In the USPS recommended actions, there is. In federal law, there is not. The legal definition of unordered merchandise is "merchandise mailed without the prior expressed request or consent of the recipient" (See USC 39 3009(d)). The people ordered some merchandise but what they received was something else that was mailed without prior expressed request or consent of the recipient.

IMO, returning the Vita is the moral and mannerly thing to do, and the company should pay for shipping and perhaps even compensate the recipient for their time to return it (maybe a free game or something). But per US law, the recipient has no obligation to return it. Of course, as noted, this incident took place in the UK and under UK law, with which I'm unfamiliar.

I don't see that at all. USC 39 3009(d) seems perfectly clear to me, and to cover this situation quite well. If there is another statute that is a better fit then that one would take precedence, but in the absence of the law you claim exists but cannot cite, USC 39 3009 would apply just fine.

Further, if the law you reference exists, I can't find it. Clearly it would belong in Title 39 - POSTAL SERVICE. Within Title 39, the obvious place for it is part IV - MAIL MATTER. Within part IV, chapter 30 - NONMAILABLE MATTER doesn't seem like an obvious fit, but it's better than any of the others. And finally, within chapter 30, there's nothing that fits other than section 3009.

Perhaps the law you're referring to is a state law, not federal? If so, it may or may not be valid, to the extent it conflicts with federal law. But even to the extent it is valid, it applies only in the relevant state, not the US as a whole.

Note the two opt out links at the bottom of the Ads Preference Manager page. Those shut off tracking of you for targeted advertising purposes, across Google properties, and/or across the web.

This article is about the government exploiting the cookies Google uses for targeted advertising. By turning those off, there's nothing for the government to track.

What makes you think Google's "scripts" are untrustworthy? (Scare quotes because I don't know what scripts you're talking about; this is about cookies.)

True, if by "computationally expensive" you mean "we have to run this until the hardware breaks and starts executing our software non-deterministically".

Otherwise, true randomness in software is simply infeasible, because chip engineers deliberately design the hardware to eliminate non-determinism.

It's done in all new developments, of course, but the cost of running the initial conduits in built-out neighborhoods is tremendous, with little to no return on the investment.

Heck, my street doesn't have curbs and we were annexed into Austin in 1941. (Not that I mind this, by the way.)

Hmm. I thought slashdot would automatically linkify that. https://plus.google.com/117091380454742934025/posts/SDcoemc9V3J?e.

One of the first things Ted Ts'o did when he took back maintainership of /dev/random in Linux was to stop depending solely on the hardware RNG.

https://plus.google.com/117091380454742934025/posts/SDcoemc9V3J?e

Only if Google has played ball with the NSA. AFAICT, there is not evidence of that. It appears that the NSA has spied on Google without Google's knowledge or participation, though.

Would it? I don't think so. 702 requires telcos to keep their customers' information confidential, but Google does that already. It might be interpreted to require Google customer approval to deliver ads to them; it's not clear how 702(d)(3) would be interpreted in this context. But assuming Google did that, I don't think 702 would interfere with Google's operations (in my non-lawyerly opinion).

The bigger issue is that Google isn't a telephone company.

There's a big difference. The Google data collection is optional for users (Google even provides tools to make opting out easy), and in their individual control. Government data collection is not (unless we collectively take charge of our governments and stop it).

Google provides tools to opt out of Analytics and Ads tracking, which will suppress these cookies.

See http://google.com/privacy/tools, the bottom two entries.

This part is good. Documenting every identifier is generally not a good idea; instead put the effort into naming identifiers so they're self-documenting. Same with documenting every logical edge; put the effort into making the code itself explain the intent and rationale.

Only if you ignore the time it will cost you when the comments are wrong, which tends to be orders of magnitude higher.

I used to feel the same way, then I acquired more experience, on larger codebases.

For a more complete explanation of why comments are bad, I recommend Martin Fowler's book "Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code". There are a few other books that cover it as well, but I think Martin's chapter on the topic explains it concisely and effectively.

No, these subroutines aren't part of the public interface, and not only don't need documentation comments, but shouldn't have them.

Uh, that's another problem. You should always at least extract those to constants.

LOL. Well, I've only written a little code today because most of it has been spent in meetings. Tomorrow will be more productive, though.

Nonsense.