As far as I know, right now the game ratings are only a suggestion, a suggestion I've never seen enforced. I've seen kids/teenagers carded at movie theaters for PG-13 movoes, I think it's required in NYC theaters. Other than that there is NO enforcement of ratings, games or movies, unless their porn. As long as they're just a suggestion kids who may be too youg for some games are going to be able to buy them. If not, at least the "questionable" game material may gain the attention of the parent buying it to shut their kid up when they're carded by the teenager working the counter at GameStop and think give more thought to buying their 12yr old an "M" rated game. As for the question of rights, minors don't have them(I know someone's going to call me on this), except for being held responsible for an action when 7 or older and the right to be tried as an adult if they do something really bad. I remember having the right to be yelled at by the neighbors for being "too loud" while playing whiffle ball and football in the middle of the street. "Ban" sounds too negative, perhaps they should change the wording to; "employees of places of commerce are required to verify the age of patrons seeking to purchase age sensitive[entertainment] materials." That way it should cover movies, games, magazines and any other items not covered by other state or federal laws. Fortunately I'm about 2500mi away and 7yrs too old to have to even think about that silly proposed California "law." A seemingly dumb and pointless bill aimed at gainging support from religous and parents groups, I wonder who's up for re-election this year.
Is all the high end hardware suposed to be compensating for something? The more good hardware you have the more time you have before you get the blus screen or have to reboot? It's very possible that by the time Vista is eventually released 2GB ram will cost as much as 512 does now and a 512vid card will be down to that of a 128 or 64. I've had XP running decently on a 400 with 256. I can understand games eventually needing a 512 vid card, but an OS? That's crazy, I think MS is trying to make it's new sound better than it will be, like XP, not much better than win2000, but it was just a quick fix for ME.
...and its software also has OCR, works nicely for documents, there's a chance it might work with you MIDI creator, but this is the first I've heard of that.
I got the Visioneer OneTouch 9220 USB new on ebay for $35. 4800x2400 max dpi, about the max for the average inkjet. It has a backlight and tray for slides and negatives and other options for reflective and transparent items. It can be set to use your printer to act as a copier. I got it for scanning slides and it works well for everything else.
"I have the 5Gig Seagate Pocket drive" ok, one of those, they're nice and avg $140
3.5" drives use a lot of power, and should have their own power cord. 2.5" drives use less so they can be usb/bus-powered. The only time I've seen problems is when the PC/Mac they're connected to has an underpowered power supply, the generic or older Dells and similar or if too many unpowered usb devices are in use. I've had my generic 2.5" case with a 10GB IBM travelstar for over a year with no problems. 5gb and 8gb are on the small side for 2.5" drives and don't seem to exist in the form of pocket drives yet. Newegg has external drive cases for about $15 and the smallest 2.5" is 30gb for $61, you can probably find a 10 or 20GB elsewhere. It won't be as small as your 3" round pocket drive, 3x5x.5" the size of a.5" stack of index cards and still fits in a pocket while holding a few times as much as pocket drives and minis. The other option is a full sized ipod, $300 for the 20gb, or a used older smaller one if you can find it, and has a battery so a sudden loss of power shouldn't happen. The only other 5GB+ I know of are the high capacity CF cards, $665 for 8gb, also at Newegg. I hope that was helpful.
"I'd be willing to sacrifice a little more space to have it in flash memory."
The mini is already flash, the first flash iPod, feel free to check. It's still $50 more for 2GB less. The price increase is because it's thinner and has a color display and it's the new one. I think the mini is thin enough and 1.5" color LCDs are for camera preview screens, not looking at pictures. The battery is also less, 14 instead of 18hrs and takes 1.5hrs instead of 1hr for the 80% quick-charge. They probably picked the cheap&thinner option for the still non-easily removable battery.
My interpretation is you're looking for a USB-powered external 2.5" hdd. I bought my drive and case($15) separately. Once you have the case you can get the hdd(s) with the specs of your choosing, not be limited to the few case&drive combos with inflated prices. That's guessing all you want is storage, no music playing. If you want music there's Creative's Zen Micro at 4,5,6GB That option makes sense if you're working at a PC with USB ports and a headphone jack and only need to bring your collection with you and not listen to them during your commute.
"My music collection is about 70GB, and I am happy with my 4 GB mini"
Similar situation, more than 4gb of music. I think the money I saved by getting the 4gb mini is well worth the effort of having to swap the songs once a week or two. Since you have to connect it to your PC to charge you might as well spend a couple minutes to make playlists and/or organize by artist/alblum so you can easily rotate through your collection. It's at most 4gb which doesn't take that long to transfer at 480/400mbits with USB2/firewire for the apple folks, if you have a G5 with firewire2 you have no reason to complain. If you only have USB1, it's probably still less time than it takes to recharge the battery.
It would be nice if that 2TB laptop from the earlier posting was true. That way we could have TB portable media players about the size of an iPod mini or nano, anything smaller is starting to get awkwardly small, devices get smaller, our hands don't. And they should have easily removable batteries and 6.1 channel output. Itunes 5 is just another version, no big news there. I have no interest in the phone, $250 plus 2yr contract. 100 songs, probably has a 256mb miniSD or similar card. Corporate espionage anyone? It's ipod-like so it can probably be used as an external drive, might be another thing to add to the list of things you can't bring into the office, but it should be airplane safe. My mini is only 6mo old, no need for anything else.
"Hell, turning over evidence on one man who will be picked up anyway?"
Makes sense, emails are very tracable. Right now there are too many unknowns. All they have to do is get a hold of the email and find the IP it was sent from then since I think the Chinese gov't controls the ISPs they find out who had it, if it's an internet cafe they just enforce their DMCA-like laws and force them into turning over the records of who was logged into that computer at that time under pain of death or at least loss of business license or imprisonment or torture. The owner is not going to risk any of that over the actions of a patron. The real question/issue is how "the man" knew to go to yahoo. Did the int'l sites say this internal memo is from revolutionary@yahoo.china? If they revealed the email address, by posting the email with full headers, of a source who wanted to remain anonymous then it's their screw up. Or it could have been a limited distribution memo and they tortured someone else(s) who got it until they named names.
"for all this you get an Intel®855GME video chipset."
My first couple thoughts on this; it would be nice if it really existed, only an Intel video chipset and only 100mbits LAN. If they can make a 6.8GHz CPU they should at least be able to give you a 1.21 gigga Hz GPU and 1.21 gigga bit LAN. I least I feel better that is was inspected by #24, whoever that is.(pic of the QuantumII at the bottom)
How about a Back to the Future PC/Laptop, with 1.21 gigga-everything (Great Scott!) except CPU and hdd, 1.21GHz and 1.21GB would be a bit limited.
2TB storage for a laptop? How about multi-TB storage for desktop? Guessing at the size, A 5.25" bay could probably hold them 3x4 and 4 or 5 thick, 48 or 60TB. Maybe we can blame the RIAA for stalling development, 60TB would hold LOTS of 320+VBRkbits mp3s. Or for a "home media center" would be nice to be able to make 1:1 copies of my dvd collection and play as a media player playlist not having to get up to change the disk.
" It is possible that one day the imbedded chip under the skin would become law it may even come with a gps and auto feature that disables the user installed in it as well."
yes, there should be a second level of security, I'm not for imbedded in my skin chips, perhaps a 2nd pword/pin or 2nd chip also carried on your person in a place other than where the card is carried. If it's small enough it could be attached to anything you have with you everyday, on a keychain, in a watch, in a piece of jewlery or contained in a cell phone or even in a pair of glasses, anywhere it's firmly attached so it doesn't get lost or fall off. It should be movable so thieves don't know what else to take if they steal your wallet, unless they have a portable scanner, but then all you'll have to do is report the card stolen. If thieves get enough information to print a fake card, that's another problem.
"many don't even take it from you - they just ask you to put it in the card reader"
I remember when something similar happened over here. I was working as a cashier at the local supermarket during summer and winter breaks. Up to one summer everything with credit cards was done by us at the register, there is a keypad for entering pins directly across from us. That winter there are card readers installed, the generic for credit and debit cards ones you see everywhere now and they were further away from us, so the only time we even saw the card was when the customer ran it through the reader, no checking of the card. Apparently there was some scare/popular rumors that store employees were stealing credit cards or card numbers at the checkout counters. Yes, when someone's in a hurry and rushes out leaving their card on the counter it was "stolen" by that kid at the counter, not accidentally lost/left by a distracted customer and properly turned in to the management by that kid. As far as stolen numbers, I think it was done by people with assess to the store's database of credit transactions. I can understand the desire to have the card never leave the posession of the customer. Now someone can steal a credit card and walk into a BestBuy or other store with expensive easily resellable items and make a major purchase and not have the payment method checked, there's the assumption that the person with the card and pin is the owner. Don't you just love the tradeoff between convenience and security. Most credit card companies and banks now offer some fraud protection to cover from the time the card goes missing until it's reported lost/stolen. As for shoulder surfing, the keybad should be recessed blocking the view of anyone not using the keypad, too many card readers are too out in the open.
I don't know about that one, I'm sure I can think of a few people I'd like to evacuate to Florida. Don't forget California because they get the most media coverage of their wildfires, you know the naturally occuring yearly cycle of forest and brush fires that travels in a clockwise circle around the US? When will New Berlin and the Mars colony with the really big anti-space rock ray-gun be ready for move-in?
It's #10 in the donotcall faq, cell phones can be reagistered and it's illegal to use automated dialers to call(spam) cell phones, but manual dialing is still allowed.
That's easy, customer not registered with or not on the don't bother calling me list for 31+ days reviews bill and sees unwanted charges or receives telemarketing calls and calls customer support claiming the calls were unsolicited telemarketing calls. Customer service rep agrees and credits customers account leaving part of the cost of the call unpaid and the company takes a loss. After a while all those refunds are going to add up and the company wants to recover the losses.
"the caller pays for whatever is normally paid to call a landline phone, and you pay the difference."
Close, the caller pays what they would pay if they called out of their area code which is why I agree with the other reply;
"why not move the cell phone numbers to a separate area code then?"
Happens enough when someone has a 'normal' line and a cell both in the same area code, one's a free local call but the other I have to pay for even if my 'normal' line bill says free calls in same area code. It would be nice to know which calls I'm going to have to pay for, it's not much but it might eventually add up to something. "Land-lines" can keep 636 and cell phones get 939. What's with having to pay for incoming calls? They use up your plan minutes yet you don't have any control over when someone calls you, yes you could always not answer, but someone will probably consider it rude. With the nice high monthly plans with extra long contracts you'd think there would be at least another option with "free nights and weekends" how about free nights or weekends and free incoming calls, I think a free same carrier calls option exists.
As for the call spammers, they should be lined up and spammed with big cans of spam by the "can you hear me now?" guy, or a least a recording. whack...can you hear me now?...thud...can you hear me now?...ow!, my random body part...can you hear me now?
Would this be considered "stealing" Verizon's bandwidth?
"Only difference now is that they'll try and make the internet service mandatory (which they won't be able to do, so whatever)"
Perhaps they over estimate the availability of reasonably priced broadband. It will be impossible to enforce their requirement that their DVD players and game consoles have an internet connection unless they have modems and wireless cards. They will, only it will be another $50-$100 for the additional hardware. Almost sounds like the last time I was in BestBuy trying to help a relative pick out a DVD player, they try and force all the unneeded stuff on you saying it's required or you'll need it. I don't know how to use an RF modulator with component vidoe cable.
Let's see, Lexmark makes extra sucky printers, people stop buying Lexmark printers, Lexmark starts loosing money. In a desperate appempt to not go broke they try some legal scamming claiming the encryption or was it the shape of the cartrige makes it protected by the DMCA to force paying customers to pay even more for their 19ml, used to be 42lm, of ink. They Lost. Now they're claiming what they decided to print on the package is a legally binding agreement. How long until someone puts this on their packaging? "by opening this package you agree to only use products of this company and never any similar products produced by any of its competition for the remainder of your naural life under pain of a beating with the DMCA stick."
The DMCA was created with a purpose, to kill off Napster, it did, now it's being abused and needs to be put to sleep. Lets all write to our representitives asking to repeal the DMCA or at least support the DMCA reform HR 1201(search EFF) Include as many examples as possible, Lexmark(x2) universal tv remotes, replacement garage door openers. Don't forget to challenge the **AA's claims of lost profits and piracy as being overly exadurated, the real reason they're loosing money is because of failed business models and the quality of their new content has dropped off significantly and people are spending their money on games over music. They also want to raise the prices of legal services by at least 50% to 250%, itunes 99c to $1.49 or $2.50.
So they want to protect their region coding to protect their international price fixing scam. How long until they'll want to only play DRM-ed disks because the unencrypted disk might be a "pirated" copy even if it's your backup copy or a dvd you made of the show you recorded last night when you had something better to do than stay home and watch tv. Stop the price fixing and make the DMCA like the 18th ammendment.
yes, scrap the DRM and the broadcast flag along with it. People should be allowed to use the hardware and software of their choosing, not have their choices of hardware restricted by the software they think they have to use. I don't want to have to buy a DRM compliant video card that's compatable with my monitor using some other DRM and my tv and dvd playes using yet other forms of DRM. The best way to not have everything work together is to restrict everything, which happens to be what DRM is. Fortunately all that can still be done with standard audio and video cable, I wonder how long until they'll want us to buy DRMed cables, maybe the $40 for 6' monster cable. Most of what the article mentions can already be done if you have it centered on a networked PC with tv-out and wireless multi-media keyboard for convenience. I'm not sure why you'd want to have a refrigerator and garage door opener to have an internet connection, imagine a virus that sets the door opener to an endless loop or one that sets your freezer temp to 50f.
Didn't a bunch of fake donation sites pop up after the tsunami last year? Paypal may be attempting to verify the authenticity of the cause, we don't want the donations to end up in the pockets of scammers. For the technicality of nothing sold, they could sell shirts with the money going to the relief effort, but I don't know how that will effect its status as a charitable donation for tax purposes. Or as you said, some scammers used the donate info to get his paypal account name and are going phishing for account access worth over $20,000. Either way I'd use Paypal's "Contact Us" link. One of the screen caps says contact appeals@paypal so it should be legit if he's seeing that while logged into paypal.
go ahead, waste your mod points and mark this offtopic
After reading the article I was browsing the EFF store and found a wallet sized Bill of Rights printed on a metal card. Are they trying to have the Bill of Rights trigger metal detectors at security checkpoints? Now if they only had a pocket Constitution with a high metal content.
"Do you read every single EULA and other agreements?"
After you read it don't forget to print it, sign it and have it notarized so you can remember what you agreed to, not the current modified EULA. This still confuses me that some EULAs and TOS have clauses like "and this agreement may be changed at any time with no warning by the compary that wrote it" What's up with that, especially for paid services? It's like signing the 50th page of a two page agreement, it allows the other party to change the terms at will and you have to deal with it, Sorry, I think I'll pass and stick to used CDs, that I can rip at a DRM-less 320kbps, until the RIAA buys off enough people to overturn first purchase and fair use or create an RIAA and/or DRM tax that further increases the price of a used CD.
"Then why haven't the operators of news aggregators such as Slashdot been taken to court over their front-page links to sites?"
Probably because the site owners/content creators are given full credit by the poster here at Slashdot. From his screen cap it looks like Fuddruckers tried to pass off his content as their own. Yes, his credits are still in his game, but the average user probably won't pay any attention to that and may assume it way created by a Fuddruckers employee or bought/licensed by them.
"And then redirected the main page to a pleasant little website showing photographs of slaughterhouses."
He complains about stealing bandwidth and then does that, what's wrong with him. Fuddruckers causes the use of a more than usual amount of his bandwidth then he turns around and redirects traffic to another site, using their bandwidth. And did all that without trying a friendly professional email which I'm sure any respectable company would honor. If he didn't like it he could have blocked traffic from Fuddruckers or redirected it a credits page where he explained what he considered to be wrong doings by Fuddruckers and provided a link to his games main page. If he really wanted it to be bad he could have redirected to one of Fuddruckers competitors.
and yet more bandwidth "stealing" Fuddruckers.com is redirecting to google.com
Slashdot Mirror
As far as I know, right now the game ratings are only a suggestion, a suggestion I've never seen enforced. I've seen kids/teenagers carded at movie theaters for PG-13 movoes, I think it's required in NYC theaters. Other than that there is NO enforcement of ratings, games or movies, unless their porn. As long as they're just a suggestion kids who may be too youg for some games are going to be able to buy them. If not, at least the "questionable" game material may gain the attention of the parent buying it to shut their kid up when they're carded by the teenager working the counter at GameStop and think give more thought to buying their 12yr old an "M" rated game.
As for the question of rights, minors don't have them(I know someone's going to call me on this), except for being held responsible for an action when 7 or older and the right to be tried as an adult if they do something really bad. I remember having the right to be yelled at by the neighbors for being "too loud" while playing whiffle ball and football in the middle of the street.
"Ban" sounds too negative, perhaps they should change the wording to; "employees of places of commerce are required to verify the age of patrons seeking to purchase age sensitive[entertainment] materials." That way it should cover movies, games, magazines and any other items not covered by other state or federal laws.
Fortunately I'm about 2500mi away and 7yrs too old to have to even think about that silly proposed California "law." A seemingly dumb and pointless bill aimed at gainging support from religous and parents groups, I wonder who's up for re-election this year.
Is all the high end hardware suposed to be compensating for something? The more good hardware you have the more time you have before you get the blus screen or have to reboot? It's very possible that by the time Vista is eventually released 2GB ram will cost as much as 512 does now and a 512vid card will be down to that of a 128 or 64. I've had XP running decently on a 400 with 256. I can understand games eventually needing a 512 vid card, but an OS? That's crazy, I think MS is trying to make it's new sound better than it will be, like XP, not much better than win2000, but it was just a quick fix for ME.
...and its software also has OCR, works nicely for documents, there's a chance it might work with you MIDI creator, but this is the first I've heard of that.
I got the Visioneer OneTouch 9220 USB new on ebay for $35. 4800x2400 max dpi, about the max for the average inkjet. It has a backlight and tray for slides and negatives and other options for reflective and transparent items. It can be set to use your printer to act as a copier. I got it for scanning slides and it works well for everything else.
"I have the 5Gig Seagate Pocket drive" ok, one of those, they're nice and avg $140
.5" stack of index cards and still fits in a pocket while holding a few times as much as pocket drives and minis. The other option is a full sized ipod, $300 for the 20gb, or a used older smaller one if you can find it, and has a battery so a sudden loss of power shouldn't happen. The only other 5GB+ I know of are the high capacity CF cards, $665 for 8gb, also at Newegg.
3.5" drives use a lot of power, and should have their own power cord. 2.5" drives use less so they can be usb/bus-powered. The only time I've seen problems is when the PC/Mac they're connected to has an underpowered power supply, the generic or older Dells and similar or if too many unpowered usb devices are in use. I've had my generic 2.5" case with a 10GB IBM travelstar for over a year with no problems.
5gb and 8gb are on the small side for 2.5" drives and don't seem to exist in the form of pocket drives yet. Newegg has external drive cases for about $15 and the smallest 2.5" is 30gb for $61, you can probably find a 10 or 20GB elsewhere. It won't be as small as your 3" round pocket drive, 3x5x.5" the size of a
I hope that was helpful.
"I'd be willing to sacrifice a little more space to have it in flash memory."
The mini is already flash, the first flash iPod, feel free to check.
It's still $50 more for 2GB less. The price increase is because it's thinner and has a color display and it's the new one. I think the mini is thin enough and 1.5" color LCDs are for camera preview screens, not looking at pictures. The battery is also less, 14 instead of 18hrs and takes 1.5hrs instead of 1hr for the 80% quick-charge. They probably picked the cheap&thinner option for the still non-easily removable battery.
My interpretation is you're looking for a USB-powered external 2.5" hdd. I bought my drive and case($15) separately. Once you have the case you can get the hdd(s) with the specs of your choosing, not be limited to the few case&drive combos with inflated prices. That's guessing all you want is storage, no music playing. If you want music there's Creative's Zen Micro at 4,5,6GB
That option makes sense if you're working at a PC with USB ports and a headphone jack and only need to bring your collection with you and not listen to them during your commute.
"My music collection is about 70GB, and I am happy with my 4 GB mini"
Similar situation, more than 4gb of music. I think the money I saved by getting the 4gb mini is well worth the effort of having to swap the songs once a week or two. Since you have to connect it to your PC to charge you might as well spend a couple minutes to make playlists and/or organize by artist/alblum so you can easily rotate through your collection. It's at most 4gb which doesn't take that long to transfer at 480/400mbits with USB2/firewire for the apple folks, if you have a G5 with firewire2 you have no reason to complain. If you only have USB1, it's probably still less time than it takes to recharge the battery.
It would be nice if that 2TB laptop from the earlier posting was true. That way we could have TB portable media players about the size of an iPod mini or nano, anything smaller is starting to get awkwardly small, devices get smaller, our hands don't. And they should have easily removable batteries and 6.1 channel output.
Itunes 5 is just another version, no big news there. I have no interest in the phone, $250 plus 2yr contract. 100 songs, probably has a 256mb miniSD or similar card. Corporate espionage anyone? It's ipod-like so it can probably be used as an external drive, might be another thing to add to the list of things you can't bring into the office, but it should be airplane safe.
My mini is only 6mo old, no need for anything else.
"Hell, turning over evidence on one man who will be picked up anyway?"
Makes sense, emails are very tracable. Right now there are too many unknowns. All they have to do is get a hold of the email and find the IP it was sent from then since I think the Chinese gov't controls the ISPs they find out who had it, if it's an internet cafe they just enforce their DMCA-like laws and force them into turning over the records of who was logged into that computer at that time under pain of death or at least loss of business license or imprisonment or torture. The owner is not going to risk any of that over the actions of a patron. The real question/issue is how "the man" knew to go to yahoo. Did the int'l sites say this internal memo is from revolutionary@yahoo.china? If they revealed the email address, by posting the email with full headers, of a source who wanted to remain anonymous then it's their screw up. Or it could have been a limited distribution memo and they tortured someone else(s) who got it until they named names.
"for all this you get an Intel®855GME video chipset."
My first couple thoughts on this; it would be nice if it really existed, only an Intel video chipset and only 100mbits LAN. If they can make a 6.8GHz CPU they should at least be able to give you a 1.21 gigga Hz GPU and 1.21 gigga bit LAN. I least I feel better that is was inspected by #24, whoever that is.(pic of the QuantumII at the bottom)
How about a Back to the Future PC/Laptop, with 1.21 gigga-everything (Great Scott!)
except CPU and hdd, 1.21GHz and 1.21GB would be a bit limited.
2TB storage for a laptop? How about multi-TB storage for desktop? Guessing at the size, A 5.25" bay could probably hold them 3x4 and 4 or 5 thick, 48 or 60TB. Maybe we can blame the RIAA for stalling development, 60TB would hold LOTS of 320+VBRkbits mp3s. Or for a "home media center" would be nice to be able to make 1:1 copies of my dvd collection and play as a media player playlist not having to get up to change the disk.
" It is possible that one day the imbedded chip under the skin would become law it may even come with a gps and auto feature that disables the user installed in it as well."
yes, there should be a second level of security, I'm not for imbedded in my skin chips, perhaps a 2nd pword/pin or 2nd chip also carried on your person in a place other than where the card is carried. If it's small enough it could be attached to anything you have with you everyday, on a keychain, in a watch, in a piece of jewlery or contained in a cell phone or even in a pair of glasses, anywhere it's firmly attached so it doesn't get lost or fall off. It should be movable so thieves don't know what else to take if they steal your wallet, unless they have a portable scanner, but then all you'll have to do is report the card stolen. If thieves get enough information to print a fake card, that's another problem.
"many don't even take it from you - they just ask you to put it in the card reader"
I remember when something similar happened over here. I was working as a cashier at the local supermarket during summer and winter breaks. Up to one summer everything with credit cards was done by us at the register, there is a keypad for entering pins directly across from us. That winter there are card readers installed, the generic for credit and debit cards ones you see everywhere now and they were further away from us, so the only time we even saw the card was when the customer ran it through the reader, no checking of the card. Apparently there was some scare/popular rumors that store employees were stealing credit cards or card numbers at the checkout counters. Yes, when someone's in a hurry and rushes out leaving their card on the counter it was "stolen" by that kid at the counter, not accidentally lost/left by a distracted customer and properly turned in to the management by that kid. As far as stolen numbers, I think it was done by people with assess to the store's database of credit transactions. I can understand the desire to have the card never leave the posession of the customer. Now someone can steal a credit card and walk into a BestBuy or other store with expensive easily resellable items and make a major purchase and not have the payment method checked, there's the assumption that the person with the card and pin is the owner. Don't you just love the tradeoff between convenience and security. Most credit card companies and banks now offer some fraud protection to cover from the time the card goes missing until it's reported lost/stolen. As for shoulder surfing, the keybad should be recessed blocking the view of anyone not using the keypad, too many card readers are too out in the open.
"and the entire state of F1orida"
I don't know about that one, I'm sure I can think of a few people I'd like to evacuate to Florida. Don't forget California because they get the most media coverage of their wildfires, you know the naturally occuring yearly cycle of forest and brush fires that travels in a clockwise circle around the US? When will New Berlin and the Mars colony with the really big anti-space rock ray-gun be ready for move-in?
It's #10 in the donotcall faq, cell phones can be reagistered and it's illegal to use automated dialers to call(spam) cell phones, but manual dialing is still allowed.
"How can they claim monetary damages?"
That's easy, customer not registered with or not on the don't bother calling me list for 31+ days reviews bill and sees unwanted charges or receives telemarketing calls and calls customer support claiming the calls were unsolicited telemarketing calls. Customer service rep agrees and credits customers account leaving part of the cost of the call unpaid and the company takes a loss. After a while all those refunds are going to add up and the company wants to recover the losses.
"the caller pays for whatever is normally paid to call a landline phone, and you pay the difference."
Close, the caller pays what they would pay if they called out of their area code which is why I agree with the other reply;
"why not move the cell phone numbers to a separate area code then?"
Happens enough when someone has a 'normal' line and a cell both in the same area code, one's a free local call but the other I have to pay for even if my 'normal' line bill says free calls in same area code. It would be nice to know which calls I'm going to have to pay for, it's not much but it might eventually add up to something. "Land-lines" can keep 636 and cell phones get 939.
What's with having to pay for incoming calls? They use up your plan minutes yet you don't have any control over when someone calls you, yes you could always not answer, but someone will probably consider it rude. With the nice high monthly plans with extra long contracts you'd think there would be at least another option with "free nights and weekends" how about free nights or weekends and free incoming calls, I think a free same carrier calls option exists.
As for the call spammers, they should be lined up and spammed with big cans of spam by the "can you hear me now?" guy, or a least a recording.
whack...can you hear me now?...thud...can you hear me now?...ow!, my random body part...can you hear me now?
Would this be considered "stealing" Verizon's bandwidth?
"Only difference now is that they'll try and make the internet service mandatory (which they won't be able to do, so whatever)"
Perhaps they over estimate the availability of reasonably priced broadband. It will be impossible to enforce their requirement that their DVD players and game consoles have an internet connection unless they have modems and wireless cards. They will, only it will be another $50-$100 for the additional hardware. Almost sounds like the last time I was in BestBuy trying to help a relative pick out a DVD player, they try and force all the unneeded stuff on you saying it's required or you'll need it. I don't know how to use an RF modulator with component vidoe cable.
Let's see, Lexmark makes extra sucky printers, people stop buying Lexmark printers, Lexmark starts loosing money. In a desperate appempt to not go broke they try some legal scamming claiming the encryption or was it the shape of the cartrige makes it protected by the DMCA to force paying customers to pay even more for their 19ml, used to be 42lm, of ink. They Lost. Now they're claiming what they decided to print on the package is a legally binding agreement. How long until someone puts this on their packaging?
"by opening this package you agree to only use products of this company and never any similar products produced by any of its competition for the remainder of your naural life under pain of a beating with the DMCA stick."
The DMCA was created with a purpose, to kill off Napster, it did, now it's being abused and needs to be put to sleep. Lets all write to our representitives asking to repeal the DMCA or at least support the DMCA reform HR 1201(search EFF)
Include as many examples as possible, Lexmark(x2) universal tv remotes, replacement garage door openers. Don't forget to challenge the **AA's claims of lost profits and piracy as being overly exadurated, the real reason they're loosing money is because of failed business models and the quality of their new content has dropped off significantly and people are spending their money on games over music. They also want to raise the prices of legal services by at least 50% to 250%, itunes 99c to $1.49 or $2.50.
So they want to protect their region coding to protect their international price fixing scam. How long until they'll want to only play DRM-ed disks because the unencrypted disk might be a "pirated" copy even if it's your backup copy or a dvd you made of the show you recorded last night when you had something better to do than stay home and watch tv.
Stop the price fixing and make the DMCA like the 18th ammendment.
yes, scrap the DRM and the broadcast flag along with it. People should be allowed to use the hardware and software of their choosing, not have their choices of hardware restricted by the software they think they have to use. I don't want to have to buy a DRM compliant video card that's compatable with my monitor using some other DRM and my tv and dvd playes using yet other forms of DRM. The best way to not have everything work together is to restrict everything, which happens to be what DRM is. Fortunately all that can still be done with standard audio and video cable, I wonder how long until they'll want us to buy DRMed cables, maybe the $40 for 6' monster cable. Most of what the article mentions can already be done if you have it centered on a networked PC with tv-out and wireless multi-media keyboard for convenience. I'm not sure why you'd want to have a refrigerator and garage door opener to have an internet connection, imagine a virus that sets the door opener to an endless loop or one that sets your freezer temp to 50f.
Didn't a bunch of fake donation sites pop up after the tsunami last year? Paypal may be attempting to verify the authenticity of the cause, we don't want the donations to end up in the pockets of scammers. For the technicality of nothing sold, they could sell shirts with the money going to the relief effort, but I don't know how that will effect its status as a charitable donation for tax purposes.
Or as you said, some scammers used the donate info to get his paypal account name and are going phishing for account access worth over $20,000. Either way I'd use Paypal's "Contact Us" link. One of the screen caps says contact appeals@paypal so it should be legit if he's seeing that while logged into paypal.
go ahead, waste your mod points and mark this offtopic
After reading the article I was browsing the EFF store and found a wallet sized Bill of Rights printed on a metal card. Are they trying to have the Bill of Rights trigger metal detectors at security checkpoints? Now if they only had a pocket Constitution with a high metal content.
"Do you read every single EULA and other agreements?"
After you read it don't forget to print it, sign it and have it notarized so you can remember what you agreed to, not the current modified EULA. This still confuses me that some EULAs and TOS have clauses like "and this agreement may be changed at any time with no warning by the compary that wrote it" What's up with that, especially for paid services? It's like signing the 50th page of a two page agreement, it allows the other party to change the terms at will and you have to deal with it, Sorry, I think I'll pass and stick to used CDs, that I can rip at a DRM-less 320kbps, until the RIAA buys off enough people to overturn first purchase and fair use or create an RIAA and/or DRM tax that further increases the price of a used CD.
"Then why haven't the operators of news aggregators such as Slashdot been taken to court over their front-page links to sites?"
Probably because the site owners/content creators are given full credit by the poster here at Slashdot. From his screen cap it looks like Fuddruckers tried to pass off his content as their own. Yes, his credits are still in his game, but the average user probably won't pay any attention to that and may assume it way created by a Fuddruckers employee or bought/licensed by them.
"And then redirected the main page to a pleasant little website showing photographs of slaughterhouses."
He complains about stealing bandwidth and then does that, what's wrong with him. Fuddruckers causes the use of a more than usual amount of his bandwidth then he turns around and redirects traffic to another site, using their bandwidth. And did all that without trying a friendly professional email which I'm sure any respectable company would honor. If he didn't like it he could have blocked traffic from Fuddruckers or redirected it a credits page where he explained what he considered to be wrong doings by Fuddruckers and provided a link to his games main page. If he really wanted it to be bad he could have redirected to one of Fuddruckers competitors.
and yet more bandwidth "stealing" Fuddruckers.com is redirecting to google.com