Not necessarily, it has to be proven that the person receiving the stolen goods knew they were stolen, or at the very least that a reasonable person would have known or suspected. For instance, if someone sells an intact, but stolen, TV at a pawn shop the clerk isn't on the hook. However, if the person is trying to sell a TV with the serial numbers scraped off or wants next to nothing for what otherwise would go for a lot more, then the clerk should have reasonably suspected it was stolen and, at the very least, refused the sale, if not reported it to police there and then. Either way, most pawn shops are very strict about things like this because stolen property just ends up confiscated by police and the pawn shop ends up with absolutely nothing 99% of the time. Reputable ones, anyway.
It's kinda like if someone offered to sell you a brand new Escalade for $100 at the parking lot of your local Walmart. If you took the person up on that offer, you would likely be charged with a crime because a reasonable person would have been suspicious.
If it were to come out that specific people at AT&T knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they were enabling the sale of stolen phones (say, an email saying "Hey, let's not brick any phones reported stolen because that way they'll have to buy a new phone, HA HA") then those specific people would be guilty of a criminal act. That's just never going to be proven, obviously, so civil is the best we can hope for.
Still, it would be hysterical to see some C-levels at AT&T being led out in handcuffs, I admit. That company has been thieving from people for 100 years...
No, but if the thief tried to register that car, it would show up as stolen and the DMV would not allow him to register it under his name. They call the police.
Why is it so unreasonable that AT&T do the same? They can tell the damn phone is registered to someone else, they can't take a minute to see if it was stolen or not? How many people sell cell phones to strangers with all their personal information on them? I mean, really?
I fail to see how these companies could validate with 100% certainty that the device reported stolen actually belong to the owners that claimed to own them.
It's called a police report. It's good enough for the company insuring the phone against theft, so why would it not be enough for AT&T to cut the service?
If the police report is fraudulent, well, there are already legal mechanisms in place to deal with that. The point is, obviously they could do something, they just choose not to because it benefits them financially.
For most people, right now, no, probably not. But the fact that it's backward compatible means that motherboard manufacturers are going to just start replacing USB 2.0 slots with USB 3.0 slots and it's still going to work with most peripherals out there right out of the box which will spur their adoption. Hobbyists may elect to get a TB peripheral but I'm betting almost everyone else is going to be happy with what they're used to so the standard is going to remain fringe like Firewire or eSATA have and eventually fade away.
Exactly. Not only that, but the vast majority of people are not going to run out and upgrade all of their peripherals to utilize the new connection standards anyway. For instance, they still make mice and keyboards to this day that have PS/2 connections, and when I last worked in retail selling computer accessories and such (about 5 years ago), there were still people that came in looking specifically for PS/2 keyboards and mice. How long have USB keyboards and mice been around, 10 years? 15?
Take eSATA, how long has that been around? Technically speaking, it's much better than USB 2.0, but go look at external hard disk drives and count the eSATA drives as compared to the USB 2.0 and now USB 3.0 ones. Point is, something being "better" is immaterial to things like this. It's about what's in common use...and that's USB.
Until something is able to supplant USB we are going to be primarily dealing with USB, and nothing I've seen, not even Thunderbolt, seems like it's going to do that at this point.
That's because it's the new Firewire. Even if it is technically superior to USB 3, everyone knows that backward compatability is going to trump the expanded features...
I meant to send an anonymous email to the higher-ups, not to the app store, warning them about the fact that what they're asking the employees to do is immoral and possibly even illegal. Obviously they're going to know that it came from an employee, but how would they ever possibly prove which one? Witch trials?
I mean, unless there's some sort of notoriety or compensation desired here, why does the employees name ever have to be attached to anything at all? He's got a moral issue with something his employer is asking him to do; he can send an anonymous warning to the PHB now and, depending on whether it's ignored or the directive is rescinded, he can follow up with an anonymous warning to the app store in question about the astroturfing going on. If even that's not enough, he can post anonymously on the internet on forums and communities like/., not to mention in the app store itself.
If the OP works for a very small firm I can see how this may not be worth the risk, but if the OP is but one of many employees, there's really nothing I can think of they could do to possibly find out where the emails were coming from or who wrote them. I've even sent anonymous emails to employers in the past myself concerning things that were illegal or unethical. Sometimes something came of them, sometimes not, but at the end of the day, if you see something that is unethical, immoral, and especially illegal, I feel that you have a responsibility to bring it to people's attention, even if the person is signing your paychecks. The warning is just a courtesy.
I mean, how disrespectful can an employer be that they would ask their employees to do shit like this in the first place? Everyone here knows it's wrong, there's no question or ambiguity here. Clearly the OPs employer doesn't respect them if he'd put them in an ethical bind like this in the first place. Even though ethics and business are considered mutually exclusive these days, that doesn't make it right, nor acceptable. People need to be reminded of that.
Anonymous email from one of those temporary email services like 10-minute mail, then. Then there's no possible way they could tie it to any specific employee.
Yeah, tell that to half of the Middle East. Our elections have vast global consequences, which makes the idiocy we've demonstrated as far as that's concerned all the more egregious.
That's just it; back in the day, when they used to carry higher-end computer accessories and upgrades, I used to shop there all the time. All the big box retailers decided that the PC enthusiast market wasn't worth their floor space, and I found myself going there less and less.
Best Buy isn't going to compete with Walmart on shit like game consoles, CDs/DVDs/BDs, and Walmart is poaching the low end TV and computer hardware market now. The high-end customers are going to specialized stores where the staff actually knows what the hell they're talking about and carries the high-end skus they're looking for, not to mention offers real comprehensive on-site support, and the low-end customers are buying all their shit at Walmart because they don't care about features or quality, they want the 32" LCD that's $200...they're not buying a replacement plan on it, they're not getting installation on it. That leaves Best Buy the mid-range, enthusiast market, but they've been ignoring, and more egregiously, alienating that market for years now.
The only thing I'm going to miss about big box electronics retailers is being able to get hands on with their products, especially as regards mice and keyboards, but I haven't been into one of these places in years that had more than a dozen keyboard skus in stock at any given moment, and half of those were the obvious Chinese bargain-basement trash that they probably decided to carry solely because the unit price was so cheap they could sell them for a few dollars and make a profit. Even towards the end, that was one thing CompUSA had that Best Buy and Circuit City could never compete with, their selection of decent mice and keyboards across all price points, not to mention things like joysticks and game controllers and such.
That's why I say I'm not very broken up about the end of the big box electronics retailer. They all made the decision to walk away from those of us in their old market when they all in turn tried to become the Walmart of electronics and stock stupid shit like cell phones and satellite radio and push the services on people constantly, and now they're all but gone. It's a shame, but life must go on.
WHat I wanted to know is who is buying $200 headphones from a vending machine in a train station.
Probably hardly anyone, but then again, given the insane markup, how many pairs of those headphones do you think they have to sell to make a profit?
I used to work at CompUSA years ago, and we were able to look up unit cost (as we got employee purchases at cost) on anything. Thing like USB cables were less than $1.50 at cost, even the $150 Monster cables had a unit cost of less than $10 usually. As for headphones, the Bose brand were literally marked up 100%. The $100 retail, noise canceling ones were $49 at cost, and that's just the cost that CompUSA had in the system...I do not doubt for a second that the "cost" we saw at the store level was itself inflated slightly from what CompUSA actually paid for the shit, given the enormous quantities they brought in just at our location alone.
(For all it's faults, and in the end it had many, CompUSA was great for buying tech gadgets if you were an employee. I worked mornings and helped put out the price changes every morning, and you would not believe the amount of shit I bought for pennies on the dollar. My garage looks like a CompUSA threw up in it to this day...)
Anyway, I would bet one or two sales to some desperate or stupid traveler is all they would need to justify the expense of stocking it for the entire year. Their real money maker are the tons of cables and adapters the majority of the machines are probably full of. They probably spend less than $3 unit cost on most of that shit and sell it at a 1000% markup, and I'm betting they sell it like crazy to boot.
I would hope they would require at least an official report of the theft, i.e. a police report, not to mention have some way of contesting it by emailing a copy of your photo ID or something.
I would hope. Based on my experiences with a few of the major carriers here in the U.S., I'm not going to waste time hoping for a system that either makes sense or is effective in almost any way.
The days of the big box electronics retailer are dead.
I can't say I'm too surprised, nor am I very broken up about it, either. I haven't had a very good shopping experience there since the early 2000's and haven't even stepped foot in one in over a year.
If it's too much work for you, that's fine, but don't expect sympathy from anyone else when you're taking out a second mortgage to fill the tank on your Canyonero.
Or you could man up and go grocery shopping by your fucking self without dragging a car full of people with you? Or send your wife? Or are you one of those couples that are incapable of doing anything alone and require the presence of your spouse at all times for moral support?
Or even better, you could all get bikes and ride them together? Then you could even split the load among all of you. Amazing, I know...
I've heard all the excuses, so spare me. You're not helpless. If you live too far from everything so that you need to drive everywhere you go, well, you made a choice there, too, didn't you? Believe me, you wouldn't be the only one; I've heard plenty of people whining and bitching about their 40 minute commutes as gas prices went higher and higher, but nobody forced them to move 40 minutes from their job. Most of those people would constantly tell me what a fool I was for staying in the city near where I work, how much "cheaper" everything is when you live way out in the 'burbs, how much bigger a house you can get, how much less property taxes are, etc. Guess what? I don't hear that anymore, because all that money they saved, they're dumping into their gas tank, and I'm laughing my ass off the whole time as I pedal on by the gas station.
No, now I get the bitterness and anger that I'm not in their special club of morons that thought gas was going to be cheap forever and I'm not being bent over like they are. I actually had someone once tell me that I was hurting the fucking economy by not being assraped at the gas pump like "all Americans." How twisted can you be?
Automotive culture is dying. You can either start adapting now, or you can be one of those idiots screaming that the Federal Government should subsidize your unwillingness to move the fuck on and deal with life. If you live too far from anything for biking, walking, or even mass transit to be efficient, then you've got a choice, huh? Get used to paying out the ass for gasoline, or sell your shit and move back to the city like everyone else. The suburban sprawl only existed in the first place because gas was cheap and plentiful. It never will be again.
I thought 3 wasn't bad, not as good as the first two obviously but I didn't go into it expecting much, plus I've always been a big fan of Charles S. Dutton, ever since I first saw him on Roc.
If you've never read it, this was the original Alien 3 script by William Gibson, you should check it out. It needed a little polish still, obviously, but it would have been a much stronger film in my opinion. Not sure why they decided to go the way they did...
As compared to the pithy "Should have bought a Mac!!" that I hear from Apple users in response to almost any PC problem I've ever had? Because Apple PC's never, ever have problems, am I right?
I can understand that Apple users may get an unfair shake when it comes to snobbery and elitism, but I've met far, far more "Cult of Steve" types than any other. I haven't heard such animosity since the Sega Genesis/Super Nintendo rivalry of my middle school days, but at least we had the excuse that we were kids, not fully grown adults.
I liked Apple back before the iDevice bullshit. Now they're just expensive fashion accessories it seems. I mean, I've heard people make fun of each other because one of them had the last generation iPhone for fuck's sake. When you hear a 17 year old say "What is that, an iPhone 3GS? How's it feel to be poor, loser?" you realize that they're not devices anymore but status symbols.
I know that there are many Apple users out there that aren't stupid like that, but unfortunately, they're not the ones blathering on about Apple all day and night, and the last goddamned thing I want is an excuse for one of those people to start talking to me. God forbid it breaks and you have to go to the Apple Store (where those people live); I'd rather hammer nails into my toes.
Slashdot Mirror
Not necessarily, it has to be proven that the person receiving the stolen goods knew they were stolen, or at the very least that a reasonable person would have known or suspected. For instance, if someone sells an intact, but stolen, TV at a pawn shop the clerk isn't on the hook. However, if the person is trying to sell a TV with the serial numbers scraped off or wants next to nothing for what otherwise would go for a lot more, then the clerk should have reasonably suspected it was stolen and, at the very least, refused the sale, if not reported it to police there and then. Either way, most pawn shops are very strict about things like this because stolen property just ends up confiscated by police and the pawn shop ends up with absolutely nothing 99% of the time. Reputable ones, anyway.
It's kinda like if someone offered to sell you a brand new Escalade for $100 at the parking lot of your local Walmart. If you took the person up on that offer, you would likely be charged with a crime because a reasonable person would have been suspicious.
If it were to come out that specific people at AT&T knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they were enabling the sale of stolen phones (say, an email saying "Hey, let's not brick any phones reported stolen because that way they'll have to buy a new phone, HA HA") then those specific people would be guilty of a criminal act. That's just never going to be proven, obviously, so civil is the best we can hope for.
Still, it would be hysterical to see some C-levels at AT&T being led out in handcuffs, I admit. That company has been thieving from people for 100 years...
No, but if the thief tried to register that car, it would show up as stolen and the DMV would not allow him to register it under his name. They call the police.
Why is it so unreasonable that AT&T do the same? They can tell the damn phone is registered to someone else, they can't take a minute to see if it was stolen or not? How many people sell cell phones to strangers with all their personal information on them? I mean, really?
I fail to see how these companies could validate with 100% certainty that the device reported stolen actually belong to the owners that claimed to own them.
It's called a police report. It's good enough for the company insuring the phone against theft, so why would it not be enough for AT&T to cut the service?
If the police report is fraudulent, well, there are already legal mechanisms in place to deal with that. The point is, obviously they could do something, they just choose not to because it benefits them financially.
Bullshit, everyone knows that life on Earth was seeded by The Preservers.
For most people, right now, no, probably not. But the fact that it's backward compatible means that motherboard manufacturers are going to just start replacing USB 2.0 slots with USB 3.0 slots and it's still going to work with most peripherals out there right out of the box which will spur their adoption. Hobbyists may elect to get a TB peripheral but I'm betting almost everyone else is going to be happy with what they're used to so the standard is going to remain fringe like Firewire or eSATA have and eventually fade away.
Exactly. Not only that, but the vast majority of people are not going to run out and upgrade all of their peripherals to utilize the new connection standards anyway. For instance, they still make mice and keyboards to this day that have PS/2 connections, and when I last worked in retail selling computer accessories and such (about 5 years ago), there were still people that came in looking specifically for PS/2 keyboards and mice. How long have USB keyboards and mice been around, 10 years? 15?
Take eSATA, how long has that been around? Technically speaking, it's much better than USB 2.0, but go look at external hard disk drives and count the eSATA drives as compared to the USB 2.0 and now USB 3.0 ones. Point is, something being "better" is immaterial to things like this. It's about what's in common use...and that's USB.
Until something is able to supplant USB we are going to be primarily dealing with USB, and nothing I've seen, not even Thunderbolt, seems like it's going to do that at this point.
It wouldn't be the first time...
That's because it's the new Firewire. Even if it is technically superior to USB 3, everyone knows that backward compatability is going to trump the expanded features...
Best analogy ever.
I meant to send an anonymous email to the higher-ups, not to the app store, warning them about the fact that what they're asking the employees to do is immoral and possibly even illegal. Obviously they're going to know that it came from an employee, but how would they ever possibly prove which one? Witch trials?
I mean, unless there's some sort of notoriety or compensation desired here, why does the employees name ever have to be attached to anything at all? He's got a moral issue with something his employer is asking him to do; he can send an anonymous warning to the PHB now and, depending on whether it's ignored or the directive is rescinded, he can follow up with an anonymous warning to the app store in question about the astroturfing going on. If even that's not enough, he can post anonymously on the internet on forums and communities like /., not to mention in the app store itself.
If the OP works for a very small firm I can see how this may not be worth the risk, but if the OP is but one of many employees, there's really nothing I can think of they could do to possibly find out where the emails were coming from or who wrote them. I've even sent anonymous emails to employers in the past myself concerning things that were illegal or unethical. Sometimes something came of them, sometimes not, but at the end of the day, if you see something that is unethical, immoral, and especially illegal, I feel that you have a responsibility to bring it to people's attention, even if the person is signing your paychecks. The warning is just a courtesy.
I mean, how disrespectful can an employer be that they would ask their employees to do shit like this in the first place? Everyone here knows it's wrong, there's no question or ambiguity here. Clearly the OPs employer doesn't respect them if he'd put them in an ethical bind like this in the first place. Even though ethics and business are considered mutually exclusive these days, that doesn't make it right, nor acceptable. People need to be reminded of that.
Anonymous email from one of those temporary email services like 10-minute mail, then. Then there's no possible way they could tie it to any specific employee.
Yeah, tell that to half of the Middle East. Our elections have vast global consequences, which makes the idiocy we've demonstrated as far as that's concerned all the more egregious.
That's some funny shit...
The service at Best Buy wasn't shitty enough already that they're actively making it shittier?
Way to encourage everyone to only make one purchase every 90 days at your store. How stupid can they be?
That's just it; back in the day, when they used to carry higher-end computer accessories and upgrades, I used to shop there all the time. All the big box retailers decided that the PC enthusiast market wasn't worth their floor space, and I found myself going there less and less.
Best Buy isn't going to compete with Walmart on shit like game consoles, CDs/DVDs/BDs, and Walmart is poaching the low end TV and computer hardware market now. The high-end customers are going to specialized stores where the staff actually knows what the hell they're talking about and carries the high-end skus they're looking for, not to mention offers real comprehensive on-site support, and the low-end customers are buying all their shit at Walmart because they don't care about features or quality, they want the 32" LCD that's $200...they're not buying a replacement plan on it, they're not getting installation on it. That leaves Best Buy the mid-range, enthusiast market, but they've been ignoring, and more egregiously, alienating that market for years now.
The only thing I'm going to miss about big box electronics retailers is being able to get hands on with their products, especially as regards mice and keyboards, but I haven't been into one of these places in years that had more than a dozen keyboard skus in stock at any given moment, and half of those were the obvious Chinese bargain-basement trash that they probably decided to carry solely because the unit price was so cheap they could sell them for a few dollars and make a profit. Even towards the end, that was one thing CompUSA had that Best Buy and Circuit City could never compete with, their selection of decent mice and keyboards across all price points, not to mention things like joysticks and game controllers and such.
That's why I say I'm not very broken up about the end of the big box electronics retailer. They all made the decision to walk away from those of us in their old market when they all in turn tried to become the Walmart of electronics and stock stupid shit like cell phones and satellite radio and push the services on people constantly, and now they're all but gone. It's a shame, but life must go on.
WHat I wanted to know is who is buying $200 headphones from a vending machine in a train station.
Probably hardly anyone, but then again, given the insane markup, how many pairs of those headphones do you think they have to sell to make a profit?
I used to work at CompUSA years ago, and we were able to look up unit cost (as we got employee purchases at cost) on anything. Thing like USB cables were less than $1.50 at cost, even the $150 Monster cables had a unit cost of less than $10 usually. As for headphones, the Bose brand were literally marked up 100%. The $100 retail, noise canceling ones were $49 at cost, and that's just the cost that CompUSA had in the system...I do not doubt for a second that the "cost" we saw at the store level was itself inflated slightly from what CompUSA actually paid for the shit, given the enormous quantities they brought in just at our location alone.
(For all it's faults, and in the end it had many, CompUSA was great for buying tech gadgets if you were an employee. I worked mornings and helped put out the price changes every morning, and you would not believe the amount of shit I bought for pennies on the dollar. My garage looks like a CompUSA threw up in it to this day...)
Anyway, I would bet one or two sales to some desperate or stupid traveler is all they would need to justify the expense of stocking it for the entire year. Their real money maker are the tons of cables and adapters the majority of the machines are probably full of. They probably spend less than $3 unit cost on most of that shit and sell it at a 1000% markup, and I'm betting they sell it like crazy to boot.
I would hope they would require at least an official report of the theft, i.e. a police report, not to mention have some way of contesting it by emailing a copy of your photo ID or something.
I would hope. Based on my experiences with a few of the major carriers here in the U.S., I'm not going to waste time hoping for a system that either makes sense or is effective in almost any way.
The days of the big box electronics retailer are dead.
I can't say I'm too surprised, nor am I very broken up about it, either. I haven't had a very good shopping experience there since the early 2000's and haven't even stepped foot in one in over a year.
Another "it's too hard" excuse.
If it's too much work for you, that's fine, but don't expect sympathy from anyone else when you're taking out a second mortgage to fill the tank on your Canyonero.
Or you could man up and go grocery shopping by your fucking self without dragging a car full of people with you? Or send your wife? Or are you one of those couples that are incapable of doing anything alone and require the presence of your spouse at all times for moral support?
Or even better, you could all get bikes and ride them together? Then you could even split the load among all of you. Amazing, I know...
I've heard all the excuses, so spare me. You're not helpless. If you live too far from everything so that you need to drive everywhere you go, well, you made a choice there, too, didn't you? Believe me, you wouldn't be the only one; I've heard plenty of people whining and bitching about their 40 minute commutes as gas prices went higher and higher, but nobody forced them to move 40 minutes from their job. Most of those people would constantly tell me what a fool I was for staying in the city near where I work, how much "cheaper" everything is when you live way out in the 'burbs, how much bigger a house you can get, how much less property taxes are, etc. Guess what? I don't hear that anymore, because all that money they saved, they're dumping into their gas tank, and I'm laughing my ass off the whole time as I pedal on by the gas station.
No, now I get the bitterness and anger that I'm not in their special club of morons that thought gas was going to be cheap forever and I'm not being bent over like they are. I actually had someone once tell me that I was hurting the fucking economy by not being assraped at the gas pump like "all Americans." How twisted can you be?
Automotive culture is dying. You can either start adapting now, or you can be one of those idiots screaming that the Federal Government should subsidize your unwillingness to move the fuck on and deal with life. If you live too far from anything for biking, walking, or even mass transit to be efficient, then you've got a choice, huh? Get used to paying out the ass for gasoline, or sell your shit and move back to the city like everyone else. The suburban sprawl only existed in the first place because gas was cheap and plentiful. It never will be again.
If you want a real green alternative, buy a bike.
I thought 3 wasn't bad, not as good as the first two obviously but I didn't go into it expecting much, plus I've always been a big fan of Charles S. Dutton, ever since I first saw him on Roc .
If you've never read it, this was the original Alien 3 script by William Gibson, you should check it out. It needed a little polish still, obviously, but it would have been a much stronger film in my opinion. Not sure why they decided to go the way they did...
As compared to the pithy "Should have bought a Mac!!" that I hear from Apple users in response to almost any PC problem I've ever had? Because Apple PC's never, ever have problems, am I right?
I can understand that Apple users may get an unfair shake when it comes to snobbery and elitism, but I've met far, far more "Cult of Steve" types than any other. I haven't heard such animosity since the Sega Genesis/Super Nintendo rivalry of my middle school days, but at least we had the excuse that we were kids, not fully grown adults.
I liked Apple back before the iDevice bullshit. Now they're just expensive fashion accessories it seems. I mean, I've heard people make fun of each other because one of them had the last generation iPhone for fuck's sake. When you hear a 17 year old say "What is that, an iPhone 3GS? How's it feel to be poor, loser?" you realize that they're not devices anymore but status symbols.
I know that there are many Apple users out there that aren't stupid like that, but unfortunately, they're not the ones blathering on about Apple all day and night, and the last goddamned thing I want is an excuse for one of those people to start talking to me. God forbid it breaks and you have to go to the Apple Store (where those people live); I'd rather hammer nails into my toes.
Mass fucking suicide.