Don't they include the picture taken by the 'Red light cam'?? Can't you ID your own family members from a picture?
Yes, a photo or two of the back of the vehicle. We don't actually have the ridiculous magical CSI tech that can reconstruct the drivers face by compositing the partial reflections in one side mirror with a partial reflection in the sunglasses of a nearby pedestrian. And god forbid you have tinted windows, or be driving at night...
That's why, everywhere I've heard of, if you can show it was not you driving, they will go after the actual driver, and leave you alone.
The only acceptable way to 'show it was not you driving' is to identify the driver for them. (Which given the vantage point and quality of the photos is a dubious proposition.) First and foremost its not even something you should have to do if you don't want to. And secondly it amounts to a system of "guilty by default", where YOU get nailed unless YOU can find the real crook. What kind of justice system is that?
When I lived at home with my parents, at its peak there were 6 licensed drivers, and 3 cars. My parents borrowed eachothers cars regularly, and us 'kids' borrowed their cars all the time too. While WE could probably deduce who was driving on a given day at a given time provided we received TIMELY notice:
1) Photo Enforcement Tickets were typically NOT timely.
2) It is not our responsibility to rat out our own family on violations that are frequently little more than thinly veiled tax revenue. (How long before I'm expected to turn in my sister for riding a bike without a helmet?)
3) Holding the registered owner of the vehicle responsible for traffic infractions is efficient tax collection, but fundamentally unjust.
So no, it's not obvious to me that stealing from an individual is worse than stealing from a corporation.
Take 100,000 people; lets for the sake of argument suppose that they are all poor fixed income seniors living off dividend cheques from the corporation they own equal shares in.
Now, steal $1000 from one of those individuals; suddenly he can't pay his rent, or buy food, or refill a prescription. His best chance is to take out a loan, and try to pay it back $100 month over the next year; which would make a significant dent in his lifestyle.
Steal that same $1000 from the corporation; and what happens, their next dividend cheque reduced by 1 penny. The total dollar damage is the same but harm it causes is easily absorbed by the group. Its the difference between getting hit with book and a knife. The damage from the book is spread over a large surface area and you probably won't even bruise. Get hit with a knife at the same force but because the damage is concentrated to a point it can cut you deeply, even kill you.
Stealing from a megacorp is the equivalent of hitting with a book; the harm is spread thinly, and is therefor much easier to absorb. Steal from an individual, and like a knife, there is a good chance you'll seriously injure him.
No. Personally I'm not much enamored with google and other than search and maps I actively avoid the company. I don't use gmail, or their IM client, or read their News, or use Google Documents or Calender or their blogger, or myspace. I don't WANT any single entity to have that much information about me or anyone else. I value my privacy.
But that's not the point here.
When someone shows up, fresh from the board of a company - ESPECIALLY a small startup, and suddenly he's driving a substantial contract to that startup there is reasonable cause for suspicion of conflict of interest.
The sad part is, if you had Ubuntu, and you wanted to try out windows, it would have been an order of magnitude LESS clear what was going to happen in terms of partitions, your existing data, and your existing OS.
Would you have then binned windows and claimed that it clearly wasn't ready to be a desktop for the mass market? Would you have found much help to these dual boot questions in the Windows online help? or in the Windows for Dummies book? Its almost comical to even think about it!!
Dual booting OSes is inherently more complex, especially off a single hard disk that is ALREADY partitioned, especially with windows which is particularly bad at cohabitating with other OSes,...
You've set the bar for Linux mighty high...much higher than you've set even for Windows.
Seriously; give Ubuntu a try on equal footing. Toss in a 2nd hard drive, unplug your windows one to be absolutely sure it can't be affected, and install ubuntu just as you'd install windows; I think you'll find it surprisingly simple, easy, and friendly.
Later on you can plug the other HD back in and configure a boot loader to select OSes... or if you have a decent modern bios you can have it prompt you which drive to load from at the push of a key during the POST.
FWIW I concede that the complexities of dual booting are an obstacle to wider linux experimentation, but there is no easy way to resolve them.
Your looking at a system that's already got windows installed, an os that's fairly hostile to dual booting except when installed as an upgrade to a previous version of itself (and even then there are caveats). Not only that you've got pile of valuable data that must not be lost. And all available hard drive space is a already allocated to Windows... and then you cry foul when the Linux installation is a little bit complex; as it suggests resizing partitions and allocating itself some space without being absolutely clear that your data won't be lost (which is never an absolute guarantee when resizing partitions...)
But you want to know what would happen if you tried to install windows on a system fully allocated to Linux? It simply would tell you there was no room on the disk unless you erased and reformatted it. Cancel or Allow. Or press "L" to bring up the partition manager where you can create your own...although since it can't resize partitions, your down to deleting at least of of the linux partitions. (That's XP, although even Vista isn't much better.)
Figuring out just how many times the copyright was infringed would require a detailed analysis of Web server logs, going back to whenever the file was first posted. I could see where the RIAA could argue that it's neither fair nor reasonable to require that level of investigation for each and every track posted. Hence, some form of statutory damages might be appropriate.
The problem with the statute isn't that it specifies a minimum of $750.00; its that it specifies that minimum per *title*, in an era when infringing 1 title, 100 titles, or 10,000 titles requires the same trivial amount of effort. (Just as stealing 1 twinkie vs 100 twinkies.)
There is just no way a sharing a 4GB ipod worth of music via limewire should be a crime that carries an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM penalty of $150,000. (2000 songs x $750/song). That's just insane.
$750 would be a reasonable statutory damage for all the infringements taken together, and the RIAA is free to argue for higher damages and the courts are free to award higher damages if they feel its warranted; but right now the law dictates that the judge award $150,000. Its right in the statute.
If I were charged, I'd do my damnedest to get a jury trial, if for no other reason than the hope for jury nullification; the hope that no jury would convict knowing what the minimum sentence would be.
How does using this software to provide help to students and faculty constitute donating labor to a private company?
He as much as said his staff would be working on behalf of chacha but not to expect any payment from them for it.
How does having formerly served on the board of the company constitute a conflict of interest, glaring or otherwise?
He likely still has substantial stock options or even outright stock.
The fact that he was on the board until just recently doesn't PROVE he has a conflict of interest, but there are plenty of red flags here, enough to warrant an investigation and an independent review of whether or not this move really benefits the university and students.
Why is stealing from "a large company" any better than stealing from a family or small company?
Its plain as day that stealing the rent/food/medicine money from a fixed income senior causes more harm than taking the same amount from a wealthy multinational corporation. Surely anyone can see that.
That doesn't make stealing from wealthy corporations ok, but from a harm perspective there is an obvious difference.
I have no sympathy for anyone claiming they had to steal for food. That's a bullshit excuse to justify immoral behavior.
Stealing for food is immoral but its less immoral than allowing someone to starve.
Two TVs. And two MythTV boxes (or Tivos). Separate blogs, calendars, and email addresses. Share a gold fish.
That's not advice for someone getting married, that's advice for people who shouldn't get married.
Women remember exactly which position it was in last time, and subconsciously believe it to still be in that position.
Grow up and take responsibility for ensuring the toilet is configured to your needs before sitting on it. And as someone who has kids there are actually FOUR states for the toilet:
seat up
seat down
lid down
lid down and toys on lid (you think a little cold splash is bad...try taking an action figure in the ass)
So check before you sit, its not rocket science. And as for that 'late night groggy bathroom trip' come on -- if someone left the bathroom door closed would you do a face plant into it because you recalled that it was open once upon a time? And if you do, then seriously, that's YOUR problem, and YOU need to work on that.
I feel pretty strongly about making this charity because I can totally see people who wouldn't ebay gold to step up and donate to help the poor and needy of the world.
Right because people who don't cheat in World of Warcraft are going step up and cheat because now they can contribute to ruining the economy, or at the very least can break the rules of the game, for a good cause.
And better still, they get to support 'playerauctions.com' which is pretty much the poster child for the very gold-farming scum they despise.
What's your next brainchild? Meth4Food? A charity where people can donate meth to be sold to addicts by organized criminals for a handling fee, with the rest of the proceeds going to charity; in exchange you get a tax credit in the value of your donation. Then you can say "I'm going run a meth lab for the benefit of humanity while also saving money on my income taxes!"
Ok, so your Warcraft version doesn't break any laws, just the rules of the game. But its pretty much the same idea in terms of boneheaded.
Seriously? The Titanic? You realize the Titanic was considered unsinkable precisely BECAUSE it had redundancy (double bottom), other 'state of the art' technology, and went beyond the standard for lifeboats. (Even though there were not enough, yes, it was more than the standards called for.)
The ONLY lesson that could be learned from the titanic is that NOTHING is invincible/unsinkable/indestructible.
Seems kind of ridiculous. I've thought of playing WoW, and liked my Shadowknight in EQ, and Reaver in DaoC -- "Death Knight" sounds like the class I'd actually be most interested in...
Now I can see that old players might not want to level up a new one from scratch and I don't mind that they can get a 60th level character for doing a quest with their 80th level one... but at the same time... I don't see why I shouldn't be able to play one up from level 1 if I wanted to.
Really? Why exactly? What is the 'scam potential' here?
I agree that ebay has tightened up policies over the last few years, and in particular now warns and even prohibits you from buying something via a direct offer from another ebay user, because "then you aren't covered by ebay's policies and fraud protection' etc (although the real reason its against the rules is because it cuts ebay out of their listing fees).
In the early days it was common for someone to auction an item they had multiples of and then follow up by contacting non-winning bidders with additional offers -- precisely because it makes good business sense. The people who lost an auction for something were interested in buying it from you so if you've got more why not offer to sell them? Of course ebay couldn't stand for that because it cuts them out of the loop on those items, and they make it sound like a 'scam activity' now, but that's total bullshit. (As proof that its just ebay looking out for ebay consider that they recommend you create a limited buy-it-now auction that only the one person can bid on in this situation. They aren't against you conducting one-to-one transactions -- as long as you pay the listing/closing fees.)
And frankly, if you are buying something online from an individual, whether its on ebay, or not, and its up in the several hundreds to thousands of dollars, and you have the slighest bit of doubt then just use a reputable escrow service. I always ask if escrow is available through mutually acceptable company like zzzz and when selling I always advise that escrow transactions are welcome. Escrow mitigates any risk, and I find you can dodge most ebay scams simply by asking whether you can use a reputable escrow company, even if you don't ultimately use it -- if they answer no, that's a red flag.
I've ended up winning several purchases I no longer wanted for various reasons, and there are a number of partial solutions, which sellers in my experience have been quite agreeable to.
As many of these purchases are very small and shipping is the dominant cost, I just pay the purchase price and advise the seller I have no interest in taking delivery. He can toss it in the trash, or much more likely -
In the case of a larger item that I once won, I negotiated with the 2nd place winner to pay the difference between his bid and mine, and have the shipper send it to him instead.
e.g. if the bids are:
Me: 1000 X: 980 Y: 950
Then the auction will end for me at 985 (or whatever the automatic increase is). So I got in touch with X, and offered it to him at 955+shipping (enough to outbid Y, which is what he'd have gotten it for if I hadn't bid). He agreed, I forwarded the 955+shipping from X + $45 to give the seller their full due, and had him ship directly to X.
Everybody won; X got a decent deal, seller got a decent deal, I got out of a $1000 transaction for $45 bucks (less than the cost of shipping), and while its probably against half a dozen ebay policies they still got their listing fees, and percentage so they got their cut.
And FWIW, to make it strictly within ebay policies isn't even that hard. I just pay the seller off and have him hold off on shipping. Then I re-list the item, get what I can get for it, and have the seller ship to the new winner. I end up paying only the difference between the two auctions; and possibly even make a few bucks.
Of course, all this stuff requires a reasonable and decent seller; but I'm pretty good about identifying those before I make bids. Of course, worst case, you can always take possession of the item, and then resell it to recoup your costs, but the biggest winners then are the courier services.
After all somebody has to establish a crime was actually committed! Simply having a camcorder in the movie theatre isn't illegal, although it might be against theatre policy, but that is a separate issue and not police business.
Well she could show them. She only has a *20 second* clip of near the end, that doesn't even go all the way to the end, after all.
Seriously, unless you think someone is going to argue its a grand conspiracy to get 1000 kids to each record a different 20 second clip minute, and then splice it all together into a completed movie for torrent release, this is a ridiculous case.
Its telling to note that those UK citizens arrested in Afghanistan (iirc) and shipped to Guantanamo were denied their rights in any country. Granted that they were not actually in the US at any point - but they were under US jurisdiction for the entire time and they were all declared not to be POWs. They (along with all the other 'detainees') were deliberately put in limbo where they had no rights, and subjected to what most reasonable people would agree is torture.
For what its worth I think it actually IS illegal, but any chance of actually prosecuting anyone involved is nil. Between firing prosecutors who aren't Bushies, hiding everything behind the impenetrable shroud of national security and the fact that Bush will ignore rulings, commute sentences or pardon anyone who still manages to get convicted makes it a pretty much moot point.
"National Security" is an area where the checks and balances just don't work; because it trumps everyone else and shuts down any line of inquiry. If an administration has the will (or the gall) to misuse that power there simply is no proper recourse.
(And although I think the Bush administration is awful, they aren't the first to abuse national security and they won't be the last; they are merely the most recent (and at least among the most blatant). At any rate its not a republican vs democrat issue. Give anyone that power and you'll see it abused.
but i know for a fact a certain cellphone provider here banks on this as their margin inflator.
I don't see how. If you bring something to their attention during the 90 days, and they give you a run around that extends beyond it, that doesn't change the fact that you brought it to their attention during the 90 days.
You obviously don't steal many Twinkies (or at least you don't often get bust for it).
Apparently neither do you.
If people just get fined retail value when they steal something, then there is no punitive/discouragement factor.
You are absolutely correct. A punishment component is both reasonable and required.
So for stealing a twinkie, $1.00 for the twinkie and $750 punitive fine is a perfectly reasonable judgement. However, if you stole a case of 100 twinkies instead of just one, what should your penalty be then? Would it be say, a single conviction, with a judgement of $100 for the twinkies plus $750 punitive fine or maybe even $800 or $900 in punitive damages? That seems fair to me.
Or would it be 100 convictions, each with a separate fine of $1 + $750 resulting in a $75,000 fine for stealing 100 twinkies.
THAT is how copyright infringement penalties works. There is a statutory $750 fine for each work that is infringed. The courts can't lower that amount, that minimum is right in the law.
There needs to be some sort of punitive damages to discourage further activity. $750 per song is probably a bit steep, but charging any reasonable flat rate per song is probably a crazy way to address the issue. Perhaps they should fine $1 per song plus some punitive damages ($500 for up to 10 songs, $1000 for more).
Yes. But their isn't, and the courts can't apply that scale even if they wanted to. The law requires that they be charged $750 per title infringed. Of course the RIAA is willing to 'settle' for far less... their 'good guys' after all.
But in the final analysis, a law that requires $375,000 in punitive damages for putting a few dozen cds on a web server, when the songs can be bought on itunes for $1 each is massively excessive, and that excessiveness can render it unconstitutional.
Wasn't this search voluntary? As in: I want to go to this movie badly enough that I will subject myself to this search.
Won't that be great? When every where we go we can expect to be searched by ever more invasive techniques? Until one day in order to buy a pack of gum at the Quik-E-Mart you have to provide 3 pieces of ID, authorize a credit evalutation, and get padded down by Brutus -- And you can't complain... you don't have to shop there, its totally voluntary.
And besides it beats the cavity search and drug screening they do across the street at WalMart for the same pack.
And we won't even get into the samples you have to provide the DMV to renew your drivers license... but hey you do it voluntarily, as in "you want to drive a car instead of take transit or hire cabs or walk or ride a bike badly enough that you will subject yourself to this search."
Slashdot Mirror
Don't they include the picture taken by the 'Red light cam'?? Can't you ID your own family members from a picture?
Yes, a photo or two of the back of the vehicle. We don't actually have the ridiculous magical CSI tech that can reconstruct the drivers face by compositing the partial reflections in one side mirror with a partial reflection in the sunglasses of a nearby pedestrian. And god forbid you have tinted windows, or be driving at night...
That's why, everywhere I've heard of, if you can show it was not you driving, they will go after the actual driver, and leave you alone.
The only acceptable way to 'show it was not you driving' is to identify the driver for them. (Which given the vantage point and quality of the photos is a dubious proposition.) First and foremost its not even something you should have to do if you don't want to. And secondly it amounts to a system of "guilty by default", where YOU get nailed unless YOU can find the real crook. What kind of justice system is that?
Same difference I would think.
When I lived at home with my parents, at its peak there were 6 licensed drivers, and 3 cars. My parents borrowed eachothers cars regularly, and us 'kids' borrowed their cars all the time too. While WE could probably deduce who was driving on a given day at a given time provided we received TIMELY notice:
1) Photo Enforcement Tickets were typically NOT timely.
2) It is not our responsibility to rat out our own family on violations that are frequently little more than thinly veiled tax revenue. (How long before I'm expected to turn in my sister for riding a bike without a helmet?)
3) Holding the registered owner of the vehicle responsible for traffic infractions is efficient tax collection, but fundamentally unjust.
So guess who the onus is on?
You.
The onus is on you to provide a disk with space on it if you don't want to worry about any impact on your existing installed system.
So no, it's not obvious to me that stealing from an individual is worse than stealing from a corporation.
Take 100,000 people; lets for the sake of argument suppose that they are all poor fixed income seniors living off dividend cheques from the corporation they own equal shares in.
Now, steal $1000 from one of those individuals; suddenly he can't pay his rent, or buy food, or refill a prescription. His best chance is to take out a loan, and try to pay it back $100 month over the next year; which would make a significant dent in his lifestyle.
Steal that same $1000 from the corporation; and what happens, their next dividend cheque reduced by 1 penny. The total dollar damage is the same but harm it causes is easily absorbed by the group. Its the difference between getting hit with book and a knife. The damage from the book is spread over a large surface area and you probably won't even bruise. Get hit with a knife at the same force but because the damage is concentrated to a point it can cut you deeply, even kill you.
Stealing from a megacorp is the equivalent of hitting with a book; the harm is spread thinly, and is therefor much easier to absorb. Steal from an individual, and like a knife, there is a good chance you'll seriously injure him.
No. Personally I'm not much enamored with google and other than search and maps I actively avoid the company. I don't use gmail, or their IM client, or read their News, or use Google Documents or Calender or their blogger, or myspace. I don't WANT any single entity to have that much information about me or anyone else. I value my privacy.
But that's not the point here.
When someone shows up, fresh from the board of a company - ESPECIALLY a small startup, and suddenly he's driving a substantial contract to that startup there is reasonable cause for suspicion of conflict of interest.
The sad part is, if you had Ubuntu, and you wanted to try out windows, it would have been an order of magnitude LESS clear what was going to happen in terms of partitions, your existing data, and your existing OS.
...
Would you have then binned windows and claimed that it clearly wasn't ready to be a desktop for the mass market? Would you have found much help to these dual boot questions in the Windows online help? or in the Windows for Dummies book? Its almost comical to even think about it!!
Dual booting OSes is inherently more complex, especially off a single hard disk that is ALREADY partitioned, especially with windows which is particularly bad at cohabitating with other OSes,
You've set the bar for Linux mighty high...much higher than you've set even for Windows.
Seriously; give Ubuntu a try on equal footing. Toss in a 2nd hard drive, unplug your windows one to be absolutely sure it can't be affected, and install ubuntu just as you'd install windows; I think you'll find it surprisingly simple, easy, and friendly.
Later on you can plug the other HD back in and configure a boot loader to select OSes... or if you have a decent modern bios you can have it prompt you which drive to load from at the push of a key during the POST.
FWIW I concede that the complexities of dual booting are an obstacle to wider linux experimentation, but there is no easy way to resolve them.
Your looking at a system that's already got windows installed, an os that's fairly hostile to dual booting except when installed as an upgrade to a previous version of itself (and even then there are caveats). Not only that you've got pile of valuable data that must not be lost. And all available hard drive space is a already allocated to Windows... and then you cry foul when the Linux installation is a little bit complex; as it suggests resizing partitions and allocating itself some space without being absolutely clear that your data won't be lost (which is never an absolute guarantee when resizing partitions...)
But you want to know what would happen if you tried to install windows on a system fully allocated to Linux? It simply would tell you there was no room on the disk unless you erased and reformatted it. Cancel or Allow. Or press "L" to bring up the partition manager where you can create your own...although since it can't resize partitions, your down to deleting at least of of the linux partitions. (That's XP, although even Vista isn't much better.)
You tell me which OS deserves to be binned!
Figuring out just how many times the copyright was infringed would require a detailed analysis of Web server logs, going back to whenever the file was first posted. I could see where the RIAA could argue that it's neither fair nor reasonable to require that level of investigation for each and every track posted. Hence, some form of statutory damages might be appropriate.
The problem with the statute isn't that it specifies a minimum of $750.00; its that it specifies that minimum per *title*, in an era when infringing 1 title, 100 titles, or 10,000 titles requires the same trivial amount of effort. (Just as stealing 1 twinkie vs 100 twinkies.)
There is just no way a sharing a 4GB ipod worth of music via limewire should be a crime that carries an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM penalty of $150,000. (2000 songs x $750/song). That's just insane.
$750 would be a reasonable statutory damage for all the infringements taken together, and the RIAA is free to argue for higher damages and the courts are free to award higher damages if they feel its warranted; but right now the law dictates that the judge award $150,000. Its right in the statute.
If I were charged, I'd do my damnedest to get a jury trial, if for no other reason than the hope for jury nullification; the hope that no jury would convict knowing what the minimum sentence would be.
How does using this software to provide help to students and faculty constitute donating labor to a private company?
He as much as said his staff would be working on behalf of chacha but not to expect any payment from them for it.
How does having formerly served on the board of the company constitute a conflict of interest, glaring or otherwise?
He likely still has substantial stock options or even outright stock.
The fact that he was on the board until just recently doesn't PROVE he has a conflict of interest, but there are plenty of red flags here, enough to warrant an investigation and an independent review of whether or not this move really benefits the university and students.
Why is stealing from "a large company" any better than stealing from a family or small company?
Its plain as day that stealing the rent/food/medicine money from a fixed income senior causes more harm than taking the same amount from a wealthy multinational corporation. Surely anyone can see that.
That doesn't make stealing from wealthy corporations ok, but from a harm perspective there is an obvious difference.
I have no sympathy for anyone claiming they had to steal for food. That's a bullshit excuse to justify immoral behavior.
Stealing for food is immoral but its less immoral than allowing someone to starve.
Two TVs. And two MythTV boxes (or Tivos). Separate blogs, calendars, and email addresses. Share a gold fish.
That's not advice for someone getting married, that's advice for people who shouldn't get married.
Women remember exactly which position it was in last time, and subconsciously believe it to still be in that position.
Grow up and take responsibility for ensuring the toilet is configured to your needs before sitting on it. And as someone who has kids there are actually FOUR states for the toilet:
seat up
seat down
lid down
lid down and toys on lid (you think a little cold splash is bad...try taking an action figure in the ass)
So check before you sit, its not rocket science. And as for that 'late night groggy bathroom trip' come on -- if someone left the bathroom door closed would you do a face plant into it because you recalled that it was open once upon a time? And if you do, then seriously, that's YOUR problem, and YOU need to work on that.
I feel pretty strongly about making this charity because I can totally see people who wouldn't ebay gold to step up and donate to help the poor and needy of the world.
Right because people who don't cheat in World of Warcraft are going step up and cheat because now they can contribute to ruining the economy, or at the very least can break the rules of the game, for a good cause.
And better still, they get to support 'playerauctions.com' which is pretty much the poster child for the very gold-farming scum they despise.
What's your next brainchild? Meth4Food? A charity where people can donate meth to be sold to addicts by organized criminals for a handling fee, with the rest of the proceeds going to charity; in exchange you get a tax credit in the value of your donation. Then you can say "I'm going run a meth lab for the benefit of humanity while also saving money on my income taxes!"
Ok, so your Warcraft version doesn't break any laws, just the rules of the game. But its pretty much the same idea in terms of boneheaded.
Get over it.
*All* software licenses are morality tales.
Whether its released into the public domain, the GPL, the BSD, or under a proprietary license.
Lets see the Titanic sank in 1912.
Seriously? The Titanic? You realize the Titanic was considered unsinkable precisely BECAUSE it had redundancy (double bottom), other 'state of the art' technology, and went beyond the standard for lifeboats. (Even though there were not enough, yes, it was more than the standards called for.)
The ONLY lesson that could be learned from the titanic is that NOTHING is invincible/unsinkable/indestructible.
Great idea, except that everything hacker might do "(as long as it is not a crime)" is rapidly becoming a very short list.
Seems kind of ridiculous. I've thought of playing WoW, and liked my Shadowknight in EQ, and Reaver in DaoC -- "Death Knight" sounds like the class I'd actually be most interested in...
Now I can see that old players might not want to level up a new one from scratch and I don't mind that they can get a 60th level character for doing a quest with their 80th level one... but at the same time... I don't see why I shouldn't be able to play one up from level 1 if I wanted to.
Really? Why exactly? What is the 'scam potential' here?
I agree that ebay has tightened up policies over the last few years, and in particular now warns and even prohibits you from buying something via a direct offer from another ebay user, because "then you aren't covered by ebay's policies and fraud protection' etc (although the real reason its against the rules is because it cuts ebay out of their listing fees).
In the early days it was common for someone to auction an item they had multiples of and then follow up by contacting non-winning bidders with additional offers -- precisely because it makes good business sense. The people who lost an auction for something were interested in buying it from you so if you've got more why not offer to sell them? Of course ebay couldn't stand for that because it cuts them out of the loop on those items, and they make it sound like a 'scam activity' now, but that's total bullshit. (As proof that its just ebay looking out for ebay consider that they recommend you create a limited buy-it-now auction that only the one person can bid on in this situation. They aren't against you conducting one-to-one transactions -- as long as you pay the listing/closing fees.)
And frankly, if you are buying something online from an individual, whether its on ebay, or not, and its up in the several hundreds to thousands of dollars, and you have the slighest bit of doubt then just use a reputable escrow service. I always ask if escrow is available through mutually acceptable company like zzzz and when selling I always advise that escrow transactions are welcome. Escrow mitigates any risk, and I find you can dodge most ebay scams simply by asking whether you can use a reputable escrow company, even if you don't ultimately use it -- if they answer no, that's a red flag.
I've ended up winning several purchases I no longer wanted for various reasons, and there are a number of partial solutions, which sellers in my experience have been quite agreeable to.
As many of these purchases are very small and shipping is the dominant cost, I just pay the purchase price and advise the seller I have no interest in taking delivery. He can toss it in the trash, or much more likely -
In the case of a larger item that I once won, I negotiated with the 2nd place winner to pay the difference between his bid and mine, and have the shipper send it to him instead.
e.g. if the bids are:
Me: 1000
X: 980
Y: 950
Then the auction will end for me at 985 (or whatever the automatic increase is). So I got in touch with X, and offered it to him at 955+shipping (enough to outbid Y, which is what he'd have gotten it for if I hadn't bid). He agreed, I forwarded the 955+shipping from X + $45 to give the seller their full due, and had him ship directly to X.
Everybody won; X got a decent deal, seller got a decent deal, I got out of a $1000 transaction for $45 bucks (less than the cost of shipping), and while its probably against half a dozen ebay policies they still got their listing fees, and percentage so they got their cut.
And FWIW, to make it strictly within ebay policies isn't even that hard. I just pay the seller off and have him hold off on shipping. Then I re-list the item, get what I can get for it, and have the seller ship to the new winner. I end up paying only the difference between the two auctions; and possibly even make a few bucks.
Of course, all this stuff requires a reasonable and decent seller; but I'm pretty good about identifying those before I make bids. Of course, worst case, you can always take possession of the item, and then resell it to recoup your costs, but the biggest winners then are the courier services.
After all somebody has to establish a crime was actually committed! Simply having a camcorder in the movie theatre isn't illegal, although it might be against theatre policy, but that is a separate issue and not police business.
"Why should they believe her?"
Well she could show them. She only has a *20 second* clip of near the end, that doesn't even go all the way to the end, after all.
Seriously, unless you think someone is going to argue its a grand conspiracy to get 1000 kids to each record a different 20 second clip minute, and then splice it all together into a completed movie for torrent release, this is a ridiculous case.
Its telling to note that those UK citizens arrested in Afghanistan (iirc) and shipped to Guantanamo were denied their rights in any country. Granted that they were not actually in the US at any point - but they were under US jurisdiction for the entire time and they were all declared not to be POWs. They (along with all the other 'detainees') were deliberately put in limbo where they had no rights, and subjected to what most reasonable people would agree is torture.
For what its worth I think it actually IS illegal, but any chance of actually prosecuting anyone involved is nil. Between firing prosecutors who aren't Bushies, hiding everything behind the impenetrable shroud of national security and the fact that Bush will ignore rulings, commute sentences or pardon anyone who still manages to get convicted makes it a pretty much moot point.
"National Security" is an area where the checks and balances just don't work; because it trumps everyone else and shuts down any line of inquiry. If an administration has the will (or the gall) to misuse that power there simply is no proper recourse.
(And although I think the Bush administration is awful, they aren't the first to abuse national security and they won't be the last; they are merely the most recent (and at least among the most blatant). At any rate its not a republican vs democrat issue. Give anyone that power and you'll see it abused.
This is why you always ask for case numbers, ticket numbers, names, etc when you deal with this sort of thing.
BROUGHT TO THEIR ATTENTION DURING THE 90 DAYS
but i know for a fact a certain cellphone provider here banks on this as their margin inflator.
I don't see how. If you bring something to their attention during the 90 days, and they give you a run around that extends beyond it, that doesn't change the fact that you brought it to their attention during the 90 days.
Anyone ever played R-Type...
:)
R-Type on the Wii Virtual Console is one of the reasons I bought the Wii.
You obviously don't steal many Twinkies (or at least you don't often get bust for it).
Apparently neither do you.
If people just get fined retail value when they steal something, then there is no punitive/discouragement factor.
You are absolutely correct. A punishment component is both reasonable and required.
So for stealing a twinkie, $1.00 for the twinkie and $750 punitive fine is a perfectly reasonable judgement. However, if you stole a case of 100 twinkies instead of just one, what should your penalty be then? Would it be say, a single conviction, with a judgement of $100 for the twinkies plus $750 punitive fine or maybe even $800 or $900 in punitive damages? That seems fair to me.
Or would it be 100 convictions, each with a separate fine of $1 + $750 resulting in a $75,000 fine for stealing 100 twinkies.
THAT is how copyright infringement penalties works. There is a statutory $750 fine for each work that is infringed. The courts can't lower that amount, that minimum is right in the law.
There needs to be some sort of punitive damages to discourage further activity. $750 per song is probably a bit steep, but charging any reasonable flat rate per song is probably a crazy way to address the issue. Perhaps they should fine $1 per song plus some punitive damages ($500 for up to 10 songs, $1000 for more).
Yes. But their isn't, and the courts can't apply that scale even if they wanted to. The law requires that they be charged $750 per title infringed. Of course the RIAA is willing to 'settle' for far less... their 'good guys' after all.
But in the final analysis, a law that requires $375,000 in punitive damages for putting a few dozen cds on a web server, when the songs can be bought on itunes for $1 each is massively excessive, and that excessiveness can render it unconstitutional.
Wasn't this search voluntary? As in: I want to go to this movie badly enough that I will subject myself to this search.
Won't that be great? When every where we go we can expect to be searched by ever more invasive techniques? Until one day in order to buy a pack of gum at the Quik-E-Mart you have to provide 3 pieces of ID, authorize a credit evalutation, and get padded down by Brutus -- And you can't complain... you don't have to shop there, its totally voluntary.
And besides it beats the cavity search and drug screening they do across the street at WalMart for the same pack.
And we won't even get into the samples you have to provide the DMV to renew your drivers license... but hey you do it voluntarily, as in "you want to drive a car instead of take transit or hire cabs or walk or ride a bike badly enough that you will subject yourself to this search."
No, I can't see any holes in that logic.