If Sainsbury's Bank is not a bank, perhaps you can tell us why they are a member of the British Banking Association, which is restricted to institutions undertaking banking activities.
Because undertaking `banking activities' does not make one a bank? Note that the BBA page you referenced, but clearly didn't read (since it doesn't mention `institutions undertaking banking activities'), includes such things as being an agent for investments as qualifying an organisation for membership. Sainsbury's is an agent standing between members of the public and the Halifax bank.
Perhaps it would have helped if you had read the about the BBA page where it says they represent banks and other financial services firms.
Ditto the FSA, they regulate all kinds of financial organisations, not just banks.
Look, Sainsbury's don't do any banking. They just take your money and pass it on to the Halifax, take information about your account from the Halifax and pass it on to you and so on. They are an agent.
It even says this (in beurocratese) on the page you presumably looked at (but again didn't read):
Sainsbury's Bank plc is regulated by the FSA and introduces only to the Halifax Financial Services Marketing Group for advising on and selling life assurance, pension and collective investment scheme business. The Marketing Group is regulated by the FSA.
The key term here is `introduces'. As `not even a UK citizen' perhaps the technical meaning of the word in this context slipped past you. An introducer is a class of financial organisation who provides no services, but passes customers on to a organisation which does. They are regulated because they might run off with your money rather than send it on, but they don't actually invest the money, hold reserves and so on.
You might also note that they direct any complaints to the Halifax's compliance officer. If they were a real bank they would be responsible for their own compliance.
Err excuse me- but they are. And the advertise themselves as such
If you confuse what people advertise themselves as with what they are I have a bridge you might want to buy:-).
They're actually backed by a "real" bank[...]
Backed is not the right word. They don't provide any banking services at all. They are `introducers', they just stand between you and the real bank sticking their logo on things. They are no more a bank than my postman is ThinkGeek just because he is the one who hands me my box of new toys.
financially there is no way Phantom will be had for $200 with that $30/mo subscription.
This will be a very low spec PC (it's quite poor now, in a year or two when they might ship it will be laughable), mass produced as a unit rather than plugged together. Wouldn't suprise me if they could build it for $200-$250 (a low spec real PC is, what $400-$500 retail?). So they only need a couple of months subscription at most to break even on the hardware. After that it's all jam.
I'd be more skeptical about them getting XP at a reasonable price to compete with the XBox. Not to mention the pressure M$ will put on games developers not to deal with them.
Well, yeah, Unix was obviosly an integral part of the Linux story. As was the development of timesharing for CTSS. Not to mention the discoverry of electricity, fire and so on back to the protoplasmic globule.
If this is the best controversy this idiot can come up with to promote his book, he's in deep shit and needs to get a real job.
I read, I think in New Scientist, a proposal that rather than jam the wavelengths, the correct thing to do is set up a local cell which is strong enough to make all the cellphopnes in the area bind to it.
Eg in a theatre, the cell could act as a normal relay outside performance times, but suddenly become a black hole when the performance starts. (obviously it has to pretend still to be working, or the phones will just use another cell)
Such a system could allow emergency calls while blocking anything else.
You tell me. I'm firmly of the `if it ain't broke' school. People making marks on paper works well and has well understood properties. As the Florida fiasco in the last US presidential election showed, even a small amount of technology has great potential to muddy the waters.
Mind you, in a country the size of India, we may be talking more than hours for a hand count. The Indonesian election count took a month. I presume the main factor is how many trusted people you have to supervise the count. If you can't just trust every neighbourhood to do it right and honestly, then you have to centralise and that takes time.
OK for townies. In the country people have to travel further.
OTOH, they presumably do so on a daily basis, so it just becomes `go 100 yards out of their way'.
There is a widely recycled assumption that we need to get more people to vote and/or `become involved in politics'. This seems to be to be amazingly stupid. We need to get more people to think about politics. The voting etc will come as a natural consequence. Getting them to vote without thinking first is just a way to reduce the average information content of an election.
Sorry, I'd consider (at least) the 19-21yr olds to be NOT "kids" anymore....
You must be very young:-).
As a guide I think it a reasonable rule of thumb to say that human males are kids up to about 25, females up to 20. Of course, it varies between individuals. Eg Donald Rumsfeld is still too emotionally immature to be trusted out on his own in his 70s.
it doesn't do what a lot of people would want (secure internet voting).
Thank god. What's the point of internet voting? If someone can't be arsed to walk 100 yards to vote, why do we want to know what they think -- they probably don't. We have proxy and postal votes for people who really can't make it to a polling station.
in any case isn't `secure internet' a conradiction in terms?
Thats the first time I've heard of circumcision as a cure for anything
I just googled up this. I have no idea about the authority of the organisation, but the stuff there corresponds to what I remember of a BBC documentory on the subject a while ago (Radio 4 is a wonderful thing).
Actually, any pair of statements of the form ``19th century loonies thought X was a cure for masturbation'' and ``19th century loonies thought X was caused by masturbation'' for any X has a reasonable chance of being true.
Not that we are any better, substitute `obesity' or `cancer' or `artificial additives' or `mobile phones' for `masterbation' as appropriate.
(of course, with the new generation of phones with video etc, ``mobile phones cause masturbation'' is going to come true)
based of course on a teaching that until ~70 years ago promoted general health, reduced disease transmission and made cleanliness more convienient.
IIRC it was promoted as a `cure' for masturbation. All the cleanliness stuff was later rationalisation for keeping on doing it (the snipping, not the fun stuff:-)). I'm not sure how it was supposed to prevent masturbation -- ok it removes a few options, but there are enough left to keep the owner occupied of an evening.
Also, I think it started as a British fad, was exported, then more or less died out in the UK. I remember hearing a theory that it's quick death in Britain was a result of greater antisemitism at the time.
I suppose it's lucky for modern American males that 19th century British loonies chose circumcision rather than subinscision or something.
Yoe mean there was a "significant shift" when the Emperor Constantine took and interest.
No, the big shift in christianity was much earlier. Paul and Peter were involved IIRC.
So this explains the modern day christians not finding "choping bits off their childeren" barbaric?
This is an American thing, based in 19th century medical faddism, nothing to do with religion at all, except that Christianity is probably behind the ritual impurity paranoia which gave rise to the fad.
The aliens never fell. Perhaps this solves the silent universe problem. If humans are the only species silly enough to eat the apple (or jnikrup fruit or whatever), the rest of the universe is presumably to happy in paradise to want to contact the ethically subnormals of Sol III.
According to the Bible, Jesus is God made a man, now, how could you convert an alien to this idea if he doesn't give a fuck what a man actually is whereas he wants to exchange ideas in order to help both civilizations advance...
Actually, the early church hit this one. Jesus was god made jewish man. How are you going to impress a Roman with `god became a Jew' if he doesn't care about that small tribe on the edge of empire. There was a significant shift when they turned from a jewish messianic cult into a catholic one. This is the cause of all the bickerring about circumcision and so on -- the greek and roman worlds found snipping bits of their children or themselves barbaric.
So, one thing which might happen to the monotheistic religions on contact with an ET is that they mutate into a universallist outlook. The big question then being whether the history on Earth is unique -- eg did Jesus death save the Qxthipus of Raffita VII, was Mohamed the last ever prophet, or just the final prophet for earth?
However, all this is probably moot. The religions of Earth are so heavily rooted in human psychology that they are unlikely to have any point of application to an alien intelligence.
a) Back up his music collection
b) move it from one folder to another
c) do anything with it except press the "play" button.
I belive there have been explicit decisions hat backups are OK. Moving comes under `space shifting', which I think was treated as OK in the RIAA vs RIO case. There is also some concept of copies made as an unavoidable part of normal use (eg the CD player copies the data from the disk, error corrects it and then converts to analogue)
Meanwhile, the law would suggest that for personal use, copying and modifying something you've purchased is okay
That's the point, I don't think the law does. Custom and common sense is another thing.
Personally, I odn't see an ethical difference between converting a CD to MP3 so I can listen to it walking down the street and buying a really long cable for my headphones. However, someone could argue that I am avoiding paying for an MP3 copy.
It's basicly impossible to make all those kind of decisions in legislation, which is what judges are for.
Actually, according to most non-RIAA lawyers it is.
The EFF say many, not most. I trust them to be accurate with such words.
The reason I said it was not obviously fair use, is that I knew about those two decisions and they are near misses. The Sony judgement explicitly limits itself to time shifting -- ie that you don't keep the copy. The RIO one was not about copyright law at all, but one of those idiosyncratic American laws which some congressbot's paymasters bought.
I just think it's a bad idea to throw legal terms like `fair use' around unless you happen to be a judge hearing a case. Until one does no one knows if format convertion for permanent retention is fair use. All we know is that the RIAAAAAAArgh haven't thought it worthwhile to bring a case yet.
Better to explicitly say `this is clearly perfectly reasonable and ethical behaviour and I don't care what the law says'.
How is AAC -> MP3 for personal use inherently different than broadcast television -> VCR for personal use?
Why do you imagine I think it is. So far as I know recording TV to tape for personal use is not recognised as fair use, except i the limited case of time shifting (ie when you erase the tape after watching it, rather than creating a copy to keep).
[...]since you've actually purchased the product, and therefor have more right to use it as you see fit
You have purchased a copy, but not a dispensation to copy. Consider the case with a paperback: you have purchased thebook, and have every right to use it to hit your dog or prop up a wonky table, but you don't (neccessarily) have the right to copy the contents.
To come at it from another direction, there are specific rules allowing people to copy and format change for purposes of preservation (eg from old rotting film stock or things printed on acidic paper). The existance of such specific exceptions would seem to imply that the general case is not allowed.
Again: I'm not making any kind of ethical argument here, just pointing out that unless there has been a case which settled this issue, it's probably not a good idea to assume that it is fair use.
However, copying to other formats is not obviously fair use.
AIUI, under US law there are four factors considered in decising in fair use, and three of the four are clearly against format-changing: you are copying a cretaive work, you are copying all of it and you are merely copying, not creating anything new.
There is also a plausible argument that you are undermining a potential market for the work -- the owner might start selling it in the format you create, so if people were allowed to make such copies they would eliminate a potential market.
That last on isn't 100% clear, but three and a half out of four is a pretty strong argument against it being fair use.
Not that I don't make such copies, I'm just saying that I don't think people should imagine that in doing so they are protected under `fair use'.
They don't have your address, your phone number, your travel/purchasing history.
Those are issues related to any online/remote dealings, not specific to using a credit card.
Additionally, 90%+ of your offline shopping is local to your home.
I don't see how this is relevant at all. Someone living in the same city as me is just as likely to be a crook as someone living in another city.
If anything the people with access to CC details at some online shop is more likely to be a reasonably well payed IT person and less likely to be a minimum wage slave, so the temptation to commit small time fraud will be less.
And do you remember everyone who you have handed your CC to in the past year? With some effort I could probably remember every database my online CC number has gone into.
In any case, unless you are very foolish (eg not checking your statements) it doesn't really matter, since the CC company should pick up the bill for fraud.
Using your credit card on the internet and with non major companies is like giving your pin and card number to everyone on the street.
What can an internet shop do with your card details that a real-world shop can't? The guy you hand your card to in the roadside cafe you will never visit again has all the information the online store does, plus a copy of your signature.
There is a wonderful Dilbert cartoon on this subject which will ot fit in the margin of this message. (`I'm Not Anti-Business...' p29, acording to the index).
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Because undertaking `banking activities' does not make one a bank? Note that the BBA page you referenced, but clearly didn't read (since it doesn't mention `institutions undertaking banking activities'), includes such things as being an agent for investments as qualifying an organisation for membership. Sainsbury's is an agent standing between members of the public and the Halifax bank.
Perhaps it would have helped if you had read the about the BBA page where it says they represent banks and other financial services firms.
Ditto the FSA, they regulate all kinds of financial organisations, not just banks.
Look, Sainsbury's don't do any banking. They just take your money and pass it on to the Halifax, take information about your account from the Halifax and pass it on to you and so on. They are an agent.
It even says this (in beurocratese) on the page you presumably looked at (but again didn't read):
The key term here is `introduces'. As `not even a UK citizen' perhaps the technical meaning of the word in this context slipped past you. An introducer is a class of financial organisation who provides no services, but passes customers on to a organisation which does. They are regulated because they might run off with your money rather than send it on, but they don't actually invest the money, hold reserves and so on.
You might also note that they direct any complaints to the Halifax's compliance officer. If they were a real bank they would be responsible for their own compliance.
If you confuse what people advertise themselves as with what they are I have a bridge you might want to buy:-).
They're actually backed by a "real" bank[...]
Backed is not the right word. They don't provide any banking services at all. They are `introducers', they just stand between you and the real bank sticking their logo on things. They are no more a bank than my postman is ThinkGeek just because he is the one who hands me my box of new toys.
Supermarkets do savings, loans and credit cards. (at least in the UK they do). No one (sane) thinks they are banks.
Something else reimplemented to avoid the evil GPL?
This will be a very low spec PC (it's quite poor now, in a year or two when they might ship it will be laughable), mass produced as a unit rather than plugged together. Wouldn't suprise me if they could build it for $200-$250 (a low spec real PC is, what $400-$500 retail?). So they only need a couple of months subscription at most to break even on the hardware. After that it's all jam.
I'd be more skeptical about them getting XP at a reasonable price to compete with the XBox. Not to mention the pressure M$ will put on games developers not to deal with them.
If this is the best controversy this idiot can come up with to promote his book, he's in deep shit and needs to get a real job.
Eg in a theatre, the cell could act as a normal relay outside performance times, but suddenly become a black hole when the performance starts. (obviously it has to pretend still to be working, or the phones will just use another cell)
Such a system could allow emergency calls while blocking anything else.
You tell me. I'm firmly of the `if it ain't broke' school. People making marks on paper works well and has well understood properties. As the Florida fiasco in the last US presidential election showed, even a small amount of technology has great potential to muddy the waters.
Mind you, in a country the size of India, we may be talking more than hours for a hand count. The Indonesian election count took a month. I presume the main factor is how many trusted people you have to supervise the count. If you can't just trust every neighbourhood to do it right and honestly, then you have to centralise and that takes time.
``Did you know knives have sharp edges so you can cut things with them''
OTOH, they presumably do so on a daily basis, so it just becomes `go 100 yards out of their way'.
There is a widely recycled assumption that we need to get more people to vote and/or `become involved in politics'. This seems to be to be amazingly stupid. We need to get more people to think about politics. The voting etc will come as a natural consequence. Getting them to vote without thinking first is just a way to reduce the average information content of an election.
You must be very young:-).
As a guide I think it a reasonable rule of thumb to say that human males are kids up to about 25, females up to 20. Of course, it varies between individuals. Eg Donald Rumsfeld is still too emotionally immature to be trusted out on his own in his 70s.
Of course there are, but you really don't want to know what their vision is.
Thank god. What's the point of internet voting? If someone can't be arsed to walk 100 yards to vote, why do we want to know what they think -- they probably don't. We have proxy and postal votes for people who really can't make it to a polling station.
in any case isn't `secure internet' a conradiction in terms?
How many people had mobile phones before there were so many artificial additives in our food?
Surveys have shown that many people buy mobile phones within a few hours of eating at a fast food restaurant.
I just googled up this. I have no idea about the authority of the organisation, but the stuff there corresponds to what I remember of a BBC documentory on the subject a while ago (Radio 4 is a wonderful thing).
Actually, any pair of statements of the form ``19th century loonies thought X was a cure for masturbation'' and ``19th century loonies thought X was caused by masturbation'' for any X has a reasonable chance of being true.
Not that we are any better, substitute `obesity' or `cancer' or `artificial additives' or `mobile phones' for `masterbation' as appropriate.
(of course, with the new generation of phones with video etc, ``mobile phones cause masturbation'' is going to come true)
IIRC it was promoted as a `cure' for masturbation. All the cleanliness stuff was later rationalisation for keeping on doing it (the snipping, not the fun stuff:-)). I'm not sure how it was supposed to prevent masturbation -- ok it removes a few options, but there are enough left to keep the owner occupied of an evening.
Also, I think it started as a British fad, was exported, then more or less died out in the UK. I remember hearing a theory that it's quick death in Britain was a result of greater antisemitism at the time.
I suppose it's lucky for modern American males that 19th century British loonies chose circumcision rather than subinscision or something.
No, the big shift in christianity was much earlier. Paul and Peter were involved IIRC.
So this explains the modern day christians not finding "choping bits off their childeren" barbaric?
This is an American thing, based in 19th century medical faddism, nothing to do with religion at all, except that Christianity is probably behind the ritual impurity paranoia which gave rise to the fad.
The aliens never fell. Perhaps this solves the silent universe problem. If humans are the only species silly enough to eat the apple (or jnikrup fruit or whatever), the rest of the universe is presumably to happy in paradise to want to contact the ethically subnormals of Sol III.
Actually, the early church hit this one. Jesus was god made jewish man. How are you going to impress a Roman with `god became a Jew' if he doesn't care about that small tribe on the edge of empire. There was a significant shift when they turned from a jewish messianic cult into a catholic one. This is the cause of all the bickerring about circumcision and so on -- the greek and roman worlds found snipping bits of their children or themselves barbaric.
So, one thing which might happen to the monotheistic religions on contact with an ET is that they mutate into a universallist outlook. The big question then being whether the history on Earth is unique -- eg did Jesus death save the Qxthipus of Raffita VII, was Mohamed the last ever prophet, or just the final prophet for earth?
However, all this is probably moot. The religions of Earth are so heavily rooted in human psychology that they are unlikely to have any point of application to an alien intelligence.
b) move it from one folder to another
c) do anything with it except press the "play" button.
I belive there have been explicit decisions hat backups are OK. Moving comes under `space shifting', which I think was treated as OK in the RIAA vs RIO case. There is also some concept of copies made as an unavoidable part of normal use (eg the CD player copies the data from the disk, error corrects it and then converts to analogue)
Meanwhile, the law would suggest that for personal use, copying and modifying something you've purchased is okay
That's the point, I don't think the law does. Custom and common sense is another thing.
Personally, I odn't see an ethical difference between converting a CD to MP3 so I can listen to it walking down the street and buying a really long cable for my headphones. However, someone could argue that I am avoiding paying for an MP3 copy.
It's basicly impossible to make all those kind of decisions in legislation, which is what judges are for.
The EFF say many, not most. I trust them to be accurate with such words.
The reason I said it was not obviously fair use, is that I knew about those two decisions and they are near misses. The Sony judgement explicitly limits itself to time shifting -- ie that you don't keep the copy. The RIO one was not about copyright law at all, but one of those idiosyncratic American laws which some congressbot's paymasters bought.
I just think it's a bad idea to throw legal terms like `fair use' around unless you happen to be a judge hearing a case. Until one does no one knows if format convertion for permanent retention is fair use. All we know is that the RIAAAAAAArgh haven't thought it worthwhile to bring a case yet.
Better to explicitly say `this is clearly perfectly reasonable and ethical behaviour and I don't care what the law says'.
Why do you imagine I think it is. So far as I know recording TV to tape for personal use is not recognised as fair use, except i the limited case of time shifting (ie when you erase the tape after watching it, rather than creating a copy to keep).
[...]since you've actually purchased the product, and therefor have more right to use it as you see fit
You have purchased a copy, but not a dispensation to copy. Consider the case with a paperback: you have purchased thebook, and have every right to use it to hit your dog or prop up a wonky table, but you don't (neccessarily) have the right to copy the contents.
To come at it from another direction, there are specific rules allowing people to copy and format change for purposes of preservation (eg from old rotting film stock or things printed on acidic paper). The existance of such specific exceptions would seem to imply that the general case is not allowed.
Again: I'm not making any kind of ethical argument here, just pointing out that unless there has been a case which settled this issue, it's probably not a good idea to assume that it is fair use.
However, copying to other formats is not obviously fair use.
AIUI, under US law there are four factors considered in decising in fair use, and three of the four are clearly against format-changing: you are copying a cretaive work, you are copying all of it and you are merely copying, not creating anything new.
There is also a plausible argument that you are undermining a potential market for the work -- the owner might start selling it in the format you create, so if people were allowed to make such copies they would eliminate a potential market.
That last on isn't 100% clear, but three and a half out of four is a pretty strong argument against it being fair use.
Not that I don't make such copies, I'm just saying that I don't think people should imagine that in doing so they are protected under `fair use'.
Those are issues related to any online/remote dealings, not specific to using a credit card.
Additionally, 90%+ of your offline shopping is local to your home.
I don't see how this is relevant at all. Someone living in the same city as me is just as likely to be a crook as someone living in another city.
If anything the people with access to CC details at some online shop is more likely to be a reasonably well payed IT person and less likely to be a minimum wage slave, so the temptation to commit small time fraud will be less.
And do you remember everyone who you have handed your CC to in the past year? With some effort I could probably remember every database my online CC number has gone into.
In any case, unless you are very foolish (eg not checking your statements) it doesn't really matter, since the CC company should pick up the bill for fraud.
What can an internet shop do with your card details that a real-world shop can't? The guy you hand your card to in the roadside cafe you will never visit again has all the information the online store does, plus a copy of your signature.
There is a wonderful Dilbert cartoon on this subject which will ot fit in the margin of this message. (`I'm Not Anti-Business...' p29, acording to the index).