Fine Print

So, there's another LJ crush meme going around...

From the signup Terms of Service:

By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the LJmeme.com service, you automatically grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform, display and or sell such Materials. By posting said information, including personal information, you grant us full ownership over it for any purpose. This is an object lesson. Don't give out information you don't want other people to see without reading the fine print.

'Nuff said, really.

Edit: Amusing article from Dale Hawkins in the latest RISKS digest:

Many popular instant-messaging tools interpret text "emoticons" and replace
them with graphical icons. For example, if you send your buddy a
colon-right-parenthesis, your correspondent's messaging client may replace
the :) with a yellow smiley-face icon.

This is very nice, but the sender has no control. And it's hard to know in
advance what character-strings will be parsed into what kind of unintended
image.

A colleague was discussing his 401(k) plan with his boss, who happens to be
female, via instant messaging. He discovered, to his horror, that the boss'
instant-messaging client was rendering the "(k)" as a big pair of red
smoochy lips. :(

Still house-hunting

Well, I went to the auction today (after talking to solicitor, who told us what to expect, and getting the pest/building report, which had no major surprises).

The bidding went 5K above the limit Rey and I had agreed to, and that didn't make the reserve. The agents and auctioneer did their damnedest to encourage me to go just a little bit higher, because we were Almost There CAN'T YOU FEEL IT THIS HOUSE WANTS YOU SO BAD OH BABY BABY BABY PLEASE BABY PLEASE JUST A LITTLE MORE PLEASE?

And I said 'no' again, and eventually resorted to "My wife and I agreed on a figure, I'm not going higher than that without her agreement, and I can't reach her while she's working. No, I cannot call her." Repeated until they got the message.

We may yet decide that it *is* worth going that little bit more, but it's not a decision I'm willing to make in a high-pressure situation. It's a nice house, but I would rather regret a dozen places we didn't buy than one place we did.

No doubt we'll be hearing from the agents shortly, despite the auctioneer's claim that only the highest bidder would be able to negotiate with the owner afterwards...

Stayed to watch the other three auctions that night. One sold, the other two passed in without a single bid. So, 25% clearance rate...