With eBay you're getting something tangible in return - you're advertising (and, hopefully, selling) something that you no longer want, and you're paying a small, reasonable fee for the service that eBay provides - but with this forum you're essentially being asked to pay for something that doesn't provide anything similar at all.
With eBay your small payment isn't just paying for the server farm and the bandwidth bill, it's paying for the customer service reps that mediate when things sometimes go wrong, etc as well: in essence, something valuable that couldn't easily be replicated without a whole lot of capital investment. With this site, you're talking about IT-related forums, which are so damn common on the web that paying for one is a complete joke.
Auction websites are pay to play because that's their business model: without the micropayments that each sale generates, they'd fold and die. That's not true of any forum that I've even encountered and I've yet to see anyone present a compelling case as to why any popular forum needs to charge its users to even make ends meet.
If the forum of a popular IT website can't fund itself through advertising then there is something definitely wrong.
Sorry, but there's no way in hell I'd pay to provide content, especially if my content then was to become someone else's copyright (which I bet just might be the case here).
Oh My God. Can't you spot a joke when you read one?
"For £15,000 we will write any story you like on our site": do you think that any publisher as vitriolic as The Register would really really sell their soul so cheaply? Or that they would leave themselves that open to possible libel action by writing "any story you like"?
The Register constantly ridicules the major shakers and movers in the IT industry. That page that you've linked to is it ridiculing those who cover the industry too.
Re:goods and services are allowed to flow.....
on
Dutch Pass iPod Tax
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Those are items that are illegal in Britain. Unless iPods become illegal in Holland then your barking up the wrong tree.
Under EU law, you cannot stop someone from buying something in one country for use in another. Of course, if it's actually illegal to possess that something in the country that the goods are going to then you'd have to be an idiot to do it, but the flow of the goods must be unimpeded in terms of trade restrictions - that's what the whole single market is about.
People will simply buy their iPods, etc from outside Holland, either by shopping across a nearby border or ordering one from a company based outside Holland but still within the EU.
Because of EU legislation, neither of these two methods would allow the Dutch authorities to impose any kind of additional taxation on players bought from other EU member states. It's a common market, where goods and services are allowed to flow from any member state to any other member state without any penalty or restrictions.
All this law will do (if it's passed - remember, we're talking about a proposal right now) is destroy the Dutch domestic market for digital music players. When the politicians realise that then they'll come to their senses and this proposal will get slapped down faster than you can download a track from iTMS.
Ah, but how many plants (or even animals) do you know that are called by their latin names?
In the case of asparagus, the plant was commonly called sparrow grass up until the end of World War II. After WWII, clever marketing - aimed at getting it onto the plates of middle class people and thus a higher price for the product - had producers dropping the common-sounding sparrow grass moniker in favour of the more exclusive-, posher-sounding asparagus. And, of course, it worked.
Where did sparrow grass come from? Well, no doubt it was a bastardisation somewhere along the line of the plant's latin name, but it was what the plant was called for a very long time and what it still would be called had it not been for some farmer somewhere who wanted to elevate his product above the rest of the field by doing nothing more than changing its name.
"Asparagus" is what we now (mainly since the end of World War II) call "sparrow grass": apparently, sparrow grass just wasn't as trendy a name, so it got dropped.
The other day I saw someone reading the book of Revenge Of The Sith. If you're that much a fan of the Star Wars universe that you'll buy a hardback copy of a movie story why would you spoil the movie for yourself by reading about every single thing that happens in it?
I mean, if it was originally a book and then a movie then, of course, read the book first then go see the movie (although in the case of The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy, not having read the books before hand makes your enjoyment of the movies that much better - read the books first and the movies will only frustrate you) but when it's a movie first then a book go see the movie first. Enjoy the story in its original media first, then (try to) enjoy the adaptations that follow.
I'm sorry, I missed your seminal memo defining what is and what isn't funny. Could you please try forward ing it on to me again so I can read it in full and learn from the expert?
Solaris 10 on an ultrasparc is the best thing cince sliced bread. It is the best solaris yet and makes older sun hardware very useable. YES I have gentoo running on ultrasparcs and a sparcstation 5 and those have their place. But if you really need to run sun specific software on sun hardware solaris 10 is certianly a step foreward.
Maybe if a PC mag would stick to their intel and windurs operating systems they might continue to be somewhat knowlegeable...
what's next? SCO magazine going to comment on OSX?
I'm assuming from your post that Solaris 10 lacks a spelling and grammar checker. Or, at least, one that doesn't contain basic words such as "since", "forward", "windows" and "knowledgeable"...
Sorry, it's Friday afternoon, I'm bored and I couldn't help myself.
so because of the very inappropriate actions of a few companies (and local sheriffs), we should disenfranchise those who aren't a minority, gay, or female?
It's not just "a few". The current definition of marriage in the US clearly gives certain benefits to married people that are otherwise unavailable to anyone else. These have been discussed verbatim elsewhere in the wider discussion here but suffice to say that if Adam and Eve have a right given to them by the State then there is no reason why Adam and Steve shouldn't be given that same right too - when the government is the biggest discriminator, you can't talk about it just being "a few".
Besides, only "a few" people in the South took part in lynchings. Does that mean that the US government was wrong when it sought to stamp out such actions in general?
The bottom line is this: people should be treated equally regardless of who they are or what they are as long as they aren't breaking the law. And if they're not being treated equally then it is only responsible to afford them some level of protection, so that they do receive that equal treatment. In this regard, I'd say that gays getting specific legal protection from discrimination is no different to black students being allowed to go to the colleges of their choice in the 1960s and receiving the protection of federal troops so that they could enjoy that right without getting a brick in their faces for daring to do so.
I appreciate the British dry sense of wit, but the British Office is simply too dry. The American version does an excellent job of copying they feel of the show while making small changes that an American audience will appreciate more.
In other words, the US version has been dumbed down.
To be honest, I quite like the US version - it's not half as bad as I thought it would be - but it still doesn't compare with the original, which is far superior (so far).
Duh, wouldn't that be a reason not to outsource to countries with no software patents?
If anything, if what you've just said holds true then not recognising software patents would be disastrous to India's software community, so you're saying that not recognising those patents is bad for Indian business. Well then, why are they doing it?
You, like the person that I replied to originally, are missing the point: where your software is developed is irrelevant, what's relevant is where it is sold, because the market in which it is sold will determine what effect patents have on your product, not the market in which it is manufactured.
Yeah, but it's such bullshit. If a 17 year-old girl consents to having sex after having known someone since she was 15 then that's her own decision and can't in all honesty be considered illegal (assuming, of course, that the age of consent has now been passed).
If it is, then where do you want to draw the line? If a guy first has contact with a girl when she's 15 then she consents to having sex with him when she's 19 does that then still count as wrong? How about if she consents to having sex when she's 21? 30? 40? Are you just going to pick an arbitrary number?
The girl was below the age of consent at 15. If the guy had asked her to have sex with him then then that would have been wrong. But for a 17 year-old to agree to do something of her own free will - when the law recognises that she's free to do it - and then raise a hue and cry about it is plainly ridiculous.
If I were a judge and this came to my court I'd ask the girl one simple question: "when he first asked you to have sex with him or made any sexual overtures towards you, how old were you and did he know your true age at that time?". If the girl said she was past the age of consent (especially if she was a year or more past it) then I'd throw her case out in a heartbeat.
Girls meet older guys all the time. When they first meet is irrelevant. It's when they get down to business that matters. And, in this case, that didn't even happen, did it?
Imagine being sold a DVD player that stops playing any new releases a year, a month or even a day after you bought it. Under EU law you'd almost certainly be entitled to a refund from the vendor, and I can't imagine European vendors willingly leaving themselves that wide open to millions in claims.
Expect sanity to prevail when the reality of how dumb this would be in practice is finally hammered home to those who hope use this system.
As I pointed out, no-one involved in this particular discussion, apart from your good self, was talking about outsourcing to India.
Sorry to rain on your parade but the article is about an incident that took place in India. If that's not people other than myself talking about outsourcing to India then what is it?
Again, as for my initial comment which you consider irrelevant, it was intended to point out to a poster who was concerned about justice being done that justice was being done, albeit by the relevant Indian authorities rather than their US counterparts. Frankly, I don't see any light in which it could be considered irrelevant at all, but I guess that's a matter of opinion, isn't it?
By the way, the "[W]ho's talking about outsourcing to China?" in my previous post was a question asking for examples of companies who are currently outsourcing to China or even considering it. After all, if it's not being done by anyone then bringing China into the discussion would seem to me to be a moot point. I don't know of any company that currently outsources this sort of data handling to China but perhaps you do: if so, could you please enlighten me?
As for xenophobia you'll notice that I qualified my remarks by saying "sorry, that's what it looks like from where I'm standing", which was my way of saying "hey, you may not have meant it this way, but that's what it's going to look like to some people" but in not so many words. If that caused you any offense then you have my apologies.
Your Shuttle still has far more internal space and far more air for heat to dissipate in than a Mac Mini. Again, even if it were technically possible - and I'm not saying that it isn't, only that it might not be - there's still the fact that it a Mac Mini with improved graphics probably wouldn't be popular enough from Apple's point of view to justify making one right now.
Why would Apple do this? Once you start upping the spec on the Mac Mini too much you start hitting the territory covered by the rest of the Mac range, so it becomes counter-productive (in terms of inventory, etc) to offer a model that few people will want to buy.
Also, the amount of heat generated by an ATI 9600 would be considerably higher than that of the GPU that ships with the Mac Mini at the moment. Given that the Mac Mini has limited heat dissipation capabilities, fitting one with an ATI 9600 might not even be possible without significant redesign to the rest of the unit, which again, would be counter-productive from Apple's point of view.
Maybe in a year from now Apple will introduce Minis with higher spec graphics cards but I doubt we'll see them any time soon, especially as the current design specification is so damn successful.
Slashdot Mirror
With eBay you're getting something tangible in return - you're advertising (and, hopefully, selling) something that you no longer want, and you're paying a small, reasonable fee for the service that eBay provides - but with this forum you're essentially being asked to pay for something that doesn't provide anything similar at all.
With eBay your small payment isn't just paying for the server farm and the bandwidth bill, it's paying for the customer service reps that mediate when things sometimes go wrong, etc as well: in essence, something valuable that couldn't easily be replicated without a whole lot of capital investment. With this site, you're talking about IT-related forums, which are so damn common on the web that paying for one is a complete joke.
Auction websites are pay to play because that's their business model: without the micropayments that each sale generates, they'd fold and die. That's not true of any forum that I've even encountered and I've yet to see anyone present a compelling case as to why any popular forum needs to charge its users to even make ends meet.
If the forum of a popular IT website can't fund itself through advertising then there is something definitely wrong.
Sorry, but there's no way in hell I'd pay to provide content, especially if my content then was to become someone else's copyright (which I bet just might be the case here).
Oh My God. Can't you spot a joke when you read one?
"For £15,000 we will write any story you like on our site": do you think that any publisher as vitriolic as The Register would really really sell their soul so cheaply? Or that they would leave themselves that open to possible libel action by writing "any story you like"?
The Register constantly ridicules the major shakers and movers in the IT industry. That page that you've linked to is it ridiculing those who cover the industry too.
Those are items that are illegal in Britain. Unless iPods become illegal in Holland then your barking up the wrong tree.
Under EU law, you cannot stop someone from buying something in one country for use in another. Of course, if it's actually illegal to possess that something in the country that the goods are going to then you'd have to be an idiot to do it, but the flow of the goods must be unimpeded in terms of trade restrictions - that's what the whole single market is about.
People will simply buy their iPods, etc from outside Holland, either by shopping across a nearby border or ordering one from a company based outside Holland but still within the EU.
Because of EU legislation, neither of these two methods would allow the Dutch authorities to impose any kind of additional taxation on players bought from other EU member states. It's a common market, where goods and services are allowed to flow from any member state to any other member state without any penalty or restrictions.
All this law will do (if it's passed - remember, we're talking about a proposal right now) is destroy the Dutch domestic market for digital music players. When the politicians realise that then they'll come to their senses and this proposal will get slapped down faster than you can download a track from iTMS.
Ah, but how many plants (or even animals) do you know that are called by their latin names?
In the case of asparagus, the plant was commonly called sparrow grass up until the end of World War II. After WWII, clever marketing - aimed at getting it onto the plates of middle class people and thus a higher price for the product - had producers dropping the common-sounding sparrow grass moniker in favour of the more exclusive-, posher-sounding asparagus. And, of course, it worked.
Where did sparrow grass come from? Well, no doubt it was a bastardisation somewhere along the line of the plant's latin name, but it was what the plant was called for a very long time and what it still would be called had it not been for some farmer somewhere who wanted to elevate his product above the rest of the field by doing nothing more than changing its name.
Ah, the irony.
"Asparagus" is what we now (mainly since the end of World War II) call "sparrow grass": apparently, sparrow grass just wasn't as trendy a name, so it got dropped.
The other day I saw someone reading the book of Revenge Of The Sith. If you're that much a fan of the Star Wars universe that you'll buy a hardback copy of a movie story why would you spoil the movie for yourself by reading about every single thing that happens in it?
I mean, if it was originally a book and then a movie then, of course, read the book first then go see the movie (although in the case of The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy, not having read the books before hand makes your enjoyment of the movies that much better - read the books first and the movies will only frustrate you) but when it's a movie first then a book go see the movie first. Enjoy the story in its original media first, then (try to) enjoy the adaptations that follow.
I think that a certain Mrs. Doyle of Craggy Island accounts for half of it.
I'm sorry, I missed your seminal memo defining what is and what isn't funny. Could you please try forward ing it on to me again so I can read it in full and learn from the expert?
And I'm assuming from your post that any humour drier than an ocean escapes you.
Solaris 10 on an ultrasparc is the best thing cince sliced bread. It is the best solaris yet and makes older sun hardware very useable. YES I have gentoo running on ultrasparcs and a sparcstation 5 and those have their place. But if you really need to run sun specific software on sun hardware solaris 10 is certianly a step foreward.
Maybe if a PC mag would stick to their intel and windurs operating systems they might continue to be somewhat knowlegeable...
what's next? SCO magazine going to comment on OSX?
I'm assuming from your post that Solaris 10 lacks a spelling and grammar checker. Or, at least, one that doesn't contain basic words such as "since", "forward", "windows" and "knowledgeable"...
Sorry, it's Friday afternoon, I'm bored and I couldn't help myself.
so because of the very inappropriate actions of a few companies (and local sheriffs), we should disenfranchise those who aren't a minority, gay, or female?
It's not just "a few". The current definition of marriage in the US clearly gives certain benefits to married people that are otherwise unavailable to anyone else. These have been discussed verbatim elsewhere in the wider discussion here but suffice to say that if Adam and Eve have a right given to them by the State then there is no reason why Adam and Steve shouldn't be given that same right too - when the government is the biggest discriminator, you can't talk about it just being "a few".
Besides, only "a few" people in the South took part in lynchings. Does that mean that the US government was wrong when it sought to stamp out such actions in general?
The bottom line is this: people should be treated equally regardless of who they are or what they are as long as they aren't breaking the law. And if they're not being treated equally then it is only responsible to afford them some level of protection, so that they do receive that equal treatment. In this regard, I'd say that gays getting specific legal protection from discrimination is no different to black students being allowed to go to the colleges of their choice in the 1960s and receiving the protection of federal troops so that they could enjoy that right without getting a brick in their faces for daring to do so.
I appreciate the British dry sense of wit, but the British Office is simply too dry. The American version does an excellent job of copying they feel of the show while making small changes that an American audience will appreciate more.
In other words, the US version has been dumbed down.
To be honest, I quite like the US version - it's not half as bad as I thought it would be - but it still doesn't compare with the original, which is far superior (so far).
Duh, wouldn't that be a reason not to outsource to countries with no software patents?
If anything, if what you've just said holds true then not recognising software patents would be disastrous to India's software community, so you're saying that not recognising those patents is bad for Indian business. Well then, why are they doing it?
You, like the person that I replied to originally, are missing the point: where your software is developed is irrelevant, what's relevant is where it is sold, because the market in which it is sold will determine what effect patents have on your product, not the market in which it is manufactured.
Seriously, explain what link there is between software patents and outsourcing?
There isn't one, and trying to make one up won't work. The reason for outsourcing is to drive down labour costs, not to escape software patents.
But does the US have such a law? And does it apply to Internet chat room monitors?
Even if the answer to the first was "yes" I bet the answer to the second is "no".
Yeah, but it's such bullshit. If a 17 year-old girl consents to having sex after having known someone since she was 15 then that's her own decision and can't in all honesty be considered illegal (assuming, of course, that the age of consent has now been passed).
If it is, then where do you want to draw the line? If a guy first has contact with a girl when she's 15 then she consents to having sex with him when she's 19 does that then still count as wrong? How about if she consents to having sex when she's 21? 30? 40? Are you just going to pick an arbitrary number?
The girl was below the age of consent at 15. If the guy had asked her to have sex with him then then that would have been wrong. But for a 17 year-old to agree to do something of her own free will - when the law recognises that she's free to do it - and then raise a hue and cry about it is plainly ridiculous.
If I were a judge and this came to my court I'd ask the girl one simple question: "when he first asked you to have sex with him or made any sexual overtures towards you, how old were you and did he know your true age at that time?". If the girl said she was past the age of consent (especially if she was a year or more past it) then I'd throw her case out in a heartbeat.
Girls meet older guys all the time. When they first meet is irrelevant. It's when they get down to business that matters. And, in this case, that didn't even happen, did it?
Um, I didn't. Those would be the "countless horror films" that I mentioned before the more recent and more eye-candy-filled films.
You forgot Christopher Lee (countless horror films, Star Wars prequels, Lord Of The Rings trilogy.
I can't see this working in the EU.
Imagine being sold a DVD player that stops playing any new releases a year, a month or even a day after you bought it. Under EU law you'd almost certainly be entitled to a refund from the vendor, and I can't imagine European vendors willingly leaving themselves that wide open to millions in claims.
Expect sanity to prevail when the reality of how dumb this would be in practice is finally hammered home to those who hope use this system.
As I pointed out, no-one involved in this particular discussion, apart from your good self, was talking about outsourcing to India.
Sorry to rain on your parade but the article is about an incident that took place in India. If that's not people other than myself talking about outsourcing to India then what is it?
Again, as for my initial comment which you consider irrelevant, it was intended to point out to a poster who was concerned about justice being done that justice was being done, albeit by the relevant Indian authorities rather than their US counterparts. Frankly, I don't see any light in which it could be considered irrelevant at all, but I guess that's a matter of opinion, isn't it?
By the way, the "[W]ho's talking about outsourcing to China?" in my previous post was a question asking for examples of companies who are currently outsourcing to China or even considering it. After all, if it's not being done by anyone then bringing China into the discussion would seem to me to be a moot point. I don't know of any company that currently outsources this sort of data handling to China but perhaps you do: if so, could you please enlighten me?
As for xenophobia you'll notice that I qualified my remarks by saying "sorry, that's what it looks like from where I'm standing", which was my way of saying "hey, you may not have meant it this way, but that's what it's going to look like to some people" but in not so many words. If that caused you any offense then you have my apologies.
Your Shuttle still has far more internal space and far more air for heat to dissipate in than a Mac Mini. Again, even if it were technically possible - and I'm not saying that it isn't, only that it might not be - there's still the fact that it a Mac Mini with improved graphics probably wouldn't be popular enough from Apple's point of view to justify making one right now.
India seems safe; China may not be.
I guess I'm still not making myself clear: who's talking about outsourcing to China?
Why would Apple do this? Once you start upping the spec on the Mac Mini too much you start hitting the territory covered by the rest of the Mac range, so it becomes counter-productive (in terms of inventory, etc) to offer a model that few people will want to buy.
Also, the amount of heat generated by an ATI 9600 would be considerably higher than that of the GPU that ships with the Mac Mini at the moment. Given that the Mac Mini has limited heat dissipation capabilities, fitting one with an ATI 9600 might not even be possible without significant redesign to the rest of the unit, which again, would be counter-productive from Apple's point of view.
Maybe in a year from now Apple will introduce Minis with higher spec graphics cards but I doubt we'll see them any time soon, especially as the current design specification is so damn successful.