Philip Newton's journal

I just happened to look at someone’s last journal entry (let’s call them “A”), where they say that they probably won’t be posting to LiveJournal any more.

One person (“B”) said (nearly a year later) that since A’s journal was going to be inactive, B would unfriend them as part of friends list maintenance/cleanup. And that in order to keep their friend-of list tidy, B was going to ban A. (Which would cause A to no longer appear on B’s profile.)

The kicker? B ended their note saying that if A didn’t like that, they could unfriend B and let them know.

Now, once A unfriends B, B’s friends-of list will be tidy so they don’t need the ban to hide A’s name from the list. But what struck me was, how does B expect A to contact them if they banned them?

I went to a meeting of the Hamburg Esperanto Society on Thursday: my first Esperanto meeting.

( Read the whole thing )

So I was arrested in Florida (but they got my middle name and my birth date wrong).

Fortunately, that didn’t stop me from becoming Director of Audiovisual for Samsung Australia.

In unrelated news, I’m a little surprised at how many Philip Newtons are popping up recently. For ages, it seemed as if I was the only one, but now I get new search results emailed to me more and more frequently.

Either there are more Philip Newtons around now than ten years ago, or more companies are on the web, or the search algorithms are different, or something.

Anyway, it’s always fun to see what “I” have been up to :)

Someone pointed to Dwolla as a way to let users pay.

I had a brief look at their Terms of Service and I must say, a place that has TOS with such weird punctuation issues as the following is not particularly trust-inspiring. They couldn’t even afford to get a lawyer that can spell?

Item the first:

The following capitalized terms shall have the indicated meanings:
(a) “Account” means a holding account at Veridian Credit Union. Partners” means natural persons or
(b) “Dwolla entities that Dwolla does business with in order to bring the Dwolla System to the marketplace.
(c) “Dwolla System” means the software owned by Dwolla. “Dwolla User”, “You”, or “Your” means a natural
(d) person or entity using the Dwolla System via an account at a Financial Institution. Iowa state
(e) “Veridian Credit Union” is an chartered, NCUSIF federally insured credit union headquartered in Waterloo, Iowa.

Notice the weird quotation marks in Partners” means natural persons or (b) “Dwolla entities that Dwolla does business with. Was this supposed to be “Partners” means natural persons or entities that Dwolla does business with? And was “Dwolla” supposed to be defined somewhere?

Notice also the weird line break in “Dwolla User”, “You”, or “Your” means a natural (d) person or entity. Was item (d) supposed to start before “Dwolla User”? We may never know.

Notice also the fact that Veridian Credit Union is called “an chartered […] credit union”. “An chartered”? Was this thing drawn up by someone with English as their second language?

Item the second:

You agree under no circumstance shall the Dwolla System be used to transmit funds in association or for payment of illegal goods or services. This includes, but is not limited to, illegal substances, pyramid schemes, or any type of money laundering. In the event Dwolla finds your Account is being used (or has at any time) for such activity, it will result in the suspension of your Account. Dwolla will not be a party to the transfer of funds in association with illegal goods and services.

I think the first sentence needs a “that” in there—and a bit of rewording would help, too: “You agree that the Dwolla System shall under no circumstance be used…”.

Also, “your Account is being used (or has at any time been used)” needs the inserted text.

Later on, they say that Dwolla may “hold your funds for up to 90 Days”, but capitalised-Days is not defined further up, making me wonder what the significance of the initial capital letter is. Later on, they go on about Fees and Claims and Chargebacks, also all capitalised, also all without definitions. I wonder whether they think that capital letters are somehow magical, and sprinkling them on key terms throughout lends a bit more gravitas to the document or something.

Then there’s a bit where

You agree Dwolla, for security and performance purposes, shall record information and transaction information privately. This includes, but is not limited to, operating system, IP address, usage statistics, and transaction frequency. This information can be vital for not only security, but insuring our products are fulfilling their intended purposes.

Note that you agree (no “that” for ease of reading) Dwolla shall record this information (my emphasis). This sounds like a promise. Which means that you should be able to subpoena them for the information and they won’t be able to claim that they don’t have it—after all, they are contractually obligated to collect it. I’m not a lawyer, but don’t most similar contracts have a “may” here instead? That would grant them permission but not an obligation to collect data.

But perhaps the most egregious bit is this:

In the event a dispute shall arise between the parties to this [contract, lease, etc.], it is hereby agreed that the dispute shall be referred to USAM Minneapolis, Minnesota St. Paul, MN for arbitration in accordance with the applicable United States Arbitration and Mediation Rules of Arbitration. The arbitrator's decision shall be final and legally binding and judgment may be entered thereon.

“this [contract, lease, etc.]”? Are you kidding me? This looks as if they took a template from somewhere and fiddled with it a little bit but didn’t replace this template variable.

And you’re expected to do business with people that have TOS that look like those? The mind boggles.

Looks to me like something drawn up by a bunch of non-legal amateurs, not something a business uses.

Happy perihelion!

We won’t be this close to the sun again for another year :-)

So speaking with n_true made me consider going to an Esperanto meeting at some point to take part in a course and learn more and/or to have some opportunity to speak the language.

After all, I had found there that, despite never having spoken the language before, I was able to carry on a reasonable conversation with him, just based on what I had passively “assimilated” so far in reading here and there. (Eble mi ecx povas paroli esperanton pli bone ol la klingonan... versxajne pli rapide!)

So I had a look around esperantoland.org and eventoj.hu and picked out some likely-sounding venues. The following list is mostly for my own reference.

This is all just a pipe dream at the moment (especially given the costs), but who knows.

On the off-chance: is anyone on my friends list going to any of those conferences? Or have any stories to tell?

Perhaps it would make more sense to plan this sort of thing for 2013; after looking briefly at several sites, it would have been cheaper if I had applied before November.

Also, I think I’d need something more course-y; many of those meetings seem to be oriented towards fluent speakers with lots of mentions of prelegoj (Vorträge?) and discussion, which I don’t think I’d be up for yet.

gerald_duck wonders what happens when fossil fuels become so depleted that a lump of coal becomes more valuable than a child's typical stash of presents from Santa: will this create a perverse incentive for children to be naughty?

… you see a Facebook status of “$NAME likes RTL” and the first thing you think of is right-to-left writing direction.

A macaronic German/English Christmas poem my sister brought to my attention:

It’s a bit ironic to receive spam that contains the footer “I use [free product] to keep my inbox clean!”….