Interesting Links for 22-10-2012

[andrewducker]

• The Swedish serial killer who never was (20 years of drug-ridden confessions, and it sounds like none of them were true).
  (tags: drugs sweden murder EpicFail )
• Why Things Fail: From Tires to Helicopter Blades, Everything Breaks Eventually
  (tags: materials failure technology design )
• Playing LA Noire with your grandfather, who was an LA beat cop in the 40s
  (tags: games police history family )
• The physics of baseball as illustrated by Fox's new 5000 fps camera
  (tags: physics baseball video sports )
• Does Genetically Modified Corn Really Cause Tumors in Rats?
  (tags: cancer genetics rats food )
• Amazon can, and will, cut people off from all the ebooks they bought, and refuse to explain why.
  (tags: amazon drm ebooks EpicFail )
• If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This
  (tags: meditation concentration )

Comments

Amazon can, and will, cut people off from all the ebooks they bought, and refuse to explain why.

[jack]

I guess the thing is, I thought it was obvious this was going to keep happening as soon as I saw the proposal to let amazon have control over your pseudo-property with no recourse.

It's like, you've just got some cash from an ATM, and the guy with you says "Hey, would you mind if I just hold that cash for a moment while you shut your eyes? And you should sign a contract saying it's ok if I just take it. But I won't. Honest," and then says "What's wrong? Don't you trust me?? There's totally a good reason, I just won't tell you what it is!"

Maybe I do trust him, more or less, but I still think it's a bad idea to deliberately set up a situation where he has every opportunity and incentive to screw me over and there's nothing I can do about it, and to be honest, I'm rather suspicious of him asking.

So I'm surprised that other people are surprised -- if they didn't get outraged when they bought the kindle, I assumed they accepted the "may be deleted at any time". But that's not fair of me, regardless of when we realised it, we both agree that Amazon is being unfair.

The other thing is, it is in fact entirely understandable for Amazon to have automated fraud-detection algorithms, so I'm not surprised that some people get "you're taking the piss, we don't want a dialogue with you, fuck off" emails, that's unavoidable from a large tech company.

What amazon are doing wrong is that there's no way to escalate the problem (other than making a stink online and getting into the national news). In fact, even under corporate-generous legal systems, I'm surprised "you give us money and we give you absolutely no guarantee of service at all" is a legal contract!