The parts of the nation of Iraq that are still shooting at us, and vice versa, don't seem to be allies. Maybe you've got some New Iraq/Old Iraq issues?
If you look at his wording I think you'll see it saying that free speech was a right on Facebook, just that the PC culture of censorship we see in this example is why first amendment rights, among many others, are being taken away by popular demand. Hate-speech, flag burning, etc.
Eggplant62: Political Correctness (PC) and the erosion of First Amendment rights as a result.
He's not saying that the First Amendment is being violated here, but that a PC society supports weakening the free speech rights.
That's what I got out of it at any rate.:)
It is true though. Maybe not in a the-sky-is-falling sense, but the whiners who get people kicked sites for their views (this Facebook issue, the recent LiveJournal issues, etc) are going to go do it again. Likely advocating for less legal freedom of speech. To them, stopping people from hurting feelings is a win. Not enabling open discussion, not airing unpleasant facts.
We don't teach people to take criticism, to endure some verbal cruelty. There's always a helicopter parent threatening to sue unless their child grows up in a properly censored world, with the same size trophy as everyone else. One of the comments in a "Karl Rove had mooning students arrested" thread said "If I were there with my kids I'd have charged them with sexual indecency, etc, etc".
When we're killing thousands daily in two "not wars" and are about to start another "more decisive" one, I think it's reasonable that debate could get a bit heated. Were the only issues in life silly Hollywood crap, maybe, but when people live and die in the world, events and words need be heated.
Censorship is censorship, those who desire it are a special people.
I'mn bashing Microsoft for their gotchas in their supposedly open source licenses because, as I've said, they have a solid history of trying to screw over everyone else to increase their markets. MS wishes nobody used Linux, that's why they helped fund SCO and have recently been throwing around unspecified threats of hundreds of patents. Business as usual. Everything from them has been a poison pill.
And no, it won't get you modded as a troll, but it will get you scoffed at. The Microsoft Limited License (of which their touted Permissive Licenses has a form) limits all use of the software to the Windows platform. To build a better ecosystem around the code. Their Shared Source license for the CLI is "no commercial use".
Not very free. Maybe you should concentrate on the magnitude of the restrictions, not just the number.
As in, if I had a car in my basement? Or if I had a school-girl in my car? How about an electric car?
Besides, I had to use a wildly absurd analogy. I was going to say "Yeah, well what if I started a company then demanded to search you while you were in it, claiming corporate policy and vague fearmongering, would you just stand there and take it like a bitch!? Well, would you?" and then realized that yes, they would. I knew I'd have to make a pretty bizarre analogy, probably involving "think of the chilluns" before the answer would change.
So, you, a Peruvian Catholic priest, a Boy Scout Leader, The ex head of the IRA, and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen (circa 1998 - still underage) were all in a gas-electric hybrid car, going west at sixty miles per hour. You run out of good music and decide to stop at a Circuit City to buy some CDs when...
Yeah, people still think you need special permission to use software.
The whole Microsoft WGA thread I mentioned, and Quake3 Auth server outages before it, impressed on me the problems of buying any product with any kind of self termination, especially remotely. But even time-locked software. If I ever needed it, I may want it twenty years from now nested into three emulators, on a machine without USB ports for a dongle and long after a manufacturer has shut down the authentication site. If I can't hope to do that to get my data, I just can't use it. Not to mention that MS even tries to forbid running their software under an emulator.
And as I see it, the crux of it is that no matter how ridiculous a rule, how unexplained, or how provably useless it is, someone like you comes in to tell everyone to just take it like a man.
Nobody with a serious clue actually thinks this issue is undecided, anywhere in the USA. Seriously. Refusal to submit to a search, in and of itself, it not grounds for suspicion. Also, guards aren't police, and corporate policies aren't laws.
There are multiple sites about retail loss prevention and how to find/stop shoplifters. They all talk about witnessing the actual taking and concealing. This obviously isn't met by a security guard who was checking receipts.
The store can ask for anything. They could ask to strip-search you. But trying to force anything, or detain you, would be as illegal as if you did the same while making a botched citizens arrest.
It doesn't take being an genius to be pissed off wasting time for someone else's security theater. But it does take sheeple to bleat at someone else to get back in line.
But they don't support open source. Not at all. They let some people see their source, but not under a license that would actually let it be used. And not anything critical that the Wine group would want to see, for instance. Or anyone trying to be compatible with Office...
Microsoft is trying to give the impression of these things, but they carefully poison it enough that it can't actually be used.
Almost as if they were attacked for open monopolistic actions and switched to back-handed efforts like driving linux and open source away with their patent threats, poisonous open source licenses, etc.
My arrogance? At identifying the source of a problem before rushing to fix it? I don't advocate not helping the user, but it's ridiculous to expect these ISPs to suddenly be in the business of releasing software patches for a variety of machines. Especially when the offender is a software company *much* better suited to deal with these things. Microsoft could have made a simple tweak to Vista via auto-update. They know about the issue.
Then there's your inanity in suggesting that the ISP provide the patch. How exactly, Einstein? Over the internet the customer can't reach? Most ISPs don't send out CDs anymore, and even if they did would they have to keep sending out new ones?
This is like complaining to the Highways Dept. because your sat-nav is busted. Even when they hear you and wish to help (http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles /news/news.html?in_article_id=436983&in_page_id=17 70) all they can do is post signs that you won't see because you're busy looking at the nav system. Any patches this ISP rolls out to customers will need to be performed every time they reinstall their system, buy a new comp, etc. Microsoft is the only party here (like the sat-nav companies) who can make the fix effectively. Everyone else is limited to duct-tape fixes.
As for the "blame" of the ISP, they were running RFC compliant servers. It does turn out that there *is* a fairly simply fix, this time. That's why they're making it. But what about next time when there isn't an easy fix? Never mind the tech support costs for this and countless other ISPs, the hassle for Microsoft's customers.
Read that memo. Really.
btw: The correct way to write a web page is to make it standards compliant, then make any fancy changes in javascript after detecting the browser. Your pages do view properly in Lynx, right?
Microsoft had the same choice everyone else did, you mean? To adopt ODF in their next version of Office?
And you call that "no choice" why? Because you're used to them doing blatantly illegal things such as faking evidence in trials to protect that monopoly. That document may be a decade old, but Microsoft's practices ala funding SCO, alleging hundreds of misused patents, etc, prove that it's business as usual.
Besides, if anyone, business or person, is allowed to profit from the results of crime it will only breed more crime. We need to level the field for honest businesses, ones who are forced out of the market by crooks who undercut them.
1) You own the software. 2) Preventing you from accessing goods you own is illegal. 3) Forcing someone to sign a contract is duress and invalidates it. 4) By having to "agree" to get what is yours (#2), it is duress.
Also, EULAs are post-sale. Even if they told you there was a EULA in there you'd need to read it for an hour or two to make any sort of informed decision. Contracts require both parties to deal in good faith. Handing someone a contract you know they can't and won't read makes it hard to claim you had a reasonable expectation of them following it.
There's a good post on Microsoft's own forums about it:
It starts part-way down that page with a question for CatMagyck, Dan and Carey (MVPs) give him a big long story about how EULAs are valid, but then shut up when actually challenged.
However, if you buy a ticket before being informed of the searching requirement, it's a post-sale restriction.
They could still try to throw you out for not complying, but they already sold you a license to be there and didn't mention restrictions, so it'd be hard to make it stick.
There's a funny meme going around, about how if you and I contract for $20 to do something, how if you decide to bail at any time your liability is never over $20. In other words, they act like simply refunding the ticket is going to make this better, let alone completely.
By the time I've taken time off work, driven to the theater, eaten mall food and stood in line, my $9 ticket has cost me $50 in opportunity costs. The theater giving me the $9 back doesn't help me much at all, and certainly isn't a valid resolution of the contract. So, refund or not, their right to kick you out is severely impaired by taking your money.
So concert searches and such probably aren't really enforceable, unless they want to search you *before* you buy. It's legal to make people strip naked and beg for the right to buy, but once they've bought it's a contract like everything else.
EULAs, store policies, etc. None of it has any weight.
If it's not in the criminal code or coming out of a cop's mouth, you're essentially free to ignore it.
I wish that trying to pass off something as a legal contract when you understand that it's not valid was a crime. Many times stores have outright lied to me about return rights, EULAs, store policies, etc.
Do you want untrained mall guards to be jumping people right and left for looking guilty, or do you want to call in the trained professionals who theoretically went to school for this?
Mall guards with arresting power sure are a violation of civil liberties.
I've performed my own cost-benefit analysis and you're going to need to hand me your wallet. Trust me, I've done the figures.
The manager in this case obviously didn't think someone had walked out with a TV, he knew clearly that the customer had merely refused to have his receipt checked. He confirmed this by repeating the guard's request to see it. If he'd thought someone *had* been stolen he'd have called the police from inside the store.
There is: he refused to show a receipt. You may not like it, but pick 100 guys off the street and a majority of them will consider it "reasonable" for the merchant in that situation to suspect shoplifting.
And that's why the police recommend that we don't perform citizen's arrest. Those 100 mythical guys would be behind bars.
Hell, it's reasonable for them to *suspect* everyone of shoplifting. Hence the cameras. But to detain you as if you are, without proof? No.
And as much as this annoys the just-follow-orders sheeple, refusing to follow store policies isn't a crime.
They can detain you. In much the same way as you could watch someone steal a car or kidnap a baby and perform a citizen's arrest. It's a long a troublesome process, where you're liable for assault and unlawful detention charges if you do it wrong. Same as the police, but without the Police's immunity to charges.
But, that doesn't imply they can stop you for failing to show a receipt. That's not a crime.
Who cares? If a cop arrests anyone on a trumped up charge he's a threat to society, even if the guy was a prick, which it doesn't appear that he was.
Police should be used to hearing legal arguments.
If they aren't, they're worse than the criminals, who have guns but don't have the legal right to beat, detain, and shoot you.
Personally, I'd have sent the cop off to two weeks of remedial 'law for cops' school. Until he made up the false obstructing justice charge, at that point he's the one obstructing justice and should be jailed. Corruption is just slightly under treason!
I'd feel trapped and detained if someone locked me in a store... Like I'd feel trapped and detained by handcuffs.
If I thought they were placed they legally, by a cop, I'd go quietly. If it were an employee, I'd probably pick something up and make my own door through the nearest window, and any employees that got in my way.
Here's a thought experiment for a store. If I have a school girl in my home, could I detain her as long as I didn't use *directly* violent means? Like, trick her into the basement and lock her there, as long as I didn't hit her? Would it be legal if I saw her "shoplift" an apply from my fridge?
I find it amusing that stores think that blocking someone's legal exit isn't using force.
I tried that with a Girl Scout who was selling cookies. I reasoned that she was on my land (despite the no-tresspassing sign!) so I just boarded up the gate and left her there. You wouldn't believe it, but the police came and took her away. Charged me(!) with a dozen crimes.
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The parts of the nation of Iraq that are still shooting at us, and vice versa, don't seem to be allies. Maybe you've got some New Iraq/Old Iraq issues?
We certainly weren't Saddam's ally...
You're flat-out delusional.
The USA is a nation. Iraq is a nation. Saddam was the leader. The USA invaded and killed him.
How can you think we aren't at war?
What about if by driving more slowly next time, you could avoid having to give us such contrived thought problems?
Thought I would agree that if many people get caught by the red light, we should, for obvious reasons, increase the length of the yellow.
We may not be, but the poor people we're shooting at are.
They released an old game ($5 "value"?) full of ads. That's cool I guess. But then they act like they cured AIDS and gave away the cure. Feh.
If "eyeballs" have value, how can something be free when you intend to force me to view ads to use it?
If you look at his wording I think you'll see it saying that free speech was a right on Facebook, just that the PC culture of censorship we see in this example is why first amendment rights, among many others, are being taken away by popular demand. Hate-speech, flag burning, etc.
:)
Eggplant62: Political Correctness (PC) and the erosion of First Amendment rights as a result.
He's not saying that the First Amendment is being violated here, but that a PC society supports weakening the free speech rights.
That's what I got out of it at any rate.
It is true though. Maybe not in a the-sky-is-falling sense, but the whiners who get people kicked sites for their views (this Facebook issue, the recent LiveJournal issues, etc) are going to go do it again. Likely advocating for less legal freedom of speech. To them, stopping people from hurting feelings is a win. Not enabling open discussion, not airing unpleasant facts.
We don't teach people to take criticism, to endure some verbal cruelty. There's always a helicopter parent threatening to sue unless their child grows up in a properly censored world, with the same size trophy as everyone else. One of the comments in a "Karl Rove had mooning students arrested" thread said "If I were there with my kids I'd have charged them with sexual indecency, etc, etc".
When we're killing thousands daily in two "not wars" and are about to start another "more decisive" one, I think it's reasonable that debate could get a bit heated. Were the only issues in life silly Hollywood crap, maybe, but when people live and die in the world, events and words need be heated.
Censorship is censorship, those who desire it are a special people.
I'mn bashing Microsoft for their gotchas in their supposedly open source licenses because, as I've said, they have a solid history of trying to screw over everyone else to increase their markets. MS wishes nobody used Linux, that's why they helped fund SCO and have recently been throwing around unspecified threats of hundreds of patents. Business as usual. Everything from them has been a poison pill.
And no, it won't get you modded as a troll, but it will get you scoffed at. The Microsoft Limited License (of which their touted Permissive Licenses has a form) limits all use of the software to the Windows platform. To build a better ecosystem around the code. Their Shared Source license for the CLI is "no commercial use".
Not very free. Maybe you should concentrate on the magnitude of the restrictions, not just the number.
As in, if I had a car in my basement? Or if I had a school-girl in my car? How about an electric car?
Besides, I had to use a wildly absurd analogy. I was going to say "Yeah, well what if I started a company then demanded to search you while you were in it, claiming corporate policy and vague fearmongering, would you just stand there and take it like a bitch!? Well, would you?" and then realized that yes, they would. I knew I'd have to make a pretty bizarre analogy, probably involving "think of the chilluns" before the answer would change.
So, you, a Peruvian Catholic priest, a Boy Scout Leader, The ex head of the IRA, and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen (circa 1998 - still underage) were all in a gas-electric hybrid car, going west at sixty miles per hour. You run out of good music and decide to stop at a Circuit City to buy some CDs when...
Yeah, people still think you need special permission to use software.
The whole Microsoft WGA thread I mentioned, and Quake3 Auth server outages before it, impressed on me the problems of buying any product with any kind of self termination, especially remotely. But even time-locked software. If I ever needed it, I may want it twenty years from now nested into three emulators, on a machine without USB ports for a dongle and long after a manufacturer has shut down the authentication site. If I can't hope to do that to get my data, I just can't use it. Not to mention that MS even tries to forbid running their software under an emulator.
And as I see it, the crux of it is that no matter how ridiculous a rule, how unexplained, or how provably useless it is, someone like you comes in to tell everyone to just take it like a man.
Nobody with a serious clue actually thinks this issue is undecided, anywhere in the USA. Seriously. Refusal to submit to a search, in and of itself, it not grounds for suspicion. Also, guards aren't police, and corporate policies aren't laws.
There are multiple sites about retail loss prevention and how to find/stop shoplifters. They all talk about witnessing the actual taking and concealing. This obviously isn't met by a security guard who was checking receipts.
The store can ask for anything. They could ask to strip-search you. But trying to force anything, or detain you, would be as illegal as if you did the same while making a botched citizens arrest.
It doesn't take being an genius to be pissed off wasting time for someone else's security theater. But it does take sheeple to bleat at someone else to get back in line.
But they don't support open source. Not at all. They let some people see their source, but not under a license that would actually let it be used. And not anything critical that the Wine group would want to see, for instance. Or anyone trying to be compatible with Office...
Microsoft is trying to give the impression of these things, but they carefully poison it enough that it can't actually be used.
Almost as if they were attacked for open monopolistic actions and switched to back-handed efforts like driving linux and open source away with their patent threats, poisonous open source licenses, etc.
My arrogance? At identifying the source of a problem before rushing to fix it? I don't advocate not helping the user, but it's ridiculous to expect these ISPs to suddenly be in the business of releasing software patches for a variety of machines. Especially when the offender is a software company *much* better suited to deal with these things. Microsoft could have made a simple tweak to Vista via auto-update. They know about the issue.
s /news/news.html?in_article_id=436983&in_page_id=17 70) all they can do is post signs that you won't see because you're busy looking at the nav system. Any patches this ISP rolls out to customers will need to be performed every time they reinstall their system, buy a new comp, etc. Microsoft is the only party here (like the sat-nav companies) who can make the fix effectively. Everyone else is limited to duct-tape fixes.
Then there's your inanity in suggesting that the ISP provide the patch. How exactly, Einstein? Over the internet the customer can't reach? Most ISPs don't send out CDs anymore, and even if they did would they have to keep sending out new ones?
This is like complaining to the Highways Dept. because your sat-nav is busted. Even when they hear you and wish to help (http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/article
As for the "blame" of the ISP, they were running RFC compliant servers. It does turn out that there *is* a fairly simply fix, this time. That's why they're making it. But what about next time when there isn't an easy fix? Never mind the tech support costs for this and countless other ISPs, the hassle for Microsoft's customers.
Read that memo. Really.
btw: The correct way to write a web page is to make it standards compliant, then make any fancy changes in javascript after detecting the browser. Your pages do view properly in Lynx, right?
Microsoft had the same choice everyone else did, you mean? To adopt ODF in their next version of Office?
And you call that "no choice" why? Because you're used to them doing blatantly illegal things such as faking evidence in trials to protect that monopoly. That document may be a decade old, but Microsoft's practices ala funding SCO, alleging hundreds of misused patents, etc, prove that it's business as usual.
Besides, if anyone, business or person, is allowed to profit from the results of crime it will only breed more crime. We need to level the field for honest businesses, ones who are forced out of the market by crooks who undercut them.
Check this out: http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID= /20070829/LOCAL/708290511
Cop goes joy-riding with three girls in the car, gets in an accident, tells them to flee the scene, lies to superiors, contradicts witnesses, etc.
He *may* get fired.
If you did half of that you'd still be in prison in ten years.
With EULAs clicking signifies nothing.
1) You own the software.
2) Preventing you from accessing goods you own is illegal.
3) Forcing someone to sign a contract is duress and invalidates it.
4) By having to "agree" to get what is yours (#2), it is duress.
Also, EULAs are post-sale. Even if they told you there was a EULA in there you'd need to read it for an hour or two to make any sort of informed decision. Contracts require both parties to deal in good faith. Handing someone a contract you know they can't and won't read makes it hard to claim you had a reasonable expectation of them following it.
There's a good post on Microsoft's own forums about it:
It starts part-way down that page with a question for CatMagyck, Dan and Carey (MVPs) give him a big long story about how EULAs are valid, but then shut up when actually challenged.
The thread is from the WGA fiasco last week.
However, if you buy a ticket before being informed of the searching requirement, it's a post-sale restriction.
They could still try to throw you out for not complying, but they already sold you a license to be there and didn't mention restrictions, so it'd be hard to make it stick.
There's a funny meme going around, about how if you and I contract for $20 to do something, how if you decide to bail at any time your liability is never over $20. In other words, they act like simply refunding the ticket is going to make this better, let alone completely.
By the time I've taken time off work, driven to the theater, eaten mall food and stood in line, my $9 ticket has cost me $50 in opportunity costs. The theater giving me the $9 back doesn't help me much at all, and certainly isn't a valid resolution of the contract. So, refund or not, their right to kick you out is severely impaired by taking your money.
So concert searches and such probably aren't really enforceable, unless they want to search you *before* you buy. It's legal to make people strip naked and beg for the right to buy, but once they've bought it's a contract like everything else.
Have you considered just shutting up?
At least Erris' post said something, your hundreds of AC posts just clutter the thread.
People can ignore Twitter on their own, thank you very much, mom.
EULAs, store policies, etc. None of it has any weight.
If it's not in the criminal code or coming out of a cop's mouth, you're essentially free to ignore it.
I wish that trying to pass off something as a legal contract when you understand that it's not valid was a crime. Many times stores have outright lied to me about return rights, EULAs, store policies, etc.
Why do you hate freedom?
Do you want untrained mall guards to be jumping people right and left for looking guilty, or do you want to call in the trained professionals who theoretically went to school for this?
Mall guards with arresting power sure are a violation of civil liberties.
I've performed my own cost-benefit analysis and you're going to need to hand me your wallet. Trust me, I've done the figures.
The manager in this case obviously didn't think someone had walked out with a TV, he knew clearly that the customer had merely refused to have his receipt checked. He confirmed this by repeating the guard's request to see it. If he'd thought someone *had* been stolen he'd have called the police from inside the store.
There is: he refused to show a receipt. You may not like it, but pick 100 guys off the street and a majority of them will consider it "reasonable" for the merchant in that situation to suspect shoplifting.
And that's why the police recommend that we don't perform citizen's arrest. Those 100 mythical guys would be behind bars.
Hell, it's reasonable for them to *suspect* everyone of shoplifting. Hence the cameras. But to detain you as if you are, without proof? No.
And as much as this annoys the just-follow-orders sheeple, refusing to follow store policies isn't a crime.
They can detain you. In much the same way as you could watch someone steal a car or kidnap a baby and perform a citizen's arrest. It's a long a troublesome process, where you're liable for assault and unlawful detention charges if you do it wrong. Same as the police, but without the Police's immunity to charges.
But, that doesn't imply they can stop you for failing to show a receipt. That's not a crime.
Who cares? If a cop arrests anyone on a trumped up charge he's a threat to society, even if the guy was a prick, which it doesn't appear that he was.
Police should be used to hearing legal arguments.
If they aren't, they're worse than the criminals, who have guns but don't have the legal right to beat, detain, and shoot you.
Personally, I'd have sent the cop off to two weeks of remedial 'law for cops' school. Until he made up the false obstructing justice charge, at that point he's the one obstructing justice and should be jailed. Corruption is just slightly under treason!
I'd feel trapped and detained if someone locked me in a store... Like I'd feel trapped and detained by handcuffs.
If I thought they were placed they legally, by a cop, I'd go quietly. If it were an employee, I'd probably pick something up and make my own door through the nearest window, and any employees that got in my way.
Here's a thought experiment for a store. If I have a school girl in my home, could I detain her as long as I didn't use *directly* violent means? Like, trick her into the basement and lock her there, as long as I didn't hit her? Would it be legal if I saw her "shoplift" an apply from my fridge?
I find it amusing that stores think that blocking someone's legal exit isn't using force.
:)
I tried that with a Girl Scout who was selling cookies. I reasoned that she was on my land (despite the no-tresspassing sign!) so I just boarded up the gate and left her there. You wouldn't believe it, but the police came and took her away. Charged me(!) with a dozen crimes.
Seriously, try that in Texas.