I've heard that high-voltage DC can only be plugged in by licensed electricians
I don't know about original installation, but I don't recall that Disney has a single licensed electrician of the folks that perform maintenance on the system that drives their monorail system in Florida. That's a 600 VDC setup, and some of the rectifiers can provide upwards of 6000 amps IIRC.
Not stealing stuff is part of living in a civilization.
So is keeping to your word and adhering to agreements freely entered into, even if as a result of your own actions (or lack thereof) the terms you offer aren't in your best interests.
If I, as a contract programmer, offer a set price to perform a given job and the customer agrees to that price and we both sign the contract, I can't retroactively charge the customer more because I forgot to include time for integration testing in my price. I can attempt to renegotiate the contract, but there's nothing that legally or ethically requires the customer to cooperate with me. The time to make sure all your ducks are in a row is BEFORE the contract is agreed upon, not after. It's not that hard to do.
And if it wasn't clear, Amazon is contacting people to make it clear.
After the fact, and after the specified contract terms were fulfilled by both parties. Too little, too late.
That's absolutely not true, at least in the US. Once an authorization is placed on a debit card, that money is unavailable for your use until the authorization expires, which can mean bounced checks if the account is close to the limit and the card is used to buy gas or other transaction where a high minimum authorization amount is enforced. Once the transaction goes through, the money is *gone* until you get it back, and the bank has 10 business days in which to perform an investigation before taking any action, so you'd best be able to live without that money in the meantime. Furthermore, by law you're limited to $50 of liability with a debit card if you dispute the transaction within 48 hours of discovering it. After 48 hours, it goes to $500. After 60 days, it's the full amount. Credit cards are limited to $50, regardless of when the problem is reported. Most banks voluntarily implement policies that are substantially more reasonable, but that's as a convenience for the customer, not because they're required to.
They don't realize that the common purchaser can issue a chargeback on the second transaction by Amazon, and despite all of the action taken by Amazon, they will still lose it in arbitration.
Maybe, maybe not. The wonderful thing about arbitration is that the arbitrator can rule however he wants, with little to no concern for court precedent or even what the law clearly says, and if it's binding arbitration there's no appeal process for the decision itself even if it's grossly unfair. If the company that provides arbitration services to them does a lot of business with them, you'd be a fool to think there there couldn't be some kind of bias.
Judith Sheindlin has made a pretty fair pile of cash from the arbitration racket.:-)
This doesn't sound much different from the current system in the US where if a merchant has an issue, it can be reported to the various credit reporting agencies. Any extension of credit in the US generally is preceded by a credit check with one or more of these agencies, so the effect would be the same.
Dunno if it's something that would stand up in court, but goodwill fostered in the customer often translates into real dollars and cents farther on down the road. Additionally, the positive word-of-mouth that Amazon blew the opportunity to take advantage of is something that companies actually do spend money to encourage.
They should never have cocked up, but as they automate this stuff more and more a bug can be costly, and a company has to plan on avoidance and recovery.
I'm surprised that no one has interpreted the TRUE meaning of this screw-up - the machines are testing the waters in anticipation of their first widespread economic strike against us. They won't pull a SkyNet and actually kill everyone. Rather, they'll get us by putting everyone in the poorhouse.
If you've got a receipt with the price of the goods, your signature, *and* the goods themselves, I'd think the merchant would have a hard time arguing to the police officer or to the card issuer that the charge wasn't proper. In the spirit of the plethora of poor analogies that have been the hallmark of this thread, let me contribute my own, equally poor one: Let's say you buy a car for an agreed-upon price on your credit card. After you get the car home, you get a phone call from the dealership telling you that the salesman failed to charge you the standard $300 for the Scotch-Gard that got sprayed on your upholstery while the car was being washed prior to delivery. You find out that the dealership charged your credit card for the additional money. What then?
That's not what the parent poster said. Corporations are an artificial construct designed explicitly to allow its owners to avoid financial responsibility for the organization's actions (how moral is that?), and *are not people*, the court reporter's screw-up in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad notwithstanding.
Basically what happened is that due to a technical error a contract was made that both parties didn't agree to, which in most cases would render the contract void.
Then Amazon shouldn't have shipped the items - IANAL, but shipping the items would seem to be clear evidence that Amazon agreed to the terms. Amazon's policy is to have a person check the order for correctness before shipment, so it seems it'd be pretty easy to argue that they had two opportunities to cancel the sale before the customer's card was charged and the transaction deemed complete.
From their pricing policy: "If an item's correct price is higher than our stated price, we will, at our discretion, either contact you for instructions before shipping or cancel your order and notify you of such cancellation." Again, this would suggest that Amazon has a clear opportunity and the means to fix such situations before the sale becomes final, and they failed to do so in this instance. I think they're just going to have to eat this one.
Or an alternate moral solution would be to ban the account and the credit card internally and refuse to do business with that person.
I suspect that this course of action would result in more negative PR for Amazon than what they actually did. I would offer that the most reasonable course of action would be for Amazon to accept the loss, look at the amount of money involved, and determine whether increased spending for their software QA department might offset such losses in the future.:-)
G.711 isn't compressed - it's straight 8-bit, 8KHz audio at a 64kbps rate. It *is* companded to put 14 or so bits of dynamic range into an 8 bit number, but it's not compressed like GSM or G.729.
you simply buy a different voip that gets along with your security system, or a different security system that goes with your voip.
Easier said than done. While the VoIP provider has some degree of control over your packets once they're on his network, he has exactly zero control of them before they get to him. Packet jitter is always a potential problem and is not tolerated well by POTS modems, and as another Slashdotter astutely reminded me in another post, the aggregate delay imposed by the VoIP network/Internet can reach the point where any echo cancellers in the analog portions of the circuit can be rendered worse than useless even if there is no jitter at all.
Hell, he doesn't even need access to the breaker - plenty of homes have outdoor service entrances, and disabling POTS/DSL/cable is trivial then. However, it seems to be that that if the alarm company was on the ball they'd take notice once the alarm disappeared from their system and would respond accordingly.
you can get a dialtone that will only work with 911, 0, and a designated number for as little as $12/month in some cities
Before taxes & fees. I have a bare-minimum POTS line here at home (BellSouth refuses to sell dry DSL), which ostensibly is supposed to be $12.85/month, but somehow magically ends up being about twice that after BellSouth is done with it.:-)
I would have loved to have seen Rush back in the 80s. I just didn't have the funds.
I knew that you'd be kinda strapped for cash then, so I went out of my way to see several Rush concerts for your benefit during the mid/late 80's. They kicked ass then, as was to be expected. In particular, the Hampton, VA dates for the Power Windows and Hold Your Fire tours were quite good - Blue Oyster Cult opened the Power Windows concert, and Primus opened for Hold Your Fire.
I don't know if anyone here has ever thanked you personally for your efforts against the RIAA's extortionate tactics, but I appreciate the hell out of what you and your peers have done to put the brakes on it.
Remember, royalties are paid separately for both the RECORDING and the COMPOSITION.
Right - I understand that, and I also understand the situation where composition royalties are owed by the artist if they're doing a cover of someone else's work. What I still don't understand is how the royalties end up being the artist's responsibility if the work is totally original, as per your example in the original post. It seems to me that any royalties in that case would be the responsibility of the label/distributor, and the contract clause you quoted seems to support that.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here - if the artist is distributing directly through Amazon, are you saying that Amazon pays a flat 55% and considers the royalties owed to the artist to have been part of the 45% that the artist gets?
Slashdot Mirror
I've heard that high-voltage DC can only be plugged in by licensed electricians
I don't know about original installation, but I don't recall that Disney has a single licensed electrician of the folks that perform maintenance on the system that drives their monorail system in Florida. That's a 600 VDC setup, and some of the rectifiers can provide upwards of 6000 amps IIRC.
Particularly if you're using one of those fancy space heaters that are generally sold as "plasma TVs".
Not stealing stuff is part of living in a civilization.
So is keeping to your word and adhering to agreements freely entered into, even if as a result of your own actions (or lack thereof) the terms you offer aren't in your best interests.
If I, as a contract programmer, offer a set price to perform a given job and the customer agrees to that price and we both sign the contract, I can't retroactively charge the customer more because I forgot to include time for integration testing in my price. I can attempt to renegotiate the contract, but there's nothing that legally or ethically requires the customer to cooperate with me. The time to make sure all your ducks are in a row is BEFORE the contract is agreed upon, not after. It's not that hard to do.
And if it wasn't clear, Amazon is contacting people to make it clear.
After the fact, and after the specified contract terms were fulfilled by both parties. Too little, too late.
That's absolutely not true, at least in the US. Once an authorization is placed on a debit card, that money is unavailable for your use until the authorization expires, which can mean bounced checks if the account is close to the limit and the card is used to buy gas or other transaction where a high minimum authorization amount is enforced. Once the transaction goes through, the money is *gone* until you get it back, and the bank has 10 business days in which to perform an investigation before taking any action, so you'd best be able to live without that money in the meantime. Furthermore, by law you're limited to $50 of liability with a debit card if you dispute the transaction within 48 hours of discovering it. After 48 hours, it goes to $500. After 60 days, it's the full amount. Credit cards are limited to $50, regardless of when the problem is reported. Most banks voluntarily implement policies that are substantially more reasonable, but that's as a convenience for the customer, not because they're required to.
They don't realize that the common purchaser can issue a chargeback on the second transaction by Amazon, and despite all of the action taken by Amazon, they will still lose it in arbitration.
:-)
Maybe, maybe not. The wonderful thing about arbitration is that the arbitrator can rule however he wants, with little to no concern for court precedent or even what the law clearly says, and if it's binding arbitration there's no appeal process for the decision itself even if it's grossly unfair. If the company that provides arbitration services to them does a lot of business with them, you'd be a fool to think there there couldn't be some kind of bias.
Judith Sheindlin has made a pretty fair pile of cash from the arbitration racket.
This doesn't sound much different from the current system in the US where if a merchant has an issue, it can be reported to the various credit reporting agencies. Any extension of credit in the US generally is preceded by a credit check with one or more of these agencies, so the effect would be the same.
Dunno if it's something that would stand up in court, but goodwill fostered in the customer often translates into real dollars and cents farther on down the road. Additionally, the positive word-of-mouth that Amazon blew the opportunity to take advantage of is something that companies actually do spend money to encourage.
I run a small business (actually it is the spouse business)
;-)
What's the going rate on spouses this month?
They should never have cocked up, but as they automate this stuff more and more a bug can be costly, and a company has to plan on avoidance and recovery.
I'm surprised that no one has interpreted the TRUE meaning of this screw-up - the machines are testing the waters in anticipation of their first widespread economic strike against us. They won't pull a SkyNet and actually kill everyone. Rather, they'll get us by putting everyone in the poorhouse.
If you've got a receipt with the price of the goods, your signature, *and* the goods themselves, I'd think the merchant would have a hard time arguing to the police officer or to the card issuer that the charge wasn't proper. In the spirit of the plethora of poor analogies that have been the hallmark of this thread, let me contribute my own, equally poor one: Let's say you buy a car for an agreed-upon price on your credit card. After you get the car home, you get a phone call from the dealership telling you that the salesman failed to charge you the standard $300 for the Scotch-Gard that got sprayed on your upholstery while the car was being washed prior to delivery. You find out that the dealership charged your credit card for the additional money. What then?
That's not what the parent poster said. Corporations are an artificial construct designed explicitly to allow its owners to avoid financial responsibility for the organization's actions (how moral is that?), and *are not people*, the court reporter's screw-up in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad notwithstanding.
Basically what happened is that due to a technical error a contract was made that both parties didn't agree to, which in most cases would render the contract void.
Then Amazon shouldn't have shipped the items - IANAL, but shipping the items would seem to be clear evidence that Amazon agreed to the terms. Amazon's policy is to have a person check the order for correctness before shipment, so it seems it'd be pretty easy to argue that they had two opportunities to cancel the sale before the customer's card was charged and the transaction deemed complete.
From their pricing policy: "If an item's correct price is higher than our stated price, we will, at our discretion, either contact you for instructions before shipping or cancel your order and notify you of such cancellation." Again, this would suggest that Amazon has a clear opportunity and the means to fix such situations before the sale becomes final, and they failed to do so in this instance. I think they're just going to have to eat this one.
Or an alternate moral solution would be to ban the account and the credit card internally and refuse to do business with that person.
:-)
I suspect that this course of action would result in more negative PR for Amazon than what they actually did. I would offer that the most reasonable course of action would be for Amazon to accept the loss, look at the amount of money involved, and determine whether increased spending for their software QA department might offset such losses in the future.
G.711 isn't compressed - it's straight 8-bit, 8KHz audio at a 64kbps rate. It *is* companded to put 14 or so bits of dynamic range into an 8 bit number, but it's not compressed like GSM or G.729.
you simply buy a different voip that gets along with your security system, or a different security system that goes with your voip.
Easier said than done. While the VoIP provider has some degree of control over your packets once they're on his network, he has exactly zero control of them before they get to him. Packet jitter is always a potential problem and is not tolerated well by POTS modems, and as another Slashdotter astutely reminded me in another post, the aggregate delay imposed by the VoIP network/Internet can reach the point where any echo cancellers in the analog portions of the circuit can be rendered worse than useless even if there is no jitter at all.
Hell, he doesn't even need access to the breaker - plenty of homes have outdoor service entrances, and disabling POTS/DSL/cable is trivial then. However, it seems to be that that if the alarm company was on the ball they'd take notice once the alarm disappeared from their system and would respond accordingly.
you can get a dialtone that will only work with 911, 0, and a designated number for as little as $12/month in some cities
:-)
Before taxes & fees. I have a bare-minimum POTS line here at home (BellSouth refuses to sell dry DSL), which ostensibly is supposed to be $12.85/month, but somehow magically ends up being about twice that after BellSouth is done with it.
I don't know of too many U.S. VoIP providers that *don't* support G.711u, which is your best bet for fax/modem stuff anyway.
Oh, you bastard.
;-)
That reminds me - Mr. Big opened for the Presto show, IIRC.
I would have loved to have seen Rush back in the 80s. I just didn't have the funds.
I knew that you'd be kinda strapped for cash then, so I went out of my way to see several Rush concerts for your benefit during the mid/late 80's. They kicked ass then, as was to be expected. In particular, the Hampton, VA dates for the Power Windows and Hold Your Fire tours were quite good - Blue Oyster Cult opened the Power Windows concert, and Primus opened for Hold Your Fire.
Rather like the old company stores that you'd find in mining towns of old....
The lesson here: No good deed goes unpunished, so if you're gonna do a good deed, be sure to do it anonymously. :-)
Not to mention the god-awful HTML-less editor you're shackled to there.
I don't know if anyone here has ever thanked you personally for your efforts against the RIAA's extortionate tactics, but I appreciate the hell out of what you and your peers have done to put the brakes on it.
Remember, royalties are paid separately for both the RECORDING and the COMPOSITION.
Right - I understand that, and I also understand the situation where composition royalties are owed by the artist if they're doing a cover of someone else's work. What I still don't understand is how the royalties end up being the artist's responsibility if the work is totally original, as per your example in the original post. It seems to me that any royalties in that case would be the responsibility of the label/distributor, and the contract clause you quoted seems to support that.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here - if the artist is distributing directly through Amazon, are you saying that Amazon pays a flat 55% and considers the royalties owed to the artist to have been part of the 45% that the artist gets?