Geographers Nearly Predicted Bin Laden's Location->
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I'd like to see Samsung get into big trouble over this because it is inherently wrong, at least that's my position, but I am less sure if they have broken any actual laws. Maybe some digital eavesdropping provisions that are only allowed to be done by governments have been breached but I can see Samsung weaselling out of that one. There's probably a disclaimer in 5point font 100 pages into the agreement that the buyer agrees to by opening the box.... of course that's wrong too. Oh where to start...
What places might those be? And what's the excuse for buying a cassette when you already own an LP?
If you wanted to play music in your car (and didn't want that to be from the radio) you might need to buy a cassette, at least I'm not aware of any cars came with builtin turntables. The Walkman also made it possible to take music with you on the go, but again if you had the LP you'd need to "buy the White Album again" on cassette.
It is my understanding that in many of the "loser pays" jurisdictions it applies only if the party bringing the suit loses. So in your example you'd be fine... well not fine, more like screwed, but at least safe from having to front up the money for the vampiric hordes used to convict you of some heinous act like downloading a copy of Santa Clause 2.
It's still not a perfect system, but better than you describe.
I run a number of faculty specific labs (specialised software & hardware) and have a lot of contact with central IT and other faculty specific lab administrators.
I echo a lot of the sentiments already expressed but wanted to address the specific issue of speaking to the users of the facility. Mine is, as far as I know, the only place at my University that has the support staff located in the computer lab area. Everywhere else the students have to log a job with the helpdesk... which ends up being rare because it's more effort than just moving to another machine. Then the admins come around some time later (or perform tasks remotely) and do not, in any way, interact with the end users. In my case they just come and ask, which has its drawbacks too, but I get to know a lot more about them and how they use the labs.
Even those who have their own machines use the labs primarily because of the software. They can't afford to buy copies of CS4 and Solidworks and Final Cut Pro and so on... some pirate, but many wouldn't know how, the rest don't want to. The other reasons are communication with other students, printing and the speed of the machines we have as opposed to what they can get on their laptops.
Knowing how the students work and communicating with them regularly has helped me make the facilities better and while the labs are open until 3am and I go home some 9 hours earlier they're not shy in letting me know what happened the night before about any specific issues.
You learn only so much by looking, you learn more by talking as well.
Morton's Law: If rats are experimented upon, they will develop cancer.