"slashdot's consensus about what class action cases are is really, really off-base."
Really? So you claim you've done a handful of more-legitimate class actions, and you think that overturns the common view of what class-action cases "are"?
By tautology, the legal view of what a legal definition is overturns the common view of what a legal definition is.
Yes, I've heard the term "selection bias"; apparently one of us knows what it means, and you aren't the one.
What is it they say about pots and kettles?
I'm not "selecting" the cases I'm looking at. I'm looking at every case that has impacted me in any way, and suggesting that everyone else in the discussion do the same.
Definition of Selection Bias:
A type of bias caused by choosing non-random data for statistical analysis. The bias exists due to a flaw in the sample selection process, where a subset of the data is systematically excluded due to a particular attribute. The exclusion of the subset can influence the statistical significance of the test, or produce distorted results.
In this case, data is systematically excluded on the basis of not having happened to you, producing the distorted results of only looking at cases that happened to you. You are performing a textbook example of selection bias* and have the audacity to claim that you're not.
* Unless all characteristics of you have been randomly and independently selected, which would be an unbelievably dubious claim.
I would much rather my fellow users were educated about how to protect their privacy online than have a few extra pennies in my pocket (and that is about what this would amount to if paid out in cash to every class member).
Presumably, by "protect their privacy online," you mean somehow knowing that Google is going to automatically link your Gmail account to Buzz and list your most emailed contacts?
I'm pretty sure Google stopped doing that as soon as there was a public outcry, even before the suit was filed, and isn't going to do that again if it cost them $8.5 million. But yeah, people should know these things and how to disable them. Would you prefer that Google automatically display your most emailed contacts and NOT tell you that or how to disable it?
To put it in the actual terms of the settlement (where before I was using the terms of the class action notification): "This Agreement shall be the sole and exclusive remedy for any and all
Settled Claims of Class Members. Upon entry of the Final Order and Judgment, each Class
Member shall be barred from initiating, asserting, or prosecuting against Google any Settled
Claims that are released by operation of this Agreement and the Final Order and Judgment." "Settled Claims" means any claim for the specific actions the plaintiffs were suing for. Claims that theoretically might arise in the future are not "Settled Claims" for the purposes of this or any other lawsuit settlement. Then if you scroll down a little more to the big, bold, all caps section: "A GENERAL RELEASE DOES NOT EXTEND TO CLAIMS WHICH THE CREDITOR DOES NOT KNOW OR
SUSPECT TO EXIST IN HIS OR HER FAVOR AT THE
TIME OF EXECUTING THE RELEASE, WHICH IF
KNOWN TO HIM OR HER MUST HAVE MATERIALLY
AFFECTED HIS OR HER SETTLEMENT WITH THE
DEBTOR." There you have it. The settlement specifically says that claims which don't yet exist (because they're for something Google hasn't yet done, or Google has secretly done but nobody knows about yet) are NOT COVERED by the release of liability in this settlement.
Next time you condescendingly tell someone to read something, make sure you've read it first. You're reminding me of the teabaggers saying to "read the Constitution!" and the fundies saying to "read the Bible!"
Ummm...I did? Because it was sent to me. Quote: "Give up your rights to sue Google about the legal claims in this case and thereby accept the terms of this Settlement." The legal claims in this case are the claims related to the specific privacy violations happening at a specific time that were brought up in the suit when it was filed. They are not "privacy, generally". As a matter of law, "the legal claims in this case" can never mean, "privacy, generally".
Will you never learn?
Will you never think logically? Or educate yourself about the law before making claims about it? Or stop being a condescending prick to people who know more than you?
As a frequent Buzz user who also cares deeply about online privacy, this settlement seems just about right to me. I would much rather my fellow users were educated about how to protect their privacy online than have a few extra pennies in my pocket (and that is about what this would amount to if paid out in cash to every class member). I actually wish more class action settlements would end like this. How many times have I been notified that I was part of a class winning a class action only to be informed my share was less than my time was worth to read the damn letter in the first place? (I'll tell you: three times). In any one of those cases I would much rather that my share had been aggregated together with every other class member's and put to a good cause.
If you used GMail after February 9, 2010 then you *must* opt out of this settlement or you will lose your right to sue Google for privacy violations - forever - with no compensation.
I'm not sure you get how class actions work. You can only lose your right to sue for the period that the class action referred to. Courts would never uphold a "settlement" in which the winners or unrelated parties lost their right to sue the loser ever, for anything, including unlawful acts that the loser was going to do in the future. You can only lose the right to sue Google for the specific privacy violations mentioned in the suit (i.e. the stuff they did right at the launch of Buzz).
Of course not. Everyone knows unicorns are really used. They're killed, their horns ground up, and the powder made into the elixir that keeps Larry King alive.
Well, at least they were, until they went extinct. That's why he retired: he realized after his current supply runs out he's done, and he didn't want to disintegrate live on air.
Not to sound cruel, but at 87 years old she was expected to die any day any minute.
Not to sound cruel, but we might as well allow people to go around viciously beating 87-year-olds for any reason at any time, because they are expected to die any time.
I wasn't criticizing the summary, I was criticizing the Slashdot community and its gung-ho reaction to the summary.
Ah. I guess I read "Slashdot" in your statement "You would think Slashdot could tell the difference..." to mean "the Slashdot editors" and not "the Slashdot community"...though one wonders if you're committing the same fallacy looking at a few of these posts that you accuse us of making looking at this People's Daily article.
All newspapers and almost all "companies" in China are party- (=government in their Leninist system) owned.
Not true. I don't know what rock you've been living under the last 20 years, but China has had rapid development of privately owned enterprise, including both foreign and domestic investment.
What you said was true when Mao was alive. Now, however, China has over 85 million privately owned businesses. As for regulation, yes, there is immense government regulation of most business (certain industries like roadside food stands/carts seem to be exempt). And there are sectors of the economy which are still government owned; for example, the government owns all land, and private entities can only own leases. But all newspapers and almost all companies? No.
It was a device failure and not an intentional attempt to include "outright made up" votes. There was no intent on anyone's part.
That's what they said. And as far as the poll workers could tell, I'm sure it seemed true, but they have no way of knowing the parts of the software they can't see aren't rigged. Given the extremely strong circumstantial evidence that the president of the company making the machines promised to "deliver the electoral votes of Ohio to President Bush," it's a pretty weak inference from the election workers finding it an accident to it actually being an accident.
You are, in essence, saying that because the toaster failed the homeowner should be charged with arson.
No, actually I'm saying because the toaster failed and caused the house fire we should acknowledge the toaster burned the house down.
Without someone intentionally making up votes, there are no "made up votes".
As far as the definition of made up goes, I'm pretty sure if they weren't actually cast votes, and they were reported by the machines as having been cast, then they were made up by the machines, just like the original poster claimed they were.
...like having one's timing belt break and one's engine seizing up in traffic and then being given a ticket for blocking traffic. There was no intent to block traffic and one would not have been blocking traffic without a device failure.
Traffic tickets usually do not require intent. If you're blocking traffic, you're blocking traffic. It's assumed the burden is on you to get your car out of traffic as soon as you can (such as by putting it in neutral and pushing). Same thing with speeding: thinking that you were under the speed limit is no defense. Your analysis of the relationship between "intent" and the thing that happened is a bit faulty.
You considered non-existent votes being added to the total "outright made up?" What, the lack of intent makes those somehow real votes? That one incident concerned thousands of votes. That is exactly what you asked for.
That being said, if you put a kid in front of a Linux box with a Java gui into an Oracle dabase and an iPad, 100% of the time the kid is gonna choose the iPad.
Actually, when I was a kid I would've chosen the Linux box. Actually, not would've. Did. (we didn't have iPads but we did have iMacs...)
They're not grown ups who have given up on everything and now just accept their paycheck on the way to the grave. They still have imagination, they're still young, they still have life before them - they have not yet been told no a million times.
Wait, what? It takes way more imagination to enjoy a Linux box than an iPad. iPad is for those with so little imagination they have to be spoon-fed flashing lights and zipping images all day long. You may have a good point buried in there somewhere, but this is definitely not it.
So to me, it's utterly ridiculous to think kids would want to use anything else other than the 'cool', 'awesome', 'wow' products.
Believe it or not, some kids are not shallow. Though if you have that impression, perhaps all the ones in your neighborhood are.
I love and use Linux on the server - it's great. But why would I want to use a garbage desktop, laptop, phone, or tablet day in and day out? That just seems idiotic to me.
I don't know what garbage desktop you were using, but I had a Macbook for three years and switched to Ubuntu because it was smoother, less prone to freezing, and easier to customize so that the things I wanted to click were where I wanted to click them. I guess I must be an old fuddy-duddy who only cares about a paycheck then, right?
Someone who has the time and inclination to figure out any UI that comes across their path will never understand people who have different priorities. Clearly, everyone else is an idiot.
Well, just because one doesn't understand them doesn't mean they're not idiots, technically speaking.
You can't look at sticker price in a vacuum, and say "Mac > Windows PC, therefore robbery."
It's a free country. I can, and I will, say whatever I want, sir! But not in a vacuum, you're right about that part. My body would explode gruesomely, like in Total Recall.
...researchers from the Universiy of Gothenburg, Sweden have found in a forty year study of 2,000 seniors that today's 70-year-olds do far better in intelligence tests than their predecessors making it more difficult to detect dementia in its early stages.
Dammit, seniors! Get dumber so we can detect your dementia!
Exactly. Christianity had its renaissance long ago and emerged from the Dark Ages, where Islam is still stuck.
Which is why one of the most active terrorist organizations in the 1980s was a Catholic organization that bombed Protestants, right? And why this organization existed to respond to a campaign of Protestant brutality against Catholics which enjoyed police protection and government sponsorship, too? Oh, I misunderstood you...by "long ago" you meant "20 or 30 years ago".
If you don't think you have more to fear from Muslims than from Catholics in terms of physical harm, you might want to reconsider the facts.
Are you talking about physical harm generally, or terrorism? Because you said physical harm. I've seen Catholics start fights in bars and I've had Catholics get physically confrontational with me before in my life. Never had such an experience with a Muslim. If you count the risk of drunk driving accidents, then it gets much worse. Given that my probability of being harmed in a drunk driving accident is literally thousands of times greater than my probability of being harmed in a terrorist attack, you might want to reconsider your careless statement.
You would think that Slashdot could tell the difference between "China" and the person who reviewed the iPad for The People's Daily.
I can't find the part in the summary where they said "China" panned the iPad. It says China's Official Newspaper Pans iPad, but that's basically accurate. It's fairly typical to speak of a publication taking the stance of its individual reviewers, as in "I wanted to see that new Scorcese movie, until the Times panned it."
Newspaper censorship in the PRC is much more intense than in much of the rest of the world, but that doesn't mean that individuals are mouthpieces for certain sectors of their government.
The newspaper in question isn't just some independent paper subject to censorship; it's actually published by the CCP as the party's "mouthpiece" which "generally provides direct information on the policies and viewpoints of the Party." So yeah, that kinda does mean what you just said it doesn't mean.
It's usually legit to criticize Slashdot summaries, but you appear to be the first to criticize one for actually getting it right.
Sounds like China to me. When I went there, I was curious to see if one could find NON-pirated DVDs for purchase. Never saw one. All DVDs and CDs in the city I was were pirated.
You have to go to department stores or big electronics stores. The little corner shops or open-air markets (not to mention random street vendors) will of course have pirated stuff. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, will not.
Funnier still, the merchant across the street sees and hears my reaction of saying "no". Yet, he tries to sell me the same shit. WTF? What? Like you thought I was going to say "yes" seconds later? Persistent bastards, I'll give em that!
Saying you just don't want something is actually the best way of bargaining for a lower price in China. It took me a while to learn this. You never get them to offer their best deal until you're walking away. Once you appear interested they try to get more out of you, no matter how adamant you are about a lower figure.
Slashdot Mirror
"slashdot's consensus about what class action cases are is really, really off-base."
Really? So you claim you've done a handful of more-legitimate class actions, and you think that overturns the common view of what class-action cases "are"?
By tautology, the legal view of what a legal definition is overturns the common view of what a legal definition is.
Yes, I've heard the term "selection bias"; apparently one of us knows what it means, and you aren't the one.
What is it they say about pots and kettles?
I'm not "selecting" the cases I'm looking at. I'm looking at every case that has impacted me in any way, and suggesting that everyone else in the discussion do the same.
Definition of Selection Bias:
In this case, data is systematically excluded on the basis of not having happened to you, producing the distorted results of only looking at cases that happened to you. You are performing a textbook example of selection bias* and have the audacity to claim that you're not.
* Unless all characteristics of you have been randomly and independently selected, which would be an unbelievably dubious claim.
Presumably, by "protect their privacy online," you mean somehow knowing that Google is going to automatically link your Gmail account to Buzz and list your most emailed contacts?
I'm pretty sure Google stopped doing that as soon as there was a public outcry, even before the suit was filed, and isn't going to do that again if it cost them $8.5 million. But yeah, people should know these things and how to disable them. Would you prefer that Google automatically display your most emailed contacts and NOT tell you that or how to disable it?
Sigh. *read the settlement*.
To put it in the actual terms of the settlement (where before I was using the terms of the class action notification): "This Agreement shall be the sole and exclusive remedy for any and all Settled Claims of Class Members. Upon entry of the Final Order and Judgment, each Class Member shall be barred from initiating, asserting, or prosecuting against Google any Settled Claims that are released by operation of this Agreement and the Final Order and Judgment." "Settled Claims" means any claim for the specific actions the plaintiffs were suing for. Claims that theoretically might arise in the future are not "Settled Claims" for the purposes of this or any other lawsuit settlement. Then if you scroll down a little more to the big, bold, all caps section: "A GENERAL RELEASE DOES NOT EXTEND TO CLAIMS WHICH THE CREDITOR DOES NOT KNOW OR SUSPECT TO EXIST IN HIS OR HER FAVOR AT THE TIME OF EXECUTING THE RELEASE, WHICH IF KNOWN TO HIM OR HER MUST HAVE MATERIALLY AFFECTED HIS OR HER SETTLEMENT WITH THE DEBTOR." There you have it. The settlement specifically says that claims which don't yet exist (because they're for something Google hasn't yet done, or Google has secretly done but nobody knows about yet) are NOT COVERED by the release of liability in this settlement.
Next time you condescendingly tell someone to read something, make sure you've read it first. You're reminding me of the teabaggers saying to "read the Constitution!" and the fundies saying to "read the Bible!"
Sigh. *read the settlement*.
Ummm...I did? Because it was sent to me. Quote: "Give up your rights to sue Google about the legal claims in this case and thereby accept the terms of this Settlement." The legal claims in this case are the claims related to the specific privacy violations happening at a specific time that were brought up in the suit when it was filed. They are not "privacy, generally". As a matter of law, "the legal claims in this case" can never mean, "privacy, generally".
Will you never learn?
Will you never think logically? Or educate yourself about the law before making claims about it? Or stop being a condescending prick to people who know more than you?
As a frequent Buzz user who also cares deeply about online privacy, this settlement seems just about right to me. I would much rather my fellow users were educated about how to protect their privacy online than have a few extra pennies in my pocket (and that is about what this would amount to if paid out in cash to every class member). I actually wish more class action settlements would end like this. How many times have I been notified that I was part of a class winning a class action only to be informed my share was less than my time was worth to read the damn letter in the first place? (I'll tell you: three times). In any one of those cases I would much rather that my share had been aggregated together with every other class member's and put to a good cause.
If you used GMail after February 9, 2010 then you *must* opt out of this settlement or you will lose your right to sue Google for privacy violations - forever - with no compensation.
I'm not sure you get how class actions work. You can only lose your right to sue for the period that the class action referred to. Courts would never uphold a "settlement" in which the winners or unrelated parties lost their right to sue the loser ever, for anything, including unlawful acts that the loser was going to do in the future. You can only lose the right to sue Google for the specific privacy violations mentioned in the suit (i.e. the stuff they did right at the launch of Buzz).
Of course not. Everyone knows unicorns are really used. They're killed, their horns ground up, and the powder made into the elixir that keeps Larry King alive.
Well, at least they were, until they went extinct. That's why he retired: he realized after his current supply runs out he's done, and he didn't want to disintegrate live on air.
Not to sound cruel, but at 87 years old she was expected to die any day any minute.
Not to sound cruel, but we might as well allow people to go around viciously beating 87-year-olds for any reason at any time, because they are expected to die any time.
I wasn't criticizing the summary, I was criticizing the Slashdot community and its gung-ho reaction to the summary.
Ah. I guess I read "Slashdot" in your statement "You would think Slashdot could tell the difference..." to mean "the Slashdot editors" and not "the Slashdot community"...though one wonders if you're committing the same fallacy looking at a few of these posts that you accuse us of making looking at this People's Daily article.
All newspapers and almost all "companies" in China are party- (=government in their Leninist system) owned.
Not true. I don't know what rock you've been living under the last 20 years, but China has had rapid development of privately owned enterprise, including both foreign and domestic investment. What you said was true when Mao was alive. Now, however, China has over 85 million privately owned businesses. As for regulation, yes, there is immense government regulation of most business (certain industries like roadside food stands/carts seem to be exempt). And there are sectors of the economy which are still government owned; for example, the government owns all land, and private entities can only own leases. But all newspapers and almost all companies? No.
It was a device failure and not an intentional attempt to include "outright made up" votes. There was no intent on anyone's part.
That's what they said. And as far as the poll workers could tell, I'm sure it seemed true, but they have no way of knowing the parts of the software they can't see aren't rigged. Given the extremely strong circumstantial evidence that the president of the company making the machines promised to "deliver the electoral votes of Ohio to President Bush," it's a pretty weak inference from the election workers finding it an accident to it actually being an accident.
You are, in essence, saying that because the toaster failed the homeowner should be charged with arson.
No, actually I'm saying because the toaster failed and caused the house fire we should acknowledge the toaster burned the house down.
Without someone intentionally making up votes, there are no "made up votes".
As far as the definition of made up goes, I'm pretty sure if they weren't actually cast votes, and they were reported by the machines as having been cast, then they were made up by the machines, just like the original poster claimed they were.
...like having one's timing belt break and one's engine seizing up in traffic and then being given a ticket for blocking traffic. There was no intent to block traffic and one would not have been blocking traffic without a device failure.
Traffic tickets usually do not require intent. If you're blocking traffic, you're blocking traffic. It's assumed the burden is on you to get your car out of traffic as soon as you can (such as by putting it in neutral and pushing). Same thing with speeding: thinking that you were under the speed limit is no defense. Your analysis of the relationship between "intent" and the thing that happened is a bit faulty.
You considered non-existent votes being added to the total "outright made up?" What, the lack of intent makes those somehow real votes? That one incident concerned thousands of votes. That is exactly what you asked for.
I wasn't gonna say it, but somebody had to.
That being said, if you put a kid in front of a Linux box with a Java gui into an Oracle dabase and an iPad, 100% of the time the kid is gonna choose the iPad.
Actually, when I was a kid I would've chosen the Linux box. Actually, not would've. Did. (we didn't have iPads but we did have iMacs...)
They're not grown ups who have given up on everything and now just accept their paycheck on the way to the grave. They still have imagination, they're still young, they still have life before them - they have not yet been told no a million times.
Wait, what? It takes way more imagination to enjoy a Linux box than an iPad. iPad is for those with so little imagination they have to be spoon-fed flashing lights and zipping images all day long. You may have a good point buried in there somewhere, but this is definitely not it.
So to me, it's utterly ridiculous to think kids would want to use anything else other than the 'cool', 'awesome', 'wow' products.
Believe it or not, some kids are not shallow. Though if you have that impression, perhaps all the ones in your neighborhood are.
I love and use Linux on the server - it's great. But why would I want to use a garbage desktop, laptop, phone, or tablet day in and day out? That just seems idiotic to me.
I don't know what garbage desktop you were using, but I had a Macbook for three years and switched to Ubuntu because it was smoother, less prone to freezing, and easier to customize so that the things I wanted to click were where I wanted to click them. I guess I must be an old fuddy-duddy who only cares about a paycheck then, right?
Jobs is just adapting to market realities...
Jobs is just adapting, yo! Invisible hand up in the hiz-ouuuuuse!
Someone who has the time and inclination to figure out any UI that comes across their path will never understand people who have different priorities. Clearly, everyone else is an idiot.
Well, just because one doesn't understand them doesn't mean they're not idiots, technically speaking.
You can't look at sticker price in a vacuum, and say "Mac > Windows PC, therefore robbery."
It's a free country. I can, and I will, say whatever I want, sir! But not in a vacuum, you're right about that part. My body would explode gruesomely, like in Total Recall.
...There predecessors are in their 80s and 90s now or dead. If a 70 year old isn't smarter than a dead person, then I don't understand science!
Clearly, you don't understand science.
...researchers from the Universiy of Gothenburg, Sweden have found in a forty year study of 2,000 seniors that today's 70-year-olds do far better in intelligence tests than their predecessors making it more difficult to detect dementia in its early stages.
Dammit, seniors! Get dumber so we can detect your dementia!
Exactly. Christianity had its renaissance long ago and emerged from the Dark Ages, where Islam is still stuck.
Which is why one of the most active terrorist organizations in the 1980s was a Catholic organization that bombed Protestants, right? And why this organization existed to respond to a campaign of Protestant brutality against Catholics which enjoyed police protection and government sponsorship, too? Oh, I misunderstood you...by "long ago" you meant "20 or 30 years ago".
If you don't think you have more to fear from Muslims than from Catholics in terms of physical harm, you might want to reconsider the facts.
Are you talking about physical harm generally, or terrorism? Because you said physical harm. I've seen Catholics start fights in bars and I've had Catholics get physically confrontational with me before in my life. Never had such an experience with a Muslim. If you count the risk of drunk driving accidents, then it gets much worse. Given that my probability of being harmed in a drunk driving accident is literally thousands of times greater than my probability of being harmed in a terrorist attack, you might want to reconsider your careless statement.
You would think that Slashdot could tell the difference between "China" and the person who reviewed the iPad for The People's Daily.
I can't find the part in the summary where they said "China" panned the iPad. It says China's Official Newspaper Pans iPad, but that's basically accurate. It's fairly typical to speak of a publication taking the stance of its individual reviewers, as in "I wanted to see that new Scorcese movie, until the Times panned it."
Newspaper censorship in the PRC is much more intense than in much of the rest of the world, but that doesn't mean that individuals are mouthpieces for certain sectors of their government.
The newspaper in question isn't just some independent paper subject to censorship; it's actually published by the CCP as the party's "mouthpiece" which "generally provides direct information on the policies and viewpoints of the Party." So yeah, that kinda does mean what you just said it doesn't mean.
It's usually legit to criticize Slashdot summaries, but you appear to be the first to criticize one for actually getting it right.
Sounds like China to me. When I went there, I was curious to see if one could find NON-pirated DVDs for purchase. Never saw one. All DVDs and CDs in the city I was were pirated.
You have to go to department stores or big electronics stores. The little corner shops or open-air markets (not to mention random street vendors) will of course have pirated stuff. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, will not.
In my experience $2 USD was enough for a legit DVD in China (Chinese-made movie, not Western)
Funnier still, the merchant across the street sees and hears my reaction of saying "no". Yet, he tries to sell me the same shit. WTF? What? Like you thought I was going to say "yes" seconds later? Persistent bastards, I'll give em that!
Saying you just don't want something is actually the best way of bargaining for a lower price in China. It took me a while to learn this. You never get them to offer their best deal until you're walking away. Once you appear interested they try to get more out of you, no matter how adamant you are about a lower figure.