So does that mean that software retailers can now be sued for false advertising when they ask you to "buy" software with licence agreements like this, since, as an earlier poster said you are technically renting it. Will the Best Buy's and Amazons of the world be happy to "rent software" to people even if it is "in perpetuity" because of the conditions?
Does this invalidate the Amazon one-click "Buy it Now" since you're not really buying it?
I can't comment on Australia (where the article was written) but having worked in the USA and Europe I can say for certain that it's more of a cultural difference and that Blackberries, etc. are just another tool to enhance those differences. I'll explain a bit further.
It's very bizarre, that a the EU which is far more socialist, has a more capitalistic (in the true sense of the word not the warped media definition) than the USA does. In Europe, everyone works with a contract of employment (just like the contracts used in business every day) which state that the employee, will work X hours for Y dollars per hour/week/year and receive Z days vacation. Because it's a legally binding contract the employee doesn't expect an extra $1,000 dollars to magically appear in his pay packet at the end of the month, and the employer doesn't (by EU law) expect or force anyone to put in an extra 20/30/40 hours of work each week, if they choose to, then great, it's their choice, but they have to let the employer know.
On the contrary in the USA there are "At Will Employment" which dictates that the person has no guidelines as to how many hours to work, and in order to get ahead in your job often means that you have to work harder than your peers, often meaning you have to take work home, and work an extra "N" hours a week in order to get noticed, once you set that standard and everyone is doing the same, you open the door to a situation where anyone that doesn't do so, can potentially be disciplined. Because there is no black and white contract to guide either side, it's down to who has the biggest cahonies, the employee to say screw you, my family comes first or the employer to say you're not pulling your weight, get out of here.
So, using that assumption, many Europeans have Blackberry's and other mobile devices, and have for sometime, as to whether the they get used in anger during downtime or family time is more about whether the employee has a "capitalist contract" clearly defining what either side is able to do, or whether they have an at will employer of which they live in fear of, because they can't afford to lose their job/healthcare/pension/dental, etc.
Anyone who's in a position where taking vacation (or genuine sick days) may mean that they get passed over for a promotion/raise/job is bound to blur the work/life boundaries, the tools with which you make that blur happen are inconsequential, mobile computing simply made it easier to do so for those that were already doing it. Just my 52 cents
I have an iPhone running on Orange as the service provider and I get great signal, most 5 bars wherever I go, not exactly scientific, but O2 has a reputation of being worse overall coverage of the UK than most of the other large players, another great reason that Apple needs to offer an operator non-exclusive iPhone. Same as in the USA, there are outlying areas of the country that some cell providers simply don't provide good service to, where perhaps smaller companies or different operators do. In the world of cellphones, one size cannot fit all.
Given this story http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/23/1639205 that was posted on Slashdot only a few days ago regarding the commercially ready form of Solar Power at around $1 per watt there are many alternatives to the arguably clean nuclear power. If you took just a small chunk of the money ($6 Billion?) proposed, let's say about $1 Billion..... put that into further research by the Uni team who originally developed the solar panels technology to for the future, then take another $1B and create some Solar Farms at $1/watt, that 1 Gigawatt available much more cleanly, and far more quickly that the 7 year timespan quoted in the article (I'm willing to bet that within 7 years that $1B research investment in solar research would pay huge dividends). Then take the other $4B and use it for the upgrading of whatever other unclean power options are available to develop and improve (whilst the sun isn't up). Given the speed that renewable energy development is progressing it seems almost dumb to make a plan for a nuclear plant for 7 years time!
I'm no expert, but it seems to make a bunch of sense to me, to encourage and nurture cleaner/safer power technologies that are mature and market ready.
Just my 2 cents.
These sites are no different to traditional confidence tricksters that knock on your door and pretend to be something their not with phoney ID's. It took many years for Joe Public to be fully aware of those scams too. Just need to elevate the public's awareness of the whole issue. The paper whilst interesting is slightly obvious, after all if the Phishing emails didn't work we wouldn't still be getting 10's or 100's on our mail servers everyday.
I got the first of the 40GB iPods when they were released a few weeks later it was full, I've been waiting since for the 80GB version. There was a story at least 1 year ago about Apple buying a stack of Toshiba 80GB drives shortly after they were released, which is why I've been on the hook for so long. Seems to me like Apple is playing the Intel game. Have a product ready to launch, as soon as sales drop on your current line because you've sold the crap out of it, release the good stuff and line up the next product.
That's hit the nail on the head, but the reverse is true for me. My family opened a mom and pop store in a remote town which we thought would be a great place to live, and we slowly suffered loss of sales and underperformance due to the bigotry of the locals, because we weren't one of them, and they would happilly tell us they didn't want us or our business.
They were however, happy to buy everything from faceless multinationals like Walmart. Then walk around complaining because all the big stores like Walmart have shutdown all the small independents. All the time I was in the small town, not one of the locals managed to make a connection between their behaviour and their complaints.
There's a stack of political parties in the UK, the Left are Right, the Right is Left, the rest don't have a clue. Much of the public don't make informed votes these days, most vote a certain way because they "feel" they should, or because their husband/partner/parents vote a certain way.
The hard part is getting the public to make an informed decision on their vote.
This will be seen at the next USA election, when Kerry might actually have a chance of winning judging from public opinion even though seen from outside the USA the guy and his wife are clearly total loons!
Surely I'm not the only one who realised that Republicans (Right Wing) are driven by Left Brain, logical, reason, objective.
True Liberals are touchy-feely, and led by the Right or Artistic brain. So Liberals tend to make decisions based on feeling, what feels right, or subjective; what seems to be good in thier eyes.
True Republicans are factual based, objective, and make decisions based on cause/effect and the facts presented to them.
There will always be people that are after fame/glory rather than standing for what they believe which is why they end up on the wrong team.
You bound to be attracted to those who share your opinions and views. Which is why hippies/new agers rarely have time for suits and politicians.
Slashdot Mirror
So does that mean that software retailers can now be sued for false advertising when they ask you to "buy" software with licence agreements like this, since, as an earlier poster said you are technically renting it. Will the Best Buy's and Amazons of the world be happy to "rent software" to people even if it is "in perpetuity" because of the conditions?
Does this invalidate the Amazon one-click "Buy it Now" since you're not really buying it?
Obviously it throws up a bunch of questions....
AlertMe have been doing this with Google for a while now. http://www.alertme.com/products/alertme-energy/
Rumour has it that they may be setting up operations in the USA too soon.
I can't comment on Australia (where the article was written) but having worked in the USA and Europe I can say for certain that it's more of a cultural difference and that Blackberries, etc. are just another tool to enhance those differences. I'll explain a bit further.
It's very bizarre, that a the EU which is far more socialist, has a more capitalistic (in the true sense of the word not the warped media definition) than the USA does. In Europe, everyone works with a contract of employment (just like the contracts used in business every day) which state that the employee, will work X hours for Y dollars per hour/week/year and receive Z days vacation. Because it's a legally binding contract the employee doesn't expect an extra $1,000 dollars to magically appear in his pay packet at the end of the month, and the employer doesn't (by EU law) expect or force anyone to put in an extra 20/30/40 hours of work each week, if they choose to, then great, it's their choice, but they have to let the employer know.
On the contrary in the USA there are "At Will Employment" which dictates that the person has no guidelines as to how many hours to work, and in order to get ahead in your job often means that you have to work harder than your peers, often meaning you have to take work home, and work an extra "N" hours a week in order to get noticed, once you set that standard and everyone is doing the same, you open the door to a situation where anyone that doesn't do so, can potentially be disciplined. Because there is no black and white contract to guide either side, it's down to who has the biggest cahonies, the employee to say screw you, my family comes first or the employer to say you're not pulling your weight, get out of here.
So, using that assumption, many Europeans have Blackberry's and other mobile devices, and have for sometime, as to whether the they get used in anger during downtime or family time is more about whether the employee has a "capitalist contract" clearly defining what either side is able to do, or whether they have an at will employer of which they live in fear of, because they can't afford to lose their job/healthcare/pension/dental, etc.
Anyone who's in a position where taking vacation (or genuine sick days) may mean that they get passed over for a promotion/raise/job is bound to blur the work/life boundaries, the tools with which you make that blur happen are inconsequential, mobile computing simply made it easier to do so for those that were already doing it. Just my 52 cents
I have an iPhone running on Orange as the service provider and I get great signal, most 5 bars wherever I go, not exactly scientific, but O2 has a reputation of being worse overall coverage of the UK than most of the other large players, another great reason that Apple needs to offer an operator non-exclusive iPhone. Same as in the USA, there are outlying areas of the country that some cell providers simply don't provide good service to, where perhaps smaller companies or different operators do. In the world of cellphones, one size cannot fit all.
Given this story http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/23/1639205 that was posted on Slashdot only a few days ago regarding the commercially ready form of Solar Power at around $1 per watt there are many alternatives to the arguably clean nuclear power. If you took just a small chunk of the money ($6 Billion?) proposed, let's say about $1 Billion..... put that into further research by the Uni team who originally developed the solar panels technology to for the future, then take another $1B and create some Solar Farms at $1/watt, that 1 Gigawatt available much more cleanly, and far more quickly that the 7 year timespan quoted in the article (I'm willing to bet that within 7 years that $1B research investment in solar research would pay huge dividends). Then take the other $4B and use it for the upgrading of whatever other unclean power options are available to develop and improve (whilst the sun isn't up). Given the speed that renewable energy development is progressing it seems almost dumb to make a plan for a nuclear plant for 7 years time!
I'm no expert, but it seems to make a bunch of sense to me, to encourage and nurture cleaner/safer power technologies that are mature and market ready.
Just my 2 cents.
These sites are no different to traditional confidence tricksters that knock on your door and pretend to be something their not with phoney ID's. It took many years for Joe Public to be fully aware of those scams too. Just need to elevate the public's awareness of the whole issue. The paper whilst interesting is slightly obvious, after all if the Phishing emails didn't work we wouldn't still be getting 10's or 100's on our mail servers everyday.
I got the first of the 40GB iPods when they were released a few weeks later it was full, I've been waiting since for the 80GB version. There was a story at least 1 year ago about Apple buying a stack of Toshiba 80GB drives shortly after they were released, which is why I've been on the hook for so long. Seems to me like Apple is playing the Intel game. Have a product ready to launch, as soon as sales drop on your current line because you've sold the crap out of it, release the good stuff and line up the next product.
C'est la vie!!
That's hit the nail on the head, but the reverse is true for me. My family opened a mom and pop store in a remote town which we thought would be a great place to live, and we slowly suffered loss of sales and underperformance due to the bigotry of the locals, because we weren't one of them, and they would happilly tell us they didn't want us or our business.
They were however, happy to buy everything from faceless multinationals like Walmart. Then walk around complaining because all the big stores like Walmart have shutdown all the small independents. All the time I was in the small town, not one of the locals managed to make a connection between their behaviour and their complaints.
People are very strange sometimes!
Eh?
Still trying to work out how this got meta'd as a Troll post?
There's a stack of political parties in the UK, the Left are Right, the Right is Left, the rest don't have a clue. Much of the public don't make informed votes these days, most vote a certain way because they "feel" they should, or because their husband/partner/parents vote a certain way.
The hard part is getting the public to make an informed decision on their vote.
This will be seen at the next USA election, when Kerry might actually have a chance of winning judging from public opinion even though seen from outside the USA the guy and his wife are clearly total loons!
Now you almost got it right ;)
Remove the "in USA" part from your post title and you've got it!
Surely I'm not the only one who realised that Republicans (Right Wing) are driven by Left Brain, logical, reason, objective.
True Liberals are touchy-feely, and led by the Right or Artistic brain. So Liberals tend to make decisions based on feeling, what feels right, or subjective; what seems to be good in thier eyes.
True Republicans are factual based, objective, and make decisions based on cause/effect and the facts presented to them.
There will always be people that are after fame/glory rather than standing for what they believe which is why they end up on the wrong team.
You bound to be attracted to those who share your opinions and views. Which is why hippies/new agers rarely have time for suits and politicians.
ISO's of the latest distro, am I the only one here that uses Debian?
Try it one day, convert to Debian and never need another ISO again!