Comcast would have a vested interest in having customers use Apple's services.
Lawsuit on line 1...
On what grounds? They already resell content and call it cable TV; from the sounds of TFA Comcast would deliver it as a managed service rather than as a simple stream.
Possibly, but if the content is going to start coming from my ISPs own network, it better not be counted in my monthly usage either. This would be a nice way for it to turn out, but I'm pessimistic that it will actually work out that way.
It make sense not to count it. If Apple gives Comcast a cut of the revenue in exchange for the pipe, Comcast would have a vested interest in having customers use Apple's services. They already are getting your money for the pipe, so any Apple' money is just more revenue and it would be counter productive to do something to limit it. In addition, by getting deals in place they can start building for a future where subscribing to traditional cable dwindles in favor of al la carte delivery by companies such as Apple and the content owners. Apple is not the enemy, Google is because if they ever make significant inroads in the major metropolitan areas they will be able to deliver content separate from cable and the cable ISPs; which would cripple them financially.
Bitcoin is a payment network. To make a payment using Bitcoin, you buy some bitcoins on an exchange, then you send them to the seller, who sells them on an exchange. Where is the scam in all this? You paid your $x, the seller got his $x. That's not a scam, that's mission accomplished.
Not really. A viable payment system lets you get real money in exchange for something; with Bitcoin there is no assurance you will be able to get anything beyond some bits and bytes. You are at the mercy of the exchange and if they don't have the cash you don't get paid. One huge red flag is the seeming arbitrage opportunities with Bitcoin process varying exchgane to exchange. If Bitcoin were a viable transaction system those opportunities would disappear as people took advantage of the free money. That they don't says a lot about the liquidity, or rather lack of it, in the Bitcoin market. A currency that is touted as being easy to use for transactions anywhere with no transaction costs would quickly erase any arbitrage if it really was that easy to buy and sell.
All this noise about Ponzi Scheme: Yes or No? masks the real issues with Bitcoin. It is an illiquid, volatile commodity that lacks any assurance you will ever be able to get real money for it; as a result almost no one really takes Bitcoin, they simply let you "Pay" in Bitcoin by assuring they can immediately convert them to real money. While that may work for a handful of deals the lack of liquidity makes them unusable as a real payment system to take on PayPal or other electronic payment systems. Unlike Paypal, which mostly just moves money for a fee or holds it in a form that is easily turned back to cash as needed; Bitcoin "exchanges" take short positions that they can't cover since they lack the cash reserves to payout all the withdrawals.
As a result, Bitcoin became a nice place for speculators and people who are hoping to cash in on the "next big thing" and now the bubble is starting to burst. I wouldn't say it is a scam as much as one more chapter in the mass hysteria of crowds.
As we have seen, keeping any amount of money at an exchange's account is a recipe for disaster. They can still be used, but only if you take care to move your money out of it as soon as possible.
And yet, people keep their money in exchanges time and again, despite all the recent news and all warnings to the contrary. Why do you think that is?
As we have seen, keeping any amount of money at an exchange's account is a recipe for disaster. They can still be used, but only if you take care to move your money out of it as soon as possible.
The problem is the "exchange" really aren't exchanges. They do not simply facilitate transactions for a fee; rather they hold the Bitcoins, essentially creating their own short position. That works until people want real money for the Bitcoins they lent the exchange and they can't cover their position. Given Bitcoin's illiquidity they can't easily sell what they hold to cover withdrawals either. The ability to steal wallets compounds the risk since an exchange conceivably could not cover withdrawals in Bitcoin.
Bitcoin fanatics like to fantasize about getting rich and talk about their Bitcoin fortunes but until they can quickly and easily convert them to real money all they have is a bucket of bits and bytes.
I'm old enough to remember we've been down this road before with the boondoggle of the multi-one-plane-to-rule-them-all before. I'm not dissing the f-35, it's just that we've been through this before with similar results:
Heh. That's the plane Boyd said, when asked what could be done with it, said "Rip the wings off, paint it yellow, and make it the fastest crew delivery bus."
But the F35 is more or less combat ready in its basic form, it's mainly extended feature sets like the USMC's VTOL variant that are holding it back from being in use now.
Moral of the story, though... the people who mocked the F22 as the boondoggle to the F35 should have been fired from the DoD and run out of Congress. The F22 ended up being cheaper and still better (IIRC). There's no excuse for being naive enough to believe "oh yeah, we'll be much cheaper" when building something like the F35.
The fundamental problem is we seem to have fallen in love with the idea that their is one airplane that can do it all, for all the services. As a result, the plane's performance degrades as it suffers bloat that makes Windows look positively svelte. The best read on this is Coram's book, "Boyd" that details John Boyd's battle agains the Air Force bureaucracy.
The most telling line in TFA is that the F-35 is built in 45 states, thus ensuring it's survival since no Congressman or Senator wants to be accused of killing jobs in their home district or state. Wether or not the plane is what is needed is secondary to that; and woe be tide to any military leader that dares suggest killing it.
A guarantee of a fixed percentage of ownership of shares of the corporation and any follow-on corporation so when it needs a bunch of cash your share doesn't get diluted to basically zero.
TV is not a government entity, you want equal time, pay up. You have no rights of speech with a privately owned business. You want your time in the spotlight during prime time, go out and make a show that doesn't suck, then pay for its spot to air. Its quite simple. Quit with the 'entitlement' mentality already.
Yes, i do realize the FCC says you have to give SOME time away to public interest to get a broadcast license, but not equal time.
Exactly; but this isn't about equal time so much as advancing their view that their POV is being stifled because it is Christian (although technically the Catholic Church ended the argument over creationism by saying basically evolution and the idea of a creator driving the process aren't mutually exclusive) and a way for them to get press. There is a fundamental strain of Christianity that needs to feel persecuted and seeks to characterize any action they dislike as persecution to bolster their feeling of being right in their beliefs. After all, Christ was persecuted so if I am persecuted then I am following in Christ's footsteps.
Of course, many of the folks lamenting the lack of a creationist viewpoint would go nuts over the suggestion of brining in the theories of Scientology, Eric von Danakin, TGFSM, or any other viewpoint but their own.
It should also be noted tat these workers are an excellent example of how poorly "free market" implementations do when they collide with other forces. Foreign workers are cheap for non-economic reasons, employers hold their immigration status over their head, they can squeeze lower wages out of them due to the ever present threat of having to leave the country. Citizens are harder to threaten so you have to pay them closer to what they are worth.
Which is why H1-B's should come with visa portability. After say, 3 months, they can change employers and keep their visas. That would show if they truly are paid "US market wages" and just how important they are to address a "shortage of US workers with the requisite skills."
The point is we shouldnt be assigning ownership of colors to any one entity. Color itself should not be a trade dress consideration.
Fluke has been using yellow for a long time, just like Deere and green or CAT and yellow. You see the clot and you associate the it's with a specific manufacturer. Other colors weren't trademarked and since a number of companies is them they no longer would be able to be trademarked. Companies have a right to protect their trademarks and ensure no one uses theirs to free ride on their name.
Sparkfun must have known that those meters look almost exactly like a Fluke (because of the yellow, and a bunch of other reasons).
Sorry, but it is not an example of IP run amok. This is Sparkfun being disingenuous.
While I agree it is not IP run amok but rather a confluence of events that lead to Sparkfun getting in a jam. From TFA it appears they have sold this multimeter for a while and a reorder got nailed. They may have not realized they could be considered infringing and we're not trying to confuse people. Fluke, OTOH, may have made a general complaint due to counterfeits being imported and Sparkfun is collateral damage. Customs was now watching for infringing products and Sparkfun got nailed. One change I would make is to hold the seller liable for customs seizures so importers would not be out any money. If the makers of the goods lost out they would be less willing to sell them; right now they share none of the risk so it is still profitable to sell infringing items.
No, but both Palin and Romney could tell several years ago that Russia was an actual problem. Unlike Obama and his red line fickleness. Well that's alright, he's off to his what? 197th round of golf, and later today he'll be flying out to Hollywood for his 290th fundraising event. Pressing issues you know.
Or GW Bush. After all, he "... looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue.
"I was able to get a sense of his soul." Guess he missed something there.
Smart and gifted kid? Shove them to the back of the class. Oh that not so bright kid that can run and catch really good? he is a superstar!
There is no upside to providing services to gifted kids. They already are going to graduate, do well on standardized tests and thugs probably have maxed out the benefit to the school's scores. Athletes bring media attention, parents to games where they spend money and, if they are successful, may donate to the school later in life.
We worship the Low IQ and brawn. (NFL players for example) while ridicule anyone smart. It is a culture thing, and in inner city urban cultures being a smart kid get's you isolated badly as your peers try to make you feel as if you are a traitor.
That is a cultural issue that offering programs won't help. Of course, stereotyping doesn't help as all jocks aren't dumb and all smart kids aren't weaklings.
It has always been this way, on top of that Teachers are scared to death of kids that are smarter than them, and will punish the smart kid. Our education system is set up for average and can not handle the two sides of the bell.
Not really, it's just that so much time must be spent with the bulk of the students that they simply don't have time for the smart; especially since they generally are not a problem in the classroom or at risk for running a school's test scores.
What this tells me, is that there is clearly a demand that is not being met by 'traditional' colleges/universities. These schools offer people a chance at a diploma that they can put on their resume. If you don't have that piece of paper on your resume, you are not even going to get an interview regardless of how knowledgeable you are in the field (unless you have a contact inside the company already).
The problem is many of these programs simply are designed to make money, not teach students and prepare them for a job. Employers know what degrees are basically worthless; resulting in people with student debt and still poor job prospects. Take away the loans that provide the revenue for non-performing schools will make them go away and help those that actually do provide value for the money.
These schools give people, who maybe got off to a bad start, a chance to go to classes in the evenings, it is a path for those students who were not necessarily 'good' at school and would score poorly on an ACT or SAT test. When more and more of the jobs those people used to get go overseas or to mexico, they have to have some way into the 'new' economy. Either that or they find a way to game the system with welfare/disability (or get stuck forever in working poverty). They have to live, they have to feed their families. These schools offer them a way to do that. (or more likely, the false hope that they can do that)
Given the statistics cited in TFA, false hope is exactly the problem. Their advertising is aimed at those desperate for a better job, they promise one and then don't deliver. There is nothing inherently wrong with a for profit school. I know someone who taught for years at an automotive trade school; one that actually placed their graduates in good jobs because they had the basic skills, could pass the ASE exam, and were competent basic mechanics. They used to offer just a high school dropout a path to a good job, one that would let them repay any debt and earn a living.
I think the traditional colleges need to take notice and start offering programs that mimic what these for-profit schools offer. Flexible schedules for adult students, shorter paths to a certificate or diploma, etc. Side note: aren't all colleges 'for profit'? I see the million dollar salaires of university presidents, massive coffers, and multi-billion dollar sport franchises and have to think that they are all 'for-profit'; the profit just goes in different directions.
Many colleges offer just that, especially community/junior colleges and regional schools. I agree that not for profit doesn't mean we can't make and spend boatloads of money.
In that case, the store could decide to file a criminal complaint against the child.
The store doesn't have standing to file a criminal complaint against the child, it was not their card. Quite plainly they failed in their duty to ensure that the person using the card was the authorized cardholder. The contract with the credit card company is quite clear that it is the store that is liable in this case.
I think there are two issues here
The first is contractual and decides who is liable for the fraudulent charge. I agree the company accepting the card is because they failed to verify it was an authorized use.
The second is whether or not a crime was committed. Contractual liability for the loss doesn't impact that; if it did that would mean someone who stole a card and used it would not be able to be criminally prosecuted since the store would still be responsible for the loss, not the credit card company.
Of course, we are talking about a hypothetical card, using a somewhat extreme example, and many circumstances and local laws could impact what could and could not be done. However, I disagree that liability for the loss somehow absolves someone of committing a crime.
I do not see why there are still people out there who keep saying Bitcoin is a good investment.
Mencken's Law: "No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."
Of course, parents can be held in no way responsible for handing their phone to their kids and having their credit card emptied. Same as when I hand my credit card to my kid, it's not my fault when my kid uses it to buy stuff online.
What are these people thinking?
That nothing is their, or their kid's fault. It's the same reasoning that blames teachers for bad grades, coaches for not playing their child, cops for giving them a ticket for running a stop sign, etc. Clearly someone else is to blame for their actions.
But these aren't unauthorized follow-up payments, a person you are responsible for and have logged in with your credit card credentials is sitting and making actual purchases.
I doubt a court would see it this way. I'm sure it wasn't the intent of the account owner to authorize his kid to make any purchases.
Suppose a 10 year old walks up to a cashier at a Walmart, dumps 50 candy bars on the belt, and hands the cashier a credit card with no adult in sight. The cashier rings it up and charges the card. The kid opens all the candy and gives it away to friends, eats it, whatever. Later the adult discovers that the kid took his card out of his wallet when he wasn't looking and complains to his credit card company.
The fact that the kid had the card in no way authorizes its use. In fact, a court would laugh at a cashier not questioning the use of a card by a 10 year old.
In that case, the store could decide to file a criminal complaint against the child. Merchant agreements aside, the clerk has no way of knowing if the parent authorized the use of the card, or even if the card isn't the child's' although a 10 year old would be a bit of a stretch. They accepted it in good faith, if the parent claims fraudulent use then the store could attempt to recover from the child.
I realize your 10 year old example is a bit extreme but it's still fraud. However, plenty of parents let their kids use their cards,and stores accept them without question. Most parents wouldn't claim fraudulent use been if the kid took it without their knowledge; so is it the store's fault they assume the person using the card is the an authorized user? I would like stores to check my ID with any purchase since that would make it a lot harder for someone to use my card but most stores don't want the hassle and many customers would get upset as well.
This is really an extension of that. The phone owner did not give his kid permission to buy something, and thus it was not an authorized use of his account. The fact that the phone can't detect this scenario in no way makes the owner responsible. You can't unconsciously give somebody permission to do something. A computer might misinterpret your actions as authorizing something. A company might write a bunch of contract terms that claim that you can authorize something non-explicitly. However, in the end the only thing that matters is actual intent. If you don't intend to authorize a transaction, then no contract exists, and thus no obligation to pay the bill exists.
Except Google has no way of knowing if it is the child or the adult using the phone, so it's reasonable to hold the owner responsible in such cases.
Parents could setup an account and fund it with a gift card from Google. That limits the amount of damage that can be done.
If Google requires a credit card to create an account (I do not have a Google Play account so I do not know if that is the case); set the default to require a password before charging the card each time. You could allow users to change that to add a grace period but then they knowingly opened themselves up to multiple charges.
Alternatively, fund the account from one of these prepaid credit cards that you can load with money and it will only allow charges up to the amount left on the card. My bank offers one of those aimed at children; it allows them to buy things and not carry cash, while still controlling their spending. Additionally, in an emergency I can fund the card directly from an app.
This lawsuit sounds more like parents unwilling to assume responsibility for their own actions and properly supervise their children than anything nefarious on Google's part. If I were on the jury (as suing it actually would go to trail) I'd find for Google in about two seconds.
MtGox has had this coming. They need to provide answers.
I don't see this as anything other than routing criminal proceedings.
Actually, it's a civil suit so the judge froze assets to prevent them from disappearing while the suit sorts itself out. It doesn't cover all the entities since some are in bankruptcy proceedings; once discovery starts it will be interesting to see what is revealed.
Actually, he probably could but wasn't interested. No that I am done being pedantic (I'd say anal retentive but that would be too obvious in this discussion), imagine what he could have done but didn't because of how society treated him? What insights and ideas did we lose?
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I am willing to bet most companies will not bother to see if your college is accredited just as long as it sounds collegey.
I would not bet on that. More likely, if they haven't heard of the school they will trash the resume unless your experience is eye catching.
Comcast would have a vested interest in having customers use Apple's services.
Lawsuit on line 1...
On what grounds? They already resell content and call it cable TV; from the sounds of TFA Comcast would deliver it as a managed service rather than as a simple stream.
Possibly, but if the content is going to start coming from my ISPs own network, it better not be counted in my monthly usage either. This would be a nice way for it to turn out, but I'm pessimistic that it will actually work out that way.
It make sense not to count it. If Apple gives Comcast a cut of the revenue in exchange for the pipe, Comcast would have a vested interest in having customers use Apple's services. They already are getting your money for the pipe, so any Apple' money is just more revenue and it would be counter productive to do something to limit it. In addition, by getting deals in place they can start building for a future where subscribing to traditional cable dwindles in favor of al la carte delivery by companies such as Apple and the content owners. Apple is not the enemy, Google is because if they ever make significant inroads in the major metropolitan areas they will be able to deliver content separate from cable and the cable ISPs; which would cripple them financially.
Bitcoin is a payment network. To make a payment using Bitcoin, you buy some bitcoins on an exchange, then you send them to the seller, who sells them on an exchange. Where is the scam in all this? You paid your $x, the seller got his $x. That's not a scam, that's mission accomplished.
Not really. A viable payment system lets you get real money in exchange for something; with Bitcoin there is no assurance you will be able to get anything beyond some bits and bytes. You are at the mercy of the exchange and if they don't have the cash you don't get paid. One huge red flag is the seeming arbitrage opportunities with Bitcoin process varying exchgane to exchange. If Bitcoin were a viable transaction system those opportunities would disappear as people took advantage of the free money. That they don't says a lot about the liquidity, or rather lack of it, in the Bitcoin market. A currency that is touted as being easy to use for transactions anywhere with no transaction costs would quickly erase any arbitrage if it really was that easy to buy and sell.
All this noise about Ponzi Scheme: Yes or No? masks the real issues with Bitcoin. It is an illiquid, volatile commodity that lacks any assurance you will ever be able to get real money for it; as a result almost no one really takes Bitcoin, they simply let you "Pay" in Bitcoin by assuring they can immediately convert them to real money. While that may work for a handful of deals the lack of liquidity makes them unusable as a real payment system to take on PayPal or other electronic payment systems. Unlike Paypal, which mostly just moves money for a fee or holds it in a form that is easily turned back to cash as needed; Bitcoin "exchanges" take short positions that they can't cover since they lack the cash reserves to payout all the withdrawals.
As a result, Bitcoin became a nice place for speculators and people who are hoping to cash in on the "next big thing" and now the bubble is starting to burst. I wouldn't say it is a scam as much as one more chapter in the mass hysteria of crowds.
As we have seen, keeping any amount of money at an exchange's account is a recipe for disaster. They can still be used, but only if you take care to move your money out of it as soon as possible.
And yet, people keep their money in exchanges time and again, despite all the recent news and all warnings to the contrary. Why do you think that is?
People are stupid.
As we have seen, keeping any amount of money at an exchange's account is a recipe for disaster. They can still be used, but only if you take care to move your money out of it as soon as possible.
The problem is the "exchange" really aren't exchanges. They do not simply facilitate transactions for a fee; rather they hold the Bitcoins, essentially creating their own short position. That works until people want real money for the Bitcoins they lent the exchange and they can't cover their position. Given Bitcoin's illiquidity they can't easily sell what they hold to cover withdrawals either. The ability to steal wallets compounds the risk since an exchange conceivably could not cover withdrawals in Bitcoin.
Bitcoin fanatics like to fantasize about getting rich and talk about their Bitcoin fortunes but until they can quickly and easily convert them to real money all they have is a bucket of bits and bytes.
I'm old enough to remember we've been down this road before with the boondoggle of the multi-one-plane-to-rule-them-all before. I'm not dissing the f-35, it's just that we've been through this before with similar results:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
Heh. That's the plane Boyd said, when asked what could be done with it, said "Rip the wings off, paint it yellow, and make it the fastest crew delivery bus."
But the F35 is more or less combat ready in its basic form, it's mainly extended feature sets like the USMC's VTOL variant that are holding it back from being in use now.
Moral of the story, though... the people who mocked the F22 as the boondoggle to the F35 should have been fired from the DoD and run out of Congress. The F22 ended up being cheaper and still better (IIRC). There's no excuse for being naive enough to believe "oh yeah, we'll be much cheaper" when building something like the F35.
The fundamental problem is we seem to have fallen in love with the idea that their is one airplane that can do it all, for all the services. As a result, the plane's performance degrades as it suffers bloat that makes Windows look positively svelte. The best read on this is Coram's book, "Boyd" that details John Boyd's battle agains the Air Force bureaucracy.
The most telling line in TFA is that the F-35 is built in 45 states, thus ensuring it's survival since no Congressman or Senator wants to be accused of killing jobs in their home district or state. Wether or not the plane is what is needed is secondary to that; and woe be tide to any military leader that dares suggest killing it.
A guarantee of a fixed percentage of ownership of shares of the corporation and any follow-on corporation so when it needs a bunch of cash your share doesn't get diluted to basically zero.
Noah?
Somebody call?
Whoompa, whoompa, whoompa
Noah!
Who is that?
It's the Lord, Noah
Right!
TV is not a government entity, you want equal time, pay up. You have no rights of speech with a privately owned business. You want your time in the spotlight during prime time, go out and make a show that doesn't suck, then pay for its spot to air. Its quite simple. Quit with the 'entitlement' mentality already.
Yes, i do realize the FCC says you have to give SOME time away to public interest to get a broadcast license, but not equal time.
Exactly; but this isn't about equal time so much as advancing their view that their POV is being stifled because it is Christian (although technically the Catholic Church ended the argument over creationism by saying basically evolution and the idea of a creator driving the process aren't mutually exclusive) and a way for them to get press. There is a fundamental strain of Christianity that needs to feel persecuted and seeks to characterize any action they dislike as persecution to bolster their feeling of being right in their beliefs. After all, Christ was persecuted so if I am persecuted then I am following in Christ's footsteps.
Of course, many of the folks lamenting the lack of a creationist viewpoint would go nuts over the suggestion of brining in the theories of Scientology, Eric von Danakin, TGFSM, or any other viewpoint but their own.
It should also be noted tat these workers are an excellent example of how poorly "free market" implementations do when they collide with other forces. Foreign workers are cheap for non-economic reasons, employers hold their immigration status over their head, they can squeeze lower wages out of them due to the ever present threat of having to leave the country. Citizens are harder to threaten so you have to pay them closer to what they are worth.
Which is why H1-B's should come with visa portability. After say, 3 months, they can change employers and keep their visas. That would show if they truly are paid "US market wages" and just how important they are to address a "shortage of US workers with the requisite skills."
The point is we shouldnt be assigning ownership of colors to any one entity. Color itself should not be a trade dress consideration.
Fluke has been using yellow for a long time, just like Deere and green or CAT and yellow. You see the clot and you associate the it's with a specific manufacturer. Other colors weren't trademarked and since a number of companies is them they no longer would be able to be trademarked. Companies have a right to protect their trademarks and ensure no one uses theirs to free ride on their name.
Sparkfun must have known that those meters look almost exactly like a Fluke (because of the yellow, and a bunch of other reasons).
Sorry, but it is not an example of IP run amok. This is Sparkfun being disingenuous.
While I agree it is not IP run amok but rather a confluence of events that lead to Sparkfun getting in a jam. From TFA it appears they have sold this multimeter for a while and a reorder got nailed. They may have not realized they could be considered infringing and we're not trying to confuse people. Fluke, OTOH, may have made a general complaint due to counterfeits being imported and Sparkfun is collateral damage. Customs was now watching for infringing products and Sparkfun got nailed. One change I would make is to hold the seller liable for customs seizures so importers would not be out any money. If the makers of the goods lost out they would be less willing to sell them; right now they share none of the risk so it is still profitable to sell infringing items.
No, but both Palin and Romney could tell several years ago that Russia was an actual problem. Unlike Obama and his red line fickleness. Well that's alright, he's off to his what? 197th round of golf, and later today he'll be flying out to Hollywood for his 290th fundraising event. Pressing issues you know.
Or GW Bush. After all, he "... looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. "I was able to get a sense of his soul." Guess he missed something there.
Smart and gifted kid? Shove them to the back of the class. Oh that not so bright kid that can run and catch really good? he is a superstar!
There is no upside to providing services to gifted kids. They already are going to graduate, do well on standardized tests and thugs probably have maxed out the benefit to the school's scores. Athletes bring media attention, parents to games where they spend money and, if they are successful, may donate to the school later in life.
We worship the Low IQ and brawn. (NFL players for example) while ridicule anyone smart. It is a culture thing, and in inner city urban cultures being a smart kid get's you isolated badly as your peers try to make you feel as if you are a traitor.
That is a cultural issue that offering programs won't help. Of course, stereotyping doesn't help as all jocks aren't dumb and all smart kids aren't weaklings.
It has always been this way, on top of that Teachers are scared to death of kids that are smarter than them, and will punish the smart kid. Our education system is set up for average and can not handle the two sides of the bell.
Not really, it's just that so much time must be spent with the bulk of the students that they simply don't have time for the smart; especially since they generally are not a problem in the classroom or at risk for running a school's test scores.
What this tells me, is that there is clearly a demand that is not being met by 'traditional' colleges/universities. These schools offer people a chance at a diploma that they can put on their resume. If you don't have that piece of paper on your resume, you are not even going to get an interview regardless of how knowledgeable you are in the field (unless you have a contact inside the company already).
The problem is many of these programs simply are designed to make money, not teach students and prepare them for a job. Employers know what degrees are basically worthless; resulting in people with student debt and still poor job prospects. Take away the loans that provide the revenue for non-performing schools will make them go away and help those that actually do provide value for the money.
These schools give people, who maybe got off to a bad start, a chance to go to classes in the evenings, it is a path for those students who were not necessarily 'good' at school and would score poorly on an ACT or SAT test. When more and more of the jobs those people used to get go overseas or to mexico, they have to have some way into the 'new' economy. Either that or they find a way to game the system with welfare/disability (or get stuck forever in working poverty). They have to live, they have to feed their families. These schools offer them a way to do that. (or more likely, the false hope that they can do that)
Given the statistics cited in TFA, false hope is exactly the problem. Their advertising is aimed at those desperate for a better job, they promise one and then don't deliver. There is nothing inherently wrong with a for profit school. I know someone who taught for years at an automotive trade school; one that actually placed their graduates in good jobs because they had the basic skills, could pass the ASE exam, and were competent basic mechanics. They used to offer just a high school dropout a path to a good job, one that would let them repay any debt and earn a living.
I think the traditional colleges need to take notice and start offering programs that mimic what these for-profit schools offer. Flexible schedules for adult students, shorter paths to a certificate or diploma, etc. Side note: aren't all colleges 'for profit'? I see the million dollar salaires of university presidents, massive coffers, and multi-billion dollar sport franchises and have to think that they are all 'for-profit'; the profit just goes in different directions.
Many colleges offer just that, especially community/junior colleges and regional schools. I agree that not for profit doesn't mean we can't make and spend boatloads of money.
The store doesn't have standing to file a criminal complaint against the child, it was not their card. Quite plainly they failed in their duty to ensure that the person using the card was the authorized cardholder. The contract with the credit card company is quite clear that it is the store that is liable in this case.
I think there are two issues here
The first is contractual and decides who is liable for the fraudulent charge. I agree the company accepting the card is because they failed to verify it was an authorized use.
The second is whether or not a crime was committed. Contractual liability for the loss doesn't impact that; if it did that would mean someone who stole a card and used it would not be able to be criminally prosecuted since the store would still be responsible for the loss, not the credit card company.
Of course, we are talking about a hypothetical card, using a somewhat extreme example, and many circumstances and local laws could impact what could and could not be done. However, I disagree that liability for the loss somehow absolves someone of committing a crime.
I do not see why there are still people out there who keep saying Bitcoin is a good investment.
Mencken's Law: "No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."
Pretty much sums it up.
Of course, parents can be held in no way responsible for handing their phone to their kids and having their credit card emptied. Same as when I hand my credit card to my kid, it's not my fault when my kid uses it to buy stuff online.
What are these people thinking?
That nothing is their, or their kid's fault. It's the same reasoning that blames teachers for bad grades, coaches for not playing their child, cops for giving them a ticket for running a stop sign, etc. Clearly someone else is to blame for their actions.
But these aren't unauthorized follow-up payments, a person you are responsible for and have logged in with your credit card credentials is sitting and making actual purchases.
I doubt a court would see it this way. I'm sure it wasn't the intent of the account owner to authorize his kid to make any purchases.
Suppose a 10 year old walks up to a cashier at a Walmart, dumps 50 candy bars on the belt, and hands the cashier a credit card with no adult in sight. The cashier rings it up and charges the card. The kid opens all the candy and gives it away to friends, eats it, whatever. Later the adult discovers that the kid took his card out of his wallet when he wasn't looking and complains to his credit card company.
The fact that the kid had the card in no way authorizes its use. In fact, a court would laugh at a cashier not questioning the use of a card by a 10 year old.
In that case, the store could decide to file a criminal complaint against the child. Merchant agreements aside, the clerk has no way of knowing if the parent authorized the use of the card, or even if the card isn't the child's' although a 10 year old would be a bit of a stretch. They accepted it in good faith, if the parent claims fraudulent use then the store could attempt to recover from the child.
I realize your 10 year old example is a bit extreme but it's still fraud. However, plenty of parents let their kids use their cards,and stores accept them without question. Most parents wouldn't claim fraudulent use been if the kid took it without their knowledge; so is it the store's fault they assume the person using the card is the an authorized user? I would like stores to check my ID with any purchase since that would make it a lot harder for someone to use my card but most stores don't want the hassle and many customers would get upset as well.
This is really an extension of that. The phone owner did not give his kid permission to buy something, and thus it was not an authorized use of his account. The fact that the phone can't detect this scenario in no way makes the owner responsible. You can't unconsciously give somebody permission to do something. A computer might misinterpret your actions as authorizing something. A company might write a bunch of contract terms that claim that you can authorize something non-explicitly. However, in the end the only thing that matters is actual intent. If you don't intend to authorize a transaction, then no contract exists, and thus no obligation to pay the bill exists.
Except Google has no way of knowing if it is the child or the adult using the phone, so it's reasonable to hold the owner responsible in such cases.
Parents could setup an account and fund it with a gift card from Google. That limits the amount of damage that can be done.
If Google requires a credit card to create an account (I do not have a Google Play account so I do not know if that is the case); set the default to require a password before charging the card each time. You could allow users to change that to add a grace period but then they knowingly opened themselves up to multiple charges.
Alternatively, fund the account from one of these prepaid credit cards that you can load with money and it will only allow charges up to the amount left on the card. My bank offers one of those aimed at children; it allows them to buy things and not carry cash, while still controlling their spending. Additionally, in an emergency I can fund the card directly from an app.
This lawsuit sounds more like parents unwilling to assume responsibility for their own actions and properly supervise their children than anything nefarious on Google's part. If I were on the jury (as suing it actually would go to trail) I'd find for Google in about two seconds.
Or, more succinctly: Extreme audiophilia is bunk.
As well as extremely profitable.
MtGox has had this coming. They need to provide answers.
I don't see this as anything other than routing criminal proceedings.
Actually, it's a civil suit so the judge froze assets to prevent them from disappearing while the suit sorts itself out. It doesn't cover all the entities since some are in bankruptcy proceedings; once discovery starts it will be interesting to see what is revealed.
Is there nothing he couldn't do?
Women.
(I kid, I kid.)
Actually, he probably could but wasn't interested. No that I am done being pedantic (I'd say anal retentive but that would be too obvious in this discussion), imagine what he could have done but didn't because of how society treated him? What insights and ideas did we lose?