Then we can use it in the past tense when we want to sound like old codgers
"It was two thousand and eight, the year of the Linux desktop... I was just a young pup at the time, didn't know the difference between a DLL and a bash script but we didn't care, times were simple and we had all we needed to be happy. I remember sitting down on that old dock at the fishing pond with my seven inch EEE PC. Damn but that thing was small... only sixteen gigs of storage is you can believe that... sixteen gigs! But I didn't care, times were simple after all..."
People don;'t write for themselves, they write for their (imagined) audience. Would Slashdot see anywhere near the traffic it does if there were no comments and no mod system?
Within 5km of where I live, there are several malls (one huge one, several smaller ones) and countless other small stores located in strip plazas, where pirated CDs and DVDs are available by the thousands if not millions. Six new-release DVDs for $10? No problem. Hollywood? Bollywood? Euro art films? East Asian cinema? No problem. CDs and DVDs filled with mp3 music? No problem.
This activity has been going on for years and years without pause despite various "crackdown" efforts I read about in the news. It is so utterly brazen that if I had one shred of sympathy for the **AA I would probably find it galling. But instead I find it funny, and strangely reassuring, to to see such rampant and unstoppable piracy on display in the real world.
If you use peer-to-peer applications to copy or distribute copyrighted material such as music, films and software, and do so without paying royalties, you are almost certainly infringing the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
I think the real question here is how Virgin intends to "catch" subscribers. Will any form of P2P traffic result in a letter? TFA, while full of feel-good rhetoric about damages to our vibrant economy, is scant on details in this regard.
No indeed, Iran is not the only country to flirt with the idea of pricing oil in a currency other than US$. Iraq tried it once:
In 2000, Iraq converted all its oil transactions under the Oil for Food program to euros.[2] When U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it returned oil sales from the euro to the USD (
Petrodollar warfare)
In retrospect, this might just have been one of Saddam Hussein's stupidest decisions... one which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems intent on reproducing.
raised in Jakarta by his white mother and various arab men Thanks for clarifying... last time I was in Jakarta I could have sworn the place was populated with Indonesians, but I now realize I was in fact surrounded by extremely clever Arabs who were impersonating people of Malay/Melanesian descent.
The reason consumer electronics is so dear in Europe, is the same as for cars, they can get away with it.
The situation is somewhat the same in Canada. Because the CA$ has historically been weaker than the US$, Canadians have been conditioned to expect a difference between what we pay here and what we see advertised on the internet or on US network television.
As the Canadian dollar has risen to (and above) parity with the US, we've seen the prices of many goods adjust accordingly (you know, free market theory and all). But not everything has become cheaper, and there isn't a lot of rhyme or reason to it when you look at what has become cheaper vs. what has not.
By far the biggest sticking point is vehicles - a new vehicle can be anywhere from 5-30% more expensive in Canada compared to the exact same model south of the border. Some manufacturers (mostly the domestics who are getting their asses handed to them by Toyota et. al) have responded by bringing their prices down so there's only a small premium. Some manufacturers are offering special cash discounted prices (i.e. you pay close to US prices but only if you hand them cash and don't take advantage of financing). Some manufacturers have responded by changing trim and equipment levels so that it's difficult to do an apples-apples comparison. Most tellingly, virtually all manufacturers have responded by threatening their US dealer networks. US dealers have been told not to sell to Canadians, under pain of losing their dealership. As the US$ starting going down the toilet, many Canadians got wise to the fact they could drive down to Buffalo (or wherever) and "reimport" a vehicle simply by filling out a bunch of paperwork. It's almost impossible now to find a dealership anywhere close to the Canadian border who is willing to take that risk anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
Then we can use it in the past tense when we want to sound like old codgers
"It was two thousand and eight, the year of the Linux desktop ... I was just a young pup at the time, didn't know the difference between a DLL and a bash script but we didn't care, times were simple and we had all we needed to be happy. I remember sitting down on that old dock at the fishing pond with my seven inch EEE PC. Damn but that thing was small ... only sixteen gigs of storage is you can believe that ... sixteen gigs! But I didn't care, times were simple after all ..."
Within 5km of where I live, there are several malls (one huge one, several smaller ones) and countless other small stores located in strip plazas, where pirated CDs and DVDs are available by the thousands if not millions. Six new-release DVDs for $10? No problem. Hollywood? Bollywood? Euro art films? East Asian cinema? No problem. CDs and DVDs filled with mp3 music? No problem.
This activity has been going on for years and years without pause despite various "crackdown" efforts I read about in the news. It is so utterly brazen that if I had one shred of sympathy for the **AA I would probably find it galling. But instead I find it funny, and strangely reassuring, to to see such rampant and unstoppable piracy on display in the real world.
From TFA:
If you use peer-to-peer applications to copy or distribute copyrighted material such as music, films and software, and do so without paying royalties, you are almost certainly infringing the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988I think the real question here is how Virgin intends to "catch" subscribers. Will any form of P2P traffic result in a letter? TFA, while full of feel-good rhetoric about damages to our vibrant economy, is scant on details in this regard.
-1 Cyberbullying
No indeed, Iran is not the only country to flirt with the idea of pricing oil in a currency other than US$. Iraq tried it once:
In 2000, Iraq converted all its oil transactions under the Oil for Food program to euros.[2] When U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it returned oil sales from the euro to the USD ( Petrodollar warfare)
In retrospect, this might just have been one of Saddam Hussein's stupidest decisions ... one which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems intent on reproducing.
The situation is somewhat the same in Canada. Because the CA$ has historically been weaker than the US$, Canadians have been conditioned to expect a difference between what we pay here and what we see advertised on the internet or on US network television.
As the Canadian dollar has risen to (and above) parity with the US, we've seen the prices of many goods adjust accordingly (you know, free market theory and all). But not everything has become cheaper, and there isn't a lot of rhyme or reason to it when you look at what has become cheaper vs. what has not.
By far the biggest sticking point is vehicles - a new vehicle can be anywhere from 5-30% more expensive in Canada compared to the exact same model south of the border. Some manufacturers (mostly the domestics who are getting their asses handed to them by Toyota et. al) have responded by bringing their prices down so there's only a small premium. Some manufacturers are offering special cash discounted prices (i.e. you pay close to US prices but only if you hand them cash and don't take advantage of financing). Some manufacturers have responded by changing trim and equipment levels so that it's difficult to do an apples-apples comparison. Most tellingly, virtually all manufacturers have responded by threatening their US dealer networks. US dealers have been told not to sell to Canadians, under pain of losing their dealership. As the US$ starting going down the toilet, many Canadians got wise to the fact they could drive down to Buffalo (or wherever) and "reimport" a vehicle simply by filling out a bunch of paperwork. It's almost impossible now to find a dealership anywhere close to the Canadian border who is willing to take that risk anymore.