links for 2007-03-08
Popularity: 15% [?]
Add comment March 8th, 2007
Archive for March, 2007
Counter Agreement
Everywhere we go we are confronted, usually in very small text, by quasi-legal agreements. When you install software you must click on an “I agree” button before completing the installation, when you sign a credit card slip at many major retailers you are also signing a legal agreement with the store. Everywhere you turn you are asked to give up your consumer rights.
ReasonableAgreement.org has come up with a counter-agreement (an anti-EULA) for consumers to fight back with.
Frankly, it’s all bullshit. The way the system should work is, you buy something, you own it. The law of the land governs your interactions with the seller. What’s the point of having a consumer-protection law if all it takes to get around it is to announce that you’ve agreed to waive your rights by buying something? If consumer protection laws don’t protect people who buy stuff, whom do they protect?
Here is the text of the anti-EULA:
READ CAREFULLY. By [accepting this material|accepting this payment|accepting this business-card|viewing this t-shirt|reading this sticker] you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies (”BOGUS AGREEMENTS”) that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
Popularity: 18% [?]
Add comment March 7th, 2007
Mail Tests
From the improbably research files comes U.S. Postal Service experimentation. The experiments involved attempting to mail various strange, valuable, unwieldy, pointless, suspicious, and disgusting items. The majority of these items were actually delivered indicating a high level of tolerance among postal workers, or maybe even a sense of humor. Some examples include a ski, a can of soup, a large wheel of stinky cheese, and a feather duster. Most items were unwrapped, all with appropriate postage affixed to them in some manner.
Deer tibia. Our mailing specialist received many strange looks from both postal clerks and members of the public in line when he picked it up at the station, 9 days. The clerk put on rubber gloves before handling the bone, inquired if our researcher were a “cultist,” and commented that mail must be wrapped.
Popularity: 35% [?]
Add comment March 6th, 2007
Cheap Business
The hundred dollar business is an entrepreneurial experiment. Carolynn Duncan has been studying entrepreneurship at BYU, and now she is putting what she learned to the test. The idea is real simple: 30 days and $100. That is all she is using to create a business with profits going to fund the next months business. She is now on her second business, a book about entrepreneurship with at least 100 authors. This business follows her holiday mall kiosk. Frequent updates to a blog lets you follow the trials and triumphs of these business experiments.
With $100 dollars, 30 days, and solid business principles, we intend to set up a functioning business, cover all expenses, and earn back $100 to continue the next Hundred Dollar Business project.
Popularity: 40% [?]
1 comment March 5th, 2007
Underground Photos & Yale Prank
A couple more quick links today…
Incredible photos of the Japanese storm water drainage system.
Very funny prank played on Harvard fans by Yale students.
Popularity: 30% [?]
Add comment March 2nd, 2007
The Hanging Elephant
This is a strange tale of a murderous elephant and her frustrated executioners. The story of how Mary the elephant killed her trainer Red Eldridge isn’t clear, but the attempts to exact revenge on the elephant are what legends are made of.
Guns hardly phased her. 44,000 volts of electricity only made her dance. So they decided to hang Mary.
It doesn’t seem surprising that the chain from which Mary hung snapped shortly after she was raised off the ground. It was, after all, just a 7/8″ chain, and Mary weighed 10,000 pounds. She hit the ground and sat upright, immobilized from the pain of a broken hip.
“It made a right smart little racket when the elephant hit the ground,” says eyewitness George Ingram, with admirable understatement.
Seeing Mary loose, not knowing that she had broken her hip and couldn’t move, the crowd panicked and ran for cover. Then one of the roustabouts “ran up her back like he was climbing a small hill and attached a heavier chain”; the winch was put in motion a second time, and Mary died.
They left her hanging for a half-hour, witnesses say, and then they dumped her in the grave they’d dug with a steam shovel 400 feet up the tracks.
Popularity: 34% [?]
Add comment March 1st, 2007