even if they did buy it at a police auction, the hard drive should have been wiped. They most certainly dont own the licenses for any software on the machine. And the evidence for any prosecution should not be available to open bidding (no matter how much I like open markets).
They may not have directly paid the police for it, but they most certainly contributed money to a number of campaigns and/or organizations. How else do you think they got the laptop?
somebody in my office got sick of watching the commercials trying to buy and sell gold on msnbc and decided to see how much money you would lose if you were to use the advertised services to buy and sell back gold
"At the time we ordered, I believe gold was about $930 an ounce so our coin was worth $93.
For the privilege of participating in this investment opportunity 866-MINT-GOLD charged us only $125.
Unfortunately, they had only one shipping/insurance option, that was and additional $31 for $156 total.
The good people at cash4gold.com wouldn't dream of taking more than what they so richly deserve for their hard work and returned us nearly all of the $93 the coin was actually worth. They wrote us a check for $19.49.
We lost $136.51...on a coin worth $93."
just in case there were any questions about details like that.
they are also probably a bit worried about having photos labeled Burning man 2009 of people doing massive amounts of drugs in the middle of the dessert.
But that is what happens when you have people reviewing patents with no insight into the technology behind them. And when you have courts ruling on systems that they do not understand.
If they make the cost of entry high enough they kill competition. Then they don't need to worry about their business models. Which in turn gives credence to their claims that the music business would die if you do not support their ridiculous attempts at IP enforcement.
that the reason amazon deleted the books because they did not have the proper rights to sell them. As I believe this to be the case, the correct analog would be if you had purchased stolen property, and the stolen property was recovered for the proper owner.
I agree that copyright is anti-property(based on "The license is like a parody of a contract .."), however I do not like the analogy of somebody showing up at the door with gasoline to burn the book. Given that if a police officer arrived at your door to tell you that a copy of something you had purchased had been an illegal copy most people would not laugh and would be willing to turn over their copy.
how are consumers supposed to evaluate credibility?
"In my opinion, the only real "solution" to fake consumer reviews is to teach consumers proper techniques for searching for information and evaluating the credibility of the information they consume"
This isn't one of the cases where somebody let an automated tool post positive reviews repeatedly. Without verification of people's identities it is impossible to distinguish between a bad actor on a review site and a legitimately happy customer. If people are sitting down and writing reviews how can you differentiate between claims without evidence which would undoubtedly be personal.
You can claim that the review sites could be filtering IP addresses, but as it has been pointed out here and elsewhere that is not an entirely game resistant method. If people are spending time to promote themselves on a forum and aren't mass copy and pasting reviews, I dont see a clear way to differentiate. A proverbial pissing contest between two sides of an argument could arise and inevitably no system will be perfect.
Not to mention, through clever wordplay the reviews could be entirely positive and be phrased from the doctors point of view, despite being representing a client's perspective. Examples a doctor could say without lying (or being clever) at all... "my experiences at xyz have been entirely positive", "I was very happy with the outcome of the surgery", "I thought the entire procedure was painless."
I don't know. I feel like this issue is a lot more difficult than Goldman claims.
they are calling it the chrome OS, but its based on both chrome and android. Its a linux based os that utilizes the browser for most of the typical usage of the computer.
I dont know what version of chrome you were using that was buggy, I havent really had many complaints in the last 6 months. But they are optimizing chrome around the google tools. Namely all the ones that just yesterday took away the beta tag.
My assumption, is that they will be utilizing their gears functionality, to provide access to the entire suite of google tools offline. While also providing local storage for all data, with online syncing to various google services for all the data stored on the device. So any pictures you have on your computer will be stored in picassa both locally and on google servers, all your email will be stored locally and on gmail servers, all your docs, spreadsheets, and pdfs will be stored locally and on google servers. Thus giving an integrated cloud computing and local service.
The reason they are probably using the chrome moniker is that it will be sleek and minimilistic. Chrome has stayed away from being bloated by allowing its javascript engine to be highly optimized.
Without all the track listings the lawsuit shrinks down to a readable length. And a large portion of those tracks are from a few specific artists. John McCutcheon seems to be a large percentage of them himself. It also looks like a lot of repetition saying the same thing for various different albums and rights holders.
But really, Ive gotta say this is probably the fault of whoever sold the rights to microsoft, real and yahoo failing to mention that certain songs in their catalogs had separate rights they needed to procure. Or its possible that it is the fault of these artists for being unreachable when the various entities tried to reach them (as the record industry often claims is the case when it owes artists money). Or I suppose it is possible that these stores with massive catalogs made minor clerical errors and failed to obtain proper rights for less than 1 percent of their respective libraries.
I hope everybody loses and that they have to pay out 80,000 dollars per download.
I think that commentary on the issue is unintentionally funny. In comparison to Mike's solution of changing the timing on lights you address the economic situation in the area as a time in traffic concern.
Obviously there is an ideal way to time lights for economic advantage, such that the least time is wasted and the least accidents occur. But to do that you would need to take into account a very gray number of what percentage of people do not follow the law. And unfortunately the best way to get that number might actually be to have a camera sitting at every light and simply monitoring who runs yellow and red lights. I think it's a bit of a catch-22, but somebody else may see things differently.
As with all services, if you hassle with customer service for long enough you can get better deals.
Ive been going without cable for the past three months (I would rather read books). But every two weeks comcast sends me a better deal. Its rather comical actually, so far the progression has gone from an offer for triple play($100), then a discounted triple play($90), then an offer for double play($70), then a discounted double play offer($60) which was then followed by a discounted double play offer($60) that lasts 12 months instead of 6.
Gotta love how they treat their potential customers.
Also, I was led to believe by somebody else that prices vary by region, so its possible that promotional materials also vary. Another thing I heard, from somebody who spent nearly two hours dealing with customer service, is that you can generally get the deals extended to up to two years if you hassle them long enough, and, if you call to cancel your service when your deal has worn off you can usually sign up for the same deal again.
In case of service failures (depending on type of failure) you can usually receive a credit on your account. In the case of repeated missed appointments at the fault of comcast repair crews you can usually get them to give you whatever free movie channel deal they are tacking on to the preferred package at that moment.
Sorry for the long post, just thought Id share, given that comcast has a monopoly might as well try and squeeze them for any dime they are willing to part with.
As with all services, if you hassle with customer service for long enough you can get better deals.
Ive been going without cable for the past three months (I would rather read books). But every two weeks comcast sends me a better deal. Its rather comical actually, so far the progression has gone from an offer for triple play($100), then a discounted triple play($90), then an offer for double play($70), then a discounted double play offer($60) which was then followed by a discounted double play offer($60) that lasts 12 months instead of 6.
Gotta love how they treat their potential customers.
Also, I was led to believe by somebody else that prices vary by region, so its possible that promotional materials also vary. Another thing I heard, from somebody who spent nearly two hours dealing with customer service, is that you can generally get the deals extended to up to two years if you hassle them long enough, and, if you call to cancel your service when your deal has worn off you can usually sign up for the same deal again.
In case of service failures (depending on type of failure) you can usually receive a credit on your account. In the case of repeated missed appointments at the fault of comcast repair crews you can usually get them to give you whatever free movie channel deal they are tacking on to the preferred package at that moment.
Sorry for the long post, just thought Id share, given that comcast has a monopoly might as well try and squeeze them for any dime they are willing to part with.
from the microsoft commercials with the four year old claiming to be a pc. Has anybody ever bothered to read TOS. On the other side of the coin havent judges found them to be not enforceable because it is assumed that people arent reading them because they are too long and can change without warning.
Then again, how do you expect somebody to provide a service if there isnt any way for them to enter into a binding contract with the user. Internet law really needs to be rewritten, and lawyers need to have nothing to do with it, because making everything excessively verbose for the sake of making it unintelligable to plebeians is no longer a reasonable way to approach law.
When the only people signing contracts were the top 1% of society it made sense to have contracts that were verbose for the sake of clarity, specificity and enforceability. But the system as it exists now, is utterly ridiculous.
On the post: What Happened To 'If You Didn't Pay For It, It's Stealing'?
Re: Geez Louise
On the post: What Happened To 'If You Didn't Pay For It, It's Stealing'?
surprised nobody has pointed out the obvious
They may not have directly paid the police for it, but they most certainly contributed money to a number of campaigns and/or organizations. How else do you think they got the laptop?
On the post: Cash4Gold Sues Consumerist, Complaints Board Over Reports On Cash4Gold Practices
cash for gold
"At the time we ordered, I believe gold was about $930 an ounce so our coin was worth $93.
For the privilege of participating in this investment opportunity 866-MINT-GOLD charged us only $125.
Unfortunately, they had only one shipping/insurance option, that was and additional $31 for $156 total.
The good people at cash4gold.com wouldn't dream of taking more than what they so richly deserve for their hard work and returned us nearly all of the $93 the coin was actually worth. They wrote us a check for $19.49.
We lost $136.51...on a coin worth $93."
just in case there were any questions about details like that.
On the post: Italian Newspapers Get Gov't To Investigate Google For Not Sharing Ranking Secret Sauce
to be fair,
On the post: Burning Man's Copyright Grab
gonna go ahead and say
On the post: Judge Bars Sale Of Microsoft Word For Patent Infringement (Though It Won't Stick)
None of this makes sense
On the post: Rep. Lofgren: A Real Antitrust Issue That Needs Scrutiny Is Copyright
Re:
On the post: Is Apple Suggesting That The DMCA Prevents Terrorism?
given the current state of affairs with lawsuits
no matter how ridiculous it is, it is the situation that they are trying to defend against.
On the post: Trainwreck From Team Tenenbaum
On the post: Congrats, RIAA: Chilling Effects Have Killed Interest In New Digital Music Startups
wasnt that their plan from the start
On the post: The Fact That A Credit Card Is Patented Is A Selling Point?
american express black card
On the post: How Copyright Can Be Viewed As Anti-Property
I believe ...
I agree that copyright is anti-property(based on "The license is like a parody of a contract .."), however I do not like the analogy of somebody showing up at the door with gasoline to burn the book. Given that if a police officer arrived at your door to tell you that a copy of something you had purchased had been an illegal copy most people would not laugh and would be willing to turn over their copy.
On the post: Cosmetic Surgery Company 'Fesses Up To Widespread Campaign Of Fake Reviews; Pays Fine
how are consumers supposed to evaluate credibility?
This isn't one of the cases where somebody let an automated tool post positive reviews repeatedly. Without verification of people's identities it is impossible to distinguish between a bad actor on a review site and a legitimately happy customer. If people are sitting down and writing reviews how can you differentiate between claims without evidence which would undoubtedly be personal.
You can claim that the review sites could be filtering IP addresses, but as it has been pointed out here and elsewhere that is not an entirely game resistant method. If people are spending time to promote themselves on a forum and aren't mass copy and pasting reviews, I dont see a clear way to differentiate. A proverbial pissing contest between two sides of an argument could arise and inevitably no system will be perfect.
Not to mention, through clever wordplay the reviews could be entirely positive and be phrased from the doctors point of view, despite being representing a client's perspective. Examples a doctor could say without lying (or being clever) at all... "my experiences at xyz have been entirely positive", "I was very happy with the outcome of the surgery", "I thought the entire procedure was painless."
I don't know. I feel like this issue is a lot more difficult than Goldman claims.
On the post: Irish Politician: Data Retention Is Good If You Have Nothing To Hide... But Don't Ask For My Data
duh
On the post: Why Is Google Turning Chrome Into An Operating System?
I dont think you are reading into it enough,
I dont know what version of chrome you were using that was buggy, I havent really had many complaints in the last 6 months. But they are optimizing chrome around the google tools. Namely all the ones that just yesterday took away the beta tag.
My assumption, is that they will be utilizing their gears functionality, to provide access to the entire suite of google tools offline. While also providing local storage for all data, with online syncing to various google services for all the data stored on the device. So any pictures you have on your computer will be stored in picassa both locally and on google servers, all your email will be stored locally and on gmail servers, all your docs, spreadsheets, and pdfs will be stored locally and on google servers. Thus giving an integrated cloud computing and local service.
The reason they are probably using the chrome moniker is that it will be sleek and minimilistic. Chrome has stayed away from being bloated by allowing its javascript engine to be highly optimized.
On the post: Microsoft, Yahoo And Real Sued For Failing To Get All Necessary Licenses For Music Stores
not that massive
But really, Ive gotta say this is probably the fault of whoever sold the rights to microsoft, real and yahoo failing to mention that certain songs in their catalogs had separate rights they needed to procure. Or its possible that it is the fault of these artists for being unreachable when the various entities tried to reach them (as the record industry often claims is the case when it owes artists money). Or I suppose it is possible that these stores with massive catalogs made minor clerical errors and failed to obtain proper rights for less than 1 percent of their respective libraries.
I hope everybody loses and that they have to pay out 80,000 dollars per download.
On the post: Schaumburg Dumps Redlight Cameras After They Show No Safety Benefit
Re: Sweet!
Obviously there is an ideal way to time lights for economic advantage, such that the least time is wasted and the least accidents occur. But to do that you would need to take into account a very gray number of what percentage of people do not follow the law. And unfortunately the best way to get that number might actually be to have a camera sitting at every light and simply monitoring who runs yellow and red lights. I think it's a bit of a catch-22, but somebody else may see things differently.
On the post: Dear Comcast: The Idea When You Bundle Is That People Are Supposed To Get A Discount
thats not actually their best deal
Ive been going without cable for the past three months (I would rather read books). But every two weeks comcast sends me a better deal. Its rather comical actually, so far the progression has gone from an offer for triple play($100), then a discounted triple play($90), then an offer for double play($70), then a discounted double play offer($60) which was then followed by a discounted double play offer($60) that lasts 12 months instead of 6.
Gotta love how they treat their potential customers.
Also, I was led to believe by somebody else that prices vary by region, so its possible that promotional materials also vary. Another thing I heard, from somebody who spent nearly two hours dealing with customer service, is that you can generally get the deals extended to up to two years if you hassle them long enough, and, if you call to cancel your service when your deal has worn off you can usually sign up for the same deal again.
In case of service failures (depending on type of failure) you can usually receive a credit on your account. In the case of repeated missed appointments at the fault of comcast repair crews you can usually get them to give you whatever free movie channel deal they are tacking on to the preferred package at that moment.
Sorry for the long post, just thought Id share, given that comcast has a monopoly might as well try and squeeze them for any dime they are willing to part with.
On the post: Dear Comcast: The Idea When You Bundle Is That People Are Supposed To Get A Discount
thats not actually their best deal
Ive been going without cable for the past three months (I would rather read books). But every two weeks comcast sends me a better deal. Its rather comical actually, so far the progression has gone from an offer for triple play($100), then a discounted triple play($90), then an offer for double play($70), then a discounted double play offer($60) which was then followed by a discounted double play offer($60) that lasts 12 months instead of 6.
Gotta love how they treat their potential customers.
Also, I was led to believe by somebody else that prices vary by region, so its possible that promotional materials also vary. Another thing I heard, from somebody who spent nearly two hours dealing with customer service, is that you can generally get the deals extended to up to two years if you hassle them long enough, and, if you call to cancel your service when your deal has worn off you can usually sign up for the same deal again.
In case of service failures (depending on type of failure) you can usually receive a credit on your account. In the case of repeated missed appointments at the fault of comcast repair crews you can usually get them to give you whatever free movie channel deal they are tacking on to the preferred package at that moment.
Sorry for the long post, just thought Id share, given that comcast has a monopoly might as well try and squeeze them for any dime they are willing to part with.
On the post: Under 18? Using Google? You May Be A Criminal!
wasnt this the joke
Then again, how do you expect somebody to provide a service if there isnt any way for them to enter into a binding contract with the user. Internet law really needs to be rewritten, and lawyers need to have nothing to do with it, because making everything excessively verbose for the sake of making it unintelligable to plebeians is no longer a reasonable way to approach law.
When the only people signing contracts were the top 1% of society it made sense to have contracts that were verbose for the sake of clarity, specificity and enforceability. But the system as it exists now, is utterly ridiculous.
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