Ah, You mistake my reply for caring about what you posted. I don't want to leave you with that impression. One word answers undoubtedly using your voice of authority may impress small children or cowered underlings but again, you have no argument other than 'I said so' - very amusing. Not an argument or any sort of reasoning to refute me but still, amusing. But in case anyone might want to take your word for it or might be impressed by one word argument, here's the definition of society from Wikipedia.
"A society is a grouping of individuals, which is characterized by common interests and may have distinctive culture and institutions. In a society, members can be from a different ethnic group. A "Society" may refer to a particular people, such as the Nuer, to a nation state, such as Switzerland, or to a broader cultural group, such as a Western society. Society can also refer to an organized group of people associated together for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes. The following three components are common to all definitions of society:
* Social networks
* Criteria for membership, and
* Characteristic patterns of organization"
Again, the US Military is a society that one may use to compare with other societies, many in fact. Different cultures and different social structures for the Marines, Air Force, Army, Navy and Coast Guard. A bit more wordy than your 'No' but you know, in case the kids are reading I'd rather make a good impression.
Sir, you mistake Fascism for Patriotism. And you mistake my right to have a opinion different from yours with the difference between right and wrong. And I would say that there isn't a 'big frigging' difference between who and what is doing the censoring except in a matter of degree and justification. It is true that as a member of the military you are on duty 24/7. It is true that you are subject to stops and searches of your person and your car when entering a military base and it is true that you are not allowed to participate in political activities while in uniform.
And as for computer use, in the military, while at work on a military computer or on a military system you are expected to comport to many of the same rules you would have if you worked anywhere else. If in the course of working on some investigation I was researching on the internet and I came across a questionable site you know darn well the first thing I would do is inform my supervisor. If you've read the rest of this thread you'll see censorship all over the world for many different reasons. From protecting you morally by not allowing you to turn 'safe search' off in Google in Germany to China censoring sites and places for moral and society reasons to the US Military not allowing members to access Slashdot Games and not allowing blogs and online diaries. (they were fine with the positive blogs but when they found negative ones they got shut down) In Europe Nazi websites sites are illegal and selling Nazi stuff is illegal. In Europe it's illegal to say that the holocaust didn't happen, they imprisoned the historian David Irving for saying so. I think in Thailand or somewhere near there they were looking to jail the person who put a youtube video making fun of their King. Censorship, cutting off free speech - it's everywhere. Including the US Military.
Nice, condescension based on nothing other than your own invalid and unsubstantiated opinion. The US Military is a society in itself, many in fact. Each with it's own culture and ethos. My comparisons are valid and arguable. Your opinion is fine, your reasoning is not.
I'd love to be in the "US Military right or wrong" group but let's get real here. It is authoritarian, it rewards morally challenged yes men with promotion and if you disagree with the party line you get canned. Sounds like the worst of Red China to me. Two words - Abu Ghraib. Two star charged with investigating it because a one star was directly involved. Result - Two Star sent packing for actually trying to investigate and also given specific orders to not look up the chain. I've heard the excuse that well you know, it's only Iraqis after all, sounds like Chinese feelings toward the Tibetans to me, an institutional racism. I forgot to mention the military cutting off military blogs and online diaries - probably not a lot of bandwidth but hey you know it's been embarrassing to the military, sounds like Chinese cutting off dissent to me. And let's not forget the Generals in general, crass party men who wait two, four years after retiring to say anything against the whole damn thing, 'we didn't use enough men, we didn't have a play, and I didn't say a damn thing. Sounds like Party line Chinese communists to me, but in this case they are cowardly bastards who killed military men and women with their party line silence. Oh, and I've been connected with the military since before you were born Sgt. and I understand your desire to defend the military and it's certainly not the fault of the enlisted and the lower ranks for what's going on there. Good luck in Iraq and keep your head down.
Dude, you're being 'reeducated' all the time. Witness the anti-piracy badge available to Boy Scouts, the inane anti-piracy commercials in front of movies and on tv. Even the newspeak word 'piracy' to describe file sharing. You are being reeducated all the time to conform to somebody else's idea of morality and right and wrong. So buckle up citizen.
Didn't the US Military block, flickr, youtube and pretty much the same services that are blocked in China now? Everybody is blocking something from us, Google removes sites from results, Yahoo and Google help China block and censor things. Take down threats and notices for someone giving Dell consumer tips, someone criticizing some lawyers or telling you how to make your DVD play in your non Microsoft computer. It's already a Brave New Bladerunner world everywhere but go ahead and act shocked that it's happening in China now. Might make you feel better.
A short, useless study of 70 odd British children done for in support of what? Seems most useless and of course encourages those other pseudo science gems like "Phrenology" - remember that one? See, like this study, physical characteristics can be used to determine the character, personality traits, and criminality on the basis of the shape of the head. That way we can absurdly judge people based on bumps on the head, now we have finger length and of course there are always the determinations of character based on how close those eyes are together, that's always a good one to use. Then of course there's a person's size - you remember Randy Newman's "Short People Got No Reason To Live" song? Yup, you know, since they're short and everything, see it's science! After we get these worked into society nicely, you know we can move to those other physical characteristics used to judge people's worth - you know, like color and race. Yup, this study comes right out of the 'crap pulled out of their asses' department and is worthless.
Well that explains the reasoning behind the Blue Shirt behind every corner rational I get at Best Buy. One time I was browsing, I like to browse around since most everything in the store interests me so I'll look at the computers, stereos, cd's computer software etc. Well, one time there was a Blue shirt around every corner, around every corner instead of browsing I would have to fend off yet another "May I help you Sir?" inquiry. First couple of them I had a fairly good humor about it by the time the sixth one asked me the same thing I was snapping at the kids. It reminds me why I don't like to spend money in there or similar places. Circuit City seemed worse so I would go into that store even less often. Those sort of experiences put a bad taste in my mouth and keep me from going into aggressive stores like Sears but I'll spend money in Penney's since it's more laid back and I can actually shop.
Wow, a ripper that doesn't actually rip anything useful or desired. I can see that Real Player is still right on top of technology these days and probably why it isn't anywhere on my computer. Now a program that would allow me to rip my cd's, dvd's and mixed media cd/dvd's - that would be something to Slashdot on about. Thank you Easy CD-DA Extractor for part of that solution.
If you're a country like the old Soviet Union, censorship was tried and so the people knew what was the important things to find out about and pay attention to. Flooding the news with crap about Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears and every other gossipy bit of crap does the trick and accomplishes the same goal. Important news goes by the wayside while Fox, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC and CBS busy themselves feeding us the pablum we want to hear and know about. They follow the lowest common denominator which is fine when it's entertainment at stake but when the ratings became the most important thing in news on the air and in the print media then the truth and what is important goes by the wayside. It's all over, no censorship is needed, the boring important news doesn't get ratings but Lindsay Lohan being caught drunk at a car crash is front page news. We're doomed, we've doomed ourselves to being ruled by incompetents and tyrants and we'll never know the difference. Look at who we have in charge now, an incompetent and a would be constitution breaking tyrant. But ooh look - Paris Hilton is going to jail in a few weeks and that's what we want to know about. We've doomed ourselves.
And calling BS on you was uncalled for by previous poster. Dude's personal opinion is not the holy writ and calling BS on somebody else's opinion is rude, crude and intellectually bankrupt. It's an opinion. For me, my opinion is that Starcraft doesn't need to be changed from what made it successful. There are plenty of other games that go off in other directions. Starcraft was and hopefully the new version is like Chess - easy to pick up and hard to master. Those characteristics made the game re playable and fun over the years and are the reasons we're talking about a new version coming out right now. Oh, and 'woo hoo' - the pictures look awesome. Now I'm just waiting for a chance to buy my copy.
Exactly, some dorf wants no lights so writes a screed about how bad those lights are and how they shouldn't be there. Well, folks buy what they want and if the ones with lights and blinking indicator lights don't sell then they won't make them. No problem at all. You can buy the style, the model, the features you want. Personally I like the shiny lights.
I hardly ever turn icq on any longer on account of the Russian/Czech/Ukranian spam. Very annoying and last time I turned it on some damn spammer who kept on spamming on me 'added me' - annoyed I checked and yep, my preferences were to not allow anyone to add me but for some reason spambot boy was able to. I don't even know what the purpose of doing that is but I definitely don't like it and don't turn the icq on for just that reason.
Should look in the mirror if they're looking for idiots. You don't have to get Vista with your next computer. Did you read about how Dell was pressured by customers to provide XP as a alternate instead of the buggy, DRM laden Vista? Microsoft pressures, companies cave in- customers pressure and companies go back to being a customer service company and providing freedom of choice not just freedom of Microsoft's choice for you. Enough people complain and don't like a product and it will not succeed. Look at Windows ME, failed in the marketplace. Look at Vista, failing in the marketplace. And I've seen the Office 2007 for sale for 79 dollars. The whole thing. Yup, they're pushing this steaming pile hard which shows how badly it's failing. The story is what we call SPIN. You don't expect them to come out and say, 'yup, this is a real bomb and selling this Vista pile of steaming crap has been difficult.' - do you?
And if you don't like this or any other article that is on Slashdot, change your preferences or better yet, just don't click on them.
That was a less than insightful remark to make. Demanding a new computer that actually works seems to be highly rational. XP finally works and Vista doesn't work. In exchange for shiny blue glass accented highlights around your windows you get to lose more control over your computer, you get a Operating System that is a massive resource hog and most of those resources are used to take more rights away from you and the use of your computer. In exchange for losing more control over your computer there is Direct X 10 which promises - in a couple of years to make the the explosions in your games more interesting to look at. To buy a new computer and becoming a beta tester for a program that few people not employed or in the pocket of Microsoft actually dislike intensely is irrational. But you go ahead and be a nice Microsoft beta tester, seems highly irrational.
Buy the parts, build it yourself, instead of craptastic Vista, get reliable XP Pro. Load that baby up with Open Office free software which is compatible with Word and call it a day. A happy day. And don't forget to yell at the vendors, enough people yell at them and they'll listen eventually. If not, you've vented and told them off.
DAT had great promise and if it was put in the regular development cycle we'd have them in our cars to this day. Starting with Sheet Music way back when, every consumer friendly innovation was seen to gore somebody's ox and take money from somebody. And as with every single consumer electronic device to come out, it was fought against and successfully destroyed until it had so much DRM and crap on it that it was useless. Kind of like the Blue Ray and HD DVD systems now. I never did get a DAT player, I wanted one but the mortal danger of stopping someone being able to make a clearer bootleg tape of a Grateful Dead concert was more important.
First post, ah such a feather in your cap. You can mark that off on your list of things to do before you die. And of course, April 1st means the day to not bother looking at Slashdot. It's funny story time.
Give me a break. The imagination was originally by George Orwell and then the Ad agency that took the George Orwell idea and did the original commercial for Apple Computers. This clown started off the hit piece commercial crap early by changing the already completed and good commercial with two inserts - of Hillary Clinton speaking and of the Obama campaign sign on the girls shirt. Guy is a creep of the first order and rightfully lost his job. Hopefully he doesn't get another job which puts him in a position of trust anytime soon.
We have defeated the evil advocates of the metric system on every single front despite your best efforts. Your meters, your kilometers, your celsius - are all as popular and well known as is your strange game of soccer where men in shorts run around for hours never touching the polka dot ball with their hands. In America we don't learn no stinking metric system just like we don't learn no stinking foreign languages. So please take your amusing feelings of superiority and take your metric system bigotry and your conversion tables with you. We not only don't need any of it, we completely ignore it.:-P
You can take my twelve inch ruler when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
Without complaints they can't get these guys who run these 'upgrade' scams and 'rebate' scams on people. Document everything exactly and when you get the run around, the rebate in a name that's a bad variation of your name, a 'cancelled' upgrade based on alleged imput from you - you can complain to your state attorney general. These guys love cases like that, it makes them famous and gets the crooked bastards. Remember, the scam artists like Microsoft are counting on you just taking it in and not doing anything about it.
I'm thinking that if someone didn't notice the error then they won't notice when Amazon corrects the error. And then most people if they do notice the notice from Amazon will look it over and say there was and error which has been corrected. Thanks for the notice. If someone says 'wah! I stole that DVD set fair and square well then you know, wrong is still wrong.
Okay, that is the advertisement right there. "Buy One - Get One Free" That's the deal. That's black and white and easy to understand. I'm sorry for you if your world is not so black and white as to cloud your moral judgment on this then. If you go the counter with the two dvd sets and the cashier in error gives you both for free you already knew that you were getting one when you bought one. Now you're morally at fault here. You know the deal, the cashier/computer program is in error and makes a mistake in your favor. If you walk away and never realize it then you're a space cadet already and have worse problems. If you walk away and realize the mistake and don't correct the mistake then you're morally in error. You've just stolen. That's pretty simple right there. Yes, morality is a fluid concept - to a point. You know, thou shall not kill - except when sanctioned by your government for the purpose of defending your country, except to protect your family, except to protect yourself from deadly force etc. Thou shall not steal - except if you're starving and need that loaf of bread (I'm looking at you Jean Valjean) DVD's aren't loaves of bread, it's not an exception to the rule - you tried to get one over on the big faceless corporation (cause it's not wrong if it's a faceless corporation) and the corporation noticed finally. It's not a gray area.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, You mistake my reply for caring about what you posted. I don't want to leave you with that impression. One word answers undoubtedly using your voice of authority may impress small children or cowered underlings but again, you have no argument other than 'I said so' - very amusing. Not an argument or any sort of reasoning to refute me but still, amusing. But in case anyone might want to take your word for it or might be impressed by one word argument, here's the definition of society from Wikipedia. "A society is a grouping of individuals, which is characterized by common interests and may have distinctive culture and institutions. In a society, members can be from a different ethnic group. A "Society" may refer to a particular people, such as the Nuer, to a nation state, such as Switzerland, or to a broader cultural group, such as a Western society. Society can also refer to an organized group of people associated together for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes. The following three components are common to all definitions of society: * Social networks * Criteria for membership, and * Characteristic patterns of organization" Again, the US Military is a society that one may use to compare with other societies, many in fact. Different cultures and different social structures for the Marines, Air Force, Army, Navy and Coast Guard. A bit more wordy than your 'No' but you know, in case the kids are reading I'd rather make a good impression.
Sir, you mistake Fascism for Patriotism. And you mistake my right to have a opinion different from yours with the difference between right and wrong. And I would say that there isn't a 'big frigging' difference between who and what is doing the censoring except in a matter of degree and justification. It is true that as a member of the military you are on duty 24/7. It is true that you are subject to stops and searches of your person and your car when entering a military base and it is true that you are not allowed to participate in political activities while in uniform. And as for computer use, in the military, while at work on a military computer or on a military system you are expected to comport to many of the same rules you would have if you worked anywhere else. If in the course of working on some investigation I was researching on the internet and I came across a questionable site you know darn well the first thing I would do is inform my supervisor. If you've read the rest of this thread you'll see censorship all over the world for many different reasons. From protecting you morally by not allowing you to turn 'safe search' off in Google in Germany to China censoring sites and places for moral and society reasons to the US Military not allowing members to access Slashdot Games and not allowing blogs and online diaries. (they were fine with the positive blogs but when they found negative ones they got shut down) In Europe Nazi websites sites are illegal and selling Nazi stuff is illegal. In Europe it's illegal to say that the holocaust didn't happen, they imprisoned the historian David Irving for saying so. I think in Thailand or somewhere near there they were looking to jail the person who put a youtube video making fun of their King. Censorship, cutting off free speech - it's everywhere. Including the US Military.
Nice, condescension based on nothing other than your own invalid and unsubstantiated opinion. The US Military is a society in itself, many in fact. Each with it's own culture and ethos. My comparisons are valid and arguable. Your opinion is fine, your reasoning is not.
I'd love to be in the "US Military right or wrong" group but let's get real here. It is authoritarian, it rewards morally challenged yes men with promotion and if you disagree with the party line you get canned. Sounds like the worst of Red China to me. Two words - Abu Ghraib. Two star charged with investigating it because a one star was directly involved. Result - Two Star sent packing for actually trying to investigate and also given specific orders to not look up the chain. I've heard the excuse that well you know, it's only Iraqis after all, sounds like Chinese feelings toward the Tibetans to me, an institutional racism. I forgot to mention the military cutting off military blogs and online diaries - probably not a lot of bandwidth but hey you know it's been embarrassing to the military, sounds like Chinese cutting off dissent to me. And let's not forget the Generals in general, crass party men who wait two, four years after retiring to say anything against the whole damn thing, 'we didn't use enough men, we didn't have a play, and I didn't say a damn thing. Sounds like Party line Chinese communists to me, but in this case they are cowardly bastards who killed military men and women with their party line silence. Oh, and I've been connected with the military since before you were born Sgt. and I understand your desire to defend the military and it's certainly not the fault of the enlisted and the lower ranks for what's going on there. Good luck in Iraq and keep your head down.
Dude, you're being 'reeducated' all the time. Witness the anti-piracy badge available to Boy Scouts, the inane anti-piracy commercials in front of movies and on tv. Even the newspeak word 'piracy' to describe file sharing. You are being reeducated all the time to conform to somebody else's idea of morality and right and wrong. So buckle up citizen.
Didn't the US Military block, flickr, youtube and pretty much the same services that are blocked in China now? Everybody is blocking something from us, Google removes sites from results, Yahoo and Google help China block and censor things. Take down threats and notices for someone giving Dell consumer tips, someone criticizing some lawyers or telling you how to make your DVD play in your non Microsoft computer. It's already a Brave New Bladerunner world everywhere but go ahead and act shocked that it's happening in China now. Might make you feel better.
A short, useless study of 70 odd British children done for in support of what? Seems most useless and of course encourages those other pseudo science gems like "Phrenology" - remember that one? See, like this study, physical characteristics can be used to determine the character, personality traits, and criminality on the basis of the shape of the head. That way we can absurdly judge people based on bumps on the head, now we have finger length and of course there are always the determinations of character based on how close those eyes are together, that's always a good one to use. Then of course there's a person's size - you remember Randy Newman's "Short People Got No Reason To Live" song? Yup, you know, since they're short and everything, see it's science! After we get these worked into society nicely, you know we can move to those other physical characteristics used to judge people's worth - you know, like color and race. Yup, this study comes right out of the 'crap pulled out of their asses' department and is worthless.
Well that explains the reasoning behind the Blue Shirt behind every corner rational I get at Best Buy. One time I was browsing, I like to browse around since most everything in the store interests me so I'll look at the computers, stereos, cd's computer software etc. Well, one time there was a Blue shirt around every corner, around every corner instead of browsing I would have to fend off yet another "May I help you Sir?" inquiry. First couple of them I had a fairly good humor about it by the time the sixth one asked me the same thing I was snapping at the kids. It reminds me why I don't like to spend money in there or similar places. Circuit City seemed worse so I would go into that store even less often. Those sort of experiences put a bad taste in my mouth and keep me from going into aggressive stores like Sears but I'll spend money in Penney's since it's more laid back and I can actually shop.
Seems to me that items downloaded from Pirate sites are already conveniently ripped for you. Generally speaking of course.
Wow, a ripper that doesn't actually rip anything useful or desired. I can see that Real Player is still right on top of technology these days and probably why it isn't anywhere on my computer. Now a program that would allow me to rip my cd's, dvd's and mixed media cd/dvd's - that would be something to Slashdot on about. Thank you Easy CD-DA Extractor for part of that solution.
If you're a country like the old Soviet Union, censorship was tried and so the people knew what was the important things to find out about and pay attention to. Flooding the news with crap about Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears and every other gossipy bit of crap does the trick and accomplishes the same goal. Important news goes by the wayside while Fox, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC and CBS busy themselves feeding us the pablum we want to hear and know about. They follow the lowest common denominator which is fine when it's entertainment at stake but when the ratings became the most important thing in news on the air and in the print media then the truth and what is important goes by the wayside. It's all over, no censorship is needed, the boring important news doesn't get ratings but Lindsay Lohan being caught drunk at a car crash is front page news. We're doomed, we've doomed ourselves to being ruled by incompetents and tyrants and we'll never know the difference. Look at who we have in charge now, an incompetent and a would be constitution breaking tyrant. But ooh look - Paris Hilton is going to jail in a few weeks and that's what we want to know about. We've doomed ourselves.
And calling BS on you was uncalled for by previous poster. Dude's personal opinion is not the holy writ and calling BS on somebody else's opinion is rude, crude and intellectually bankrupt. It's an opinion. For me, my opinion is that Starcraft doesn't need to be changed from what made it successful. There are plenty of other games that go off in other directions. Starcraft was and hopefully the new version is like Chess - easy to pick up and hard to master. Those characteristics made the game re playable and fun over the years and are the reasons we're talking about a new version coming out right now. Oh, and 'woo hoo' - the pictures look awesome. Now I'm just waiting for a chance to buy my copy.
Exactly, some dorf wants no lights so writes a screed about how bad those lights are and how they shouldn't be there. Well, folks buy what they want and if the ones with lights and blinking indicator lights don't sell then they won't make them. No problem at all. You can buy the style, the model, the features you want. Personally I like the shiny lights.
I hardly ever turn icq on any longer on account of the Russian/Czech/Ukranian spam. Very annoying and last time I turned it on some damn spammer who kept on spamming on me 'added me' - annoyed I checked and yep, my preferences were to not allow anyone to add me but for some reason spambot boy was able to. I don't even know what the purpose of doing that is but I definitely don't like it and don't turn the icq on for just that reason.
Should look in the mirror if they're looking for idiots. You don't have to get Vista with your next computer. Did you read about how Dell was pressured by customers to provide XP as a alternate instead of the buggy, DRM laden Vista? Microsoft pressures, companies cave in- customers pressure and companies go back to being a customer service company and providing freedom of choice not just freedom of Microsoft's choice for you. Enough people complain and don't like a product and it will not succeed. Look at Windows ME, failed in the marketplace. Look at Vista, failing in the marketplace. And I've seen the Office 2007 for sale for 79 dollars. The whole thing. Yup, they're pushing this steaming pile hard which shows how badly it's failing. The story is what we call SPIN. You don't expect them to come out and say, 'yup, this is a real bomb and selling this Vista pile of steaming crap has been difficult.' - do you? And if you don't like this or any other article that is on Slashdot, change your preferences or better yet, just don't click on them.
That was a less than insightful remark to make. Demanding a new computer that actually works seems to be highly rational. XP finally works and Vista doesn't work. In exchange for shiny blue glass accented highlights around your windows you get to lose more control over your computer, you get a Operating System that is a massive resource hog and most of those resources are used to take more rights away from you and the use of your computer. In exchange for losing more control over your computer there is Direct X 10 which promises - in a couple of years to make the the explosions in your games more interesting to look at. To buy a new computer and becoming a beta tester for a program that few people not employed or in the pocket of Microsoft actually dislike intensely is irrational. But you go ahead and be a nice Microsoft beta tester, seems highly irrational.
Buy the parts, build it yourself, instead of craptastic Vista, get reliable XP Pro. Load that baby up with Open Office free software which is compatible with Word and call it a day. A happy day. And don't forget to yell at the vendors, enough people yell at them and they'll listen eventually. If not, you've vented and told them off.
DAT had great promise and if it was put in the regular development cycle we'd have them in our cars to this day. Starting with Sheet Music way back when, every consumer friendly innovation was seen to gore somebody's ox and take money from somebody. And as with every single consumer electronic device to come out, it was fought against and successfully destroyed until it had so much DRM and crap on it that it was useless. Kind of like the Blue Ray and HD DVD systems now. I never did get a DAT player, I wanted one but the mortal danger of stopping someone being able to make a clearer bootleg tape of a Grateful Dead concert was more important.
First post, ah such a feather in your cap. You can mark that off on your list of things to do before you die. And of course, April 1st means the day to not bother looking at Slashdot. It's funny story time.
Give me a break. The imagination was originally by George Orwell and then the Ad agency that took the George Orwell idea and did the original commercial for Apple Computers. This clown started off the hit piece commercial crap early by changing the already completed and good commercial with two inserts - of Hillary Clinton speaking and of the Obama campaign sign on the girls shirt. Guy is a creep of the first order and rightfully lost his job. Hopefully he doesn't get another job which puts him in a position of trust anytime soon.
Immoral, immature, illiterate and outdated. A sad commentary. About what law school was like when I went.
We have defeated the evil advocates of the metric system on every single front despite your best efforts. Your meters, your kilometers, your celsius - are all as popular and well known as is your strange game of soccer where men in shorts run around for hours never touching the polka dot ball with their hands. In America we don't learn no stinking metric system just like we don't learn no stinking foreign languages. So please take your amusing feelings of superiority and take your metric system bigotry and your conversion tables with you. We not only don't need any of it, we completely ignore it. :-P
You can take my twelve inch ruler when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
Without complaints they can't get these guys who run these 'upgrade' scams and 'rebate' scams on people. Document everything exactly and when you get the run around, the rebate in a name that's a bad variation of your name, a 'cancelled' upgrade based on alleged imput from you - you can complain to your state attorney general. These guys love cases like that, it makes them famous and gets the crooked bastards. Remember, the scam artists like Microsoft are counting on you just taking it in and not doing anything about it.
I'm thinking that if someone didn't notice the error then they won't notice when Amazon corrects the error. And then most people if they do notice the notice from Amazon will look it over and say there was and error which has been corrected. Thanks for the notice. If someone says 'wah! I stole that DVD set fair and square well then you know, wrong is still wrong.
Okay, that is the advertisement right there. "Buy One - Get One Free" That's the deal. That's black and white and easy to understand. I'm sorry for you if your world is not so black and white as to cloud your moral judgment on this then. If you go the counter with the two dvd sets and the cashier in error gives you both for free you already knew that you were getting one when you bought one. Now you're morally at fault here. You know the deal, the cashier/computer program is in error and makes a mistake in your favor. If you walk away and never realize it then you're a space cadet already and have worse problems. If you walk away and realize the mistake and don't correct the mistake then you're morally in error. You've just stolen. That's pretty simple right there. Yes, morality is a fluid concept - to a point. You know, thou shall not kill - except when sanctioned by your government for the purpose of defending your country, except to protect your family, except to protect yourself from deadly force etc. Thou shall not steal - except if you're starving and need that loaf of bread (I'm looking at you Jean Valjean) DVD's aren't loaves of bread, it's not an exception to the rule - you tried to get one over on the big faceless corporation (cause it's not wrong if it's a faceless corporation) and the corporation noticed finally. It's not a gray area.