I remember fondly the leap year wars of the late 1990s. There were endless debates over whether or not 2000 would be a leap year. It was, of course.
Still, if you ever want to have a banging-your-head-in-frustration moment or three, go read old Usenet archives about the topic. It was incredible! People cited all sorts of sources. People got into heated debates about the length of the solar year. My personal favorite is the discovery that, since the 400-year-rule (years which are multiples of 400 are leap years) is the largest-scale rule, there is a 400-year cycle which has an exact multple of 7 days. As a result, the 13th of a month is more likely to be Friday than any other day of the week... and this holds true until we change the calendar!
Trivia. Gotta love it.
Okay, first things first: I don't like Sony anymore. In the years since they made the TV I like, they've become a fairly nasty, evil, company, with a really strong commitment to screwing consumers. They are in every way diametrically opposed to any kind of rights for the consumers of media, and they go out of their way to introduce shiny new incompatibilities (Memory Stick, anyone?) for no reason other than to try to make themselves be the holders of the patent on a new toy.
But...
I got a Sony 27" TV about ten years ago. It was $500. It was a $750 TV, with busted speakers, and Best Buy was selling off the display model. It came with a remote and a TV, but no manual or box.
It still works. It's still got nice, clear, pictures. It still does picture-in-picture. It has S-video in on its main input, and it is smart enough to use a composite signal if the S-video jack is quiet.
Just under a year and a half ago, I wanted a second TV. I got the cheapest TV I could find which had an S-video jack, an Advent 20" TV, model #Q2035A. Right away, I found nuisances; for instance, this TV has no audio out jacks, so you have to use its speakers, or mess with signal levels on the headphone jack. You caan't just run an audio cable to a reciever from it. Secondly, if there is a cable in the S-video jack, it simply ignores all composite signals. Finally, it has a set of video inputs on the side... which you cannot use if you're using the ones on the back. This serves no function at all.
Anyway, the real problem is the way it fails completely a bit over a year after you get it. I'm not alone in this; a couple of other people have reported the exact same behavior. The failure mode is that, instantly upon being plugged in, it acts like it's powering up fully, instead of going to standby mode. The little green LED comes on, and it makes tube warming noises... The only thing is, there's no signal at all.
If you touch any of the buttons, whether power, or channel up/down, or input source select, it goes into standby mode, where it waits. You cannot turn it on.
What's interesting is other people reporting the same mysterious behavior; powering up right away on being plugged in, and not displaying any signal.
What's especially interesting is that it seems to do this reliably AFTER the one year warranty.
http://ecoustics.consumerreview.com/pscAudioReview/Televisions/TVs+from+20+inch+to+31+inch/Advent,Q2035A/PRD_173757_2724crx.aspx#reviews
http://www.freelists.org/archives/techassist/01-2004/msg00109.html
There's a few other similar reports. Curious, huh?
Anyway, I've learned my lesson. No cheap TVs for me. The question is, who does decent TVs? Sony's hostility to end-users strikes me as a major negative. Who else does a good job?
It's been a while, so I decided to update my local listings of Cranky User columns. In a bit, I hope to be doing the same thing for my various other IBM columns that have run in the last year or so.
The columns are on my IBM columns page. Here's the topics of the ones added:
When I get a chance, I'll do up the top-secret original version of the Verisign column. It was a tad stronger in the original.
Seebach v. CaDan is settled!
They pay $10,000. By May 1st, they implement signed, written, permission for all people on their list; no one gets ads via fax without giving permission. I drop the suit.
If they break the agreement, by sending ads via fax without permission after May 1st, we are back in court and having lots of fun. So, that means that anyone, especially anyone in the Twin Cities area, who gets junk faxes should keep an eye out for CaDan corporation faxes. Furthermore, we know now that their insurance company is willing to talk about settling cases like this; that means that, if you have CaDan faxes, they are worth money, and that pursuing action will increase the chances that CaDan will actually stay stopped.
The key here is getting the word out. Everyone needs to know that junk faxing is against the law; if you send junk faxes, you pay the money and you have to stop.
We got a letter from the Defendant's counsel - or rather, Defendant's insurance company's counsel. It looked like a pro forma attack on me, probably done to make the client happy. Someone needs to know that the lawyers aren't afraid to call me names.
I am somewhat surprised and confused by your client's posture during settlement negotiations, especially since there are no actual damages per his deposition and the transmissions ceased immediately upon your client's request and before this lawsuit was ever filed. My suspicions that he never was interested in resolving this case on an equitable basis are heigtened [sic] when given his initial demand was $35,000 and I told you that that was a non-starter, and then when we spoke again today he nearly doubled the demand to $60,500 and then minutes later reduced it back down to $30,000 along with my client's consent to a permanent injunction. As I explained to you in our conversation this afternoon, given the faxes ceased immediately upon your client's request and before this lawsuit was ever filed, that issue was moot and there is no legal basis for injunctive relief concerning possible future conduct.I regret your client never had an honest desire to resolve this matter on an equitable basis and on the facts of the case.
Well, Mr. Quinlivan, I generally reserve my regrets for the way the world is, not the way it isn't. I have had "an honest desire to resolve this matter on an equitable basis and on the facts of the case" since long before I ever talked to anyone at CaDan, and I still have such a desire.
What I don't have is a desire to help a dishonest company wash its lists of a few people capable of sticking up for their rights, and continue engaging in unlawful junk faxing of other users, despite their clear awareness of the prohibition on this behavior.
The fact is, I was always willing to consider a settlement for as little as half of the statutory damages. What has changed is my understanding of what the statutory damages are; when I initiated this case, I accepted the conventional wisdom which said that the TCPA imposed penalties of $500 per fax; in fact, it turns out to impose penalties of $500 per advertisement. Since your client sent me 121 advertisements via facsimile, without permission from me, that's 121 unsolicited advertisements via facsimile, 121 violations of the law, and thus statutory damages of a minimum of $60,500. Given CaDan's clear demonstration of awareness of the unsolicited nature of their faxes, equitable relief in this case would be $181,500 - the treble damages the law provides for willful and knowing violations. Given their violations of Minnesota law, the relief would also include attorney's fees. As specified in the statute, it should also involve an injunction.
You seem to have misunderstood the history of the settlement offers. The $35,000 offer stood for many months, before I learned about my misunderstanding of the law. Today, when we discussed settlement, we made the revised offer - the full statutory damages. In the interest of trying to achieve a settlement, I figured I could walk away from half of the statutory damages, to say nothing of attorney's fees, if it would make your client stop faxing now, rather than in the distant future when we have a final ruling on this case.
What you seem not to understand is that the goal here is to make CaDan stop sending junk faxes. Not just to me; to anyone. As someone who is representing an insurance company, you probably have no idea what it would mean for a case not to be about the money, but this case isn't about the money; the only relevance of the money is that CaDan is unlikely to stop faxing unless it costs them money. As Jay Nixon, the Attorney General of Missouri, says: "Until the remedies exceed the profits, my sense is they will keep pushing."
Indeed.
CaDan continues to send unsolicited faxes to people who have not asked for them, as testified by their claim that they continue to regularly send "confirmation request" pages relevant only if some users have not given permission. This flagrant and willful flouting of the law is not "equitable".
You want it to be about the money? It can be about the money for you, and it can be about the money for Dan Rogers, and as long as it's about the money for you, then the only way to make the flagrant lawbreaking stop is to collect the whole statutory amount.
For me, it's not about the money, and never was. Whatever money I get in this case, I'm giving away. I don't want your client's dirty money.
I regret your decision to make insulting and false claims about me in your letter. I have always wanted to reach an equitable settlement based on the facts of the case, but I do not believe one to be possible at this time. The attitude expressed in your letter, while unwelcome, clarifies things. It only testifies that the real problem here is that there is no meeting of the minds. I want unlawful behavior stopped; you want to treat this enforcement action as a nuisance lawsuit. I guess we have an understanding. See you in court in the morning!
Sorry for the downtime, folks. We have trial preparations, and there's a lot of work to be done, and I can't write about what I'm doing.
Also, I spent about three days trying to reload Windows on my laptop, which turns out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. :)
Now I'm just stuck because I know roughly what I want to write about, but it's too large and confusing to start all at once, and I may sort of need to take advantage of my mighty dual-boot system to do the actual writing work. Annoying! I sort of wish I hadn't casually included "Unix-like environments running on Windows" in this article description.
Cygwin vs. MKS... In a FIGHT TO THE DEATH! Woo!
We have a new roommate. This was mostly unplanned, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Anyone in the Twin Cities area who's hiring part-time folks, let us know, we have a guy who just got here and needs a job.