*Addiction* is the operative word here. Unhealthy behavior, as far as 20-30 hours of television viewing, may not be the best idea, but it is not necessarily due to an addiction. Sure, many of those television viewers may in fact suffer from television addiction, but that can only be found by doing research.
The amount of time spent doing an activity, while important in its own right, exists independently from studies in addiction. Three questions to keep in mind: 1. Do you do activity X to an excess (with whatever definition of excess applies to that activity)? 2. Could you stop doing activity X if you wanted to? 3. Has doing activity X prevented you from fulfilling major obligations, such as job, family, etc.
It's one thing when you understand that the behavior is actually "peeking" and frowned upon by the schools. It's another thing entirely if you acted before knowing the schools were upset.
Many schools have a history of underutilizing its technology infrastructure. This could very easily be interpreted as an "undocumented feature" rather than a "hack" by the prospective students.
Just as easily as thinking "oooh, this is naughty, but I want to know sooner," the students could have thought to themselves "wow, this is neat -- I wonder why the schools don't tell more people about this feature."
With how long it takes to implement changes, the prospective students could just have thought the school was taking their time rolling it out.
When people enter new realms, like the online service described by this story, who exactly can say what is right and wrong when there is *NO* set boundaries of acceptable behavior?
Again, for those students who looked before being notified about this being bad behavior, how can the students be punished when nobody has ever said what they are doing is wrong?
...or did the offer of mere proximity to a living, breathing seventeen-year-old girl cause the robot operators to make the robots lose?
"Maybe if I throw the match in her favor, she'll actually look at me. Or maybe she'll even *talk* to me. *Gasp*, dare I dream she'll use my name in a *sentence?!*"
Since the California Shield Law applies only for Journalist, maybe the definition of journalist would be helpful.
From the State Constitution of California, Article 1, Section 2, paragraph B:
A publisher, editor, reporter, or other person connected with
or employed upon a newspaper, magazine, or other periodical
publication, or by a press association or wire service, or any person
who has been so connected or employed, shall not be adjudged in
contempt by a judicial, legislative, or administrative body, or any
other body having the power to issue subpoenas, for refusing to
disclose the source of any information procured while so connected or
employed for publication in a newspaper, magazine or other
periodical publication, or for refusing to disclose any unpublished
information obtained or prepared in gathering, receiving or
processing of information for communication to the public.
Nor shall a radio or television news reporter or other person
connected with or employed by a radio or television station, or any
person who has been so connected or employed, be so adjudged in
contempt for refusing to disclose the source of any information
procured while so connected or employed for news or news commentary
purposes on radio or television, or for refusing to disclose any
unpublished information obtained or prepared in gathering, receiving
or processing of information for communication to the public.
As used in this subdivision, "unpublished information" includes
information not disseminated to the public by the person from whom
disclosure is sought, whether or not related information has been
disseminated and includes, but is not limited to, all notes,
outtakes, photographs, tapes or other data of whatever sort not
itself disseminated to the public through a medium of communication,
whether or not published information based upon or related to such
material has been disseminated.
I supply this information in the hope that everyone can make an educated decision when forming their opinions. (As such, I'll be keeping my opinion to myself, with regard to Apple and it's decisions.)
I think it has a lot to do with the fact PC manufacturers have, in many ways, hit a ceiling with regard to technological innovation. First CD-ROMs, sound cards, high-bit color video cards. Processor speeds were growing at leaps and bounds. Then eventually that process slowed, but over this time we gained CD-R/RW, affordable 10/100 networking, Internet access, high-powered graphics with GPUs, and eventually wireless networking and affordable DVD-R/RW.
The manufacturers are finding that each new speed enhancement (and the rare innovation) are bringing customers out to buy less and less often. Therefore, those who create these products have to shift their focus to something other than "horsepower and features." Things like reliability, customer support, attractive design, and excellent feature integration--this is the way of the future, if hardware manufacturers wish to survive.
Oddly enough, this "way of the future" is how Apple has always operated (forgiving the brief period while Steve Jobs was away and everything turned horrible and beige).
Many companies understand this philosophy. I could get a Ford Mustang and get every aftermarket option, as far as the engine and interior options (sound system, navigation, etc.) are concerned. At a feature level, this car could be the fastest and "best" car on the road. But it would lack the sleekness and seamless integration of the sound system, and navigation that would be found with a top of the line BMW M6 (which, I believe, integrates Bluetooth).
Sometimes, bigger, faster, and more aren't the best.
What's SQL? 'SQL' stands for "Structured Query Language," which is a database query labguage.
What's TCP? 'TCP' stands for "Transmission Control Protocol," a connection-oriented, reliable delivery byte-stream transport layer communication protocol. TCP is the intermediate layer between the Internet Protocol (IP) below it, and an application above it.
To be completely fair, from what I can tell "bolded" is not really a word. In any usage of the term bold, adding the 'ed' suffix will not produce the past tense. In the case of the word 'bold,' you should use the term 'bold-faced', or simply 'bold' by itself without a suffix.;) All of this is from Merriam Webster, which has no listed past tense of the word bold, aside from "bold-faced."
Uhhh... *right*. That is exactly my point. I compose a number of documents (Excel, Word, etc.) for work and school, and they are kept in folders labeled as such.
But the bulk of my documents are things like music, photos, and email, all of which have programs which handle organizing them just fine.
My question was not whether this could be useful to *anyone*, my question was how many users out there have that many random documents (containing 'text', mind you) that would take advantage of this feature, and is this number of users a large enough group to require such focus placed on a new feature? Are you one of those people? What kind of searches would you perform? (I really want to know, because I could never think of needing such a feature myself.)
No, I don't want less *frequent* innovation... what I want is *more* innovation in general.
Keeping a break-neck pace with innovation and releasing things that are significant (and possibly revolutionary) every few (3-5) years is awesome.
Adding a few widgets, and making a few (mostly) minor tweaks and charging $129 every two years is crappy. I could possibly see paying $129 for a combination of the features of 10.2 *and* 10.3 at *once*, but not $248 for the combination of the features separately.
And I don't view my post as flamebait. I am an Apple fan. I show my brand loyalty with my purchases (17" PB, 40GB iPod, service plans, and accessories for both, not to mention the OS upgrades.) I am a serious Apple customer trying to understand what real value we're getting for $130 every two years.
I'm not opposed to innovation or upgrades, but I'd like to see something for my money.
Didn't I *just* upgrade to 10.3? Now we're into a full year of using it, and there's YET ANOTHER paid upgrade to the OS?! And we're not even talking about a leap, like Microsoft had from 95 to 98 or even 98 to 2000. This just seems like minimal "add-ons" that they're charging full price for.
Also, is it just me, or does it look like the new Safari is only coming with the new OS? I switched back to Firebird on 10.3 because the current Safari is dog slow in comparison. I'm hoping Safari will be released to everyone, and not just to 10.4.
Can someone explain to me what the big deal with *search* is, these days? In all fairness, I don't have a mountain of documents I'm constantly trying to find stuff in. I have a ton of MP3s, which are kept track of quite nicely in iTunes. And I have a number of photos, which are kept track of quite nicely in iPhoto. Beyond that, I have a handful of documents, which keep basically organized within folders (Work, School, etc.). How many users are out there that dump *all* of their random documents in the "Documents" folder without ever making a subfolder to clean things up? How much of the userbase is really getting a benefit from all this hype about search, which Microsoft *and* Apple are gung-ho about?
Sadly, one of the best things that comes with 10.4 is the improved graphics-hardware integration which those of us with 17in PowerBooks will never be able to take advantage of (since, according to Apple, it can only be used by a handful of the most recently released top-of-the-line graphics cards, none of which is mine.)
I love Apple, and all, but I don't see anything that is worth the price of a full-OS just barely a year after paying for the last one. Making me pay the full price, a year after buying the last (on the DAY it came out, mind you, it's not like I waited a while), just so I can get a new version of the web browser and a few add-ons would really disappoint me. (Like with 10.3: Expose? It's nice... it's cool... I use it *maybe* once a week. Cmd-Tab and Cmd-Tilda works perfectly fine 99% of the time.)
As a comparison, while I like 10.3, I'm still not quite sure why I had to pay a full-OS price for it, compared to 10.2. Just like every other Apple fan, I'll probably empty my wallet for the newest OS, but it's disappointing me more and more each time when it turns out I'm paying for minor tweaks and add-ons.
>The system that India uses is very similar to the one used in >my district. It's customizable for every election, has a simple >interface, and is very tamper-proof. We don't need networked >voting machines when I've been using this kind of equipment >since I could vote.
The voting machines in my town are also perfectly fine, I fail to understand what the big deal is.
Here, in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, you face what looks like a 5'x4' white easel. Behind a thin, clear plastic covering is a large white printed out paper that displays all the options. Red LEDs blink through the white paper and appear next to each unvoted option. You simply press the blinking light next to the one you want. Your option turns solid red, and the other options for that particular vote turn off. To undo, either press the one you picked or press clear for that option (one or the other, my memory is rusty).
Each section is clearly labeled and easy to understand. Since the whole voting surface is just a 5'x'4' sheet of white paper, they can configure it however they want to accomodate as few or as many candidates and issues as they need. Also, they have room to include lengthy written explanations of what each "issue" is (instead of just listing: Issue 1 -- Yes or No).
To finalize your choices, you press a large green "VOTE" button below the white voting surface to the right. It's impossible to forget to pick a choice on something since the lights will continue to blink until you have picked an option. (You can of course finalize your vote with things unvoted if you choose.) You can also press the large red "RESET" button at the bottom left of the white voting surface if you want to clear everything and start over.
When you've finished, the overhead light turns off, and you leave. That's it. I imagine the system keeps an electronic log of all votes which is gathered at the end of the night. There are NO moving parts (other than the large RESET and VOTE buttons, which you have to press an inch into into their slots before they take effect), no visable interfaces, and no software to hack. (I'm sure there's a way to interface somewhere on the opposite side of the unit, but seeing as you go behind a curtain in the front to vote while people are watching, there's no way to "sneak" and try to figure it out.) Nothing is ever printed out, and the machine is perfectly silent, other than a loud bell to signal the start and finish of voting.
Our local/state government has figured out how to implement an electronic system without all this crap (one that allows voting on mutiple issues *and* multiple candidates per issue, unlike the one described for the Indian primary). With an obviously electronic system such as this, why are we wasting our time with voting machines that run Windows of any sort? Why are we allowing Diebold and other firms to complicate this issue?
"Fancier" is not always better. We can get perfectly good electronic voting without all the useless bells and whistles.
From Article, about getting info from PayPal: "I will hook you up with the Paypal people. They will help you get the information you're looking for.... In order to give you details about credit-card transactions, I have to see a court order. I suggest that you get one, if that's what you're looking for"
Seems like PayPal-to-PayPal transfers are fair game, seeing as they aren't "credit card transactions." With nothing but a fax, sounds like eBay/PayPal would also give up all your money transactions too -- provided they aren't done using a PayPal credit/debit card.
I guess no more money laundering and hiding funds in my PayPal account. =(
What is more worrisome is what this implies for *buyers*! If eBay can and will, at the drop of a fax, give a seller's sales transaction history for any reason, what prevents them supplying a buyer's purchase history?
All merchants give up a lot of privacy in order to business in any arena. None of this is surprising or scary.
However, what scares the hell out of me is the thought law enforcement officials could see I was the winning bidder on some blacklisted book, movie, object and request my bidding history from eBay.
The potential loss of privacy for buyers is what *everyone* should be screaming about.
What the hell happened to WinCE? I assume 'CE' stands for 'Consumer Electronics.' Wouldn't a cell phone be precisely that?
Does this new OS show that WinCE is too *bloated* or too *buggy* for cell phones?
There are way too many versions of Windows out there already. WinME, WinXP, Win2000, Windows for Terminal Servers, WinCE, and this new version. At least my toilet is still sacred. (Microsoft - don't even THINK about it!)
ICVerify (bought by CyberCash) is no longer an option, since CyberCash went out of business. Consequently, CyberCash's payment handling service is now done Verisign, who got into the whole payment handling business starting with their purchase of Signio.
Whatever the case, none of these services (ICVerify, CyberCash, Signio, or Verisign) do anything differently than what you have. =)
The problem with trying to 'squeeze' any money out of them stems from the nature of debt collection... Think a little further -- what happens if they go bankrupt? Well, first the lawyers get paid. Then, the SECURED creditors (those creditors they signed PERSONALLY for) are paid back preportional to the debt owed to each of them. Even if the web site owners were SECURED creditors (which I HIGHLY doubt), you would only get paid back wherever your debt falls on the list -- and you would get very little of that, I might add.
The difference here is the company hasn't filed yet, from what I understand, for bankruptcy protection.
What they are doing is making all of you their best offer. This is the same as you having a massive debt YOU can't pay, and offering the collection agency 3/4's of the amount, if they stop harrassing you.
In this case it seems like it isn't at all 3/4's of the amount, but it's probably the best they can do.
If you decide to take the money, they OF COURSE would demand you waive your rights to litigation over the matter, because (quite honestly), it would be stupid for anyone to offer money to people, only to leave themselves open for further litigation. If they are GIVING you money, they don't want to turn around and pay more for legal fees on TOP of it.
If you decide to litigate, I think you'll find yourself completely SCREWED in this matter. They will probably show up in court, explain they don't HAVE the money, and offered you as much as they could in an effort to stem bankruptcy.
If all of you join together and sue them, you'll probably just force their hand -- meaning, you'll probably get nothing; they'll file bankruptcy. Because, like I suspect, you are NOT 'SECURED' creditors at all, but mearly the run-of-the-mill debtors like we all are sometimes. And, you'll just have to wait in line behind everyone they DID sign personally for, like their ISP, hardware vendors, and even their EMPLOYEES.
My advice: Take what you are offered and hit the road. At least you'll get something, rather than legal fees for getting NOTHING.
Slashdot Mirror
*Addiction* is the operative word here. Unhealthy behavior, as far as 20-30 hours of television viewing, may not be the best idea, but it is not necessarily due to an addiction. Sure, many of those television viewers may in fact suffer from television addiction, but that can only be found by doing research.
The amount of time spent doing an activity, while important in its own right, exists independently from studies in addiction. Three questions to keep in mind: 1. Do you do activity X to an excess (with whatever definition of excess applies to that activity)? 2. Could you stop doing activity X if you wanted to? 3. Has doing activity X prevented you from fulfilling major obligations, such as job, family, etc.
It's one thing when you understand that the behavior is actually "peeking" and frowned upon by the schools. It's another thing entirely if you acted before knowing the schools were upset.
Many schools have a history of underutilizing its technology infrastructure. This could very easily be interpreted as an "undocumented feature" rather than a "hack" by the prospective students.
Just as easily as thinking "oooh, this is naughty, but I want to know sooner," the students could have thought to themselves "wow, this is neat -- I wonder why the schools don't tell more people about this feature."
With how long it takes to implement changes, the prospective students could just have thought the school was taking their time rolling it out.
When people enter new realms, like the online service described by this story, who exactly can say what is right and wrong when there is *NO* set boundaries of acceptable behavior?
Again, for those students who looked before being notified about this being bad behavior, how can the students be punished when nobody has ever said what they are doing is wrong?
...or did the offer of mere proximity to a living, breathing seventeen-year-old girl cause the robot operators to make the robots lose?
"Maybe if I throw the match in her favor, she'll actually look at me. Or maybe she'll even *talk* to me. *Gasp*, dare I dream she'll use my name in a *sentence?!*"
From the State Constitution of California, Article 1, Section 2, paragraph B:
A publisher, editor, reporter, or other person connected with or employed upon a newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication, or by a press association or wire service, or any person who has been so connected or employed, shall not be adjudged in contempt by a judicial, legislative, or administrative body, or any other body having the power to issue subpoenas, for refusing to disclose the source of any information procured while so connected or employed for publication in a newspaper, magazine or other periodical publication, or for refusing to disclose any unpublished information obtained or prepared in gathering, receiving or processing of information for communication to the public.
Nor shall a radio or television news reporter or other person connected with or employed by a radio or television station, or any person who has been so connected or employed, be so adjudged in contempt for refusing to disclose the source of any information procured while so connected or employed for news or news commentary purposes on radio or television, or for refusing to disclose any unpublished information obtained or prepared in gathering, receiving or processing of information for communication to the public.
As used in this subdivision, "unpublished information" includes information not disseminated to the public by the person from whom disclosure is sought, whether or not related information has been disseminated and includes, but is not limited to, all notes, outtakes, photographs, tapes or other data of whatever sort not itself disseminated to the public through a medium of communication, whether or not published information based upon or related to such material has been disseminated.
I supply this information in the hope that everyone can make an educated decision when forming their opinions. (As such, I'll be keeping my opinion to myself, with regard to Apple and it's decisions.)
I think it has a lot to do with the fact PC manufacturers have, in many ways, hit a ceiling with regard to technological innovation. First CD-ROMs, sound cards, high-bit color video cards. Processor speeds were growing at leaps and bounds. Then eventually that process slowed, but over this time we gained CD-R/RW, affordable 10/100 networking, Internet access, high-powered graphics with GPUs, and eventually wireless networking and affordable DVD-R/RW.
The manufacturers are finding that each new speed enhancement (and the rare innovation) are bringing customers out to buy less and less often. Therefore, those who create these products have to shift their focus to something other than "horsepower and features." Things like reliability, customer support, attractive design, and excellent feature integration--this is the way of the future, if hardware manufacturers wish to survive.
Oddly enough, this "way of the future" is how Apple has always operated (forgiving the brief period while Steve Jobs was away and everything turned horrible and beige).
Many companies understand this philosophy. I could get a Ford Mustang and get every aftermarket option, as far as the engine and interior options (sound system, navigation, etc.) are concerned. At a feature level, this car could be the fastest and "best" car on the road. But it would lack the sleekness and seamless integration of the sound system, and navigation that would be found with a top of the line BMW M6 (which, I believe, integrates Bluetooth).
Sometimes, bigger, faster, and more aren't the best.
;) You might as well go all the way:
What's SQL? 'SQL' stands for "Structured Query Language," which is a database query labguage.
What's TCP? 'TCP' stands for "Transmission Control Protocol," a connection-oriented, reliable delivery byte-stream transport layer communication protocol. TCP is the intermediate layer between the Internet Protocol (IP) below it, and an application above it.
Since this seems to reference something from "Google Suggest," maybe the link to that would be useful:
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
Since this seems to reference something from "Google Suggest," maybe the link to that would be useful:
n </ li>
<li>http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=e
Unless I missed something, clocks cover more than just the 4 hour window between 2am and 6am. ;)
To be completely fair, from what I can tell "bolded" is not really a word. In any usage of the term bold, adding the 'ed' suffix will not produce the past tense. In the case of the word 'bold,' you should use the term 'bold-faced', or simply 'bold' by itself without a suffix. ;) All of this is from Merriam Webster, which has no listed past tense of the word bold, aside from "bold-faced."
Uhhh... *right*. That is exactly my point. I compose a number of documents (Excel, Word, etc.) for work and school, and they are kept in folders labeled as such.
But the bulk of my documents are things like music, photos, and email, all of which have programs which handle organizing them just fine.
My question was not whether this could be useful to *anyone*, my question was how many users out there have that many random documents (containing 'text', mind you) that would take advantage of this feature, and is this number of users a large enough group to require such focus placed on a new feature? Are you one of those people? What kind of searches would you perform? (I really want to know, because I could never think of needing such a feature myself.)
No, I don't want less *frequent* innovation... what I want is *more* innovation in general.
Keeping a break-neck pace with innovation and releasing things that are significant (and possibly revolutionary) every few (3-5) years is awesome.
Adding a few widgets, and making a few (mostly) minor tweaks and charging $129 every two years is crappy. I could possibly see paying $129 for a combination of the features of 10.2 *and* 10.3 at *once*, but not $248 for the combination of the features separately.
And I don't view my post as flamebait. I am an Apple fan. I show my brand loyalty with my purchases (17" PB, 40GB iPod, service plans, and accessories for both, not to mention the OS upgrades.) I am a serious Apple customer trying to understand what real value we're getting for $130 every two years.
I'm not opposed to innovation or upgrades, but I'd like to see something for my money.
Didn't I *just* upgrade to 10.3? Now we're into a full year of using it, and there's YET ANOTHER paid upgrade to the OS?! And we're not even talking about a leap, like Microsoft had from 95 to 98 or even 98 to 2000. This just seems like minimal "add-ons" that they're charging full price for.
Also, is it just me, or does it look like the new Safari is only coming with the new OS? I switched back to Firebird on 10.3 because the current Safari is dog slow in comparison. I'm hoping Safari will be released to everyone, and not just to 10.4.
Can someone explain to me what the big deal with *search* is, these days? In all fairness, I don't have a mountain of documents I'm constantly trying to find stuff in. I have a ton of MP3s, which are kept track of quite nicely in iTunes. And I have a number of photos, which are kept track of quite nicely in iPhoto. Beyond that, I have a handful of documents, which keep basically organized within folders (Work, School, etc.). How many users are out there that dump *all* of their random documents in the "Documents" folder without ever making a subfolder to clean things up? How much of the userbase is really getting a benefit from all this hype about search, which Microsoft *and* Apple are gung-ho about?
Sadly, one of the best things that comes with 10.4 is the improved graphics-hardware integration which those of us with 17in PowerBooks will never be able to take advantage of (since, according to Apple, it can only be used by a handful of the most recently released top-of-the-line graphics cards, none of which is mine.)
I love Apple, and all, but I don't see anything that is worth the price of a full-OS just barely a year after paying for the last one. Making me pay the full price, a year after buying the last (on the DAY it came out, mind you, it's not like I waited a while), just so I can get a new version of the web browser and a few add-ons would really disappoint me. (Like with 10.3: Expose? It's nice... it's cool... I use it *maybe* once a week. Cmd-Tab and Cmd-Tilda works perfectly fine 99% of the time.)
As a comparison, while I like 10.3, I'm still not quite sure why I had to pay a full-OS price for it, compared to 10.2. Just like every other Apple fan, I'll probably empty my wallet for the newest OS, but it's disappointing me more and more each time when it turns out I'm paying for minor tweaks and add-ons.
>The system that India uses is very similar to the one used in
>my district. It's customizable for every election, has a simple
>interface, and is very tamper-proof. We don't need networked
>voting machines when I've been using this kind of equipment
>since I could vote.
The voting machines in my town are also perfectly fine, I fail to understand what the big deal is.
Here, in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, you face what looks like a 5'x4' white easel. Behind a thin, clear plastic covering is a large white printed out paper that displays all the options. Red LEDs blink through the white paper and appear next to each unvoted option. You simply press the blinking light next to the one you want. Your option turns solid red, and the other options for that particular vote turn off. To undo, either press the one you picked or press clear for that option (one or the other, my memory is rusty).
Each section is clearly labeled and easy to understand. Since the whole voting surface is just a 5'x'4' sheet of white paper, they can configure it however they want to accomodate as few or as many candidates and issues as they need. Also, they have room to include lengthy written explanations of what each "issue" is (instead of just listing: Issue 1 -- Yes or No).
To finalize your choices, you press a large green "VOTE" button below the white voting surface to the right. It's impossible to forget to pick a choice on something since the lights will continue to blink until you have picked an option. (You can of course finalize your vote with things unvoted if you choose.) You can also press the large red "RESET" button at the bottom left of the white voting surface if you want to clear everything and start over.
When you've finished, the overhead light turns off, and you leave. That's it. I imagine the system keeps an electronic log of all votes which is gathered at the end of the night. There are NO moving parts (other than the large RESET and VOTE buttons, which you have to press an inch into into their slots before they take effect), no visable interfaces, and no software to hack. (I'm sure there's a way to interface somewhere on the opposite side of the unit, but seeing as you go behind a curtain in the front to vote while people are watching, there's no way to "sneak" and try to figure it out.) Nothing is ever printed out, and the machine is perfectly silent, other than a loud bell to signal the start and finish of voting.
Our local/state government has figured out how to implement an electronic system without all this crap (one that allows voting on mutiple issues *and* multiple candidates per issue, unlike the one described for the Indian primary). With an obviously electronic system such as this, why are we wasting our time with voting machines that run Windows of any sort? Why are we allowing Diebold and other firms to complicate this issue?
"Fancier" is not always better. We can get perfectly good electronic voting without all the useless bells and whistles.
It even includes a form at the bottom with the survey questions, which I filled out and submitted.
:)
It's good to know OU cares about *my* opinion too, not being an OU student. Hah.
> S'cuse me while I go frolic naked in the periwinkle. Woo!
More like "eww!"
The thought of seeing any of us Slashdot-ers running around naked outside is disturbing, to say the least.
Yeah... first the sex kept you busy, now the kid does. ;) Isn't it funny how that works?
"I will hook you up with the Paypal people. They will help you get the information you're looking for.... In order to give you details about credit-card transactions, I have to see a court order. I suggest that you get one, if that's what you're looking for"
Seems like PayPal-to-PayPal transfers are fair game, seeing as they aren't "credit card transactions." With nothing but a fax, sounds like eBay/PayPal would also give up all your money transactions too -- provided they aren't done using a PayPal credit/debit card.
I guess no more money laundering and hiding funds in my PayPal account. =(
What is more worrisome is what this implies for *buyers*! If eBay can and will, at the drop of a fax, give a seller's sales transaction history for any reason, what prevents them supplying a buyer's purchase history?
All merchants give up a lot of privacy in order to business in any arena. None of this is surprising or scary.
However, what scares the hell out of me is the thought law enforcement officials could see I was the winning bidder on some blacklisted book, movie, object and request my bidding history from eBay.
The potential loss of privacy for buyers is what *everyone* should be screaming about.
What the hell happened to WinCE? I assume 'CE' stands for 'Consumer Electronics.' Wouldn't a cell phone be precisely that?
Does this new OS show that WinCE is too *bloated* or too *buggy* for cell phones?
There are way too many versions of Windows out there already. WinME, WinXP, Win2000, Windows for Terminal Servers, WinCE, and this new version. At least my toilet is still sacred. (Microsoft - don't even THINK about it!)
ICVerify (bought by CyberCash) is no longer an option, since CyberCash went out of business. Consequently, CyberCash's payment handling service is now done Verisign, who got into the whole payment handling business starting with their purchase of Signio.
Whatever the case, none of these services (ICVerify, CyberCash, Signio, or Verisign) do anything differently than what you have. =)
The difference here is the company hasn't filed yet, from what I understand, for bankruptcy protection.
What they are doing is making all of you their best offer. This is the same as you having a massive debt YOU can't pay, and offering the collection agency 3/4's of the amount, if they stop harrassing you.
In this case it seems like it isn't at all 3/4's of the amount, but it's probably the best they can do.
If you decide to take the money, they OF COURSE would demand you waive your rights to litigation over the matter, because (quite honestly), it would be stupid for anyone to offer money to people, only to leave themselves open for further litigation. If they are GIVING you money, they don't want to turn around and pay more for legal fees on TOP of it.
If you decide to litigate, I think you'll find yourself completely SCREWED in this matter. They will probably show up in court, explain they don't HAVE the money, and offered you as much as they could in an effort to stem bankruptcy.
If all of you join together and sue them, you'll probably just force their hand -- meaning, you'll probably get nothing; they'll file bankruptcy. Because, like I suspect, you are NOT 'SECURED' creditors at all, but mearly the run-of-the-mill debtors like we all are sometimes. And, you'll just have to wait in line behind everyone they DID sign personally for, like their ISP, hardware vendors, and even their EMPLOYEES.
My advice: Take what you are offered and hit the road. At least you'll get something, rather than legal fees for getting NOTHING.