P.S. I block Flash during normal browsing. One more beauty of non-IE browsers!
By default, yes, IE can't block flash. Firefox doesn't come configured to block it out of the box (although if you don't install the plugin you're not going to have it) as well though. Personally I use Maxthon, an IE browser wrapper that is quite nice. Unlike Firefox it comes preloaded with ad blocking settings for inline ads and popup ads. Turning on ad blocking will eliminate a good 90% of the ads online and it's easy to add more with a right click selection.
So not trying bash Firefox or anything but it's not the be all, end all of browsers. It can be difficult for novices as well since they visit sites that we (more tech-oriented people) don't, such as all the silly humor and greeting card sites that just rehash ancient jokes with images and music. I had a hell of a time getting Firefox to play background wav files on my mother's computer, something that was important to her no matter how silly I thought it was. It'd have been nice if I could have found an answer to this on Mozilla.org/Getfirefox.com but I wasn't able to. I finally figured it out from some developer questions on a forum asking how to get background wav files to play in Firefox/Mozilla. (The solution was installing Quicktime alternative and setting the mime type for Wav files to be associated with it. For some strange reason Firefox wants to use Quicktime to handle wav files. This was highly unintuitive, especially when Firefox would claim a required plugin wasn't available for a page and then say it was Quicktime (which was installed). It took a lot of looking at the source of pages before I realized that the background wav files were linked to Firefox saying Quicktime was needed but not installed on some pages. Some Google searches later I found the forum posts and it all finally made sense.)
All that said, I want to see Firefox improve and continue to challenge IE and take away market share. In the long run we're all going to be better off with the competition. Hell, eventually IE might even end up safe to run for regular users. (OK, probably not but it would be nice.:) )
Point out an Article and Section. I implore you to do so.
If you're asking me to present you with a part of the constitution itself that says there are checks and balances I can't, but then you're being intentionally pedantic. The constitution does not say "oh yeah, these are the checks and balances" but instead lays out the powers of each branch. These powers all have checks and balances built in because other branches can affect them, or overrule them. Some examples that also includes things beyond just the judiciary:
The House of Representatives (legislative branch) has the power to impeach the president/vice president as well as judges. (executive branch & judicial branch)
The Senate (legislative branch) has the power to try these impeachments (executive and judicial branchs)
The Senate approves appointments of federal judges
Bills must be passed by both the House and Senate (self-checking because of the dual houses of the legislative branch)
The President can veto bills
The President appoints judges
The President can do recess appointments (this is a check & balance against the legislative branch, rarely used although Bush did use this recently)
The President can pardon people (check against the judiciary)
Can call emergency sessions of congress
Judicial branch reviews laws passed by Congress and signed into law by the President
Chief justice sits as president of the Senate during impeachment trials
If you want to read more, try here, that page has a more comprehensive list of the checks and balances the constiution sets up.
Also this page has information on what the framers of our constitution were trying to accomplish. They constitution is intentionally vague and sets up an inefficient set of branches. The intention was to make sure that no branch could gain too much power and take control of the country. Remember that this was framed after we rebelled against being subjects of a king hundreds of miles away on another continent who was making us pay taxes without us having any say in them. Our founding fathers feared and hated this and intentionally set up our government to prevent it from ever occurring here. Whether or not they succeeded is up for argument, but that was their intentions.
Why should media companies be allowed to shift the burden of risk involved in starting a new channel from themselves to their customers? This seems like an economic distortion to me. It seems more reasonable that if the channel is really worth watching, the company launching it would put compelling content on it, then to drive up demand, it would launch a media marketing blitz.
In this case the media companies set the rules of how they'll sell their content, and they want it to stay bundled. The cable companies have the right to tell them to take their bundle and shove it but they don't because of consumer demand for some of the channels in those bundles. The consumers are the ones driving the show here, the media companies are merely leveraging the demand of the public for some of their existing content to move new content to the market. Annoying yes, but pretty standard business practice.
What's the real key I think is that by definition all media's a monopoply. You can't just replace one show with another and satisfy the consumers. So perhaps we should treat media companies as monopolies and disallow this bundling and leveraging of existing monopolies to create new ones. (Aka a new hit show/channel.) I doubt this would ever happen though, it's a bit unwieldly and the media companies aren't quite the same as your traditional evil monoplist company (hi Microsoft!).
Also in the end the channels have to stand on their own merits or they'll be dropped by their creators. Even if you force it to be available if no one watches it it's toast. Frankly I go through now and then to see if there are channels where previously there were none. I generally find a couple of new channels Comcast has added but not bothered to tell us about. So I'm really not sure the end result is what the media companies had hoped for. They made Comcast take them and provide them, but the cable consumers around here don't know they have them available.
I don't know how much the government should regulate businesses like this, but if you only have one broadband provider in your area and they want to hit you up for more services than you want, there's not much you can do about it.
Quite true. I have a friend who lives in an area where the only broadband option is the cable company (I forget which company it is, but it's not one of the biggies so it may not matter). Over the past year they have changed their plans so that their basic cable plan is now only 384kbps down, 128kbps up. Just a year ago it was 3mbps down, 384kbps up. Really amazing given that most of the big nationals upped their download rates to 4mbps on their basic plans over the past few months. This company has a monopoly though, and they know it so they're abusing it as much as possible.
Sure you can get higher from them but you have to pay an arm and a leg for business services, even if you don't plan to use it for business at all. End result: Consumers are screwed, the cable company's laughing its ass off on the way to the bank. They don't have to to do any infrastructure upgrades or even provide much in the way of service. (They had a week long outage several months back, the explanation they gave was total BS, apparently they have no backup power or power conditioning so when they got hit by a surge it took a week to replace everything necessary for the network to come back up.)
Freedom of speech is a right. A right can not be taken away.
Rewrite the Bill Of Rights, Rewrite the Constitution. Burn them for all that it matters. Those documents are nothing but paper.
None of those actions can take away my right to free speech.
And that wasn't the grandparent's point. You still have your freedom of speech. Mainly what the judiciary has done over the centuries is define what speech isn't covered under the first admendment, and that is speech that infringes on other people's rights. You have the right to free speech, you do not have the right to speech that intentionally harms another person. This is no different than the right to bear arms. You have the right to bear arms, but you don't have the right to kill someone in cold blood with those arms.
That's what the grandparent's point was, the judiciary is involved in determining what passes constitutional muster and what doesn't regarding laws. Congress can pass a law saying you can speak the word blue, the president can even sign it into law, then the courts will get involved and find it unconstitutional and it will eventually be striken from the record. This is all part of the checks and balances put into the constitution to make sure things like that don't happen.
Rebates have already been kinda of a scam. They make it as hard as possible to get them, but advertise the price after rebate.
I won't disagree that rebates are a bit of a scam, and the whole advertising the price after rebate most definitely is, but sometimes rebates can make for some very good deals. I watch deal sites and research my buys, I'll take a rebate offer if the savings are significant. Back in January I got an AMD 64 3400+ CPU, Asus A8V Deluxe motherboard, a Soyo case (I don't remember the model name) along with some crappy keyboard, mouse and speakers for $399 with a mail-in rebate for $100 on the CPU. This was with TigerDirect who uses OnRebate so I had my $100 back in about 2 weeks sitting in my Paypal account.
Looking at PriceGrabber right now, the best I can find the CPU and Motherboard are $207 and $110. The prices were a bit higher back when I bought this, but basically with everything together it was a decent deal without the rebate, and an incredibly good deal with it.
Meanwhile they are playing the float with your money. Its not that bad b/c they do pay after you jump through many hoops but they count on people not putting up with the hassle. This is a good bet b/c people value their time and sanity.
In this instance I don't feel they even had time to do much with the float of my money, I had the rebate in 2 weeks time. I didn't have to jump through any hoops, all I did was fill out my info on the website and it gave me a page to printout with a checklist of what to include. Frankly I have bills that are more complicated to prepare and mail in.
For minimal hassle I saved a lot of money. I even have the keyboard and mouse spare if something fails. They're not great, but they're not total crap either, they're fine for spares. The case turned out to be a real surprise, it's a really nice case, laid out perfectly. It didn't even take a bit of effort to have all my cables neatly tucked away, I'm quite happy with it.
Absolutely free checking accounts for business or personal. No deposit requirements, no minimum balances, no strings.
And I get about 12 phishing attacks a week supposedly from Washington Mutual. I report them for their benefit but have yet to receive even a single automated reply of "thanks, we're looking into it". Coincedence? Maybe, but combined I'd never trust my money to WAMU.
I should point out, most other banks/companies send back an automated reply including information on phishing attacks in general and what you should do if you did submit information to the fake site. WAMU fails to do this, that's not a very good business practice.
Many stores don't do cash refunds because they don't want to keep large amounts of cash on hand just in case somebody needs a refund. Cash is too tempting for robbery or sticky fingers.
Yes this is true, but... Best Buy deals in expensive items. They even sell appliances. This isn't the type of store that can afford to have small cash reserves on hand. Why not? If they did that they run the risk of not having enough cash for change if too many customers pay in cash. They simply MUST keep a fairly large amount of cash on hand, more than likely locked up in the cash office (or equivalent) or they might have to close down early some evening.
You can pay for large items in cash, sure, but if it's over a certain amount (varies by store policy) most or all of your money goes straight into the store safe rather than the register cash drawer. They probably couldn't refund a large cash purchase even if you hadn't yet left the store.
Again this is Best Buy, not a convenience store. There will be someone there who can open the safe, there pretty much has to be.
I never worked at a Best Buy, but from working at a Wal-mart a few years back, a place that doesn't sell nearly as many high ticket items, it was not uncommon for cashiers up front to have to get loans because they ran out of cash giving change. The service desk also has that problem, they have to get loans much more often because of cash refunds. (And cashing money orders, and nowadays cashing payroll checks.)
Wal-mart's policies are different on returns but Best Buy simply cannot claim they don't have the cash available to do refunds. Whatever the reason for this is, it's not that. I'm also very suspicious of any claims of loss prevention in cases like the grandparent mentioned -- with receipt, bought very recently.
It's best to point out that the refund will take over a month, up to two, and that Best Buy will be earning interest on that money the whole time. That's probably the real reason -- greed.
Given that my domain is so small, either spammers grab whois in bulk, or use an alphanumeric attack to find new domains.
I think they've found ways to mostly automating ripping addresses out of whois, even with the (mostly meager) blocks put into place to supposedly stop this. Given the vast zombie nets nowadays it's probably easy to just have each machine whois a domain or two and report back. Actually that would be a way to combine both, use alphanumeric attacks to find new domains and have the zombies do that and the whois'ing.
I do appreciate the support, I don't have recent stats to back me up (until last month the last domain I had registered expired around 1998) but I was certain the problem has only gotten worse. (Certain enough to pay extra for the privacy option actually, money well spent to cut down the spam.) Hell, I still get snail mail from sleazy domain registars about domains inactive for over 5 years!
Ummm....would spammers getting one of these anonymous addresses also be considered a bad use? Then when someone starts sending me spam and I try getting him to stop, besides spam blockers (that blocks the spam but does not stop it) there is no other way to do so. If the spammer feels they have a right to do so, I think I have a right to know who it is so that I can tell him to stop.
Do you think a spammer would actually provide valid details to register a domain with even to the proxy service? Spam and Phishing are increasingly being linked to organized crime, the odds are they'll register using a stolen credit card number and whatever info they do provide will be either an innocent person's or totally bogus. Besides even if it's private you can still sue, even in a civil case if the court finds your suit has merit they can make the proxy service hand over the real contact info.
This service also costs extra, it's not something a spammer will bother with.
If you are fearful of anyone having your contact information...hire someone else to maintain your web site.
Are you familiar with how domain registration works at all? If I list another person as the contacts for the domain, especially the administrative contact, they can transfer ownership of that domain easily. Yes using a proxy service introduces some risk as well, but it's far less risky than having a fallout with one individual who decides to take away your domain. You _might_ eventually get it back but it may be too late by then to matter.
The arguments against private domain registration don't hold much weight. As I pointed out above, spammers don't play by the rules, they're not going to provide valid info anyway so that's not a good reason to prevent them. Criminal activity is also not, all it takes is a subpoena and the police will get your real contact info from the proxy service.
Er, set up a system where you couldn't change someone's password just by knowing their SSN?
The University I went to (and worked at as a Sysadmin for a few years after graduation) required a personal visit with ID to get a password reset. While I'm sure a lot of people grumbled about this, it's a very good system and would have prevented this type of thing from happening in the first place.
Although, the students who worked in the place that did the password resets would have easily been able to reset the passwords and done this type of thing. One would hope that the campus networking folks thought of this and watched what they did closely.
I can't get over how silly this thing seems. She did it to change a couple of her own grades from B to A or A+?
It'll be the phishers, spamer, ect. I have no problem with getting rid of "proxy" registrations. I'm not a fan of "big brother" knowing everything about me, but really if you want to host a domain I think that should be public knowledge. The only reasons I can think of the not want to give this is your a tin-hatter, up to some nafarious activity, or would be ashamed to have your name associated with the site. In any of those cases, either live with it or you shouldn't host the domain.
You appear to have no idea how private proxy registration works. The owner's real information is stored in escrow with the proxy service. The E-mail address listed in whois will be yourdomain.net@proxyservice.domain and it forwards stuff to the real owner. (Well at least the stuff that's not spam, so DMCA notices, etc. get through.) The police can easily get your real contact info by presenting a subpoena to the proxy service.
The spammers/phishers/etc. just register a domain with a stolen credit card and give false whois info. They'll continue to do so in fact, this won't affect them. It will affect those trying to avoid the spammers (that's why I registered my domains privately, I have to pay extra for the privledge in fact) and those who need privacy (rape victims, stalker victims, etc.)
There are many third parties that will register your domain name with valid contact information that isn't related to you at all.
That's just slightly different than what the NTIA is prohibiting, I'm sure they'll get around to stopping this as well. I have a few domains registered privately through GoDaddy so I can avoid spam. They place my real contact info in escrow with a proxy service and the proxy service shows up in the whois info. Here's an example:
Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15511 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com
Domain Name: MYDOMAIN.NET
Created on: 18-Feb-05
Expires on: 18-Feb-06
Last Updated on: 18-Feb-05
Administrative Contact:
Private, Registration MYDOMAIN.NET@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15511 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599
Technical Contact:
Private, Registration MYDOMAIN.NET@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15511 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599
I changed the domain name since I don't feel like advertising/etc., but that's what all private domain registrations look like in whois. The E-mail works too, it will get passed along to me as long as it passes spam filters, so I can get DMCA notices and what-not.
Basically all it does is keep prying eyes from getting my real name, address and E-mail address. This keeps the spammers and whackos at bay. If I do something illegal, the police can get my real contact info with a subpoena to the proxy service.
Likewise, an anonymously registered and maintained TLD is useful for only a few things. Most of them wrong. I.e. you can knowingly publish libelous material as long as nobody knows it was put out by you.
Don't get spammed much do you? I recently registered two domains, both will have a quasi-business site on them, both very valid public sites. I registered them privately on purpose, I don't want any more spam because of domain registrations.
Back in the mid 1990s I registered two domains. Spam wasn't the problem it is now at the time, and I used a permanent E-mail address. A few years after that I started getting spammed constantly, mostly trying to push other domains or other domain registars at me, along with the weak phishing-type scams trying to make me think my domain had expired. Since then, even though the domains no longer exist, the amount of spam at that address has risen drastically. It gets hundreds a day now, and most of them can be attributed back to registering two domain names. Personally I think you'd be nuts to register a domain either non-privately or with any real contact info nowadays. Spammers will still mine the whois databases, they don't care about the rules prohibiting it.
There are other good reasons as well. What about people who have a stalker? Rape victims or other violent crime victims? Identity theft victims, or those wanting to avoid becoming one? Political activists who don't want bricks thrown through their windows by overzealous people of opposite beliefs?
There are many VERY good reasons to want a private registration, very few of which are "wrong". Private registration also does not mean you're free from the law. My real contact info is in escrow with the proxy service, if they get a subpoena they will release my real info to the police. I'm still bound by the law, I just am no longer bound by the spammers.
This may be something that varies by state but are damages/etc. awarded from a lawsuit dischargeable under bankruptcy laws? I know my deadbeat dad tried (and failed) to get out of a court settlement over back child support years ago so in that case at least it wasn't allowed.
Granted it's not like they can get much from him if he's legitimately broke, but I don't believe he can stop MS & others from collecting what the court awarded. The bankruptcy court will dispose of his assets and decide who gets what portions, but what's left he'll still owe once he's out of bankruptcy protection.
IANAL so if I'm mistaken someone please correct me, I'd like to know.
Re:No matter how careful you are, you aren't enoug
on
ID Theft Made Easy
·
· Score: 1
You actually make some good points, although you're a bit overboard on your paranoia, but then you go and said this:
They were a little confused as to how I knew they did that and they were VERY confused as to why I would want that back. I didn't feel the need to educate them on it though.
Why not? Exactly how did you help the problem you complain and worry about if you don't inform individuals of your actions? You take the time to tell that one liquor store you buy there because they _don't_ scan you license, but by your accounting, you didn't bother to explain to the manager (who called you an asshole and frankly asked for an explanation as he most obviously needed one) why you don't want your card scanned at the other.
I have news for you, the problem of identity theft will not go away by simply ignoring it. You have to not only refuse to provide more info than is necessary, you have to explain why when it's obvious they don't know why. I've lost count of how many people at my bank have gotten the lecture as to why I refuse to identify myself over the phone by giving my social security number (it is not legal to require it as a form of identification in that manner for one thing, identity theft is the other), yet I still explain it. Will it change policies at my bank? Maybe not, but then again they do have alternate forms of identification which _aren't_ easy to find out about a person. If enough people refuse to give their SSN, AND explain why they refuse eventually they'll switch to those as the default.
BTW, as paranoid as you sound I'd recommend ditching your credit card. Go with cash and checks. Check fraud, while still around, is totally dwarved by identity theft and credit card fraud. Most places do require ID on checks so if you leave off your phone number and driver's license you can almost guarantee you'll be asked to show it. Sure you can write "Ask for ID" in the signature field on your credit card but anyone who's actually done that can tell you how well it works (not very. A few years back when I was working at a Wal-mart I had a customer show me the back of theirs which said this. I had asked for ID (since it was policy to ask for it on all credit cards & checks) and they told me I was the first person in 3 years who had actually asked to see their ID. They quite happily showed it to me.)
Change wont take long, if we all stopped buying ringtones and bullshit for our phones then change would happen pretty quick, its a broken buisness model made to screw the customers out of even more money, dont fall for it!
It'll likely take longer than you think unfortunately. Look at the Inkjet Printer market/business model. It's another idiotic business plan (sell the printers for a loss, screw them on the ink!) yet it's still around even though most consumers have caught on to it.
They're adapted some, now they often don't include full cartridges with the printers because the general public figured out it was cheaper to throw away their printer and buy a new one than to replace the ink in it. (Which just shows how greedy they're being on the ink cartridges, if they were a little more reasonable people wouldn't have picked up on this as quickly. Many low-end model printers still cost less than HALF the cost of replacement ink cartridges even today.)
Faced with growing consumer awareness of their scheme, and rejection of it as well, what did the printer manufacturers do? Tried to force lock-in by sticking chips and other useless doodads in the cartridges. Lexmark even went so far as to sue a company making chips to allow companies to produce generic cartridges for Lexmark printers -- using the DMCA no less. Luckily it seems the courts haven't approved of Lexmark's little scheme, basically saying that if the technology was put there only to force consumer lock-in it wasn't protected under the DMCA.
That was fairly recent and Lexmark's sure to appeal (if they haven't already) so it'll be a while before it settles down, but have we really seen any change in the printer companies' business model?
The same thing will happen here, even with consumer backlash, the phone companies will insist on their stupid business model and savvy customers will find ways around it or be forced to live with it. Hell it took the courts to stop us from being forced to let the telcos own all our inside wiring and phones years ago, it very well may take something similar to change the wireless company's business models.
Ultimately businesses have stopped listening to their customers. Even falling sales are not attributed to unhappy customers but to anything else that can be blamed -- piracy, hackers, the weather, little green men, you name it, just not unhappy customers.
Good move Google but what happens if every news organization sues or threatens to sue? Where shall we get our news from?
From the news organizations that realize being listed on Google News or other news aggregators (such as Topix.net) is beneficial to them because it directs users to their websites.
The ones who don't get this concept will just quietly go under or be bought up by other news organizations that "get it". This is exceptionally silly on AFP's part since once a user clicks on a link from Google News to go to AFP's site they can display banner ads to help pay their costs.
Looks like this will be one of those cases where the company deserves exactly what it's asking for. I wonder how they'll try to spin their declining web readership?
Probably more, if you do a whois on the domain it was registered in September of 2002, so that's about 2.5 years. Definitely starting to get a bit long there for Hasbro to wait to defend their trademarks. That might hurt Hasbro if this goes to court.
Why would Hasbro pay Jared? What are they getting out of it exactly?
An actual good, simple, easy to use version of Scrabble able to be played online by play by E-mail. Seeing as none of their commercial releases of Scrabble videogames have come even within the same planetary system as e-scrabble's version from a fun, easy to use standpoint this would be quite valuable, or it would if Hasbro actually cares about putting out a good version of Scrabble playable online, something I have my doubts about after all the dreadful videogame versions they've sold.
That said, such a site is HORRIBLE, because it puts a lot of power into the hands of criminals. Imagine being afraid to testify against a criminal because the criminals will post your information somewhere and the odds are you're going to die.
And it might not be legal after all. Remember a few years back when there was a site anti-abortionists would put up pictures/addresses/phone numbers of doctors who performed abortions and then one (or more) of those doctors were shot and killed? The site ended up in trouble and taken down because (IIRC) the courts found that they were encouraging violence against the doctors listed there and that they had surpassed the boundaries of free speech because of this.
This case sounds pretty similar, as soon as some informant ends up killed and they can link it to the site, the site will likely end up removed and the creator jailed.
As far as it being the Napster defense, exactly what happened to Napster? They lost and the new Napster has nothing to do with the original.
Now, we all know Disney does some evil shit, but in this case, they really didn't have a choice in the matter. Disney can't afford to lose the trademarks they have on Mickey and company.
Explain to me why the ONLY option for Disney was to send a cease and desist letter? Why didn't they contact the school, say "We need to have a meeting with your legal staff about some trademarks issues" and then lay out the problem? They could have have explained why doing this was a no-no, and then worked out a legal agreement that gave the school district permission to use their copyrighted characters. This would have protected their trademark (they did act and made the school sign an agreement showing that the characters belonged to Disney and were used only with permission).
The fact that Disney didn't even think of this, an actual _reasonable_ approach, tells you where their priorities are -- making money from those trademarks. It wasn't just a trademark issue, it was a money issue, Disney wanted to be paid for the rights to use their characters -- even in a pre-school. Hanna Barbera obviously sees the lack of threat posed by a pre-school using their characters with permission (but without payment).
Companies do have choices when enforcing their trademark and copyright, they just don't bother to be reasonable.
Nonetheless, I stand by my evaluation: they're being very kind,
Frankly this one bit makes me feel they aren't being kind at all:
"Additionally, under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, 15 U.S.C. 1125(d), any individual who registers or uses a domain name that is identical to, confusingly similar to, or dilutive of a distinctive or famous trademark with the bad faith intent to profit from that mark may be subject to civil liability."
The site's a free site, there's not even any ads. There is a donate button to help offset hosting costs, but it's ONLY on the main page, once you start a game you don't see it again. He's simply not been profiting from the site in any way, and it's obvious as hell when you look at the site he's not trying to. As for intent, the FAQ explained why he made the site, he used to play on a similar one that dissapeared into the ether and decided to make one similar so he'd still have a place to play. Not to make a profit, simply to have a place to play Scrabble by E-mail. Hasbro did everything but flat-out call him a cyber-squattor without any proof. That's hardly KIND.
This wouldn't be so bad if Hasbro had any kind of clue how to make a decent electronic Srabble game. People wouldn't feel the need to use online versions of questionable legality if they could manage this rather simple thing. (One guy coding on his own for free makes a version of Scrabble online better than every version Hasbro has ever releaed electronically? What exactly did Hasbro pay those programmers for?)
Yes, Hasbro has rights, and I respect those, but stepping too far over the line and making baseless accusations is not one of their rights. I lost all respect I ever had for them, and won't be bothering to buy anything else from them. (Not that I'll be missing much from the videogames they put out...)
Thing is, would it have become even socially acceptable, much less common cultural stock, if it was invented in 1948?
Which is precisely the point. If it had been invented in the 1900s, it would have been tied down with what are becoming excessive copyright durations and the game would have lost all cultural significance in the name of protecting trademark.
Please explain to me how that system makes any sense? Chess is now considered a part of our culture, but apparently nothing invented since 1900 every will be because it'll be trademarked and copyrighted for eternity. Effectively our collective culture stopped at the end of the 1800s. That's progress?
So, sorry if I don't feel much sympathy for that site. They just took someone else's property and tried to make a buck out of it. It's no different than trying to make a buck off the Coca-Cola trademark by writing that on your own soft drinks cans.
You're seriously misinformed. I found the site a few weeks back and have been playing on it. It's totally free, no ads, no fee to play. They're not trying to make money on it, and are liekly LOOSING money for the hosting fees. I find it odd that you're so quick to assume this guy was trying to make money without any proof whatsoever, do you always jump to conclusions like that?
They have a problem with big bad Hasbro not letting them make a buck off the game Hasbro invented, and the trademark Hasbro owns?
I have a problem with Hasbro being willing to spend oodles of dollars defending their Trademark yet spend effectively nothing in providing the service fans want. Every version of the Scrabble video games put out have sucked, especially for online play. This one site, for free, has completely blown away every commercial version of Scrabble put out. That says a lot about Hasbro's priorities, they're just being greedy bastards, this isn't really about Trademark.
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So not trying bash Firefox or anything but it's not the be all, end all of browsers. It can be difficult for novices as well since they visit sites that we (more tech-oriented people) don't, such as all the silly humor and greeting card sites that just rehash ancient jokes with images and music. I had a hell of a time getting Firefox to play background wav files on my mother's computer, something that was important to her no matter how silly I thought it was. It'd have been nice if I could have found an answer to this on Mozilla.org/Getfirefox.com but I wasn't able to. I finally figured it out from some developer questions on a forum asking how to get background wav files to play in Firefox/Mozilla. (The solution was installing Quicktime alternative and setting the mime type for Wav files to be associated with it. For some strange reason Firefox wants to use Quicktime to handle wav files. This was highly unintuitive, especially when Firefox would claim a required plugin wasn't available for a page and then say it was Quicktime (which was installed). It took a lot of looking at the source of pages before I realized that the background wav files were linked to Firefox saying Quicktime was needed but not installed on some pages. Some Google searches later I found the forum posts and it all finally made sense.)
All that said, I want to see Firefox improve and continue to challenge IE and take away market share. In the long run we're all going to be better off with the competition. Hell, eventually IE might even end up safe to run for regular users. (OK, probably not but it would be nice. :) )
I'm serious.
Point out an Article and Section. I implore you to do so.
If you want to read more, try here, that page has a more comprehensive list of the checks and balances the constiution sets up.
Also this page has information on what the framers of our constitution were trying to accomplish. They constitution is intentionally vague and sets up an inefficient set of branches. The intention was to make sure that no branch could gain too much power and take control of the country. Remember that this was framed after we rebelled against being subjects of a king hundreds of miles away on another continent who was making us pay taxes without us having any say in them. Our founding fathers feared and hated this and intentionally set up our government to prevent it from ever occurring here. Whether or not they succeeded is up for argument, but that was their intentions.
What's the real key I think is that by definition all media's a monopoply. You can't just replace one show with another and satisfy the consumers. So perhaps we should treat media companies as monopolies and disallow this bundling and leveraging of existing monopolies to create new ones. (Aka a new hit show/channel.) I doubt this would ever happen though, it's a bit unwieldly and the media companies aren't quite the same as your traditional evil monoplist company (hi Microsoft!).
Also in the end the channels have to stand on their own merits or they'll be dropped by their creators. Even if you force it to be available if no one watches it it's toast. Frankly I go through now and then to see if there are channels where previously there were none. I generally find a couple of new channels Comcast has added but not bothered to tell us about. So I'm really not sure the end result is what the media companies had hoped for. They made Comcast take them and provide them, but the cable consumers around here don't know they have them available.
Sure you can get higher from them but you have to pay an arm and a leg for business services, even if you don't plan to use it for business at all. End result: Consumers are screwed, the cable company's laughing its ass off on the way to the bank. They don't have to to do any infrastructure upgrades or even provide much in the way of service. (They had a week long outage several months back, the explanation they gave was total BS, apparently they have no backup power or power conditioning so when they got hit by a surge it took a week to replace everything necessary for the network to come back up.)
Rewrite the Bill Of Rights, Rewrite the Constitution. Burn them for all that it matters. Those documents are nothing but paper.
None of those actions can take away my right to free speech.
That's what the grandparent's point was, the judiciary is involved in determining what passes constitutional muster and what doesn't regarding laws. Congress can pass a law saying you can speak the word blue, the president can even sign it into law, then the courts will get involved and find it unconstitutional and it will eventually be striken from the record. This is all part of the checks and balances put into the constitution to make sure things like that don't happen.
- I won't disagree that rebates are a bit of a scam, and the whole advertising the price after rebate most definitely is, but sometimes rebates can make for some very good deals. I watch deal sites and research my buys, I'll take a rebate offer if the savings are significant. Back in January I got an AMD 64 3400+ CPU, Asus A8V Deluxe motherboard, a Soyo case (I don't remember the model name) along with some crappy keyboard, mouse and speakers for $399 with a mail-in rebate for $100 on the CPU. This was with TigerDirect who uses OnRebate so I had my $100 back in about 2 weeks sitting in my Paypal account.
Meanwhile they are playing the float with your money. Its not that bad b/c they do pay after you jump through many hoops but they count on people not putting up with the hassle. This is a good bet b/c people value their time and sanity.Looking at PriceGrabber right now, the best I can find the CPU and Motherboard are $207 and $110. The prices were a bit higher back when I bought this, but basically with everything together it was a decent deal without the rebate, and an incredibly good deal with it.
For minimal hassle I saved a lot of money. I even have the keyboard and mouse spare if something fails. They're not great, but they're not total crap either, they're fine for spares. The case turned out to be a real surprise, it's a really nice case, laid out perfectly. It didn't even take a bit of effort to have all my cables neatly tucked away, I'm quite happy with it.
I should point out, most other banks/companies send back an automated reply including information on phishing attacks in general and what you should do if you did submit information to the fake site. WAMU fails to do this, that's not a very good business practice.
- Yes this is true, but... Best Buy deals in expensive items. They even sell appliances. This isn't the type of store that can afford to have small cash reserves on hand. Why not? If they did that they run the risk of not having enough cash for change if too many customers pay in cash. They simply MUST keep a fairly large amount of cash on hand, more than likely locked up in the cash office (or equivalent) or they might have to close down early some evening.
You can pay for large items in cash, sure, but if it's over a certain amount (varies by store policy) most or all of your money goes straight into the store safe rather than the register cash drawer. They probably couldn't refund a large cash purchase even if you hadn't yet left the store.I never worked at a Best Buy, but from working at a Wal-mart a few years back, a place that doesn't sell nearly as many high ticket items, it was not uncommon for cashiers up front to have to get loans because they ran out of cash giving change. The service desk also has that problem, they have to get loans much more often because of cash refunds. (And cashing money orders, and nowadays cashing payroll checks.)
Wal-mart's policies are different on returns but Best Buy simply cannot claim they don't have the cash available to do refunds. Whatever the reason for this is, it's not that. I'm also very suspicious of any claims of loss prevention in cases like the grandparent mentioned -- with receipt, bought very recently.
It's best to point out that the refund will take over a month, up to two, and that Best Buy will be earning interest on that money the whole time. That's probably the real reason -- greed.
I do appreciate the support, I don't have recent stats to back me up (until last month the last domain I had registered expired around 1998) but I was certain the problem has only gotten worse. (Certain enough to pay extra for the privacy option actually, money well spent to cut down the spam.) Hell, I still get snail mail from sleazy domain registars about domains inactive for over 5 years!
- Do you think a spammer would actually provide valid details to register a domain with even to the proxy service? Spam and Phishing are increasingly being linked to organized crime, the odds are they'll register using a stolen credit card number and whatever info they do provide will be either an innocent person's or totally bogus. Besides even if it's private you can still sue, even in a civil case if the court finds your suit has merit they can make the proxy service hand over the real contact info.
If you are fearful of anyone having your contact information...hire someone else to maintain your web site.This service also costs extra, it's not something a spammer will bother with.
The arguments against private domain registration don't hold much weight. As I pointed out above, spammers don't play by the rules, they're not going to provide valid info anyway so that's not a good reason to prevent them. Criminal activity is also not, all it takes is a subpoena and the police will get your real contact info from the proxy service.
Although, the students who worked in the place that did the password resets would have easily been able to reset the passwords and done this type of thing. One would hope that the campus networking folks thought of this and watched what they did closely.
I can't get over how silly this thing seems. She did it to change a couple of her own grades from B to A or A+?
The spammers/phishers/etc. just register a domain with a stolen credit card and give false whois info. They'll continue to do so in fact, this won't affect them. It will affect those trying to avoid the spammers (that's why I registered my domains privately, I have to pay extra for the privledge in fact) and those who need privacy (rape victims, stalker victims, etc.)
I changed the domain name since I don't feel like advertising/etc., but that's what all private domain registrations look like in whois. The E-mail works too, it will get passed along to me as long as it passes spam filters, so I can get DMCA notices and what-not.Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15511 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com
Domain Name: MYDOMAIN.NET
Created on: 18-Feb-05
Expires on: 18-Feb-06
Last Updated on: 18-Feb-05
Administrative Contact:
Private, Registration MYDOMAIN.NET@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15511 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599
Technical Contact:
Private, Registration MYDOMAIN.NET@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15511 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599
Basically all it does is keep prying eyes from getting my real name, address and E-mail address. This keeps the spammers and whackos at bay. If I do something illegal, the police can get my real contact info with a subpoena to the proxy service.
Back in the mid 1990s I registered two domains. Spam wasn't the problem it is now at the time, and I used a permanent E-mail address. A few years after that I started getting spammed constantly, mostly trying to push other domains or other domain registars at me, along with the weak phishing-type scams trying to make me think my domain had expired. Since then, even though the domains no longer exist, the amount of spam at that address has risen drastically. It gets hundreds a day now, and most of them can be attributed back to registering two domain names. Personally I think you'd be nuts to register a domain either non-privately or with any real contact info nowadays. Spammers will still mine the whois databases, they don't care about the rules prohibiting it.
There are other good reasons as well. What about people who have a stalker? Rape victims or other violent crime victims? Identity theft victims, or those wanting to avoid becoming one? Political activists who don't want bricks thrown through their windows by overzealous people of opposite beliefs?
There are many VERY good reasons to want a private registration, very few of which are "wrong". Private registration also does not mean you're free from the law. My real contact info is in escrow with the proxy service, if they get a subpoena they will release my real info to the police. I'm still bound by the law, I just am no longer bound by the spammers.
Granted it's not like they can get much from him if he's legitimately broke, but I don't believe he can stop MS & others from collecting what the court awarded. The bankruptcy court will dispose of his assets and decide who gets what portions, but what's left he'll still owe once he's out of bankruptcy protection.
IANAL so if I'm mistaken someone please correct me, I'd like to know.
- You actually make some good points, although you're a bit overboard on your paranoia, but then you go and said this:
They were a little confused as to how I knew they did that and they were VERY confused as to why I would want that back. I didn't feel the need to educate them on it though.I have news for you, the problem of identity theft will not go away by simply ignoring it. You have to not only refuse to provide more info than is necessary, you have to explain why when it's obvious they don't know why. I've lost count of how many people at my bank have gotten the lecture as to why I refuse to identify myself over the phone by giving my social security number (it is not legal to require it as a form of identification in that manner for one thing, identity theft is the other), yet I still explain it. Will it change policies at my bank? Maybe not, but then again they do have alternate forms of identification which _aren't_ easy to find out about a person. If enough people refuse to give their SSN, AND explain why they refuse eventually they'll switch to those as the default.
BTW, as paranoid as you sound I'd recommend ditching your credit card. Go with cash and checks. Check fraud, while still around, is totally dwarved by identity theft and credit card fraud. Most places do require ID on checks so if you leave off your phone number and driver's license you can almost guarantee you'll be asked to show it. Sure you can write "Ask for ID" in the signature field on your credit card but anyone who's actually done that can tell you how well it works (not very. A few years back when I was working at a Wal-mart I had a customer show me the back of theirs which said this. I had asked for ID (since it was policy to ask for it on all credit cards & checks) and they told me I was the first person in 3 years who had actually asked to see their ID. They quite happily showed it to me.)
They're adapted some, now they often don't include full cartridges with the printers because the general public figured out it was cheaper to throw away their printer and buy a new one than to replace the ink in it. (Which just shows how greedy they're being on the ink cartridges, if they were a little more reasonable people wouldn't have picked up on this as quickly. Many low-end model printers still cost less than HALF the cost of replacement ink cartridges even today.)
Faced with growing consumer awareness of their scheme, and rejection of it as well, what did the printer manufacturers do? Tried to force lock-in by sticking chips and other useless doodads in the cartridges. Lexmark even went so far as to sue a company making chips to allow companies to produce generic cartridges for Lexmark printers -- using the DMCA no less. Luckily it seems the courts haven't approved of Lexmark's little scheme, basically saying that if the technology was put there only to force consumer lock-in it wasn't protected under the DMCA.
That was fairly recent and Lexmark's sure to appeal (if they haven't already) so it'll be a while before it settles down, but have we really seen any change in the printer companies' business model?
The same thing will happen here, even with consumer backlash, the phone companies will insist on their stupid business model and savvy customers will find ways around it or be forced to live with it. Hell it took the courts to stop us from being forced to let the telcos own all our inside wiring and phones years ago, it very well may take something similar to change the wireless company's business models.
Ultimately businesses have stopped listening to their customers. Even falling sales are not attributed to unhappy customers but to anything else that can be blamed -- piracy, hackers, the weather, little green men, you name it, just not unhappy customers.
The ones who don't get this concept will just quietly go under or be bought up by other news organizations that "get it". This is exceptionally silly on AFP's part since once a user clicks on a link from Google News to go to AFP's site they can display banner ads to help pay their costs.
Looks like this will be one of those cases where the company deserves exactly what it's asking for. I wonder how they'll try to spin their declining web readership?
This case sounds pretty similar, as soon as some informant ends up killed and they can link it to the site, the site will likely end up removed and the creator jailed.
As far as it being the Napster defense, exactly what happened to Napster? They lost and the new Napster has nothing to do with the original.
The fact that Disney didn't even think of this, an actual _reasonable_ approach, tells you where their priorities are -- making money from those trademarks. It wasn't just a trademark issue, it was a money issue, Disney wanted to be paid for the rights to use their characters -- even in a pre-school. Hanna Barbera obviously sees the lack of threat posed by a pre-school using their characters with permission (but without payment).
Companies do have choices when enforcing their trademark and copyright, they just don't bother to be reasonable.
The site's a free site, there's not even any ads. There is a donate button to help offset hosting costs, but it's ONLY on the main page, once you start a game you don't see it again. He's simply not been profiting from the site in any way, and it's obvious as hell when you look at the site he's not trying to. As for intent, the FAQ explained why he made the site, he used to play on a similar one that dissapeared into the ether and decided to make one similar so he'd still have a place to play. Not to make a profit, simply to have a place to play Scrabble by E-mail. Hasbro did everything but flat-out call him a cyber-squattor without any proof. That's hardly KIND.
This wouldn't be so bad if Hasbro had any kind of clue how to make a decent electronic Srabble game. People wouldn't feel the need to use online versions of questionable legality if they could manage this rather simple thing. (One guy coding on his own for free makes a version of Scrabble online better than every version Hasbro has ever releaed electronically? What exactly did Hasbro pay those programmers for?)
Yes, Hasbro has rights, and I respect those, but stepping too far over the line and making baseless accusations is not one of their rights. I lost all respect I ever had for them, and won't be bothering to buy anything else from them. (Not that I'll be missing much from the videogames they put out...)
Please explain to me how that system makes any sense? Chess is now considered a part of our culture, but apparently nothing invented since 1900 every will be because it'll be trademarked and copyrighted for eternity. Effectively our collective culture stopped at the end of the 1800s. That's progress?
- You're seriously misinformed. I found the site a few weeks back and have been playing on it. It's totally free, no ads, no fee to play. They're not trying to make money on it, and are liekly LOOSING money for the hosting fees. I find it odd that you're so quick to assume this guy was trying to make money without any proof whatsoever, do you always jump to conclusions like that?
They have a problem with big bad Hasbro not letting them make a buck off the game Hasbro invented, and the trademark Hasbro owns?