Here in Sweden, I pay a TV tax. This tax goes to paying for state owned TV channels. They broadcast Game of Thrones without commercials. There are no advertisers being hurt, and my TV tax goes to paying HBO for the syndication rights. The issue is I do not like seeing the subtitles that are burned in. I also like my show at the highest resolution with surround sound.
So is it piracy when I download it rather than watching it directly from syndication?
The country I am in now (Sweden) does not round the prices. They still use the obsolete öre (in physical form) in the prices. What they do is round it to the nearest krone. Some times you benefit if less than 50 öre and they round down, otherwise they round up.
In other countries this is solved by laws demanding that all prices advertised to individuals (as opposed to companies) or where the target customer is clearly an individual include sales tax. So prices including the sales tax are conveniently set to nice round numbers.
Sweden just had an issue where including the tax in the price caused recently reduced taxes to not get passed to the customer.
Restaurants had a tax reduction from 25% to 12.5%. Since the tax was already included in the price, none of the restaurants reduced the prices and just pocketed the profit. If the price shown was pre-tax and the tax added in tally, the customer would have received the tax break.
The only ones that actually reduced their prices was the large food chains. Most likely because watch dog groups were making sure of this.
How long it will be till TVs come with Kinects built in, and can't be turned off. It would be an advertiser's wetdream, and then the DHS could use it to monitor those who might be a "threat to national Security" (everyone).
Surprisingly, the Nintendo Wii began offering demos of Wiiware titles, and to a limited extent short time demos of Virtual console titles (such as through Super Smash Bros Brawl). The only companies that have something to worry about are the ones releasing horrible games where the demo causes people to test and not purchase the full version.
The movie industry offers demos in the form of Previews. Although comparing the two are like apple and oranges.
I have a Swedish and an Australian SIM card. Each of which cost less than US$ 10 and included a bunch of minutes and free or nearly-free (international!) texting and cheap and easy-to-get refills. Both of which "just work" every place I've tried to use them.
Except one. The US... where they want 10 times that much just for the SIM and they can't even guarantee that it'll work in both Florida and New Jersey!
When I went to Sweden, I found the first news paper stand I could find, bought a SIM card for US$10 and got US$15 in credit. Yes, they gave me 5 dollars more in credit. And the best part, my pre-pay Swedish SIM card worked Internationally, I tested in Japan and the US. The refill process is simple as getting a code printed receipt from a number of places, you text the code and you get refill confirmation. All your minutes are valid for a year upon refilling, including your previous minutes, even with the cheapest refill amount. They even offer campaigns such as free internet days, 3000 international SMSes if you refill with $25, and etc.
US carriers such as T-Mobile, offer Prepay, but the damn SIM only works in the US, will not register internationally, require a purchase of the SIM at double what I paid in Europe without credit on it, and expires in mere months.
Then there was the Passenger Pigeon which didn't die due to loss of habitat, but rather over hunting as cheap meat.
So, um, they'd be hunted back to extinction as cheap meat again?
In that case the mechanism that drove them to extinction is still present. They were hunted to feed slaves in America. The meat itself wasn't savory, it was just cheap. Plus if you protect it and NOT offer a bounty on quantity, it can thrive.
Reality check here, they aren't trying to create a means to save animals that go extinct. It wouldn't work anyway, because many creatures require habitat that dissapears, That being what makes them go extinct in the first place.
Few animals go extinct in a way that means they could be realistically revived. A shame, but true, so that would be a losing strategy. Then there was the Passenger Pigeon which didn't die due to loss of habitat, but rather over hunting as cheap meat. If they could be resurrected, I don't think they would have a problem thriving if a large population can be generated before releasing them into the wild.
I'm not living in America, but I had to ask: if that's what's happening then why is nobody trying to change it? Because it would skew statistics that the status quo currently says only the screwed up do drugs. If scientists are using drugs and they are brilliant and smart, this goes counter to what American government says about drug use.
I know cancer research scientists, the ones that are always on the verge of new discoveries, the very same who worked for the FDA (yes, very hypocritical people) that toke on Marijuana at a highly chronic level.
Why would America want to legislate this and make the brilliant people leave these positions? I know my friend would walk away from what she does, if they started dropping tests on them. Most well paid positions including the majority of government do not test themselves or their employees. Why? Because this country would come to a grinding halt if they knew the real truth.
Software crippling is standard practice. I am a professional embedded software engineer and I guarantee that the majority of model sperated features are all only a few bits of cleverly coded SW to tell them apart. Hell most of the jobs I have ever had in consumer electronics or industrial applications are implemented this way - ie. one standard set of HW and a configuration file and different stickers to tell the top of the range from the basic model. This reminds me of the Nikon Rebel XT actually being a 350D with a dumbed down firmware. People were buying the cheaper Rebel model and applying a firmware hack to make it a full fledged 350D.
I don't know about Washington, DC, (which I suspect has great broadband) but where I live in South Carolina all I can get is dial-up. I get better connectivity when I'm in China. I live in Arlington which is only divided from Washington by a river. It is about $60 for 6 Mbit.
Washington DC However gets their cable internet and TV heavily subsidized. Such as $80 for every channel, premium package, and internet combined.
When the government or agents of the government ask for something, the opposite is probably in your best interest. Hi, we are from the government and we are here to help you.
What B&N doesn't have is any power outlets I am about to open a Steampunk inspired coffee shop in the imminent future and have been doing research in this subject. It seems not offering outlets is a strategy. By not doing so, people will stay as long as they have battery power. Once power is exhausted they will leave. This keeps people from loitering way beyond the reasonable limit.
It could be architectural that there are no outlets, or it could be strategic ultimately.
If hijacking is the real threat, then the cockpit is what needs to be secured. Have it lock automatically prior to boarding, and have it unlock automatically after the plane is emptied. If terrorists can't get to the cockpit, then they cannot take over a craft. Except that Pilots need to eat which the Stewardess/Steward must provide and there is no bathroom in the cockpit so they would have to exit to use the facilities. You will notice that when the Pilot is about to exit the cockpit that they block the two front bathrooms/galley during that time.
"Seamlessly"? You have to have a computer connected to the Internet just to activate your phone? That is so lame. There's a huge population of people, especially outside the US, who have mobile phones but not computers. I wonder what percentage of those un-activated iPhones were bought by people who didn't realize they had to mess with a PC just to turn the phone on. Japan, will be an interesting market as many there barely use a PC at home. I am half Japanese, go there all the time and can vouch that they don't. I have no doubt that once it is available there officially, they will be able to activate directly on the phone or at the dealership just fine.
I was the original owner of "Codeplex.com" (Not so obvious of a name) before I sold it to Microsoft for a eye whopping $600. The site is now Microsoft's official opensource repository.
Microsoft created an umbrella company who specifically designed a horrendous website with no links back to them. Even after the research (which I found nothing), I thought I would be a nice guy and sell it to this nobody.
I know they did that so they didn't have to payout larger sums of money, but I still feel as if I was screwed first hand by Microsoft.
The plane crash disaster has been removed as a result of 9/11
This is ridiculous. I hope fires have also been removed as a result of California fires, tornadoes as a result of the Indian ocean tsunami and the big monster invasion as a result of Cmdr Taco. Other wise it wouldn't be very respectful for the victims you know. Let us not forget: Nuclear meltdown because of Chernobyl. Earthquakes because of California, Kobe Japan, and Pakistan. Alien Invasion because of Orson Welles war of the worlds radio broadcast.
So they're going with a 3.0 instead of some crazy More Full Speed (TM) name this time?
FTA: Dubbed SuperSpeed USB, the third major incarnation of the serial bus standard is set to deliver data transfer speeds of around 4.7Gb/s - ten times today's 480Mb/s limit.
In October, researchers from Bangor University in Wales were trawling an ocean shelf off the coast of north Iceland when they stumbled on what is believed to be the world's oldest living animal: a 405 year-old clam. Or it was living, until researchers had to kill it to determine the clam's age by studying rings on its shell.
The shell in question "ming" was brought up during dredging for Global warming research. By the time they got to the specimen, it had died. Researchers didn't physically kill it to find out its age.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you tried google.com/ncr ?
This will do a no country redirect and you will get google proper no matter where you are.
Here in Sweden, I pay a TV tax. This tax goes to paying for state owned TV channels. They broadcast Game of Thrones without commercials. There are no advertisers being hurt, and my TV tax goes to paying HBO for the syndication rights. The issue is I do not like seeing the subtitles that are burned in. I also like my show at the highest resolution with surround sound.
So is it piracy when I download it rather than watching it directly from syndication?
The country I am in now (Sweden) does not round the prices. They still use the obsolete öre (in physical form) in the prices. What they do is round it to the nearest krone. Some times you benefit if less than 50 öre and they round down, otherwise they round up.
In other countries this is solved by laws demanding that all prices advertised to individuals (as opposed to companies) or where the target customer is clearly an individual include sales tax. So prices including the sales tax are conveniently set to nice round numbers.
Sweden just had an issue where including the tax in the price caused recently reduced taxes to not get passed to the customer.
Restaurants had a tax reduction from 25% to 12.5%. Since the tax was already included in the price, none of the restaurants reduced the prices and just pocketed the profit. If the price shown was pre-tax and the tax added in tally, the customer would have received the tax break.
The only ones that actually reduced their prices was the large food chains. Most likely because watch dog groups were making sure of this.
until somebody die from it. sorry, but it's been that way for centuries.
Nobody will take it seriously until an entertainment satellite gets taken out.
How long it will be till TVs come with Kinects built in, and can't be turned off. It would be an advertiser's wetdream, and then the DHS could use it to monitor those who might be a "threat to national Security" (everyone).
One word: Tape.
they can't install custom firmwares that remove the restriction.
You can install custom firmwares on the mac yourself however that prevent the region change counter from deducting.
http://forum.rpc1.org
Here's a wonderful little piece of trivia about Solar Realms Elite:
The author of SRE, Amit Patel, went on to work at Google, and is one of two people credited with devising their "Don't Be Evil" motto.
and that he lost the source code to SRE due to a hard drive crash.
Surprisingly, the Nintendo Wii began offering demos of Wiiware titles, and to a limited extent short time demos of Virtual console titles (such as through Super Smash Bros Brawl). The only companies that have something to worry about are the ones releasing horrible games where the demo causes people to test and not purchase the full version.
The movie industry offers demos in the form of Previews. Although comparing the two are like apple and oranges.
I have a Swedish and an Australian SIM card. Each of which cost less than US$ 10 and included a bunch of minutes and free or nearly-free (international!) texting and cheap and easy-to-get refills. Both of which "just work" every place I've tried to use them.
Except one. The US... where they want 10 times that much just for the SIM and they can't even guarantee that it'll work in both Florida and New Jersey!
When I went to Sweden, I found the first news paper stand I could find, bought a SIM card for US$10 and got US$15 in credit. Yes, they gave me 5 dollars more in credit. And the best part, my pre-pay Swedish SIM card worked Internationally, I tested in Japan and the US. The refill process is simple as getting a code printed receipt from a number of places, you text the code and you get refill confirmation. All your minutes are valid for a year upon refilling, including your previous minutes, even with the cheapest refill amount. They even offer campaigns such as free internet days, 3000 international SMSes if you refill with $25, and etc.
US carriers such as T-Mobile, offer Prepay, but the damn SIM only works in the US, will not register internationally, require a purchase of the SIM at double what I paid in Europe without credit on it, and expires in mere months.
I can say that I have made fake stickers for use in bathrooms. You know those hand blow dryers? I made a sticker that said.
1. Push Button.
2. Dispense Bacon.
Since the 3 wave bands in the depiction looked like that.
So, um, they'd be hunted back to extinction as cheap meat again?
In that case the mechanism that drove them to extinction is still present. They were hunted to feed slaves in America. The meat itself wasn't savory, it was just cheap. Plus if you protect it and NOT offer a bounty on quantity, it can thrive.
Few animals go extinct in a way that means they could be realistically revived. A shame, but true, so that would be a losing strategy. Then there was the Passenger Pigeon which didn't die due to loss of habitat, but rather over hunting as cheap meat. If they could be resurrected, I don't think they would have a problem thriving if a large population can be generated before releasing them into the wild.
I know cancer research scientists, the ones that are always on the verge of new discoveries, the very same who worked for the FDA (yes, very hypocritical people) that toke on Marijuana at a highly chronic level.
Why would America want to legislate this and make the brilliant people leave these positions? I know my friend would walk away from what she does, if they started dropping tests on them. Most well paid positions including the majority of government do not test themselves or their employees.
Why? Because this country would come to a grinding halt if they knew the real truth.
Washington DC However gets their cable internet and TV heavily subsidized. Such as $80 for every channel, premium package, and internet combined.
It could be architectural that there are no outlets, or it could be strategic ultimately.
I was the original owner of "Codeplex.com" (Not so obvious of a name) before I sold it to Microsoft for a eye whopping $600. The site is now Microsoft's official opensource repository.
Microsoft created an umbrella company who specifically designed a horrendous website with no links back to them. Even after the research (which I found nothing), I thought I would be a nice guy and sell it to this nobody.
I know they did that so they didn't have to payout larger sums of money, but I still feel as if I was screwed first hand by Microsoft.
Nuclear meltdown because of Chernobyl.
Earthquakes because of California, Kobe Japan, and Pakistan.
Alien Invasion because of Orson Welles war of the worlds radio broadcast.
So they're going with a 3.0 instead of some crazy More Full Speed (TM) name this time?
FTA:
Dubbed SuperSpeed USB, the third major incarnation of the serial bus standard is set to deliver data transfer speeds of around 4.7Gb/s - ten times today's 480Mb/s limit.
They haven't TM'd it yet though.
In October, researchers from Bangor University in Wales were trawling an ocean shelf off the coast of north Iceland when they stumbled on what is believed to be the world's oldest living animal: a 405 year-old clam. Or it was living, until researchers had to kill it to determine the clam's age by studying rings on its shell.
The shell in question "ming" was brought up during dredging for Global warming research. By the time they got to the specimen, it had died. Researchers didn't physically kill it to find out its age.