If there's concern that Marvell (the chip maker) will randomly drop support for their product at one point of time, things should not be left to guesses but this should simply and plainly be covered in the contracts.
I understand your point about the utility of the Marvell part. The contract idea is also good, but I'm not sure it's doable. Setting aside whether or not the chip maker would be willing to be so encumbered, there are plenty of issues that a contract won't remedy. The biggest in my mind is the future of the vendor. If the company fails, there might not be another entity willing to pick up the dead product line and the contractual support for it. I don't know if there is a realistic way of compelling a vendor to open up its IP upon corporate dissolution.
Note to RMS fanboys: Life is full of COMPROMISES. Sometimes you have to take a little bit of the "bad" to accomplish something good. Having RMS out there spewing because of things like this does NOTHING to help people's opinion of him, OR HIS IDEOLOGY.
So your definition of COMPROMISE is that he should put up AND shut up? When did compromise start meaning "don't argue your side" or "do what I say"? Just because you think that someone who disagrees with you is "spewing" doesn't mean that their arguments are without merit. Who's to say you're not the one who is "out there spewing"? NB: I don't say you are, I just ask how you can accuse one side of not compromising. But I also didn't start my argument by name-calling.
My local library tried an automated phone system about 7 or 8 years ago. It would call you for overdue books and fine notices. A syntehsized voice would even attempt to pronounce your name in a call like: "John Smith, you have four library items due October 2nd. Return the items today to avoid additional fines."
They didn't call at inappropriate times, as far as I know. It's just that the combination of the syntha-voice and the demand sounded more like a TV show kidnapping ransom call than a librarian. I don't think the system lasted very long in practice. Probably alarmed too many people.
I can't believe why so many Slashdotters are complaining about the decision to limit internet access for a product that isn't activated/paid. Do you get better treatment at Wal-Mart for walking out with products that you ignored to pay for?
M$ would be cutting you off because they think you didn't pay. And software never has bugs, right? So I guess you wouldn't mind some goon at Wal*Mart tackling you, handing you over to the local Wal*Mart detention center and incarcerating you (all on their unquestioned authority) all because they mistakenly think you shoplifted?
Over here in Germany, it is highly illegal to excert de-facto power of this kind. You can't just disable software "because you can" just like you can't just fire someone "because you can". The courts have a very dim view on what is, essentially vigilante "justice", because this kind of action directly undermines the power of the state.
Careful with that terr'ist, talk . . . you might just find yourself renditioned.
Sure, I know how to read an analog watch, but why should I have to? It's extra work. I can glance at a digital watch, and I know instantly what time it is. No calculating, no trying to figure out which number the little hand is pointing at. No counting up by 5's. Just a 1/10 second glance tells me unambiguously what I'm looking for.
Sounds like you "know how" to read an analog timepiece like I "know how" to play chess . . . familiar with the basic concept but not really comfortable with it.
But that doesn't really matter -- you want a plain-jane digital watch. Here's some ideas:
A: Go retro. Get a working 20-year-old digital diver watch.
B: Check out some Nixon watches. They sometimes carry watches like you describe. www.nixonnow.com
C: My favorite: Get a ca. 1970 mechanical jump-hour digital watch. The best (or worst) of both worlds.
After you've found a suitable timepiece, then you might consider disposing of your obsolete wheeled vehicles. It's hovercrafts in the future, baby. Hovercrafts and Esperanto.
Apparently, none of these students have read the IP policy at their school. At least at my University, anything you turn in for a grade becomes the property of the University. By turning it in, you have implicitly waived your intellectual property rights over it anyway. Granted, I don't think that's fair in the first place, but the simple fact is that many of the students don't have any rights to the papers to begin with.
I agree about the unfairness . . . To my unlawyerly mind, that doesn't look like a very sound contract: "In exchange for nothing, you agree to give us all your papers." I suppose one could argue that the student is getting an education, unless, of course, tuition was charged. Just another example of the "everything belongs to The Man" philosophy at work here.
And they're still at it: "They were supported by US Navy aircraft which dropped 40,000 pounds of explosives and napalm, a US officer told the Herald.
I think you're confusing napalm and agent orange. Napalm is thickened fuel, used an an incendiary. Agent Orange is a herbicide (with human carcinogenic properties).
What the hell are you Yanks driving to need that much fuel per mile? Do you just grab a fire truck and bolt a couch to it, or what?
That's pretty close. See www.hummer.com for more details.
And it's not an engineering failure -- more of a marketing problem. Or maybe a customer problem. I doubt that your 4x4 is a 9000 lb monster (643 stone for you) driven by a soccer (oops, football) mom (mum). Come to think of it, we're just applying the wrong solution to the problem of getting from here to there (fuel effiency-wise).
Do we need these monsters? No. Do they get bad MPG because we have designed them poorly? That depends on how you define "design". It's possible that the MPG isn't the real issue here -- because no one really cares that much what volume of fuel is burned, but the cost of that fuel. So the real figure of merit is Miles per Dollar. In this case, the Hummer H1 Alpha might be just as "efficient" as your vehicle that gets 4 times its mileage.
I don't know who is more dangerous, the "Islamofascists" who are behind terrorism or the Neocons who are willing and able to give away all of our Constitutional rights and freedoms.
I'd have to say that they are two sides of the same coin. Each relies on the other to exist.
As for voting . . . I wish I could vote out my senators, but neither Pat "Kooky" Roberts or Sam "Opus Dei" Brownback are up for re-election this year. As if it matters -- they often run un-opposed.
First time I heard the phrase "New World Order", it was out of the mouth of George H. W. Bush in 1990. He was talking about the fall of communism -- and what would come after, as I recall.
As far as senario 3 goes again, your fault for forgetting about the card. But further more, one joint account it not going to make an employer not hire you (and if it does did you really want to work for them anyway). I don't know if you've ever seen a real credit report (not a credit score) but they are extremely detailed and this account would be an oddity in a sea of other accounts.
You don't necessarily know that someone has made you an authorized user of their credit card. And their credit history (at least on that card) becomes part of yours. One can't "forget" what one never knew.
I have seen a credit report on me where my parents' credit card balance was reported as mine. They'd made me an authorized user so I could purchase stuff for them in case of emergencies -- they had health issues and wanted a backup plan in case of hospitalization. They always paid off the bill every month, but the instant the report was run, the balance was quite high. This was a red flag on my credit report.
Conclusion: you cannot generally dismiss scenario three as the individual's fault.
That's because companies are able to externalize costs, meaning that the cost is paid by others. The trick is to make them internalize costs, via legislation if necessary -- if I suffer losses because they don't protect my info, they should pay the entire cost for my time, money, and inconvenience.
This would work for plenty of corporate-caused ills today, e.g., pollution. For anyone who complains that this is "socialism", remember: companies are effectively socializing the risks and costs of doing business, while only privatizing the profit.
I'm dropping Verizon land line service in favor of VOIP in a week or so. I got an expensive collect call charged to my bill last month, a call I never accepted, and the date/time stamp showed it supposed ocurred when I was at work (and I live alone). Verizon's response was "Oh, we just poass those charges from the original collect call company." Contacting the other company produced nothing, and a quick online investigation shows that they are the source of many phone line scams.
I used to work at a phone company that billed collect calls from jails. We were a legitimate business, but we could make mistakes. We had billing agreements with phone companies that they would put our bills on their customers' phone bills. Here are a few suggestions from my days in that business:
Contact the shady operator and tell them you are gonna file a report with FCC if they don't cancel the bill.
If they don't, contact the FCC and file a report.
Tell Verizon that you won't pay the bogus bill -- go ahead and pay the non-contested part.
Most phone companies would back down on collecting 3rd party billings if you refused to pay that part of the bill. We never had a phone company "go to bat" for us and actually take any action beyond billing to collect a 3rd party bill. The bad debt on our legitimate collect billings was at leat 25%.
Verizon probably knows they are bogus, and will do whatever is easiest for themselves. They would much rather have your $40-80/month than turn your phone off to collect for another company.
Also keep in mind that not every state uses Diebold machines, and furthermore some states that do use them don't use them exclusively.
Not a correction, just an addition . . . Counties are generally responsible to run elections in the US. They buy the machines, maintain them and handle the "retail" side of elections.
Makes you wonder why they bother with all the added hassle of machine voting at all, really.
It does "sound" like a good idea. Machine voting was supposed to have plenty of benefits, like: much easier tallying of votes, resistance to ballot-box stuffing, improved experience for disabled/sensory impaired voters, and fewer opportunities for human error in the whole process from voting to recording to tallying. These are things that machines are supposed to do well.
Unfortunately, the human element let us down. Obviously, it was a mistake to view the system as a black box. I still think it was a good idea in general. I'm reminded (with much irony) of a favorite movie quote here: "Well, I, uh, don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir."
[S]adly, many ebayers are not very bright and don[']t understand this basic concept.
I think most buyers, at least after their first experience, are aware that shipping is part of the cost of buying items on eBay. I also think that most buyers are aware that final value fees are assessed against the final bid, not including shipping. They realize that sellers often make money on shipping. When buyers see an item selling for a nominal amount (like $0.01) with shipping that far exceeds actual shipping and reasonable handling charges, they know what's going on. They find it a little shady. And they are reluctant to deal with a merchant who has already demonstrated his shady practices.
I admit it, eBay created the situation with their fee structure. But that doesn't mean a buyer has to like it. It also doesn't mean he's stupid. There is some risk in doing a transaction on eBay, and smart people look for warning signs of higher risk.
They are going to have to get rid of fraudelent auctions.
Amen to that. I think eBay could address the fraudulent auctions issue by putting a bounty on illegitmate auctions. Report one and get a cash prize.
This summer, I have reported about a dozen bogus auctions to eBay. Usually they are bogus listings made by someone who has hacked a legitimate users's account. Suddenly, the type of items offered for sale changes, and the seller starts asking for payment by Western Union or similar. EBay does pull them quickly, but I would be looking a lot harder if there was a small reward.
There are an awful lot of buyers (maybe 20% of them) that hold THEIR feedback back until sellers give them perks . ..
On the other side of that coin, there are a lot of sellers who withhold leaving feedback until the buyer leaves a positive. I understand their motives -- they don't want a negative and hold on to their feedback as insurance. It seems to me that once a seller has paid in full, he has fulfilled his obligation.
When I encounter that as a buyer, I wait to leave feedback until they give me mine. They wait for me. I wait for them. We have a standoff. No one gets feedback in this case.
Don't misunderstand. I understand these sellers' motives. I fully understand why they operate the way they do. But just wanting something insn't sufficient to deserve it. E.g., I want 100 billion dollars and a Gillian Anderson fembot.
Perhaps the amount of fraud in the parent post's market is very high -- 20% does sound high. EBay really needs to address that. They should probably boot buyers and sellers more often.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not a double entendre. It's a palindrome. Or a pun. Notlob.
Don't forget Sony's lithium ion computer batteries, now sold, at the suggestion of another Slashdot poster a few weeks back, under Sony's XPlod line.
I'm sure we could always plead incompetence. Now drop your panties, Sir William, I cannot wait til lunchtime.
I understand your point about the utility of the Marvell part. The contract idea is also good, but I'm not sure it's doable. Setting aside whether or not the chip maker would be willing to be so encumbered, there are plenty of issues that a contract won't remedy. The biggest in my mind is the future of the vendor. If the company fails, there might not be another entity willing to pick up the dead product line and the contractual support for it. I don't know if there is a realistic way of compelling a vendor to open up its IP upon corporate dissolution.
So your definition of COMPROMISE is that he should put up AND shut up? When did compromise start meaning "don't argue your side" or "do what I say"? Just because you think that someone who disagrees with you is "spewing" doesn't mean that their arguments are without merit. Who's to say you're not the one who is "out there spewing"? NB: I don't say you are, I just ask how you can accuse one side of not compromising. But I also didn't start my argument by name-calling.
They didn't call at inappropriate times, as far as I know. It's just that the combination of the syntha-voice and the demand sounded more like a TV show kidnapping ransom call than a librarian. I don't think the system lasted very long in practice. Probably alarmed too many people.
M$ would be cutting you off because they think you didn't pay. And software never has bugs, right? So I guess you wouldn't mind some goon at Wal*Mart tackling you, handing you over to the local Wal*Mart detention center and incarcerating you (all on their unquestioned authority) all because they mistakenly think you shoplifted?
Careful with that terr'ist, talk . . . you might just find yourself renditioned.
Coincidental, perhaps, but not ironic.
But that doesn't really matter -- you want a plain-jane digital watch. Here's some ideas:
A: Go retro. Get a working 20-year-old digital diver watch.
B: Check out some Nixon watches. They sometimes carry watches like you describe. www.nixonnow.com
C: My favorite: Get a ca. 1970 mechanical jump-hour digital watch. The best (or worst) of both worlds.
After you've found a suitable timepiece, then you might consider disposing of your obsolete wheeled vehicles. It's hovercrafts in the future, baby. Hovercrafts and Esperanto.
I agree about the unfairness . . . To my unlawyerly mind, that doesn't look like a very sound contract: "In exchange for nothing, you agree to give us all your papers." I suppose one could argue that the student is getting an education, unless, of course, tuition was charged. Just another example of the "everything belongs to The Man" philosophy at work here.
I think you're confusing napalm and agent orange. Napalm is thickened fuel, used an an incendiary. Agent Orange is a herbicide (with human carcinogenic properties).
That's pretty close. See www.hummer.com for more details.
And it's not an engineering failure -- more of a marketing problem. Or maybe a customer problem. I doubt that your 4x4 is a 9000 lb monster (643 stone for you) driven by a soccer (oops, football) mom (mum). Come to think of it, we're just applying the wrong solution to the problem of getting from here to there (fuel effiency-wise).
Do we need these monsters? No. Do they get bad MPG because we have designed them poorly? That depends on how you define "design". It's possible that the MPG isn't the real issue here -- because no one really cares that much what volume of fuel is burned, but the cost of that fuel. So the real figure of merit is Miles per Dollar. In this case, the Hummer H1 Alpha might be just as "efficient" as your vehicle that gets 4 times its mileage.
I think it's Exxon's new wireless service.
I'd have to say that they are two sides of the same coin. Each relies on the other to exist.
As for voting . . . I wish I could vote out my senators, but neither Pat "Kooky" Roberts or Sam "Opus Dei" Brownback are up for re-election this year. As if it matters -- they often run un-opposed.
???
First time I heard the phrase "New World Order", it was out of the mouth of George H. W. Bush in 1990. He was talking about the fall of communism -- and what would come after, as I recall.
Reminds me of a job I had.
You don't necessarily know that someone has made you an authorized user of their credit card. And their credit history (at least on that card) becomes part of yours. One can't "forget" what one never knew.
I have seen a credit report on me where my parents' credit card balance was reported as mine. They'd made me an authorized user so I could purchase stuff for them in case of emergencies -- they had health issues and wanted a backup plan in case of hospitalization. They always paid off the bill every month, but the instant the report was run, the balance was quite high. This was a red flag on my credit report.
Conclusion: you cannot generally dismiss scenario three as the individual's fault.
This would work for plenty of corporate-caused ills today, e.g., pollution. For anyone who complains that this is "socialism", remember: companies are effectively socializing the risks and costs of doing business, while only privatizing the profit.
I used to work at a phone company that billed collect calls from jails. We were a legitimate business, but we could make mistakes. We had billing agreements with phone companies that they would put our bills on their customers' phone bills. Here are a few suggestions from my days in that business:
Contact the shady operator and tell them you are gonna file a report with FCC if they don't cancel the bill.
If they don't, contact the FCC and file a report.
Tell Verizon that you won't pay the bogus bill -- go ahead and pay the non-contested part.
Most phone companies would back down on collecting 3rd party billings if you refused to pay that part of the bill. We never had a phone company "go to bat" for us and actually take any action beyond billing to collect a 3rd party bill. The bad debt on our legitimate collect billings was at leat 25%.
Verizon probably knows they are bogus, and will do whatever is easiest for themselves. They would much rather have your $40-80/month than turn your phone off to collect for another company.
Not a correction, just an addition . . . Counties are generally responsible to run elections in the US. They buy the machines, maintain them and handle the "retail" side of elections.
It does "sound" like a good idea. Machine voting was supposed to have plenty of benefits, like: much easier tallying of votes, resistance to ballot-box stuffing, improved experience for disabled/sensory impaired voters, and fewer opportunities for human error in the whole process from voting to recording to tallying. These are things that machines are supposed to do well.
Unfortunately, the human element let us down. Obviously, it was a mistake to view the system as a black box. I still think it was a good idea in general. I'm reminded (with much irony) of a favorite movie quote here: "Well, I, uh, don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir."
I admit it, eBay created the situation with their fee structure. But that doesn't mean a buyer has to like it. It also doesn't mean he's stupid. There is some risk in doing a transaction on eBay, and smart people look for warning signs of higher risk.
Amen to that. I think eBay could address the fraudulent auctions issue by putting a bounty on illegitmate auctions. Report one and get a cash prize.
This summer, I have reported about a dozen bogus auctions to eBay. Usually they are bogus listings made by someone who has hacked a legitimate users's account. Suddenly, the type of items offered for sale changes, and the seller starts asking for payment by Western Union or similar. EBay does pull them quickly, but I would be looking a lot harder if there was a small reward.
On the other side of that coin, there are a lot of sellers who withhold leaving feedback until the buyer leaves a positive. I understand their motives -- they don't want a negative and hold on to their feedback as insurance. It seems to me that once a seller has paid in full, he has fulfilled his obligation.
When I encounter that as a buyer, I wait to leave feedback until they give me mine. They wait for me. I wait for them. We have a standoff. No one gets feedback in this case.
Don't misunderstand. I understand these sellers' motives. I fully understand why they operate the way they do. But just wanting something insn't sufficient to deserve it. E.g., I want 100 billion dollars and a Gillian Anderson fembot.
Perhaps the amount of fraud in the parent post's market is very high -- 20% does sound high. EBay really needs to address that. They should probably boot buyers and sellers more often.