>Now, if ebay KNEW about these practices and did nothing to stop them, could they be found liable?
What CAN they do to stop them though? (Without completely destroying their business) How is it possible for Ebay to tell the difference between an account that just doesn't bid all that much because they're trying to be cheap vs. an account that is shill bidding?
Different printers have different limitations as to what their borders and such can be. How should you display a document that someone set to use 0.4" borders, but the printer won't take any less that 0.5"?
>If you think that you can safely control 1.5t of metal at high speeds when you've drunk all you want - then you either shouldn't be drinking or driving, hence the law.
But why does one equate the other? I know I can't control my car fully under that much alcohol. I'm not sure I can control my car well enough after 2 drinks... so I wait it out. If I was inclined to go ahead and drive anyway... the existing laws wouldn't stop me. After two drinks, I can pretty much guarantee I'm under the limit, and I wouldn't get a drunk driving arrest. However, if I get tagged for unsafe driving, and I've had a little to drink, call that an aggravating factor, and off we go.
Either way, you've got the law ready to spank you. Just one is there to punish what you do, not what you might do.
>Drink driving laws are there to protect lives from destruction by stupid people. That's a worthy law. And given the number of deaths caused by drink driving, it's a necessary law.
Then why don't we have laws against operating the radio while driving? If video screens are required to not show video while the car is operating, why can't they disable controls on a radio and just have mute and volume operational. Any other changes, and you have to stop the car to make the changes. That would save thousands of lives as well. Why isn't anyone enforcing laws that would curb eating while driving?
I seriously think we could craft the law that drinking and driving would be perfectly legal, but the problem behavior that nearly always results would be very illegal. And it could be crafted in such a way that it would cover other conditions under which you are not in control of your vehicle (cell phone, tv, food, etc)
> The drinking and driving law is one of the few rational traffic laws we have
Its among the more rational, but I still don't quite buy rational.
I think there should be huge education campaigns about drinking and driving and the problems... and I should be allowed to drink and drive all I want. However, if I drink and drive, and cause an accident, there should be special circumstances. I knowingly reduced my ability to deal with whatever is out there, and in my mind that makes me a much more willful actor in the "accident".
If alcohol, drugs, cell phones, makeup, doughnuts, or trombones are an aggravating factor in your accident, you should be double or triple spanked... and those penalties better hold.
You should be ticketed or arrested for what you actually do, not what you might do.
Why not? I actually have quite a few tracks from iTMS, and I burn them to CD.
The trick is that I started burning from the start, and I don't tend to buy in batches or more than a CD or two anyway. Unless you have to do them all at once, it's not that big of a deal./Holy crap, my "Purchased playlist" has over 1000 items in it
It amuses be a bit. I have the ultimate in no listing for one of my domains. =-)
I used to received about 6 million spams a day across 3 relays for this domain. I removed all MX records for the domain, and the hostnames have nothing to do with the domain (so A record lookups won't help), but 30 days later I still was receiving over 2 million spams a day. After about 6 months the number really started falling off.
You mean you set your expectations about a groundbreaking new product based on currently shipping technologies (maybe they will have announced a newer higher density solid state storage) and assumptions about what tech they will use (maybe they'd use a hard drive?) Niiiiice
I too was very disappointed by the 8GB size. I understand it, but I'm still disappointed by it.
And like OP, it's the Cingular tie-in that kills it for me, and everyone I know.
I originally offered to do that, but the rep didn't want to go that way (worried that I would have a picture,but not the device anymore somhow, I guess).
By that point I was a tad miffed, so we made sure to use the onsite support option that we paid for =-)
Dunno about current prices, but a friend of mine bought one of the first Civic hybrids in California. He drove it for about 16,000 miles the first year, and the dealer bought it back for what he paid for it originally.
He basically got the car to use for free for a year, and put a large amount of miles on it...
>it'd be pretty obvious that one or neither actually own it.
Having been bitten by that one before... lemme say... NOPE
We had a service guy using one of our serial numbers for another device to get replacement parts for it under warrantee. When ours needed the same parts, the manufacturer got a tad suspicious, and we had to fight hard in order to be able to get our part.
And also note that the OS is supposed to be secure, which means 3rd party stuff shouldn't be leaving the entire OS exposed like this without the user doing something very stupid and intentional.
I don't by the 3rd party thing as an excuse... and I AM an Apple fanboi
Awhile back we needed to run a length of telephone cable (probably around 100') in an emergency. Only problem is we didn't have near that length handy, but we had a bunch of shorties. Damn! nothing to connect those together with.
Hey! A ton of machines in this building have internal modems that they aren't using... lets snag those. The line input and telephone input should work for us.
Voila. Put a plant in front of each modem, and you've got a temporary extension cord =-)
> I feel for you and your shitty situation, but stop blaming the camera.
No camera => situation wouldn't have been pressed as far. the camera amplified it all
>The real problem was a legal system that lets a jumped-up secretary tie you up in legal knots like she has.
ONE of the real problems. I can't think of a legal solution to it that won't make it easier for rich folks or corporations to get away with things though. And affecting cultural change is a mite trickier than the legal one.
>Remove the camera from the situation, and substitute a single bystander who IDs you when shown a picture. Would the situation be signifigantly different? No. She'd still tie your ass up in court in similar fashion.
She started by asking someone to look at a tape around a certain time. She saw me on the tape and went from there. Until she saw me on the tape, she had no reason to suspect me or dig in that deeply.
>But I guess it's easier to blame the camera than fix your American "lawsuit culture".
I'm not just blaming the camera. (and yes, it is easier to blame than fix our culture...) Yes the culture needs fixing, but substitute our lawsuit happy culture with one that is "terrorists are hiding"-happy or hooligan happy, or goes too far for public safety, etc There are plenty of problems that, when combined with ubiquitous cameras, create even worse problems.
most definitely... I just can't think of any reforms that would have protected me that I could support
I can't think of any, and I haven't seen any, that wouldn't make it easier for the "rich" man to stomp all over his abused wife and get away with it, or allow the corporation to bully individuals into not filing suits for legitimate reasons.
You're making alot of assumptions. There was no assault. I never threatened her ever for anything. The damage (can't give details) she supposedly suffered fell entirely under civil laws, which is why the police were never involved in the firstplace. This is entirely a case of a sociopathic person who is entirely comfortable working within the court system and using every possible angle to cause harm. And since historically, the man is the clear abuser and the richer and gets free because of it, I, the innocent in this case, have to go through extraordinary measures to prove that I wasn't the culprit. (remember, not a criminal case, so standard of evidence is lower for her side)
Even after all the hassle, I'm still a strong opponent of a basic loser pays system, because I am strongly against the "rich person's defense" problem. I'm also against making Bankruptcy easier even though it would solve my currentl financial problems nicely.
>You can't be tried for a law that doesn't exist. IANAL, but if it wasn't against the law when you did it, you can't be arrested for i
Correrct, but to continue the silly example... if they passed a law against picking your nose in public, and folks later saw video of you doing it, even though it was before the law went went into effect, there might easily still be consequences. You might not be arrested, but you rneighbors might watch you more closely now, and now that you're known to be "bad", that time you accidentally tripped into their Azaleas now looks like an intentional act. With just one largely irrelevant piece of info, alot of local damage can happen.
> These cameras aren't there to catch public figures picking their noses. Straw man, anyone?
Just because it's not intended to catch the nosepicker now, doesn't mean it won't come in handy later. The poster's point is that while it is a privacy intrusion now, it doesn't feel like it; though it very well might feel like one in a later circumstance in a different light, so it will feel more like one later if you are the "lucky" one. And yes, nosepicking isn't the greatest example, but it really doesn't matter. You can pick any action that could be looked upon poorly in some light at some point in the future.
> How does having better computers provide the manpower to watch more cameras?
The computer could recognize the person on film, and learn to recognize certain sorts of questionable activities. Now the computer only brings up a screen when something potentially fishy is going on. You've greatly amplified the usefulness of one human with the power of computing.
> What if the cameras are only there to watch for criminal activity? What if all other activity is disregarded? Does it make you pause to think that maybe you're a tad paranoid?
I ended up spending over $50k defending myself against a lawsuit whose only reason for fingering me was that I showed up on a nearby camera. Since judges often give wide latitude when deciding whether a plaintiff's case is frivolous, it was decided that I had to pay my own defense bills. Even if I was awarded the costs it wouldn't have mattered since the plaintiff couldn't afford it. (She's a paralegal, and thinks herself an attorney so she just filed and filed and delayed and delayed and demanded and demanded, etc.)
Had that camera not been there, or had she not have been able to illegally obtain the evidence (which turned out not to be used officially, but she used my location and time to find people who had seen me there and got them to say I was around... so throwing out the evidence didn't matter), I might still have some savings, and not have as much debt at the moment.
Was the camera setup to catch me? no Was the camera setup to to allow her to watch surroundings? no After the fact, she found out I might have been in the area, she was harmed in that area (and I am friends with her ex), so therefore I must have caused that harm. Did I do it? no Did it cost me greatly? yes Was law enforcemnt involved? no Would existing laws preventing law enforcement from using these cameras for any purpose have protected me? no
It even cost my dad around $5k to defend a suit against him, since someone called her office within a few days that remotely sounded like him. (and since the camera "proved" that I harmed her, he must have been in on it) And it cost my friend(roommate at the time) over $10k to keep custody of his kid, because since he was still friends with me, he must have orchestrated the whole thing, and therefore the child was in danger. And neither of them even appeared on the recording... they were tagged just because they knew me.
Am I a little paranoid? Hell yes! Does that mean someone's not out to get me? Hell no!
Wow, I had a totally different experience driving in TX than I do in CA.
I was there for 2 days, and had the same thing happen 4 times: I'm in the right lane of two going in my direction, going just above the speed limit. A pckup truck zooms in from behind and sits on my tail... right on my tail. He doesn't go around... just sits there. Eventually, after 30 seconds or more, he guns it and goes around all pissed off.
Oddly enough, I've only had that happen once while driving in CA, and that truck had Texas plates on it.
And, as I said above, I don't think they sue for just not making as much money as possible... they can only sue for you fraudulently saying you would make more money than you said you would.
Because users will still read that and call you for help. You may end up denying them help, or someone may be nice and give it to them, since whatever it is may be an easy issue... but in either case your company is spending support dollars on an unsupported program.
Some will still call if you fail to install and give a clear reason, but in my experience, the number is much lower.
I usually pick some really specialized procedure from a non-technical venue, something that Google isn't going to come up with. (Like how to operate a 1921 Model-T)
I would ask them how to do the task, and invariably they would immediately come up with Google. And I would reply with "you can't find that", now what would you do?
I'm hoping they head in either or both of two directions: 1- Find web sites related to that specialty, and do some reading in there to try to understand more about the knowlege domain so you can better phrase your searches or reading. 2- Find an actual human who might know something about it, and talk to them. (mechanic friend, museum folk)
Slashdot Mirror
>Now, if ebay KNEW about these practices and did nothing to stop them, could they be found liable?
What CAN they do to stop them though? (Without completely destroying their business)
How is it possible for Ebay to tell the difference between an account that just doesn't bid all that much because they're trying to be cheap vs. an account that is shill bidding?
Been there, done that... not a chance.
Different printers have different limitations as to what their borders and such can be.
How should you display a document that someone set to use 0.4" borders, but the printer won't take any less that 0.5"?
>If you think that you can safely control 1.5t of metal at high speeds when you've drunk all you want - then you either shouldn't be drinking or driving, hence the law.
But why does one equate the other?
I know I can't control my car fully under that much alcohol. I'm not sure I can control my car well enough after 2 drinks... so I wait it out.
If I was inclined to go ahead and drive anyway... the existing laws wouldn't stop me. After two drinks, I can pretty much guarantee I'm under the limit, and I wouldn't get a drunk driving arrest.
However, if I get tagged for unsafe driving, and I've had a little to drink, call that an aggravating factor, and off we go.
Either way, you've got the law ready to spank you. Just one is there to punish what you do, not what you might do.
>Drink driving laws are there to protect lives from destruction by stupid people. That's a worthy law. And given the number of deaths caused by drink driving, it's a necessary law.
Then why don't we have laws against operating the radio while driving?
If video screens are required to not show video while the car is operating, why can't they disable controls on a radio and just have mute and volume operational. Any other changes, and you have to stop the car to make the changes.
That would save thousands of lives as well.
Why isn't anyone enforcing laws that would curb eating while driving?
I seriously think we could craft the law that drinking and driving would be perfectly legal, but the problem behavior that nearly always results would be very illegal. And it could be crafted in such a way that it would cover other conditions under which you are not in control of your vehicle (cell phone, tv, food, etc)
> The drinking and driving law is one of the few rational traffic laws we have
Its among the more rational, but I still don't quite buy rational.
I think there should be huge education campaigns about drinking and driving and the problems... and I should be allowed to drink and drive all I want.
However, if I drink and drive, and cause an accident, there should be special circumstances.
I knowingly reduced my ability to deal with whatever is out there, and in my mind that makes me a much more willful actor in the "accident".
If alcohol, drugs, cell phones, makeup, doughnuts, or trombones are an aggravating factor in your accident, you should be double or triple spanked... and those penalties better hold.
You should be ticketed or arrested for what you actually do, not what you might do.
Why not? I actually have quite a few tracks from iTMS, and I burn them to CD.
/Holy crap, my "Purchased playlist" has over 1000 items in it
The trick is that I started burning from the start, and I don't tend to buy in batches or more than a CD or two anyway.
Unless you have to do them all at once, it's not that big of a deal.
The kept the IPs handy, not even bothering to check DNS.
I handled other domains on the same servers, so I'd still see the requests come in
It amuses be a bit. I have the ultimate in no listing for one of my domains. =-)
I used to received about 6 million spams a day across 3 relays for this domain.
I removed all MX records for the domain, and the hostnames have nothing to do with the domain (so A record lookups won't help), but 30 days later I still was receiving over 2 million spams a day. After about 6 months the number really started falling off.
I've wondered about this myself, and how it may play out with IP6.
Maybe the vendor wants to give priority to ip6 traffic... I'd support that... But legislation would probably kill that.
You mean you set your expectations about a groundbreaking new product based on currently shipping technologies (maybe they will have announced a newer higher density solid state storage) and assumptions about what tech they will use (maybe they'd use a hard drive?) Niiiiice
I too was very disappointed by the 8GB size. I understand it, but I'm still disappointed by it.
And like OP, it's the Cingular tie-in that kills it for me, and everyone I know.
I originally offered to do that, but the rep didn't want to go that way (worried that I would have a picture,but not the device anymore somhow, I guess).
By that point I was a tad miffed, so we made sure to use the onsite support option that we paid for =-)
Dunno about current prices, but a friend of mine bought one of the first Civic hybrids in California. He drove it for about 16,000 miles the first year, and the dealer bought it back for what he paid for it originally.
He basically got the car to use for free for a year, and put a large amount of miles on it...
>it'd be pretty obvious that one or neither actually own it.
Having been bitten by that one before... lemme say... NOPE
We had a service guy using one of our serial numbers for another device to get replacement parts for it under warrantee. When ours needed the same parts, the manufacturer got a tad suspicious, and we had to fight hard in order to be able to get our part.
It's pretty much a separate entity now as far as AOL's concerned, I think. Ever since Mozilla got spun off.
And also note that the OS is supposed to be secure, which means 3rd party stuff shouldn't be leaving the entire OS exposed like this without the user doing something very stupid and intentional.
I don't by the 3rd party thing as an excuse... and I AM an Apple fanboi
Awhile back we needed to run a length of telephone cable (probably around 100') in an emergency. Only problem is we didn't have near that length handy, but we had a bunch of shorties.
Damn! nothing to connect those together with.
Hey! A ton of machines in this building have internal modems that they aren't using... lets snag those. The line input and telephone input should work for us.
Voila. Put a plant in front of each modem, and you've got a temporary extension cord =-)
> I feel for you and your shitty situation, but stop blaming the camera.
No camera => situation wouldn't have been pressed as far.
the camera amplified it all
>The real problem was a legal system that lets a jumped-up secretary tie you up in legal knots like she has.
ONE of the real problems. I can't think of a legal solution to it that won't make it easier for rich folks or corporations to get away with things though. And affecting cultural change is a mite trickier than the legal one.
>Remove the camera from the situation, and substitute a single bystander who IDs you when shown a picture. Would the situation be signifigantly different? No. She'd still tie your ass up in court in similar fashion.
She started by asking someone to look at a tape around a certain time. She saw me on the tape and went from there.
Until she saw me on the tape, she had no reason to suspect me or dig in that deeply.
>But I guess it's easier to blame the camera than fix your American "lawsuit culture".
I'm not just blaming the camera. (and yes, it is easier to blame than fix our culture...)
Yes the culture needs fixing, but substitute our lawsuit happy culture with one that is "terrorists are hiding"-happy or hooligan happy, or goes too far for public safety, etc
There are plenty of problems that, when combined with ubiquitous cameras, create even worse problems.
most definitely... I just can't think of any reforms that would have protected me that I could support
I can't think of any, and I haven't seen any, that wouldn't make it easier for the "rich" man to stomp all over his abused wife and get away with it, or allow the corporation to bully individuals into not filing suits for legitimate reasons.
Sucks for me, but that's life
You're making alot of assumptions.
There was no assault. I never threatened her ever for anything.
The damage (can't give details) she supposedly suffered fell entirely under civil laws, which is why the police were never involved in the firstplace.
This is entirely a case of a sociopathic person who is entirely comfortable working within the court system and using every possible angle to cause harm. And since historically, the man is the clear abuser and the richer and gets free because of it, I, the innocent in this case, have to go through extraordinary measures to prove that I wasn't the culprit. (remember, not a criminal case, so standard of evidence is lower for her side)
Even after all the hassle, I'm still a strong opponent of a basic loser pays system, because I am strongly against the "rich person's defense" problem.
I'm also against making Bankruptcy easier even though it would solve my currentl financial problems nicely.
>You can't be tried for a law that doesn't exist. IANAL, but if it wasn't against the law when you did it, you can't be arrested for i
Correrct, but to continue the silly example... if they passed a law against picking your nose in public, and folks later saw video of you doing it, even though it was before the law went went into effect, there might easily still be consequences. You might not be arrested, but you rneighbors might watch you more closely now, and now that you're known to be "bad", that time you accidentally tripped into their Azaleas now looks like an intentional act. With just one largely irrelevant piece of info, alot of local damage can happen.
> These cameras aren't there to catch public figures picking their noses. Straw man, anyone?
Just because it's not intended to catch the nosepicker now, doesn't mean it won't come in handy later.
The poster's point is that while it is a privacy intrusion now, it doesn't feel like it; though it very well might feel like one in a later circumstance in a different light, so it will feel more like one later if you are the "lucky" one.
And yes, nosepicking isn't the greatest example, but it really doesn't matter. You can pick any action that could be looked upon poorly in some light at some point in the future.
> How does having better computers provide the manpower to watch more cameras?
The computer could recognize the person on film, and learn to recognize certain sorts of questionable activities. Now the computer only brings up a screen when something potentially fishy is going on. You've greatly amplified the usefulness of one human with the power of computing.
> What if the cameras are only there to watch for criminal activity? What if all other activity is disregarded? Does it make you pause to think that maybe you're a tad paranoid?
I ended up spending over $50k defending myself against a lawsuit whose only reason for fingering me was that I showed up on a nearby camera. Since judges often give wide latitude when deciding whether a plaintiff's case is frivolous, it was decided that I had to pay my own defense bills. Even if I was awarded the costs it wouldn't have mattered since the plaintiff couldn't afford it. (She's a paralegal, and thinks herself an attorney so she just filed and filed and delayed and delayed and demanded and demanded, etc.)
Had that camera not been there, or had she not have been able to illegally obtain the evidence (which turned out not to be used officially, but she used my location and time to find people who had seen me there and got them to say I was around... so throwing out the evidence didn't matter), I might still have some savings, and not have as much debt at the moment.
Was the camera setup to catch me? no
Was the camera setup to to allow her to watch surroundings? no
After the fact, she found out I might have been in the area, she was harmed in that area (and I am friends with her ex), so therefore I must have caused that harm. Did I do it? no
Did it cost me greatly? yes
Was law enforcemnt involved? no
Would existing laws preventing law enforcement from using these cameras for any purpose have protected me? no
It even cost my dad around $5k to defend a suit against him, since someone called her office within a few days that remotely sounded like him. (and since the camera "proved" that I harmed her, he must have been in on it)
And it cost my friend(roommate at the time) over $10k to keep custody of his kid, because since he was still friends with me, he must have orchestrated the whole thing, and therefore the child was in danger.
And neither of them even appeared on the recording... they were tagged just because they knew me.
Am I a little paranoid? Hell yes!
Does that mean someone's not out to get me? Hell no!
Wow, I had a totally different experience driving in TX than I do in CA.
I was there for 2 days, and had the same thing happen 4 times: I'm in the right lane of two going in my direction, going just above the speed limit. A pckup truck zooms in from behind and sits on my tail... right on my tail. He doesn't go around... just sits there. Eventually, after 30 seconds or more, he guns it and goes around all pissed off.
Oddly enough, I've only had that happen once while driving in CA, and that truck had Texas plates on it.
Very very strange
He did say "on the order of"... so unless you've got a disk pushing 250MBps or 2500MBps, I wouldn't nitpick too much.
That fiber is pushing several orders of magnitude more data per second
Just because you can sue doesn't mean it's a law.
And, as I said above, I don't think they sue for just not making as much money as possible... they can only sue for you fraudulently saying you would make more money than you said you would.
Because users will still read that and call you for help. You may end up denying them help, or someone may be nice and give it to them, since whatever it is may be an easy issue... but in either case your company is spending support dollars on an unsupported program.
Some will still call if you fail to install and give a clear reason, but in my experience, the number is much lower.
I usually pick some really specialized procedure from a non-technical venue, something that Google isn't going to come up with. (Like how to operate a 1921 Model-T)
I would ask them how to do the task, and invariably they would immediately come up with Google. And I would reply with "you can't find that", now what would you do?
I'm hoping they head in either or both of two directions:
1- Find web sites related to that specialty, and do some reading in there to try to understand more about the knowlege domain so you can better phrase your searches or reading.
2- Find an actual human who might know something about it, and talk to them. (mechanic friend, museum folk)