This thread is getting further and further from linguistic reality...
They could do no worse than the old English that the English themselves had discarded...The reason most USian words are around earlier is because they're from pre-Norman Britain.
Let's test this hypothesis with a little Old English, the language of pre-Norman England. Here are the first five lines of Beowulf (no cluster jokes please), the best known work of Old English literature (using the modern alphabet since slashcode doesn't like Old English characters):
Hwaet, we gar-dena in geardagum,
theodcyninga thrym gefrunon,
hu tha aethelingas ellen fremedon!
oft Scyld Scefing sceathena threatum,
monegum maegthum meodosetla ofteah,
Now if you can recognise American English in there, I want some of whatever you're taking. The plain fact is that Old English is a completely "foreign" language to modern English speakers. The first texts we could recognise as English are 14th century (eg Chaucer), which are written in Middle English - which shares a similar grammar to moden English, but a very different vocabulary. From between the 11th and 14th centuries, when English took on a recognisable form, there are no written documents in English surviving, because the languages of the literate classes were French and Latin. Moreover, the major differences between US and British spelling are almost all in words deriving from French rather than OE. For example, Old English for colour is "beo" (couleur in French).
We Brits pronounce it -er and spell it -re.
On a lighter note, we Brits may spell "-re", but we don't pronounce "er", unless you're from the West Country. it's "centa" through & thru.
Oh, and if you want to know how Beowulf opens on modern english:
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,
King James breaking away from Rome and starting the Anglican church
Please, please, please. It was HENRY VIII who broke with Rome and founded the Anglican church, because the Pope wouldn't give him a divorce. Between him and James I there were three other monarchs (Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth I), four if you count Lady Jane Gray's brief "rule". I presume that the reason you think James I was responsible for Anglicanism is the King James Bible - though this was solidly plagiarised from Wycliff's much earlier work.
We could argue for years over when dictionary-writing became serious, but most people would probably cite Samuel Johnson's dictionary, published in 1755, about 75 years before Websters. Note that it included only spellings, not definitions.
There are are so many basic historico-linguistic errors running through this thread that I don't know where to start, but here's as good a one as any. Johnson's dictionary most emphatically DID include definitions. It would never have gained the status it did otherwise - indeed most of the interest in it today comes from its delightfully politically incorrect definitions. For example:
Oats: a grain which in England is given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.
Pension: pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country
Patron: A wretch who supports with indolence, and is rewarded with flattery
Of course these are only partial definitons - Johnson also included more useful descriptions, together with examples of their use. It is this which makes Johnson's dictionary the true forebear of all English dictionaries.
Actually people should note that this was originally a research article publishing in the respected journal Nature. Just because the story was later taken up the Christian Science Monitor is no reason to diss it.
And you do realise that Christian Science has nothing to do with scientists who are Christian but refers to a sect founded in Boston in the 19th century, right? That Christian Scientists believe that the key to all health problems can be found in the Bible, and that therefore they refuse any medical treatment - and indeed are happy to let their children die of perfectly treatable diseases. If you don't believe me, read this.
It seems to me that this is about as far from believing in stem cell research and cloning as being effective, let alone moral, as you can get.
The CSM may be one of the most objective news sources in the US, but that says more about the inadequacy of US journalism than the stellar achievements of the CSM.
That the majority of people should be able to ban something because they don't like it, without any justification like that it will violate one of their basic rights (life, property, etc), is one of the worst aspects of the democratic system.
Agreed, but what other system would you prefer? As Churchill said, democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others.
And that is called CAPITALISM, you socialist jerkwads.
And if an elected legislature makes a law, whether or not you agree with, that's called DEMOCRACY. What you are advocating is not capitalism, it's anarchy.
The function of the law is to protect freedom not in the narrow sense of "letting me do whatever the hell I want", but also in the broader sense of "protecting me from jerks who think they can do whatever the hell they want and damn the consequences for others". And because societies develop, and the risks they face change, the law has to change with it.
Unfettered capitalism is not the solution to this because (and here I doubt you'll agreee with me), in the eyes of the law even people without money deserve protections. If someone has a choice between working in an unhealthy environment and not working at all, what kind of a choice is that? Especially if they have kids to bring up, old folk to look after etc. That's why politics is messier than philosophy. It has to deal with the real world, not some ideal situation in which no-one has to do anything they don't want to.
You say non-smokers have deprived you of your right to smoke. But smokers have for centuries deprived non-smokers of their rights to be free of lung cancer. Now I ask you, if the balance of choice is between preventing someone dying a needless death, and letting you enjoy a cigarette, where should the balance be drawn? As we have seen, in most democracies the people have come down on the side of restricting smokers. You may not agree with that position, but to argue that it is not merely wrong but an unjustifiable assault on your civil liberties is to misunderstand the entire issue.
How do they air condition a sub?
Firstly, when you're totally immersed near-freezing seawater (these subs spend a lot of time under the arctic ice), keeping cool is not likely to be a hard problem to solve.
secondly, military subs are not cruise liners. so no a/c (beyond keeping the air breathable), no swimming pool, no onboard casino...just lots of hot metal and underwashed sailors trying to keep quiet.
Here in London many people have come up with a solution to the "carrying business attire back and forth" problem. They leave their business attire at the office...
Postal workers that walk their deliveries would also find this to be a heart attack saver.
Sure, in fact using a Segway is so good for your heart compared with walking that I hear gyms are using them to replace treadmills. After all, every/.er knows that exercise kills!
and you're proud of (2)? Still, don't forget that the atom was first split by a Brit (Rutherford), the first nuclear pile was done by an Italian (Fermi), and the idea for it came from a German (Einstein).
As for (1): The US had the first manned landing on the moon. The Soviets had the first landing on the moon.Not to mention Sputnik, Gagarin, Mir...
(3). Again, you're proud of this? But please, remember that the automobile (and the internal combustion engine) was invented by a German.
(4). I don't dispute that Jazz is american. But was it really worth slavery and decades of segregation?
(5) Would anyone care about the internet if it wasn't for Tim Berners Lee, a Brit working in Switzerland?
(6) well, first it's hard to see how they're an "invention" - they're just small computers. No conceptual advance, just improved engineering. And the concept of a computer was British (Babbage, 19th century), the theory was British (Turing) and the first fully functional electronic computer was British (the SSEM, 1948). And the computer wouldn't have got very far without a display - the good old Italian-invented CRT.
The saddest thing is that if you tried you could have found dozens of genuinely American inventions to brag about. The light bulb. The telephone. Honey nut cheerios. One-click shopping...
EU budget decifit? What EU budget deficit? This is just another of those anti-EU scare stories. The EU as an institution isn't able to run a budget deficit, because the tab for whatever it spends is picked up by the member states (and with a total bugdet running at around 1% of the EU's GDP, that's not too much of a burden).
Now it's true that many EU member states are running budget deficits (what country isn't these days) but that's entirely independent, and certainly the actions of the EU commission will not be motivated by the marginal effect on the budget deficits of individual countries.
The big problem with all those folks who can only do calculations (and calculus) on a calculator is that they never get any intuition about the outcome of a calculation. Unless you have some feeling for what the end result of a calculation should look like, you'll always be open to accepting an obviously wrong solution simply because you keyed in something wrong along the way. And once you do the maths manually enough times to develop that intuition, you may discover you can see the solution much faster than if you had the calculator.
I don't know about engineering, but when I studied physics there was always an enormous emphasis on being able to estimate the right answer before you do the calculation -- more so as a graduate student than as an undergrad. If you're about to embark on some complicated calculation, you need to do some rough work first to find out what you expect to get (within an order of magnitude at least), and how you expect to get there. Only once you've done that is it worth bringing out the calculator and getting the decimal places right. (As a grad student in theoretical physics you rapidly learn that your job is getting the decimal points right -- the professor already knows more or less what to expect.)
I remember a story about Fermi watching the first a-bomb test near Los Alamos (I think - might have been Oppenheimer, but Fermi is legendary for these kind of calculations). He estimated the force of the explosion just by dropping a few shreds of paper, seeing how far they were blown by the explosion (he was a safe distance away, of course), and doing a quick calculation on the back of an envelope. Meanwhile the engineers calculates a figure, using data from instruments set up to record the blast. After several days, they came up with the same number as Fermi.
116 GDB (got my original figures wrong - about 180 USD) for 5 national TV stations, 5 national radio stations (plus dozens of local stations), the best news service on the web (not to mention radio and TV), live coverage (TV, radio and web) of all the major sporting events, and not a commercial or fund-drive in sight or earshot.
Not to mention that many HBO dramas are coproduced with the BBC (eg emmy-winning Gathering Storm), so you're also benefiting from our license fees.
In the UK, DAB tuners start at 100 (and falling). OK so that's a lot more than a standard FM radio (though it's less than most audiophile tuners), but then an iPod costs more than 10 times as much as a cheap walkman, and CD players hit the big time when they still cost many times more than tape decks.
Add to that the fact that there's now a wider range of good radio stations on DAB than on FM (thanks mostly to the BBC), and that the sound is CD quality, it's not surprising that most British electric stores sold out of DAB radios last Christmas.
I lived in the states for years and I don't remember the beer being free. Hell, I couldn't even buy beer without showing government-issued ID. Nor could I drink it on the sidewalk outside my own home (not to mention outside downtown bars on a hot summer evening). I bet that even in soviet russia you could enjoy a vodka by the river in the summer, without being forced to show your papers. Looks to me like in the US, beer is not only not free as in free beer, it's not even free as in free speach.
What I do remember is the TV being shit, apart from a handful of good shows. I was particularly unimpressed by the way Fox news would advertise its lead stories several days in advance. How did they know...BTW, you do realise that commercial US TV is not truly free? How do you think Jennifer Aniston's hairstyle is funded - by YOU paying more at the stores for all those products that have to recover the millions of dollars spent on TV ads...
They sent an inspector to me too, but of course I was at work. So I wrote back saying they were welcome to inspect our place, but would they mind visiting after 6pm or on weekends since... surprise surprise, they never called back. I guess they're not _that_ keen...
At the time though I felt a twinge of sympathy for Saddam Hussein. The British government kept telling me that it knew I had banned equipment (an unlicensed TV set). When I denied this they told me they knew I was lying and were going to send in inspectors. And when I offered to cooperate with the inspectors (though on my terms - I'll be damned if I'll be subject to unannounced inspections of my home at any time of the day or night - though Saddam even agreed to that), they pulled them out.
Luckily for me the analogy stops there. Otherwise my flat would be occupied by government agents triumphantly brandishing my laptop as proof that I had a mobile TV-development laboratory that could be turned into a fully functioning device within 45 minutes by the addition of a simple TV tuner card, which they had documentary evidence that I was trying to purchase from Niger...
In Briatin you have to pay for a license for anything which lets you watch a TV signal.
As to whether that sucks...IMO what really sucks is having TV shows, movies, even sports games interrupted every 10 minutes for a 5 minutes commercial break. In return for a 190 annual fee, Brits get 2 free-to-air TV stations and 5 national radio stations with NO COMMERCIAL BREAKS. And we're not talking marginalised, underfunded US style public broadcasting - they're the most popular stations in the UK, with rights to most major sporting events, movies, music etc. So you can sit down and watch a 3 hour movie (with stereo sound) right the way through, just like in the cinema. Or a 5 set Wimbledon final, without missing any shots. Not to mention all those original BBC geek classics like Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, Red Dwarf, Hitchikers Guide (originally a BBC radio show), Dr Who...Oh, and the BBC also has several (free) digital radio and TV channels as well.
Another bonus is that because of the competition with the ad-free BBC, commercial broadcasters in Britain restrict themselves to one commercial break every 15 minutes, so even on the 3 free-to-air commercial stations you can follow the plot of most shows without being constantly interrupted by life insurance salesman. Plus they have to compete with the BBC on breadth and quality, meaning that they can't get away with the endless repeats of Frasier and Seinfeld that seem to define primetime on most major US networks.
Now what I don't understand is this: the BBC can put out about 6 TV channels (including the digital ones) and dozens of radio stations (including local radio) for a charge of only 190 per year per household -- without needing any advertising income. This is far less than the cost of most cable or satellite TV subscriptions - and yet cable stations usually have as many commercials as free-to-air stations, and the programs rarely better BBC quality. What do they do with their money?
I guess it just goes to prove that with the right management and funding, publically owned services can outperform the private sector. Although actually I don't have a TV anymore...a DVD player hooked up to a computer monitor supplies the movies without me needing a TV license, radio and the net gives me the rest.
anything with a range more than 6 feet is likely to reach either the apartment above or the apartment below me. 30 feet and it will reach about 10 other apartments in my block. but there's a simple alternative: cordless headphones. OK so you won't be able to tune in from your car radio, but you will be able to listen to your iPod (or any other music source) from up to 100 ft away. I think cordless headphones use an unlicensed UHF band so there's no issue of interference with legit radio stations, though obviously if too many people buy the 'phones in one neighborhood they'll run into problems.
the ultimate solution is to have a device that broadcasts a local DAB (digital radio) signal. That will eliminate most interference issues (as well as radio hiss) and allow you to view track info on your digital radio. DAB is starting to take off in a big way in the UK now so somesuch gadget is probably not that far down the line.
2. A citation to his case as added support for your complaint
There are a number of reasons why this won't work.
First, this is a decision of a judge on the bottom rung of the courts system, so it's got very limited precedential value.
Second, there's a virtually 0 chance that this case will be reported anywhere, even on Westlaw (cases must be cited from reports by reputable legal publishers, or the original judgement - slashdot posts don't count).
Third, precedents are only binding on points of law. In this case, that would be that under the license not installing the software entitles you to a refund. The amount of the refund is not binding, since this is a question of fact (how much is the software worth?) and this was not even contested in court.
Finally, what is binding as precent is the text of the judgement itself, not the arguments leading up to it. "Judgement for the plaintiff" is not really of much use in this context - the judge hasn't explained why (OK, so it's obvious), so it's worthless as a precedent anyway.
IANYAL (I am not yet a lawyer), but I am at law school...
That's actually a very valid point. Even if the courts don't interpret taking the $10 as being a contract, they might regard you as having promised not to pursue the claim further and so decide it would be unfair to let you now change your mind (the technical term for this is estoppel).
The way around it is to take the check but make it clear that you're not waiving your claim to the full amount. I.e. say something like "I'll take your $10 as a part payment on my claim. I'm still claiming the full $199". Then you've clearly established that the company admits they owe you money, without any implication that you're accepting their cash in final settlement
Slashdot Mirror
This thread is getting further and further from linguistic reality...
They could do no worse than the old English that the English themselves had discarded...The reason most USian words are around earlier is because they're from pre-Norman Britain.
Let's test this hypothesis with a little Old English, the language of pre-Norman England. Here are the first five lines of Beowulf (no cluster jokes please), the best known work of Old English literature (using the modern alphabet since slashcode doesn't like Old English characters):
Hwaet, we gar-dena in geardagum,
theodcyninga thrym gefrunon,
hu tha aethelingas ellen fremedon!
oft Scyld Scefing sceathena threatum,
monegum maegthum meodosetla ofteah,
Now if you can recognise American English in there, I want some of whatever you're taking. The plain fact is that Old English is a completely "foreign" language to modern English speakers. The first texts we could recognise as English are 14th century (eg Chaucer), which are written in Middle English - which shares a similar grammar to moden English, but a very different vocabulary. From between the 11th and 14th centuries, when English took on a recognisable form, there are no written documents in English surviving, because the languages of the literate classes were French and Latin. Moreover, the major differences between US and British spelling are almost all in words deriving from French rather than OE. For example, Old English for colour is "beo" (couleur in French).
We Brits pronounce it -er and spell it -re.
On a lighter note, we Brits may spell "-re", but we don't pronounce "er", unless you're from the West Country. it's "centa" through & thru.
Oh, and if you want to know how Beowulf opens on modern english:
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,
King James breaking away from Rome and starting the Anglican church
Please, please, please. It was HENRY VIII who broke with Rome and founded the Anglican church, because the Pope wouldn't give him a divorce. Between him and James I there were three other monarchs (Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth I), four if you count Lady Jane Gray's brief "rule". I presume that the reason you think James I was responsible for Anglicanism is the King James Bible - though this was solidly plagiarised from Wycliff's much earlier work.
We could argue for years over when dictionary-writing became serious, but most people would probably cite Samuel Johnson's dictionary, published in 1755, about 75 years before Websters. Note that it included only spellings, not definitions.
There are are so many basic historico-linguistic errors running through this thread that I don't know where to start, but here's as good a one as any. Johnson's dictionary most emphatically DID include definitions. It would never have gained the status it did otherwise - indeed most of the interest in it today comes from its delightfully politically incorrect definitions. For example:
Oats: a grain which in England is given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.
Pension: pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country
Patron: A wretch who supports with indolence, and is rewarded with flattery
Of course these are only partial definitons - Johnson also included more useful descriptions, together with examples of their use. It is this which makes Johnson's dictionary the true forebear of all English dictionaries.
Actually people should note that this was originally a research article publishing in the respected journal Nature. Just because the story was later taken up the Christian Science Monitor is no reason to diss it.
And you do realise that Christian Science has nothing to do with scientists who are Christian but refers to a sect founded in Boston in the 19th century, right? That Christian Scientists believe that the key to all health problems can be found in the Bible, and that therefore they refuse any medical treatment - and indeed are happy to let their children die of perfectly treatable diseases. If you don't believe me, read this.
It seems to me that this is about as far from believing in stem cell research and cloning as being effective, let alone moral, as you can get.
The CSM may be one of the most objective news sources in the US, but that says more about the inadequacy of US journalism than the stellar achievements of the CSM.
That the majority of people should be able to ban something because they don't like it, without any justification like that it will violate one of their basic rights (life, property, etc), is one of the worst aspects of the democratic system.
Agreed, but what other system would you prefer? As Churchill said, democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others.
And that is called CAPITALISM, you socialist jerkwads.
And if an elected legislature makes a law, whether or not you agree with, that's called DEMOCRACY. What you are advocating is not capitalism, it's anarchy.
The function of the law is to protect freedom not in the narrow sense of "letting me do whatever the hell I want", but also in the broader sense of "protecting me from jerks who think they can do whatever the hell they want and damn the consequences for others". And because societies develop, and the risks they face change, the law has to change with it.
Unfettered capitalism is not the solution to this because (and here I doubt you'll agreee with me), in the eyes of the law even people without money deserve protections. If someone has a choice between working in an unhealthy environment and not working at all, what kind of a choice is that? Especially if they have kids to bring up, old folk to look after etc. That's why politics is messier than philosophy. It has to deal with the real world, not some ideal situation in which no-one has to do anything they don't want to.
You say non-smokers have deprived you of your right to smoke. But smokers have for centuries deprived non-smokers of their rights to be free of lung cancer. Now I ask you, if the balance of choice is between preventing someone dying a needless death, and letting you enjoy a cigarette, where should the balance be drawn? As we have seen, in most democracies the people have come down on the side of restricting smokers. You may not agree with that position, but to argue that it is not merely wrong but an unjustifiable assault on your civil liberties is to misunderstand the entire issue.
How do they air condition a sub?
Firstly, when you're totally immersed near-freezing seawater (these subs spend a lot of time under the arctic ice), keeping cool is not likely to be a hard problem to solve.
secondly, military subs are not cruise liners. so no a/c (beyond keeping the air breathable), no swimming pool, no onboard casino...just lots of hot metal and underwashed sailors trying to keep quiet.
Here in London many people have come up with a solution to the "carrying business attire back and forth" problem. They leave their business attire at the office...
Postal workers that walk their deliveries would also find this to be a heart attack saver.
/.er knows that exercise kills!
Sure, in fact using a Segway is so good for your heart compared with walking that I hear gyms are using them to replace treadmills. After all, every
and you're proud of (2)? Still, don't forget that the atom was first split by a Brit (Rutherford), the first nuclear pile was done by an Italian (Fermi), and the idea for it came from a German (Einstein).
As for (1): The US had the first manned landing on the moon. The Soviets had the first landing on the moon.Not to mention Sputnik, Gagarin, Mir...
(3). Again, you're proud of this? But please, remember that the automobile (and the internal combustion engine) was invented by a German.
(4). I don't dispute that Jazz is american. But was it really worth slavery and decades of segregation?
(5) Would anyone care about the internet if it wasn't for Tim Berners Lee, a Brit working in Switzerland?
(6) well, first it's hard to see how they're an "invention" - they're just small computers. No conceptual advance, just improved engineering. And the concept of a computer was British (Babbage, 19th century), the theory was British (Turing) and the first fully functional electronic computer was British (the SSEM, 1948). And the computer wouldn't have got very far without a display - the good old Italian-invented CRT.
The saddest thing is that if you tried you could have found dozens of genuinely American inventions to brag about. The light bulb. The telephone. Honey nut cheerios. One-click shopping...
racing will likely become more interesting
How will it be more interesting when all the horses are identical?
EU budget decifit? What EU budget deficit? This is just another of those anti-EU scare stories. The EU as an institution isn't able to run a budget deficit, because the tab for whatever it spends is picked up by the member states (and with a total bugdet running at around 1% of the EU's GDP, that's not too much of a burden).
Now it's true that many EU member states are running budget deficits (what country isn't these days) but that's entirely independent, and certainly the actions of the EU commission will not be motivated by the marginal effect on the budget deficits of individual countries.
no, they've given you a promise to pay you $10, in the form of a check. Even if they cancel the check, they still owe you the money
The big problem with all those folks who can only do calculations (and calculus) on a calculator is that they never get any intuition about the outcome of a calculation. Unless you have some feeling for what the end result of a calculation should look like, you'll always be open to accepting an obviously wrong solution simply because you keyed in something wrong along the way. And once you do the maths manually enough times to develop that intuition, you may discover you can see the solution much faster than if you had the calculator.
I don't know about engineering, but when I studied physics there was always an enormous emphasis on being able to estimate the right answer before you do the calculation -- more so as a graduate student than as an undergrad. If you're about to embark on some complicated calculation, you need to do some rough work first to find out what you expect to get (within an order of magnitude at least), and how you expect to get there. Only once you've done that is it worth bringing out the calculator and getting the decimal places right. (As a grad student in theoretical physics you rapidly learn that your job is getting the decimal points right -- the professor already knows more or less what to expect.)
I remember a story about Fermi watching the first a-bomb test near Los Alamos (I think - might have been Oppenheimer, but Fermi is legendary for these kind of calculations). He estimated the force of the explosion just by dropping a few shreds of paper, seeing how far they were blown by the explosion (he was a safe distance away, of course), and doing a quick calculation on the back of an envelope. Meanwhile the engineers calculates a figure, using data from instruments set up to record the blast. After several days, they came up with the same number as Fermi.
144 USD for one station, with commercials.
116 GDB (got my original figures wrong - about 180 USD) for 5 national TV stations, 5 national radio stations (plus dozens of local stations), the best news service on the web (not to mention radio and TV), live coverage (TV, radio and web) of all the major sporting events, and not a commercial or fund-drive in sight or earshot.
Not to mention that many HBO dramas are coproduced with the BBC (eg emmy-winning Gathering Storm), so you're also benefiting from our license fees.
In the UK, DAB tuners start at 100 (and falling). OK so that's a lot more than a standard FM radio (though it's less than most audiophile tuners), but then an iPod costs more than 10 times as much as a cheap walkman, and CD players hit the big time when they still cost many times more than tape decks.
Add to that the fact that there's now a wider range of good radio stations on DAB than on FM (thanks mostly to the BBC), and that the sound is CD quality, it's not surprising that most British electric stores sold out of DAB radios last Christmas.
I lived in the states for years and I don't remember the beer being free. Hell, I couldn't even buy beer without showing government-issued ID. Nor could I drink it on the sidewalk outside my own home (not to mention outside downtown bars on a hot summer evening). I bet that even in soviet russia you could enjoy a vodka by the river
in the summer, without being forced to show your papers. Looks to me like in the US, beer is not only not free as in free beer, it's not even free as in free speach.
What I do remember is the TV being shit, apart from a handful of good shows. I was particularly unimpressed by the way Fox news would advertise its lead stories several days in advance. How did they know...BTW, you do realise that commercial US TV is not truly free? How do you think Jennifer Aniston's hairstyle is funded - by YOU paying more at the stores for all those products that have to recover the millions of dollars spent on TV ads...
They sent an inspector to me too, but of course I was at work. So I wrote back saying they were welcome to inspect our place, but would they mind visiting after 6pm or on weekends since... surprise surprise, they never called back. I guess they're not _that_ keen...
At the time though I felt a twinge of sympathy for Saddam Hussein. The British government kept telling me that it knew I had banned equipment (an unlicensed TV set). When I denied this they told me they knew I was lying and were going to send in inspectors. And when I offered to cooperate with the inspectors (though on my terms - I'll be damned if I'll be subject to unannounced inspections of my home at any time of the day or night - though Saddam even agreed to that), they pulled them out.
Luckily for me the analogy stops there. Otherwise my flat would be occupied by government agents triumphantly brandishing my laptop as proof that I had a mobile TV-development laboratory that could be turned into a fully functioning device within 45 minutes by the addition of a simple TV tuner card, which they had documentary evidence that I was trying to purchase from Niger...
In Briatin you have to pay for a license for anything which lets you watch a TV signal.
As to whether that sucks...IMO what really sucks is having TV shows, movies, even sports games interrupted every 10 minutes for a 5 minutes commercial break. In return for a 190 annual fee, Brits get 2 free-to-air TV stations and 5 national radio stations with NO COMMERCIAL BREAKS. And we're not talking marginalised, underfunded US style public broadcasting - they're the most popular stations in the UK, with rights to most major sporting events, movies, music etc. So you can sit down and watch a 3 hour movie (with stereo sound) right the way through, just like in the cinema. Or a 5 set Wimbledon final, without missing any shots. Not to mention all those original BBC geek classics like Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, Red Dwarf, Hitchikers Guide (originally a BBC radio show), Dr Who...Oh, and the BBC also has several (free) digital radio and TV channels as well.
Another bonus is that because of the competition with the ad-free BBC, commercial broadcasters in Britain restrict themselves to one commercial break every 15 minutes, so even on the 3 free-to-air commercial stations you can follow the plot of most shows without being constantly interrupted by life insurance salesman. Plus they have to compete with the BBC on breadth and quality, meaning that they can't get away with the endless repeats of Frasier and Seinfeld that seem to define primetime on most major US networks.
Now what I don't understand is this: the BBC can put out about 6 TV channels (including the digital ones) and dozens of radio stations (including local radio) for a charge of only 190 per year per household -- without needing any advertising income. This is far less than the cost of most cable or satellite TV subscriptions - and yet cable stations usually have as many commercials as free-to-air stations, and the programs rarely better BBC quality. What do they do with their money?
I guess it just goes to prove that with the right management and funding, publically owned services can outperform the private sector. Although actually I don't have a TV anymore...a DVD player hooked up to a computer monitor supplies the movies without me needing a TV license, radio and the net gives me the rest.
anything with a range more than 6 feet is likely to reach either the apartment above or the apartment below me. 30 feet and it will reach about 10 other apartments in my block. but there's a simple alternative: cordless headphones. OK so you won't be able to tune in from your car radio, but you will be able to listen to your iPod (or any other music source) from up to 100 ft away. I think cordless headphones use an unlicensed UHF band so there's no issue of interference with legit radio stations, though obviously if too many people buy the 'phones in one neighborhood they'll run into problems.
the ultimate solution is to have a device that broadcasts a local DAB (digital radio) signal. That will eliminate most interference issues (as well as radio hiss) and allow you to view track info on your digital radio. DAB is starting to take off in a big way in the UK now so somesuch gadget is probably not that far down the line.
2. A citation to his case as added support for your complaint
There are a number of reasons why this won't work. First, this is a decision of a judge on the bottom rung of the courts system, so it's got very limited precedential value.
Second, there's a virtually 0 chance that this case will be reported anywhere, even on Westlaw (cases must be cited from reports by reputable legal publishers, or the original judgement - slashdot posts don't count).
Third, precedents are only binding on points of law. In this case, that would be that under the license not installing the software entitles you to a refund. The amount of the refund is not binding, since this is a question of fact (how much is the software worth?) and this was not even contested in court.
Finally, what is binding as precent is the text of the judgement itself, not the arguments leading up to it. "Judgement for the plaintiff" is not really of much use in this context - the judge hasn't explained why (OK, so it's obvious), so it's worthless as a precedent anyway.
IANYAL (I am not yet a lawyer), but I am at law school...
That's actually a very valid point. Even if the courts don't interpret taking the $10 as being a contract, they might regard you as having promised not to pursue the claim further and so decide it would be unfair to let you now change your mind (the technical term for this is estoppel).
The way around it is to take the check but make it clear that you're not waiving your claim to the full amount. I.e. say something like "I'll take your $10 as a part payment on my claim. I'm still claiming the full $199". Then you've clearly established that the company admits they owe you money, without any implication that you're accepting their cash in final settlement
alternatively you could just take some screenshots of the page while the license agreement is showing.