Most people in any profession, if they can't let go of their insistence on reality, dislike or down right hate movie portrayals of what they do.
Tell me about it. I've worked in the TV/film industry and even though I liked FX The Series, I couldn't help but regularly scream at the screen, "It's not that freaking easy!", "It doesn't work that way!" and/or "That's not how you do that!". It was especially bad if you took into account that the show debuted in 1996 (and the movies it was based on in 1986 and 1996, I think), and was for the most part set in the pre-digital-video era.
Although I don't personally believe that it's true, let's suppose for the sake of argument that internet addiction could be considered legitimate. Although it has become increasingly rare in this ever-more litigious society, it is possible to be fired for an addiction, especially when it impinges on your ability to do your job. Alcoholics and drug addicts (legal and not) are often fired once their addiction is discovered, and it's usually discovered simply because it prevents them from performing sufficiently well at their place of employment. The reason they can be fired is because (hypothetically) they could choose to go into rehab of some kind, and their choice not to do so is relevant. So, if you couldn't control your internet addiction and it kept you from being able to do your job, you could potentially be fired. That makes sense to me.
However, if you count internet addiction as a disability, suddenly workplaces will be required to keep you on even if they find out about it. You can't fire someone for being restricted to a wheelchair, or having OCD, or being HIV-positive. Granted, your employer may, for instance, find a position for someone in an office instead of, say, manual labour, but your boss would have serious legal problems if they fired you for having a disability. So if internet addiction were recognized as a disability, nobody could fire you for it. The problem is, in this day and age, most businesses are highly computerized, so finding a position for someone that doesn't use a computer at all would be remarkably difficult.
So I say it may be an addiction, but for God's sake don't call it a disability, especially a legally-recognized disability. Stupid things happen in upper-management heads when something is called a disability. For example, at a friend's place of work, he had to actively argue against an employee being transferred to reception. The upper-level management couldn't understand why you wouldn't want someone with Tourette's syndrome being the first point of contact for your customers.
Having a disability does not mean that you are inferior, but it does mean that there are some things you simply can't do. However, when something is legally recognized as a disability, in an effort towards equality, too many people try to fit a square peg into a round hole. If someone did not have Tourette's, but had a potty-mouth, would you put them in a receptionist's role? If someone was not in a wheelchair, but was not strong enough to lift heavy boxes, would you hire them as a mover?
Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Since when is not knowing you're doing something illegal enough to get you out of punishment for committing a crime? Whatever happened to presumed knowledge of the law? If you kill, rape, steal, embezzle, falsify evidence, obstruct a police investigation, etc. and you don't know it's illegal, you still go to jail.
KaZaA provides a tool. How you choose to use that tool is up to you. If you live in wilful ignorance by choosing not to read the instructions/disclaimer/EULA and it gets you into trouble later, that's your own problem. It's much akin to trying to sue McDonald's for you burning yourself with their coffee after they've changed all the cups to read "Caution! Contents are hot!"
29. The Sharman Defendants deceptively marketed the KaZaA Product as a P2P service as allowing "free" downloads.
That's not deceptive marketing, that's the truth. You don't pay a fee, either subscription or per download, to download files through their service.
31. The Sharman Defendants deceptively marketed the use of the KaZaA Product as legal.
KaZaA is legal; what people choose to do with it may not be legal in certain jurisdictions. There is a major difference. It's like saying that the postal service is illegal because sometimes people use it to ship illegally obtained merchandise.
32. The Sharman Defendants knew that most users of the KaZaA Product would use the KaZaA product to catalogue and store digital copies of copyrighted sound recordings and films. 33. The Sharman Defendants encouraged, invited, and solicited such conduct from its public, its customers, and users of the KaZaA Product.
You'll note that the claim fails to mention that items 32 and 33 aren't necessarily illegal. It may be implied, but the reality is that every piece of media created since the invention of copyright is inherently copyrighted. This does not mean that copying this material is automatically illegal; that's up to the creator to decide. There is a lot of media out there that is provided free for the sharing, so long as you follow certain terms and conditions (like not claiming the work is your own).
[KaZaA] designed the software in such a manner as to create a shared files folder and make that folder available to anyone using KaZaA, while at the same time failing to make the user aware that it had done so (Complaint, par. 36-37)...
Correct me if I'm wrong, since it's been a while since I used KaZaA, but when you set install and set up the program, doesn't it let you pick your shared folders? Even if it doesn't, you can change it very easily through the program's settings. Even if you don't know this when you originally install the program, KaZaA lets you see who has been downloading what files from your computer. If you don't want people to download from you, wouldn't you change your settings as soon as you see the list of people trying to copy your stuff?
[KaZaA] surreptitiously installed 'spyware' on users' computers which made the shared files folder accessible to the KaZaA network even after the user had removed the KaZaA software from his or her computer (Complaint, par. 42-45)...
This is the only complaint that I can see possibly holding water, if it is true. To lend verity to their case, they'd have to test every version of the software to see which ones had this "spyware," and make sure that every person who was joining the class action suit on the spyware basis used or has used the spyware-affected versions.
When's the last time you referred to memory as Double Data Rate Random Access Memory rather than DDR RAM? If you work with something every day, you tend to shorten things. You also define terms more specifically than general usage (RAM vs memory).
This is true. However, in the case of IED vs. booby trap; both terms have the same number of syllables (unless someone has figured out a way to pronounce IED as a word on its own without sounding like a complete idiot). Double Data Rate Random Access Memory has 12 syllables, DDR-RAM has four when pronounced D-D-R-RAM. It is often shortened even further to RAM, which has only one syllable. IED doesn't even have the excuse of having a more concise pronunciation. When it takes you the same amount of time to say the acronym rather than the actual term, it's a useless bloody acronym. Granted, it's still quicker to write than "booby trap," but still.
Not that the term "booby trap" doesn't sound silly enough in its own right, even if you take the word "booby" in its original context to mean "a stupid person; dunce" and not the part of Janet Jackson's anatomy that was exposed on television. The English language definitely needs some refinement.
Sony has so far refused to allow Blu-Ray licensing to any device that plays nice with both formats. They still have too much at stake to let anyone give the consumer a choice that may not be theirs.
Since when has a lack of a liscence stopped companies in other countries under different laws from doing whatever they want to make a profit? Don't want a region-locked DVD player and can't hack your own? Buy a cheap import. Same goes for the next generation -- and in a lot of places it's 100% legal to do so.
Either that, or someone will come out with a cheaper device/format that will do pretty much the same thing that doesn't require liscences and sells it for half the cost. Ta-daa, then you have another VHS vs. Betamax war on your hands, and we all know how well the original one went for Sony.
"What do you mean I can't burn this (in all appearances identical to a DVD-R) DVD+R in this device?" "Why doesn't my DVD-R work in this machine?" "What will be the new standard?" "What kind should I buy?" "Which one's better?"
Fast forward a couple of years, and suddenly an internal DVD-burner for all formats (and now even dual-layer) can be bought for $100 or less, which makes the difference pretty much moot from a consumer point of view. It was only the bleeding-edge adopters who purchased the technology early who possibly got screwed -- and since both formats are still in use, it's not like people with an old burner can't burn/play their format of choice. The same thing will happen with the next generation, and so long as the format of your choice still displays fine on your $XX,XXX television, nobody will care. Okay, except for a few audio/vido-philes and the people trying to make money off of a proprietary format.
About the only place I can think of is Radio Shack. I don't know if they sell iPods now but they are going down the tubes fast any way. (#16788483)
Radio Shack was bought out by Circuit City here in Canada a while back, and all the old stores are now "The Source by Circuit City." I believe that Radio Shack is now trying to get back into the Canadian market, but I haven't actually seen one of the stores yet.
At any rate, so far as I can tell any place that sells electronics, including a large number that don't generally carry that kind of thing, all sell iPods. So I don't see where Zune could be sold that doesn't already sell iPods (and most likely a whole host of other MP3 players as well). The only thing I can think of is small, single-location non-franchised computer stores; there are a number of those in my area. However, these tend to be run directly by geeks and the general consensus seems to be that most geeks dislike the Zune. I don't know how MS could persuade these stores to cut their already-slim profit margin even slimmer by buying into a product that they don't think will sell.
All in all, fighting the internet now is like fighting sliced bread. Bang rocks together, guys.
Except that they have to make sure that they don't bang the rocks together in a rhythm that has been played by someone else in the past, otherwise they'll be liable and likely to face a lawsuit for copyright infringement.
On a really cold winter's day up here in Canada, I'd quite like a system that didn't require removing the card from my wallet while wearing heavy gloves. That would require a keyfob that worked from several feet and had some form of passcode required of course, but it would be awful nice.
Alright, I'll bite. I'm Canadian too, and I can't think of the last time that I went somewhere that required me to do a credit/debit card transaction out in the cold. 99.9% of businesses have, at minimum, a heated booth/kiosk that you go into to pay your bill. The only exception that I can think of is at a full-serve gas station where they'd bring you a wireless keypad or your credit card bill to sign while you're in your car. In that case, I should hope that if it's -40C you'd have the sense to take the pin pad/clipboard into your heated car, close the door/window, authenticate as necessary, and then pass the pin pad/clipboard back out of the car to the attendant. And it's still your own choice not to get out of the car and go to the attendant's little heated booth to pay. Otherwise, the only time I can think that you'd be needing to pay for something outdoors in winter is something like a Christmas tree lot, and those kinds of places pretty much only take cash.
And if you're complaining about the necessity to take off your gloves once you get into a heated booth/kiosk/store so that you can sign your bill/enter your PIN... I have yet to see a pin pad device on anything smaller than a bank machine that is sized appropriately for heavily mittened/gloved hands. Even with your card on a key fob, you'd still have to take off your heavy gloves to sign your bill or enter your PIN.
Laws aren't going to fix things here, they just give us a method of reacting. The old saying "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." still applies. Suck it up and take some responsibility for yourself, stop shovelling it off on the government.
Alright, what if someone takes reasonable precautions and their privacy is still violated? That's why laws are needed. You cross-cut shred all your documents before they go out to the trash -- but someone performing surveillance on you actually can afford to hire someone to reassemble the documents. Or even better, you burn all of your paper records to ashes -- but someone impersonates you using your SSN (or part of it, as in the case in the article) so they get their own copies of your records.
The problem with saying that citizens need to protect themselves is that it's a slippery slope. Unless the government regulates certain precautions as being mandatory, how are "reasonable" precautions determined? On a case-by-case basis? How do you justify something being legally acceptable in once case and not in another? Then where will equality be, which is vaunted by so many legal and social systems? Alternately, if certain precautions become mandatory, do you really want to pay for another layer of law enforcement that makes sure the "practical prevention guidelines" are followed?
Instead, the law says "this is wrong, no matter how easy it was for you to do it." It's illegal for someone to go into your house and take your stuff/destroy your property when all the doors are locked, windows are barred, and you have an armed alarm system. It's just as illegal for someone to walk in your unlocked front door and steal/destroy your stuff. You may have been stupid to leave the door unlocked and make things easier for the intruder, but that doesn't make what the intruder did less illegal. And if there were a law against stupidity, jails everywhere would overflow.
I thought that trash at the curb was considered as being out in public view. Someone can drive by and throw your trash into their truck for further inspection. After all, you were going to throw it away and it was going to end up in a landfill or incinerator.
It really depends on where you live -- that kind of law is often determined and enforced by municipal, county, or state authorities. For example, in my municipality it's illegal to take things from peoples' trash because as soon as it is put out on the curb it is considered municipal property. Granted, most of the time it's not enforced -- nobody really cares if you take those beaten-up pieces of furniture and refinish them, it just takes the onus of disposal off of the city. However, in the case of privacy invasion, I can see those laws coming into play.
The Guardian reports that Iran has banned high-speed internet access to attempt to curb the west's influence.
Yeah, that'll work. Dial-up didn't prevent a growing North American obsession with Japanese animation. It admittedly made it as far as pop culture after high-speed access became popular, but devotees were maxing out their dial-up bandwidth and "spreading the word" online almost as soon as the Internet came into existence.
Actually, making high-speed mandatory might have the effect of making citizens get tired of the West. It's easy to get weighed down with the glut of information and media on the net, and you can get very tired very quickly of page after page of uninformed rants and horrible netspeak. You're also not so choosy nor so covetous of what you've downloaded when it takes 5min vs. 5 hours to finish.
"Michael Guido --'While peer-to-peer users are stealing the intellectual property, they are also the active music audience"
Krell: Wrong-o, Guido the Killer Pimp. Nothing has ever been stolen via p2p. The words you are looking for is "users are violating the copyright of...".
Also, in countries other than the U.S., they're not even "stealing", if by "stealing" he is implying that people are downloading illegally. For instance, here in Canada it's not illegal to download music for free via P2P. When you're talking about file sharers, there are no borders.
Additionally, isn't there some kind of law/clause/whatever that says that you cannot profit from an illegal act? E.g. If I were to sell stolen goods, especially knowing that they were stolen goods, couldn't I be charged even if wasn't the original thief? (Okay, so what they're doing is more like slipping ads into the packaging of stolen goods, but they're still making a profit in the long run or they wouldn't be doing it in the first place.) I think a decent case could be made.
what person in their right mind would stick and earbud from some hard-legged dude in their ear? that is just gross
Since most people these days have a portable music player, and these days they pretty much all use standard 1/8" stereo headphone jacks, a $5 headphone jack splitter would eliminate that problem. Then you and the person you're sharing the music with can use your own headphones and you can both listen to the music at the same time! *shock and amazement* Or, you know, they could plug their own earphones into your iPod. Either way's still easier than "beaming" a song to your friend's Zune so they can listen to it maximum three times.
...expressions, metaphors, onomatopoeias, sarcasm, similes, homonyms, synonyms, heteronyms, or homophones, this program will probably work well, within the limits of voice-recognition software, of course. Currently, text-based translations aren't accurate or even necessarily coherent. (English to any language back to English in Babelfish, anyone?) Most people who have tried voice-recognition software would understand that you can get a computer to recognize "Goddamn computer!" and not much else, even if you speak. Like. A. Robot. I would hate for the next major war to be started based on the combat translation equivalent of "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" into "the wine was good, but the meat was undercooked."
After the election you publish the list of vote ID numbers and corresponding votes somewhere -- on the web, with printed copies available in the county courthouse or something -- so a voter who knows his own vote ID can confirm his vote. But the voter cannot prove to a third party that a particular vote ID is really his own, so vote-selling doesn't work.
If the whole point of giving someone a number is so that they can check to see if their vote was correctly reported, wouldn't they need some kind of proof in order to report to the authorities (or the media, or whatever) if their vote was changed? If you can't prove that that vote was yours with a receipt or some such, you can't prove to your buyer that you've voted as promised, but you also can't prove that the vote was yours and that you voted in a certain manner if the votes are tampered with.
It has been proven that there is a distinct correlation between the amount of disposable income and how much money a person spends on entertainment, media, and all other non-essential purchases. (No, I don't have a link to back this up, but common sense will tell you that when you don't have much money, you're going to spend it primarily on food and rent.) One of the largest groups of people with disposable income is teenagers (i.e. part-time job although Mommy and Daddy are still paying all the bills -- or Mommy and Daddy just keep forking out the cash).
Now, the people who were teenagers in the late 80's and the 90's (the heyday of CDs) are now adults burdened with the responsibilities of raising kids, paying mortgage/rent and other bills, and keeping their family fed while at the same time hopefully putting some funds away for retirement and their kids' educations. They have little funds to go and buy new music. They often don't like the music on the radio as it's mostly targeted at a younger demographic, so the urge to buy the stuff that they hear just isn't there. But they still have all the CDs from their teenage/disposable-income years. So instead of re-buying the dozens (or hundreds, or thousands) of songs that they like in (usually DRM-ed) digital format, they'll take a little time and rip all of their music to mp3 and play it on the player of their choice. This is usually the most economical way for them to listen to their old music on a new device. Oh, and although the RIAA seems to have forgotten, this is also totally legal.
Essentially, the people who were the main purchasers of CDs in their heyday have moved on to a new demographic and are unlikely to buy what they consider to be the crap that's on the radio. But they're still able to listen to the music that they had previously purchased on the newest devices without re-buying the media. (Note that this option never used to be available -- if you wanted something on CD that you used to have on record or audio cassette, it was usually cheaper, less time-consuming, and produced a better audio quality to go out and buy the CD.)
The majority of teenagers in what used to be the CD-buying demographic are downloading their music. Even if every teenager spent their disposable income on music from online stores instead of downloading stuff for free, CD sales would still go down. This doesn't mean that the music industry is making less money (after all, a lot of the info online points to rising profits); it just means that CDs don't sell as well anymore. But the RIAA sees the decline in the sale of CDs and other physical media as the decline of the music industry in general.
We need to get our *own* houses in order before we lay into some other country's ethics on free speech and personal liberties when it comes issues of national reputation/security.
So... We can't acknowledge that something that they are doing is wrong (according to our beliefs) unless we live in a utopia? "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?"
Yeah, right. Humans and societies that we create will never be perfect. With that kind of mentality, we'd never look beyond our own borders. And we're not even discussing non-Chinese people trying to "rectify" things in China; this discussion deals with peoples' ideas of right and wrong, potential abuses of power, and how they relate to current events.
There is a load of difference between committing resources needed at home to problems overseas and acknowledging that another country deviates further from your idea of perfection than your own does.
I agree with brianerst that the modern concept of childhood, i.e. "a time of play and learning lasting well into your teens", is a relatively recent phenomenon. It is only in recent history that industrialization and advances in technology have made it unnecessary and undesired for children to work much the same way that adults do.
But I would like to take it one step further and point out that it is also a relatively recent idea that children must be entertained at all times. In this day and age it seems that a child cannot make their own fun; rather, their entertainment must be provided by their parents (or other responsible adults). When did the threat of "go find something to do or I'll find something for you to do" lose its effectiveness?
Also, I have learned that many parents use electronic entertainment (TV, video games, computers, etc.) as a way to not have to deal with the responsibilities inherent in raising children. It seems to me that too many adults aren't willing to have the kids "underfoot" while they are doing things like cleaning house, fixing the car, doing lawn work, etc. However, this attitude has gone on for long enough that there are teenagers (and even adults) these days who leave home and suddenly realize that they don't know how to run a washing machine (as an example).
One of the best ways that children learn is to imitate their parents, and believe it or not children actually like spending time with their parents, just about no matter what their parents are doing. Even if a child is too young to actually help with what the parent is doing, they will be more than happy to play with related tools (e.g. if parent is cooking dinner, child plays with pots and wooden spoons). It may require a little more supervision and (possibly) a lot more noise than plunking your kids in front of the TV while you make dinner... But aren't kids supposed to be noisy and actually require effort to raise?
(And no, I'm not saying that kids can't try a parent's patience and need to be distracted by something, anything quiet far away from where the parent is. I'm specifically talking about people who do this as a matter of course rather than as an exception.)
Did anyone else skim the comments and read "http://onon.org/asm/powder.html" as "orgasm powder" at first glance? I'm used to scanning my email and clicking the "delete" box beside messages with this kind of title, so it drew my eye. How backwards.
I understand blocking IM, P2P, downloading/installing programs, flash- and video-heavy sites, let alone sites that contain illegal content or simply content that goes against company policy. I may not like the rules, but this is the company's computer and the company's bandwidth, so if I want to check my web-based email or whatever, I'll wait until I get home. Simple enough.
However, the downside of all this blocking is how much it can restrict the useful, lawful, and company-approved uses of the internet. Our company's filter periodically blocks such sites as dictionary.com, theweathernetwork.com, travel booking sites... This may not affect you if you're supposed to be coding all day, but if you're working on the admin side of things (writing documents, planning travel for your boss, etc.), these sites save a great deal of time and effort. (Please note that I said "periodically" before; nobody's quite sure why some days the filter blocks some sites, and other days it doesn't, even when the content of the site itself hasn't changed.)
As a further example, let's take a recent major project in my department that involved coordinating the inflow of information and graphics from branches across the country. Our mail servers can't send/recieve anything bigger than 2GB, but we needed to transfer files bigger than this on a regular basis. So some smart cookie set us up an FTP site. About halfway through the project, we suddenly couldn't access the FTP site through our work internet connection. Why? Because our IT department had suddenly "cracked down" and we were no longer allowed to use FTP sites. Despite the program manager (who is quite highly placed in the organization) repeatedly speaking with the IT people, IT still wouldn't unblock the site. I understand a blanket block on FTP sites because they can be used for personal use, but this was an FTP site run out of one of our sister offices specifically for work purposes. Suddenly we were forced to go back to mailing/couriering all of our drafts/work/etc. instead of sending it over the internet. However, the project deadline hadn't changed, so we ended up delivering late because we had to rely on transferring the files non-electronically.
It's this kind of policy that makes loyal, hardworking, company-rule-abiding employees want to quit. It's one thing to block recreational/illegal/whatever internet use; it's entirely another thing to keep employees from doing their job efficiently.
-who the hell leaves their 8 year old in a situation where they would need to call someone in an emergency but wouldn't have landline access?!
-It's called a *mistake*
Exactly! Which is why those only-to-parent-approved-numbers phones are great. That being said, there are ways to deal with being accidentally separated from your child other than the child having a cell phone. The lessons that I was taught as a child (find a policeman/security guard/booth in the mall/house with the appropriate sticker in the window) still apply. The idea of setting an easy-to-find rendezvous spot in a mall/shop/area just in case you get separated (or will be meeting up in an hour or two, depending on the child's age) is still a good one.
Additionally, since many parents have cell phones themselves these days, all a child needs if they become separated is Mommy/Daddy's cell phone number on a piece of paper and maybe a few quarters just in case they have to use a pay phone. (When we were kids you'd have a little plastic tube with all that stuff in it that you kept in your bag, pocket, or wore around your neck.) Hell, if you get separated in a mall or on a street with shops, 99% of store clerks will happily let your child use their phone to call you (or get someone to page you over the store/mall's loudspeaker) and wait with them while a parent arrives. At worst, they'll direct the kid to a payphone. Also, an adult already with children will presumably be more sympathetic to your child's plight if all else fails.
Yes, there are "bad sorts" out there, but if you think that someone who intends to harm your child will let them call you on a cell phone or communicate with you in any other way, you are sadly mistaken. And if you like the ability to call your child instead of the other way around, please remember that if a kid is doing something that they know is against the rules, they can always not answer the phone and claim that they didn't have service or they didn't hear the ring.
I'm not saying that in any way AOL users "deserved" this -- nobody does. No matter what or how much information you a company has about you, whether it be your net searches or how filthy your carpets are, you expect the company that holds this information to keep it private.
However, why in the world would you go with a company like AOL that has so many recorded existing problems that could be discovered with a modicum of research? Unfortunately, it seems much like U-Haul being one of/the biggest moving van rental companies despite allthebadpress... It's a household name, so it has to be good, right?
With that said, I feel like my thousands sitting in the bank could be doing work for me instead of collecting dust till the day I graduate.
First of all, read the fine print on your loan agreement. It may be against the terms of your contract to use the loan for anything but educational use (i.e. tuition, books, transportation to/from school, and living expenses if you're living away from home). Making a tiny bit of money in the small number of years it will take you to finish your degree/diploma will get wiped out if the bank/gov't/whatever does a financial audit. It doesn't even have to be anything that you do that inspires them to audit you; external pressure to "look into things", especially in cutback times, often is what instigates audits.
I am a rising junior in college and decided to take out loans to cover all my costs so I could graduate with money in the bank. My tuition bill is minimal as I have a nearly full ride, but living is always expensive.
Secondly, if you can afford school without getting student loans, why in the world are you applying for them? There is a limited pool of money out there for student loans, especially government ones. If people who can afford to go to school without taking out loans do so, this means that people who can't afford to go without help will often get the short end of the stick. If you don't take out a loan or are not eligible because of your great financial status, you're not being "punished" -- rather, you're being rewarded by not having to pay back the loan with interest. However, when you take out a loan that you don't need out of a limited pool of money, some poor schmuck out there who is scrambling to pay the bills already will be allocated $2K a year to pay for his $15K/yr education away from home (rough estimates).
Thirdly, how did you get a student loan in the first place if you didn't need it to pay your way through school? If it's a bank loan, that's understandable, since they can usually get parents to co-sign they will give a loan to just about anybody because it will eventually earn them mad cash. However, government guidelines are usually much stricter, and take into account not only your financial need and how much money you have in the bank, but also how much your parents make a year and have in savings. I'll grant that your government loan could have slipped through the cracks and you'd get the money even if you don't really need it. However, if you've misrepresented your income/savings/parents' income, you could just have royally screwed yourself. It's back to the audit thing again, and actively lying on an application won't just get the loan money taken away, it can also mean some mighty hefty fines and (possibly) jail time/marks on your permanent record for fraud.
Honestly, if you've already got a "nearly full ride" as you claim, get a part-time job if you don't already have one instead of a loan. You don't have to pay the money back, you'll make up the difference between your "nearly full ride" and paying everything off in full, and there are no moral/legal ramifications. And hey, if you end up making more than you need to live, you can always invest that money in stocks/bonds/mutual funds/whatever.
I can remember being a teenager when self-checkout first came to our Wal-Mart (we were one of the first to trial it)... I thought that God himself had answered my prayers with a discrete way to purchase personal items...
Actually, wouldn't it make sense for drugstores/pharmacies to have a lot of self-checkout lanes? That's one of the few places that people (especially teens, I'd bet) would actually pay a little more to avoid having to deal with human cashiers. It would help if the only people supervising the self-checkouts were senior, discreet men and women (how many times has the cashier been cute when you were buying something embarrassing?). Of course, they'd have to turn the voices down on the machines, or change what they say. At least a human being has the option not to say "X-brand lube, $X.XX"...
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Most people in any profession, if they can't let go of their insistence on reality, dislike or down right hate movie portrayals of what they do.
Tell me about it. I've worked in the TV/film industry and even though I liked FX The Series, I couldn't help but regularly scream at the screen, "It's not that freaking easy!", "It doesn't work that way!" and/or "That's not how you do that!". It was especially bad if you took into account that the show debuted in 1996 (and the movies it was based on in 1986 and 1996, I think), and was for the most part set in the pre-digital-video era.
Although I don't personally believe that it's true, let's suppose for the sake of argument that internet addiction could be considered legitimate. Although it has become increasingly rare in this ever-more litigious society, it is possible to be fired for an addiction, especially when it impinges on your ability to do your job. Alcoholics and drug addicts (legal and not) are often fired once their addiction is discovered, and it's usually discovered simply because it prevents them from performing sufficiently well at their place of employment. The reason they can be fired is because (hypothetically) they could choose to go into rehab of some kind, and their choice not to do so is relevant. So, if you couldn't control your internet addiction and it kept you from being able to do your job, you could potentially be fired. That makes sense to me.
However, if you count internet addiction as a disability, suddenly workplaces will be required to keep you on even if they find out about it. You can't fire someone for being restricted to a wheelchair, or having OCD, or being HIV-positive. Granted, your employer may, for instance, find a position for someone in an office instead of, say, manual labour, but your boss would have serious legal problems if they fired you for having a disability. So if internet addiction were recognized as a disability, nobody could fire you for it. The problem is, in this day and age, most businesses are highly computerized, so finding a position for someone that doesn't use a computer at all would be remarkably difficult.
So I say it may be an addiction, but for God's sake don't call it a disability, especially a legally-recognized disability. Stupid things happen in upper-management heads when something is called a disability. For example, at a friend's place of work, he had to actively argue against an employee being transferred to reception. The upper-level management couldn't understand why you wouldn't want someone with Tourette's syndrome being the first point of contact for your customers.
Having a disability does not mean that you are inferior, but it does mean that there are some things you simply can't do. However, when something is legally recognized as a disability, in an effort towards equality, too many people try to fit a square peg into a round hole. If someone did not have Tourette's, but had a potty-mouth, would you put them in a receptionist's role? If someone was not in a wheelchair, but was not strong enough to lift heavy boxes, would you hire them as a mover?
Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Since when is not knowing you're doing something illegal enough to get you out of punishment for committing a crime? Whatever happened to presumed knowledge of the law? If you kill, rape, steal, embezzle, falsify evidence, obstruct a police investigation, etc. and you don't know it's illegal, you still go to jail.
KaZaA provides a tool. How you choose to use that tool is up to you. If you live in wilful ignorance by choosing not to read the instructions/disclaimer/EULA and it gets you into trouble later, that's your own problem. It's much akin to trying to sue McDonald's for you burning yourself with their coffee after they've changed all the cups to read "Caution! Contents are hot!"
29. The Sharman Defendants deceptively marketed the KaZaA Product as a P2P service as allowing "free" downloads.
That's not deceptive marketing, that's the truth. You don't pay a fee, either subscription or per download, to download files through their service.
31. The Sharman Defendants deceptively marketed the use of the KaZaA Product as legal.
KaZaA is legal; what people choose to do with it may not be legal in certain jurisdictions. There is a major difference. It's like saying that the postal service is illegal because sometimes people use it to ship illegally obtained merchandise.
32. The Sharman Defendants knew that most users of the KaZaA Product would use the KaZaA product to catalogue and store digital copies of copyrighted sound recordings and films. 33. The Sharman Defendants encouraged, invited, and solicited such conduct from its public, its customers, and users of the KaZaA Product.
You'll note that the claim fails to mention that items 32 and 33 aren't necessarily illegal. It may be implied, but the reality is that every piece of media created since the invention of copyright is inherently copyrighted. This does not mean that copying this material is automatically illegal; that's up to the creator to decide. There is a lot of media out there that is provided free for the sharing, so long as you follow certain terms and conditions (like not claiming the work is your own).
[KaZaA] designed the software in such a manner as to create a shared files folder and make that folder available to anyone using KaZaA, while at the same time failing to make the user aware that it had done so (Complaint, par. 36-37)...
Correct me if I'm wrong, since it's been a while since I used KaZaA, but when you set install and set up the program, doesn't it let you pick your shared folders? Even if it doesn't, you can change it very easily through the program's settings. Even if you don't know this when you originally install the program, KaZaA lets you see who has been downloading what files from your computer. If you don't want people to download from you, wouldn't you change your settings as soon as you see the list of people trying to copy your stuff?
[KaZaA] surreptitiously installed 'spyware' on users' computers which made the shared files folder accessible to the KaZaA network even after the user had removed the KaZaA software from his or her computer (Complaint, par. 42-45)...
This is the only complaint that I can see possibly holding water, if it is true. To lend verity to their case, they'd have to test every version of the software to see which ones had this "spyware," and make sure that every person who was joining the class action suit on the spyware basis used or has used the spyware-affected versions.
When's the last time you referred to memory as Double Data Rate Random Access Memory rather than DDR RAM? If you work with something every day, you tend to shorten things. You also define terms more specifically than general usage (RAM vs memory).
This is true. However, in the case of IED vs. booby trap; both terms have the same number of syllables (unless someone has figured out a way to pronounce IED as a word on its own without sounding like a complete idiot). Double Data Rate Random Access Memory has 12 syllables, DDR-RAM has four when pronounced D-D-R-RAM. It is often shortened even further to RAM, which has only one syllable. IED doesn't even have the excuse of having a more concise pronunciation. When it takes you the same amount of time to say the acronym rather than the actual term, it's a useless bloody acronym. Granted, it's still quicker to write than "booby trap," but still.
Not that the term "booby trap" doesn't sound silly enough in its own right, even if you take the word "booby" in its original context to mean "a stupid person; dunce" and not the part of Janet Jackson's anatomy that was exposed on television. The English language definitely needs some refinement.
Sony has so far refused to allow Blu-Ray licensing to any device that plays nice with both formats. They still have too much at stake to let anyone give the consumer a choice that may not be theirs.
Since when has a lack of a liscence stopped companies in other countries under different laws from doing whatever they want to make a profit? Don't want a region-locked DVD player and can't hack your own? Buy a cheap import. Same goes for the next generation -- and in a lot of places it's 100% legal to do so.
Either that, or someone will come out with a cheaper device/format that will do pretty much the same thing that doesn't require liscences and sells it for half the cost. Ta-daa, then you have another VHS vs. Betamax war on your hands, and we all know how well the original one went for Sony.
"What do you mean I can't burn this (in all appearances identical to a DVD-R) DVD+R in this device?"
"Why doesn't my DVD-R work in this machine?"
"What will be the new standard?"
"What kind should I buy?"
"Which one's better?"
Fast forward a couple of years, and suddenly an internal DVD-burner for all formats (and now even dual-layer) can be bought for $100 or less, which makes the difference pretty much moot from a consumer point of view. It was only the bleeding-edge adopters who purchased the technology early who possibly got screwed -- and since both formats are still in use, it's not like people with an old burner can't burn/play their format of choice. The same thing will happen with the next generation, and so long as the format of your choice still displays fine on your $XX,XXX television, nobody will care. Okay, except for a few audio/vido-philes and the people trying to make money off of a proprietary format.
...that doesn't already carry iPods?
About the only place I can think of is Radio Shack. I don't know if they sell iPods now but they are going down the tubes fast any way. (#16788483)
Radio Shack was bought out by Circuit City here in Canada a while back, and all the old stores are now "The Source by Circuit City." I believe that Radio Shack is now trying to get back into the Canadian market, but I haven't actually seen one of the stores yet.
And yes, Radio Shack does sell iPods. So does The Source.
At any rate, so far as I can tell any place that sells electronics, including a large number that don't generally carry that kind of thing, all sell iPods. So I don't see where Zune could be sold that doesn't already sell iPods (and most likely a whole host of other MP3 players as well). The only thing I can think of is small, single-location non-franchised computer stores; there are a number of those in my area. However, these tend to be run directly by geeks and the general consensus seems to be that most geeks dislike the Zune. I don't know how MS could persuade these stores to cut their already-slim profit margin even slimmer by buying into a product that they don't think will sell.
All in all, fighting the internet now is like fighting sliced bread. Bang rocks together, guys.
Except that they have to make sure that they don't bang the rocks together in a rhythm that has been played by someone else in the past, otherwise they'll be liable and likely to face a lawsuit for copyright infringement.
On a really cold winter's day up here in Canada, I'd quite like a system that didn't require removing the card from my wallet while wearing heavy gloves. That would require a keyfob that worked from several feet and had some form of passcode required of course, but it would be awful nice.
Alright, I'll bite. I'm Canadian too, and I can't think of the last time that I went somewhere that required me to do a credit/debit card transaction out in the cold. 99.9% of businesses have, at minimum, a heated booth/kiosk that you go into to pay your bill. The only exception that I can think of is at a full-serve gas station where they'd bring you a wireless keypad or your credit card bill to sign while you're in your car. In that case, I should hope that if it's -40C you'd have the sense to take the pin pad/clipboard into your heated car, close the door/window, authenticate as necessary, and then pass the pin pad/clipboard back out of the car to the attendant. And it's still your own choice not to get out of the car and go to the attendant's little heated booth to pay. Otherwise, the only time I can think that you'd be needing to pay for something outdoors in winter is something like a Christmas tree lot, and those kinds of places pretty much only take cash.
And if you're complaining about the necessity to take off your gloves once you get into a heated booth/kiosk/store so that you can sign your bill/enter your PIN... I have yet to see a pin pad device on anything smaller than a bank machine that is sized appropriately for heavily mittened/gloved hands. Even with your card on a key fob, you'd still have to take off your heavy gloves to sign your bill or enter your PIN.
Laws aren't going to fix things here, they just give us a method of reacting. The old saying "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." still applies. Suck it up and take some responsibility for yourself, stop shovelling it off on the government.
Alright, what if someone takes reasonable precautions and their privacy is still violated? That's why laws are needed. You cross-cut shred all your documents before they go out to the trash -- but someone performing surveillance on you actually can afford to hire someone to reassemble the documents. Or even better, you burn all of your paper records to ashes -- but someone impersonates you using your SSN (or part of it, as in the case in the article) so they get their own copies of your records.
The problem with saying that citizens need to protect themselves is that it's a slippery slope. Unless the government regulates certain precautions as being mandatory, how are "reasonable" precautions determined? On a case-by-case basis? How do you justify something being legally acceptable in once case and not in another? Then where will equality be, which is vaunted by so many legal and social systems? Alternately, if certain precautions become mandatory, do you really want to pay for another layer of law enforcement that makes sure the "practical prevention guidelines" are followed?
Instead, the law says "this is wrong, no matter how easy it was for you to do it." It's illegal for someone to go into your house and take your stuff/destroy your property when all the doors are locked, windows are barred, and you have an armed alarm system. It's just as illegal for someone to walk in your unlocked front door and steal/destroy your stuff. You may have been stupid to leave the door unlocked and make things easier for the intruder, but that doesn't make what the intruder did less illegal. And if there were a law against stupidity, jails everywhere would overflow.
I thought that trash at the curb was considered as being out in public view. Someone can drive by and throw your trash into their truck for further inspection. After all, you were going to throw it away and it was going to end up in a landfill or incinerator.
It really depends on where you live -- that kind of law is often determined and enforced by municipal, county, or state authorities. For example, in my municipality it's illegal to take things from peoples' trash because as soon as it is put out on the curb it is considered municipal property. Granted, most of the time it's not enforced -- nobody really cares if you take those beaten-up pieces of furniture and refinish them, it just takes the onus of disposal off of the city. However, in the case of privacy invasion, I can see those laws coming into play.
The Guardian reports that Iran has banned high-speed internet access to attempt to curb the west's influence.
Yeah, that'll work. Dial-up didn't prevent a growing North American obsession with Japanese animation. It admittedly made it as far as pop culture after high-speed access became popular, but devotees were maxing out their dial-up bandwidth and "spreading the word" online almost as soon as the Internet came into existence.
Actually, making high-speed mandatory might have the effect of making citizens get tired of the West. It's easy to get weighed down with the glut of information and media on the net, and you can get very tired very quickly of page after page of uninformed rants and horrible netspeak. You're also not so choosy nor so covetous of what you've downloaded when it takes 5min vs. 5 hours to finish.
"Michael Guido --'While peer-to-peer users are stealing the intellectual property, they are also the active music audience"
Krell: Wrong-o, Guido the Killer Pimp. Nothing has ever been stolen via p2p. The words you are looking for is "users are violating the copyright of...".
Also, in countries other than the U.S., they're not even "stealing", if by "stealing" he is implying that people are downloading illegally. For instance, here in Canada it's not illegal to download music for free via P2P. When you're talking about file sharers, there are no borders.
Additionally, isn't there some kind of law/clause/whatever that says that you cannot profit from an illegal act? E.g. If I were to sell stolen goods, especially knowing that they were stolen goods, couldn't I be charged even if wasn't the original thief? (Okay, so what they're doing is more like slipping ads into the packaging of stolen goods, but they're still making a profit in the long run or they wouldn't be doing it in the first place.) I think a decent case could be made.
what person in their right mind would stick and earbud from some hard-legged dude in their ear? that is just gross
Since most people these days have a portable music player, and these days they pretty much all use standard 1/8" stereo headphone jacks, a $5 headphone jack splitter would eliminate that problem. Then you and the person you're sharing the music with can use your own headphones and you can both listen to the music at the same time! *shock and amazement* Or, you know, they could plug their own earphones into your iPod. Either way's still easier than "beaming" a song to your friend's Zune so they can listen to it maximum three times.
...expressions, metaphors, onomatopoeias, sarcasm, similes, homonyms, synonyms, heteronyms, or homophones, this program will probably work well, within the limits of voice-recognition software, of course. Currently, text-based translations aren't accurate or even necessarily coherent. (English to any language back to English in Babelfish, anyone?) Most people who have tried voice-recognition software would understand that you can get a computer to recognize "Goddamn computer!" and not much else, even if you speak. Like. A. Robot. I would hate for the next major war to be started based on the combat translation equivalent of "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" into "the wine was good, but the meat was undercooked."
After the election you publish the list of vote ID numbers and corresponding votes somewhere -- on the web, with printed copies available in the county courthouse or something -- so a voter who knows his own vote ID can confirm his vote. But the voter cannot prove to a third party that a particular vote ID is really his own, so vote-selling doesn't work.
If the whole point of giving someone a number is so that they can check to see if their vote was correctly reported, wouldn't they need some kind of proof in order to report to the authorities (or the media, or whatever) if their vote was changed? If you can't prove that that vote was yours with a receipt or some such, you can't prove to your buyer that you've voted as promised, but you also can't prove that the vote was yours and that you voted in a certain manner if the votes are tampered with.
It has been proven that there is a distinct correlation between the amount of disposable income and how much money a person spends on entertainment, media, and all other non-essential purchases. (No, I don't have a link to back this up, but common sense will tell you that when you don't have much money, you're going to spend it primarily on food and rent.) One of the largest groups of people with disposable income is teenagers (i.e. part-time job although Mommy and Daddy are still paying all the bills -- or Mommy and Daddy just keep forking out the cash).
Now, the people who were teenagers in the late 80's and the 90's (the heyday of CDs) are now adults burdened with the responsibilities of raising kids, paying mortgage/rent and other bills, and keeping their family fed while at the same time hopefully putting some funds away for retirement and their kids' educations. They have little funds to go and buy new music. They often don't like the music on the radio as it's mostly targeted at a younger demographic, so the urge to buy the stuff that they hear just isn't there. But they still have all the CDs from their teenage/disposable-income years. So instead of re-buying the dozens (or hundreds, or thousands) of songs that they like in (usually DRM-ed) digital format, they'll take a little time and rip all of their music to mp3 and play it on the player of their choice. This is usually the most economical way for them to listen to their old music on a new device. Oh, and although the RIAA seems to have forgotten, this is also totally legal.
Essentially, the people who were the main purchasers of CDs in their heyday have moved on to a new demographic and are unlikely to buy what they consider to be the crap that's on the radio. But they're still able to listen to the music that they had previously purchased on the newest devices without re-buying the media. (Note that this option never used to be available -- if you wanted something on CD that you used to have on record or audio cassette, it was usually cheaper, less time-consuming, and produced a better audio quality to go out and buy the CD.)
The majority of teenagers in what used to be the CD-buying demographic are downloading their music. Even if every teenager spent their disposable income on music from online stores instead of downloading stuff for free, CD sales would still go down. This doesn't mean that the music industry is making less money (after all, a lot of the info online points to rising profits); it just means that CDs don't sell as well anymore. But the RIAA sees the decline in the sale of CDs and other physical media as the decline of the music industry in general.
Give me a break.
We need to get our *own* houses in order before we lay into some other country's ethics on free speech and personal liberties when it comes issues of national reputation/security.
So... We can't acknowledge that something that they are doing is wrong (according to our beliefs) unless we live in a utopia? "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?"
Yeah, right. Humans and societies that we create will never be perfect. With that kind of mentality, we'd never look beyond our own borders. And we're not even discussing non-Chinese people trying to "rectify" things in China; this discussion deals with peoples' ideas of right and wrong, potential abuses of power, and how they relate to current events.
There is a load of difference between committing resources needed at home to problems overseas and acknowledging that another country deviates further from your idea of perfection than your own does.
I agree with brianerst that the modern concept of childhood, i.e. "a time of play and learning lasting well into your teens", is a relatively recent phenomenon. It is only in recent history that industrialization and advances in technology have made it unnecessary and undesired for children to work much the same way that adults do.
But I would like to take it one step further and point out that it is also a relatively recent idea that children must be entertained at all times. In this day and age it seems that a child cannot make their own fun; rather, their entertainment must be provided by their parents (or other responsible adults). When did the threat of "go find something to do or I'll find something for you to do" lose its effectiveness?
Also, I have learned that many parents use electronic entertainment (TV, video games, computers, etc.) as a way to not have to deal with the responsibilities inherent in raising children. It seems to me that too many adults aren't willing to have the kids "underfoot" while they are doing things like cleaning house, fixing the car, doing lawn work, etc. However, this attitude has gone on for long enough that there are teenagers (and even adults) these days who leave home and suddenly realize that they don't know how to run a washing machine (as an example).
One of the best ways that children learn is to imitate their parents, and believe it or not children actually like spending time with their parents, just about no matter what their parents are doing. Even if a child is too young to actually help with what the parent is doing, they will be more than happy to play with related tools (e.g. if parent is cooking dinner, child plays with pots and wooden spoons). It may require a little more supervision and (possibly) a lot more noise than plunking your kids in front of the TV while you make dinner... But aren't kids supposed to be noisy and actually require effort to raise?
(And no, I'm not saying that kids can't try a parent's patience and need to be distracted by something, anything quiet far away from where the parent is. I'm specifically talking about people who do this as a matter of course rather than as an exception.)
Did anyone else skim the comments and read "http://onon.org/asm/powder.html" as "orgasm powder" at first glance? I'm used to scanning my email and clicking the "delete" box beside messages with this kind of title, so it drew my eye. How backwards.
...as a toy, and using it as a tool.
I understand blocking IM, P2P, downloading/installing programs, flash- and video-heavy sites, let alone sites that contain illegal content or simply content that goes against company policy. I may not like the rules, but this is the company's computer and the company's bandwidth, so if I want to check my web-based email or whatever, I'll wait until I get home. Simple enough.
However, the downside of all this blocking is how much it can restrict the useful, lawful, and company-approved uses of the internet. Our company's filter periodically blocks such sites as dictionary.com, theweathernetwork.com, travel booking sites... This may not affect you if you're supposed to be coding all day, but if you're working on the admin side of things (writing documents, planning travel for your boss, etc.), these sites save a great deal of time and effort. (Please note that I said "periodically" before; nobody's quite sure why some days the filter blocks some sites, and other days it doesn't, even when the content of the site itself hasn't changed.)
As a further example, let's take a recent major project in my department that involved coordinating the inflow of information and graphics from branches across the country. Our mail servers can't send/recieve anything bigger than 2GB, but we needed to transfer files bigger than this on a regular basis. So some smart cookie set us up an FTP site. About halfway through the project, we suddenly couldn't access the FTP site through our work internet connection. Why? Because our IT department had suddenly "cracked down" and we were no longer allowed to use FTP sites. Despite the program manager (who is quite highly placed in the organization) repeatedly speaking with the IT people, IT still wouldn't unblock the site. I understand a blanket block on FTP sites because they can be used for personal use, but this was an FTP site run out of one of our sister offices specifically for work purposes. Suddenly we were forced to go back to mailing/couriering all of our drafts/work/etc. instead of sending it over the internet. However, the project deadline hadn't changed, so we ended up delivering late because we had to rely on transferring the files non-electronically.
It's this kind of policy that makes loyal, hardworking, company-rule-abiding employees want to quit. It's one thing to block recreational/illegal/whatever internet use; it's entirely another thing to keep employees from doing their job efficiently.
-who the hell leaves their 8 year old in a situation where they would need to call someone in an emergency but wouldn't have landline access?!
-It's called a *mistake*
Exactly! Which is why those only-to-parent-approved-numbers phones are great. That being said, there are ways to deal with being accidentally separated from your child other than the child having a cell phone. The lessons that I was taught as a child (find a policeman/security guard/booth in the mall/house with the appropriate sticker in the window) still apply. The idea of setting an easy-to-find rendezvous spot in a mall/shop/area just in case you get separated (or will be meeting up in an hour or two, depending on the child's age) is still a good one.
Additionally, since many parents have cell phones themselves these days, all a child needs if they become separated is Mommy/Daddy's cell phone number on a piece of paper and maybe a few quarters just in case they have to use a pay phone. (When we were kids you'd have a little plastic tube with all that stuff in it that you kept in your bag, pocket, or wore around your neck.) Hell, if you get separated in a mall or on a street with shops, 99% of store clerks will happily let your child use their phone to call you (or get someone to page you over the store/mall's loudspeaker) and wait with them while a parent arrives. At worst, they'll direct the kid to a payphone. Also, an adult already with children will presumably be more sympathetic to your child's plight if all else fails.
Yes, there are "bad sorts" out there, but if you think that someone who intends to harm your child will let them call you on a cell phone or communicate with you in any other way, you are sadly mistaken. And if you like the ability to call your child instead of the other way around, please remember that if a kid is doing something that they know is against the rules, they can always not answer the phone and claim that they didn't have service or they didn't hear the ring.
I'm not saying that in any way AOL users "deserved" this -- nobody does. No matter what or how much information you a company has about you, whether it be your net searches or how filthy your carpets are, you expect the company that holds this information to keep it private.
However, why in the world would you go with a company like AOL that has so many recorded existing problems that could be discovered with a modicum of research? Unfortunately, it seems much like U-Haul being one of/the biggest moving van rental companies despite all the bad press... It's a household name, so it has to be good, right?
With that said, I feel like my thousands sitting in the bank could be doing work for me instead of collecting dust till the day I graduate.
First of all, read the fine print on your loan agreement. It may be against the terms of your contract to use the loan for anything but educational use (i.e. tuition, books, transportation to/from school, and living expenses if you're living away from home). Making a tiny bit of money in the small number of years it will take you to finish your degree/diploma will get wiped out if the bank/gov't/whatever does a financial audit. It doesn't even have to be anything that you do that inspires them to audit you; external pressure to "look into things", especially in cutback times, often is what instigates audits.
I am a rising junior in college and decided to take out loans to cover all my costs so I could graduate with money in the bank. My tuition bill is minimal as I have a nearly full ride, but living is always expensive.
Secondly, if you can afford school without getting student loans, why in the world are you applying for them? There is a limited pool of money out there for student loans, especially government ones. If people who can afford to go to school without taking out loans do so, this means that people who can't afford to go without help will often get the short end of the stick. If you don't take out a loan or are not eligible because of your great financial status, you're not being "punished" -- rather, you're being rewarded by not having to pay back the loan with interest. However, when you take out a loan that you don't need out of a limited pool of money, some poor schmuck out there who is scrambling to pay the bills already will be allocated $2K a year to pay for his $15K/yr education away from home (rough estimates).
Thirdly, how did you get a student loan in the first place if you didn't need it to pay your way through school? If it's a bank loan, that's understandable, since they can usually get parents to co-sign they will give a loan to just about anybody because it will eventually earn them mad cash. However, government guidelines are usually much stricter, and take into account not only your financial need and how much money you have in the bank, but also how much your parents make a year and have in savings. I'll grant that your government loan could have slipped through the cracks and you'd get the money even if you don't really need it. However, if you've misrepresented your income/savings/parents' income, you could just have royally screwed yourself. It's back to the audit thing again, and actively lying on an application won't just get the loan money taken away, it can also mean some mighty hefty fines and (possibly) jail time/marks on your permanent record for fraud.
Honestly, if you've already got a "nearly full ride" as you claim, get a part-time job if you don't already have one instead of a loan. You don't have to pay the money back, you'll make up the difference between your "nearly full ride" and paying everything off in full, and there are no moral/legal ramifications. And hey, if you end up making more than you need to live, you can always invest that money in stocks/bonds/mutual funds/whatever.
I can remember being a teenager when self-checkout first came to our Wal-Mart (we were one of the first to trial it)... I thought that God himself had answered my prayers with a discrete way to purchase personal items...
Things to put beside/near the self-check aisles:
- prune juice
- Anusol
- adult diapers
- feminine hygiene products
- condoms
- lube
- etc...
Actually, wouldn't it make sense for drugstores/pharmacies to have a lot of self-checkout lanes? That's one of the few places that people (especially teens, I'd bet) would actually pay a little more to avoid having to deal with human cashiers. It would help if the only people supervising the self-checkouts were senior, discreet men and women (how many times has the cashier been cute when you were buying something embarrassing?). Of course, they'd have to turn the voices down on the machines, or change what they say. At least a human being has the option not to say "X-brand lube, $X.XX"...