That is their prerogative. However, if they do, they may be liable for damages to their distributorship owners and others to whom they have contractual obligations.
In any case, they are still going to be subject to lawsuits in US courts.
The right thing to do is fix the problem and make customers whole, then prevent it from happening again and deter others from trying anything similar, without destroying the company.
To fix the problem and make customers whole:
* Recall the vehicles and correct the problem. Do this first. * If overall the gas mileage goes UP after the fix refund the difference to each customer based on miles driven so far * If overall gas mileage goes DOWN after the fix, refund the difference to each customer based on the "remaining mileage life" of the car, assuming (falsely, but for the sake of benefiting the customer) that each car will survive to the "95th percentile" of total miles driven before the car is trashed. * Pay each customer $100 in cash plus $50/day that the vehicle is in for repairs, to compensate for the inconvenience (IMHO this should be standard on all car recalls that were due to manufacturer negligence or, as in this case, deliberate wrongdoing)
To prevent it from happening again and deter others from trying anything similar: * Put the company under severe consent decrees for the next 5-10 years to make it extremely difficult for them to pull a stunt like that in the near future. * Fine the company but cap the fine at the higher of 5% of the gross sales of the affected vehicles or twice the net profits from those vehicles. Allow the company several years to pay off the fine so they don't go belly-up, but make them suspend dividends and other payouts to stockholders and performance-bonuses to executives until the fine is paid in full. * Go back and find all the licensed professionals who either knowingly participated in this or knew about it and had a responsibility to stop it and didn't. Refer them to their state licensing boards. * Go back and find all of the executives who either participated in this or who knew about it and failed to stop it, and sue to "pierce the corporate veil" and hold them personally financially responsible for their actions or failures to act. * For any licensed professional or executive who actively and knowingly participated in this scheme, see if any criminal fraud or other statutes apply and at the very least, file high-level-almost-a-felony misdemeanor charges against them and don't let them plead "no contest." Yes, it's only a slap on the wrist but with a guilty plea or jury- or bench-trial conviction for fraud against you, you will not be able to deny your guilt in subsequent civil cases. * Revoke/invalidate any awards, certifications, etc. granted based on the false emissions results or on secondary things like "customer satisfaction." Calculate the "value" of those awards to Volkswagon's bottom line over the years and, if the other costs and fines mentioned above don't completely offset this "value," make the company disgorge any remaining unjust profits (my guess is this won't be an issue).
... is why all* devices where the end user reasonably expects that he "owns/controls" the device need to have a way for end users to do a "real" factory-reset.
*Super-cheap devices which are literally cheaper to replace than manage may be exceptions. With the "Internet of things" you may see future "smart" devices that cost less than $1 to replace.
I don't care (much) if there is 120mL left when the cartridge is "used up." I care that I'm not getting the use of every mL that is listed on the box.
If the box says "700mL" I expect 700mL PLUS whatever reserve will be left when either the print starts to face or the printer refuses to print, whichever comes first.
For the next year or two, the principal actors who demonstrated professional incompetence may miss out on promotion opportunities and they may not be picked for "choice" assignments in the workplace.
As a result, their final pay grade at retirement may be a step or two lower than if they hadn't been involved in this case at all.
But we'll never know, and they probably won't either.
... "no Uber for you" - they can simply stop operating in California. They'll still owe all of their former "contractors", er, I mean, former employees back pay and may have to pay unemployment compensation, but it will eliminate the problem going forward, at least in California.
As far as other states and countries, "lather, rinse, repeat" and only stay in business in places that allow you to function using your business model.
Morally, of course, it's enough to want me to boycott the company, but legally, they may be in the right
The law may be on their side, but only * If the patent infringement is not on the toner cartridge per se but on the method of refilling it, AND * there is no non-infringing way to fill the cartridge that's economically viable, AND * if the patent is legally sound. Patents whose claims are overly broad or which fail to take into account prior art may be shot down if someone else decides it's cost-effective to take the patent-owner to court or to ask the Patent Office to review the patent.
Yeah, it sucks, but short of either changing patent law or getting some court to rule that anti-trust and restriction-of-trade laws require the patent-holder to broadly license the patent to all comers on reasonable terms or make some other ruling that kills off this business practice, I don't see what can be done about it.
... for a minute there I thought this was a bug in the drive firmware.
At least with a NAS box bug I can plug in USB and turn off the network interface. With a drive firmware bug I can't really prevent being p0wned until I update the firmware, and drive-firmware updates sometimes require a full backup before you even get started.
The most interesting aspect of this, in my opinion, is that once the vulnerabilities were known to not be private anymore, the vendor (Mozilla in this case) immediately fixed all of them
A better way of saying what really happened:
... is that once the vulnerabilities were known to not be private anymore, the vendor... was forced to pull resources from more severe but still-believed-to-be-undisclosed bugs to get these patched, resulting in delays in getting those more-severe bugs fixed.
Attorneys representing the plaintiffs had requested around $81 million in fees. But Koh nixed that amount, saying it would be a "windfall" for the lawyers and instead awarded them $40 million.
Way to go judge!
On the other hand, even $40M is probably too high for the amount of work done and risk taken.
Well, forst I would hire an accountant and an a tax attorney.
Then I would give the same % back to God as I do my regular paycheck, but it will be more complicated than just handing a check to my local church.
Then I would pull out enough for myself to pay off my debts and be able to generate 150-200% of my current income, adjusted for the cost of living in the most expensive metro area in America. This will be in the $1-10M range.
Everything else goes to charity, with one catch: if you ask, and I hadn't slready decided to give you money, you just disqualified yourself. If I had decided already, you'll get the low end of the range I was thinking of giving you.
Oh, make that two catches: no publicity as long as I live. A private thank-you letter and a note for the tax man is enough. If you want to name a scholarship, endowed chair, or building after me fine, but please do it over my dead body.:)
Just about every decent-sized apartment complex or condo is an attractive "soft target," particularly at night when there will be lots of people there. Ditto most decent-sized churches during worship services, most schools during school hours (perhaps excluding those where you can't easily get your car near the classrooms), most movie theaters on a Friday evening, most high-school and middle-school sports venues during games, etc. etc.
Imagine society's outrage if instead of attacking a federal courthouse where he killed over 100 adults and just under 2 dozen little kids, McVeigh had blown up the truck outside of an large elementary school's auditorium during the Christmas play. The overall death toll might have been lower (without the "pancake collapse" of a multi-story building, a lot of injuries would be survivable) but the death toll of children would've been much, much higher, and dozens if not hundreds of victims would have serious, perhaps life-altering, physical and psychological injuries.
Imagine if the 1993 World Trade Center bombers had gone after a high-rise apartment building or hotel in New York instead of a financial center, and they set their bomb to go off at 3AM when the building was full of people, and imagine they used enough explosives to cause at least part of the building to collapse on itself like the Federal Building in Oklahoma City did. The casualties would be huge (not "9/11 huge" but huge) and the fear factor and willingness to give up personal liberties in exchange for supposed safety would be immense.
I hope that the "good guys" in our government - those charged with simultaneously protecting the public from criminals out to do us harm while taking seriously their vow to protect and defending the Constitution [yeah yeah, I know, the cynic in me acknowledges that this group may be the "empty set" - but let's assume for the moment that it's not] - are thinking a lot harder about these issues than I am and are finding ways that can deter such crimes and catch criminals when the deterrence doesn't work without taking America any further down the road to a police state than it already is.
The "solution" will be "know your customer" laws similar to what American banks have to deal with. Thumb-prints, copies of drivers licenses kept on file, etc. etc.
The follow-up problem will be identity theft won't just be a financial problem any more - I'll steal your identity so I can rent an AV under your name, then go bomb some place, not caring the police will go after you instead of me.
You can also expect that governments will require that companies renting AVs for short-term use will hard-wire them to only be on or near the route that the customer needs them to be on, and that a red flag will be raised if that route comes anywhere close to certain types of buildings, such as government office-buildings.
If you know where you are going, you'll be able to get the best solution for you by seeing who offers good service in those locations.
Otherwise, go with one of the big carriers like ATT, Sprint, or Verizon or one of their re-sellers. If you were only traveling in big cities I would add T-Mobile to that list but since you say you are traveling in rural areas, I would only get them if you are sure they cover the areas you are in.
If you a lot of data (say, more than 10GB/month or so), you may be better off getting a multi-SIM hotspot or multiple hotspots, and use the one that gives you the best bandwidth at the time you need it. I say this because in some areas you'll get 4G or LTE on one carrier but only 3G or even worse on another carrier, or you'll get a very congested signal on one carrier but a much less congested one on another.
Sadly, in many rural areas that are away from heavily-traveled roads you'll be stuck with either less-than-3G coverage or "roaming" coverage from a non-major-brand cell service provider, which can get expensive fast. Make sure your plan includes free or at least reasonably-priced off-network data roaming so you don't get sticker shock at the end of the month.
I was thinking more along the lines of a jumbo jet taking taking off or landing from a typical urban airport.
When easy-to-conceal-until-you-use-them, cheap anti-aircraft weapons that can take down a passenger jet that's less than 10,000 feet in the air hit the black market, you'll start to see suicidal murderers who want their 15-minutes-of-infamy using them on US soil.
I say "suicidal" because once you fire one of these, you will be found, and once you are caught, you can plan on spending the rest of your life in jail or if you are death-penalty-eligible, getting the state to help you in your suicide wish.
Slashdot Mirror
That is their prerogative. However, if they do, they may be liable for damages to their distributorship owners and others to whom they have contractual obligations.
In any case, they are still going to be subject to lawsuits in US courts.
The right thing to do is fix the problem and make customers whole, then prevent it from happening again and deter others from trying anything similar, without destroying the company.
To fix the problem and make customers whole:
* Recall the vehicles and correct the problem. Do this first.
* If overall the gas mileage goes UP after the fix refund the difference to each customer based on miles driven so far
* If overall gas mileage goes DOWN after the fix, refund the difference to each customer based on the "remaining mileage life" of the car, assuming (falsely, but for the sake of benefiting the customer) that each car will survive to the "95th percentile" of total miles driven before the car is trashed.
* Pay each customer $100 in cash plus $50/day that the vehicle is in for repairs, to compensate for the inconvenience (IMHO this should be standard on all car recalls that were due to manufacturer negligence or, as in this case, deliberate wrongdoing)
To prevent it from happening again and deter others from trying anything similar:
* Put the company under severe consent decrees for the next 5-10 years to make it extremely difficult for them to pull a stunt like that in the near future.
* Fine the company but cap the fine at the higher of 5% of the gross sales of the affected vehicles or twice the net profits from those vehicles. Allow the company several years to pay off the fine so they don't go belly-up, but make them suspend dividends and other payouts to stockholders and performance-bonuses to executives until the fine is paid in full.
* Go back and find all the licensed professionals who either knowingly participated in this or knew about it and had a responsibility to stop it and didn't. Refer them to their state licensing boards.
* Go back and find all of the executives who either participated in this or who knew about it and failed to stop it, and sue to "pierce the corporate veil" and hold them personally financially responsible for their actions or failures to act.
* For any licensed professional or executive who actively and knowingly participated in this scheme, see if any criminal fraud or other statutes apply and at the very least, file high-level-almost-a-felony misdemeanor charges against them and don't let them plead "no contest." Yes, it's only a slap on the wrist but with a guilty plea or jury- or bench-trial conviction for fraud against you, you will not be able to deny your guilt in subsequent civil cases.
* Revoke/invalidate any awards, certifications, etc. granted based on the false emissions results or on secondary things like "customer satisfaction." Calculate the "value" of those awards to Volkswagon's bottom line over the years and, if the other costs and fines mentioned above don't completely offset this "value," make the company disgorge any remaining unjust profits (my guess is this won't be an issue).
... is why all* devices where the end user reasonably expects that he "owns/controls" the device need to have a way for end users to do a "real" factory-reset.
*Super-cheap devices which are literally cheaper to replace than manage may be exceptions. With the "Internet of things" you may see future "smart" devices that cost less than $1 to replace.
and make certain you don't have a back door.
Assuming "back door" means "any security bug, including a but that nobody knows about yet," well, "good luck with that."
I don't care (much) if there is 120mL left when the cartridge is "used up." I care that I'm not getting the use of every mL that is listed on the box.
If the box says "700mL" I expect 700mL PLUS whatever reserve will be left when either the print starts to face or the printer refuses to print, whichever comes first.
For the next year or two, the principal actors who demonstrated professional incompetence may miss out on promotion opportunities and they may not be picked for "choice" assignments in the workplace.
As a result, their final pay grade at retirement may be a step or two lower than if they hadn't been involved in this case at all.
But we'll never know, and they probably won't either.
Westinghouse^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HIntel^H^H^H^H^HGeeks Of The World Science Talent Search
Where do I send my contribution?
... "no Uber for you" - they can simply stop operating in California. They'll still owe all of their former "contractors", er, I mean, former employees back pay and may have to pay unemployment compensation, but it will eliminate the problem going forward, at least in California.
As far as other states and countries, "lather, rinse, repeat" and only stay in business in places that allow you to function using your business model.
Carrots are cheaper and tastier.
Back then you had to use the interwebs or actually talk to someone on the telephone-thingy.
Now, "there's an app for that."
Apps are magic, they can turn anything into money. I know this is true because an App told me so.
Can I pay extra to not have to watch^H^H^H^H^Heat the ads?
Morally, of course, it's enough to want me to boycott the company, but legally, they may be in the right
The law may be on their side, but only
* If the patent infringement is not on the toner cartridge per se but on the method of refilling it, AND
* there is no non-infringing way to fill the cartridge that's economically viable, AND
* if the patent is legally sound. Patents whose claims are overly broad or which fail to take into account prior art may be shot down if someone else decides it's cost-effective to take the patent-owner to court or to ask the Patent Office to review the patent.
Yeah, it sucks, but short of either changing patent law or getting some court to rule that anti-trust and restriction-of-trade laws require the patent-holder to broadly license the patent to all comers on reasonable terms or make some other ruling that kills off this business practice, I don't see what can be done about it.
... for a minute there I thought this was a bug in the drive firmware.
At least with a NAS box bug I can plug in USB and turn off the network interface. With a drive firmware bug I can't really prevent being p0wned until I update the firmware, and drive-firmware updates sometimes require a full backup before you even get started.
... is crying.
The most interesting aspect of this, in my opinion, is that once the vulnerabilities were known to not be private anymore, the vendor (Mozilla in this case) immediately fixed all of them
A better way of saying what really happened:
... is that once the vulnerabilities were known to not be private anymore, the vendor ... was forced to pull resources from more severe but still-believed-to-be-undisclosed bugs to get these patched, resulting in delays in getting those more-severe bugs fixed.
From the article in the 2nd link:
Attorneys representing the plaintiffs had requested around $81 million in fees. But Koh nixed that amount, saying it would be a "windfall" for the lawyers and instead awarded them $40 million.
Way to go judge!
On the other hand, even $40M is probably too high for the amount of work done and risk taken.
Well, forst I would hire an accountant and an a tax attorney.
Then I would give the same % back to God as I do my regular paycheck, but it will be more complicated than just handing a check to my local church.
Then I would pull out enough for myself to pay off my debts and be able to generate 150-200% of my current income, adjusted for the cost of living in the most expensive metro area in America. This will be in the $1-10M range.
Everything else goes to charity, with one catch: if you ask, and I hadn't slready decided to give you money, you just disqualified yourself. If I had decided already, you'll get the low end of the range I was thinking of giving you.
Oh, make that two catches: no publicity as long as I live. A private thank-you letter and a note for the tax man is enough. If you want to name a scholarship, endowed chair, or building after me fine, but please do it over my dead body. :)
Let me know when they've got a fish they can put in my ear that will auto-translate...
Just about every decent-sized apartment complex or condo is an attractive "soft target," particularly at night when there will be lots of people there. Ditto most decent-sized churches during worship services, most schools during school hours (perhaps excluding those where you can't easily get your car near the classrooms), most movie theaters on a Friday evening, most high-school and middle-school sports venues during games, etc. etc.
Imagine society's outrage if instead of attacking a federal courthouse where he killed over 100 adults and just under 2 dozen little kids, McVeigh had blown up the truck outside of an large elementary school's auditorium during the Christmas play. The overall death toll might have been lower (without the "pancake collapse" of a multi-story building, a lot of injuries would be survivable) but the death toll of children would've been much, much higher, and dozens if not hundreds of victims would have serious, perhaps life-altering, physical and psychological injuries.
Imagine if the 1993 World Trade Center bombers had gone after a high-rise apartment building or hotel in New York instead of a financial center, and they set their bomb to go off at 3AM when the building was full of people, and imagine they used enough explosives to cause at least part of the building to collapse on itself like the Federal Building in Oklahoma City did. The casualties would be huge (not "9/11 huge" but huge) and the fear factor and willingness to give up personal liberties in exchange for supposed safety would be immense.
I hope that the "good guys" in our government - those charged with simultaneously protecting the public from criminals out to do us harm while taking seriously their vow to protect and defending the Constitution [yeah yeah, I know, the cynic in me acknowledges that this group may be the "empty set" - but let's assume for the moment that it's not] - are thinking a lot harder about these issues than I am and are finding ways that can deter such crimes and catch criminals when the deterrence doesn't work without taking America any further down the road to a police state than it already is.
The "solution" will be "know your customer" laws similar to what American banks have to deal with. Thumb-prints, copies of drivers licenses kept on file, etc. etc.
The follow-up problem will be identity theft won't just be a financial problem any more - I'll steal your identity so I can rent an AV under your name, then go bomb some place, not caring the police will go after you instead of me.
You can also expect that governments will require that companies renting AVs for short-term use will hard-wire them to only be on or near the route that the customer needs them to be on, and that a red flag will be raised if that route comes anywhere close to certain types of buildings, such as government office-buildings.
They left out http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/gr... and http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/up... .
Bandwidth is cheap enough to send the entire glyph each time it is used.
if Facebook wants to do business in Germany,
And if it doesn't, then what?
If you know where you are going, you'll be able to get the best solution for you by seeing who offers good service in those locations.
Otherwise, go with one of the big carriers like ATT, Sprint, or Verizon or one of their re-sellers. If you were only traveling in big cities I would add T-Mobile to that list but since you say you are traveling in rural areas, I would only get them if you are sure they cover the areas you are in.
If you a lot of data (say, more than 10GB/month or so), you may be better off getting a multi-SIM hotspot or multiple hotspots, and use the one that gives you the best bandwidth at the time you need it. I say this because in some areas you'll get 4G or LTE on one carrier but only 3G or even worse on another carrier, or you'll get a very congested signal on one carrier but a much less congested one on another.
Sadly, in many rural areas that are away from heavily-traveled roads you'll be stuck with either less-than-3G coverage or "roaming" coverage from a non-major-brand cell service provider, which can get expensive fast. Make sure your plan includes free or at least reasonably-priced off-network data roaming so you don't get sticker shock at the end of the month.
I was thinking more along the lines of a jumbo jet taking taking off or landing from a typical urban airport.
When easy-to-conceal-until-you-use-them, cheap anti-aircraft weapons that can take down a passenger jet that's less than 10,000 feet in the air hit the black market, you'll start to see suicidal murderers who want their 15-minutes-of-infamy using them on US soil.
I say "suicidal" because once you fire one of these, you will be found, and once you are caught, you can plan on spending the rest of your life in jail or if you are death-penalty-eligible, getting the state to help you in your suicide wish.