Well, I for one have exactly zero confidence this won't eventually (if not currently) be used to deny entirely legitimate returns as they push harder to reduce costs-- eventually that will result in increasing improper denials. "Oh sorry, you've exceeded your return quota of 1 item every 3 months, so this must be fraudulent as that's excessive."
I doubt that. I agree with the OP, that this is an attempt to stir up outrage for clicks. The stores have an incentive to keep fairly open return policies, as such policies are in high demand. Companies only have liberal return policies because they're attractive to customers, not because they have to. The challenge is to draw a line where the return policy doesn't make the store victimized by crime and fraud. The fact that practically no one has heard of this system reflects on how rarely it flags people (I don't know why anyone's surprised—there's a reason they ask for you driver's license number if you make a return without a receipt).
If you ask me, return policies are too lenient and allow people to try things out and then get their money back and the item ends up in the trash. If return policies were limited to defective exchanges, a ton of waste would be saved both financially and materially. I think it's odd that people think that they're entitled to return things just because they changed their mind.
The New York Times likes to put over-the-top columns on the op-ed page from both sides of the aisle. It's disingenuous for you to claim that the column you cited is indicative of the opinions of those who run the company. They frequently have two columns on the same page that contradict one another. Does that mean that the New York Times has paradoxical opinions? No. It means it's an op-ed page.
Even if you take that article to represent the paper's opinion, you misconstrue the author's point. He's not praising China's political structure as much as he's criticizing the ineffectualness of America's system. Considering that your post is so tongue-in-cheek, it would seem that you ought to recognize the same tone in the article you cite.
You're trolling and trying to turn a non-political story into a political discussion.
I hate to respond to myself, but I will include a quick caveat: I wholly disapproved of how Obama handled Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and the NSA data collection as a whole. It's an unfortunate stain on his presidency. However, I would be a fool to believe any of the men who ran against him would have been any better. McCain is scary pro-military and Romney isn't much better.
Obama moved society in the direction of being better. If we judge a president only by their failures and not by their greater body of work, all presidents would be failures.
At what? He came into office during an economic crisis. He stabilized the economy and it has done extremely well since. He also expanded healthcare to millions of Americans without it, which addressed one of the great moral failings of this country. He appointed experts to the various agencies and bureaus he oversaw. He took steps to protect our environment that led to an explosion of green technologies. No major wars were started during his presidency. America regained good standing with the international community that was squandered by the Bush era.
I could go on. What more could he have really done? History will judge Obama very favorably. He will be remembered as one of the greats.
I think he genuinely wanted to, but I also don't believe he resorted to a broad use of executive power lightly. The Affordable Care Act was his great congressional push and after that he lost congress. There are certain things the executive branch can act on and certain things it cannot. Selective enforcement, which is basically what he did with the immigration problem, has long been an area where the executive branch has great latitude. Moving a military base/prison isn't the same thing. As a Constitutional scholar, I'm sure Obama was aware that he would not win in court if he attempted to shut Gitmo down without congressional approval.
Nonsense. Rendition dramatically increased under Obama.
Why don't you provide a citation for this claim. I'm not one to usually exclaim CITATION REQUIRED as this is an internet forum, not a research paper, but when you make extraordinary claims you should back them up.
From looking at your post history, I can't tell if you're a troll or just a horribly ineloquent contrarian. Then again, what's the difference?
Hopefully Page keeps this company independent from Alphabet. I think it sounds really promising, but I would hate to see Google continue to expand its reach. Keeping this venture independent would allow more market diversity. This is what made me uneasy about Google's autonomous vehicles. By allowing them in every facet of our lives, we're allowing for some scary data mining, especially when governments compel them to share those data.
I can take an airplane from San Jose to Burbank for $121 and even with security, it takes about 2 hours
I haven't been to San Jose's airport, but if you were to leave from LAX you'd have to get to their airport two hours before takeoff to make it to your gate in time. That's not counting LA's crazy traffic, where it takes an hour to drive ten miles.
why does *this* train and the astonishing and ever-growing cost make sense?
It will greatly reduce traffic, decongest airports, reduce pollution, provide economic opportunities for the underprivileged, and projects like this are a boon to the economy.
Iraq war was funded by the US govt. It was a national effort. This train is a state project.
That state is 20% of the U.S. economy.
worthless pork barrel trains
You should visit California and you should visit Europe. I don't see how anyone could visit those two places and not come to the conclusion that California needs to copy Europe's high speed train model. Going anywhere in Cali is a hazardous nightmare. In Europe, you can get anywhere efficiently and without much stress.
Elon Musk struggles to pay his employees and keep the lights on. I wouldn't trust him to take on a project of this magnitude. The goal of Falcon Heavy was to keep the costs down so he could boast about it to investors (and the government, so he can get their money, too). He's still has a long way to go to demonstrate that 1) he can compare to NASA 2) that he can turn space exploration into a profitable venture. NASA may burn the government's money, but Musk is burning investor money.
I just don't buy the argument that NN hurts the little guys—not that there are many little guys left in telco. Things like telecommunications, that require massive infrastructure investment, will always function as an oligopoly. There's no way around that. Even in places where some bit players exist, there are never several players in the market. It's just not economically viable. So, knowing that an oligopoly is unavoidable, what's best is to have regulations that protect the consumers.
Without NN you have a situation where there are very limited roads, they're all private, and the owners can charge varying amounts or block access to certain vehicles. For the government to lay down some ground rules, such as all tolls must be equal and all cars must be allowed access, is only reasonable. It's far from "a marriage of corporation and government." The current situation, in which an admitted corporate puppet* controls the regulatory agency. Personally, I'd prefer a situation where the government owns and maintains the roads, but not the destinations (the government owns the cable, but not the ISPs it leads to).
*While you might counter, "he was just joking about the corporate puppet" thing, what was supposed to make the joke funny was that it's true.
It's closely tied to voting against one's self interest.
I think there are two primary causes of this. 1) stupidity and 2) the "temporarily inconvenienced millionaire" delusion. The two are closely related. I don't think most people who vote against their self-interest do so consciously.
I'm sure TBL wants to continue to have influence, hence he resorts to euphemisms rather than divisive rhetoric. Sometimes, you have to have prudence so you don't sacrifice the future. Being blunt and polarizing doesn't achieve anything. We know what he means.
You're right. Corporations always act benevolently. If the government would just cease regulations, we could all live in a Rocky Mountain paradise where self-interest creates a utopia. No one would starve or be taken advantage of because everyone would be motivated to work hard and innovate. And we could go back to the gold standard and worship the dollar sign.
It's government regulations that harm people. Not "pollution" or "usury" or "fraud" or any of those other fictitious crimes the collectivists have invented to scare mankind into submission. Government regulation is synonymous with slavery.
Reality does have a well-known liberal bias. That's why the conservative coalition is primarily composed of Evangelicals, MBAs, racists, and libertarians. Those who live in a fantasy world, those who live and die by the lie, those who reject reality because it's a threat to their egos, and those who reject empirical economic data because it doesn't conform with their utopian fantasy.
The irony is great with this one. Is this troll serious or is he being ironic? We'll never know. I always find posts like these to be such curiosities. I want to believe he's being ironic, but the cynic in me is inclined to believe that there are people out there who will accuse others of being "left wing fascists" in earnest.
This is a pretty ridiculous post for/. I mean, everyone here should know how to manage permissions and make a computer fairly child-proof without resorting to the type of spyware this company was hawking. This software is to monitor people without their knowledge, not monitor people with fair warning. There are much easier ways to limit the activity of children on the internet than your solution.
but Apple clearly aims to move to a streaming model of music selling
Apple provides a steaming model, but I don't see how this means they clearly aim to move exclusively to a streaming model. I mean, they might be, but no evidence is provided to support this statement.
Even if it ends up being true, that doesn't mean the article is making a sound argument.
The story acknowledges this, but they don't really explain how this hints at the demise of iTunes itself. It's just stated as if one follows the other. It managed to generate enough clicks to end up on the front page of/., so I guess it worked.
They really were selling spyware, so their condemnation of hackers is a bit like throwing stones in glass houses. Of course, they kind of have to spout the bullshit that their software was intended only for legal uses, because otherwise it opens them up to all sorts of liabilities.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I for one have exactly zero confidence this won't eventually (if not currently) be used to deny entirely legitimate returns as they push harder to reduce costs-- eventually that will result in increasing improper denials. "Oh sorry, you've exceeded your return quota of 1 item every 3 months, so this must be fraudulent as that's excessive."
I doubt that. I agree with the OP, that this is an attempt to stir up outrage for clicks. The stores have an incentive to keep fairly open return policies, as such policies are in high demand. Companies only have liberal return policies because they're attractive to customers, not because they have to. The challenge is to draw a line where the return policy doesn't make the store victimized by crime and fraud. The fact that practically no one has heard of this system reflects on how rarely it flags people (I don't know why anyone's surprised—there's a reason they ask for you driver's license number if you make a return without a receipt).
If you ask me, return policies are too lenient and allow people to try things out and then get their money back and the item ends up in the trash. If return policies were limited to defective exchanges, a ton of waste would be saved both financially and materially. I think it's odd that people think that they're entitled to return things just because they changed their mind.
The New York Times likes to put over-the-top columns on the op-ed page from both sides of the aisle. It's disingenuous for you to claim that the column you cited is indicative of the opinions of those who run the company. They frequently have two columns on the same page that contradict one another. Does that mean that the New York Times has paradoxical opinions? No. It means it's an op-ed page.
Even if you take that article to represent the paper's opinion, you misconstrue the author's point. He's not praising China's political structure as much as he's criticizing the ineffectualness of America's system. Considering that your post is so tongue-in-cheek, it would seem that you ought to recognize the same tone in the article you cite.
You're trolling and trying to turn a non-political story into a political discussion.
I hate to respond to myself, but I will include a quick caveat: I wholly disapproved of how Obama handled Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and the NSA data collection as a whole. It's an unfortunate stain on his presidency. However, I would be a fool to believe any of the men who ran against him would have been any better. McCain is scary pro-military and Romney isn't much better.
Obama moved society in the direction of being better. If we judge a president only by their failures and not by their greater body of work, all presidents would be failures.
I'm also against the increasing trend of leaking
Why? Information frees.
Obama was so bad
At what? He came into office during an economic crisis. He stabilized the economy and it has done extremely well since. He also expanded healthcare to millions of Americans without it, which addressed one of the great moral failings of this country. He appointed experts to the various agencies and bureaus he oversaw. He took steps to protect our environment that led to an explosion of green technologies. No major wars were started during his presidency. America regained good standing with the international community that was squandered by the Bush era.
I could go on. What more could he have really done? History will judge Obama very favorably. He will be remembered as one of the greats.
I think he genuinely wanted to, but I also don't believe he resorted to a broad use of executive power lightly. The Affordable Care Act was his great congressional push and after that he lost congress. There are certain things the executive branch can act on and certain things it cannot. Selective enforcement, which is basically what he did with the immigration problem, has long been an area where the executive branch has great latitude. Moving a military base/prison isn't the same thing. As a Constitutional scholar, I'm sure Obama was aware that he would not win in court if he attempted to shut Gitmo down without congressional approval.
Nonsense. Rendition dramatically increased under Obama.
Why don't you provide a citation for this claim. I'm not one to usually exclaim CITATION REQUIRED as this is an internet forum, not a research paper, but when you make extraordinary claims you should back them up.
From looking at your post history, I can't tell if you're a troll or just a horribly ineloquent contrarian. Then again, what's the difference?
The only Secretaries of State in living memory with less experience in foreign affairs were William Rogers and Cy Vance.
You're showing your age there.
Don't feed the trolls.
Hopefully Page keeps this company independent from Alphabet. I think it sounds really promising, but I would hate to see Google continue to expand its reach. Keeping this venture independent would allow more market diversity. This is what made me uneasy about Google's autonomous vehicles. By allowing them in every facet of our lives, we're allowing for some scary data mining, especially when governments compel them to share those data.
He tried and congress would not let him. At one point he even said his inability to close Gitmo was one of his greatest failures as president.
I can take an airplane from San Jose to Burbank for $121 and even with security, it takes about 2 hours
I haven't been to San Jose's airport, but if you were to leave from LAX you'd have to get to their airport two hours before takeoff to make it to your gate in time. That's not counting LA's crazy traffic, where it takes an hour to drive ten miles.
why does *this* train and the astonishing and ever-growing cost make sense?
It will greatly reduce traffic, decongest airports, reduce pollution, provide economic opportunities for the underprivileged, and projects like this are a boon to the economy.
Iraq war was funded by the US govt. It was a national effort. This train is a state project.
That state is 20% of the U.S. economy.
worthless pork barrel trains
You should visit California and you should visit Europe. I don't see how anyone could visit those two places and not come to the conclusion that California needs to copy Europe's high speed train model. Going anywhere in Cali is a hazardous nightmare. In Europe, you can get anywhere efficiently and without much stress.
Elon Musk struggles to pay his employees and keep the lights on. I wouldn't trust him to take on a project of this magnitude. The goal of Falcon Heavy was to keep the costs down so he could boast about it to investors (and the government, so he can get their money, too). He's still has a long way to go to demonstrate that 1) he can compare to NASA 2) that he can turn space exploration into a profitable venture. NASA may burn the government's money, but Musk is burning investor money.
I just don't buy the argument that NN hurts the little guys—not that there are many little guys left in telco. Things like telecommunications, that require massive infrastructure investment, will always function as an oligopoly. There's no way around that. Even in places where some bit players exist, there are never several players in the market. It's just not economically viable. So, knowing that an oligopoly is unavoidable, what's best is to have regulations that protect the consumers.
Without NN you have a situation where there are very limited roads, they're all private, and the owners can charge varying amounts or block access to certain vehicles. For the government to lay down some ground rules, such as all tolls must be equal and all cars must be allowed access, is only reasonable. It's far from "a marriage of corporation and government." The current situation, in which an admitted corporate puppet* controls the regulatory agency. Personally, I'd prefer a situation where the government owns and maintains the roads, but not the destinations (the government owns the cable, but not the ISPs it leads to).
*While you might counter, "he was just joking about the corporate puppet" thing, what was supposed to make the joke funny was that it's true.
It's closely tied to voting against one's self interest.
I think there are two primary causes of this. 1) stupidity and 2) the "temporarily inconvenienced millionaire" delusion. The two are closely related. I don't think most people who vote against their self-interest do so consciously.
I'm sure TBL wants to continue to have influence, hence he resorts to euphemisms rather than divisive rhetoric. Sometimes, you have to have prudence so you don't sacrifice the future. Being blunt and polarizing doesn't achieve anything. We know what he means.
You're right. Corporations always act benevolently. If the government would just cease regulations, we could all live in a Rocky Mountain paradise where self-interest creates a utopia. No one would starve or be taken advantage of because everyone would be motivated to work hard and innovate. And we could go back to the gold standard and worship the dollar sign.
It's government regulations that harm people. Not "pollution" or "usury" or "fraud" or any of those other fictitious crimes the collectivists have invented to scare mankind into submission. Government regulation is synonymous with slavery.
Basically, it's tabloid news.
Reality does have a well-known liberal bias. That's why the conservative coalition is primarily composed of Evangelicals, MBAs, racists, and libertarians. Those who live in a fantasy world, those who live and die by the lie, those who reject reality because it's a threat to their egos, and those who reject empirical economic data because it doesn't conform with their utopian fantasy.
Left wing fascists
The irony is great with this one. Is this troll serious or is he being ironic? We'll never know. I always find posts like these to be such curiosities. I want to believe he's being ironic, but the cynic in me is inclined to believe that there are people out there who will accuse others of being "left wing fascists" in earnest.
This is a pretty ridiculous post for /. I mean, everyone here should know how to manage permissions and make a computer fairly child-proof without resorting to the type of spyware this company was hawking. This software is to monitor people without their knowledge, not monitor people with fair warning. There are much easier ways to limit the activity of children on the internet than your solution.
but Apple clearly aims to move to a streaming model of music selling
Apple provides a steaming model, but I don't see how this means they clearly aim to move exclusively to a streaming model. I mean, they might be, but no evidence is provided to support this statement.
Even if it ends up being true, that doesn't mean the article is making a sound argument.
The story acknowledges this, but they don't really explain how this hints at the demise of iTunes itself. It's just stated as if one follows the other. It managed to generate enough clicks to end up on the front page of /., so I guess it worked.
They really were selling spyware, so their condemnation of hackers is a bit like throwing stones in glass houses. Of course, they kind of have to spout the bullshit that their software was intended only for legal uses, because otherwise it opens them up to all sorts of liabilities.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
- Mark Twain
All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.
- Mark Twain