That was all very interesting and whatnot, but didn't really have much to do with the article? People were treated for nausea and vomiting, not asphyxiation...
Solipsism for the win! There's a large amount of truth to it though - we do each create our own reality. One could almost say that only creations without feelings (ie, computers) can observe things as they truly are.
Notice how he threatened only? There's a very good chance that he had no ability to do that. It does vary from state to state, but I would like to see specific laws regarding carrying of ID before I accept that any state has such a law. I'm skeptical that US state would be able to get away with making it a criminal act to not carry ID. (Except California, but that's because they're weird over there.)
In DE, I was hassled (I was on the street in front of my house, reading and smoking in the middle of the night -- when I smoked I did not do so in my house, and the lighting was good under the streetlamp ). Asked what I was doing, where I lived, etc, and to a point I answered his questions (though I was under no obligation to). He then asked me for an ID. I wasn't carrying one, and told him so - and also told him if I were carrying it, I still wouldn't give it to him.
He pointed out that he could arrest me for not having an ID, and I told him that if he could - feel free to do so. He then said that maybe I shouldn't be out in the middle of the night, and rolled up his window and drove away.
another anecdote, I know, but my point is this - cops may well be willing to say and threaten beyond their ability to actually do
I won't waste time arguing that not all cops, politicians, and corporations are corrupt. Assume that they are - you're lowering yourself to their standards? Why not just not sign the document in the first place? It's much easier than signing it and pretending that you didn't. Especially when they can reasonably turn around and (under your theory of corruption) get a dozen HR drones to swear up and down that you signed it?
or me it's been the reverse--from a young age I felt that it was very wrong to lie and almost never did (and always felt bad about it). Only later did I discover (much to my surprise and, when participating in it, discomfort) that being disingenuous and even lying outright is not only widely accepted in the adult world, but very often expected.
What an odd and unfortunate view on life. It's interesting - I will never lie to protect myself, or to cover for my inadequacies, or to make myself look better. In business I won't lie to protect someone's feelings if it's to the detriment of project/company/etc - but I also am not a jerk about being honest.
Yet somehow, I have a successful career where I'm earning notably more than market value for what I do. This makes me very skeptical of any claims that it's "expected" or "required".
Ah yes. I'm familiar with people who have done that. They puff up their resume to get in the door, then when they interview it's apparent that they've wasted my time.
False. Signing is not enough. They must also be able to prove the signature is tied to a specific person, and if you made an illegible blotch of ink across the page, then there's no verifiability. The contract is null and will be rejected by the courts.
One assumes you're not going to lie to cover your own ass (whether in court or otherwise) -- I like to believe that most folks learned to stop doing that sometime in their teens. If your honor means so little to you (or if not that, than your trustworthiness to others), then have fun with that.
It's far too late for that now guy, we're underway. Best to batten down the hatches. Hold tight, we've cast off, entered the place where nobody is going to bale you out. Yawl are at the bitter end of your rope, buoy, while I'm just getting started - follow my lead if you want to make it through, else I'll rake you over the shoals.
"How cuddy do that," you ask yourself, and the answer is simple: I am a mere traveler along the rode, it's a fluke that I've arrived but none shall thwart me. I'm a stern man, aft all is said and done, and I love to screw with your head.
Read Slashdot comments from Sep'05 on any MS related article for more insight into this matter.
Also see slashdot comments on any MS-related article from Oct '06 to May '09 for further reference. Jokes don't get old here, they just get entrenched and build a following.
Nobody is saying that they will succeed. My point is that they are 100% within their rights (as the owner of the site) to/try/. I am within my rights to circumvent it (seldom worth the trouble) or to stop using the web site. The latter is much easier as there is very little online content that I feel I/must/ have - and if sufficient people do leave because of obnoxious advertising, their page hits will drop, leaving them to realize that maybe they need to change something.
A minimum charge (places that say you must charge at least $10 to use a card, for example) is against their regs. I wasn't sure what the OP meant by minimums, so included this in the interest of being thorough. May not have been relevant.
The relevant part is this. The merchant banks charge their own fees, independent of visa/mc. If you had read that link that you sent, you would see that the visa interchange charges are paid by the merchant bank. The merchant banks set their own rates, presumably high enough to cover those fees from visa/mc and then some -- but they are not required to. Most merchant banks will charge a flat percentage that won't vary based on transaction type - even though what they pay to Visa/MC may vary.
If a business gets hundreds of thousands of chargebacks, their merchant bank may choose to end their agreement because it has become too expensive to maintain. The merchant bank is responsible for refunding those payments in case the chargeback is found to be valid. If the business is legit (as in this case), they will recoup the money from the business, and charge additional chargeback fees to the business on top of that.
However - here's the sticking point. It may not affect the merchant or the merchant bank at all. Many credit card companies have a "small balance" writeoff policy, in which chargebacks less than a certain dollar amount are just paid out without going through the full chargeback process. This is because it's cheaper to do this than the engage in the multi-week back and forth required to resolve a chargeback of any dollar amount.
This would almost certainly happen in this case, in which people are charging less than a dollar. In this scenario, it is the credit card issuer (Capital One, Citibank, Chase, etc) that is losing money and not the law firm or their merchant bank.
There are a lot of complex rules governing chargebacks, and it's nowhere near as simple as the rather foolish suggestion made by TPB folks implies. There are strict processing requirements from Visa/MC. Each merchant bank has their own rules around how they are handled. Each issuing bank has their own rules too.
have you ever had a merchant account? They list fee's right here:
You're missing the point - adverts can be whatever the sites allow. Since they own the resources, it is entirely up to them what is acceptable on their site. Some places are tasteful and use text. Others... not so much.
We can use adblock (I do) so no matter how tasteless adverts are, it doesn't matter. If a site detects this and says "Hey, turn it off or go away" this is within their rights. We can then look at the adverts and -- if they are obnoxious -- we can go away.
My point is that the GP said they don't have the "right" to do this, and he's wrong. As the people who control the site, they have every right to do it. Just like we (as the people they want to retain) have every right to not use the web site if they abuse it.
Indeed. If they're going to go all police state on their citizens, they should just drop the pretense and start using required DNA registration upon entry to the country (or birth). Dump some funds into developing instantaneous DNA signature reading, and have done with it.
That way they can stop wasting money on phrenology and similar pursuits, and start to really Catch Some Bad Guys.
Orrrr... the people who live there can stand up and say that enough is enough. Personally I'd suggest the latter, but humans are humans the world over -- so it's quite unlikely.
This was true a year or two ago, but I've seen a marked decrease in the number of ad-spam sites in my google search results - practically none these days. Either my search skills are somehow better than average (unlikely); or you're working off of outdated data.
They may have the right to show ads, as you say. But they have absolutely no right to demand that I view them.
As for Wired, well their site is a horrible, confusing mess even without their ads.
The hell they don't. You're visiting their web site hosted on their hardware, at their expense, and maintained with their time/money. If they turn around and say "Unblock or stop accessing", then that's perfectly within their "rights". And it's perfectly within/your/ rights to stop using the site in protest.
If they allow you to pay by credit card, it's costing them money. There's a minimum service fee to accept a credit card payment, and I can pretty much guarantee it's more than.13.
There's no minimum charge (that would be against Visa/MC regs) ; and whether or not there's a minimum service fee depends on which merchant bank they're using.
Still, they spend millions producing a product and then give it away. Yes, of course they make money selling something else -- it wouldn't be a business model if there wasn't a source of revenue. But the primary product they produce is given away for free, and it's been a successful business model for decades.
The primary products they produce are advertising slots. The secondary byproduct is the music -a nd even that is not wholly free unless your time is worth nothing.
Yep, I was just having a bit of fun. Historically though, they do not continue providing updates for betas and RCs once the final release is out. Nor should they be.
"A free market is a theoretical term that economists use to describe a market which is free from government intervention (i.e. no regulation, no subsidization, no single monetary system and no governmental monopolies)." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Market
I know that wikipedia's not the most reliable source of information, but that's a pretty accurate description. Including the "theoretical" part.
. If I protect my interests by hiring mercenaries to shoot anyone who goes into my competitor's business that's the free market since I'm just protecting my interests against competitors?!?
That would just be murder, far as I know. How do you compare hiring mercenaries to shoot competitors to paying someone or offering discounts to not stock a product?
As a user of the internet, I feel that there are already far too many unpatched Microsoft OS based Zombies lying in wait to do horrible things to people
You are basing this on what?!
Oh, right, nothing..
Yeah, I can't imagine where he'd get such a wild and kooky idea as that one. Kids these days.
Slashdot Mirror
That was all very interesting and whatnot, but didn't really have much to do with the article? People were treated for nausea and vomiting, not asphyxiation...
Solipsism for the win! There's a large amount of truth to it though - we do each create our own reality. One could almost say that only creations without feelings (ie, computers) can observe things as they truly are.
Notice how he threatened only? There's a very good chance that he had no ability to do that. It does vary from state to state, but I would like to see specific laws regarding carrying of ID before I accept that any state has such a law. I'm skeptical that US state would be able to get away with making it a criminal act to not carry ID. (Except California, but that's because they're weird over there.)
In DE, I was hassled (I was on the street in front of my house, reading and smoking in the middle of the night -- when I smoked I did not do so in my house, and the lighting was good under the streetlamp ). Asked what I was doing, where I lived, etc, and to a point I answered his questions (though I was under no obligation to). He then asked me for an ID. I wasn't carrying one, and told him so - and also told him if I were carrying it, I still wouldn't give it to him.
He pointed out that he could arrest me for not having an ID, and I told him that if he could - feel free to do so. He then said that maybe I shouldn't be out in the middle of the night, and rolled up his window and drove away.
another anecdote, I know, but my point is this - cops may well be willing to say and threaten beyond their ability to actually do
I won't waste time arguing that not all cops, politicians, and corporations are corrupt. Assume that they are - you're lowering yourself to their standards? Why not just not sign the document in the first place? It's much easier than signing it and pretending that you didn't. Especially when they can reasonably turn around and (under your theory of corruption) get a dozen HR drones to swear up and down that you signed it?
or me it's been the reverse--from a young age I felt that it was very wrong to lie and almost never did (and always felt bad about it). Only later did I discover (much to my surprise and, when participating in it, discomfort) that being disingenuous and even lying outright is not only widely accepted in the adult world, but very often expected.
What an odd and unfortunate view on life. It's interesting - I will never lie to protect myself, or to cover for my inadequacies, or to make myself look better. In business I won't lie to protect someone's feelings if it's to the detriment of project/company/etc - but I also am not a jerk about being honest.
Yet somehow, I have a successful career where I'm earning notably more than market value for what I do. This makes me very skeptical of any claims that it's "expected" or "required".
his is especially common in business, I've found, where being perfectly honest on a résumé and/or application will practically never land you a job, especially on those "why do you want to work here"-type question (let's face it, 99% of the time the real answer is "I want money and this job sounds like it won't suck too much"). Then there's "networking" which often involves creating a whole false persona. It's sickening, but damn-near unavoidable, and certainly considered to be normal and acceptable.
Ah yes. I'm familiar with people who have done that. They puff up their resume to get in the door, then when they interview it's apparent that they've wasted my time.
False. Signing is not enough. They must also be able to prove the signature is tied to a specific person, and if you made an illegible blotch of ink across the page, then there's no verifiability. The contract is null and will be rejected by the courts.
One assumes you're not going to lie to cover your own ass (whether in court or otherwise) -- I like to believe that most folks learned to stop doing that sometime in their teens. If your honor means so little to you (or if not that, than your trustworthiness to others), then have fun with that.
Yes! You are the proud winner of a minus one (-1) offtopic moderation, and a plus one (+1) under-rated moderation! Congratulations!
It's far too late for that now guy, we're underway. Best to batten down the hatches. Hold tight, we've cast off, entered the place where nobody is going to bale you out. Yawl are at the bitter end of your rope, buoy, while I'm just getting started - follow my lead if you want to make it through, else I'll rake you over the shoals.
"How cuddy do that," you ask yourself, and the answer is simple: I am a mere traveler along the rode, it's a fluke that I've arrived but none shall thwart me. I'm a stern man, aft all is said and done, and I love to screw with your head.
Read Slashdot comments from Sep'05 on any MS related article for more insight into this matter.
Also see slashdot comments on any MS-related article from Oct '06 to May '09 for further reference. Jokes don't get old here, they just get entrenched and build a following.
Maybe you should have learned how to sail as a kid, then you'd take a different tack.
Perhaps he just needed to buy a clew...
Nobody is saying that they will succeed. My point is that they are 100% within their rights (as the owner of the site) to /try/. I am within my rights to circumvent it (seldom worth the trouble) or to stop using the web site. The latter is much easier as there is very little online content that I feel I /must/ have - and if sufficient people do leave because of obnoxious advertising, their page hits will drop, leaving them to realize that maybe they need to change something.
A minimum charge (places that say you must charge at least $10 to use a card, for example) is against their regs. I wasn't sure what the OP meant by minimums, so included this in the interest of being thorough. May not have been relevant.
The relevant part is this. The merchant banks charge their own fees, independent of visa/mc. If you had read that link that you sent, you would see that the visa interchange charges are paid by the merchant bank. The merchant banks set their own rates, presumably high enough to cover those fees from visa/mc and then some -- but they are not required to. Most merchant banks will charge a flat percentage that won't vary based on transaction type - even though what they pay to Visa/MC may vary.
If a business gets hundreds of thousands of chargebacks, their merchant bank may choose to end their agreement because it has become too expensive to maintain. The merchant bank is responsible for refunding those payments in case the chargeback is found to be valid. If the business is legit (as in this case), they will recoup the money from the business, and charge additional chargeback fees to the business on top of that.
However - here's the sticking point. It may not affect the merchant or the merchant bank at all. Many credit card companies have a "small balance" writeoff policy, in which chargebacks less than a certain dollar amount are just paid out without going through the full chargeback process. This is because it's cheaper to do this than the engage in the multi-week back and forth required to resolve a chargeback of any dollar amount.
This would almost certainly happen in this case, in which people are charging less than a dollar. In this scenario, it is the credit card issuer (Capital One, Citibank, Chase, etc) that is losing money and not the law firm or their merchant bank.
There are a lot of complex rules governing chargebacks, and it's nowhere near as simple as the rather foolish suggestion made by TPB folks implies. There are strict processing requirements from Visa/MC. Each merchant bank has their own rules around how they are handled. Each issuing bank has their own rules too.
have you ever had a merchant account? They list fee's right here:
Dude, I code the rules for this crap ;)
Here's some info that is generally accurate, even if missing citations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chargeback http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_account
I agree, but I thought we were talking about public broadcast radio...
We can use adblock (I do) so no matter how tasteless adverts are, it doesn't matter. If a site detects this and says "Hey, turn it off or go away" this is within their rights. We can then look at the adverts and -- if they are obnoxious -- we can go away.
My point is that the GP said they don't have the "right" to do this, and he's wrong. As the people who control the site, they have every right to do it. Just like we (as the people they want to retain) have every right to not use the web site if they abuse it.
That way they can stop wasting money on phrenology and similar pursuits, and start to really Catch Some Bad Guys.
Orrrr... the people who live there can stand up and say that enough is enough. Personally I'd suggest the latter, but humans are humans the world over -- so it's quite unlikely.
This was true a year or two ago, but I've seen a marked decrease in the number of ad-spam sites in my google search results - practically none these days. Either my search skills are somehow better than average (unlikely); or you're working off of outdated data.
They may have the right to show ads, as you say. But they have absolutely no right to demand that I view them.
As for Wired, well their site is a horrible, confusing mess even without their ads.
The hell they don't. You're visiting their web site hosted on their hardware, at their expense, and maintained with their time/money. If they turn around and say "Unblock or stop accessing", then that's perfectly within their "rights". And it's perfectly within /your/ rights to stop using the site in protest.
Erm... you have to post as yourself (non-AC) to undo your mod.
If they allow you to pay by credit card, it's costing them money. There's a minimum service fee to accept a credit card payment, and I can pretty much guarantee it's more than .13.
There's no minimum charge (that would be against Visa/MC regs) ; and whether or not there's a minimum service fee depends on which merchant bank they're using.
Still, they spend millions producing a product and then give it away. Yes, of course they make money selling something else -- it wouldn't be a business model if there wasn't a source of revenue. But the primary product they produce is given away for free, and it's been a successful business model for decades.
The primary products they produce are advertising slots. The secondary byproduct is the music -a nd even that is not wholly free unless your time is worth nothing.
Yep, I was just having a bit of fun. Historically though, they do not continue providing updates for betas and RCs once the final release is out. Nor should they be.
I know that wikipedia's not the most reliable source of information, but that's a pretty accurate description. Including the "theoretical" part.
. If I protect my interests by hiring mercenaries to shoot anyone who goes into my competitor's business that's the free market since I'm just protecting my interests against competitors?!?
That would just be murder, far as I know. How do you compare hiring mercenaries to shoot competitors to paying someone or offering discounts to not stock a product?
Please learn basic HTML for us lazy types. Thank you.
PTTL is your friend.
Or perhaps I should have said:
Check out PTTL: http://pttl.mozdev.org/
Edit: Gah! It auto-linked it for some reason.... ruined my joke.
As a user of the internet, I feel that there are already far too many unpatched Microsoft OS based Zombies lying in wait to do horrible things to people
You are basing this on what?! Oh, right, nothing..
Yeah, I can't imagine where he'd get such a wild and kooky idea as that one. Kids these days.