...given that the shows are online minutes after they are broadcast, I have zero interest in watching it live.. what, being interrupted with the ads all the time and all.
Whoops. I guess I'm a reason for them to have the videos removed.
the second-to-last paragraph in that article notes something important.. the EU directive does not mention anything about needing to be a subscriber - the Dutch version, however, does.
Also, the Opta have already mentioned to NU.nl in a later article that it will be up to the financial department of the government to fix this or not.. a great hint that although Opta would love to label this spam and put a stop to it, their hands are tied, and are asking for them to be untied.
...would post this as a news item. Front page, too.
Let's break this down submission down..
"Hi. I found this article on the web that totally didn't impress me, I think they fiddled with the numbers to make themselves look better than they are, and overall I really couldn't give a shite."
So they're not just asking for a phone, they're asking for a good phone. Bastards. Should be hanged
Hanged? No. Fully realize that they're going to have limited choice? Hell yes - and yes, there are actually choices out there as you point out "Good luck, mate" doesn't mean they don't exist:)
Heck, you can get a PocketPC Phone edition equal in every way to the HTC Wizard - but without the camera:
The WIZA-110 is the least common HTC Wizard model. The reason for this may be found in the fact that it has no camera. Other than that, it is the same as the WIZA-100. It can be found customized and branded by at least one company:
There are tons of phones without cameras. There is absolutely *no* problem whatsoever getting a phone that doesn't have a camera. Every time an article about cellphones comes up somebody cries out "Can't I just have a phone? One without a camera???", and every time the basic answers is that you damn well can.
Now the problem is that these people aren't asking if they can have a phone without a camera. And they know it. They want a phone that has WiFi, stereo bluetooth, a big high quality color screen, 3G, can play back every media file under the sun and better yet they can put custom software on and isn't locked to any provider... but not a camera. And that is where you do end up getting into "good luck, mate" territory.
Seriously - walk into a store, look on the web, check out office supplies stores (guess what - they sell cell phones that are literally no-frills so that employees can have a cheap company phone).. there are plenty of cell phones without a camera. And if that is their only argument, then they shouldn't complain that it is not a very fashionable design or that it only has a fixed-matrix black-and-white LCD display and they can't download the latest music onto it let alone watch that StarGate SG-1 they recorded to Ogg Theora.
Just to note, there's a *lot* of routers out there these days that will happily: - report websites visited if they fit a certain pattern - block users from visiting websites if they fit a certain pattern - and do all this with custom schedules
This would take more than a savvy user to get around, as they would need to know your router login / user. Sure, they could reset the router and log in with the defaults, but that's a bit of a dead give-away %)
Just to note - it does work the other way around sometimes as well. I do agree, hollywood 'B' movies certainly come out in the U.S. long before they do in The Netherlands, or they don't at all. Hollywood 'A' movies typically have less of a timegap. Some movies are released simultaneously or just a few days apart, which is the best yet. Sadly that means that I am going to have to wait for "Stranger than fiction" to come out on March 1st, 2007 - long after the 10 November 10th, 2006 release date in the U.S. In fact, this is after the reels have been passed through Latvia and Estonia. Hello authentic 'cinema experience' scratches, smudges, stretches, etc.
However, I would like to point out that it does happen the other way around as well. This applies to 'B' movies, 'intellectual' / Indie movies, but also to more typical 'hollywood'-ish movies such as Children of Man (October 23rd, 2006 in NL, January 5th, 2007 in US) - something a U.S. friend of mine was rather unhappy about and called it "unfair". And that it is.. in both directions.
"If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, January 12th is your last good opportunity to catch Comet McNaught in the evening twilight -- though January 13th isn't completely out of the question. After that, Comet McNaught will become a target for observers in the Southern Hemisphere, as shown below."
I agree on most of your points, but I disagree on the premise..
You say that by my argument, cops shouldn't get paid.. not at all. The comparison person for a cop would be somebody who actually works for a security firm. If you run it that way, then it becomes a matter of a paid security firm guy deciding against telling people about a flaw because they want to see -additiona- money first. It's like a cop who already gets paid to do his job saying "I found the rapist.. but I'll want $12,000 before I tell you where he is, or he walks".
Going back then to somebody whose job isn't with a security firm / whatever.. if I as a lone person see a crime comitted, should I hold out until they start offering witness rewards before telling the police what I saw? Tell me that's perfectly fine, and I say Them - 2:0 - Humanity
Put differently.. if you want to see money for the flaws you find - go get a job at a security firm, or start your own:)
Mind you - I'm not complaining about people who found a flaw and were going to report it anyway and see "wait, I can get 8k for this - let me go with that route".. good on them. I'd be complaining about the people who might go that route, fall short of the money-getting period, and then decide that they're not going to report it.. let it just sit, or sell it to evil-doers, or do evil with it themselves.
what if he doesn't want the ad to be downloaded at all? For bandwidth reasons ( hello Belgium, you poor saps:/ ) or just for the usual "they're tracking me!" reasons?
I've always found the reactions to the notion of a speed limiter on regular cars (they're common on trucks, and the hayabusa is the last production motorcycle that would be able to top 300km/h as all later motorcycles post-2001 are artificially limited to that top speed) interesting.
65Mph is the maximum speed on rural interstate highways. There's always a bit of leeway, presumably to deal with situations as that mentioned by the parent poster. And I certainly wouldn't like cars to be limited to the maximum speed limit for thos reasons either
However.. let's say they put an articial limiter on cars at 100Mph - would you still object? Please note that this is well over any speed required, or even attainable (lest you have a supercar), for you to take any evasive maneuvers and far above the maximum speed limit on any road. I have a feeling a lot of people would still say "yes!" based on principle - without a particularly solid foundation (I guess that's what 'on principle' means) as to what possible purpose / excuse they could have for going faster than 100Mph. What if it was 200Mph? ( "getting away from a crazy stalker with a chainsaw" notwithstanding - presumably their car could also go faster than 100Mph, so you would still be quite screwed )
Only 8k for bugs which go on the market for 15-100k each exploit? Surely you jest, no self righteous will go for such a scam.
Then perhaps the simply righteous will step up.
Whereas the truly righteous would have stepped up regardless of bounty. The simply righteous who would have stepped up before, but are now thinking "wait a second.. I can get money for this that isn't crook money? Right on!".. well. Them - 1:0 - humanity.
the slashdot summary makes it sound like what they discovered is akin to an Omega Particle of the Star Trek kind. Like pursuing and making use of it would result in disaster.
Instead, at best: the article explains that the guy had a theory that particular matter could conly interact with light to a certain extent. Now some researchers have found possible evidence to the contrary. This means that either A. he and thus his theory (rule, law, theorem, whatever - not even the science community seems to use them consistently) was wrong or B. the researchers are wrong (meaning what they found does not violate the guy's theory - either because it's a whole different phenomenon, or because they made a mistake.. whatever).
I'm sure it's all highly interesting to those within those circles, and I even found the premise interesting enough - but to have a statement such as "should not be used for several years -- if ever".. hmm.
Four, every script kiddie and their dog will have a full set of instructions on a hack to which previously only 'black hat' hackers with serious malicious intent and willing to, apparently, pay for this, were privvy.
Instead of 500 companies silently being hacked and having some of their data stolen, 5 million people, including companies, are now under attack through the latest combination of script kiddie worm + dangerous hack.
So yes, it is irresponsible to just throw the data out there - because you vastly increase the group of people who will make use of this exploit. Just as it is irresponsible to say nothing of it.
I certainly don't know what the correct course of action to take is on -every- such vulnerability, but those involved can probably judge this for themselves case-by-case.
well, that's not entirely true. Although I do believe that an airplane diving, or rising, nose first through a cloud wouldn't leave much of a hole, I have witnessed on several occasions clouds that got ripped apart by an airplane traversing through them. The only reason I saw this, though, is because the clouds were pretty thin. This picture might show something like it, though in my case it was a lot more subtle.. it was also a lot higher up: http://www.capetownskies.com/dane/apr75_24cirrus_b andb.jpg
for what it's worth - for a bunch of countries you do not need to request a visa. They are on the visa waiver program, and you just fill in a slip that is handed to you on the plane, or you can fill in at the airport where you land. It has the usual questions (who are you, where are you staying, are you a terrorist?), but that's it. The visa waiver program has a maximum of 90 days. For any casual trip, that is more than enough. Obviously if you need a student / work visa, it's a whole different story but I wouldn't say it's any different a story from the vast majority of countries. Having to request a visa from the U.S. Embassy / Consulate is, afaik, standard operating procedure for any nation. You can't very well expect to pick one up at your own government institute as it's not your government that has to approve your flying somewhere else. (Well, some people do.. the "don't leave the country"-type.)
"bridge the gap between Galactica and the new spinoff 'Caprica'"
There's one problem right there. Why is there a gap? Why is there a spinoff? Did the events on Caprica really warrant a spinoff? Could the Caprica story, in no way, remain integrated with the main storyline in some way? And if it couldn't, and it didn't really warrant a spinoff, why not just let it be and move on?
Too many spinoffs these days - in the end, it merely divides focus (and money!) on the end of producers, actors, and audience alike. I'd like to see how many spinoffs+series remained doing as well separately, as the original did on its own. My guess: not many.
I've replaced all the sockets in my place with ones that have switches. Rather than unplug the phone charger, replug it, etc. I just flick the switch. This is much more convenient than having to muck about with the chord all the time.
My entertainment 'center' (TV, radio, two laptops (one acting as a PVR), cable modem, router) all go into a single extension cord that also has a switch. This saves having a large socket block, makes it easy to turn all devices on/off with one switch, and keeps me from having to walk over to the socket to flick the switch there.
There's numerous advantages - from power savings, to peace of mind when going out for a while. No worrying about my TV blowing up, etc. When going on vacation, I just flick the mains switches at the meter - same effect.
The only disadvantage I had found is with the clocks on everything. They keep resetting and either blink 00:00 or end up being some oddball hour. I taped them off. I suppose some might find the switches on the socket plates ugly - haven't heard any comment on them.
In the past, though, I couldn't have done this. TVs, radios, VCRs would not have remembered their settings, and I would have had to re-program them. What a pain when coming back from vacation that was.
For the curious: my consumption is currently at 23% of average for my area (couple of house blocks), the investment has already paid off.
You do realize that cellphones can already be roughly / accurately pinpointed by the emergency services, right? You do realize that although they do this when you actually make a call, that as long as your phone is on and thus registers itself to the various cell towers, somewhere, some machine knows where you are, right?
The State (did you mean 'The Man' without saying 'The Man'?) can already track you. Leave your phone and credit cards at home, and by all means wear a disguise, take back alleys, etc. if you want it to be nigh-impossible for you to be tracked.
moreover... 1. most phones can't reproduce the note. Oops. That's your $3 ringtone put to good use right there. 2. so what if the teacher can't hear it? Yay for the classroom, but why not just put the thing in buzz/vibrate mode then? Then the rest of the kids in the classroom won't be annoyed by the shrill tone either. 3. and even with that.. so now you know your phone got a new text message, or you're getting a call. Now what? You'd still have to answer it in some way, and if the teacher catches you then, you're still going to have to give up your cellphone at the teacher's desk (so I hope - you do here, NL).
Kids aren't 'clever'. Kids are increasingly stupid if they actually buy these ringtones. And sadly, they do. But hey, it's their money.
As you may have read - that's exactly what I did, and typically do. Unfortunately, for some matters, I can't. E.g. software I use in business and want my tax break on %) Sadly, buying through U.S. retailers is, in fact, considered fraud. Then again, seeing as those businesses should very well be guilty of fraud themselves, by asserting a product carries one price when it most certainly doesn't, I don't have any remorse on it when dealing with personal use software.
== off-topic ==
By the way - wtf is with Slashdot not showing the Euro sign? "" -- that's supposed to be a Euro sign there, Taco et al.
Let's try some others... Dollar (known to work): "$" Euro (known not to work): "" Florin: "f" Pound sterling: "£" Yen: "¥"
"Find what?", you may ask. The answer: That for the European price, the company simply takes the U.S. price and replaces the $ with a , and call it a day.
For example, I recently purchased Paint Shop Pro for an aunt. U.S. price: $99.99 Euro price: 99.99 That price in Euros is valued at $129.579 (xe.net, December 18th, 2006). 30% more expensive indeed. This is for The Netherlands. The Netherlands carries a Sales VAT of 19% on such goods. In other words, 11% is pure profit*
Add to that that in the U.S. there's a discount on the product to $79.99, and it's a 62% markup, so 43% pure profit*.
* One may argue that shipping costs (as in, from Country X exported to The Netherlands, as opposed to the U.S.) drive up the price. Not true, this is for the electronic download version (not that the boxed version is more expensive, by the way). One may argue that translation costs drive up the price - also not true, as both the U.S. and Dutch-bought versions ship with all languages.
So naturally, I purchased through the U.S. store.
You'll find that it is much the same for any software product, and Europeans are, sadly, used to it. If you happen to know any Dutch, go check the news posts over at www.tweakers.net on newly announced products. Whenever somebody wonders what the price in Euros will be, the standard reply - which tends to work out as being correct - is that if the product costs $100 in the U.S., it will cost 100 in Europe. That's probably a bit of a self-perpetuating issue there. Why would a publisher be so silly as to charge less when they can obviously charge more with the consumer half-cursing the practice while at the same time making the purchase anyway?
So I wouldn't say that I wouldn't expect it from a German company; in fact, I would expect it from -any- company.
=====
You might think that $30 more for PSP isn't so bad - but obviously, it gets worse when the cost of the goods increases, such as the gem that is Autodesk's AutoCAD 2007: U.S. price: $3,995 NL price: 4,750 NL price in dollars: $6,217.48 Mark-up: 55.63% 'Profit': 36.63% or $2,277.53
Slashdot Mirror
...given that the shows are online minutes after they are broadcast, I have zero interest in watching it live.. what, being interrupted with the ads all the time and all.
Whoops. I guess I'm a reason for them to have the videos removed.
the second-to-last paragraph in that article notes something important.. the EU directive does not mention anything about needing to be a subscriber - the Dutch version, however, does.
Also, the Opta have already mentioned to NU.nl in a later article that it will be up to the financial department of the government to fix this or not.. a great hint that although Opta would love to label this spam and put a stop to it, their hands are tied, and are asking for them to be untied.
...would post this as a news item. Front page, too.
Let's break this down submission down..
"Hi. I found this article on the web that totally didn't impress me, I think they fiddled with the numbers to make themselves look better than they are, and overall I really couldn't give a shite."
Yes. Obvious front page material for a Sunday!
Hanged? No. Fully realize that they're going to have limited choice? Hell yes - and yes, there are actually choices out there as you point out "Good luck, mate" doesn't mean they don't exist
Heck, you can get a PocketPC Phone edition equal in every way to the HTC Wizard - but without the camera:
http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename
There are tons of phones without cameras. There is absolutely *no* problem whatsoever getting a phone that doesn't have a camera. Every time an article about cellphones comes up somebody cries out "Can't I just have a phone? One without a camera???", and every time the basic answers is that you damn well can.
Now the problem is that these people aren't asking if they can have a phone without a camera. And they know it. They want a phone that has WiFi, stereo bluetooth, a big high quality color screen, 3G, can play back every media file under the sun and better yet they can put custom software on and isn't locked to any provider... but not a camera. And that is where you do end up getting into "good luck, mate" territory.
Seriously - walk into a store, look on the web, check out office supplies stores (guess what - they sell cell phones that are literally no-frills so that employees can have a cheap company phone).. there are plenty of cell phones without a camera. And if that is their only argument, then they shouldn't complain that it is not a very fashionable design or that it only has a fixed-matrix black-and-white LCD display and they can't download the latest music onto it let alone watch that StarGate SG-1 they recorded to Ogg Theora.
Just to note, there's a *lot* of routers out there these days that will happily:
- report websites visited if they fit a certain pattern
- block users from visiting websites if they fit a certain pattern
- and do all this with custom schedules
This would take more than a savvy user to get around, as they would need to know your router login / user. Sure, they could reset the router and log in with the defaults, but that's a bit of a dead give-away %)
Just to note - it does work the other way around sometimes as well. I do agree, hollywood 'B' movies certainly come out in the U.S. long before they do in The Netherlands, or they don't at all. Hollywood 'A' movies typically have less of a timegap. Some movies are released simultaneously or just a few days apart, which is the best yet. Sadly that means that I am going to have to wait for "Stranger than fiction" to come out on March 1st, 2007 - long after the 10 November 10th, 2006 release date in the U.S. In fact, this is after the reels have been passed through Latvia and Estonia. Hello authentic 'cinema experience' scratches, smudges, stretches, etc.
However, I would like to point out that it does happen the other way around as well. This applies to 'B' movies, 'intellectual' / Indie movies, but also to more typical 'hollywood'-ish movies such as Children of Man (October 23rd, 2006 in NL, January 5th, 2007 in US) - something a U.S. friend of mine was rather unhappy about and called it "unfair". And that it is.. in both directions.
http://skytonight.com/observing/highlights/5133461 .html
"If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, January 12th is your last good opportunity to catch Comet McNaught in the evening twilight -- though January 13th isn't completely out of the question. After that, Comet McNaught will become a target for observers in the Southern Hemisphere, as shown below."
Today is January 14th.
I agree on most of your points, but I disagree on the premise..
:)
You say that by my argument, cops shouldn't get paid.. not at all. The comparison person for a cop would be somebody who actually works for a security firm. If you run it that way, then it becomes a matter of a paid security firm guy deciding against telling people about a flaw because they want to see -additiona- money first. It's like a cop who already gets paid to do his job saying "I found the rapist.. but I'll want $12,000 before I tell you where he is, or he walks".
Going back then to somebody whose job isn't with a security firm / whatever.. if I as a lone person see a crime comitted, should I hold out until they start offering witness rewards before telling the police what I saw? Tell me that's perfectly fine, and I say Them - 2:0 - Humanity
Put differently.. if you want to see money for the flaws you find - go get a job at a security firm, or start your own
Mind you - I'm not complaining about people who found a flaw and were going to report it anyway and see "wait, I can get 8k for this - let me go with that route".. good on them. I'd be complaining about the people who might go that route, fall short of the money-getting period, and then decide that they're not going to report it.. let it just sit, or sell it to evil-doers, or do evil with it themselves.
what if he doesn't want the ad to be downloaded at all? For bandwidth reasons ( hello Belgium, you poor saps :/ ) or just for the usual "they're tracking me!" reasons?
I've always found the reactions to the notion of a speed limiter on regular cars (they're common on trucks, and the hayabusa is the last production motorcycle that would be able to top 300km/h as all later motorcycles post-2001 are artificially limited to that top speed) interesting.
65Mph is the maximum speed on rural interstate highways. There's always a bit of leeway, presumably to deal with situations as that mentioned by the parent poster. And I certainly wouldn't like cars to be limited to the maximum speed limit for thos reasons either
However.. let's say they put an articial limiter on cars at 100Mph - would you still object? Please note that this is well over any speed required, or even attainable (lest you have a supercar), for you to take any evasive maneuvers and far above the maximum speed limit on any road. I have a feeling a lot of people would still say "yes!" based on principle - without a particularly solid foundation (I guess that's what 'on principle' means) as to what possible purpose / excuse they could have for going faster than 100Mph. What if it was 200Mph?
( "getting away from a crazy stalker with a chainsaw" notwithstanding - presumably their car could also go faster than 100Mph, so you would still be quite screwed )
Just curious, really..
Whereas the truly righteous would have stepped up regardless of bounty. The simply righteous who would have stepped up before, but are now thinking "wait a second.. I can get money for this that isn't crook money? Right on!".. well. Them - 1:0 - humanity.
the slashdot summary makes it sound like what they discovered is akin to an Omega Particle of the Star Trek kind. Like pursuing and making use of it would result in disaster.
Instead, at best: the article explains that the guy had a theory that particular matter could conly interact with light to a certain extent. Now some researchers have found possible evidence to the contrary. This means that either A. he and thus his theory (rule, law, theorem, whatever - not even the science community seems to use them consistently) was wrong or B. the researchers are wrong (meaning what they found does not violate the guy's theory - either because it's a whole different phenomenon, or because they made a mistake.. whatever).
I'm sure it's all highly interesting to those within those circles, and I even found the premise interesting enough - but to have a statement such as "should not be used for several years -- if ever".. hmm.
Four, every script kiddie and their dog will have a full set of instructions on a hack to which previously only 'black hat' hackers with serious malicious intent and willing to, apparently, pay for this, were privvy.
Instead of 500 companies silently being hacked and having some of their data stolen, 5 million people, including companies, are now under attack through the latest combination of script kiddie worm + dangerous hack.
So yes, it is irresponsible to just throw the data out there - because you vastly increase the group of people who will make use of this exploit.
Just as it is irresponsible to say nothing of it.
I certainly don't know what the correct course of action to take is on -every- such vulnerability, but those involved can probably judge this for themselves case-by-case.
well, that's not entirely true. Although I do believe that an airplane diving, or rising, nose first through a cloud wouldn't leave much of a hole, I have witnessed on several occasions clouds that got ripped apart by an airplane traversing through them. The only reason I saw this, though, is because the clouds were pretty thin. This picture might show something like it, though in my case it was a lot more subtle.. it was also a lot higher up: http://www.capetownskies.com/dane/apr75_24cirrus_b andb.jpg
d ownplane.gif
h +cloud
It is also quite possible with thicker clouds, but it's usually not visible from the ground: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/Images/
However.. veritable holes in clouds, I have only ever seen in the form of 'hole punch clouds': http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=hole+punc
for what it's worth - for a bunch of countries you do not need to request a visa. They are on the visa waiver program, and you just fill in a slip that is handed to you on the plane, or you can fill in at the airport where you land. It has the usual questions (who are you, where are you staying, are you a terrorist?), but that's it. The visa waiver program has a maximum of 90 days. For any casual trip, that is more than enough. Obviously if you need a student / work visa, it's a whole different story but I wouldn't say it's any different a story from the vast majority of countries. Having to request a visa from the U.S. Embassy / Consulate is, afaik, standard operating procedure for any nation. You can't very well expect to pick one up at your own government institute as it's not your government that has to approve your flying somewhere else. (Well, some people do.. the "don't leave the country"-type.)
"bridge the gap between Galactica and the new spinoff 'Caprica'"
There's one problem right there. Why is there a gap? Why is there a spinoff? Did the events on Caprica really warrant a spinoff? Could the Caprica story, in no way, remain integrated with the main storyline in some way? And if it couldn't, and it didn't really warrant a spinoff, why not just let it be and move on?
Too many spinoffs these days - in the end, it merely divides focus (and money!) on the end of producers, actors, and audience alike. I'd like to see how many spinoffs+series remained doing as well separately, as the original did on its own. My guess: not many.
I've replaced all the sockets in my place with ones that have switches. Rather than unplug the phone charger, replug it, etc. I just flick the switch. This is much more convenient than having to muck about with the chord all the time.
My entertainment 'center' (TV, radio, two laptops (one acting as a PVR), cable modem, router) all go into a single extension cord that also has a switch. This saves having a large socket block, makes it easy to turn all devices on/off with one switch, and keeps me from having to walk over to the socket to flick the switch there.
There's numerous advantages - from power savings, to peace of mind when going out for a while. No worrying about my TV blowing up, etc. When going on vacation, I just flick the mains switches at the meter - same effect.
The only disadvantage I had found is with the clocks on everything. They keep resetting and either blink 00:00 or end up being some oddball hour. I taped them off. I suppose some might find the switches on the socket plates ugly - haven't heard any comment on them.
In the past, though, I couldn't have done this. TVs, radios, VCRs would not have remembered their settings, and I would have had to re-program them. What a pain when coming back from vacation that was.
For the curious: my consumption is currently at 23% of average for my area (couple of house blocks), the investment has already paid off.
Here you go, a nice break-down of that troll post type - from June 2005:c id=12887520 - Whatever happened to my favourite troll?
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=153632&
and not a Bolian search? ;)
You must be new here. On this planet, I mean.
You do realize that cellphones can already be roughly / accurately pinpointed by the emergency services, right? You do realize that although they do this when you actually make a call, that as long as your phone is on and thus registers itself to the various cell towers, somewhere, some machine knows where you are, right?
The State (did you mean 'The Man' without saying 'The Man'?) can already track you. Leave your phone and credit cards at home, and by all means wear a disguise, take back alleys, etc. if you want it to be nigh-impossible for you to be tracked.
moreover...
1. most phones can't reproduce the note. Oops. That's your $3 ringtone put to good use right there.
2. so what if the teacher can't hear it? Yay for the classroom, but why not just put the thing in buzz/vibrate mode then? Then the rest of the kids in the classroom won't be annoyed by the shrill tone either.
3. and even with that.. so now you know your phone got a new text message, or you're getting a call. Now what? You'd still have to answer it in some way, and if the teacher catches you then, you're still going to have to give up your cellphone at the teacher's desk (so I hope - you do here, NL).
Kids aren't 'clever'. Kids are increasingly stupid if they actually buy these ringtones. And sadly, they do. But hey, it's their money.
sweet - thanks :)
As you may have read - that's exactly what I did, and typically do. Unfortunately, for some matters, I can't. E.g. software I use in business and want my tax break on %) Sadly, buying through U.S. retailers is, in fact, considered fraud. Then again, seeing as those businesses should very well be guilty of fraud themselves, by asserting a product carries one price when it most certainly doesn't, I don't have any remorse on it when dealing with personal use software.
== off-topic ==
By the way - wtf is with Slashdot not showing the Euro sign? "" -- that's supposed to be a Euro sign there, Taco et al.
Let's try some others...
Dollar (known to work): "$"
Euro (known not to work): ""
Florin: "f"
Pound sterling: "£"
Yen: "¥"
...and you'll find much the same, if not worse.
"Find what?", you may ask. The answer: That for the European price, the company simply takes the U.S. price and replaces the $ with a , and call it a day.
For example, I recently purchased Paint Shop Pro for an aunt.
U.S. price: $99.99
Euro price: 99.99
That price in Euros is valued at $129.579 (xe.net, December 18th, 2006). 30% more expensive indeed.
This is for The Netherlands. The Netherlands carries a Sales VAT of 19% on such goods. In other words, 11% is pure profit*
Add to that that in the U.S. there's a discount on the product to $79.99, and it's a 62% markup, so 43% pure profit*.
* One may argue that shipping costs (as in, from Country X exported to The Netherlands, as opposed to the U.S.) drive up the price. Not true, this is for the electronic download version (not that the boxed version is more expensive, by the way). One may argue that translation costs drive up the price - also not true, as both the U.S. and Dutch-bought versions ship with all languages.
So naturally, I purchased through the U.S. store.
You'll find that it is much the same for any software product, and Europeans are, sadly, used to it. If you happen to know any Dutch, go check the news posts over at www.tweakers.net on newly announced products. Whenever somebody wonders what the price in Euros will be, the standard reply - which tends to work out as being correct - is that if the product costs $100 in the U.S., it will cost 100 in Europe.
That's probably a bit of a self-perpetuating issue there. Why would a publisher be so silly as to charge less when they can obviously charge more with the consumer half-cursing the practice while at the same time making the purchase anyway?
So I wouldn't say that I wouldn't expect it from a German company; in fact, I would expect it from -any- company.
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You might think that $30 more for PSP isn't so bad - but obviously, it gets worse when the cost of the goods increases, such as the gem that is Autodesk's AutoCAD 2007:
U.S. price: $3,995
NL price: 4,750
NL price in dollars: $6,217.48
Mark-up: 55.63%
'Profit': 36.63% or $2,277.53