Changing to proportional electors in Colorado is obviously stupid in Colorado. As you say, it shifts them from 8 votes in play to 1. However, it makes perfect sense in states like New York and Texas, where there are currently no electoral votes in play (Bush and Kerry don't bother campaigning in New York and Texas because they don't care about the margin in either; one candidate is clearly ahead). Note that in those states, 10% of the vote would be equal to 3 electoral votes: the same as a one representative state.
"I think that most of the world would argue that a better approach would be to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian crisis."
This kind of requires the Israelis and the Palestinians. As the Soviet Union proved in Chechnya and Czechoslovakia, you can't impose peace from without. The only thing that the US could have done would have been to wage genocide on one or the other.
It is probably true that the US can't leave Iraq now. We're stuck there until a government can be formed. What I don't understand is why we haven't been able to shift more control to local forces. Then it would be Iraqis detaining Iraqis.
I am less concerned about Bush in terms of what he will do in Iraq and more concerned about how what he has done will affect his ability to engage in useful foreign policy. The uranium enrichment program in Iran is a perfect example of this. I have far more faith in Kerry's ability to solve this (preferably with global support) than Bush's. Particularly because Kerry will have a much better claim to global support than Bush.
Zogby was also much more accurate in 1996. He was one of the few pollsters to correct for the difficulty of getting Republicans to take the poll. Other pollsters were putting the margin at double digits in 1996. The fact that his guess was within.1% involved a lot of luck; the fact that his guess was within sampling error was all skill.
IMnsHO, the site would be more accurate if it *only* used the Zogby poll where available. I strongly suspect that the Gallup poll in Ohio is off. Zogby has Ohio going to Bush (albeit weaker than Gallup has it going for Kerry). The Gallup poll is one of those that has historically undercounted Republicans.
If so, why is oil almost twice as expensive now than before the war? If oil (gas) were currently at pre-war prices, I would be voting for Bush, liar or not (as Clinton demonstrated, liars can still be elected President). He utterly failed in doing this. That's why I'm voting for Kerry.
I'm not so sure that Bush's intent was to secure oil resources. Note that oil producers (like he used to be) have been greatly *helped* by the war. Oil prices are such that it is worthwhile to pump oil out of fields that would otherwise be too expensive (i.e. if it costs US$40 a barrel to get out of the ground and to the refinery, it wasn't worth pumping when oil was US$30 a barrel). Thus, it is quite possible that he went to war to *keep* oil resources from being secure. That has certainly been the effect (if not the intent).
Personally, I think that it is even simpler than that. Bush belongs to the group that thinks (incorrectly) that his father did the wrong thing by halting the offensive in '91. He took any excuse he could find to resume the war. Now, he is demonstrating why his father was correct to stop when he did.
"I'd probably still go with the painless method of a parachute."
Yes, but in this case, we are talking about a parachute that you can only use *after* flattening yourself. What I think that you mean is that you would prefer a traditional parachute where flattening is avoided entirely.
My point was that if you have to be flattened as part of the process, you might as well allow the jump itself to flatten you. You get to the ground faster. The whole point of a parachute slowing you is to *avoid* being flattened. If it's alright to be flattened, just jump straight./not sure the joke was funny enough for all this work
"The election would then be thrown into complete chaos."
A tie might mean that Congress would decide (no ties allowed in the election). Especially interesting since I think that it is the *outgoing* Congress, so Kerry and Edwards (and possibly Cheney) might conceivably get to vote. Or there could be other tiebreakers (maybe it would go back the home game before that).
Ties are relatively rare in professional football. Maybe once every two or three seasons. We may never know.
They are posting on slashdot. Where do you get the idea that they want to do something meaningful? Especially since you are posting on slashdot. You should know better./absolutely sure that I have no intention of doing something meaningful
"If we took the money that the physicists receive"
There is no evidence that the physicist and the mathematician received any extra money here. They probably are both lecturers (someone already posted about having the mathematician for a class). They may well be doing the research part in their free time. If you have a problem with that, maybe you should stop reading/. in *your* free time and get to work on that cure for cancer.
For that matter, why aren't you criticizing smokers? Not only do they make themselves more likely to get cancer, they also take frequent breaks to smoke. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that smoke breaks take more time than the sum total of cancer research. Eliminating smoking would free up physicians who are currently working on cancer to do research and provide more time for non-physicians to do maid work, etc. to free up physicians to concentrate on their cancer research.
The results of physics research also free up people by cutting costs in other areas. If we still had a hunter/gatherer economy, we wouldn't be able to waste people on non-essentials like medicine, much less medical *research*. Not to mention the point that the advances in understanding chaotic systems may be applicable in areas other than physics (e.g. medicine). While statistical analysis (from mathematics!) suggests possible causes of cancer, we still don't understand what actually happens.
" Because physicists study physics.. not disease and hunger."
Not only is hunger not a physics problem, it's not a scientific problem either. We know the scientific solution to hunger: eating. Further, we have plenty of food. If some individual is short of food, it is a political/economic problem. The classic example would be starvation in Ethiopia in the 80s: initial food donations never made it to the starving people because the government was *trying* to starve them. Donors had to bypass the Ethiopian government and deliver food directly to the starving to be effective.
"I wonder what happens if the printer jams or runs out of paper."
You use a different printer. Same as what happens with mechanical election machines if they stop working.
"Of course someone could just steal or trash the paper receipts making an audit almost impossible."
With physical access, any system can be compromised. This is why *both* parties provide representatives to safeguard the voting process. Further, if you are really concerned, you can sign up to watch the vote count yourself.
The problem with eVoting is that so many of the compromise methods do not require a physical presence at the machine at the time of voting. As such, they would be difficult to prosecute, leading to little disincentive to faking the vote.
"To go one step further, I would be nice if I could even interchange from various sources(.deb.rpm.tar.gz) and from websites. In theory, this is just associating file types with the this program and the like."
alien converts RPM to DEBs. The problem is that it loses the dependency info when it does so. The basic issue is that dependencies involve specific packages. It would be easier to pick a particular format than to mix formats (you would still have to come up with common language between the formats).
"They were naive in thinking he would be fiscally conservative since Bush idolizes Reagan and Reagan ran up the deficit exactly the same way though Bush has taken it to a who new level."
Reagan did so for correct reasons though: to bankrupt the Soviet Union and end the Cold War and to bring the country out of Carter era stagflation (via tax cuts). Reagan was actually very fiscally responsible in non-defense discretionary spending. As someone else pointed out, he actually shrank it during his term. The deficits were caused by higher *military* spending and tax cuts (which set the foundation for the Clinton boom in the 90s).
In 2000, I hoped that Bush would provide the foreign policy of his father and the economics of Reagan. Instead, we got the economics of his father and the foreign policy of Lyndon Johnson.
This is not a legal/illegal issue. The problem is not that a box cutter might be used for an illegal purpose; it's that it might be used for a *dangerous* purpose. To wit, gaining access to an airplane to crash it into a building. By your argument, it would be sensible to allow people to carry guns on airplanes (they have legitimate self defense and sporting uses) or bombs (demolition).
You are correct, the linking of mod chips to weapons on airlines is in fact a red herring. So why are you adopting the position of those who oppose mod chips (who would like the link to be made)?
"Coffee when brewed is just under boiling. Certainly in excess of 180degrees F. That could cause 3rd degree burns easily. Coffee IS inherently hazardous. Hell, people are told to turn their water heaters to 120 degrees (from 140 and above) to prevent accidental scalding."
Yet McDonald's was able to drop the temperature of their coffee from 185 degrees to 155 degrees. Something that their competitors had already done. McDonald's *admitted* (proclaimed even; they felt that it was one of the selling points of their coffee) that their coffee was significantly hotter than that of their competitors or of home brewed. Are you saying that McDonald's was wrong?
You're arguing the facts on which both sides agreed, rather than those in dispute. *BOTH* sides agreed that McDonald's coffee was 30 F degrees hotter than that of their competitors and 45 F degrees hotter than typical home brew. Are you telling me that McDonald's was just too stupid to know how most people brewed coffee?
"Heck, if I can't afford insurance, I likely won't be charged...."
Obviously, you've never been injured without health insurance. She likely had insurance; it simply wasn't good enough to cover the care she needed (which probably cost at least $100,000, given that her compensatory damages were set at $200,000). Yes, she could have gotten out of the medical bills by declaring bankruptcy, but is that really a reasonable punishment for spilling coffee on herself?
What legal recourse is there against someone hijacking a plane and flying it into a building? The terrorists are *ALREADY DEAD*; they died when the plane hit the building. What point is there in complaining that as an intermediary step they illegally used a box cutter as a weapon? Nor is it useful to point out after the fact that the gun used to threaten people was a toy that was incapable of doing actual damage.
If it were just the people in the plane, then I would agree that it was overkill. However, there were tens of thousands of people in the World Trade Center when the planes hit it. Unlike the riders on the plane, they never had a chance to choose what airline might provide the planes that caused their deaths. They couldn't choose to pay more for better security.
"It's no different than trying to ban chewing gum [bbc.co.uk] just because someone might stick it under a desk."
How many people have died from someone sticking chewing gum under a seat? Collecting damages is a rational response to vandalism, as it can return the situation to that that would have existed without the vandalism. It is useless in the face of mass murder via suicide run.
Mass murder and dried chewing gum. Clearly, they are the same.
"In particular, the network has other MS systems on it."
The point is that it shouldn't. There is no need for the ATM network to share any point of commonality with any other bank networks except for the transaction server itself. If the server is compromised, you have much bigger problems than individual ATMs.
Note: just to clarify, I'm not saying that ATM networks *do* not share space with other bank networks; I'm saying they *should* not and that do not need to do so. In other words, Bank of America (and Diebold!) security was crap.
Isn't that roughly the installed units ratio? I.e. there are roughly 23 million PS2s and only about 2 or 3 million XBoxes IIRC. You should see more PS2s than XBoxes just because there *are* more PS2s than XBoxes.
From your link: "Liebeck placed the cup between her knees and attempted to remove the plastic lid from the cup."
Please explain how one puts something between one's knees without putting it between one's legs. Remember that the knees are *part* of the legs.
The main reasons she won the suit were:
1. She had no reason to be aware that spilling McDonald's coffee would be so much more harmful to her than other coffee (it was roughly 40 degrees hotter than home brewed would have been and 30 degrees hotter than most other vendors).
2. McDonald's did (she wasn't the first to sue them).
3. McDonald's didn't do anything to decrease the danger, e.g.:
a) Make the coffee cooler (which McDonald's did post verdict).
b) Make it possible to add the creamer and sugar without removing the lid (i.e. make a safer lid).
c) Warn her that the coffee was much hotter than other coffee and would scald if spilled.
4. Finally, McDonald's made no attempt to negotiate with her. After all, she just wanted her medical (and later legal) bills paid. Instead, they let it go to a jury, who bent them over.
Caveat emptor existed in a time when most products were shipped by selling to a middleman who knew nothing about the product. I.e. you make a widget; you sell widget to a transportation agent (e.g. a ship owner); the transportation agent sells to someone who actually wants to use the widget. A given transportation agent might sell a different product each trip. It made no sense to hold the transportation agent responsible for a product about which he knew less than the person making the purchase. "Hey, I just steer the boat; he uses widgets all the time; how come he didn't know that it was defective?" Further, the transportation agent would tend to leave (with a new shipment of product) soon after making the sale. It was generally not practical to find and sue them.
Microsoft is the manufacturer here. They have no presumption of ignorance here that would shield them from liability. Further, they refuse to let people open up their XBoxes and examine them (and even then, one can't open up a hard drive and examine it; it ruins the hard drive). The individual pieces (motherboard, hard drive, DVD) all usually come with year warranties. Why not here? Finally, it was Microsoft's choice not to sell the XBoxes at a more expensive price (or take a bigger loss per sale; remember that XBoxes are already internally subsidized).
The courts may or may not side with Microsoft here. I don't know the specifically relevant law. However, there are precedents for rejecting provisions from *signed* waivers if they are deemed unfair. For example, steamboats used to commonly have a clause absolving them from responsibility if the boat caught on fire and you lost your luggage. 19th century courts threw out those *signed* (as in actively agreed) waivers as unreasonable and allowed suits to recover damages. Similarly, this could be ruled as an unreasonable provision. Particularly if the XBox competition (Playstation 2 and Gamecube) have longer warranties.
As always, I will find it funny if Microsoft's penchant for shoddy work and dumping comes back to bite them.
I suspect that most of the people on that site don't really think of themselves as criminals. They are just testing the boundaries and assumed they would never get caught. Now they know they can. In particular, they now know that the people who have been feeding them info *did* get caught, so the readers won't feel as comfortable about using the site's advice (which clearly didn't work for them).
"might it be that "must/could/should of" were once acceptable spellings?"
No, just common (exacerbated by the fact that most teachers don't explain it properly; should've is the proper spelling, but most would recommend should have which is not obviously related). They may become acceptable spellings, because they are so common. As will "alot," which is also very common. Much the way one, two and three has replaced one, two, and three because it's one, two & three (now the rules are the same for both & and "and").
English's logic was always convoluted, since so many words are from other languages (Latin, French, Welsh, etc.); it's sad that it loses what logic it has to popular misunderstanding.
Slashdot Mirror
Changing to proportional electors in Colorado is obviously stupid in Colorado. As you say, it shifts them from 8 votes in play to 1. However, it makes perfect sense in states like New York and Texas, where there are currently no electoral votes in play (Bush and Kerry don't bother campaigning in New York and Texas because they don't care about the margin in either; one candidate is clearly ahead). Note that in those states, 10% of the vote would be equal to 3 electoral votes: the same as a one representative state.
"I think that most of the world would argue that a better approach would be to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian crisis."
This kind of requires the Israelis and the Palestinians. As the Soviet Union proved in Chechnya and Czechoslovakia, you can't impose peace from without. The only thing that the US could have done would have been to wage genocide on one or the other.
It is probably true that the US can't leave Iraq now. We're stuck there until a government can be formed. What I don't understand is why we haven't been able to shift more control to local forces. Then it would be Iraqis detaining Iraqis.
I am less concerned about Bush in terms of what he will do in Iraq and more concerned about how what he has done will affect his ability to engage in useful foreign policy. The uranium enrichment program in Iran is a perfect example of this. I have far more faith in Kerry's ability to solve this (preferably with global support) than Bush's. Particularly because Kerry will have a much better claim to global support than Bush.
"I don't see how, as they all face tremendous embarassment over "Oil for Food" and other involvement with the Hussein government."
It doesn't seem to have embarassed Bush much, and the US was one of the biggest participants in the "Oil for Food" program.
Zogby was also much more accurate in 1996. He was one of the few pollsters to correct for the difficulty of getting Republicans to take the poll. Other pollsters were putting the margin at double digits in 1996. The fact that his guess was within .1% involved a lot of luck; the fact that his guess was within sampling error was all skill.
IMnsHO, the site would be more accurate if it *only* used the Zogby poll where available. I strongly suspect that the Gallup poll in Ohio is off. Zogby has Ohio going to Bush (albeit weaker than Gallup has it going for Kerry). The Gallup poll is one of those that has historically undercounted Republicans.
"It was always about securing oil resources"
If so, why is oil almost twice as expensive now than before the war? If oil (gas) were currently at pre-war prices, I would be voting for Bush, liar or not (as Clinton demonstrated, liars can still be elected President). He utterly failed in doing this. That's why I'm voting for Kerry.
I'm not so sure that Bush's intent was to secure oil resources. Note that oil producers (like he used to be) have been greatly *helped* by the war. Oil prices are such that it is worthwhile to pump oil out of fields that would otherwise be too expensive (i.e. if it costs US$40 a barrel to get out of the ground and to the refinery, it wasn't worth pumping when oil was US$30 a barrel). Thus, it is quite possible that he went to war to *keep* oil resources from being secure. That has certainly been the effect (if not the intent).
Personally, I think that it is even simpler than that. Bush belongs to the group that thinks (incorrectly) that his father did the wrong thing by halting the offensive in '91. He took any excuse he could find to resume the war. Now, he is demonstrating why his father was correct to stop when he did.
"I'd probably still go with the painless method of a parachute."
/not sure the joke was funny enough for all this work
Yes, but in this case, we are talking about a parachute that you can only use *after* flattening yourself. What I think that you mean is that you would prefer a traditional parachute where flattening is avoided entirely.
My point was that if you have to be flattened as part of the process, you might as well allow the jump itself to flatten you. You get to the ground faster. The whole point of a parachute slowing you is to *avoid* being flattened. If it's alright to be flattened, just jump straight.
"The election would then be thrown into complete chaos."
A tie might mean that Congress would decide (no ties allowed in the election). Especially interesting since I think that it is the *outgoing* Congress, so Kerry and Edwards (and possibly Cheney) might conceivably get to vote. Or there could be other tiebreakers (maybe it would go back the home game before that).
Ties are relatively rare in professional football. Maybe once every two or three seasons. We may never know.
"If you want to do something meaningful"
/absolutely sure that I have no intention of doing something meaningful
They are posting on slashdot. Where do you get the idea that they want to do something meaningful? Especially since you are posting on slashdot. You should know better.
"If we took the money that the physicists receive"
/. in *your* free time and get to work on that cure for cancer.
There is no evidence that the physicist and the mathematician received any extra money here. They probably are both lecturers (someone already posted about having the mathematician for a class). They may well be doing the research part in their free time. If you have a problem with that, maybe you should stop reading
For that matter, why aren't you criticizing smokers? Not only do they make themselves more likely to get cancer, they also take frequent breaks to smoke. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that smoke breaks take more time than the sum total of cancer research. Eliminating smoking would free up physicians who are currently working on cancer to do research and provide more time for non-physicians to do maid work, etc. to free up physicians to concentrate on their cancer research.
The results of physics research also free up people by cutting costs in other areas. If we still had a hunter/gatherer economy, we wouldn't be able to waste people on non-essentials like medicine, much less medical *research*. Not to mention the point that the advances in understanding chaotic systems may be applicable in areas other than physics (e.g. medicine). While statistical analysis (from mathematics!) suggests possible causes of cancer, we still don't understand what actually happens.
" Because physicists study physics.. not disease and hunger."
Not only is hunger not a physics problem, it's not a scientific problem either. We know the scientific solution to hunger: eating. Further, we have plenty of food. If some individual is short of food, it is a political/economic problem. The classic example would be starvation in Ethiopia in the 80s: initial food donations never made it to the starving people because the government was *trying* to starve them. Donors had to bypass the Ethiopian government and deliver food directly to the starving to be effective.
"You need to flat yourself _before_ you hit the ground."
I think that the bigger problem is that you would want to *unflat* yourself afterwards...
Of course, if you could do that you could probably do without the parachute.
"I wonder what happens if the printer jams or runs out of paper."
You use a different printer. Same as what happens with mechanical election machines if they stop working.
"Of course someone could just steal or trash the paper receipts making an audit almost impossible."
With physical access, any system can be compromised. This is why *both* parties provide representatives to safeguard the voting process. Further, if you are really concerned, you can sign up to watch the vote count yourself.
The problem with eVoting is that so many of the compromise methods do not require a physical presence at the machine at the time of voting. As such, they would be difficult to prosecute, leading to little disincentive to faking the vote.
"To go one step further, I would be nice if I could even interchange from various sources(.deb .rpm .tar.gz) and from websites. In theory, this is just associating file types with the this program and the like."
alien converts RPM to DEBs. The problem is that it loses the dependency info when it does so. The basic issue is that dependencies involve specific packages. It would be easier to pick a particular format than to mix formats (you would still have to come up with common language between the formats).
"They were naive in thinking he would be fiscally conservative since Bush idolizes Reagan and Reagan ran up the deficit exactly the same way though Bush has taken it to a who new level."
Reagan did so for correct reasons though: to bankrupt the Soviet Union and end the Cold War and to bring the country out of Carter era stagflation (via tax cuts). Reagan was actually very fiscally responsible in non-defense discretionary spending. As someone else pointed out, he actually shrank it during his term. The deficits were caused by higher *military* spending and tax cuts (which set the foundation for the Clinton boom in the 90s).
In 2000, I hoped that Bush would provide the foreign policy of his father and the economics of Reagan. Instead, we got the economics of his father and the foreign policy of Lyndon Johnson.
This is not a legal/illegal issue. The problem is not that a box cutter might be used for an illegal purpose; it's that it might be used for a *dangerous* purpose. To wit, gaining access to an airplane to crash it into a building. By your argument, it would be sensible to allow people to carry guns on airplanes (they have legitimate self defense and sporting uses) or bombs (demolition).
You are correct, the linking of mod chips to weapons on airlines is in fact a red herring. So why are you adopting the position of those who oppose mod chips (who would like the link to be made)?
"Coffee when brewed is just under boiling. Certainly in excess of 180degrees F. That could cause 3rd degree burns easily. Coffee IS inherently hazardous. Hell, people are told to turn their water heaters to 120 degrees (from 140 and above) to prevent accidental scalding."
Yet McDonald's was able to drop the temperature of their coffee from 185 degrees to 155 degrees. Something that their competitors had already done. McDonald's *admitted* (proclaimed even; they felt that it was one of the selling points of their coffee) that their coffee was significantly hotter than that of their competitors or of home brewed. Are you saying that McDonald's was wrong?
You're arguing the facts on which both sides agreed, rather than those in dispute. *BOTH* sides agreed that McDonald's coffee was 30 F degrees hotter than that of their competitors and 45 F degrees hotter than typical home brew. Are you telling me that McDonald's was just too stupid to know how most people brewed coffee?
"Heck, if I can't afford insurance, I likely won't be charged...."
Obviously, you've never been injured without health insurance. She likely had insurance; it simply wasn't good enough to cover the care she needed (which probably cost at least $100,000, given that her compensatory damages were set at $200,000). Yes, she could have gotten out of the medical bills by declaring bankruptcy, but is that really a reasonable punishment for spilling coffee on herself?
"PLENTY of legal recourse against the act"
What legal recourse is there against someone hijacking a plane and flying it into a building? The terrorists are *ALREADY DEAD*; they died when the plane hit the building. What point is there in complaining that as an intermediary step they illegally used a box cutter as a weapon? Nor is it useful to point out after the fact that the gun used to threaten people was a toy that was incapable of doing actual damage.
If it were just the people in the plane, then I would agree that it was overkill. However, there were tens of thousands of people in the World Trade Center when the planes hit it. Unlike the riders on the plane, they never had a chance to choose what airline might provide the planes that caused their deaths. They couldn't choose to pay more for better security.
"It's no different than trying to ban chewing gum [bbc.co.uk] just because someone might stick it under a desk."
How many people have died from someone sticking chewing gum under a seat? Collecting damages is a rational response to vandalism, as it can return the situation to that that would have existed without the vandalism. It is useless in the face of mass murder via suicide run.
Mass murder and dried chewing gum. Clearly, they are the same.
"In particular, the network has other MS systems on it."
The point is that it shouldn't. There is no need for the ATM network to share any point of commonality with any other bank networks except for the transaction server itself. If the server is compromised, you have much bigger problems than individual ATMs.
Note: just to clarify, I'm not saying that ATM networks *do* not share space with other bank networks; I'm saying they *should* not and that do not need to do so. In other words, Bank of America (and Diebold!) security was crap.
And who bought that brand of DVD drive? I'm thinking that Microsoft may have had something to do with it. Just a guess.
"It's probably only about 10 to 1 now."
Isn't that roughly the installed units ratio? I.e. there are roughly 23 million PS2s and only about 2 or 3 million XBoxes IIRC. You should see more PS2s than XBoxes just because there *are* more PS2s than XBoxes.
" Except the joysticks."
Yet they were still tougher than most other joysticks I used. High wear item, like brakes on a car.
"B) it wasn't between her legs"
From your link: "Liebeck placed the cup between her knees and attempted to remove the plastic lid from the cup."
Please explain how one puts something between one's knees without putting it between one's legs. Remember that the knees are *part* of the legs.
The main reasons she won the suit were:
1. She had no reason to be aware that spilling McDonald's coffee would be so much more harmful to her than other coffee (it was roughly 40 degrees hotter than home brewed would have been and 30 degrees hotter than most other vendors).
2. McDonald's did (she wasn't the first to sue them).
3. McDonald's didn't do anything to decrease the danger, e.g.:
a) Make the coffee cooler (which McDonald's did post verdict).
b) Make it possible to add the creamer and sugar without removing the lid (i.e. make a safer lid).
c) Warn her that the coffee was much hotter than other coffee and would scald if spilled.
4. Finally, McDonald's made no attempt to negotiate with her. After all, she just wanted her medical (and later legal) bills paid. Instead, they let it go to a jury, who bent them over.
"Look up caveat emptor."
Caveat emptor existed in a time when most products were shipped by selling to a middleman who knew nothing about the product. I.e. you make a widget; you sell widget to a transportation agent (e.g. a ship owner); the transportation agent sells to someone who actually wants to use the widget. A given transportation agent might sell a different product each trip. It made no sense to hold the transportation agent responsible for a product about which he knew less than the person making the purchase. "Hey, I just steer the boat; he uses widgets all the time; how come he didn't know that it was defective?" Further, the transportation agent would tend to leave (with a new shipment of product) soon after making the sale. It was generally not practical to find and sue them.
Microsoft is the manufacturer here. They have no presumption of ignorance here that would shield them from liability. Further, they refuse to let people open up their XBoxes and examine them (and even then, one can't open up a hard drive and examine it; it ruins the hard drive). The individual pieces (motherboard, hard drive, DVD) all usually come with year warranties. Why not here? Finally, it was Microsoft's choice not to sell the XBoxes at a more expensive price (or take a bigger loss per sale; remember that XBoxes are already internally subsidized).
The courts may or may not side with Microsoft here. I don't know the specifically relevant law. However, there are precedents for rejecting provisions from *signed* waivers if they are deemed unfair. For example, steamboats used to commonly have a clause absolving them from responsibility if the boat caught on fire and you lost your luggage. 19th century courts threw out those *signed* (as in actively agreed) waivers as unreasonable and allowed suits to recover damages. Similarly, this could be ruled as an unreasonable provision. Particularly if the XBox competition (Playstation 2 and Gamecube) have longer warranties.
As always, I will find it funny if Microsoft's penchant for shoddy work and dumping comes back to bite them.
"Criminals aren't that easy to scare"
I suspect that most of the people on that site don't really think of themselves as criminals. They are just testing the boundaries and assumed they would never get caught. Now they know they can. In particular, they now know that the people who have been feeding them info *did* get caught, so the readers won't feel as comfortable about using the site's advice (which clearly didn't work for them).
"might it be that "must/could/should of" were once acceptable spellings?"
No, just common (exacerbated by the fact that most teachers don't explain it properly; should've is the proper spelling, but most would recommend should have which is not obviously related). They may become acceptable spellings, because they are so common. As will "alot," which is also very common. Much the way one, two and three has replaced one, two, and three because it's one, two & three (now the rules are the same for both & and "and").
English's logic was always convoluted, since so many words are from other languages (Latin, French, Welsh, etc.); it's sad that it loses what logic it has to popular misunderstanding.