The one other thing I should mention, is that when I hear Iranians criticize their government, they almost never mention Khamenei. Its always Ahmedenejad. Ahmedenejad can be replaced in an election.
I, too, have never met an Iranian who had anything positive to say about Ahmedenejad. Even Muslim Iranians, although most Iranians I've met in the US and Canada are Christian or Jewish, which kind of excludes them from the Ahmedenejad fan club. The first thing to consider is that Iranians who leave the country are not wholly representative of the Iranian population.
But, beyond that, the current Iranian regime is very good at surviving. It has just enough semblance of democracy that it can appear to bend to the will of the people just enough to keep them from revolting. When Iranians want reform, the government has a few tricks up its sleeve -like symbolic measures against honor killings- that don't actually change anything, but have the appearance of reform. And the permanent, non-democratic, part of the government manages to run everything from behind the scenes while still placing all the blame for negative things on the elected leaders. I've heard very smart people claim that the Iranian regime will fall, but I think they underestimate its ability to insulate itself from instability.
I presume that once eBay starts restricting some sales to PayPal only, it will be tempted to extend the list further. [from linked site]
I cautiously disagree. The list you found of categories subject to the paypal only policy:
- Video Games > Consoles
- Consumer Electronics > MP3 Players
- Computing > Software
- Wholesale & Job Lots > Mobile & Home Phones
- Business, Office & Industrial > Industrial Supply/ MRO
consists of items that are likely to result in a dispute that involves a serious loss of money for a customer. For example a broken console or mp3 player, a phony software license, a lot of phones that differ from the description (this is a huge problem with after-market cell phones), or sub-par industrial supplies. They could be requiring payal so that they control the dispute process. If someone is unhappy because they couldn't get a refund after they paid by money order, they might blame ebay. ebay doesn't want bad publicity from disputes they have no ability to resolve. Granted, paypal's policies suck when you actually try to get your money back. But they probably suffer from the same problem as most companies with PR problems; being completely unable to acknowledge when their product is trash. So, as they see it, I think this is about protecting their image. I'm sure they appreciate the increased margins though, hence my caution in disagreeing.
if eBay had launched the scheme in America would they have gotten away with it?
Clearly they didn't feel very confident about it. Why do you think they tested it in Australia?
If they tried it in America and it scared off all their buyers, they would destroy their business. If the American buyers went to another site, the sellers all over the world would follow right behind them. However, any Australians that abandoned ebay as a result of the policy will eventually come back. The Australian market is not big enough to poach ebay's sellers. Even if they alienated every customer in Australia they'd still be the #1 auction site. A small, isolated market like Australia is the best place for them to test a policy they aren't sure about.
Its a consequence of the fact that people are to god damn lazy to research anything themselves, so they get all their information from campaign ads. Why bother doing things your constituents would like if they will never know about them? Whether you're a perfect democratic angel or a complete douche, your campaign ads will look pretty much the same. But when it comes to paying for them, if you kiss the asses of people and organizations with money to spare, you can afford a hell of a lot more of that wonderfully educational TV time.
I can't decide whether things are better or worse now. Back then, the FBI put wiretaps on whoever they damn well pleased without any legal justification. There was no public debate on whether warrantless wiretapping should be allowed. Law enforcement acted with impunity, but technological limitations kept the number of wiretaps small. Now, those technological limitations have evaporated. Wiretapping requires much less manpower. Law enforcement agencies would like to be able to wiretap anyone they want without a warrant, and they want to do it legally. If we pretend that no illegal wiretaps are placed, I wonder if its better to have a broad wiretapping program in public view or to have a small scale wiretapping operation with absolutely no public oversight.
If you needed proof that the experts behind this story don't know what they're talking about, here it is:
Analysts said that as-Sahab(AQ's propaganda network) is outfitted with some of the best technology available. Editors and producers use ultralight Sony Vaio laptops
Typical newspaper tech reporting. I wonder if any of these "analysts" has ever used a Sony laptop.
Not only are they not encrypted, but they are easily accessible from the preferences menu. I don't think most people realize that anyone sitting at their computer can see all their firefox passwords unless they password protect them.
Implementing an OTP system is pretty pricey. Paypal loses money selling their footballs at $5. Blizzard would have to price them pretty high to turn a significant profit. Maybe they're doing it to protect themselves from liability. If you feel your account was worth $5 million and it gets stolen, they can make a better case in court that they took all reasonable security precautions.
Perhaps the answer is that the only way godaddy can afford to price domains so low is by implementing a basket of shady policies that make them money on the side.
Don't set a reserve, set the minimum bid. I never got he point of a reserve, its just a hidden minimum bid. Buyers should be able to see the minimum amount they would have to pay for something. Hiding it is just dishonest.
I'm not sure how this works, but if you don't claim it what if it goes to the lawyers who brought the class action? You should claim the money and then send it to Rockstar just to make sure. Cash, so they can't throw it out.
Based on my experience, the flock data is not representative of firefox 2. After running firefox and using tabs for a few hours, it would often be using around 300mb of my memory, while the data shows flock maxing out at 200mb.
Its a big relief to see someone is doing something about this. I live in Montreal and I get my DSL from bell. The traffic shaping is out of hand. I simply can't use bittorrent. There is a window of a few hours mid-day where they let me use it, but otherwise its throttled right down to 0. The irony is that they charge me if I go over 30gb, so they really have no incentive to keep my traffic down. At $1.50 a GB over 30, they can afford a hell of a lot of infrastructure.
What you're saying would make sense if they were publishing the information through legitimate channels. If, on their own sites,in press releases or in published articles, they were pointing attention to articles they thought people should read. But that is not what they are doing. They are playing with the google search page, which doesn't belong to them and is intended to be a reflection of what you would want to see when you type in a search term, not what some other person wants you to see.
I don't object to calling attention to a truthful news article that reflects poorly on a candidate. However, I have a big problem with doing so by gaming a search engine.
So what you're saying, if I understand correctly, is that anything that effects someone's opinion is basically the same. Whether I make an honest attempt to explain an issue or an event or I try to sneak around behind the scenes altering what people see and in what order, its all basically the same. Whether I place a clearly marked advertisement or try to cleverly bend someone else's content to convey my message, its all basically the same. It scares me that so many people don't believe in classifying behavior as right or wrong. Its not that people like you believe that ends justify means, its that you simply don't see what makes one mean worse than another. And the worst part is that your type is drawn to politics, so you guys are running the show.
If the price of a good is adjusted quickly and severely enough to compensate for an increase in demand or a decrease in supply, the good will never actually run out. The idea that there is "not enough" of some good is meaningless in an economic sense. If there is not enough gas being produced to supply world demand at $1 a gallon, there may be enough to supply world demand at $3 a gallon.
in other words: if markets work like they are theoretically supposed to, you will never simply run out of a good. gas stations will never run dry, and the internet will never collapse. under normal circumstances like gradually increasing demand for oil and bandwidth, the market is able to absorb changes without breaking down.
This is a perfect example of how political types can't see anything outside of their petty us vs. them mentality.
"We're just using McCain's own words -- everything we are targeting are things McCain has done or said himself. There's no bias at all. No bias? By what definition is emphasizing the things someone says that suit your purposes not bias? In fact, this is the most insidious kind of bias. If the pieces being ranked up were opinion pieces, at least viewers would be aware that what they are reading is someone's opinion. But this way, the ordering of the news stories itself contains some random guy's personal bias and the majority of searchers will not know to put their guard up.
Obviously, it is manipulating
bingo
While the FSF can't take legal action on their own, they may be able to convince the BusyBox folks to do it. Some random guy on the internet saying "These guys are violating the terms of the GPL, do something about it" sounds a lot less appealing than "we, the FSF, will pay your legal fees and handle public relations. Please enforce the GPL terms."
Slashdot Mirror
The one other thing I should mention, is that when I hear Iranians criticize their government, they almost never mention Khamenei. Its always Ahmedenejad. Ahmedenejad can be replaced in an election.
I, too, have never met an Iranian who had anything positive to say about Ahmedenejad. Even Muslim Iranians, although most Iranians I've met in the US and Canada are Christian or Jewish, which kind of excludes them from the Ahmedenejad fan club.
The first thing to consider is that Iranians who leave the country are not wholly representative of the Iranian population.
But, beyond that, the current Iranian regime is very good at surviving. It has just enough semblance of democracy that it can appear to bend to the will of the people just enough to keep them from revolting. When Iranians want reform, the government has a few tricks up its sleeve -like symbolic measures against honor killings- that don't actually change anything, but have the appearance of reform. And the permanent, non-democratic, part of the government manages to run everything from behind the scenes while still placing all the blame for negative things on the elected leaders. I've heard very smart people claim that the Iranian regime will fall, but I think they underestimate its ability to insulate itself from instability.
I presume that once eBay starts restricting some sales to PayPal only, it will be tempted to extend the list further. [from linked site]
I cautiously disagree. The list you found of categories subject to the paypal only policy:
- Video Games > Consoles
- Consumer Electronics > MP3 Players
- Computing > Software
- Wholesale & Job Lots > Mobile & Home Phones
- Business, Office & Industrial > Industrial Supply/ MRO
consists of items that are likely to result in a dispute that involves a serious loss of money for a customer. For example a broken console or mp3 player, a phony software license, a lot of phones that differ from the description (this is a huge problem with after-market cell phones), or sub-par industrial supplies. They could be requiring payal so that they control the dispute process. If someone is unhappy because they couldn't get a refund after they paid by money order, they might blame ebay. ebay doesn't want bad publicity from disputes they have no ability to resolve. Granted, paypal's policies suck when you actually try to get your money back. But they probably suffer from the same problem as most companies with PR problems; being completely unable to acknowledge when their product is trash. So, as they see it, I think this is about protecting their image. I'm sure they appreciate the increased margins though, hence my caution in disagreeing.
if eBay had launched the scheme in America would they have gotten away with it?
Clearly they didn't feel very confident about it. Why do you think they tested it in Australia?
If they tried it in America and it scared off all their buyers, they would destroy their business. If the American buyers went to another site, the sellers all over the world would follow right behind them. However, any Australians that abandoned ebay as a result of the policy will eventually come back. The Australian market is not big enough to poach ebay's sellers. Even if they alienated every customer in Australia they'd still be the #1 auction site. A small, isolated market like Australia is the best place for them to test a policy they aren't sure about.
Its a consequence of the fact that people are to god damn lazy to research anything themselves, so they get all their information from campaign ads. Why bother doing things your constituents would like if they will never know about them? Whether you're a perfect democratic angel or a complete douche, your campaign ads will look pretty much the same. But when it comes to paying for them, if you kiss the asses of people and organizations with money to spare, you can afford a hell of a lot more of that wonderfully educational TV time.
I can't decide whether things are better or worse now. Back then, the FBI put wiretaps on whoever they damn well pleased without any legal justification. There was no public debate on whether warrantless wiretapping should be allowed. Law enforcement acted with impunity, but technological limitations kept the number of wiretaps small. Now, those technological limitations have evaporated. Wiretapping requires much less manpower. Law enforcement agencies would like to be able to wiretap anyone they want without a warrant, and they want to do it legally. If we pretend that no illegal wiretaps are placed, I wonder if its better to have a broad wiretapping program in public view or to have a small scale wiretapping operation with absolutely no public oversight.
Pants man begs to differ. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2007/06/pants_verdict_judge_stuffs_the.html
Analysts said that as-Sahab(AQ's propaganda network) is outfitted with some of the best technology available. Editors and producers use ultralight Sony Vaio laptops
Typical newspaper tech reporting. I wonder if any of these "analysts" has ever used a Sony laptop.
Not only are they not encrypted, but they are easily accessible from the preferences menu. I don't think most people realize that anyone sitting at their computer can see all their firefox passwords unless they password protect them.
Implementing an OTP system is pretty pricey. Paypal loses money selling their footballs at $5. Blizzard would have to price them pretty high to turn a significant profit. Maybe they're doing it to protect themselves from liability. If you feel your account was worth $5 million and it gets stolen, they can make a better case in court that they took all reasonable security precautions.
Perhaps the answer is that the only way godaddy can afford to price domains so low is by implementing a basket of shady policies that make them money on the side.
Don't set a reserve, set the minimum bid. I never got he point of a reserve, its just a hidden minimum bid. Buyers should be able to see the minimum amount they would have to pay for something. Hiding it is just dishonest.
lalalalalalalalalalalalala!!! I can't hear you!!!
I'm not sure how this works, but if you don't claim it what if it goes to the lawyers who brought the class action? You should claim the money and then send it to Rockstar just to make sure. Cash, so they can't throw it out.
Not if you have a 4 year old computer.
Based on my experience, the flock data is not representative of firefox 2. After running firefox and using tabs for a few hours, it would often be using around 300mb of my memory, while the data shows flock maxing out at 200mb.
Its a big relief to see someone is doing something about this. I live in Montreal and I get my DSL from bell. The traffic shaping is out of hand. I simply can't use bittorrent. There is a window of a few hours mid-day where they let me use it, but otherwise its throttled right down to 0. The irony is that they charge me if I go over 30gb, so they really have no incentive to keep my traffic down. At $1.50 a GB over 30, they can afford a hell of a lot of infrastructure.
What you're saying would make sense if they were publishing the information through legitimate channels. If, on their own sites,in press releases or in published articles, they were pointing attention to articles they thought people should read. But that is not what they are doing. They are playing with the google search page, which doesn't belong to them and is intended to be a reflection of what you would want to see when you type in a search term, not what some other person wants you to see.
I don't object to calling attention to a truthful news article that reflects poorly on a candidate. However, I have a big problem with doing so by gaming a search engine.
So what you're saying, if I understand correctly, is that anything that effects someone's opinion is basically the same. Whether I make an honest attempt to explain an issue or an event or I try to sneak around behind the scenes altering what people see and in what order, its all basically the same. Whether I place a clearly marked advertisement or try to cleverly bend someone else's content to convey my message, its all basically the same. It scares me that so many people don't believe in classifying behavior as right or wrong. Its not that people like you believe that ends justify means, its that you simply don't see what makes one mean worse than another. And the worst part is that your type is drawn to politics, so you guys are running the show.
I absolutely agree with that. But placing responsibility on readers to sort out fact from opinion does not exonerate people who try to deceive them.
If the price of a good is adjusted quickly and severely enough to compensate for an increase in demand or a decrease in supply, the good will never actually run out. The idea that there is "not enough" of some good is meaningless in an economic sense. If there is not enough gas being produced to supply world demand at $1 a gallon, there may be enough to supply world demand at $3 a gallon.
in other words: if markets work like they are theoretically supposed to, you will never simply run out of a good. gas stations will never run dry, and the internet will never collapse. under normal circumstances like gradually increasing demand for oil and bandwidth, the market is able to absorb changes without breaking down.
Its like gerrymandering Texas.
Obviously, it is manipulating
bingo
The site couldn't handle the traffic. Here is the google cache: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:l7XcvweMq9QJ:www.thestandard.com/news/2008/06/21/montreal-launches-public-bike-system+montreal+public+bikes+standard&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1
While the FSF can't take legal action on their own, they may be able to convince the BusyBox folks to do it. Some random guy on the internet saying "These guys are violating the terms of the GPL, do something about it" sounds a lot less appealing than "we, the FSF, will pay your legal fees and handle public relations. Please enforce the GPL terms."