All that means is they can decide not to sell it to you for the listed price if it was a mistake. They can't suddenly decide not to honor part of the agreement one they have sold it. That's not legal. Otherwise vendors could make all kind of wild promises and then renege.
No, it's them refusing to honor the deal explicitly written on the box and the papers inside! That's a little thing called fraud - no if's and's or but's.
Do you really expect the average consumer who buys it at a store to even know the price was cheaper than it should be? Not everyone's an expert on tivo's past history, and to people used to buying $50 VCR it doesn't sound like a "too good to be true" deal.
That's true they should, but what they count on is making it enough of a hassle that people eventually just give up in exasperation. Often times extreme persistence will get you the rebate, but it's seldom worth all the time and postage.
I do wish some of the states attorney generals would start looking into rebates. They are a huge rip-off and I really do suspect some of them are made hard or impossible to fulfill.
Let's face it - a place like Best Buy (one of the worst rebate scammers IMHO) has a full record of your purchase in their databases. Why should their fulfillment house need anything more than the receipt number as proof of purchase? Yet I've been denied rebates from them for not including stuff that was never even mentioned on any of the rebate forms! I've also had forms with conflicting requirements printed in different spots.
The latest thing seems to be the "claim your rebate on-line" stuff. Sure, you can enter your info in, but they STILL expect you to mail them the UPC, receipt, and 3 or 4 other random items! Why?! Surely the stores's own rebate site can confirm the purchase was made without any of that, and what does a UPC prove exactly anyway? Just that you found a box somewhere.
Hm, I just hit pause on the DVD and it starts right back up where it left off. You're not still watching that quaint old broadcast or cable stuff by any chance? Until TiVO can author its own shows, I don't think even it could make that steaming pile of reality shows and infomercials watchable.
Maybe what they mean is unlike the flash memory folks, they aren't actually sending anything out pre-formatted FAT32. Just reading and writing to a disk formatted by a Microsoft OS may not be a violation. I guess if you decide to make and use a FAT32 partition on your own, that would be (possibly) your own violation.
I think that's just saying he took the constant values from minix - he didn't just copy the header files verbatim. Although, like you said, it should of been ok even if he did.
Er, don't confuse my reply with that of the parent post. My point *was* that software won't stop working. Yes, changes may make it obsolete, but that's a different issue really. Even so, the hardware it runs on won't work forever and may become too obsolete to repair or replace. It's the hardware (not the software) that maybe needs the long-term support cars have.
They are only required by law to support it for a limited number of years (like 15).
Far more than any software vendor's required to do. Heck, software usually disclaims any warranty to perform even its intended task - how many car companies could get away with that?
Software written for an industry in 1990 will be ill equipt to handle changes in regulation and other external forces. It may have implemented the meta function of 'sells widgets to customers in 1990' perfectly, but it will decay in its ability to support the meta function 'sells widgets to customers under today's regs' as it gets further from 1990.
Well, to me there's a big difference between new functionality and wearing out. Obviously you can't expect older software to handle new requirements, but in many cases places have successfully used the same ancient software for years. Still, sometimes you do need to upgrade.
It's no different for a real-world widgets either: "Hey my VCR won't play these new-fangled DVDs - I demand my movey back!"...or to beat the dead car analogy once more - it's a bit like expecting a 50's ear car to follow all the current environmental and safety guidelines.
A car company will still provide parts for their older products for decades. Also you're example isn't quite right: it's not like a dealer won't fix a car that's no longer under warranty - you'll just have to pay for it. On the other hand, an EOL'ed product isn't just out of warranty - it may have no official support available at any price.
The other side of it is, of course, software usually doesn't wear out over time. Except for date relates bugs, it should work as well (or as poorly) in the future as it does now - as long as it has the same hardware to run on. Maybe this should really be an issue for PC makers to keep support for old hardware?
Waht makes you think your personal usage is any sort of valid guide for what's legal? What about someone who has a webpage and regularly uploads large *legal* files to it? What about someone who only downloads large *illegal* files from IRC?
The upload/download ratio means absolutely nothing - all kinds of new applications that require heavy uploading (like Internet phones, webcams, etc) are becoming common. ISPs were just lucky that early Internet usage tendend to favor DL bandwidth, but the Internet isn't television and isn't a one-way street. If the Internet is to be used to it's full potential, crippled upstream bandwidth must become a thing of the past.
Um, nevermind - I was thinking of the V2! Yeah, the V1 was more like a cruise missile, but without any real accuracy.
Still, it's that accuracy (enough to take out a specific building) that makes a cruise missile better than a ballistic missile when you only have a small explosive payload.
Um, I believe the V1 was a ballistic missile - not a cruise missile. They're quite a bit different from each other. A ballistic missile just follows a trajectory so it falls more or less near its target, but it has no real navigational abilities. A cruise missile, on the other hand, needs enough smarts to follow terrain and find it's target.
Well, just because I get turned on looking at a woman doesn't mean I'm going to rape her. The person may never change their urges, but they can decide to act on them or not.
The main problem with these lists is people have been labeled as a "sex offender" for as little as mooning someone as a college prank. They're not all pedophiles or rapists.
Also, why limit it to sex offenses? Wouldn't you want to know if your next door neighbor was a ex-murderer?...or it it ok to turst your kids around someone who commited a violent assult, just because it wasn't a violent *sexual* assult?
Re:JavaScript RULEZ!!1!
on
Javascrypt
·
· Score: 1
I'd say so too except it seems to be the behavior the current standards dictate. It's odd, but the old Netscape 4.x, for example, didn't have this problem.
I don't know if the standards body may have been influenced to use IE's behavior or something like that, but it definitely seems like usability wasn't the deciding factor.
Unfortunately you're not saying jack about anything.
ECMAscript and DOM are both *standards* and are intended to work together. Any personal perversion of those standards might be more useable in some local app, but is essentially useless on the web at large.
Unless you're actually foolish enough to still be confusing Java with Javascript (which I'll give you enough credit to assume you're not), DOM is what you have to work with in a standards compliant browser (if such a beast really exists - but that's another issue).
Re:JavaScript RULEZ!!1!
on
Javascrypt
·
· Score: 1
Well, unless your talking sever-side javascript they go hand-in-hand. One's pretty much useless without the other. It's no coincidence they were developed together. It's like saying a hammer with a bad handle isn't a bad hammer.
Re:JavaScript RULEZ!!1!
on
Javascrypt
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The main problem is it's *almost* elegant, but not quite 100% there - in actualy use it always seems like you need some ugly half-assed hack to do something that should be simple.
For example, say in a form you want to validate a field as soon as the person enters it (i.e. they type a bad value and it returns focus to the field). Sounds simple right? Just trap the onblur event, test the field, and call focus() if it fails.
Not so... most browsers will ignore focus called from within onblur (because the "blur" happens after the event fires, and you can't stop it). You wind up with the silly, messy hack of setting a timer to call focus() a few milliseconds later. Really, this makes onblur almost useless for the main thing you'd expect to use it for!
It's quirks like this that makes you pull your hair out trying to do anything serious with javascript. I sometimes wonder if those setting the standards have actually ever eaten their own dog food (as the Mozilla folks like to say).
Re:Nice, but dangerous.
on
Javascrypt
·
· Score: 1
Therefore, nobody on the net can see it under any circumstances.
Well, as mentioned on the site, that's not necessarily 100% guaranteed. You could, for example, have another page open running an active-x plug in able to sniff the content of the local page. In fact, it might not even take that much since cross site security problems have been frequent among browser bugs.
not really. First anyone can buy a natural diamond so they're hardly "priceless", and second DeBeers has artificially inflated the prices for years with their monopoly over the supply (diamonds are actually not nearly as rare as they'd like people to believe).
Don't be fooled - DeBeers is scared sh*tless by the idea that jewel quality diamonds can now be manufactured! They look at artificial diamonds in much the same way Microsoft looks at Linux. At first despairingly, and then - as the threat becomes harder to ignore - with a massive FUD campaign aimed at convincing people artificial diamonds are somehow inferior.
It's simple really: Democrats are corrupt, Republicans are evil. The difference is subtle, but I tend to prefer corrupt. It implies one may have had some convictions at one time but just lacked to backbone to stand up for them, meanwhile evil has plenty of backbone - but it's devoted towards nefarious ends.
I think many understand the Republicans are mostly out to serve a small wealthy elite, but perhaps they vote for them partly because they fantasize themselves as part of that "elite" one day. By way of objectivity, here's a brief litmus test - do you currently have plans to buy your *second* million dollar yacht? If so, by all means, you should be voting Republican.
Meanwhile Democrats start out supporting the working class, but soon discover a fundamental law of nature - the rich have more money than the poor! Once they realize they'll always be out-fundraised by the Republicans, they begin to be tempted by those corporate special interests. Sure, at first they'll justify it and tell themselves "what's good for this large employer is good for my constituents", but the seeds of corruption have already been sown. Soon their opinions will be completely dictated by their corporate backers.
The only real solution might be campaign finance reform, but while everyone says they want it, it's amazing how soon after elections the politicians on both sides forget about it.
Well, it's only a problem if your goal is to make good music.:-) If you're goal is just to make as much money as possible then it's actually great - real talent and originality are not only hard to come by but can even be a tough sell. It's much easier to market some nice, comfortable, non-threatening, mass-produced pop song.
However, given this, it stands to reason that selling the song as the product is misguided. Instead realize that the song is really just a 3 minute commercial for the image, and if you find ways to sell that image, people copying the song becomes free advertising. Look at how sports stars are marketed for examples of what can be done.
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Just to add another uninformed opinion to the mix, I'd guess it's the fuel rather than the thrusters that take up most of the weight.
Of course it's not like it's rocket science or anyth... - oh crap it is isn't it.
All that means is they can decide not to sell it to you for the listed price if it was a mistake. They can't suddenly decide not to honor part of the agreement one they have sold it. That's not legal. Otherwise vendors could make all kind of wild promises and then renege.
No, it's them refusing to honor the deal explicitly written on the box and the papers inside! That's a little thing called fraud - no if's and's or but's.
Do you really expect the average consumer who buys it at a store to even know the price was cheaper than it should be? Not everyone's an expert on tivo's past history, and to people used to buying $50 VCR it doesn't sound like a "too good to be true" deal.
That's true they should, but what they count on is making it enough of a hassle that people eventually just give up in exasperation. Often times extreme persistence will get you the rebate, but it's seldom worth all the time and postage.
I do wish some of the states attorney generals would start looking into rebates. They are a huge rip-off and I really do suspect some of them are made hard or impossible to fulfill.
Let's face it - a place like Best Buy (one of the worst rebate scammers IMHO) has a full record of your purchase in their databases. Why should their fulfillment house need anything more than the receipt number as proof of purchase? Yet I've been denied rebates from them for not including stuff that was never even mentioned on any of the rebate forms! I've also had forms with conflicting requirements printed in different spots.
The latest thing seems to be the "claim your rebate on-line" stuff. Sure, you can enter your info in, but they STILL expect you to mail them the UPC, receipt, and 3 or 4 other random items! Why?! Surely the stores's own rebate site can confirm the purchase was made without any of that, and what does a UPC prove exactly anyway? Just that you found a box somewhere.
Hm, I just hit pause on the DVD and it starts right back up where it left off. You're not still watching that quaint old broadcast or cable stuff by any chance? Until TiVO can author its own shows, I don't think even it could make that steaming pile of reality shows and infomercials watchable.
Maybe what they mean is unlike the flash memory folks, they aren't actually sending anything out pre-formatted FAT32. Just reading and writing to a disk formatted by a Microsoft OS may not be a violation. I guess if you decide to make and use a FAT32 partition on your own, that would be (possibly) your own violation.
I think that's just saying he took the constant values from minix - he didn't just copy the header files verbatim. Although, like you said, it should of been ok even if he did.
Er, don't confuse my reply with that of the parent post. My point *was* that software won't stop working. Yes, changes may make it obsolete, but that's a different issue really. Even so, the hardware it runs on won't work forever and may become too obsolete to repair or replace. It's the hardware (not the software) that maybe needs the long-term support cars have.
They are only required by law to support it for a limited number of years (like 15).
...or to beat the dead car analogy once more - it's a bit like expecting a 50's ear car to follow all the current environmental and safety guidelines.
Far more than any software vendor's required to do. Heck, software usually disclaims any warranty to perform even its intended task - how many car companies could get away with that?
Software written for an industry in 1990 will be ill equipt to handle changes in regulation and other external forces. It may have implemented the meta function of 'sells widgets to customers in 1990' perfectly, but it will decay in its ability to support the meta function 'sells widgets to customers under today's regs' as it gets further from 1990.
Well, to me there's a big difference between new functionality and wearing out. Obviously you can't expect older software to handle new requirements, but in many cases places have successfully used the same ancient software for years. Still, sometimes you do need to upgrade.
It's no different for a real-world widgets either: "Hey my VCR won't play these new-fangled DVDs - I demand my movey back!"
A car company will still provide parts for their older products for decades. Also you're example isn't quite right: it's not like a dealer won't fix a car that's no longer under warranty - you'll just have to pay for it. On the other hand, an EOL'ed product isn't just out of warranty - it may have no official support available at any price.
The other side of it is, of course, software usually doesn't wear out over time. Except for date relates bugs, it should work as well (or as poorly) in the future as it does now - as long as it has the same hardware to run on. Maybe this should really be an issue for PC makers to keep support for old hardware?
Waht makes you think your personal usage is any sort of valid guide for what's legal? What about someone who has a webpage and regularly uploads large *legal* files to it? What about someone who only downloads large *illegal* files from IRC?
The upload/download ratio means absolutely nothing - all kinds of new applications that require heavy uploading (like Internet phones, webcams, etc) are becoming common. ISPs were just lucky that early Internet usage tendend to favor DL bandwidth, but the Internet isn't television and isn't a one-way street. If the Internet is to be used to it's full potential, crippled upstream bandwidth must become a thing of the past.
but was the V1 guided? If I remember correctly, it just flew in a straight line until it ran out of fule.
Um, nevermind - I was thinking of the V2! Yeah, the V1 was more like a cruise missile, but without any real accuracy.
Still, it's that accuracy (enough to take out a specific building) that makes a cruise missile better than a ballistic missile when you only have a small explosive payload.
Um, I believe the V1 was a ballistic missile - not a cruise missile. They're quite a bit different from each other. A ballistic missile just follows a trajectory so it falls more or less near its target, but it has no real navigational abilities. A cruise missile, on the other hand, needs enough smarts to follow terrain and find it's target.
espessially since they did this without adding ant salt to the water.
I just want to know how you get the salt out of the little critters to begin with!? Still, I can see why someone might prefer ant salt free water...
Well, just because I get turned on looking at a woman doesn't mean I'm going to rape her. The person may never change their urges, but they can decide to act on them or not.
...or it it ok to turst your kids around someone who commited a violent assult, just because it wasn't a violent *sexual* assult?
The main problem with these lists is people have been labeled as a "sex offender" for as little as mooning someone as a college prank. They're not all pedophiles or rapists.
Also, why limit it to sex offenses? Wouldn't you want to know if your next door neighbor was a ex-murderer?
I'd say so too except it seems to be the behavior the current standards dictate. It's odd, but the old Netscape 4.x, for example, didn't have this problem.
I don't know if the standards body may have been influenced to use IE's behavior or something like that, but it definitely seems like usability wasn't the deciding factor.
Unfortunately you're not saying jack about anything.
ECMAscript and DOM are both *standards* and are intended to work together. Any personal perversion of those standards might be more useable in some local app, but is essentially useless on the web at large.
Unless you're actually foolish enough to still be confusing Java with Javascript (which I'll give you enough credit to assume you're not), DOM is what you have to work with in a standards compliant browser (if such a beast really exists - but that's another issue).
Well, unless your talking sever-side javascript they go hand-in-hand. One's pretty much useless without the other. It's no coincidence they were developed together. It's like saying a hammer with a bad handle isn't a bad hammer.
The main problem is it's *almost* elegant, but not quite 100% there - in actualy use it always seems like you need some ugly half-assed hack to do something that should be simple.
For example, say in a form you want to validate a field as soon as the person enters it (i.e. they type a bad value and it returns focus to the field). Sounds simple right? Just trap the onblur event, test the field, and call focus() if it fails.
Not so... most browsers will ignore focus called from within onblur (because the "blur" happens after the event fires, and you can't stop it). You wind up with the silly, messy hack of setting a timer to call focus() a few milliseconds later. Really, this makes onblur almost useless for the main thing you'd expect to use it for!
It's quirks like this that makes you pull your hair out trying to do anything serious with javascript. I sometimes wonder if those setting the standards have actually ever eaten their own dog food (as the Mozilla folks like to say).
Therefore, nobody on the net can see it under any circumstances.
Well, as mentioned on the site, that's not necessarily 100% guaranteed. You could, for example, have another page open running an active-x plug in able to sniff the content of the local page. In fact, it might not even take that much since cross site security problems have been frequent among browser bugs.
not really. First anyone can buy a natural diamond so they're hardly "priceless", and second DeBeers has artificially inflated the prices for years with their monopoly over the supply (diamonds are actually not nearly as rare as they'd like people to believe).
Don't be fooled - DeBeers is scared sh*tless by the idea that jewel quality diamonds can now be manufactured! They look at artificial diamonds in much the same way Microsoft looks at Linux. At first despairingly, and then - as the threat becomes harder to ignore - with a massive FUD campaign aimed at convincing people artificial diamonds are somehow inferior.
It's simple really: Democrats are corrupt, Republicans are evil. The difference is subtle, but I tend to prefer corrupt. It implies one may have had some convictions at one time but just lacked to backbone to stand up for them, meanwhile evil has plenty of backbone - but it's devoted towards nefarious ends.
I think many understand the Republicans are mostly out to serve a small wealthy elite, but perhaps they vote for them partly because they fantasize themselves as part of that "elite" one day. By way of objectivity, here's a brief litmus test - do you currently have plans to buy your *second* million dollar yacht? If so, by all means, you should be voting Republican.
Meanwhile Democrats start out supporting the working class, but soon discover a fundamental law of nature - the rich have more money than the poor! Once they realize they'll always be out-fundraised by the Republicans, they begin to be tempted by those corporate special interests. Sure, at first they'll justify it and tell themselves "what's good for this large employer is good for my constituents", but the seeds of corruption have already been sown. Soon their opinions will be completely dictated by their corporate backers.
The only real solution might be campaign finance reform, but while everyone says they want it, it's amazing how soon after elections the politicians on both sides forget about it.
Well, it's only a problem if your goal is to make good music. :-) If you're goal is just to make as much money as possible then it's actually great - real talent and originality are not only hard to come by but can even be a tough sell. It's much easier to market some nice, comfortable, non-threatening, mass-produced pop song.
However, given this, it stands to reason that selling the song as the product is misguided. Instead realize that the song is really just a 3 minute commercial for the image, and if you find ways to sell that image, people copying the song becomes free advertising. Look at how sports stars are marketed for examples of what can be done.