"This year Privacy International took the decision to use the report as the basis for a ranking assessment of the state of privacy in all EU countries together with eleven benchmark countries."
Oh put down your Daily Mail for 5 minutes and look out in the real world. Almost no-one on benefits earns anywhere near as much as you, and if you think they do you're delusional. Yeah, there are the extreme exceptions, but that's what they are: exceptions. If you envy them so much, get on the dole yourself, see how much you enjoy your new lifestyle. Hell, even then you'd still be richer the vast majority of the planet.
I don't want to subsidise the pollution from the rest of the planet.
So get on your MP's case about things like reduced taxes on alternative fuels.
It would benefit you at least in the short term and would help the environment. Don't you want measures like that? No doubt they would increase taxes as it became more popular, but there would be no reason to push them beyond current levels. That there the government might do other things to your disadvantage at some point in the future doesn't make all green measures a bad thing.
I was guessing you earn more than £26,000 a year which would put you in the top 1%. I'm betting you're certainly not way down the list.
You are right on both counts. I am a scientist and an engineer, and I work enough with climate modelling to understand the problems and limitations in this area.
Well, that's a roundabout way of saying "I'm not a climatologist", isn't it? So, you're not a climatologist, you're a scientist in another field (which?) but the people who study the subject are all wrong and you're right. Yeah, Ok.
"Different to" - I have noticed this illogical construct being used lately by the British.
1526 Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W. 1531) 125b, His lyght is moche different and vnlyke to the lyght of the holy goost. 1588 R. PARKE tr. Mendoza's Hist. China 257 If..they could write any other language that were different vnto theirs. [Ibid. 271, 291.] 1852 THACKERAY Esmond II. ii. (1869) 169 The party of prisoners lived..with comforts very different to those which were awarded to the poor wretches there.
Please accept our sincere apologies for the recent lapse in our standards. Normal service should be resumed by 2500 AD at the very latest. We appreciate your patience in this matter.
They're talking about consumer rights, not human rights...like getting a refund from the retailer on something that breaks after 2 days use. Not something Amnesty is going to be counting any time soon.
Oops, shouldn't have posted that, now maybe I won't get to hear any more Americans educating me on the safeguarding of human tort^H^H^H^Hrights.
This is how you burn files to a CD on Ubuntu Linux:
Click on "CD/DVD Creator" on the Places menu Drag the files you want to the window Click "Write to CD"
You seem to be under the delusion that nothing has changed since 2000 (when you last used Linux). Why don't you just download and try a livecd before complaining about things that haven't applied for years?
Well, there was always Shanghai Karate which did what Way of the Exploding Fist, Way of the Tiger, etc. had done, just much, much worse.
Worst game I can remember playing though was Grid Iron. The thing that isn't even mentioned in that review is how buggy the whole thing was (presumably they didn't play it long enough to notice). You'd start off playing as the Chicago Bears and 10 games down the line you were coaching the Chicano Berts. Oh, and since it can be difficult to remember what were good or bad graphics, Super Hang On was reviewed that same issue. Compare and contrast...
ecause if they *had* sued this "Guba" thing, you idiots would be congratulating them for their meticulous fairness and consistency
"idiots"? How does this make anyone an idiot? It makes perfect sense to critisize the MPAA when they sue people and to also criticize them when the fail to do so. This way, they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. Which is kind of the point. What you're proposing leaves them a way to wriggle out of their damnation, and that just won't do.
But what about brand names? Sony and Panasonic price their products based on the fact that Joe Bloke believes their products are in some way better. So if you're a U2 fan buying the next (over-priced) U2 CD, are you any different than Joe Bloke buying an (over-priced) Sony TV because you happen to like Sony products?
Well, yes, I was oversimplifying. Products are sold with the same components under different badges, and they'll charge the higher price for the "name". But it is different. A Sony and a Panasonic (or whatever brands you choose) would both be seen as quality, so if one was substantially cheaper than the other you'd tend to go for the cheaper one. There is real competition there. However, it wouldn't make any difference what the price difference was between the Backstreet Boys and the U2 album if I don't want or like the BB stuff (in reality they could be giving the CDs away for free and I still wouldn't take them:-)
you manufacture something then you need retailers to buy it from you in bulk. Therefore, you need to sell it cheap enough to retailers to get them to buy as many as possible
Umm...no...they don't care about the actual cost, they care about their profit margin. They'd buy CDs for £400 a go, if they could sell them for £450.
But the retailers will only stock what they think they can sell, and if their selling fewer copies because of P2P, then the price they buy it in for, and ultimately sell it for, is higher.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here as it appears to contridict what you said earlier. But anyway, no, it doesn't change. The actual cost of physically making the CD is negligible (maybe a pound or so). After that the price is purely based on what will produce the most money. For example, imagine the record company and retailer predicted that CD sales of "U2's Greatest B-sides" were going to drop by 10% due to P2P. Would they raise the price from £15 to £20? No, because they'd make less money as the number of people put off buying it would exceed the extra £5 they would gain per copy. £15 was chosen because it was the point where it made them the most money and that remains true regardless. There's no other market pressure on the price except that people might just decide to risk P2P instead.
If there was no way to pirate their music they would figure that more people would buy their CD, or at least the same number would (after all, it's the only way to get it) and they could safely raise the price to £20 (making some daft excuse to keep the punters happy). Producing in bulk only lowers prices if there's competition and copyright law produces monopolies instead. P2P puts (illegal) pressure on these monopolies though and that's what keeps their prices down.
Everything is priced based on the potential loss to be made from the product being incorporated into it's final price - for example, part of the, say, £1000 price tag of a brand new LCD TV takes into account the fact that 1 in 10 of them will be faulty, come back as a return which will then get junked, or repaired and sold off cheaply.
Yes, for LCD TVs, but not for CDs. There's competition in the LCD TV market so they have to try and sell it as cheaply as possible (not always true, but generally). But there's no competition in the CD market. If the Sony LCD TV was ridiculously overpriced, you'd just buy the cheaper Panasonic instead, but say you're a big U2 fan, when you go to buy one of their CDs you don't say, "Whoa! Fifteen quid! No way, I'm getting that cheaper Backstreet Boys CD instead."
Nope, if you want a U2 CD you have no choice: you have to buy it from one company. Therefore, they're under no pressure to sell it at a reasonable price: they'll sell it at the maximum the market will bear (if they set it too high, no one will buy it). Oops, nearly forgot, there is one other supplier...you might decide that, say, £25 is just far too much and decide to download it. Therefore they need to keep the price reasonable enough that you won't just decide to break the law. File-sharers are, therefore, keeping the price down for you.
at least then you've taken away one of their excuses and have an easier job of exposing them to be the price-fixing bastards that they are.
Well, it's not exactly price-fixing (though they are bastards;-) They don't have to agree with other companies to set their prices at a certain level because they each hold monopolies on their particular bands.
Oh, I quite agree. I guess people really do want these £15 CDs though as they seem to sell pretty well. However I still fail to see how you're subsidising the file-sharers. Surely they're keeping the prices down for you? (whether such file-sharing is ethical is another matter)
ps I hate to be a total pedant, but someone will inevitably point it out, so it might as well be me: kung-fu is Chinese, not Japanese.
If you just treat it like any other copyrighted work, you are abiding by the terms of the license. So saying you don't have to abide by the terms of the license if you just treat it like any other copyrighted work is nonsensical.
No, you're not. If I gave you a copy of some software I'd written without any license at all, you could legally use it (after all, I gave it to you) but you could not legally distribute it (copyright law says this). No license is required for these conditions.
Hey, wait a minute. Why don't we look more like Microsoft?
"We"? "Us"? You're a MICROSOFT EMPLOYEE! It says so right there in your blog, and this is the second time you've tried to pass yourself off as something else. Are you ashamed of where you work or something?
Yeah, because no one ever gets murdered with a firearm in the UK.
There were 73 murders with firearms in the UK in 2004/05. The UK has a population of about 60 million. I believe that the USA has a population of 300 million, so the equivalent rate would be about 350 murders with firearms in a year. Was the actual number more or less than that?
Slashdot Mirror
From the article:
"This year Privacy International took the decision to use the report as the basis for a ranking assessment of the state of privacy in all EU countries together with eleven benchmark countries."
So get on your MP's case about things like reduced taxes on alternative fuels.
It would benefit you at least in the short term and would help the environment. Don't you want measures like that? No doubt they would increase taxes as it became more popular, but there would be no reason to push them beyond current levels. That there the government might do other things to your disadvantage at some point in the future doesn't make all green measures a bad thing.
I was guessing you earn more than £26,000 a year which would put you in the top 1%. I'm betting you're certainly not way down the list.
Anyway, what if tax on biodiesel was cut to zero? That would be a green measure and would directly benefit you, no?
1526 Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W. 1531) 125b, His lyght is moche different and vnlyke to the lyght of the holy goost.
1588 R. PARKE tr. Mendoza's Hist. China 257 If..they could write any other language that were different vnto theirs. [Ibid. 271, 291.]
1852 THACKERAY Esmond II. ii. (1869) 169 The party of prisoners lived..with comforts very different to those which were awarded to the poor wretches there.
Please accept our sincere apologies for the recent lapse in our standards. Normal service should be resumed by 2500 AD at the very latest. We appreciate your patience in this matter.
They're talking about consumer rights, not human rights...like getting a refund from the retailer on something that breaks after 2 days use. Not something Amnesty is going to be counting any time soon.
Oops, shouldn't have posted that, now maybe I won't get to hear any more Americans educating me on the safeguarding of human tort^H^H^H^Hrights.
This is how you burn files to a CD on Ubuntu Linux:
Click on "CD/DVD Creator" on the Places menu
Drag the files you want to the window
Click "Write to CD"
You seem to be under the delusion that nothing has changed since 2000 (when you last used Linux). Why don't you just download and try a livecd before complaining about things that haven't applied for years?
Well, there was always Shanghai Karate which did what Way of the Exploding Fist, Way of the Tiger, etc. had done, just much, much worse.
Worst game I can remember playing though was Grid Iron. The thing that isn't even mentioned in that review is how buggy the whole thing was (presumably they didn't play it long enough to notice). You'd start off playing as the Chicago Bears and 10 games down the line you were coaching the Chicano Berts. Oh, and since it can be difficult to remember what were good or bad graphics, Super Hang On was reviewed that same issue. Compare and contrast...
Oh yeah, no argument on that one! :-)
Umm...no...they don't care about the actual cost, they care about their profit margin. They'd buy CDs for £400 a go, if they could sell them for £450.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here as it appears to contridict what you said earlier. But anyway, no, it doesn't change. The actual cost of physically making the CD is negligible (maybe a pound or so). After that the price is purely based on what will produce the most money. For example, imagine the record company and retailer predicted that CD sales of "U2's Greatest B-sides" were going to drop by 10% due to P2P. Would they raise the price from £15 to £20? No, because they'd make less money as the number of people put off buying it would exceed the extra £5 they would gain per copy. £15 was chosen because it was the point where it made them the most money and that remains true regardless. There's no other market pressure on the price except that people might just decide to risk P2P instead.
If there was no way to pirate their music they would figure that more people would buy their CD, or at least the same number would (after all, it's the only way to get it) and they could safely raise the price to £20 (making some daft excuse to keep the punters happy). Producing in bulk only lowers prices if there's competition and copyright law produces monopolies instead. P2P puts (illegal) pressure on these monopolies though and that's what keeps their prices down.
Yes, for LCD TVs, but not for CDs. There's competition in the LCD TV market so they have to try and sell it as cheaply as possible (not always true, but generally). But there's no competition in the CD market. If the Sony LCD TV was ridiculously overpriced, you'd just buy the cheaper Panasonic instead, but say you're a big U2 fan, when you go to buy one of their CDs you don't say, "Whoa! Fifteen quid! No way, I'm getting that cheaper Backstreet Boys CD instead."
Nope, if you want a U2 CD you have no choice: you have to buy it from one company. Therefore, they're under no pressure to sell it at a reasonable price: they'll sell it at the maximum the market will bear (if they set it too high, no one will buy it). Oops, nearly forgot, there is one other supplier...you might decide that, say, £25 is just far too much and decide to download it. Therefore they need to keep the price reasonable enough that you won't just decide to break the law. File-sharers are, therefore, keeping the price down for you.
Well, it's not exactly price-fixing (though they are bastards
That's a bug with your distro: report it to them.
Oh, I quite agree. I guess people really do want these £15 CDs though as they seem to sell pretty well. However I still fail to see how you're subsidising the file-sharers. Surely they're keeping the prices down for you? (whether such file-sharing is ethical is another matter)
ps I hate to be a total pedant, but someone will inevitably point it out, so it might as well be me: kung-fu is Chinese, not Japanese.
Not accepting the GPL is the same thing.
"We"? "Us"? You're a MICROSOFT EMPLOYEE! It says so right there in your blog, and this is the second time you've tried to pass yourself off as something else. Are you ashamed of where you work or something?
They would rise, of course. Think about it.