Irrespective of who you're with and who you are moving to, inthe UK you can always take your phone number with you when you change provider.
In most cases, changing provider is as easy as falling off a log. When I changed my provider last year (to Virgin Mobile) all I had to do was buy the new SIM card, pop it into my existing handset, and call Virgin to set up my account and give them the details of my existing number. They gave me a changeover date, until which time I used my old SIM card (so people could still reach my on the number that I had given out to them). Three days later I was using my new SIM card with my "old" number. It really is that simple.
Number portability is so damn easy and obvious, I can't see any reason not to use it (unless you really want a new number so that your ex-whatever stops hassling you). Conspiracy theorists need to chill on this one too - after all, you can always get a new number if you want to but, like I said, why would you want to put yourself through that much inconvenience? Do you really want to have to call up all your friends, family and colleagues to give them all your new number?
Oh, I'm sorry, that's supposed to be some comfort to the mothers, wives and children of the deceased?
Did the news team really pose an immediate threat to the troops that fired upon them? Were they shooting bullets rather than film?
Did the crew of the RAF Tornado that was shot down by a Patriot missile battery start firing on the US soldiers on the ground, or were they just shot down out of the sky because someone or something cocked up?
Did the Canadian troops murdered by their US "allies" in Afghanistan die a meaningful death? Or were their lives needlessly wasted?
Did the countless men and women who died as a result of US "friendly fire" in the first Gulf War do the same? Or were their lives also thrown away courtesy of some trigger jock who was just too eager to shoot at something?
Do yourself a favour and educate yourself. Read articles like this, this and this.
Here's a quote from one of those articles:
"According to US government figures, 'friendly fire' incidents accounted for 24% of US military fatalities during Operation 'Desert Storm': the 1991 campaign to liberate Kuwait. The only combat casualties for UK forces during the campaign occurred when a USAF A-10 ground attack aircraft mistakenly attacked two Warrior infantry fighting vehicles."
So, almost one quarter of all US fatalities and all UK fatalities during the first Gulf War were caused by US forces firing on their own.
What's even worse it that the US military covers these incidents up rather than investigate them fully - the A-10 attack against British Warrior APCs was disgraceful, yet the USAF never divulged the name of the pilot concerned, conveniently "lost" the on-board camera footage of the attack and even denied the incident took place until they could no longer pretend that it didn't happen.
And this a good track record? You're defending this level of incompetence?
Sorry, but you seem to have misread the damn article. Re-read it (and other news stories about this tragic incident) and you will find that the reporter and his news team were running away from Iraqi forces that they had accidentally encountered and were heading towards "friendly" forces in vehicles that clearly identified them as members of the international press.
The "friendly" forces turned out to be US forces, who shot first and asked questions later. They didn't even have the courtesy to stop and tend first aid to the survivors, which is why one of the news team that survived (and lived to tell the tale, much to the chagrin of the US Army) ended up in a Iraqi hospital.
Sorry, but this is one giant cock-up all-round by the US troops concerned. And, just like in the first Gulf War, the War on Terrorism in Afghanistan, etc, US forces, with their "overwhelming force" military doctrine have killed their own allies and neutral bystanders almost indescriminately. And, as always, the people responsible will never have to answer for their actions, either in a military court or elsewhere.
Sorry, but as a military man would say, this is FUBAR.
It's a bit hard to provide accurate war reporting if you don't go near the bloody damn war. What kind of idiot do you have to be to think that war reporting is something that should only be done from a battlefield HQ or the deck of an aircraft carrier?
Grrr. Damn HTML screwed up on me. Here's the post as it should have appeared.
There's always ebates.com's 4% money back deal for buying from barnes and nobles' website (and they have a long-running special, buy two or more items and get free shipping). Yeah, Amazon, you're not making it any easier on me.
That's why it's got the same interface - rather than develop their own technology to cater for online customers, B&N licensed Amazon's technology from them. A bit like buying an off-the-shelf database as opposed to writing your own one.
Amazon might not be profitting as much from a B&N online sale as it would from a similar online sale that it made itself but it's still making money on that sale somewhere. [barnesandnoble.com]
There's always ebates.com's 4% money back deal for buying from barnes and nobles' website (and they have a long-running special, buy two or more items and get free shipping). Yeah, Amazon, you're not making it any easier on me.
That's why it's got the same interface - rather than develop their own technology to cater for online customers, B&N licensed Amazon's technology from them. A bit like buying an off-the-shelf database as opposed to writing your own one.
Amazon might not be profitting as much from a B&N online sale as it would from a similar online sale that it made itself but it's still making money on that sale somewhere.
Point 1: Population-wise, you're probably right. Thanks for the correction.
India, population 1 billion plus. USA, population 280-300 million. You do the math.
Point 2: While I'll admit that most local TV stations and newspapers are just affiliates of national networks, they do produce original local content and some original national content. I'll also agree that the big news conglomerates probably do impose some homogeneity on what is reported through all its outlets.
Local papers do not have the resources to send writers all over the globe, to Washington, to London, to Kuwait City, to Bagdhad, to Tel Aviv, to Paris, etc. The rely on news services such as the Associated Press and Reuters to get their big news. Sure, each paper might colour the story its own way, depending on its editorial policy and its readership but, essentially, they're all giving you the same story with the same facts - if something's missing from one AP-rewrite, it'll be missing from them all.
I don't know Ms. Adie, I have no intention of slandering her, but she's the "odd man out."
Yeah, her and every other news source that's reporting the same story.
She says X while everybody else in the pool says Y.
The pool must be pretty shallow at your end - your not American by any chance are you? Undoubtedly, CNN, NBC, etc aren't the one's who the US government are worried about, because all those guys, like the overwhelming majority of the US media and 100 percent behind the war/invasion. Any US broadcaster or newspaper that doesn't want to lose audience figures or newsstand sales doesn't really have a choice in how it reports this war, does it?
Look overseas - to Britain, Australia (both active members of the "coalition of the willing") and elsewhere and you'll see plenty of coverage by this story, especially by those news outlets that will suffer as a direct consequence of the Pentagon position. Who in their right mind will send in independent journalists if there's a good chance that those innocent observers will be actively targetted by US forces unwilling to differentiate between genuine reporters or anyone else with a transmitter and legitimate Iraqi forces?
Remember, if you control the reporting, you control the truth.
The only way to reconcile that, in the absence of additional evidence, is that she's mistaken.
And that's exactly what the Pentagon and the US government would like you to believe. Well done, you (like just about everyone who's for this war/invasion) has bought their story, hook, line and sinker.
Chill. I actually visit your site quite frequently and find it informative and useful.
My post was a light-hearted joke, aimed as much at Slashdot's poor editorial standards (everything from story selection and verification to duping to being caught out by fakes to the lack of spelling and grammar checking) as it was to you or your site.
I'm disappointed - as a great many Slashdot readers - that the editorial standards of this site are a great deal poorer than those of most school newspapers. As a journalist, it's something that I find shocking in a site that's regarded as one of the top ten IT news sites.
If I caused personal offense, I apologise unreservedly. Mea culpa.
(I did find the "late-night one-handed surfing sessions" amusing though.)
"Hey, we're the guys from Ars Technica, and we thought that you would all love to see this on our site."
"Oh, by the way, we've just installed some new servers and we'd like to test them for load balancing and, coincidentally, we're about to be audited to see what kind of audience we have and to work out how much we can charge for ads and stuff, so why not try slashdotting our servers right now? It'll save the techies an afternoon of testing so they can go to the movies instead and it'll keep the suits happy too. Yay for slashvertising!"
Walk into any branch of Dixons (UK's biggest high street electronics retailer) right now and you can buy a GameCube with a free game for only £99. Not only that, but a lot of their GameCube games and accessories seem to be pretty damn cheap too, with games around £25-30, as opposed to PS2 and X-Box titles at £35-40.
Why? Dixons has a glut of GameCubes and associated products, far more than they would like. Basically, the console hasn't done half as well as Dixons was hoping and it hopes to generate interest in the platform through this sales push. If it fails to attract sufficient interest then there is a real possibility that Dixons will drop the GameCube altogether, which would be the start of the death knell for the GameCube in the UK.
I was severely tempted by this package when I saw that Metroid Prime was one of the free games that you could get in this £99 deal but have since cooled off - right now, half way through a complete house renovation I can use the money elsewhere and the fewer wasted hours I have playing games the better. It'll be at least May, maybe June or July before I can sit down in my new home with enough free time on my hands to devote to a seriously immersive game like Metroid Prime so I'll hold off until then.
By the way, Argos is also pushing the GameCube too. I'm not sure what its package entails but I think it's not a million miles away from Dixons is offering.
Kate Adie is probably one of the most experienced and well-respected war reporters in the world. She has an outstanding reputation, earned the hard way by telling it how it is, and not necessarily by telling it by how certain Western governments would have you believe.
She's covered just about every conflict - major and minor - of the last 20 years, and she didn't make it this long by being dumb, so when she says that unathorised transmissions are considered to be legitimate targets by the US forces, it's because she's been told so, and having been told so she double-checked with her sources to verify what she was reporting was accurate.
I find it far more plausible to believe that the Pentagon was trying to spin this story back their way than to believe that Adie misrepresented the facts - either intentionally or unintentionally.
Besides, I've heard the same story being reported by several other news sources and agencies. I find it hard to believe that they've all got it wrong.
Please, let's not make the truth any more a casualty of this war/invasion than it already is.
In the UK, under the Sale Of Goods Act and other legislation covering purchases (either in the high street, by mail order or online), Amazon has one of two options: either honour the advertised price or not sell the goods at all.
The legislation is designed to protect both the purchaser and the vendor. If you went into a store and saw a widescreen 32in. TV priced at £900 instead of £1,000, then the store would be bound into selling it to you at that price or not at all. They couldn't turn around and say, "sorry, the price is £100 more, pay the full £1,000 if you wan't it", but they could refuse to sell it to you.
In most cases, where the difference is still within their profit margin and practical, stores tend to honour the lower price. However, where there's been an honest mistake, such as that £1,000 TV being mispriced at £100, they almost invariably take the option of refusing to sell the item.
The courts (where civil action has been taken) have taken a "common sense" approach. Getting a £1,000 TV for only £900 is a reasonable expectation (in a sale, promotion, etc) but getting it for £100 is highly unreasonable. Basically, where the pricing might be deceiving they tend to favour the purchaser and where the pricing is obviously a genuine mistake they tend to favour the vendor.
Generally, it's a very good system. However, I do remember reading about an old lady somewhere in the US (Texas perhaps?) who went into her local car dealership with a bunch of oversized bananas and bought a brand new car with them. The dealership had advertised their new models on radio as being available for "only xx big bananas", ("big bananas" being local slang for $1,000), and having to honour the sale after a court decision found in favour of the old woman.
Before I start I should say that my girlfriend (well, partner, but using the word girlfriend should get a few Slashdotters drooling) is a town planner, a graduate of the internationally reknowned Bartlett School of Planning, and I've learnt a thing or two about urban design, planning and architecture from her along the way.
Modern buildings, with very few exceptions, aren't designed to last for hundreds of years. Architects, developers and builders design and build for the short term, not for the long term. The materials they choose to work with aren't designed to last for centuries simply because cities, and hence buildings, evolve over time - what's needed and what's fashionable today will be useless and outdated in only a couple of decades from now.
The proof of this is around us - buildings erected in the 60s and 70s are being pulled down all the time, to make way for more "modern", "practical" and "aesthetic" developments. This is especially true of commercial buildings but it also applies to residential structures too.
Modern building design is nothing like Victorian building design. The Victorians constructed brick buildings, because brick was the best material available to them. As a result, they couldn't safely build more than four or five storeys - beyond that a building would not be able to support its own weight. They also (for the most part) didn't have any means of transporting goods and people up and down easily - lifts/elevators didn't really take off in a big way until the turn of the 20th century.
It was only when the means to work steel effectively, to shape it as required, was developed that modern building design took off. Steel being lighter and stronger than brick allowed architects to design taller, more spacious buildings and coupled with the use of lifts/elevators, it allowed them to break the ceiling barrier that previously existed. Once they started to work with steel, they quickly were able to go very high, very quickly, hence the rapid development of skyscrapers almost overnight in New York and other cities.
But I'm digressing from my main point: The reason why buildings don't last is because, generally they're designed with the knowledge that they'll be obsolete within their designers' lifetimes.
In the near future, environmental problems will come home to roost - a direct result of the short-sighted environmental policies persued by both governments and corporations.
You may dismiss this as "tree-hugging BS", that's your perogative, but illnesses such as childhood asthma, leukemia, allergies, etc are all on the rise. And, as much as they try to hide it, pollution does maim and kill thousands, if not millions, every year.
Arguably, modern medicine is to blame as well. By curing the sick and the weak, modern medicine has prolonged the lives of people who would have otherwise died (including me). Don't get me wrong, I'm not against treating sick people but it's an inescapable fact that by allowing the weak to live you're weakening the gene pool.
Let's face it, Peter Molyneux is overrated. Black and white was very pretty, sure, and it was a good idea, but it got tedious very quickly. It simply wasn't a very good game. He got lucky with a few games early on, that's all.
Peter Molyneux overrated? Got lucky with a few games early on?
Man, just what are you smoking?
Ever heard of Populous, the original "god" game? It created a whole new genre and blew the socks off everything else out there at the time.
How about Powermonger, Magic Carpet, Syndicate, Theme Park, Dungeon Keeper and their derivatives? All original games, all great plays and all great successes.
Care to name some other developers with as impressive a track record of producing original, highly-addictive games that have been as popular?
So you didn't like Black And White. Fine, you're entitled to your opinion. But to dismiss one of the industry's most creative and productive minds as "overrated" and "lucky" is ridiculous.
Unless such an endeavour was open source, why would you trust it?
Frankly, these guys are asking for more trust than most people would extend their next-door neighbours. And abusing that trust would be far too easy.
Yes, SETI, distributed.net have shown the altruistic potential of such software but we're not talking about non-profit organisations here, we're talking about corporations, and the only language that corporations know is the language of money. And people interested in making money don't always put other people's (data) security high up on their list of priorities.
To be honest, I'd rather spend some hard cash buying music online or in the local record store. At least that way I know I'll never wake up one day to find that my system's been hacked by a script kiddie who was given the keys to my virtual front door by a "harmless" piece of software.
A touch paranoid, perhaps, but better safe than sorry is my motto.
Why not just borrow the DVD from a friend or rent it from the video store?
Do that and you'll be just as clued up/well-informed as anyone else walking in to see the second movie.
Or, you could stick to your "won't bother watching any of them now" strategy. Which, to be frank, is rather like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Slashdot Mirror
Whoa.
Irrespective of who you're with and who you are moving to, inthe UK you can always take your phone number with you when you change provider.
In most cases, changing provider is as easy as falling off a log. When I changed my provider last year (to Virgin Mobile) all I had to do was buy the new SIM card, pop it into my existing handset, and call Virgin to set up my account and give them the details of my existing number. They gave me a changeover date, until which time I used my old SIM card (so people could still reach my on the number that I had given out to them). Three days later I was using my new SIM card with my "old" number. It really is that simple.
Number portability is so damn easy and obvious, I can't see any reason not to use it (unless you really want a new number so that your ex-whatever stops hassling you). Conspiracy theorists need to chill on this one too - after all, you can always get a new number if you want to but, like I said, why would you want to put yourself through that much inconvenience? Do you really want to have to call up all your friends, family and colleagues to give them all your new number?
Oh, I'm sorry, that's supposed to be some comfort to the mothers, wives and children of the deceased?
Did the news team really pose an immediate threat to the troops that fired upon them? Were they shooting bullets rather than film?
Did the crew of the RAF Tornado that was shot down by a Patriot missile battery start firing on the US soldiers on the ground, or were they just shot down out of the sky because someone or something cocked up?
Did the Canadian troops murdered by their US "allies" in Afghanistan die a meaningful death? Or were their lives needlessly wasted?
Did the countless men and women who died as a result of US "friendly fire" in the first Gulf War do the same? Or were their lives also thrown away courtesy of some trigger jock who was just too eager to shoot at something?
Do yourself a favour and educate yourself. Read articles like this, this and this.
Here's a quote from one of those articles:
"According to US government figures, 'friendly fire' incidents accounted for 24% of US military fatalities during Operation 'Desert Storm': the 1991 campaign to liberate Kuwait. The only combat casualties for UK forces during the campaign occurred when a USAF A-10 ground attack aircraft mistakenly attacked two Warrior infantry fighting vehicles."
So, almost one quarter of all US fatalities and all UK fatalities during the first Gulf War were caused by US forces firing on their own.
What's even worse it that the US military covers these incidents up rather than investigate them fully - the A-10 attack against British Warrior APCs was disgraceful, yet the USAF never divulged the name of the pilot concerned, conveniently "lost" the on-board camera footage of the attack and even denied the incident took place until they could no longer pretend that it didn't happen.
And this a good track record? You're defending this level of incompetence?
Sorry, but you seem to have misread the damn article. Re-read it (and other news stories about this tragic incident) and you will find that the reporter and his news team were running away from Iraqi forces that they had accidentally encountered and were heading towards "friendly" forces in vehicles that clearly identified them as members of the international press.
The "friendly" forces turned out to be US forces, who shot first and asked questions later. They didn't even have the courtesy to stop and tend first aid to the survivors, which is why one of the news team that survived (and lived to tell the tale, much to the chagrin of the US Army) ended up in a Iraqi hospital.
Sorry, but this is one giant cock-up all-round by the US troops concerned. And, just like in the first Gulf War, the War on Terrorism in Afghanistan, etc, US forces, with their "overwhelming force" military doctrine have killed their own allies and neutral bystanders almost indescriminately. And, as always, the people responsible will never have to answer for their actions, either in a military court or elsewhere.
Sorry, but as a military man would say, this is FUBAR.
It's a bit hard to provide accurate war reporting if you don't go near the bloody damn war. What kind of idiot do you have to be to think that war reporting is something that should only be done from a battlefield HQ or the deck of an aircraft carrier?
Oh look, it looks like the US forces have already killed their first journalist of this war/invasion.
And they've started killing their allies too.
With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Ignore that second "isn't" in the third paragraph down.
This is what you get if you post in haste.
Grrr. Damn HTML screwed up on me. Here's the post as it should have appeared.
There's always ebates.com's 4% money back deal for buying from barnes and nobles' website (and they have a long-running special, buy two or more items and get free shipping). Yeah, Amazon, you're not making it any easier on me.
I could be wrong but isn't Barnes & Noble's web site isn't run by Amazon?
That's why it's got the same interface - rather than develop their own technology to cater for online customers, B&N licensed Amazon's technology from them. A bit like buying an off-the-shelf database as opposed to writing your own one.
Amazon might not be profitting as much from a B&N online sale as it would from a similar online sale that it made itself but it's still making money on that sale somewhere. [barnesandnoble.com]
There's always ebates.com's 4% money back deal for buying from barnes and nobles' website (and they have a long-running special, buy two or more items and get free shipping). Yeah, Amazon, you're not making it any easier on me.
I could be wrong but isn't run by Amazon?
That's why it's got the same interface - rather than develop their own technology to cater for online customers, B&N licensed Amazon's technology from them. A bit like buying an off-the-shelf database as opposed to writing your own one.
Amazon might not be profitting as much from a B&N online sale as it would from a similar online sale that it made itself but it's still making money on that sale somewhere.
You don't like the red. And you (or at least some of the other posters here) don't like the Indians.
Americans that don't like red and Indians together. Hmmm, now where have I heard that before?
Point 1: Population-wise, you're probably right. Thanks for the correction.
India, population 1 billion plus. USA, population 280-300 million. You do the math.
Point 2: While I'll admit that most local TV stations and newspapers are just affiliates of national networks, they do produce original local content and some original national content. I'll also agree that the big news conglomerates probably do impose some homogeneity on what is reported through all its outlets.
Local papers do not have the resources to send writers all over the globe, to Washington, to London, to Kuwait City, to Bagdhad, to Tel Aviv, to Paris, etc. The rely on news services such as the Associated Press and Reuters to get their big news. Sure, each paper might colour the story its own way, depending on its editorial policy and its readership but, essentially, they're all giving you the same story with the same facts - if something's missing from one AP-rewrite, it'll be missing from them all.
I don't know Ms. Adie, I have no intention of slandering her, but she's the "odd man out."
Yeah, her and every other news source that's reporting the same story.
She says X while everybody else in the pool says Y.
The pool must be pretty shallow at your end - your not American by any chance are you? Undoubtedly, CNN, NBC, etc aren't the one's who the US government are worried about, because all those guys, like the overwhelming majority of the US media and 100 percent behind the war/invasion. Any US broadcaster or newspaper that doesn't want to lose audience figures or newsstand sales doesn't really have a choice in how it reports this war, does it?
Look overseas - to Britain, Australia (both active members of the "coalition of the willing") and elsewhere and you'll see plenty of coverage by this story, especially by those news outlets that will suffer as a direct consequence of the Pentagon position. Who in their right mind will send in independent journalists if there's a good chance that those innocent observers will be actively targetted by US forces unwilling to differentiate between genuine reporters or anyone else with a transmitter and legitimate Iraqi forces?
Remember, if you control the reporting, you control the truth.
The only way to reconcile that, in the absence of additional evidence, is that she's mistaken.
And that's exactly what the Pentagon and the US government would like you to believe. Well done, you (like just about everyone who's for this war/invasion) has bought their story, hook, line and sinker.
Chill. I actually visit your site quite frequently and find it informative and useful.
My post was a light-hearted joke, aimed as much at Slashdot's poor editorial standards (everything from story selection and verification to duping to being caught out by fakes to the lack of spelling and grammar checking) as it was to you or your site.
I'm disappointed - as a great many Slashdot readers - that the editorial standards of this site are a great deal poorer than those of most school newspapers. As a journalist, it's something that I find shocking in a site that's regarded as one of the top ten IT news sites.
If I caused personal offense, I apologise unreservedly. Mea culpa.
(I did find the "late-night one-handed surfing sessions" amusing though.)
"Hey, we're the guys from Ars Technica, and we thought that you would all love to see this on our site."
"Oh, by the way, we've just installed some new servers and we'd like to test them for load balancing and, coincidentally, we're about to be audited to see what kind of audience we have and to work out how much we can charge for ads and stuff, so why not try slashdotting our servers right now? It'll save the techies an afternoon of testing so they can go to the movies instead and it'll keep the suits happy too. Yay for slashvertising!"
Walk into any branch of Dixons (UK's biggest high street electronics retailer) right now and you can buy a GameCube with a free game for only £99. Not only that, but a lot of their GameCube games and accessories seem to be pretty damn cheap too, with games around £25-30, as opposed to PS2 and X-Box titles at £35-40.
Why? Dixons has a glut of GameCubes and associated products, far more than they would like. Basically, the console hasn't done half as well as Dixons was hoping and it hopes to generate interest in the platform through this sales push. If it fails to attract sufficient interest then there is a real possibility that Dixons will drop the GameCube altogether, which would be the start of the death knell for the GameCube in the UK.
I was severely tempted by this package when I saw that Metroid Prime was one of the free games that you could get in this £99 deal but have since cooled off - right now, half way through a complete house renovation I can use the money elsewhere and the fewer wasted hours I have playing games the better. It'll be at least May, maybe June or July before I can sit down in my new home with enough free time on my hands to devote to a seriously immersive game like Metroid Prime so I'll hold off until then.
By the way, Argos is also pushing the GameCube too. I'm not sure what its package entails but I think it's not a million miles away from Dixons is offering.
Kate Adie is probably one of the most experienced and well-respected war reporters in the world. She has an outstanding reputation, earned the hard way by telling it how it is, and not necessarily by telling it by how certain Western governments would have you believe.
She's covered just about every conflict - major and minor - of the last 20 years, and she didn't make it this long by being dumb, so when she says that unathorised transmissions are considered to be legitimate targets by the US forces, it's because she's been told so, and having been told so she double-checked with her sources to verify what she was reporting was accurate.
I find it far more plausible to believe that the Pentagon was trying to spin this story back their way than to believe that Adie misrepresented the facts - either intentionally or unintentionally.
Besides, I've heard the same story being reported by several other news sources and agencies. I find it hard to believe that they've all got it wrong.
Please, let's not make the truth any more a casualty of this war/invasion than it already is.
In the UK, under the Sale Of Goods Act and other legislation covering purchases (either in the high street, by mail order or online), Amazon has one of two options: either honour the advertised price or not sell the goods at all.
The legislation is designed to protect both the purchaser and the vendor. If you went into a store and saw a widescreen 32in. TV priced at £900 instead of £1,000, then the store would be bound into selling it to you at that price or not at all. They couldn't turn around and say, "sorry, the price is £100 more, pay the full £1,000 if you wan't it", but they could refuse to sell it to you.
In most cases, where the difference is still within their profit margin and practical, stores tend to honour the lower price. However, where there's been an honest mistake, such as that £1,000 TV being mispriced at £100, they almost invariably take the option of refusing to sell the item.
The courts (where civil action has been taken) have taken a "common sense" approach. Getting a £1,000 TV for only £900 is a reasonable expectation (in a sale, promotion, etc) but getting it for £100 is highly unreasonable. Basically, where the pricing might be deceiving they tend to favour the purchaser and where the pricing is obviously a genuine mistake they tend to favour the vendor.
Generally, it's a very good system. However, I do remember reading about an old lady somewhere in the US (Texas perhaps?) who went into her local car dealership with a bunch of oversized bananas and bought a brand new car with them. The dealership had advertised their new models on radio as being available for "only xx big bananas", ("big bananas" being local slang for $1,000), and having to honour the sale after a court decision found in favour of the old woman.
Before I start I should say that my girlfriend (well, partner, but using the word girlfriend should get a few Slashdotters drooling) is a town planner, a graduate of the internationally reknowned Bartlett School of Planning, and I've learnt a thing or two about urban design, planning and architecture from her along the way.
Modern buildings, with very few exceptions, aren't designed to last for hundreds of years. Architects, developers and builders design and build for the short term, not for the long term. The materials they choose to work with aren't designed to last for centuries simply because cities, and hence buildings, evolve over time - what's needed and what's fashionable today will be useless and outdated in only a couple of decades from now.
The proof of this is around us - buildings erected in the 60s and 70s are being pulled down all the time, to make way for more "modern", "practical" and "aesthetic" developments. This is especially true of commercial buildings but it also applies to residential structures too.
Modern building design is nothing like Victorian building design. The Victorians constructed brick buildings, because brick was the best material available to them. As a result, they couldn't safely build more than four or five storeys - beyond that a building would not be able to support its own weight. They also (for the most part) didn't have any means of transporting goods and people up and down easily - lifts/elevators didn't really take off in a big way until the turn of the 20th century.
It was only when the means to work steel effectively, to shape it as required, was developed that modern building design took off. Steel being lighter and stronger than brick allowed architects to design taller, more spacious buildings and coupled with the use of lifts/elevators, it allowed them to break the ceiling barrier that previously existed. Once they started to work with steel, they quickly were able to go very high, very quickly, hence the rapid development of skyscrapers almost overnight in New York and other cities.
But I'm digressing from my main point: The reason why buildings don't last is because, generally they're designed with the knowledge that they'll be obsolete within their designers' lifetimes.
You have to go back as far as Warfract (I!)... to find a real time graphics game that plays fine.
Warfract? What's this? Is it like a custom version of Rescue On Fractalus for Dubya's personal use?
(Only kidding. I know you meant Warcraft but your post made me reminisce about a game (ROF not WC) that I hadn't even thought about in years.)
In the near future, environmental problems will come home to roost - a direct result of the short-sighted environmental policies persued by both governments and corporations.
You may dismiss this as "tree-hugging BS", that's your perogative, but illnesses such as childhood asthma, leukemia, allergies, etc are all on the rise. And, as much as they try to hide it, pollution does maim and kill thousands, if not millions, every year.
Arguably, modern medicine is to blame as well. By curing the sick and the weak, modern medicine has prolonged the lives of people who would have otherwise died (including me). Don't get me wrong, I'm not against treating sick people but it's an inescapable fact that by allowing the weak to live you're weakening the gene pool.
Harsh facts but the facts all the same.
It's obvious that Taco's been abducted by aliens and that they've substituted a doppleganger in his place.
/. and none of them were dupes.
Unfortunately for the aliens, spotting their ruse was too easy - their double recently posted several new stories on
OK, we all know that Taco's a royal PITA but he's our royal PITA. We want him back. You can keep Glenn Miller though.
Mmmm, universes...
Let's face it, Peter Molyneux is overrated. Black and white was very pretty, sure, and it was a good idea, but it got tedious very quickly. It simply wasn't a very good game. He got lucky with a few games early on, that's all.
Peter Molyneux overrated? Got lucky with a few games early on?
Man, just what are you smoking?
Ever heard of Populous, the original "god" game? It created a whole new genre and blew the socks off everything else out there at the time.
How about Powermonger, Magic Carpet, Syndicate, Theme Park, Dungeon Keeper and their derivatives? All original games, all great plays and all great successes.
Care to name some other developers with as impressive a track record of producing original, highly-addictive games that have been as popular?
So you didn't like Black And White. Fine, you're entitled to your opinion. But to dismiss one of the industry's most creative and productive minds as "overrated" and "lucky" is ridiculous.
Ie, trojan horse?
Unless such an endeavour was open source, why would you trust it?
Frankly, these guys are asking for more trust than most people would extend their next-door neighbours. And abusing that trust would be far too easy.
Yes, SETI, distributed.net have shown the altruistic potential of such software but we're not talking about non-profit organisations here, we're talking about corporations, and the only language that corporations know is the language of money. And people interested in making money don't always put other people's (data) security high up on their list of priorities.
To be honest, I'd rather spend some hard cash buying music online or in the local record store. At least that way I know I'll never wake up one day to find that my system's been hacked by a script kiddie who was given the keys to my virtual front door by a "harmless" piece of software.
A touch paranoid, perhaps, but better safe than sorry is my motto.
Why not just borrow the DVD from a friend or rent it from the video store?
Do that and you'll be just as clued up/well-informed as anyone else walking in to see the second movie.
Or, you could stick to your "won't bother watching any of them now" strategy. Which, to be frank, is rather like cutting off your nose to spite your face.