Right you are! By far most of the 60K+ items are not refurbished, let alone labeled as refurbished.
Yeah, right.
However, a significant percentage of the items on the shelf being sold as "new" are actually customer returns, many are missing items including the odd cable or two, even a CD or manual, and re-sealed by the store as if it is still pristine new and complete.
Open each box before you buy it (do it with a "customer service representative" present if you like), and make sure the contents of the box look unused, and that they match the list in the manual or QuickStart guide (if there is such a list).
After purchasing a supposedly new answering machine but finding someone had already recorded an outgoing message, and received incoming calls, I learned never to trust Fry's. Trust but verify.
Over the last 3 years, I have returned 2 items to Fry's as defective at purchase (DOA), and found that same box on the shelf later that week. Based on my own personal experience, I made a little mark in an unobtrusive spot on the box before returning the dead equipment. They taped the box and put it back on the shelf -- the mark told the tale.
Fry's Electronics stores are prime examples of why we, the buyer, need to beware. Sure we can get cheap deals, but we can also get royally ripped off if we don't check what we're getting.
In this case, Stanford did not put plagues, etc, in the box. They simply said, "don't peek".
Did they really? I have looked and looked, and I have not seen any mention of any such thing, let alone that applicants had agreed to it, even if merely by applying (shades of click-wrap licensing...)
From what I can determine, Stanford never said "don't peek". They said "we'll let you know on xx date, and here's how you can find out at that time".
As far as I can tell, they did not say anything remotely like "don't look until that date". And they did not say "don't peek".
I welcome a citation to support a claim that Stanford told the applicants not to look for results ahead of schedule, and that agreeing not to look was a condition of applying.
I wish everyone would please knock it off with all the poor analogies comparing this situation to entering an office, or looking through a file cabinet, or trying a key on a door, or opening a screen door on a house, or whatever. Those flawed analogies all include a reasonable expectation of privacy. This situation falls short because of incompetence on the part of the web site contractor.
The information was posted on a system that was intended to be accessible, although it was not intended to be accessed as soon as it was. Essentially, it was posted on a bulletin board in a hallway, but no one was told which hallway it was. Yet. The announcement of which hallway was scheduled for a month in the future.
Someone figured out which hallway had the bulletin board on the wall, and they told how to find it. The announcement of the location had not been made, but the information was already tacked up on the board for anyone who happened by to see.
The fact remains that it was a bulletin board, not a file cabinet either locked or unlocked. And never mind that the hallway on the 3rd floor of Building 4 doesn't get much foot traffic, compared to the Infinite Corridor -- it's still a bulletin board if you go there to look.
How much time until email address harvesters just drop the suffix and have a legitimate address ? Not much time at all. Some are already doing just that.
There is another problem with the +extension. Spammers have figured out that if an address contains '+' they send to the full email address, and also send to the local part before the '+'.
Back in the '70s and '80s, the AT&T lawyers went to great pains to make sure that all references to UNIX were of the form "UNIX Operating System" and not simply "UNIX". They required all licensees (and I was one) to do this, and they wrote nastygrams to any publication that used the word "UNIX" as a noun and not as a modifier.
Yes, I realize this was long before most/. readers were born.
Let me make more clear what apparently was not. I am saying that the penalties for operating a motor vehicle without having passed the required skill tests within the required period of time preceeding should be severe. Not the penalty for not having the copy of an issued license on your person at all times.
California is one of many states which require you to be licensed to drive, and you must be able to produce a license within a reasonable period of time. If you forget your license, but can go home and get it, no big deal. If you remember the license number, and they look it up on the computer, and it's current and it really is you, no big deal.
But get caught driving with a suspended or expired license, or having never passed a drivers test at all, and I think it's reasonable to consider it nearly as serious as assault with a deadly weapon.
Again, having demonstrated the necessary skills and judgment to drive safely has nothing whatsoever to do with whether you are a citizen or not. And having a license which is tied to you has nothing to do with your identity per se.
Make the licenses as close to impossible as possible:-) to forge or falsify. Use biometrics or whatever best technique is available to make sure that the license to drive is tied to you and can not be used by anyone else. Keep an MD5 or other suitable hash of the biomemtrics on file at a suitable authority (the central police computer, for example) to confirm that the biometrics which match the body standing there also match what is on file with the testing authority.
And if I don't have my license with me at this moment because my wallet fell out of my pocket in a rest room, I am still a licensed driver. I might need to go fetch my license and/or report to a police station. Driving without my license in my possession is not the same as driving without being licensed.
The driver's license should be exactly that -- a license to operate a motor vehicle on the public roads. It should not be identification. They were not designed to be, the systems which issue them were not designed with that purpose in mind, and misusing them as identification causes endless problems, as can now be seen. (same thing with SSN as a presumed unique ID for every purpose)
Driving without a license should be an extremely serious offense, not the casual slap-on-the-wrist thing it is now. Unless someone has proven their ability to control a big heavy mass with lots of kinetic energy, they should not be allowed to do so near other people, and doing so should be dealt with harshly. Never mind who they are, never mind if they are legally within this border or that. The only identification should be to ensure that the license really is issued to them (they're the ones with the proven skill), and that the license is valid (not forged).
I really would like to see it become more straightforward for anyone, legally or illegally present, to get a driver's license. And at the same time make it very straightforward that driving without one puts your ass in jail. Harsh consequences, but simple painless and threat-free compliance.
I'm a hell of a lot more afraid of some of the drivers I see hurtling toward me on the road than I am of a random bombing or plane hijacking. But as is usually the case, numbers and real risk get ignored in favor of emotional reaction. This lets lottery tickets get sold to the gullible [relatively benign], and lets despots take power, a little at a time [decidedly evil].
[side comment about misusing tools for purposes other than the intended ones, driving nails with a screwdriver and complaining that all screwdrivers need to be heavier and have a flatter surface...]
I've never understood how Congress can get away with attaching riders and amendments to a bill that have absolutely nothing to do with the base bill. The only purpose is to have a kind of inverse "poison pill", so that voting against the amendment allows the accusation of being against the base bill. Never mind that it's traditional. Lots of things that are illegal now were "traditional" in the past.
It works the other way as well, in the usual meaning of "poison pill" -- attach a rider that is so unacceptable that the base bill is defeated regardless of its own merit.
Nevermind fussing about rules changes for filibustering in the Senate. This is where the real mischief gets done, and has been so for many decades.
There should be a rule in both the House and the Senate that amendments and riders must in some way be related to the base bill to which they are attached. Otherwise, they should stand on their own (or die on their own).
Well, not exactly hand-written. Printed out of Quicken. We do use a payroll system with direct deposit, but it does not have the required same-day turnaround. We have to enter all the payroll data somewhat in advance of the actual payday.
Also, it's not clear to me whether direct deposit which actually appears sometime overnight really would meet the requirement of last pay "same day", which is my understanding of the law based on advice from a lawyer.
Actually, my understanding of California labor law (and as an employer in CA I hope I understand it correctly!) is that the last paycheck must be given the very same day if the termination is at the will of the employer.
If the termination is at the will of the employee, whether with or without notice (e.g. simply not showing up for work for x number of days as specified in the employment contract), the final paycheck must be mailed by US First Class Mail within 2 days of the time the termination is known.
Of course, it's much cleaner to have that hand-written paycheck ready, even if it includes hours that might have been worked but turned out not to be (because of being walked out the door right away). That's another part of the reason that paying for 2 weeks of "at home" work is common.
Ron Reagon (son of Ronald) was the MSNBC correspondent interviewing Joshua about the arrest, jailing, and subsequent release.
It was pointed out that the police claimed that they had watched him (Joshua) spray-painting the sidewalk with grafitti, but Ron (the interviewer) and Joshua (arrestee) knew that was false. The marks the police saw were put down the day before, not while the police were watching.
By the time Joshua and Ron got back to the scene of the crime today for the followup story, the chalk from the previous day was already gone.
Bank robbery is profitable and you don't see the average bank getting robbed 140 times per day. Mugging is profitable, but, you don't get mugged multiple times per day. Nor do you see anyone saying that we should repeal laws against bank robbery and mugging, either.
Make spamming illegal and punishable by jail time and hefty fines.
The lack of real geographical significance on the Internet makes email a very different animal. You don't get mugged in NYC by someone in Brazil -- they have to go to NYC to get to you. Willie Horton robbed banks because that's where the money is -- he couldn't do it from China.
In today's world, laws and legal jurisdictions have geographical boundaries. The Internet essentially does not. Pass all the laws you want in one country, it has no meaning to someone in another country unless they want it to. Hell, unsolicited junk faxes are illegal in California, but that doesn't stop the 50+ my company receives every day coming from across state lines.
I'm firmly convinced that legal approaches won't work. The only approaches that will work are economic and technological.
Even if spammers *did* comply
on
CAN-SPAM Is A Bust
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
it wouldn't help. A.54% compliance rate shows just how much the law scares the spammers: it doesn't. It's impossible to enforce compliance, and they know it.
Yet even if 100% of spam complied with the requirements of CAN-SPAM, it wouldn't mean the amount of spam would necessarily be reduced in any way. Spamming is completely legal under this law. An illegal scams make up a large portion of the spam we see here. The scam being scammed is illegal already, so the spammers feel no need to worry about breaking another law that essentially has little or no penalty and negligible chance of it being applied.
I can't imagine that anyone is genuinely surprised at the actual effectiveness of this useless law. No teeth if you obey it, no teeth if you don't.
Well that isnt the case for my Beige powermac upgraded to a G4 500MHz. Perhaps if I turned quartz on. btw are you using acrobat reader or Quartz? If you want a real challenge for a PDF reader, www.mta.info. Download the NYC subway map.
After downloading the subway map PDF file (about 9 seconds on a T1), I opened the PDF file using Preview on Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), by double-clicking on the PDF file icon.
Slightly over 2 seconds to fully rendered on an iBook (G3 processor, and relatively slow, nowhere near a G4 let alone a G5).
I was visiting Kiev and the area near Chernobyl in 1992, and I met many people who were not only well educated but quite fluent in spoken English, and written English at least as good or better than many native English speakers here on/. There was also a strong middle class, as well as numerous entrepreneurs moving in after the "Second Revolution". (there was also a huge downtrodden lower class, and a feeling of near desperation in some areas, not unlike parts of the US after the dot-Com bust, but more so...)
I was very impressed by the people I met, and Elena reminds me very much of two in particular. They were strong, intelligent, analytical yet warm. Exactly as many of us might like to think ourselves to be.
You see, knucklehead, when we get three or four legitimate constituent emails a day for help, with legislative ideas, or honest & valid complaints about some branch of our sprawling gov't - we can't get to them! It takes me an hour every day of sitting in front of a computer screen deleting spam - and the result is that is an hour that constituents DON'T GET SERVED.
Oh, so spam in your mailbox is evil and in conflict with the Democratic Process because it masks real email messages just by sheer volume, but your spam is OK in our mailboxes?
I guess I'm not a politician, because that argument just doesn't make sense to me...
Slashdot Mirror
Right you are! By far most of the 60K+ items are not refurbished, let alone labeled as refurbished.
Yeah, right.
However, a significant percentage of the items on the shelf being sold as "new" are actually customer returns, many are missing items including the odd cable or two, even a CD or manual, and re-sealed by the store as if it is still pristine new and complete.
Open each box before you buy it (do it with a "customer service representative" present if you like), and make sure the contents of the box look unused, and that they match the list in the manual or QuickStart guide (if there is such a list).
After purchasing a supposedly new answering machine but finding someone had already recorded an outgoing message, and received incoming calls, I learned never to trust Fry's. Trust but verify.
Over the last 3 years, I have returned 2 items to Fry's as defective at purchase (DOA), and found that same box on the shelf later that week. Based on my own personal experience, I made a little mark in an unobtrusive spot on the box before returning the dead equipment. They taped the box and put it back on the shelf -- the mark told the tale.
Fry's Electronics stores are prime examples of why we, the buyer, need to beware. Sure we can get cheap deals, but we can also get royally ripped off if we don't check what we're getting.
... (whatever happened to Enterprise?) ...
Cannibalized for spare parts and testing. It's not a complete vehicle at present.
In this case, Stanford did not put plagues, etc, in the box. They simply said, "don't peek".
Did they really? I have looked and looked, and I have not seen any mention of any such thing, let alone that applicants had agreed to it, even if merely by applying (shades of click-wrap licensing...)
From what I can determine, Stanford never said "don't peek". They said "we'll let you know on xx date, and here's how you can find out at that time".
As far as I can tell, they did not say anything remotely like "don't look until that date". And they did not say "don't peek".
I welcome a citation to support a claim that Stanford told the applicants not to look for results ahead of schedule, and that agreeing not to look was a condition of applying.
I wish everyone would please knock it off with all the poor analogies comparing this situation to entering an office, or looking through a file cabinet, or trying a key on a door, or opening a screen door on a house, or whatever. Those flawed analogies all include a reasonable expectation of privacy. This situation falls short because of incompetence on the part of the web site contractor.
The information was posted on a system that was intended to be accessible, although it was not intended to be accessed as soon as it was. Essentially, it was posted on a bulletin board in a hallway, but no one was told which hallway it was. Yet. The announcement of which hallway was scheduled for a month in the future.
Someone figured out which hallway had the bulletin board on the wall, and they told how to find it. The announcement of the location had not been made, but the information was already tacked up on the board for anyone who happened by to see.
The fact remains that it was a bulletin board, not a file cabinet either locked or unlocked. And never mind that the hallway on the 3rd floor of Building 4 doesn't get much foot traffic, compared to the Infinite Corridor -- it's still a bulletin board if you go there to look.
How much time until email address harvesters just drop the suffix and have a legitimate address ?
Not much time at all. Some are already doing just that.
There is another problem with the +extension. Spammers have figured out that if an address contains '+' they send to the full email address, and also send to the local part before the '+'.
Along those lines of protecting a trademark:
/. readers were born.
Back in the '70s and '80s, the AT&T lawyers went to great pains to make sure that all references to UNIX were of the form "UNIX Operating System" and not simply "UNIX". They required all licensees (and I was one) to do this, and they wrote nastygrams to any publication that used the word "UNIX" as a noun and not as a modifier.
Yes, I realize this was long before most
--
Why yes, I *am* a dinosaur!
Let me make more clear what apparently was not. I am saying that the penalties for operating a motor vehicle without having passed the required skill tests within the required period of time preceeding should be severe. Not the penalty for not having the copy of an issued license on your person at all times.
:-) to forge or falsify. Use biometrics or whatever best technique is available to make sure that the license to drive is tied to you and can not be used by anyone else. Keep an MD5 or other suitable hash of the biomemtrics on file at a suitable authority (the central police computer, for example) to confirm that the biometrics which match the body standing there also match what is on file with the testing authority.
California is one of many states which require you to be licensed to drive, and you must be able to produce a license within a reasonable period of time. If you forget your license, but can go home and get it, no big deal. If you remember the license number, and they look it up on the computer, and it's current and it really is you, no big deal.
But get caught driving with a suspended or expired license, or having never passed a drivers test at all, and I think it's reasonable to consider it nearly as serious as assault with a deadly weapon.
Again, having demonstrated the necessary skills and judgment to drive safely has nothing whatsoever to do with whether you are a citizen or not. And having a license which is tied to you has nothing to do with your identity per se.
Make the licenses as close to impossible as possible
And if I don't have my license with me at this moment because my wallet fell out of my pocket in a rest room, I am still a licensed driver. I might need to go fetch my license and/or report to a police station. Driving without my license in my possession is not the same as driving without being licensed.
The driver's license should be exactly that -- a license to operate a motor vehicle on the public roads. It should not be identification. They were not designed to be, the systems which issue them were not designed with that purpose in mind, and misusing them as identification causes endless problems, as can now be seen. (same thing with SSN as a presumed unique ID for every purpose)
Driving without a license should be an extremely serious offense, not the casual slap-on-the-wrist thing it is now. Unless someone has proven their ability to control a big heavy mass with lots of kinetic energy, they should not be allowed to do so near other people, and doing so should be dealt with harshly. Never mind who they are, never mind if they are legally within this border or that. The only identification should be to ensure that the license really is issued to them (they're the ones with the proven skill), and that the license is valid (not forged).
I really would like to see it become more straightforward for anyone, legally or illegally present, to get a driver's license. And at the same time make it very straightforward that driving without one puts your ass in jail. Harsh consequences, but simple painless and threat-free compliance.
I'm a hell of a lot more afraid of some of the drivers I see hurtling toward me on the road than I am of a random bombing or plane hijacking. But as is usually the case, numbers and real risk get ignored in favor of emotional reaction. This lets lottery tickets get sold to the gullible [relatively benign], and lets despots take power, a little at a time [decidedly evil].
[side comment about misusing tools for purposes other than the intended ones, driving nails with a screwdriver and complaining that all screwdrivers need to be heavier and have a flatter surface...]
I've never understood how Congress can get away with attaching riders and amendments to a bill that have absolutely nothing to do with the base bill. The only purpose is to have a kind of inverse "poison pill", so that voting against the amendment allows the accusation of being against the base bill. Never mind that it's traditional. Lots of things that are illegal now were "traditional" in the past.
It works the other way as well, in the usual meaning of "poison pill" -- attach a rider that is so unacceptable that the base bill is defeated regardless of its own merit.
Nevermind fussing about rules changes for filibustering in the Senate. This is where the real mischief gets done, and has been so for many decades.
There should be a rule in both the House and the Senate that amendments and riders must in some way be related to the base bill to which they are attached. Otherwise, they should stand on their own (or die on their own).
Well, not exactly hand-written. Printed out of Quicken. We do use a payroll system with direct deposit, but it does not have the required same-day turnaround. We have to enter all the payroll data somewhat in advance of the actual payday.
Also, it's not clear to me whether direct deposit which actually appears sometime overnight really would meet the requirement of last pay "same day", which is my understanding of the law based on advice from a lawyer.
Actually, my understanding of California labor law (and as an employer in CA I hope I understand it correctly!) is that the last paycheck must be given the very same day if the termination is at the will of the employer.
If the termination is at the will of the employee, whether with or without notice (e.g. simply not showing up for work for x number of days as specified in the employment contract), the final paycheck must be mailed by US First Class Mail within 2 days of the time the termination is known.
Of course, it's much cleaner to have that hand-written paycheck ready, even if it includes hours that might have been worked but turned out not to be (because of being walked out the door right away). That's another part of the reason that paying for 2 weeks of "at home" work is common.
You are going to have to cite a statue for that one.
http://cne.gmu.edu/itcore/images/thinker.gif
Sorry, couldn't resist.
They could make "Baked Friends"
or make "Szechuan Deep-Fried Friends"
or make "Poached Friends in White Whine [sic] Sauce"
Watch out when they say "I'd like to have you for dinner next Friday."
Show me the RFC that says email sent to the postmaster address must actually be read by anyone, let alone acted upon.
UPS should be pronounced 'oops'.
It is.
Ron Reagon (son of Ronald) was the MSNBC correspondent interviewing Joshua about the arrest, jailing, and subsequent release.
It was pointed out that the police claimed that they had watched him (Joshua) spray-painting the sidewalk with grafitti, but Ron (the interviewer) and Joshua (arrestee) knew that was false. The marks the police saw were put down the day before, not while the police were watching.
By the time Joshua and Ron got back to the scene of the crime today for the followup story, the chalk from the previous day was already gone.
The lack of real geographical significance on the Internet makes email a very different animal. You don't get mugged in NYC by someone in Brazil -- they have to go to NYC to get to you. Willie Horton robbed banks because that's where the money is -- he couldn't do it from China.
In today's world, laws and legal jurisdictions have geographical boundaries. The Internet essentially does not. Pass all the laws you want in one country, it has no meaning to someone in another country unless they want it to. Hell, unsolicited junk faxes are illegal in California, but that doesn't stop the 50+ my company receives every day coming from across state lines.
I'm firmly convinced that legal approaches won't work. The only approaches that will work are economic and technological.
it wouldn't help. A .54% compliance rate shows just how much the law scares the spammers: it doesn't. It's impossible to enforce compliance, and they know it.
Yet even if 100% of spam complied with the requirements of CAN-SPAM, it wouldn't mean the amount of spam would necessarily be reduced in any way. Spamming is completely legal under this law. An illegal scams make up a large portion of the spam we see here. The scam being scammed is illegal already, so the spammers feel no need to worry about breaking another law that essentially has little or no penalty and negligible chance of it being applied.
I can't imagine that anyone is genuinely surprised at the actual effectiveness of this useless law. No teeth if you obey it, no teeth if you don't.
After downloading the subway map PDF file (about 9 seconds on a T1), I opened the PDF file using Preview on Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), by double-clicking on the PDF file icon.
Slightly over 2 seconds to fully rendered on an iBook (G3 processor, and relatively slow, nowhere near a G4 let alone a G5).
Gotta see what the G5 at work will do!
AFAICS this is exactly what the RIAA and MPAA would like. Play-once, expire after n days, and so on.
They really would like to charge per view/listening, not per purchase.
Yes, you're being paranoid.
/. There was also a strong middle class, as well as numerous entrepreneurs moving in after the "Second Revolution". (there was also a huge downtrodden lower class, and a feeling of near desperation in some areas, not unlike parts of the US after the dot-Com bust, but more so...)
I was visiting Kiev and the area near Chernobyl in 1992, and I met many people who were not only well educated but quite fluent in spoken English, and written English at least as good or better than many native English speakers here on
I was very impressed by the people I met, and Elena reminds me very much of two in particular. They were strong, intelligent, analytical yet warm. Exactly as many of us might like to think ourselves to be.
Thank you Elena!
Yup, owning your own business means that you have the ultimate in flex-time.
You get to pick which 20 hours a day you work.
Don't do that, you'll be sorry.
It's a really bad idea to work with someone you live with (or are married to). Most people need some time to themselves to think/work/play/breathe.
My experience is not your experience, but my experience screams "Don't Do It!"
You see, knucklehead, when we get three or four legitimate constituent emails a day for help, with legislative ideas, or honest & valid complaints about some branch of our sprawling gov't - we can't get to them! It takes me an hour every day of sitting in front of a computer screen deleting spam - and the result is that is an hour that constituents DON'T GET SERVED.
Oh, so spam in your mailbox is evil and in conflict with the Democratic Process because it masks real email messages just by sheer volume, but your spam is OK in our mailboxes?
I guess I'm not a politician, because that argument just doesn't make sense to me...