And by "explicitly disclaiming them" you mean prominently displaying such a disclaimer on the product prior to purchase.
This is State law, but I think many States are the same this way.
Actually, it's mostly common law, which is somewhat different and way more universal. Some states have enactments, but the concept exists even in those without them.
Uhhh, I would have thought that scanning the original receipt was standard practice at every retail store (ok granted I've only worked at one). Why would a large retail store not do that to verify the receipt is valid?
Not sure about in the US, but here in the UK the legal situation is that they have to accept a return if the available evidence suggests it is more likely that you bought the item from them than not. A receipt is an easy way of achieving the required evidence, but other ways are generally considered acceptable: showing a credit card transaction from the store for the correct amount (at least for large value items) is generally allowed. Also showing that a product is only available through one retailer (as in own-brand products) is usually accepted, too.
Stores may demand a receipt, but they also know that if they don't refund you can sue them, and are quite likely to win, at which point they end up paying your legal costs (which are likely to be non-trivial in many cases). They fold easily once you start threatening them.
As I understand it, legally the onus of repairing a defective item falls on the manufacturer, not on the store selling the item.
This is not true. The stores want you to think they don't have to, but legally they do have to take returns of defective items. See "warranty of merchantability". Somebody from Massachusetts has already posted about their protection -- it applies just about everywhere else (at least in Common Law jursidictions) too; the only difference is that elsewhere they can stop you using it if they tell you they intend to before you make your purchase.
So, yes, they have to take returns of defective items. In practice, because they don't as a rule pay enough to get staff who are able to tell the difference between a defective item and a non-defective one, this means they must accept all returns.
Sure, but *only* if it is defective when sold or you were clearly misled in the purchase. That's a pretty tiny subset of the returns made to places like Best Buy.
Perhaps. But it *is* true in the case we're discussing, at least according to the summary.
Actually, stores aren't required to take returns - if an item is defective it's the manufacturer's responsibility to honor the warranty
You can return defective items to the store even if they were sold without a warranty, unless the vendor made you aware of terms prior to your purchase that specifically prevent this. It's called an implied warranty of merchantability, and they exist in (AFAIK) all common law jursidictions. If they want to exclude the warranty from the sale, they have to draw your attention to this fact (if you sign a printed contract, it must be written in a different font or in block capitals; if there is no written contract they have to inform you in some other equivalent way). In some jurisdictions, it may not be legally possible to exclude such a warranty from a consumer contract (e.g. Massachusetts).
Best Buy are skating on thin ice here. They're just asking to be sued for breach of contract, and my guess is it won't be long before somebody does it.
Is there an SOX requirement here - is this a breach by the hosting company?
Sounds like he's in Canada, so SOX doesn't apply.
You did the "right" thing by writing a letter - email is not legal (in this sense). I would continue the discussion with the paper documentation you've already started.
While I would say that a letter is the best thing to do, the suggestion that email doesn't have the same legal force is not necessarily true. Phone them and ask if they accept service of legal documents by email -- if they say yes, then it probably does (depending on your exact jursidiction, YMMV).
Do you have encrypted disks that only you know the passphrase for? How do you enter the passphrase? If the answer to these isn't "yes" and "directly on console", your hosting company has access, or can get it if they want it:
If the answer to the first question is no, then they can simply boot with init=/bin/sh and change your root password. If the answer to the second question isn't "directly on the console" they can insert an interception and grab your passphrase next time you reboot.
No computer is secure unless it is somewhere only people you trust can access it.
Nope, you couldn't. Because behind the scenes Megaupload used content deduplication: multiple users who uploaded the same content would get different URLs, but it was stored in a common store.
Not only was this needed for efficiency, it was also needed to implement Megaupload's fake-takedown system: it would allow a content provider to take down single URLs pointing to a file, but the file itself never went away and any OTHER URL pointing to that file would still work.
Erm -- the behaviour would be identical if deduplication were not used. Efficiency is the only reason it was necessary. And I think your use of the phrase "fake-takedown system" implies a value judgement that isn't entirely justified.
They couldn't get away with confiscating the customers' property without due process, though. Sure, the shop might remain closed, but all you as a customer would have to do to get your property back would be turn up at the investigation HQ, provide proof of ID and ownership of the contents of a particular box, and fill in forms to demand its return. Either they'd have it within the week, or you wouldn't be able to move for the circling vultures^Rcivil rights lawyers.
Either you're trolling, or *really* stupid. It doesn't happen on Android unless somebody has specifically configured it to do so. You can configure any phone with an email app to do this, so your complaint must apply to *all* phones. It happens that on iPhones, Apple make this configuration. On Android, most device manufacturers don't. Some stupid third party suppliers do, however, but this is, by your reasoning, the phone OS's fault?
In relation to the first and second "minimum" sentences described:
The court has discretion not to impose the minimum custodial sentence of seven years if it is of the opinion that there are particular circumstances which relate to any of the offences, or to the offender which would make it "unjust" to do so in all the circumstances.
In relation to the third "minimum" sentence described:
The court has discretion not to impose the minimum term, if of the opinion that there are "exceptional circumstances" relating to either of the offences, or to the offender which justifies it not doing so.
Another point of relevancy to the story is in that particular game white was down by more than 5.5 points of material with no significant positional advantage in return but only a checkmate 7 moves in the future. I don't know if the computer in the article would have chalked that up as a loss for white and moved on by its criteria.
No. Rybka's scores for this game stay in the range {-1.17,3.75} until the last few moves, so it will have analysed it, and presumably decided that the entire branch it sits in is a mistake for black.
Yes, perhaps, but on the other hand as these programs *are* opensource, there is nothing wrong with their use in the manner described in the article. I hope we can agree that the result produced is interesting regardless of whether we consider the ethics of the researcher to be up to our standards?
Now, if it were up to the ISP's discretion as to what they want to save (Hello the bullshit that will be July 1st) or if the government subsidized a load of their costs, I can see ISPs going for it
You're describing basically the situation as it is now. Most of the UK's ISPs adhere to a voluntary code of conduct where they keep logs of web requests for 3 days and email "traffic information" for 3 months, and will reveal it with a court order. They do this because the government offered to pay their reasonable expenses in implementing the system. If the government were offering to pay for this extension of the monitoring, then the ISPs would mostly be quite happy with it. But something tells me that in today's "austerity" climate, they are not going to be paying out on even the same scale they did last time, never mind the fact that what they're asking for this time is likely to be 10 times as expensive.
If his requests were ignored it was because he had no right to them under existing law. He would have been held due to making war as part of Al Qaeda regardless of his citizenship, much as non-German nationals fighting for the German army would have been held unless there was some special mitigating circumstance.
Yes, perhaps. Except that there is no evidence that some of these people ever had anything to do with al Qaeda. These were just innocent men who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or at least that's what all the evidence that has been presented appears to make them.
It was an early, not entirely succesfull, attempt at one. It does have a radar cross section significantly smaller than its actual size, which I think qualifies it for the title, even if other more recent designs are much better at it.
Most people who need to worry about a resume/CV are bright enough to realize they shouldn't be cracking/hacking into other's people's networks & computers.
ISTR a case not too long ago where somebody was prosecuted succsessfully for breaking into somebody's wifi -- an open network which the "offender"s smartphone had automatically connected to. A 2 year minimum for that would be absurd. Thankfully, I think the OP misinterpreted the proposed law, which rather than establishing a minimum is intended to make sure all the member countries' maximums are high enough.
There's amendments with lower numbers they ignore all the time.
Why should the 10th be any different?
The actual problem, as generally seen on Slashdot, is that many people fail to understand how they get applied in practice as opposed to their actually being ignored. Prisoners of War, for example, have generally never been subject to Habeas corpus - a subject of perpetual confusion on Slashdot. German and Italian POWs in the UK, US, and Canada didn't have the right to Habeas Corpus in WW2, Al Qaeda members taken prisoner originally didn't either. (Perhaps they now wish Bin Laden hadn't declared War on the US. Of course it took 9/11 for the US to reply in kind, legally.)
Last I saw, the US and the UK are not at war, yet at least one of those gitmo prisoners whose Habeas Corpus requests were ignored was a British citizen.
Silly categorical minimum sentences are pretty much an alien concept here.
That depends where "here" is. In the UK, we have seen all kinds of minimum sentences for possession of various prohibited items over the years, not to mention the policy of compulsory life sentences for murder.
No, we don't. Only the "life sentences" are mandatory; the others are merely recommendations that the judge can override if he believes they are unjust in the particular case before him. And as "life sentence" doesn't actually mean imprisonment for life (offenders become eligible for early release after a tariff period set by the judge, which the judge is able to set as basically anything he wants to), that's probably an irrelevance and just a procedural matter rather than setting an actual minimum punishment for the offender.
Id expect cases like that would be handled by extrajudicial measures either before or after charges - Police or Crown warnings/Extrajudicial sanctions/referral to programs.
Yes, you would. But there are circumstances that mean that it might not happen that way. In the UK at least:
- Police warnings. If the owner of the laptop in the GP's story above objects to the use of an (entirely unofficial) warning, he can force the police to either use a caution or charge the "offender". - Caution. Can only be issued if the offender admits that what he did constitutes an offence. If there is dispute as to whether his actions were legal (e.g. "leaving the system open constitutes an invitation to use") he cannot accept a caution, and the case must go to court.
Other than these, the police have no power to do anything other than pass the case to the CPS for prosecution. No provision for "extrajudicial sanctions" exists. Referral to programs requires a prosecution, which brings the case within the scope of the minimum sentence.
Slashdot Mirror
You'll find most patents expire at the point of a sword.
Corn Starch mixtures also have a nasty side effect of growing mold after a period of time.
That's what benzylkonium chloride is for.
And by "explicitly disclaiming them" you mean prominently displaying such a disclaimer on the product prior to purchase.
This is State law, but I think many States are the same this way.
Actually, it's mostly common law, which is somewhat different and way more universal. Some states have enactments, but the concept exists even in those without them.
What's the difference between being mercurial and being a git?
Dunno. I'm subversion myself, can't see the point in all these difficult-to-use distributed people.
Uhhh, I would have thought that scanning the original receipt was standard practice at every retail store (ok granted I've only worked at one). Why would a large retail store not do that to verify the receipt is valid?
Not sure about in the US, but here in the UK the legal situation is that they have to accept a return if the available evidence suggests it is more likely that you bought the item from them than not. A receipt is an easy way of achieving the required evidence, but other ways are generally considered acceptable: showing a credit card transaction from the store for the correct amount (at least for large value items) is generally allowed. Also showing that a product is only available through one retailer (as in own-brand products) is usually accepted, too.
Stores may demand a receipt, but they also know that if they don't refund you can sue them, and are quite likely to win, at which point they end up paying your legal costs (which are likely to be non-trivial in many cases). They fold easily once you start threatening them.
As I understand it, legally the onus of repairing a defective item falls on the manufacturer, not on the store selling the item.
This is not true. The stores want you to think they don't have to, but legally they do have to take returns of defective items. See "warranty of merchantability". Somebody from Massachusetts has already posted about their protection -- it applies just about everywhere else (at least in Common Law jursidictions) too; the only difference is that elsewhere they can stop you using it if they tell you they intend to before you make your purchase.
So, yes, they have to take returns of defective items. In practice, because they don't as a rule pay enough to get staff who are able to tell the difference between a defective item and a non-defective one, this means they must accept all returns.
Sure, but *only* if it is defective when sold or you were clearly misled in the purchase. That's a pretty tiny subset of the returns made to places like Best Buy.
Perhaps. But it *is* true in the case we're discussing, at least according to the summary.
Actually, stores aren't required to take returns - if an item is defective it's the manufacturer's responsibility to honor the warranty
You can return defective items to the store even if they were sold without a warranty, unless the vendor made you aware of terms prior to your purchase that specifically prevent this. It's called an implied warranty of merchantability, and they exist in (AFAIK) all common law jursidictions. If they want to exclude the warranty from the sale, they have to draw your attention to this fact (if you sign a printed contract, it must be written in a different font or in block capitals; if there is no written contract they have to inform you in some other equivalent way). In some jurisdictions, it may not be legally possible to exclude such a warranty from a consumer contract (e.g. Massachusetts).
Best Buy are skating on thin ice here. They're just asking to be sued for breach of contract, and my guess is it won't be long before somebody does it.
Is there an SOX requirement here - is this a breach by the hosting company?
Sounds like he's in Canada, so SOX doesn't apply.
You did the "right" thing by writing a letter - email is not legal (in this sense).
I would continue the discussion with the paper documentation you've already started.
While I would say that a letter is the best thing to do, the suggestion that email doesn't have the same legal force is not necessarily true. Phone them and ask if they accept service of legal documents by email -- if they say yes, then it probably does (depending on your exact jursidiction, YMMV).
Do you have encrypted disks that only you know the passphrase for? How do you enter the passphrase? If the answer to these isn't "yes" and "directly on console", your hosting company has access, or can get it if they want it:
If the answer to the first question is no, then they can simply boot with init=/bin/sh and change your root password.
If the answer to the second question isn't "directly on the console" they can insert an interception and grab your passphrase next time you reboot.
No computer is secure unless it is somewhere only people you trust can access it.
Article title sounds like one of his games.
Nope, you couldn't. Because behind the scenes Megaupload used content deduplication: multiple users who uploaded the same content would get different URLs, but it was stored in a common store.
Not only was this needed for efficiency, it was also needed to implement Megaupload's fake-takedown system: it would allow a content provider to take down single URLs pointing to a file, but the file itself never went away and any OTHER URL pointing to that file would still work.
Erm -- the behaviour would be identical if deduplication were not used. Efficiency is the only reason it was necessary. And I think your use of the phrase "fake-takedown system" implies a value judgement that isn't entirely justified.
They couldn't get away with confiscating the customers' property without due process, though. Sure, the shop might remain closed, but all you as a customer would have to do to get your property back would be turn up at the investigation HQ, provide proof of ID and ownership of the contents of a particular box, and fill in forms to demand its return. Either they'd have it within the week, or you wouldn't be able to move for the circling vultures^Rcivil rights lawyers.
Either you're trolling, or *really* stupid. It doesn't happen on Android unless somebody has specifically configured it to do so. You can configure any phone with an email app to do this, so your complaint must apply to *all* phones. It happens that on iPhones, Apple make this configuration. On Android, most device manufacturers don't. Some stupid third party suppliers do, however, but this is, by your reasoning, the phone OS's fault?
I'm officially "done" with your idiocy.
From the article you linked:
In relation to the first and second "minimum" sentences described:
In relation to the third "minimum" sentence described:
I dunno, mine seems pretty good at making up random rules and punishing me for not following them... it's half way there.
(also: Mao is a non-competitive game; there are no winners or losers, only people with few or many cards.)
Another point of relevancy to the story is in that particular game white was down by more than 5.5 points of material with no significant positional advantage in return but only a checkmate 7 moves in the future. I don't know if the computer in the article would have chalked that up as a loss for white and moved on by its criteria.
No. Rybka's scores for this game stay in the range {-1.17,3.75} until the last few moves, so it will have analysed it, and presumably decided that the entire branch it sits in is a mistake for black.
Yes, perhaps, but on the other hand as these programs *are* opensource, there is nothing wrong with their use in the manner described in the article. I hope we can agree that the result produced is interesting regardless of whether we consider the ethics of the researcher to be up to our standards?
Now, if it were up to the ISP's discretion as to what they want to save (Hello the bullshit that will be July 1st) or if the government subsidized a load of their costs, I can see ISPs going for it
You're describing basically the situation as it is now. Most of the UK's ISPs adhere to a voluntary code of conduct where they keep logs of web requests for 3 days and email "traffic information" for 3 months, and will reveal it with a court order. They do this because the government offered to pay their reasonable expenses in implementing the system. If the government were offering to pay for this extension of the monitoring, then the ISPs would mostly be quite happy with it. But something tells me that in today's "austerity" climate, they are not going to be paying out on even the same scale they did last time, never mind the fact that what they're asking for this time is likely to be 10 times as expensive.
If his requests were ignored it was because he had no right to them under existing law. He would have been held due to making war as part of Al Qaeda regardless of his citizenship, much as non-German nationals fighting for the German army would have been held unless there was some special mitigating circumstance.
Yes, perhaps. Except that there is no evidence that some of these people ever had anything to do with al Qaeda. These were just innocent men who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or at least that's what all the evidence that has been presented appears to make them.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/mar/14/terrorism.afghanistan
The SR-71 is not a stealth aircraft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird#Stealth_and_threat_avoidance
It was an early, not entirely succesfull, attempt at one. It does have a radar cross section significantly smaller than its actual size, which I think qualifies it for the title, even if other more recent designs are much better at it.
Most people who need to worry about a resume/CV are bright enough to realize they shouldn't be cracking/hacking into other's people's networks & computers.
ISTR a case not too long ago where somebody was prosecuted succsessfully for breaking into somebody's wifi -- an open network which the "offender"s smartphone had automatically connected to. A 2 year minimum for that would be absurd. Thankfully, I think the OP misinterpreted the proposed law, which rather than establishing a minimum is intended to make sure all the member countries' maximums are high enough.
There's amendments with lower numbers they ignore all the time.
Why should the 10th be any different?
The actual problem, as generally seen on Slashdot, is that many people fail to understand how they get applied in practice as opposed to their actually being ignored. Prisoners of War, for example, have generally never been subject to Habeas corpus - a subject of perpetual confusion on Slashdot. German and Italian POWs in the UK, US, and Canada didn't have the right to Habeas Corpus in WW2, Al Qaeda members taken prisoner originally didn't either. (Perhaps they now wish Bin Laden hadn't declared War on the US. Of course it took 9/11 for the US to reply in kind, legally.)
Last I saw, the US and the UK are not at war, yet at least one of those gitmo prisoners whose Habeas Corpus requests were ignored was a British citizen.
Silly categorical minimum sentences are pretty much an alien concept here.
That depends where "here" is. In the UK, we have seen all kinds of minimum sentences for possession of various prohibited items over the years, not to mention the policy of compulsory life sentences for murder.
No, we don't. Only the "life sentences" are mandatory; the others are merely recommendations that the judge can override if he believes they are unjust in the particular case before him. And as "life sentence" doesn't actually mean imprisonment for life (offenders become eligible for early release after a tariff period set by the judge, which the judge is able to set as basically anything he wants to), that's probably an irrelevance and just a procedural matter rather than setting an actual minimum punishment for the offender.
Id expect cases like that would be handled by extrajudicial measures either before or after charges - Police or Crown warnings/Extrajudicial sanctions/referral to programs.
Yes, you would. But there are circumstances that mean that it might not happen that way. In the UK at least:
- Police warnings. If the owner of the laptop in the GP's story above objects to the use of an (entirely unofficial) warning, he can force the police to either use a caution or charge the "offender".
- Caution. Can only be issued if the offender admits that what he did constitutes an offence. If there is dispute as to whether his actions were legal (e.g. "leaving the system open constitutes an invitation to use") he cannot accept a caution, and the case must go to court.
Other than these, the police have no power to do anything other than pass the case to the CPS for prosecution. No provision for "extrajudicial sanctions" exists. Referral to programs requires a prosecution, which brings the case within the scope of the minimum sentence.