Ouch. This guy doesn’t like how the French government so quickly gave an evacuation alert…

Normally I would say that two wrongs don’t make a right, but I think this is an example of a loophole in that particular ethical dilemma. If you’d rather read the whole story directly instead of the summary below, visit the page on Reddit, and then skip the next two paragraphs.

A fellow had four tickets to a sporting event scheduled to take place in less than three days, but he could not attend, so he decided to sell them on eBay using a one-day listing. The auction would end at 10:00 am the day before the event, and the terms made it clear they would have to be picked up. A woman bid $600 for the tickets, so the seller emailed her to arrange the pickup. She did not reply to the emails until almost 12 hours later–late on the night before the event–and when she did, it was to back out of buying the tickets, commenting coldly, “It’s eBay, not a car dealership. I can back out if I want.” No other buyers were still willing to purchase, so the seller was stuck with his goods, unable to use them or sell them.

So the seller comes up with an idea. Using an alternate eBay identity, he sends a message to the woman claiming to be someone who saw the auction too late, and wanted to know if she would be willing to resell the tickets for $1000. By telephone, the woman says she’ll sell them–for $1100. The deal is made, and the woman contacts the seller’s original address–not knowing it’s the same guy–and says she’ll buy the tickets after all. However, she demands that the seller come to her–and by now it’s midnight. He goes to see her, gets the money–and then cuts off the deal via the fake account. When the woman blows her top, he replies, “Ma’am, this is eBay, not a car dealership.”

Now, assume–as the seller claims–that the story is not the least bit embellished or exaggerated, and is told 100% accurately. Was the seller within his rights to do what he did? In effect, he did nothing to her that she did not do to him–promise to buy and then renege on the deal. Under ordinary circumstances, I would say that it’s not right to do so, any more than it is right to assault someone who assaulted you.

This case is a bit different, however. First of all, buying something on eBay does obligate you to pay up–in eBay’s own words, “A bid or commitment to buy on eBay is considered a contract and you’re obligated to purchase the item.” I am not clear on how far that extends legally, but my impression (not being familiar with eBay) is that a seller really doesn’t have much option save to give the non-buyer a complaint against their eBay buyer’s record–something that would probably be less than a slap on the wrist. Maybe they could sue in small claims court, but with only an email address and an eBay user name, it might not be so easy to do.

Second, the (non) buyer deprived the seller of the value of his goods by promising to pay for perishable items and then waiting until it was too late to back out of the deal; this furthered her obligation to compensate. Had she immediately informed him of her intent soon after the auction ended, he probably could have found an alternate buyer. That she ignored emails for most of the day suggests that she knew early on that there would be a problem–and even if not, it was still her responsibility to live up to her side of the contract.

The final straw, of course, is the fact that she finally agreed to the sale only to profit. This, in my mind, completely deprives her of the right to object, if she had one to start out. She claims to have backed out of the deal, but when offered a $400 boon–which she jacks up an extra hundred bucks out of greed–she quickly reclaims the buyer’s title. Now, had she told the seller, disguised as a re-buyer, that she had backed out and the original seller would probably be happy to find a new buyer, then the seller would have been screwed–and the woman would at least come across as genuinely regretful. However, as she instead tried to get $500 extra for herself out of the deal, she pretty much cements the impression that she deserves no sympathy.

From the seller’s perspective, yes, he did use a short con to get the woman to pay–he lied in order to complete the sale. And yes, he did jack up the price by $20 at the last moment, in his mind to compensate for his troubles, which included driving across town at midnight, a term not in the original deal (a compensation one can easily accept, considering the circumstances). However, he may well have been able to jack the price up even more, claiming he had found another buyer, etc.–which he did not. In the end, he did nothing but persuade a person who had wronged him to live up to their obligations.

I would call no foul on his part. But then, maybe it’s just because this kind of story is so much fun to read about.

One final–and not so satisfying–consideration: technically, the woman could probably still make her $500. When making the fake counteroffer, the seller nonetheless establishes a “meeting of minds” on the $1100 deal. If I were in the woman’s position–and had no shame–I could probably take the guy to small claims court, and might possibly win. Hopefully, the woman in this case will not figure that out.

“Off” is perhaps one of the most intentionally abused prepositions in Japanese English. “Big Off,” “Off Sale,” “Hard Off,” etc. Here’s another one:

An interesting question to print on a trash can:

Then throw it away.

Pure comedic brilliance. It wouldn’t be as funny if Beck weren’t so ironic in his characterization of George Soros, it being a far more apt and accurate description of Rupert Murdoch. Stewart starts from there and creates a classic. It’s worth it just for the random way the puppets hit Stewart.

Here’s their current postage stamp:

When you click on it, the story doesn’t actually focus on the politics; instead, you get this:

In both cases, their focus is based upon picking and choosing a few people out of the crowd, not the entire event–which, frankly was about as non-political as you could get, with as many references against the far left as there were against the far right. In their clips of raging cable news hosts, Olbermann appeared perhaps as often as Beck. Stewart and Colbert raged against fear-mongering and hate, not against Republicans and conservatives. That it attracted and pleased a mostly liberal crowd speaks more to the nature of the crowd than the crowd speaks to the nature of the event. In other words, Fox got it backwards–not that they care or were even paying attention.

Frankly, if you saw it as a get-out-the-vote rally, it would have been greatly disappointing. There was no urging to go to the polls that I remember (I think one guest said so as they left the stage near the end, but nothing planned), no overt calls to defeat the Tea Party–instead there was disapproval hurled at all politicians, exactly the sentiment that is working to the disadvantage of Democrats and liberals in the election so far. I cannot see this by any stretch of the imagination as being a pro-left rally, despite the makeup of the crowd. It was a pro-entertainment rally, perhaps, and a pro-reason rally, for certain. But pro-left? Not really.

Indeed, when Fox covered Beck’s event, they made a big deal about how non-political it was (despite Palin being there, urging people to be engaged and “knowing never to retreat”), not to mention covering the “strong turnout,” a point they studiously ignored (instead focusing on the negatives of a large crowd) in today’s rally (estimates put it at 2-3 times larger than Beck’s) in favor of calling the crowd “insane.” So much for unbiased (not that it was really in question).

That said, I could not pass up the chance to note my admiration for Stewart and Colbert to make such a great Trek reference, from Corbomite in bottled water to Uhura’s command tunic bearing a science insignia in the same episode, #10. Stewart then wondered if they got it right or if they would be picked apart in Trekkie chat rooms–but no, they got it spot on. Here’s even an image of Uhura from that episode:

A few minutes later, they even brought out R2D2. And later still, Colbert made a LOTR reference. Showing our geeky roots, are we?

Fox New’s coverage of the Stewart/Colbert rally:

I’d have to check, but I’d be willing to bet good money that they didn’t cover Beck’s rally that way… or with that small a postage-stamp sized story box. One of the stories next to it: about how a Democrat is going to lose his Senate race.

Not that the Rally today is not somewhat political… but it certainly is no more political, and probably somewhat less political, than Beck’s rally. Watching it, I hear nothing coming from the stage that’s political. In fact, right this moment Stewart is awarding a Medal of Reasonableness to Velma Hart, the woman in the Obama town hall who took him to task and asked him incredibly tough questions.

And let’s not forget that this coverage is coming from an incredibly biased politically biased news network, so much so that they are virtually the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, even going beyond that with tea Party candidates–but which at the same time insists that they are fair, balanced, and non-political.

Riiighht.

I will also be very interested to see the crowd estimates–that looks like a pretty darn huge crowd.

Okay, all of you actual programmers out there, get ready for amateur hour. I have been working to understand programming better for a while now, and have made a teensy bit of progress. I learned HTML and CSS the natural way–I gleaned it bit by bit off of instructional web sites and peeking at other people’s code (a lot of CSS I learned, in fact, came from editing the themes for this blog). But I wanted to get beyond simple scripting and into some actual programming, something I hadn’t done since I took that BASIC programming class back in 1982.

I figured that my best chance would be to take advantage of the online classes from the college where I teach, free to faculty. Intermediate Algebra was a prerequisite, and though I passed it back in the 80’s (one of my few “B” grades in college), I figured it was time to freshen up, considering that (a) it could help in programming, (b) I have a bit of a phobia about anything more complex than basic math, and (c) I hadn’t used any of it since I took the course and remembered pretty much squat. So I took that class, aced it, and went on to take the next class, “Introduction to Computer Programming.” Which it pretty much was–just an intro course. We never got beyond making little C++ command-line programs. Alas, another Math class–Discrete Math–was required before taking any other programming courses, so I bore down and signed up for that. Problem: the text was horrific, requiring about 30 hours a week to get past the atrocious writing so I could spend another 10 hours learning the material. It was just too much on a full-time schedule, so I reluctantly withdrew.

Not wanting to just give up (our local Math professor has kindly agreed to arrange a private independent-study course that might get me the credit for Discrete Math, but not this year), I started studying PHP. I want to re-write my Introduction to Computers web site from the ground up anyway, and I figured that knowing some PHP would help. Well, now that my August break has started, I started diving into it. The result so far: a crude, basic understanding… and a result. I figured out how to add a much-needed feature to my web site. My students crave feedback at every step, and I wanted to add little exercises after each page or two of study. PHP gave me a way to create very slightly interactive quizzes, very simple–choose the answers from drop down menus and check to see if you got things right.

Pleased with my little success, I figured I’d have a bit of fun and add a quiz you might want to take–not on computers, but on some basic political points. Just click the link below, choose what you think are the best answers, and then click “See Results” to find out how many you got right. Since I like my students to figure out correct answers, I don’t give the answers on the results page; you have to go back and try again. Enjoy!

This is a fascinating little video made by performance artist Gavin Nolte (via technabob), a concept which, at first, struck me as incredibly funny: he stuck 25 German GPS navigation computers on his windshield and they all gave him directions at once. As I watched the video, however, it seemed less funny and more fascinating, how the various computers seemed to work, what similarities and differences were apparent.

Seriously. I would just love seeing slides in every train station. I would totally use them all the time. Too bad in the U.S. it would just lead to countless lawsuits. In Japan, people in charge of stuff simply wouldn’t allow something this light-hearted.

Finding that fully dentist’s sign recently made me remember that I have a few similar images on file–though none can top the dentist, really. But here are a few honorable mentions.

I don’t think I want to know what or who “Chee” is in this case.

Not to be confused with fanny hair.

The actual name of a housing complex in Hibarigaoka. Don’t ask.

They sell cold showers, baseball imagery, and saltpeter, one can only assume.

Always good advice: you never know when something will fly right at your head, after all.

Why can’t I keep the other 12? And do I get to choose which twenty?

An actual dentist’s office near Hibarigaoka station. The slogan is supposed to mean, “Keep your teeth as healthy as a 20-year-old’s until you’re 80.”

An advertisement for a girls’ private junior/senior high school seen at Komagome Station, Tokyo:

Seriously, can you get much creepier than that?

How is it that no one doing PR against piracy can open their mouths without sounding like complete idiots? Agnete Haaland, the president of the International Actors’ Federation, has the solution to the piracy scourge:

“We should change the word piracy,” she told reporters at the unveiling of the report on Wednesday.

“To me, piracy is something adventurous, it makes you think about Johnny Depp. We all want to be a bit like Johnny Depp. But we’re talking about a criminal act. We’re talking about making it impossible to make a living from what you do,” she said.

And no, that’s not from The Onion. I did not make that up. Piracy, according to Agnete, is making it impossible for actors to “make a living.”

It’s not the greed of giant megacorps that make $2.64 billion from a movie like Avatar, or, as the same article points out, rakes in nearly $2 trillion every year. It can’t be that the huge parasitic media corporations are robbing the performers blind and making life tough for the rank and file. No, because $2 trillion can only go so far. No, it’s the pirates who are sucking up as much as 1.16% of that total (again according to that same article, and that’s probably an over-estimate) who are the real problem. If only the megacorps could recoup that 1.16%, then it would all go to the starving artists, who would reap the full rewards of their efforts and could finally make a decent living. Yeah. I believe that. That makes sense.

And what’s the biggest part of that problem? That they’re called “pirates.” Normally, these people would be leading responsible lives, paying $40 for that second visit to the multiplex instead of downloading the film online–but the urge to visit thepiratebay.org and download a torrent so they can feel just like Johnny Depp in “Pirates of the Caribbean” is just too damn strong.

And it’s not just the swashbuckling image of clicking a web link, it’s that label, “piracy.” Oooooohhhh. That’s what sucks people into these lives of reprehensible crime–they can’t resist the cool name.

Says “Agnete Haaland.”

Obama is doing the only really reasonable thing with the $1.4 million he’s getting in Nobel Prize winnings: he’s giving it to charities. The list:

— the Fisher House $250,000
— the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund $250,000
— the College Summit $125,000
— the Posse Foundation $125,000
— the United Negro College Fund $125,000
— the Hispanic Scholarship Fund $125,000
— the Appalachian Leadership and Education Foundation $125,000
— the American Indian College Fund $125,000
— AfriCare $100,000
— Central Asia Institute $100,000

As I thought about how it might have looked had he kept the money, what instantly came to mind was: Sarah Palin. Had she (so impossibly as to be hilarious) won the prize, she would have announced that she would give the money to charity, given no details about it, and then we would never hear about it again while she quietly pocketed the money. It’s gauche when a former politician whores around for any money they can get; for a hopeful politician to do so is pretty ugly.

In what analysts are calling a breathtaking string of coincidences, every single email written by every single official and staffer in the Bush administration, from the very first day it began to Bush’s very last day in office, has been accidentally erased. In 7,538 separate cases of human and mechanical error, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of email messages were erased. Additionally, in each case, backups were also destroyed, and then, in thousands of completely unrelated mishaps, the hard disk drives which once contained the emails and their backups, located on hundreds of different servers at sites spanning the entire continental United States, were accidentally removed and magnetically wiped, and then physically destroyed. In what is being termed a statistical fluke, there were virtually no such errors before January 2001, and have been no such reported incidences since January of 2009; the outbreak of purely innocent accidental erasures is fully contained to a sharply defined eight-year period with no meaningful pattern that anyone has been able to discern.

When asked to comment on the phenomenon, former White House technical staffer Steven McDevitt replied, “Huh. How about that?” After hearing that a question concerning the matter was asked by a member of the media, Minority leader John Boehner (R-OH) immediately assailed what he termed “a Liberal-media witch-hunt instigated by known Socialist George Soros, with the clear intention of undermining American values and killing American soldiers.” Upon hearing the news, Congressional Democrats, distressed and fearing reprisal nine months prior to midterm elections, instantly withdrew a variety of bills related to health care, gun control, and education reform, and called instead for renewal of the Patriot Act, after passing a bill exonerating anyone who could have been involved in what were clearly unintended accidents regarding the Bush administration emails, promising to never, ever ask any questions about it, we promise and please don’t attack us.

</snark>

Okay, I exaggerate. But it wouldn’t be funny if there weren’t an element of truth involved.

It’s inevitable: Apple releases what is to be a hit device, so smaller companies line up to sue Apple for “copying” or “stealing” from them, hoping the deep-pocketed company will settle and cough up the cash. In fact, it is so established an industry that some companies are designing their wares so they are set up to sue Apple. It only took a few days for Wu Xiaolong, the president of “Shenzhen Great Long Brother Industrial Co.” to announce that they were furious:

I was very angry and flabbergasted when I saw the news of the iPad presentation two days ago… It is certainly our design. They’ve stolen because we present our P88 to everyone six months ago at the IFA (International Electronics Fair in Berlin).

Now, if you’ve seen the iPad, you may be wondering: how can you copyright that design? I mean, it’s a rounded rectangle with a metal bezel and black border. You can’t get more simple than that. Zillions of devices have that basic look; it describes half the monitors on laptops today. Besides which, one of the major grouses people have been lobbing at the iPad is that it looks exactly like an oversized iPhone or iPod Touch–so if Apple’s design is just like the P88’s, then isn’t the P88’s a copy of Apple’s handhelds?

According to Wu: “[Our machine has] nothing to do with it, as they have completely different functions.” Ah, I see. And so the P88 and the iPad have identical functions? Well, not quite. The iPad has a 9.7“ capacitive multitouch screen, the P88 has a lower-resolution 10.2” resistive touch screen (no multitouch) and uses a stylus; the iPad runs the iPhone OS on flash memory in a closed ecosystem, the P88 has Windows on a HDD and is essentially a PC crammed into a tablet form; the iPad gets 10 hours of battery life, the P88 less than 2 hours; the P88 is thicker, heavier, and sits on an ugly metal bracket. But the real difference is in appearance:

What was even more funny was that when the P88 was released, it was called a “non-existent Apple Tablet Clone,” as it resembled most mock-ups and estimations of what the iPad was supposed to look like.

But it gets even better. Want to see another computer made by the Chinese company?

OMG! Apple stole the iMac from them too!!

Expect this lawsuit to fizzle. As Wired so aptly put it, “Anyone confusing the two products deserves the P88.”

When you read it, you keep thinking, “My god, they are really going over the top with this one,” and then you remember who they’re talking about and go, “Well, maybe not.”

This had me in tears. Literally.