The "new" pirate bay site is blocked here in the UK, which makes me question what kind of process the police have to go through to get sites blocked. Can a site be blocked simply because it shares the name of a site that's already blocked? Because it has a similar domain name?
Also, if Barrett Brown can be jailed for linking to allegedly illegal material, can you, I, or Slashdot's owners be jailed for linking to an allegedly illegal torrent site?
After 2 years of using Android, going from love to hate, I returned to iPhone with the 4S. I hadn't even heard of Siri til I was leaving the store with the 4S and noticed Siri mentioned on a poster.
Siri is useful in a very limited number of circumstances. I routinely use Siri to set an alarm. S/he seems to be good at understanding stock market enquiries too. But the natural language parsing can be very random at times. For example, try "set a countdown for 10 minutes" -- sometimes you'll get "I don't understand", sometimes you'll get an alarm clock set for 10 mins from now, and sometimes you'll get what you want which is a timer counting down from 10 minutes. Try "set a timer for 10 minutes" and you'll get the same range of mis-understanding.
I'm fine with Siri being how it is at the moment. I know it will get better and more useful, especially when it can work with maps / businesses outside the US. But it is still definitely a beta product that is usually slower than performing the task yourself.
Siri in a year or two should be great. I'm looking forward to it.
This is an age-old debate but in my opinion there needs to be significant compensation for arrests that don't lead to convictions. Even more so if the arrest doesn't even lead to a charge.
The way things are at the moment, people who are wrongly arrested are expected to see their eventual release as a "relief" and be thankful for it. That's not how it should be. Otherwise the police had might as well arrest and hold everyone, take their time investigating all of them, and then release everyone who didn't do anything wrong.
In the venn diagram of arrests and convictions the target intersection is 100%. Currently it is nowhere near 100% and that is not entirely due to a flawed court system, it is partially due to too many innocent people being arrested.
I hope you're not suggesting that Apple had any intention of misleading people? That would be outrageous. I mean, they put out the iPhone for 2G networks, then the iPhone 3 for 3G networks, then just as people were starting to want a 4G handset they put out the iPhone 4. And you dare to suggest that it even _occurred_ to Apple that the numbering might confuse people!!!??? Go to your room and don't come out til supper time! Cheeky young scamp.
Well done judge, you made me sympathise with a spammer. I don't want any court case conducted in this way. The judge's conduct is indicative of someone who is in a position of trusted neutrality but with an apparent bias against one side. Even when the case inevitably goes against the spammer, surely the judge's behaviour provides grounds for an appeal, eating up more of Spamhaus's defence fund.
Consumers have a legitimate interest in the behind-the-scenes contracts used by companies. We want to know what they're up to. For example, Microsoft forcing OEMs not to supply any machines with Linux -- it's a contract between two companies, but consumers had a legitimate interest in knowing about it.
"Some frustrated users meted out one-star ratings for the album as their way of protesting Amazon's slow service"
Fortunately those people are morons so we can disregard their silly protest. Amazon should cancel those one-star ratings, but then they'd be accused of censorship, influencing the rating, etc. The whole thing sounds a bit silly to me.
Similar to the trend list thing, here's another case of apparent censorship under fear. A newspaper identified one of the footballers, and that issue of the paper is missing from the online newsagent PressDisplay, even though PressDisplay is based in Canada, supposedly outside the reach of UK courts.
Twitter now appears to be censoring its trend list, in the UK at least, to avoid drawing attention to a particular footballer who is being talked about a lot.
Tell you what Disney, when your executives are ready to put their lives on the line to kill terrorists, then you can have a trademark for whatever you call your elite unit. Unti then, just stick to making cartoons and mind your own business.
I'm afraid my humble blog has again yielded to the footfall of a thousand stampeding slashdotters. One of these days I really should move to a dedicated server, but for now here is the text of the article...
Beware of the Groupon piranhas eating you alive!
This is a cautionary tale for anyone who may think of offering a deal through Groupon, the group-buying site that promises great deals for customers and great exposure for businesses.
The idea is that, as a business, you offer a special deal on the Groupon web site. For example a restaurant may offer a meal-for-two worth £200 for the bargain price of £80. Groupon takes a 50% cut so the restaurant gets £40 which should be enough to cover the actual cost of the food, plus they've had some good exposure and, hopefully, the few hundred people who bought the deal will go back another day and pay full price. Maybe they'll even become regular customers.
But look at what happened to one independent photographer in Somerset:
He offered a £200 portrait package for £29, which was bought by 301 people.
Let's break that down...
Firstly the photographer will only get £14.50 because Groupon takes half. And if the client pays by credit card, which they probably will, then the photographer has to pay the credit card fee, so he's only getting around £12.
Each shoot lasts one hour, but it can be anywhere the client chooses within 15 miles of Bristol city centre. So let's suppose the total time for travel is half an hour each way, plus 20 minutes to set-up lighting and background and 10 minutes to tear it all down at the end. Already he's up to 2.5 hours so he's charging £4.80 per hour, not taking fuel costs in to account.
"Every photo taken will be put on CD or DVD in high resolution" -- this is fairly trivial, let's say 15 minutes work and £1 for the disc and case. He's now getting the equivalent of £4 per hour.
But the deal gets better! "20 of the images will be professionally edited and air brushed" -- now I assume this is nothing more than a bit of spot removal and some minor tweaks, because there's no way you can do a full retouching job as part of a £29 package, and there's certainly no way you can do 20 of them. So we'll estimate a super-speedy 5 minutes per picture and imagine that he somehow gets the whole lot done in 2 hours. He's now on £2.32 per hour.
Anything else included? Yes! You get "one 12x10 framed print, two 10x8 prints, two 8x6 prints, two 5x4 prints, two 4x3 prints, and two 3x2 prints" -- a total of 11 prints, with the largest one framed. I'd estimate the absolute rock-bottom price for producing those prints will be £8 plus another £5 for the frame if he's buying in bulk. That's £13. That's more than he's getting from each client, and he's got 301 clients to make his way through.
Even if this photographer is doing each job to a bare minimum standard, he has committed himself to nearly a year's work for no money. If that doesn't sound like good business sense to you then be very careful if you decide to offer a deal through Groupon or any similar site. What may at first seem like success could very easily put you out of business.
Slashdot Mirror
The "new" pirate bay site is blocked here in the UK, which makes me question what kind of process the police have to go through to get sites blocked. Can a site be blocked simply because it shares the name of a site that's already blocked? Because it has a similar domain name?
Also, if Barrett Brown can be jailed for linking to allegedly illegal material, can you, I, or Slashdot's owners be jailed for linking to an allegedly illegal torrent site?
It seems there is some karma in effect here.
http://www.planetcrap.com/topics/8/
After 2 years of using Android, going from love to hate, I returned to iPhone with the 4S. I hadn't even heard of Siri til I was leaving the store with the 4S and noticed Siri mentioned on a poster.
Siri is useful in a very limited number of circumstances. I routinely use Siri to set an alarm. S/he seems to be good at understanding stock market enquiries too. But the natural language parsing can be very random at times. For example, try "set a countdown for 10 minutes" -- sometimes you'll get "I don't understand", sometimes you'll get an alarm clock set for 10 mins from now, and sometimes you'll get what you want which is a timer counting down from 10 minutes. Try "set a timer for 10 minutes" and you'll get the same range of mis-understanding.
I'm fine with Siri being how it is at the moment. I know it will get better and more useful, especially when it can work with maps / businesses outside the US. But it is still definitely a beta product that is usually slower than performing the task yourself.
Siri in a year or two should be great. I'm looking forward to it.
This is an age-old debate but in my opinion there needs to be significant compensation for arrests that don't lead to convictions. Even more so if the arrest doesn't even lead to a charge.
The way things are at the moment, people who are wrongly arrested are expected to see their eventual release as a "relief" and be thankful for it. That's not how it should be. Otherwise the police had might as well arrest and hold everyone, take their time investigating all of them, and then release everyone who didn't do anything wrong.
In the venn diagram of arrests and convictions the target intersection is 100%. Currently it is nowhere near 100% and that is not entirely due to a flawed court system, it is partially due to too many innocent people being arrested.
I hope you're not suggesting that Apple had any intention of misleading people? That would be outrageous. I mean, they put out the iPhone for 2G networks, then the iPhone 3 for 3G networks, then just as people were starting to want a 4G handset they put out the iPhone 4. And you dare to suggest that it even _occurred_ to Apple that the numbering might confuse people!!!??? Go to your room and don't come out til supper time! Cheeky young scamp.
Except it's Rachel, not Chandler :-)
Respect, sir! :-)
Haha! I knew what that moo point link would be before I even clicked it :-)
Isn't it cold water? To pour cold water on something, to debunk it.
Cloud water is rain.
Signatures weren't being appended correctly. Line breaks were omitted.
Well done judge, you made me sympathise with a spammer. I don't want any court case conducted in this way. The judge's conduct is indicative of someone who is in a position of trusted neutrality but with an apparent bias against one side. Even when the case inevitably goes against the spammer, surely the judge's behaviour provides grounds for an appeal, eating up more of Spamhaus's defence fund.
--
Andrew Smith
http://www.brainachegames.com/
Developer of "Seq", the world's hardest puzzle game
"unless the terms are specifically part of a news story"
Well that hardly ever happens.
...to find this all frickin' hilarious?
Wildly entertaining as a spectator.
"In short: nothing to see here, move along"
Consumers have a legitimate interest in the behind-the-scenes contracts used by companies. We want to know what they're up to. For example, Microsoft forcing OEMs not to supply any machines with Linux -- it's a contract between two companies, but consumers had a legitimate interest in knowing about it.
Gotta take that a step further...
iP[[ad/od]/hone]s
Of course a Kiwi can fly!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdUUx5FdySs
"Some frustrated users meted out one-star ratings for the album as their way of protesting Amazon's slow service"
Fortunately those people are morons so we can disregard their silly protest. Amazon should cancel those one-star ratings, but then they'd be accused of censorship, influencing the rating, etc. The whole thing sounds a bit silly to me.
lol
Similar to the trend list thing, here's another case of apparent censorship under fear. A newspaper identified one of the footballers, and that issue of the paper is missing from the online newsagent PressDisplay, even though PressDisplay is based in Canada, supposedly outside the reach of UK courts.
http://www.meejahor.com/2011/05/22/paper-identifies-injunction-footballer-scares-online-newsagent/
Twitter now appears to be censoring its trend list, in the UK at least, to avoid drawing attention to a particular footballer who is being talked about a lot.
http://www.meejahor.com/2011/05/21/twitter-censors-trend-list-due-to-super-injunction/
"Where do people go when they give up Amazon?"
A bookshop?
Tell you what Disney, when your executives are ready to put their lives on the line to kill terrorists, then you can have a trademark for whatever you call your elite unit. Unti then, just stick to making cartoons and mind your own business.
I'm afraid my humble blog has again yielded to the footfall of a thousand stampeding slashdotters. One of these days I really should move to a dedicated server, but for now here is the text of the article...
Beware of the Groupon piranhas eating you alive!
This is a cautionary tale for anyone who may think of offering a deal through Groupon, the group-buying site that promises great deals for customers and great exposure for businesses.
The idea is that, as a business, you offer a special deal on the Groupon web site. For example a restaurant may offer a meal-for-two worth £200 for the bargain price of £80. Groupon takes a 50% cut so the restaurant gets £40 which should be enough to cover the actual cost of the food, plus they've had some good exposure and, hopefully, the few hundred people who bought the deal will go back another day and pay full price. Maybe they'll even become regular customers.
But look at what happened to one independent photographer in Somerset:
He offered a £200 portrait package for £29, which was bought by 301 people.
Let's break that down...
Firstly the photographer will only get £14.50 because Groupon takes half. And if the client pays by credit card, which they probably will, then the photographer has to pay the credit card fee, so he's only getting around £12.
Each shoot lasts one hour, but it can be anywhere the client chooses within 15 miles of Bristol city centre. So let's suppose the total time for travel is half an hour each way, plus 20 minutes to set-up lighting and background and 10 minutes to tear it all down at the end. Already he's up to 2.5 hours so he's charging £4.80 per hour, not taking fuel costs in to account.
"Every photo taken will be put on CD or DVD in high resolution" -- this is fairly trivial, let's say 15 minutes work and £1 for the disc and case. He's now getting the equivalent of £4 per hour.
But the deal gets better! "20 of the images will be professionally edited and air brushed" -- now I assume this is nothing more than a bit of spot removal and some minor tweaks, because there's no way you can do a full retouching job as part of a £29 package, and there's certainly no way you can do 20 of them. So we'll estimate a super-speedy 5 minutes per picture and imagine that he somehow gets the whole lot done in 2 hours. He's now on £2.32 per hour.
Anything else included? Yes! You get "one 12x10 framed print, two 10x8 prints, two 8x6 prints, two 5x4 prints, two 4x3 prints, and two 3x2 prints" -- a total of 11 prints, with the largest one framed. I'd estimate the absolute rock-bottom price for producing those prints will be £8 plus another £5 for the frame if he's buying in bulk. That's £13. That's more than he's getting from each client, and he's got 301 clients to make his way through.
Even if this photographer is doing each job to a bare minimum standard, he has committed himself to nearly a year's work for no money. If that doesn't sound like good business sense to you then be very careful if you decide to offer a deal through Groupon or any similar site. What may at first seem like success could very easily put you out of business.
"What modern word processor has that feature?"
Serif Page Plus :-)
Wow Sony really are getting 0wn3d royale with cheese.