They use the weasel-words "may be recorded" since the recording system might break.
... and given how these warnings are worded, they may be (mis)understood as a permission for the other party to record. "may" = "there is a possibility that..." or "you are allowed to...". Crafty consumers understand the second, and that's how legally sound incriminating records get into the public domain and into anti-trust court cases...:-)
They are only limited by how they can book those profits. Does it matter if somebody profits through salary, benefits and bonuses or as a shareholder in practice?
... and if that doesn't work, there's always the possibility of having the non-profit buy from friendly suppliers, which hugely overcharge their services, and split the proceeds.
Plus, when you can support a huge number of characters, why/not/ support every character?
Because then, some idiotic software will start "helpfully" substituting one variant of the character by the other. And no, I'm not thinking here about this mimic or other similar prank-ware, but about "well-meaning" applications such as Microsoft Office and Wordpress.
How often have I wondered in the last couple of years why some apparently correct shell-script pasted from a Wordpress blog or Microsoft Office user manual was not working as expected? Yeah, these softwares replace quotes, dashes and other assorted characters with lookalikes ("smart quotes") and cause subtle breakage.
Ok, so both are poor quality software, but in recent years Wikipedia has started pulling the same kinds of shenanigans...
I understand perfectly that other languages have different symbols. But when those symbols are effectively identical to an existing symbol, JUST USE THAT SYMBOL.
Well said! And this should apply as well to the "smart quotes" non-sense. If you want a quote, just store a quote, and nothing else.
Back in my highschool days, we had no Unicode, but we did have monitors whose picture was so poor that you could had to look twice to distinguish semicolons and colons.
So we made a DOS TSR program that hooked in the keyboard interrupt, and if it detected that it was called from Turbo Pascal, and that the sequence for compilation was keyed in, it would locate Turbo Pascal's editor buffer and randomly change a couple of semicolons to colons.
This was both annoying as hell (plenty of syntax errors), and difficult to positively blame on mischief as:
Colon and semicolon are on same key, so easy to blame on typo (phat phingered the shift key)
On those crappy monitors that we used back then, it was really difficult to tell colon and semicolon apart
The TSR was called <shift-space>.com and so a cursory perusal of the autoexec.bat would not reveal its presence, as shift-space just looks like a normal space (... but can be the name of a command)
IT spend an entire day trying to re-install Turbo Pascal, and the problem still persisted... (because it was in an independent TSR rather than in the Turbo Pascal itself)
Then, the next day, they re-installed the entire system...
Another fun TSR one was the "annoying keyboard beep". The TSR had a timetable of the classes build in, so that the keyboard click would be very short and almost unnoticable at the beginning of the class, and then gradually grew longer and longer during the class (first a faint click, than a more obvious click, and by the end of the hour an annoying beeeeeeeeeep). Fun thing is, as it was gradual, nobody really noticed when/how it started, but eventually that background noise was "just there"...
being that they probably had to sign something waiving all rights to the money if they do not complete the term of the agreement,
... but would they have to give back everything or would it be prorated on the time of the incident (i.e. if the incident happened one year after, would they only need to give back half of the severance check, or everything?).
Even, "in good faith", it might not be obvious for the ex-employee to uphold the deal. Obviously, being laid off, he'll be looking for other opportunities. And might be working for another companies a couple of months after the layoff. And if the bank called after that time, with a problem big enough that it requires on-site presence for several days, the employee may have trouble getting enough vacation days from his newer employer to cover that.
And being not allowed to look for other opportunities during those 2 years would be hugely unfair, as normally the purpose of a severance check is to allow you to survive until you've got a new source of revenues. If you're barred from doing that, it defeats the whole point.
If nothing of value is offered in return, it's not a contract.
But is actually "nothing of value" offered. Supposedly "severance" means that you get a (huge) lump sum at departure, and the bank could argue that the reason why the same was so big (rather than the bare legal minimum) was as a consideration in exchange of having the soon-to-be ex-employee "on call" for the next 2 years. Of course, he would be able to refuse it (... and get a much smaller severance payment...).
Maybe the person already has an X1 (which he bought, because he needed it), and now he's being sent an X2 for free. If he actually finds that the X2 fits his needs better than the X1, he might actually discard/resell the X1 and keep the X2.
Or maybe he didn't get any X so far, because he was hesitating between X1 and X2. Now that X2 landed on his desk on its own, he might just as well use (and review...) that one.
This is totally illogical. If I post a picture of my daughter in her ballet costume and someone finds it turns them on it doesn't make me someone who produces child porn.
You are right, this is totally illogical. But since when did logic play any part in those witch trials? It's all about emotions, not logic. And that's exactly the problem.
No jury would convict based on that.
There is no intelligence test required to be part of a jury. And probability is indeed quite large that if the prosecutor pulls off a good show, that the jury may convict on the flimsiest of evidence. Just look at the Facebook discussions on posts which are about this subject, and see how quickly some people can switch off their brain.
I was moderator for a while on okcupid.com and 90% of the complaints of "abusing fotos" or how you want to call it where not: sexual explicit, or what ever but: "contains children"! (which was completely legit according to the sites policy)
These people might have complained not so much to "protect" the kids, but rather to protect the "users" of the photos. What if somebody jerked off to the photo (i.e. to the adult in it who is the main subject), was caught in the act, and the onlooker presumed the jerking off was because of the kids. You know, there are lots of hysterical people out there...
What if they take a photo of an adult that you've shot pics of (or a pic of you) and photoshops it into something horrible, perhaps involving children?
You know, you don't even need that. What if you've got carrier grade NAT (all the neighbourhood shares same IP), some of your neighbours does something really horrible, police asks the provider who had that IP, and among the many people who share that IP, they just draw a name at random, or, well, pick the one who annoyed the helpdesk the most (hehe sweet revenge... NOT).
From there on, hysteria just goes its way, and if they find evidence that you ever deleted a file, or uninstalled some software, "they" just claim that this item must have been the one that they were looking for.
And don't count on the judge to toss such a ridiculous accusation out, in a small country such as Luxembourg, she just happens to be close friend of a construction company mafioso against whose pet project you campaigned years ago.
So, you can get in deep waters as soon as you own a computer, occasionally complain if (again!) internet doesn't work and are active in your community.
I still get the pictures. Indeed, that's the whole point. So much that the name of the paper "Bild" is even the German word for picture.
However, looking more closely, I actually do get some (fortunately rather unintrusive) ads. They are not on the title page, but on the top right side of some of the articles (such as the one about the "rules on the freeway", but strangely enough no other...). Sorry, I missed them earlier, as I didn't actually go to the articles, but stayed on the main page.
Do else would a "customer experience improvement program" work, if not by sending customer experience data to Microsoft?
But would a computer illiterate person know that? Or, for that matter, would they even read the text of the question, or just mechanically click yes?
Btw, here at work, we have come across a Win 7 box where this service was indeed enabled, without anybody having clicked anything. Sure, it can be disabled again after the fact, but for that you first have to know about it...
Actually, if its recruiters, many people might actually want them (thinking "who knows, I might need him in the future").
Come to think of it, maybe some of these recruiters aren't actually recruiters, but hackers pretending to be recruiters because that's easier to fake than former colleagues.
... and what about the spyware built-in to Windows 10. Will European companies still be allowed to use Windows 10 if it will regularly transmit all keystrokes (including passwords, and customer data) to the mothership in the US?
You could send them to jail if you wanted to. Fraud, false statements to government, criminal conspiracy, etc...
Just maybe not under the clean air act.
Exactly. Just pick a different law. Rape, kiddie porn,...
And this has the added benefit that nobody will be rooting for the accused...
Slashdot Mirror
They use the weasel-words "may be recorded" since the recording system might break.
... and given how these warnings are worded, they may be (mis)understood as a permission for the other party to record. "may" = "there is a possibility that..." or "you are allowed to...". Crafty consumers understand the second, and that's how legally sound incriminating records get into the public domain and into anti-trust court cases... :-)
They are only limited by how they can book those profits. Does it matter if somebody profits through salary, benefits and bonuses or as a shareholder in practice?
... and if that doesn't work, there's always the possibility of having the non-profit buy from friendly suppliers, which hugely overcharge their services, and split the proceeds.
Will they censor names from the cases? If not depending on the case, some of the involved might object...
Plus, when you can support a huge number of characters, why /not/ support every character?
Because then, some idiotic software will start "helpfully" substituting one variant of the character by the other. And no, I'm not thinking here about this mimic or other similar prank-ware, but about "well-meaning" applications such as Microsoft Office and Wordpress.
How often have I wondered in the last couple of years why some apparently correct shell-script pasted from a Wordpress blog or Microsoft Office user manual was not working as expected? Yeah, these softwares replace quotes, dashes and other assorted characters with lookalikes ("smart quotes") and cause subtle breakage.
Ok, so both are poor quality software, but in recent years Wikipedia has started pulling the same kinds of shenanigans...
I understand perfectly that other languages have different symbols. But when those symbols are effectively identical to an existing symbol, JUST USE THAT SYMBOL.
Well said! And this should apply as well to the "smart quotes" non-sense. If you want a quote, just store a quote, and nothing else.
So we made a DOS TSR program that hooked in the keyboard interrupt, and if it detected that it was called from Turbo Pascal, and that the sequence for compilation was keyed in, it would locate Turbo Pascal's editor buffer and randomly change a couple of semicolons to colons.
This was both annoying as hell (plenty of syntax errors), and difficult to positively blame on mischief as:
The TSR was called <shift-space>.com and so a cursory perusal of the autoexec.bat would not reveal its presence, as shift-space just looks like a normal space (... but can be the name of a command)
IT spend an entire day trying to re-install Turbo Pascal, and the problem still persisted... (because it was in an independent TSR rather than in the Turbo Pascal itself)
Then, the next day, they re-installed the entire system...
Another fun TSR one was the "annoying keyboard beep". The TSR had a timetable of the classes build in, so that the keyboard click would be very short and almost unnoticable at the beginning of the class, and then gradually grew longer and longer during the class (first a faint click, than a more obvious click, and by the end of the hour an annoying beeeeeeeeeep). Fun thing is, as it was gradual, nobody really noticed when/how it started, but eventually that background noise was "just there"...
A, those were the days of highschool pranks...
SQL update statements without a WHERE clause. They are always fun.
Has happened to me by (genuine...) mistake a couple of times. Fortunately I had a backup.
being that they probably had to sign something waiving all rights to the money if they do not complete the term of the agreement,
... but would they have to give back everything or would it be prorated on the time of the incident (i.e. if the incident happened one year after, would they only need to give back half of the severance check, or everything?).
Even, "in good faith", it might not be obvious for the ex-employee to uphold the deal. Obviously, being laid off, he'll be looking for other opportunities. And might be working for another companies a couple of months after the layoff. And if the bank called after that time, with a problem big enough that it requires on-site presence for several days, the employee may have trouble getting enough vacation days from his newer employer to cover that.
And being not allowed to look for other opportunities during those 2 years would be hugely unfair, as normally the purpose of a severance check is to allow you to survive until you've got a new source of revenues. If you're barred from doing that, it defeats the whole point.
If nothing of value is offered in return, it's not a contract.
But is actually "nothing of value" offered. Supposedly "severance" means that you get a (huge) lump sum at departure, and the bank could argue that the reason why the same was so big (rather than the bare legal minimum) was as a consideration in exchange of having the soon-to-be ex-employee "on call" for the next 2 years. Of course, he would be able to refuse it (... and get a much smaller severance payment...).
Or maybe he didn't get any X so far, because he was hesitating between X1 and X2. Now that X2 landed on his desk on its own, he might just as well use (and review...) that one.
Edge, the Volkswagen of browsers!
Why don't editors catch such shenanigans?
This is totally illogical. If I post a picture of my daughter in her ballet costume and someone finds it turns them on it doesn't make me someone who produces child porn.
You are right, this is totally illogical. But since when did logic play any part in those witch trials? It's all about emotions, not logic. And that's exactly the problem.
No jury would convict based on that.
There is no intelligence test required to be part of a jury. And probability is indeed quite large that if the prosecutor pulls off a good show, that the jury may convict on the flimsiest of evidence. Just look at the Facebook discussions on posts which are about this subject, and see how quickly some people can switch off their brain.
I was moderator for a while on okcupid.com and 90% of the complaints of "abusing fotos" or how you want to call it where not: sexual explicit, or what ever but: "contains children"! (which was completely legit according to the sites policy)
These people might have complained not so much to "protect" the kids, but rather to protect the "users" of the photos. What if somebody jerked off to the photo (i.e. to the adult in it who is the main subject), was caught in the act, and the onlooker presumed the jerking off was because of the kids. You know, there are lots of hysterical people out there...
So given that, why should I care if someone with a perversion finds one of them titillating?
Because, if that person with a perversion happens to be a forensic "expert", or a judge, it's you who go into the slammer.
Yeah it's definitely pretty high on the gross out scale but maybe I shouldn't post pictures of my cat then for a similar reason?
There is far less hysteria about zoophilia than there is about pedophilia.
If someone does collect photos of kids off the internet from facebook NO CHILD IS HARMED.
Yeah, but try explaining that to a judge...
What if they take a photo of an adult that you've shot pics of (or a pic of you) and photoshops it into something horrible, perhaps involving children?
You know, you don't even need that. What if you've got carrier grade NAT (all the neighbourhood shares same IP), some of your neighbours does something really horrible, police asks the provider who had that IP, and among the many people who share that IP, they just draw a name at random, or, well, pick the one who annoyed the helpdesk the most (hehe sweet revenge... NOT).
From there on, hysteria just goes its way, and if they find evidence that you ever deleted a file, or uninstalled some software, "they" just claim that this item must have been the one that they were looking for.
And don't count on the judge to toss such a ridiculous accusation out, in a small country such as Luxembourg, she just happens to be close friend of a construction company mafioso against whose pet project you campaigned years ago.
So, you can get in deep waters as soon as you own a computer, occasionally complain if (again!) internet doesn't work and are active in your community.
However, looking more closely, I actually do get some (fortunately rather unintrusive) ads. They are not on the title page, but on the top right side of some of the articles (such as the one about the "rules on the freeway", but strangely enough no other...). Sorry, I missed them earlier, as I didn't actually go to the articles, but stayed on the main page.
(Btw, just accessed it for testing, out of curiosity, not for reading the yellow news...)
It is indeed a rather small structure (not a company, but a public administration). I'll have to ask more details from the guy who discovered it...
Do else would a "customer experience improvement program" work, if not by sending customer experience data to Microsoft?
But would a computer illiterate person know that? Or, for that matter, would they even read the text of the question, or just mechanically click yes?
Btw, here at work, we have come across a Win 7 box where this service was indeed enabled, without anybody having clicked anything. Sure, it can be disabled again after the fact, but for that you first have to know about it...
Come to think of it, maybe some of these recruiters aren't actually recruiters, but hackers pretending to be recruiters because that's easier to fake than former colleagues.
... and what about the spyware built-in to Windows 10. Will European companies still be allowed to use Windows 10 if it will regularly transmit all keystrokes (including passwords, and customer data) to the mothership in the US?
It's a conspiracy by moderators, of course!
Mercedes management should have conducted independent tests on Volkswagen TDI cars and alerted the EPA of the fraud.
Might have been seen as "unpatriotic"...
You could send them to jail if you wanted to. Fraud, false statements to government, criminal conspiracy, etc...
Just maybe not under the clean air act.
Exactly. Just pick a different law. Rape, kiddie porn, ...
And this has the added benefit that nobody will be rooting for the accused...