And... who's going to verify/certify/ensure that those appliances are actually as energy efficient as claimed?

Consumer Reports?

Who says they are the only candidate? The government has the NHTSA, while the private sector has the more rigorous IIHS. UL has done this kind

Speaking of UL... you realize that they are one of those who does the testing under the EngeryStar program, right? ex: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ul.com%2Fservices%2Fen...

If the program goes away tomorrow, no doubt they'd simply close their doors and never test energy efficiency again.

And they are exactly right. Anyone doing anything on the internet will be either forced to geofence, or face the impossibility of compliance with a tangle of contradictory international laws possibly not even availible in language you speak.

Oh no, that sounds awful! ANYONE doing ANYTHING on the Internet will now be FORCED to face the impossibility yada yada!

Oh the humanity!

Anyone.

Doing anything.

I am an anyone. Wait, so are you. And we do things. We do any things.

At least we used to. We cannot anymore. We cannot do anything anymore. Nobody can!

Because not doing shit that people find objectionable is out of the question. Most of these legal things can be avoided by simply doing the right thing, not taking what is not yours to take, and not obsessively trying to use fine print as a shield for doing things that many people find objectionable.

But according to you, if you cannot take data that is not yours, you cannot do anything! Nobody can!

Most of these numerous laws in numerous jurisdiction are merely trying to prevent companies from taking information that they are not entitled to. If you stop trying to do that, you solve a big part of your problem right there. Most companies face legal issues do their own making.

And of course, anytime a company is told that it cannot do something, we are all treated to screams about how the sky is falling. About how, you know, nobody can ever do anything on the Internet ever again.

Don't buy a Mac for gaming.

I donâ(TM)t think many people do.

I think most Mac gamers bought their Mac for another reason(s), and at some point decided that they might like to play some games.

I do not think it is common to buy a separate computer for each discreet task you at some point decide to perform.

Hardware wise, Macs are capable of running many games, albeit at lower settings compared to machines with beefy GPUs. They are just looking for software that makes it easier to do.

Sounds quite reasonable.

Neither side has much to brag about when it comes to the Civil Rights Act

Senate

Democrats voting No: 17
Republicans voting No: 3

House

Democrats voting No: 90
Republicans voting No: 82

He probably assumed, like most people, that when you purchase a physical product, the code that makes it so what it is advertised to do is part of the purchase. Why?

Because they knew, of course, that they could use them. After all, they bought the appliance. They purchased it with their own hard earned money. Why would they not be able to use its features? You know, the ones that were advertised?

Why would they think such a thing?

Because it is common sense. We have had alarm clocks for decades, but it would have been farcical to suggest that when you bought an alarm clock, you did not buy an alarm clock. Instead you purchased a physical case with some internal complements which did nothing, and licensed the code that makes it, for instance, display the current time.

Had you told them that this is what the future had in store for Americans, they would not have believed you. After all, it sounds like a scheme invented by a child to retain control over their toys even after they trade them away to the kid down the street, it is not something that would even pass the laugh test for adults. Not to mention, we pay 30%-ish of our earnings ever year to governments and courts which use our money to give us an nation and an economy that is sane, rational, and that preserves values that we have always held dear, such as respect for personal property and fair, rational business dealings.

There is NO WAY they would ever fall for a scheme as patently silly as divvying a product up into a patchwork of owned and licensed parts. And if for some bizarre reason they did, the people would never stand for it. I mean, we are Americans for fucks sake! Remember Do not Tread on Me. These colors do not run. We will put a boot in your ass, it is the American way. Yes, THOSE Americans.

Do you think they, do you think we, are would bend over while corporations rewrite well-established rules of private property, and ass rape us out of control over the things we spend our hard earned money to purchase?

Do you really think that would ever happen here?

I ask because most people still, to this day, cannot fathom it. And so they continue to purchase products, with the expectation that they will be able to use their newly acquired property as they see fit. Just as their parents did. And their parents before them.

And they are slowly, but surely, finding out that this is no longer the case. And when they do, they express shock, outrage, and disbelief. The whole thing is so bizarre and nonsensical, that they truly cannot believe that it is actually happening.

Get used to it. There is more to come. It has only just begun.

Thanks for posting with your real account so that we can all see that you're retarded.

Retarded > Coward

Do other customers honestly lose their right to sue if they get nothing? I thought you could only legally give things up in exchange for consideration. What if you do not have one of the 21 printers, are you still barred from suing in the future?

On second thought, do not answer. I do not think I want to know.

Remember, they just put a guy in jail because he sabotaged his ex-employers equipment. The corporations, on the other hand, profit. Here again is the completely two tiered justice system. No wonder the presidents have no faith in it. Criminal court for thee, half ass civil court for me. Suckers.

Growing up, I could never have foreseen the type of place my country would become.

And only a couple of week before tax day. Why, how convenient, another timely example of the quality government your money gets you. It takes some of the sting out, at least.

Now if the rest of you will excuse us, another US judge has handed another barbed wire condom to another US business to strap onto their corporate cock.

It is time for us to assume the position.

Yes again.

If you spend on average more than you earn you will have big problems.

Sometimes you will have big problems if you do not. I am thinking of the oft-quoted 40 percent of bankruptcies due to medical costs. Every dentist office also has a display hawking some kind of medical credit card or another. Then again, that pain you feel is gods way of telling you to brush better. You should not be able to cop out with a root canal.

Other times, you can handle the debt, then you lose your job. Suddenly your average income drops precipitously, then according to your formula you can afford exactly nothing, and using your credit card to get through the month, as you gamble that you will get a job by then, is irresponsible.

I guess the only responsible thing to do is learn to live off the land, and immediately do so when you have a job loss. Except all the land is owned by somebody who is not you. And where you live the cops crack down on the homeless, those irresponsible fucks. Oh shit, and what about the lease? There is 8 months left on it, and you are no irresponsible deadbeat.

If only there was an anonymous Internet commenter around somewhere. They would know what to do. They always do.

That's what I logged in to ask... what's the point of a scheme like this when blocking exists?

A couple of years ago I ordered a iPhone & case from T-Mobile, and one day a signature required box showed up with just the case in site. Upon investigation by T-Mobile & FedEx, it was found the box was light from the original warehouse, so someone must have screwed up and not put the phone in the box... but had scanned it as linked to my account. Fast forward a couple of weeks and I get an email noting that the IMEI of that phone had been permanently blocked and would not be activatable.

Sure, maybe some random carrier in far away country doesn't check those lists... but wouldn't Apple also block such a device?

Nobody sane would sympathise with that.

Agreed, they would have to be insane. And probably ugly too. And have extremely bad smelling bowel movements.

This is a power that should be reserved for large corporations when they disable millions of dollars of equipment, causing untold damages, because they detect that you have used a competitors product.

But, but, that is different, you say, because an individual committed this crime, corporations are just protecting their profits. That, as we all know, is the most noble motivation that exists. We know this because not one company executive has ever been arrested, nor spent 1 second in jail for mass disabling hardware across the world.

Nobody sane would expect them to be punished.

But this individual citizen, well, what if he gives other individual citizens crazy ideas. Insane ideas as you so succinctly put it.

Well, now that, that would be unthinkable.

I say we put him under the jail. Under the jail with a large TV playing The View twenty four seven.

Yes, yes, that will show them.

That will show the people that they are not large corporations, and DO NOT have anything close to the same rights.

That will show them. Even the insane ones.

If they detect that you have used a competitors product, they will brick your device entirely, rendering it worthless. Knowingly and intentionally.

Yet, not one person has spent a millisecond in jail, or even been slightly inconvenienced. Instead, they have been financially rewarded. You cannot even take them to court anymore due to their buried arbitration horse shit.

But if you ever do anything even remotely similar. Oh no. No. No no. That is a crime. It is a crime and no amount of public money will be spared in your punishment. And the people will clap. They will clap and they will gleefully swallow the fish that has been thrown to them. GULP! Oh that was a good fish!

Civil Court for me, Criminal Court for thee.

Is not the system of justice a wonderful thing. It may not be perfect, they tell us, but it is the best we have.

Woo-hoo! Once again, we get the best! We are number 1!

Yay.

You are invited to sue them in Civil Court at your own risk and expense. Assuming the company didnâ(TM)t include an Arbitration Clause in the fine print, thus leaving a kangaroo court as your sole avenue for recourse.

No arrests will be made. Law enforcement would laugh if you even had the nerve to ask. This is true even if the ill gotten gains run into the tens of millions of dollars. Company executives will have no problem getting another job or renting a home, because a background check will show no bad behavior.

Let it be the other way around, though. Let a citizen rip off a large corporation. Then, it is the FBI with guns drawn, the media gleefully reporting his downfall. Oh they squeak with delight they do, because finally they have a corporate ripoff story that they are allowed to report about. No pesky advertisers to worry about,

Come on everybody now, bad citizen, bad bad citizen. He let people have stuff without paying for it. Fifteen years in a cage and no soup for you! Why it is an outrage it is!

Our two tiered justice system is so overtly in our face that we have all just gotten used to it and no longer think anything of it. I get it. I do it too. The farce is just so large, it feels like you cannot possibly do anything. I mean, it is a felony for you to lie to a bank, insurance company, or credit reporting agency. It is no crime whatsoever for them to lie to you. The Department of Justice is just another law enforcement agency protecting corporate interests.

The government protects them at your expense. Then they invite you to spend your own money to protect you. Frankly, they owe you, though it is not a point they will ever concede.

Future generations are going to hate us. After all, they will have gotten the government that WE deserve.

This kind of stunt is pretty underhanded, but if you look at the price of printers, they are crazy low by historical standards. A good laser printer is probably less than 10% of the price it was 25 years ago, inflation adjusted. There's an implicit agreement here that they give you the printer at less than cost and, in return, you pay them by buying the cartridges from them. So, it's hard to get too worked up about this.

Horse shit. See if people make excuses for you if you commit fraud. People get worked up because the options to do otherwise are rapidly disappearing. We have no say in their business model and I would happily buy a printer to own instead of rent. It is one race to the bottom after another, we do not have to be understanding about deceptive horse ass like this that tramples on personal property rights and does things that you and I would be arrested for doing.

The few weak consumer laws Americans have are not even enforced. You pay 30% of your income every year to a bunch of anal beads who spend the year holding you butt cheeks apart while one corporation after another straps on a barbed wire condom and deep nine inches you without so much as a dab of Vaseline for your comfort.

It may be easy for you not to get worked up about, but it is outlooks like that which have given us this awesome situation to begin with. Maybe try to get angry every now and then if for no other reason than to prove to yourself that you still have an ounce of dignity left.

Oh and remember, Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide.

No really, he totally did.

That several million nutty conspiracy theorists predicted that he would beforehand means nothing. It was a coincidence, that is all.

If you disagree, I hear there is a chatbot that can convince you of the errors of your ways.

MKUltra, COINTELPRO, Operation Mockingbird, Iran-Contra, Gulf of Tonkin, the 1933 Business Plot, Jekyll Island and the Fed formation, the overthrow of Iranian democratically elected government to benefit BP, Operation Northwoods, the shit Wikileaks and Citizen Four revealed to name just a few. I do not think anyone could give you an exhaustive list, there are just too many,

What you do and do not consider a valid conspiracy for your own rhetorical purposes is your own issue, but there is enough out there to suit any opinion.

Skepticism is healthy, because history has shown that governments and corporations are capable of deception on a massive scale.

In whose interests is it that most young people consider Conspiracy Theory to be a synonym for false?

Yours?

Doubtful.