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South Korea Bans Selfie-Stick Sales
Rambo Tribble writes "South Korea has instituted large fines for selling unregistered "selfie-sticks". The problem arises because many of the devices are using Bluetooth radio spectrum, and must be certified to do so legally. Expressing doubts that the regulations and stiff fines will influence sales, one official said of them, "It's not going to affect anything in any meaningful way, but it is nonetheless a telecommunication device subject to regulation, and that means we are obligated to crack down on uncertified ones."
How is this different from ANY unregistered/knockoff/Chinese copy Bluetooth device? Why suddenly the issue with "selfie sticks"?
What a pain, though, to have to register in each country. Why, I'm shocked, shocked, that FCC registration is not enough. ;)
(OK, SRSLY, assume EU has some common registration. But how do smaller countries deal with this? Are there other region-wide registrations other than EU?)
Or is it that Selfie Sticks are just so wildly popular that suddenly this has become some sort of problem? I'd assume that by next Christmas, this will be a non-issue, as South Koreans will all be hopping on 500mbit/sec pogo sticks.
There are times when there is just isn't anybody else around to take the picture. (second photo).
I read the internet for the articles.
Don't let the "ban" fool you. This has nothing to do with bluetooth technology - that's only the legal loophole being used. Since the selca-bong or selfie sticks came on the scene, they've exploded in the retail sector - but stores missed the boat and street venders have made a killing in sales. Sometimes selling cheap Chinese manufactured devices for as much as W30,000 (about US$30). Seeing that they missed the boat, the big box retailers pushed the regulators to crack down on "illegal" sticks. This is all an attempt to get the monopods sold in chaebol owned stores.
* "wer", adult male (survives in a few words like virile and werewolf)
(Puts on pedantic hat.) You are correct that the Germanic/Old English "were" survives in words like "werewolf" and, for Tolkien fans only, "weregild" (as in "This I will have as weregild for my father's death" from the Silmarillion).
"Virile," however, comes from the Latin "virilis" via French. They are kinda sorta related but not really.
This is a gross oversimplification as any language scholar can tell you, but a fun exercise for any English language speaker is to study the roots of common "vulgar" vs. "high-class" words and find that their roots map very closely to Latin vs. Germanic. Old English was - once the native Celts and Romano-Britons had been displaced - largely a relic of its "Germanic" (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) conquerors and the language of the people. After the Norman Conquest in 1066 (Normans "Nord-mann" being transplanted Vikings who learned French) the language of the nobility in England became French (which was based on Latin) for hundreds of years. While over time the two melded together, you can still (again, oversimplifying) in many cases tell the upper-class terms for things (derived from French/Latin) from the lower-class terms for things (derived from Old English/Germanic). For example:
It doesn't hold true in all cases but it is in general a pretty fascinating window into the evolution of the English language, FWIW.
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