My (perhaps incorrect) understanding is that exiva tweeted the key to Kevin Butler (the marketing guy) followed by the words "Come at me." Kevin Butler then retweeted it with "Lemme guess... you sank my Battleship?" because he didn't know what it was. So, Sony didn't give the key to a marketing guy, someone outside of Sony (exiva) did.
That reminds me of this article about a horrible mutual fund that lost tons of money:
Fund-industry experts puzzled for years over what motivated investors to stick with Steadman's hopeless losers. There are still about 10,000 shareholders. One clue emerged after the firm shut down Technology & Growth fund. About 30% of the redemption checks were returned, presumably because the shareholders were dead.
couldn't reasonably be considered a violation of a privacy policy
But, could it legally be considered a violation (i.e., could your user successfully sue you for disclosing the info)? You can argue in court that a contract cannot force you to do something illegal (ignore court order to disclose info), but can you convince the court that you shouldn't be liable for the damages to the user caused by that disclosure? Essentially, your privacy policy is false advertising, and the user can claim that he wouldn't have used your site (and hence become damaged by the disclosure) if you hadn't promised him something you couldn't deliver (nondisclosure). Is the user in the wrong for believing that your privacy policy meant exactly what it said, without any unstated caveats, or are you in the wrong for not being explicit about situations where the information could be disclosed? Again, IANAL, but I would think that a judge would expect a higher level of legal expertise (hence, more burden of precision) from the person writing the privacy policy than from the user trying to interpret it.
Let's try a different example. Someone does a denial-of-service attack on your webserver. It seems your privacy policy prohibits you from disclosing the attacker's IP address to the police or to the attacker's ISP. There is no legal compulsion for you to disclose it in this case -- it is purely for your benefit (to pursue civil action against the attacker, which you are not legally required to do).
I applaud your intentions, but what do you do if a court orders you to disclose information about one of your users? IANAL, but it seems you have a choice between violating the law and violating your own privacy policy -- you've got a big problem either way. All of those clauses and conditions in those long privacy policies serve a purpose, and they need to be there even when the company operating the website does respect the privacy of the site's users.
I was just reading an article in the Philadelphia Business Journal this morning about the switch to electronic medical records, and it said one thing they've found from experience is that a desktop computer with a mouse is much more convenient for the doctor than mobile/touch devices. I would provide a link but it is subscriber-only, so the PBJ losses an opportunity for some traffic.
The researchers hooked thermometers to the scrotums of 29 young men (!) who were balancing a laptop on their knees. They found that even with a lap pad under the computer, the men's scrotums overheated quickly
Q: What does this announcement mean to other derivatives of OpenOffice.org?
A: We want The Document Foundation to be open to code contributions from as many people as possible. We are delighted to announce that the enhancements produced by the Go-OOo team will be merged into LibreOffice, effective immediately. We hope that others will follow suit.
No, I fully understand what they did, and I find it sleazy. Are your standards really so low that you aren't bothered by companies misleading the public just so they can make more money?
Their INTENT was to craft the announcement in such a way that people would assume they were shutting down.
One of the definitions of lie from dictionary.com: something intended or serving to convey a false impression
That's the thing that was supposed to give them the media coverage (as it indeed did).
Media coverage that they would not have received if they were honest and forthright. In other words, coverage that they did not deserve.
The fact that they technically didn't lie is a fact that should have only be noticeable in hindsight, which appears to have been how it worked.
Well, according to the definition above, they technically did lie. Putting that aside, we're not talking about whether or not they would be found guilty in a court of law, we're talking about whether or not it was ethical. Technicalities don't matter here. What matters is intent, fairness, etc. Their intent was to deceive the public in order to get publicity they didn't deserve in order to increase their profits.
If you want to play with technicalities, you can say absolutely anything you want. Examples:
"I didn't see the red light (because when the light turned yellow I looked away and stomped on the gas)."
"I did not have sex with that woman (it was oral sex)."
"I saw the president dancing around in a pink tutu while stomping on puppies (in a dream I had last night)."
"I saw an alien with my own two eyes (it was on the Twilight Zone)."
If you're OK with companies misleading you to pick more money out of your pockets, that's your business. I'm not OK with it. "Technically it's not a lie" is the sort of excuse I expect to hear from a 5-year-old, not a company that wants my business.
As opposed to the companies that DRM the hell out of their products, refuse to give refunds if the aforementioned DRM prevents you from using it and fails to disclose the degree to which the DRM impacts the security of your computer?
Disgusting behavior is disgusting, even if the competition is worse.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but is this PR stunt really worse behavior than the competition or are you talking about not buying games from anybody?
They're selling games, not water; you can live without it. If you can't find any good options in the entire gaming industry, spend your entertainment dollars elsewhere. If you aren't willing to walk away when a company/industry treats you like crap, they'll just keep doing it.
So using DRM is respect for their customers? Because that is what other game sellers do.
I didn't say anything of the sort.
If you could not see through their little "deceit" you need your head examined.
So, it's OK to lie if the lie is obvious enough? Should I point out that the Slashdot editors apparently bought it, since they carried the story (and it's not April 1st).
They deceived the public in order to benefit themselves with free publicity (media attention).
If GOG had a competitor that refused to lie to the public for publicity, that competitor would have to spend a ton of money on advertising just to keep up, which would put it at a significant disadvantage. If there isn't sufficient consumer backlash to dissuade companies from doing such things, how can an honest company possibly compete?
"We're closing down the service and putting this era behind us as new challenges await." When was the last time you heard a company say something like that when announcing that their service was coming out of beta? Sure, if you parse it really carefully you can claim that it technically isn't a lie, but how did they expect it to be interpreted? If the news (like slashdot) misunderstood their intent, why didn't they put out an announcement contradicting it immediately?
Why would you not purchase from them in the future?
Because the money you are giving to people who are willing to lie to you if it will put more cash in their own pockets could otherwise be spent on products from companies that have an ounce of respect for their customers. If you don't punish companies that cheat, the only companies that will survive are those that do.
Love it or hate it, this is one of the more successful marketing stunts of late.
Yes, lying can be very effective marketing. Just like the important announcements about my Verizon service I get all the time (actually FiOS ads), the Clear ads I get in envelopes saying "This is not junk mail" on the outside, the letters to my business that look like they are from government entities (but aren't, as the fine print admits), and the Siemens pop-up ads on scientificamerican.com that have an extra "close" button that takes you to the Siemens website. As long as consumers fail to get sufficiently outraged about such crap, it will only get worse.
I remember reading once that men were much less likely to engage in terrorism if they had a wife (or was it a girlfriend -- I'm too lazy to hunt down the reference). The real problem is that engineers can't get laid, so they become terrorists. So, ladies, for the sake of world peace, sleep with an engineer.
Since you asked, yes I carry a paper map, a compass, and a spare set of batteries for my GPS. The GPS is, however, a lot more useful/convenient if you have a decent map installed on it. My point was that you shouldn't assume that an appropriate maps was included just because the GPS was made for hiking.
Just do clarify, my response assumes that you mean "comes with the unit" when you say "built in maps." If you really meant "no need for a signal to fetch maps on the fly from the Internet," the author of the summary seems to have already found a work-around for doing that with a phone.
Probably not. The maps included on most hiking GPSs are totally worthless -- they might show a few huge highways, but nothing else. You generally have to buy topographic maps, or download free ones from a site like GPSFileDepot.
I just found a route like that (right turn off of bridge, then fall 30 feet to the street below) on Google maps in the U.S. about a week ago. I reported the error, but it's not fixed yet.
simply because there are too many patents out there and patent offices grant lots of patents that can be invalidated later based on prior art
No, it's much worse than that. Read my post again.
a large company like Google is in a hugely better position than smaller players to analyze the situation
Google is in a better position to analyze patents that haven't been granted/published yet? Does Google have spies inside the USPTO?
Think about what you are asking for when you demand indemnification. You are asking them to be on the hook for a risk that they cannot accurately assess no matter how much due diligence they perform, because applications for patents not yet granted are not visible to them.
Slashdot Mirror
My (perhaps incorrect) understanding is that exiva tweeted the key to Kevin Butler (the marketing guy) followed by the words "Come at me." Kevin Butler then retweeted it with "Lemme guess... you sank my Battleship?" because he didn't know what it was. So, Sony didn't give the key to a marketing guy, someone outside of Sony (exiva) did.
That reminds me of this article about a horrible mutual fund that lost tons of money:
Fund-industry experts puzzled for years over what motivated investors to stick with Steadman's hopeless losers. There are still about 10,000 shareholders. One clue emerged after the firm shut down Technology & Growth fund. About 30% of the redemption checks were returned, presumably because the shareholders were dead.
couldn't reasonably be considered a violation of a privacy policy
But, could it legally be considered a violation (i.e., could your user successfully sue you for disclosing the info)? You can argue in court that a contract cannot force you to do something illegal (ignore court order to disclose info), but can you convince the court that you shouldn't be liable for the damages to the user caused by that disclosure? Essentially, your privacy policy is false advertising, and the user can claim that he wouldn't have used your site (and hence become damaged by the disclosure) if you hadn't promised him something you couldn't deliver (nondisclosure). Is the user in the wrong for believing that your privacy policy meant exactly what it said, without any unstated caveats, or are you in the wrong for not being explicit about situations where the information could be disclosed? Again, IANAL, but I would think that a judge would expect a higher level of legal expertise (hence, more burden of precision) from the person writing the privacy policy than from the user trying to interpret it.
Let's try a different example. Someone does a denial-of-service attack on your webserver. It seems your privacy policy prohibits you from disclosing the attacker's IP address to the police or to the attacker's ISP. There is no legal compulsion for you to disclose it in this case -- it is purely for your benefit (to pursue civil action against the attacker, which you are not legally required to do).
We don't share your information with anyone
I applaud your intentions, but what do you do if a court orders you to disclose information about one of your users? IANAL, but it seems you have a choice between violating the law and violating your own privacy policy -- you've got a big problem either way. All of those clauses and conditions in those long privacy policies serve a purpose, and they need to be there even when the company operating the website does respect the privacy of the site's users.
$666.66 -- could Steve Jobs make it any clearer that he is the devil? ;-)
I was just reading an article in the Philadelphia Business Journal this morning about the switch to electronic medical records, and it said one thing they've found from experience is that a desktop computer with a mouse is much more convenient for the doctor than mobile/touch devices. I would provide a link but it is subscriber-only, so the PBJ losses an opportunity for some traffic.
The researchers hooked thermometers to the scrotums of 29 young men (!) who were balancing a laptop on their knees. They found that even with a lap pad under the computer, the men's scrotums overheated quickly
Were they viewing porn on the laptop?
...nation states should be able to act against technologies in countries being used as a platform for attack...
So, nuke Redmond?
From the FAQ:
Q: What does this announcement mean to other derivatives of OpenOffice.org?
A: We want The Document Foundation to be open to code contributions from as many people as possible. We are delighted to announce that the enhancements produced by the Go-OOo team will be merged into LibreOffice, effective immediately. We hope that others will follow suit.
Um, are you that dense?
No, I fully understand what they did, and I find it sleazy. Are your standards really so low that you aren't bothered by companies misleading the public just so they can make more money?
Their INTENT was to craft the announcement in such a way that people would assume they were shutting down.
One of the definitions of lie from dictionary.com: something intended or serving to convey a false impression
That's the thing that was supposed to give them the media coverage (as it indeed did).
Media coverage that they would not have received if they were honest and forthright. In other words, coverage that they did not deserve.
The fact that they technically didn't lie is a fact that should have only be noticeable in hindsight, which appears to have been how it worked.
Well, according to the definition above, they technically did lie. Putting that aside, we're not talking about whether or not they would be found guilty in a court of law, we're talking about whether or not it was ethical. Technicalities don't matter here. What matters is intent, fairness, etc. Their intent was to deceive the public in order to get publicity they didn't deserve in order to increase their profits.
If you want to play with technicalities, you can say absolutely anything you want. Examples:
"I didn't see the red light (because when the light turned yellow I looked away and stomped on the gas)."
"I did not have sex with that woman (it was oral sex)."
"I saw the president dancing around in a pink tutu while stomping on puppies (in a dream I had last night)."
"I saw an alien with my own two eyes (it was on the Twilight Zone)."
If you're OK with companies misleading you to pick more money out of your pockets, that's your business. I'm not OK with it. "Technically it's not a lie" is the sort of excuse I expect to hear from a 5-year-old, not a company that wants my business.
As opposed to the companies that DRM the hell out of their products, refuse to give refunds if the aforementioned DRM prevents you from using it and fails to disclose the degree to which the DRM impacts the security of your computer?
Disgusting behavior is disgusting, even if the competition is worse.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but is this PR stunt really worse behavior than the competition or are you talking about not buying games from anybody?
They're selling games, not water; you can live without it. If you can't find any good options in the entire gaming industry, spend your entertainment dollars elsewhere. If you aren't willing to walk away when a company/industry treats you like crap, they'll just keep doing it.
So using DRM is respect for their customers? Because that is what other game sellers do.
I didn't say anything of the sort.
If you could not see through their little "deceit" you need your head examined.
So, it's OK to lie if the lie is obvious enough? Should I point out that the Slashdot editors apparently bought it, since they carried the story (and it's not April 1st).
Cheating: to practice fraud or deceit
They deceived the public in order to benefit themselves with free publicity (media attention).
If GOG had a competitor that refused to lie to the public for publicity, that competitor would have to spend a ton of money on advertising just to keep up, which would put it at a significant disadvantage. If there isn't sufficient consumer backlash to dissuade companies from doing such things, how can an honest company possibly compete?
"We're closing down the service and putting this era behind us as new challenges await."
When was the last time you heard a company say something like that when announcing that their service was coming out of beta? Sure, if you parse it really carefully you can claim that it technically isn't a lie, but how did they expect it to be interpreted? If the news (like slashdot) misunderstood their intent, why didn't they put out an announcement contradicting it immediately?
Why would you not purchase from them in the future?
Because the money you are giving to people who are willing to lie to you if it will put more cash in their own pockets could otherwise be spent on products from companies that have an ounce of respect for their customers. If you don't punish companies that cheat, the only companies that will survive are those that do.
Love it or hate it, this is one of the more successful marketing stunts of late.
Yes, lying can be very effective marketing. Just like the important announcements about my Verizon service I get all the time (actually FiOS ads), the Clear ads I get in envelopes saying "This is not junk mail" on the outside, the letters to my business that look like they are from government entities (but aren't, as the fine print admits), and the Siemens pop-up ads on scientificamerican.com that have an extra "close" button that takes you to the Siemens website. As long as consumers fail to get sufficiently outraged about such crap, it will only get worse.
I remember reading once that men were much less likely to engage in terrorism if they had a wife (or was it a girlfriend -- I'm too lazy to hunt down the reference). The real problem is that engineers can't get laid, so they become terrorists. So, ladies, for the sake of world peace, sleep with an engineer.
Should be "rebuttals." Sorry.
No surprise, Transocean finds fault with the report, as does Halliburton.
Since you asked, yes I carry a paper map, a compass, and a spare set of batteries for my GPS. The GPS is, however, a lot more useful/convenient if you have a decent map installed on it. My point was that you shouldn't assume that an appropriate maps was included just because the GPS was made for hiking.
Just do clarify, my response assumes that you mean "comes with the unit" when you say "built in maps." If you really meant "no need for a signal to fetch maps on the fly from the Internet," the author of the summary seems to have already found a work-around for doing that with a phone.
built in maps
Probably not. The maps included on most hiking GPSs are totally worthless -- they might show a few huge highways, but nothing else. You generally have to buy topographic maps, or download free ones from a site like GPSFileDepot.
I just found a route like that (right turn off of bridge, then fall 30 feet to the street below) on Google maps in the U.S. about a week ago. I reported the error, but it's not fixed yet.
So now we can all start fucking again?
If you want to pretend that HIV was the reason people on Slashdot weren't fucking, you go right ahead.
simply because there are too many patents out there and patent offices grant lots of patents that can be invalidated later based on prior art
No, it's much worse than that. Read my post again.
a large company like Google is in a hugely better position than smaller players to analyze the situation
Google is in a better position to analyze patents that haven't been granted/published yet? Does Google have spies inside the USPTO?
Think about what you are asking for when you demand indemnification. You are asking them to be on the hook for a risk that they cannot accurately assess no matter how much due diligence they perform, because applications for patents not yet granted are not visible to them.