses, fences, dead-end roads, and waters in the way).
Nope, not a mcmansion. It's an older house in an area of 1/2 to 1 acre plots where the town just grew up around us (we just got forcably annexed a couple years ago). Unfortunately, due to the haphazard growth, there was practically no intelligent planning involved in the road design.
I'll have to start looking around at parking options a mile or two from my office. That sounds like something workable. The roads there are a lot less unfriendly than near my home.
I wish my commute was only two miles; I'd be happy to ride a bike, then. Well, if here was a safe path to do so, because I'd be scared to ride it on the roads around here. And sidewalks are practically non-existent except near retail stores.
However, my commute is 15 miles each way; even with optimum conditions I figure that would take me 2 hours (lots of hills) which would have me leaving home absurdly early in the morning and returning home about the time the kids go to bed.
I would love to live closer to work, but I can't afford the houses there. We looked hard for something closer before settling for the house we're in now. I love the area we're in, but there's just no good (safe) place to ride bikes except up and down the 1/2 mile dead-end road we live on. It's better than a stationary bike, but it would be even better if we could actually go somewhere without having to pile into the car. The road we connect onto, I have crossed on foot twice, with a crosswalk and signals, and will never do so again short of an emergency (a red light does mean "stop" doesn't it? I always thought so).
So, to sum up my confused rambling, sometimes you just don't have a reasonable alternative to using the car, even to go just a mile down the road.
I don't see any reason you couldn't plug solar into there instead of a generator. I had never thought of trying that. I suppose that since I planned it for emergencies, I generally wouldn't expect the sun to be shining then (rain/snow/ice storms), but I like the idea.
The panel typically costs $200-$600 and the electrician to install it another $200-$600.
The first article linked to sounds to me like if a state employee violates copyright as part of his job, the state can't be sued but will fire the employee who can *then* be sued. Sucks to be that employee...
Checking wikipedia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit) you can see that 130 km/h (80.8 mph) is pretty much a worldwide upper limit on major freeway speed limits. In fact, only Indonesia breaks that, and only by 10 km/h (6.2 mph), and only Germany does not have an explicit upper limit, and even then only on certain major freeways. Considering that maximum allowed limit, considering all the freeways that are set lower than the maximum allowed limit, and considering all the in-city roads that overwhelmingly outnumber those freeways in total mileage, then I'll stick with the 99.99% number.
I don't know what most Americans would accept, but I suspect that the price of the vehicle would play a much larger role in the decision than the specs as long as the specs met their needs.
The couple times I have been to the dealer looking at new cars, they tried to wow me with all the impressive numbers. None of those times were they able to answer my question "and just where would I need that?". I always ended up with a cheaper car that met my needs: driving on U.S. roads, both city and highway. I have yet to find a place where I need such acceleration or any place where I can achieve those speeds without getting a huge ticket and probably jail time.
Who in the mainstream public goes 125mph and 0-60 in 8 seconds? Who in the mainstream public goes 100mph? The mainstream public travels on city roads in the 30-55mph range and highways in the 50-80mph range. The mainstream public needs to accelerate no faster than the car in front of them. I questioned the specs specifically because they did not appear relevant to the mainstream. You obviously aren't mainstream; where are you driving anyway?
I used to live in Dallas. Usually, the only time I saw that kind of speed was between 11pm and 5am. Otherwise, it was more like 30-50 mph most of the time. Back then I had a car that would struggle to hit 70; I seldom had to worry about it.
Checking wikipedia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit) you can see that 130 km/h (80.8 mph) is pretty much a worldwide upper limit on major freeway speed limits. In fact, only Indonesia breaks that, and only by 10 km/h (6.2 mph), and only Germany does not have an explicit upper limit. Considering that maximum allowed limit, considering all the freeways that are set lower than the maximum allowed limit, and considering all the in-city roads that overwhelmingly outnumber those freeways in total mileage, then I'll stick with the 99.99% number.
How far do I travel in 6 seconds on the on-ramp? Oh, maybe 50-100 feet or so, I'd guess, on a good day.
It takes me 2-5 minutes to merge into highway traffic regardless of the length of the on-ramp. Traveling at 5 MPH trying to find a gap between all the other cars while some of those cars are trying to merge onto the off-ramp takes a good amount of time.
If I entered the on-ramp at 30 MPH, I'd leave skid marks from braking to avoid hitting the cars in front of me. Some days I don't even come close to reaching 60 in the 14 miles I drive on the highway.
To be fair, there are also some days where I've hit 80 before moving over and slowing down once I realized how fast I was going. Though in general, if we're going 60 for a long stretch, I'm happy.
I would love to get 100 MPG, but why do they require acceleration to 60 in 12 seconds? 15-20 seconds would be just fine. And more importantly, why do they require a minimum top speed of 100 MPH? 80 MPH would be more than sufficient for 99.99% of roads worldwide. I'd be happy with 100 MPG even if I could never get it over 75 MPH. Of course I'd be happy if most of the cars on the highway would drive the same speed, instead of having some people driving slow in the fast lanes and other people constantly swerving across lanes to maintain their speed 10-20 MPH over the general traffic flow. I'm not advocating artificially restricting the speed capabilities; I'm just questioning why they make such a high speed (that only police cars and people running from police cars need) a requirement.
I did the exact same thing when my first ISP got sold to a bigger service which promptly lost the accounts. The nice thing is that when I move cross-country, I still have the same address and domain no matter what ISP I end up on. I still use some web mail services, but only for all the junk-mail sign-ups I have to do to do any online ordering.
Oh my god. I just about choked I was laughing so hard. Now I've got yet another comic strip I've got to read during my daily morning wake-up period.
The LED strobes on school buses, trash trucks, and all manner of construction worker pickup trucks are very distracting to me. Even from a long distance away, they drag my eyes away from what I *should* be paying attention to: the vehicles and pedestrians near and ahead of me.
In all those pictures, I don't see any buildup of dust in front of the rocks, though there is plenty on the sides of the paths. Usually, when I push something through the dirt/mud/snow/whatever, I end up with a good buildup in front, too. I wonder where that has gone.
- it doesn't matter if the kids scratch the disc, I can replace it easily
- I can go straight to the movie after putting the disc in the player
- I don't have to watch the FBI warning (I have one disc that has 3.5 minutes of warnings from various conutries that was unskippable! They really expect me to sit through that?)
With VHS, I could just fast forward through the ads. With DVD, if you are going to make the ads unskippable and thus make me take the effort to correct that, I'm going to just remove the ads altogether from my copy. You lose ground by being too greedy.I certainly agree that the police profession's example is somewhat sullied, but that doesn't change the fact that they have a very public role and are supposed to set a good example even off duty, and the vast majority of them do. The ones that don't, the ones you hear about, are a tiny minority giving the rest a bad rap.
It's part of the job requirement; if you don't like it, find a different job, because you are obviously not suited for that one. The original post stated that off-the-job behavior was no business of the employer; I was showing some examples of some professions where it is their business. I am not saying it is always the business of every employer.
It can affect job performance, and not in any way that can be measured. If you're slightly drunk at a bar and acting up a bit, someone who sees you there and who you're counseling about alcoholism isn't going to pay much attention to you after that (there you go; another job example). If you're yelling and screaming at someone who scratched your car in the parking lot, instead of talking calmly and getting the police if needed, how do you think your student (who was out shopping with his mom and saw you there) will react in school the next day when you tell him to calm down after he flies into a rage when someone pokes him?
Any profession where you are holding up your own behavior as an example will typically require you to maintain that behavior in public even when off duty. If you don't, you are making your own job that much harder when someone you work with sees you acting contrary to that example.
Theoretically, what you do on your own time is no business of your employer. Unfortunately, it can still affect your on-the-job performance. So, if you want to stay employed, you often have to restrict your off-the-job activities to either a very controlled private environment or to what is acceptable on-the-job.
My wife is in such a position, and while I understand her employers requirements, some of them chafe, and some of them I disagree with. But, she likes her job and for now at least is willing to abide by those restrictions in public.
If Sprint does this, I'll be really upset. I can't even get that information for my own phone. My statements contain only "incoming" for incoming calls, so I can't see who all called me. I have even asked customer service, and they say they cannot provide that information.
and before anyone calls me on it, yes I know NZ is not "a European city". I don't know if similar swimming instructions would have existed for going to a NZ city. They obviously don't now, though.
Dang, they fixed it. For directions bewteen a US city and a European city, Google maps used to include a swim from Boston to Paris.