If the register malfunctions and the retailer stops the transaction, it's OK. If the register malfunctions and the retailer still makes the sale, that's the retailer's problem.

A sale is a contract which binds BOTH parties. And EULA's are subject to the law of the land, which says: if a contract is non-negociable, it has to be interpreted has widely as possible in favor of the party who did not draft it.

The Brick is known in Canada for deceptive business practices, so the consumer protection agencies have taken to the media to inform that customers do NOT have to give the money back.

The retailer advertised those prices, and tries to trick the customer into cancelling the sale to wiggle out of the sales. That's a tactic known as bait-and-switch, and it's illegal.

I assume your team is the developer pool for the company. If not, my comment is not usable.

Learn to use the forces piling onto you to achieve. If Bob in accounting is the client for whatever you are currently working on and Jim in sales asks for something, forward the request for pushing back Bob's feature to Bob. Then watch Bob and Jim wrestle on your behest.
Why does this work? Because people unconsciously know you are a finite resource. You are not tasked to choose what the company's priorities are, so let management choose the priority of each request.

Oh, and ALWAYS make an estimate of the work needed for development include the testing and some meetings. Meetings are like gravity: you can't escape them all the time.

+5: Full of win !

The problem with Detroit is decades of crap product. Did you buy Detroit lately? You get better cars from KIA than GM! Korean Imitation Automobile! Not hard to beat that...

That means they are right and you are played for a sucker. If you want something , fight for it. Of course, fighting alone is less effective, but you can try!

LOL. I've heard that one so much, and in so many industries and yet, surprise! Humans are still necessary.

I know of a system that did PKE right: Lotus Notes. There was a nice checkbox to make it sign every mail you sent, every user had a keypair, you could verify both sender and content with a click. You could even prohibit printing ou copying an individual email.
It is universally despised.

Only problem is: Wifi does not do 21km links, more like 100 feet. Except if you have ultra-directional, amplified emitter-receivers at both ends.

I am not sure I encountered a TOS lately that does not incorporate this language. Even my cellular service has that!

Not that it could stand in court, mind you, but I am sure that I will only get dinged enough that I am not willing to pay a lawyer to make it right.

Luckily, there are many sane jurisdictions in the world where if an annex is not present at sign-up, it is not considered part of the contract, even if mentioned/refered to in it.

I even know a place where if a part of the contract is too difficult to read (ex.: low-contrast writing on the back of the paper, 6-point typeface, etc.) that part is null and void. An untested theory includes convoluted language in that rule.

I'd like to point out the following:
1) iPhones are avaliable for almost nothing down (with contract) and an iPod touch can be ordered new for 200$
2) DLSR's are even cheaper with no need to have a contract
3) bitcoin is bullshit.

Revenge of the nerds 3 ? ewwwww. At least it was better than Revenge of the nerds IV! *shudders*

I'm currently moving in that direction, and I will probably get a Guruplug. Same low-power processor, a little more memory, same USB connectivity to a HDD, but with Wifi. I will stuff it in a closet somewhere so if a burglar comes around I will not lose my backups. Plus, there are two interesting distros avaliable offering DLNA and "personnal cloud" functionnality: Tonido and an open-source one.

Ahem, a time capsule of the last 5 years of the century would be more like it.

First half of the nineties = Wolfenstein, Doom (barely), 386-486 class machines, no 3D accelerators, Adlib or Soundblaster, mouse optional.