If it's a fake, there's no real value and hence not worth to return.
And what if it's not a fake? Then this person just lost $2500 because somebody 'decided' it was. Who is this somebody? The world's leader on counterfeit violin detection? What was the benefit of destroying it? Even a 'fake' violin will continue to play music, and somebody would have been happy to have it. If I were the seller, and eBay took the $2500 back from me after ordering the destruction of the property, I'd be in court so fast you would swear you heard flight of the bumblebee floating on the wind...
It's not like buying a car or computer. Nobody says "Hey, I REALLY want to see this movie, but for $3 less I'd settle for this other one, even though I won't enjoy it quite as much". Not only are you spending your money on a movie, you're also spending time. Given the choice between a horrible, free movie, or a $15 supremely kick ass one, I'd rather invest a little in my life and actually enjoy it. In other words, people don't watch shitty movies because they're shitty, not because the price was too high.
There was still quite a delay between theater release and rental availability. Also, the family TV couldn't match the theater A/V experience. Now that large LCD TVs and quality sound systems can be had relatively cheap, and the wait to watch movies at home no longer extended into years, I think we've passed that crossover point where theater technology no longer trumps home viewing quality.
You saw a movie in the theater, or you didn't see it at all. Further on, you saw it in the theater, or you waited a few years for it to come out on VHS for rental. These days, you see it in the theater, or wait for it to hit Netflix in a matter of months. I'd rather wait a few months and view it in the comfort of my own home, than to go sit with a bunch of ill-mannered heathens, watch 20 minutes of previews, and then shield my eyes from the glow of a hundred cell phones...
Sure, let's get the children involved in this too, eh comrade bob? Or is it herr? Either way, I think this slippery slope has been fallen down a few times before.
Who decides what's civil? The population and society in general. That's where our laws, ethics, and manners come from. We define it.
You speak as if this is a single group of people with a unified, collective idea of what is just and ethical. I think taking a quick gander at the news will tell you otherwise. The United States, let alone the world as a whole, hasn't been able to completely agree on anything, ever. So your saying everybody decides on the laws, ethics, etc, is either extremely naive, or just plain trolling. Also, at least here in America, 'we' do not decide on the laws, 'they' decide on the laws. There's a difference. Just take a look at SOPA, for example..
Credit card transactions bill a flat, per-transaction "authorization" fee, and then a percentage-based rate on top of that. I've been out of the industry for a few years, but last I saw, the average was about $.35 auth, ~3% rate for internet transactions. With these numbers, the $2 fee would cover a $55 transaction. Personally, I'd be pissed to pay $2 to pay my bill, but probably wouldn't think twice about paying a $57 bill for free. Not getting a warm fuzzy about being visibly nickle and dimed these days..
I worked customer service/tech support for seven years. We dealt with good customers, we dealt with bad customers, and we dealt with baaaad customers. Death threats were a weekly occurrence (we worked with people's money). At no point in my career did I ever see or hear anything that even came close to the magnitude of where this guy went with a simple request of 'wheres my stuff?'. This guy took abusing the customer to a new extreme, and he got caught and publicly shamed for it. This case in itself isn't one of those world-changing events, but it's more of a warning to other business people to treat everyone decently and with respect. You never know if the customer you just told to piss up a rope will quietly slink away, or wipe their ass with your reputation for the whole internet to see.
And for those who say the customer is at all in the wrong here, how so? The guy had been very patient up to this point, and now he's fed up, so he spoke his mind. If the business wants his money, then they do what they need to make him happy. If they decide the benefit of this particular sale has become overshadowed by what ever burden he's placed upon them, then they advise him of such, immediately refund his money, and part ways. There's no need for all this drama. It's not as if the company has been trapped in an abusive relationship that only the customer has the power to end...
You assume extraterrestrial life would be interested solely in investigating other life forms. Perhaps we're just one of millions of planets that harbor life, and they've already been there, done that. The moon does have uses other than just looking up at it. I remember the possibility of large amounts of Helium-3 up there..
Revenge? This guy fronted his cash for two months, won't have his product in time for Christmas, and then this low life spit in his face to top it off. As a customer, he's well within his rights to raise a stink. As to agreeing or disagreeing with his actions, that's up for you and I to decide, but it doesn't change the fact that he's entitled to some sort of recourse in this situation. All the PR guy had to do was give him a simple, courteous answer. "I'm sorry, I don't know", "They will ship by.." "They have shipped..", etc. Never in my darkest days of doing phone support would I ever have considered what this assclown did as acceptable. No matter how rude or combative the customer is (and as far as upset customers go, Dave was a gem), somebody is paying you to do a job, so you damn well better do it. If you want to run your own business into the ground, have at, but this guy has now messed with someone else's money.
The moon however, is pretty much a solid rock, there no known movements of its surface
Oh, except for all the crap that has been sandblasting it since the dawn of time. Every time a new crater is formed, everything that is ejected out of the hole blankets the area around it, and the ground will quiver like a bell from the impact. While there doesn't appear to be any current tectonic activity, the surface of the moon is far from static.
I just set my Android phone to stop pulling mail after hours. I can check it manually, if I get the itch. For what they're paying me, I don't scratch often.
Also, it amazes me that people would even entertain the idea of checking/answering emails at all times of the day and night. What do they get out of it? Some false sense of importance? Unless it's your job to be on call 24/7, or your own the business, why on earth would you let work cut into your living time?
This article's summary is rather baited. I fail to see how see how this guy "learned the hard way". It's not like they rolled up with a truck and dumped reams of paper in the middle of his living room. He received a CD with files in an easily searchable format. I'm sure he knew going into it he wasn't going to read through it all in a night, and probably doesn't contain any surprises. If anything, Facebook "learned the hard way", now that they have to divulge the massive amount of data that they store, upon request, which means they must employ people to do this. Are the costs incurred outweighed by any profit produced by hoarding this particular information?
As the police continue to employ more and more technology, they distance themselves even further from the rest of us as human beings, who can feel pain and distress.
When I was a kid, cops only carried guns and batons. If you mouthed off, you got told to STFU. If you were combative, you got some stick time and thrown in the back of a cruiser. If you constituted a real and imminent threat to the safety of others, you got shot. Of course this is an over-simplication, but bear with me.Then, tasers and OC spray came along. Hey, you no longer got your skull cracked or your knees busted when you resisted arrest, or shot unless you had to be. Instead, you were subdued, then usually hauled away in a cruiser, not an ambulance.
Somewhere within the last decade or so, something changed. These new tools stopped simply being replacements for more damaging, violent tactics, and instead became items of daily use. Cop doesn't like your attitude? Sprayed in the face. Not moving quickly enough, citizen? Sprayed in the face. Sitting around peacefully protesting? Sprayed in the face. Not complying with what you're being told to do? Tased. Struggling on the ground because you don't understand why you've been pepper sprayed and 3 cops are piled on you? Tased. Don't tase me bro? Extra helping of tase. At what point did these 'less lethal' alternatives to brutal violence become a policing tool be given the same utility as giving commands to a dog?
Where are we going to be in 10 years when things like this new 'temporary' blinding laser have been deployed en masse? Remember when OC spray and tasers were considered NON-lethal? Now they're 'less' lethal, after a few fatalities. How many people will have to be blinded for life before they realize pointing lasers into eyes is not a risk-free practice? How many of those will be considered acceptable losses? People are still dying from tasers, and occasionally from pepper spray, yet they continue to use them on people who would not have been given more than a stare down and a few terse commands a couple decades ago. It's become a one-sided arms race, and it's terrifying.
Your analogy is flawed. In my world, ISPs provide a connection to the internet that I have full control over what I use it for. The comparable entity to your ISP in the word of cars would be whoever built the roads. However, if I get into a car that drives itself, and I am not actively in control of it during a collision, why would that be my fault? Why would I sign a waiver that puts me at the mercy of some company's machine and its programming? As soon as you sign that waiver, that also removes the manufacturer's incentive to make damn well sure their products are as close to being without flaw as reasonably possible.
This works great in cities with public transportation that was properly planned and built into the infrastructure over the last 100+ years. London and Paris were amazingly easy to get around in. Los Angeles, on the other hand, was not built with mass public transit in mind, and it's far too late to go back and cram it into the existing works. We don't drive ourselves to work because we absolutely get an 'oh jesus, call the doctor'-style boner when we think about getting to sit in traffic for up to 3 hours a day. We do that because we don't have any other viable alternative. The train system is limited, the light rail doesn't extend far enough into the suburbs, and the buses are downright scary. If there was a a better public transportation system in place, and if it was clean and efficient, a lot more people would use it.
Won't happen. In short, when you crash you car, it's your fault. When I crash my car it's my fault. When the computer crashes a car, it's the manufacturers fault. Find me a manufacturer that wants to take on that amount of liability. They already have enough problems with lawsuits as it is (Toyota comes to mind..), regardless of fault. Also, how is the insurance industry supposed to make barge-loads of money when you drastically reduce the risk involved with automobiles?
This has been in effect in California for years. Instead of people talking on their phones held to their ear, they now put them on speakerphone and hold them inches in front of their face. I guess the mentality is that speakerphone counts as 'hands free', even if it's in your hand. I don't want to live in this state anymore!
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If it's a fake, there's no real value and hence not worth to return.
And what if it's not a fake? Then this person just lost $2500 because somebody 'decided' it was. Who is this somebody? The world's leader on counterfeit violin detection? What was the benefit of destroying it? Even a 'fake' violin will continue to play music, and somebody would have been happy to have it. If I were the seller, and eBay took the $2500 back from me after ordering the destruction of the property, I'd be in court so fast you would swear you heard flight of the bumblebee floating on the wind...
It's not like buying a car or computer. Nobody says "Hey, I REALLY want to see this movie, but for $3 less I'd settle for this other one, even though I won't enjoy it quite as much". Not only are you spending your money on a movie, you're also spending time. Given the choice between a horrible, free movie, or a $15 supremely kick ass one, I'd rather invest a little in my life and actually enjoy it. In other words, people don't watch shitty movies because they're shitty, not because the price was too high.
There was still quite a delay between theater release and rental availability. Also, the family TV couldn't match the theater A/V experience. Now that large LCD TVs and quality sound systems can be had relatively cheap, and the wait to watch movies at home no longer extended into years, I think we've passed that crossover point where theater technology no longer trumps home viewing quality.
You saw a movie in the theater, or you didn't see it at all. Further on, you saw it in the theater, or you waited a few years for it to come out on VHS for rental. These days, you see it in the theater, or wait for it to hit Netflix in a matter of months. I'd rather wait a few months and view it in the comfort of my own home, than to go sit with a bunch of ill-mannered heathens, watch 20 minutes of previews, and then shield my eyes from the glow of a hundred cell phones...
Sure, let's get the children involved in this too, eh comrade bob? Or is it herr? Either way, I think this slippery slope has been fallen down a few times before.
Who decides what's civil? The population and society in general. That's where our laws, ethics, and manners come from. We define it.
You speak as if this is a single group of people with a unified, collective idea of what is just and ethical. I think taking a quick gander at the news will tell you otherwise. The United States, let alone the world as a whole, hasn't been able to completely agree on anything, ever. So your saying everybody decides on the laws, ethics, etc, is either extremely naive, or just plain trolling. Also, at least here in America, 'we' do not decide on the laws, 'they' decide on the laws. There's a difference. Just take a look at SOPA, for example..
Credit card transactions bill a flat, per-transaction "authorization" fee, and then a percentage-based rate on top of that. I've been out of the industry for a few years, but last I saw, the average was about $.35 auth, ~3% rate for internet transactions. With these numbers, the $2 fee would cover a $55 transaction. Personally, I'd be pissed to pay $2 to pay my bill, but probably wouldn't think twice about paying a $57 bill for free. Not getting a warm fuzzy about being visibly nickle and dimed these days..
I worked customer service/tech support for seven years. We dealt with good customers, we dealt with bad customers, and we dealt with baaaad customers. Death threats were a weekly occurrence (we worked with people's money). At no point in my career did I ever see or hear anything that even came close to the magnitude of where this guy went with a simple request of 'wheres my stuff?'. This guy took abusing the customer to a new extreme, and he got caught and publicly shamed for it. This case in itself isn't one of those world-changing events, but it's more of a warning to other business people to treat everyone decently and with respect. You never know if the customer you just told to piss up a rope will quietly slink away, or wipe their ass with your reputation for the whole internet to see.
And for those who say the customer is at all in the wrong here, how so? The guy had been very patient up to this point, and now he's fed up, so he spoke his mind. If the business wants his money, then they do what they need to make him happy. If they decide the benefit of this particular sale has become overshadowed by what ever burden he's placed upon them, then they advise him of such, immediately refund his money, and part ways. There's no need for all this drama. It's not as if the company has been trapped in an abusive relationship that only the customer has the power to end...
You assume extraterrestrial life would be interested solely in investigating other life forms. Perhaps we're just one of millions of planets that harbor life, and they've already been there, done that. The moon does have uses other than just looking up at it. I remember the possibility of large amounts of Helium-3 up there..
Revenge? This guy fronted his cash for two months, won't have his product in time for Christmas, and then this low life spit in his face to top it off. As a customer, he's well within his rights to raise a stink. As to agreeing or disagreeing with his actions, that's up for you and I to decide, but it doesn't change the fact that he's entitled to some sort of recourse in this situation. All the PR guy had to do was give him a simple, courteous answer. "I'm sorry, I don't know", "They will ship by.." "They have shipped..", etc. Never in my darkest days of doing phone support would I ever have considered what this assclown did as acceptable. No matter how rude or combative the customer is (and as far as upset customers go, Dave was a gem), somebody is paying you to do a job, so you damn well better do it. If you want to run your own business into the ground, have at, but this guy has now messed with someone else's money.
The moon however, is pretty much a solid rock, there no known movements of its surface
Oh, except for all the crap that has been sandblasting it since the dawn of time. Every time a new crater is formed, everything that is ejected out of the hole blankets the area around it, and the ground will quiver like a bell from the impact. While there doesn't appear to be any current tectonic activity, the surface of the moon is far from static.
I just set my Android phone to stop pulling mail after hours. I can check it manually, if I get the itch. For what they're paying me, I don't scratch often.
Also, it amazes me that people would even entertain the idea of checking/answering emails at all times of the day and night. What do they get out of it? Some false sense of importance? Unless it's your job to be on call 24/7, or your own the business, why on earth would you let work cut into your living time?
Sure, but who will come by to pick up the dead flowers and kick those pesky kids off the grounds after dark?
This article's summary is rather baited. I fail to see how see how this guy "learned the hard way". It's not like they rolled up with a truck and dumped reams of paper in the middle of his living room. He received a CD with files in an easily searchable format. I'm sure he knew going into it he wasn't going to read through it all in a night, and probably doesn't contain any surprises. If anything, Facebook "learned the hard way", now that they have to divulge the massive amount of data that they store, upon request, which means they must employ people to do this. Are the costs incurred outweighed by any profit produced by hoarding this particular information?
As the police continue to employ more and more technology, they distance themselves even further from the rest of us as human beings, who can feel pain and distress.
When I was a kid, cops only carried guns and batons. If you mouthed off, you got told to STFU. If you were combative, you got some stick time and thrown in the back of a cruiser. If you constituted a real and imminent threat to the safety of others, you got shot. Of course this is an over-simplication, but bear with me.Then, tasers and OC spray came along. Hey, you no longer got your skull cracked or your knees busted when you resisted arrest, or shot unless you had to be. Instead, you were subdued, then usually hauled away in a cruiser, not an ambulance.
Somewhere within the last decade or so, something changed. These new tools stopped simply being replacements for more damaging, violent tactics, and instead became items of daily use. Cop doesn't like your attitude? Sprayed in the face. Not moving quickly enough, citizen? Sprayed in the face. Sitting around peacefully protesting? Sprayed in the face. Not complying with what you're being told to do? Tased. Struggling on the ground because you don't understand why you've been pepper sprayed and 3 cops are piled on you? Tased. Don't tase me bro? Extra helping of tase. At what point did these 'less lethal' alternatives to brutal violence become a policing tool be given the same utility as giving commands to a dog?
Where are we going to be in 10 years when things like this new 'temporary' blinding laser have been deployed en masse? Remember when OC spray and tasers were considered NON-lethal? Now they're 'less' lethal, after a few fatalities. How many people will have to be blinded for life before they realize pointing lasers into eyes is not a risk-free practice? How many of those will be considered acceptable losses? People are still dying from tasers, and occasionally from pepper spray, yet they continue to use them on people who would not have been given more than a stare down and a few terse commands a couple decades ago. It's become a one-sided arms race, and it's terrifying.
Your analogy is flawed. In my world, ISPs provide a connection to the internet that I have full control over what I use it for. The comparable entity to your ISP in the word of cars would be whoever built the roads. However, if I get into a car that drives itself, and I am not actively in control of it during a collision, why would that be my fault? Why would I sign a waiver that puts me at the mercy of some company's machine and its programming? As soon as you sign that waiver, that also removes the manufacturer's incentive to make damn well sure their products are as close to being without flaw as reasonably possible.
This works great in cities with public transportation that was properly planned and built into the infrastructure over the last 100+ years. London and Paris were amazingly easy to get around in. Los Angeles, on the other hand, was not built with mass public transit in mind, and it's far too late to go back and cram it into the existing works. We don't drive ourselves to work because we absolutely get an 'oh jesus, call the doctor'-style boner when we think about getting to sit in traffic for up to 3 hours a day. We do that because we don't have any other viable alternative. The train system is limited, the light rail doesn't extend far enough into the suburbs, and the buses are downright scary. If there was a a better public transportation system in place, and if it was clean and efficient, a lot more people would use it.
Won't happen. In short, when you crash you car, it's your fault. When I crash my car it's my fault. When the computer crashes a car, it's the manufacturers fault. Find me a manufacturer that wants to take on that amount of liability. They already have enough problems with lawsuits as it is (Toyota comes to mind..), regardless of fault. Also, how is the insurance industry supposed to make barge-loads of money when you drastically reduce the risk involved with automobiles?
This has been in effect in California for years. Instead of people talking on their phones held to their ear, they now put them on speakerphone and hold them inches in front of their face. I guess the mentality is that speakerphone counts as 'hands free', even if it's in your hand. I don't want to live in this state anymore!
Science dictates that you cannot prove something doesn't exist; only that it does.