You really think they're doing this because WalMart executives think naughty words are wrong??
This is a pure business decision - it's part of a marketing stratergy to portray themselves as familly friendly. Don't like it? Don't buy it. It's their business and they have the right to make this decision if they want.
When we phoned Google about its video about-face, a spokesperson gave us one other (slightly) newsworthy tip. Starting today, at Google News, certain search results will be linked to related YouTube videos from site partners like the BBC and Reuters, and with an extra click, these videos can be viewed right there on the results page - without opening a new browser window or browser tab. Expect an official Google blog post later today. ®
Would it make it any better if they offered their customers a pony?
For fucks sake, these things happen. They've come up with the cash to compensate people - finally (I quite agree the original Google Checkout thing was unacceptable, but they've compensated people for messing them around with that too).
Look, this is as good as it gets for consumer customer service. If you expect more you're just going to spend most of your life angry, dissapointed, and with people avoiding you because you winge about meaningless crap all the time.
Now all they have to do is make sure the death of the internet isn't imminent too often, since it failing to die too often is going to get noticed at some point.
Right. Same way as you should limit yourself to three grandmothers funerals per year.
It is in the interest of many of the EU states to promote the authority of the UN security council. Individually the nations of the EU don't really have much power to push an agenda (especially military power, but also economic power), but together they have a fair amount (and their combined economic power will help secure additional military power from states that possess it). Both France and the UK have veto power on the UNSC so that gives them quite a bit of power there. In a forum where your official vote carries a lot of weight you're going to emphasize the outcome of votes.
Absolutely no argument with that, and no doubt if Britain was the world superpower we would have a similar attitude to the UN that Americans do. But despite that I would maintain that there is a genuine element of goodwill towards the UN and it's purpose which cannot be adequately explained as simply a consequence of the balance of power - which is probably masked in the US by decades of frustration with the body. In Britain you see it most on the traditional Left of politics - probably the remnant of the old Marxist ethos of international worker solidarity, but it is a genuine force in UK politics.
While you can certainly see the national politics at work within the EU (best quote I know on it here):
Jim Hacker: "Europe is a community of nations, dedicated towards one goal."
Sir Humphrey: "Oh, ha ha ha."
Jim Hacker: "May we share the joke, Humphrey?"
Sir Humphrey: "Oh Minister, let's look at this objectively. It's a game played for national interests, it always was. Why do you suppose we went into it?"
Jim Hacker: "To strengthen the brotherhood of Free Western nations."
Sir Humphrey: "Oh really. We went in to screw the French by splitting them off from the Germans."
Jim Hacker: "So why did the French go into it then?"
Sir Humphrey: "Well, to protect their inefficient farmers from commercial competition."
Jim Hacker: "That certainly doesn't apply to the Germans."
Sir Humphrey: "No no, they went in to cleanse themselves of genocide and apply for readmission to the human race."
You still have to see the large numbers of people (by no means a majority, but tens of millions at least) who genuinely do believe in the "European Ideal", and see the end point of the EU as replacing the existing nation states.
The big ideologies; Liberalism, Marxism, Fascism etc. have united and divided people across and within national borders in a way that simply can't be explained just in terms of nation-state power politics, and let's not even get into religion.. While I certainly don't discount nation-state politics' massive effect on the state of the world, I honestly don't think you can consider this as the only major driving force behind international politics. Ideas are at least as powerful, and long-term I would say much more powerful.
Ok the fires going, I've got his legs. Someone get his arms and we'll burn this heretic before his ideas spread..
Sorry, nothing personal, just a deep, deep hatred of Filemaker - admitedly from versions 5 and 6.
I hear the scripting language has variables now, and you can make functions with these things called arguments. Wow, another few years and the scripting language might have most of the functionality of a 1980s vintage BASIC interpreter..
Welcome to national sovereignty - a nation is sovereign if it can do whatever it wants to do. A nation can achieve this to the degree that it can push its weight around. International law is basically nothing more than a gentleman's agreement among the more powerful nations that they will act in a certain way.
I think that's a little simplistic; it's kind of true but it's not the whole story. It's a bit like saying that the internal laws of a state are dictated by the cooercive power of the government; true, but it ignores many of the forces, influences and philosophy that actually determine how a nation organises itself.
If international diplomacy was really just pure nineteenth-century-style nation states fighting for position you wouldn't have the genuine supranational organisations that we do have. The EU for example simply can't be explained in these terms. Nor can the UN, although that may seem strange to an American... but if you look at how the UN is respected in a nation that is not the global superpower you would see what I mean: UN authority (or the lack of it) for going into Iraq was a very big deal in Britain before the war; much of the parlimentary opposition to it was from MPs who simply considered an offensive war without UN authorisation to be illegal.
At the end of the day politics, both national and international is about people. And people are complex little buggers; if you model them as simple units that just serve their state you end with a very over simplified view of the world IMO.
While technological advances have occured during most times, what has changed a lot is the perception of them (this is western Europe specific): until about the mid-eighteenth century western European thought did not really encompass the concept of Progress - by which I mean the concept (which is so embedded into our current thought as to be an axiom) of idea building on idea, and Mankind slowly improving itself.
On the contary, the philosophical underpinnings of western European thought where Chrtistian - they looked back towards perfection before the Fall (and also towards Roman times), rather than forwards.
The concept of progress was a big deal at the time - the core of what came to be known as the Enlightenment. This is not to say that there weren't technological advances during medeival times, just that the idea of progress; of things being better than they were in the past, and of getting better in the future, was not part of the contemporary mindset.
I don't think there's a computer shop with spare motherboards in stock in Ethiopia.
Er, why would you think that? I doubt your average Ethiopian computer user buys a brand new machine everytime a component fails, so logically they'll be a lot of dealers in components.
I'm not sure how shipping in different parts from all corners of the world necessarily helps the 'carbon-free' thing either.
Just on that point, my understanding that shipping (ie actually using a ship) stuff around is extremely efficent - a container ship may have a big engine, but the amount of cargo it shifts is vast.
So is the moral of the story is "Let them pirate your merchandise or they might use the competitions"?
That pretty much sums up TFA; and it's a tried and tested strategy that has worked well for Microsoft and others for a very long time - if you want to give -10 points to Business Week it should be as Redundant.
Whether it will actually work in an environment where Microsoft seems currently unable to come up with an OS which is worth a paid upgrade over XP is the real question. Rent seeking behaviour only works when no one is offering free accommodation with acceptable functionality. It's up to Microsoft to beat Linux now - it will be interesting to see if they do, and ultimately it will be users who reap the benefit of competition.
Thanks for posting that. I hope the Tories wake up on this issue. I would be quite likely to vote for them next time, but even though it's hardly the most vital issue in the world I simply refuse to vote for a party that plans to extend copyright terms.
However, I am not sure that you can refuse to allow someone to cover your song in any case, there are compulsory licensing rights in some situations and you get a statutory payment.
You can't in the US as I understand it - some good info here. I have the feeling that the UK has a similar system, but I'm not sure. An excert from the link:
If you record a cover version of a song, (meaning your performance of a song that has been released in the U.S. with consent of the copyright owner), you are entitled by law to release your recording commercially, and the owner of the copyright to the song cannot prevent you from doing so.
The Copyright Act provides for what is called a "Compulsory License" for downloads and CD sales, which means that if you follow the steps set forth by statute, you can distribute your recording of that song on a CD or over the internet. This Compulsory License is only available for sales in the United States. Other uses of masters, such as streaming, conditional downloads, and the like, are not subject to a Compulsory License. A separate license from the publisher is needed in those cases.
While that's a fair comment, I think you do have to take a step back and say that there is a limit to how much the rest of us can be inconvenienced in exchange for a workable business model for the content industries.
They aren't *that* important in the grand scheme of things, certainly not as important as the internet, or the electronics industries. Or universities come to that. Yet they're set on a route which may seriously damage one or all of these things just to enable them to keep their current business model.
I mean how bad would it really be if the whole thing broke down, and we have a world where - for a time - you can't make money selling content.
It's not good I quite agree, but this is the absolute rock bottom worst case senario, and its not as bad as what the content industry is willing to do to protect its current model.
Basicaly what I'm saying is; let 'em sink or swim on their own, and don't let them drag anyone else under.
Would you accept the idea that there is a hint of vanity in posting on a forum? Or indeed in opening your mouth and speaking when not absolutely essential? Not meant as a bad thing or an insult or anything, just saying that by it's very nature posting a comment draws attention to the poster.
I dunno - making an error in a post about errors has a degree of irony to it, although it would have been better if he misspelled the word error. It's not massively ironic I grant you, but there is a hint of a lesson about the pitfalls of vanity there, and that is the core of irony.
I dunno, if you sent a 20MB attachemnt to any email address of mine, I'd support the mailserver going round your house and throwing a brick through your window..
Not meant to completely reject, that in the short-term at least, there can be problems caused by mechanisation, but there's a great quote from That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen (Frederic Bastiat, 1850) on this subject.
James B. had two francs which he had gained by two workmen; but it occurs to him, that an arrangement of ropes and weights might be made which would diminish the labour by half. Thus he obtains the same advantage, saves a franc, and discharges a workman.
He discharges a workman: this is that which is seen.
And seeing this only, it is said, "See how misery attends civilization; this is the way that liberty is fatal to equality. The human mind has made a conquest, and immediately a workman is cast into the gulf of pauperism. James B. may possibly employ the two workmen, but then he will give them only half their wages for they will compete with each other, and offer themselves at the lowest price. Thus the rich are always growing richer, and the poor, poorer. Society wants remodelling." A very fine conclusion, and worthy of the preamble.
Happily, preamble and conclusion are both false, because, behind the half of the phenomenon which is seen, lies the other half which is not seen.
The franc saved by James B. is not seen, no more are the necessary effects of this saving.
Since, in consequence of his invention, James B. spends only one franc on hand labour in the pursuit of a determined advantage, another franc remains to him.
If, then, there is in the world a workman with unemployed arms, there is also in the world a capitalist with an unemployed franc. These two elements meet and combine, and it is as clear as daylight, that between the supply and demand of labour, and between the supply and demand of wages, the relation is in no way changed.
The invention and the workman paid with the first franc, now perform the work which was formerly accomplished by two workmen. The second workman, paid with the second franc, realizes a new kind of work.
What is the change, then, which has taken place? An additional national advantage has been gained; in other words, the invention is a gratuitous triumph - a gratuitous profit for mankind.
From the form which I have given to my demonstration, the following inference might be drawn: - "It is the capitalist who reaps all the advantage from machinery. The working class, if it suffers only temporarily, never profits by it, since, by your own showing, they displace a portion of the national labour, without diminishing it, it is true, but also without increasing it."
I do not pretend, in this slight treatise, to answer every objection; the only end I have in view, is to combat a vulgar, widely spread, and dangerous prejudice. I want to prove, that a new machine only causes the discharge of a certain number of hands, when the remuneration which pays them as abstracted by force. These hands, and this remuneration, would combine to produce what it was impossible to produce before the invention; whence it follows that the final result is an increase of advantages for equal labour.
Who is the gainer by these additional advantages?
First, it is true, the capitalist, the inventor; the first who succeeds in using the machine; and this is the reward of his genius and his courage. In this case, as we have just seen, he effects a saving upon the expense of production, which, in whatever way it may be spent (and it always is spent), employs exactly as many hands as the machine caused to be dismissed.
But soon competition obliges him to lower his prices in proportion to the saving itself; and then it is no longer the inventor who reaps the benefit of the invention - it is the purchaser of what is produced, the consumer, the public, including the workmen; in a word, mankind.
And that which is not seen is, that the saving thus procured for all consumers creates a fund whence wages m
As other replies have said, you can't just cut them off. The law and all that. But after about number 3 I'd have given him a full refund and tell him to stick to blowing up my competitors products in future.
Re:UK not part of World
on
ATM Turns 40
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· Score: 1
Heh,the comic travel writer Bill Bryson says his favourite English newspaper headline was: "Fog in Channel - Continent Cut Off!"
Slashdot Mirror
You really think they're doing this because WalMart executives think naughty words are wrong??
This is a pure business decision - it's part of a marketing stratergy to portray themselves as familly friendly. Don't like it? Don't buy it. It's their business and they have the right to make this decision if they want.
Check this
Would it make it any better if they offered their customers a pony?
For fucks sake, these things happen. They've come up with the cash to compensate people - finally (I quite agree the original Google Checkout thing was unacceptable, but they've compensated people for messing them around with that too).
Look, this is as good as it gets for consumer customer service. If you expect more you're just going to spend most of your life angry, dissapointed, and with people avoiding you because you winge about meaningless crap all the time.
Right. Same way as you should limit yourself to three grandmothers funerals per year.
Absolutely no argument with that, and no doubt if Britain was the world superpower we would have a similar attitude to the UN that Americans do. But despite that I would maintain that there is a genuine element of goodwill towards the UN and it's purpose which cannot be adequately explained as simply a consequence of the balance of power - which is probably masked in the US by decades of frustration with the body. In Britain you see it most on the traditional Left of politics - probably the remnant of the old Marxist ethos of international worker solidarity, but it is a genuine force in UK politics.
While you can certainly see the national politics at work within the EU (best quote I know on it here):
You still have to see the large numbers of people (by no means a majority, but tens of millions at least) who genuinely do believe in the "European Ideal", and see the end point of the EU as replacing the existing nation states.
The big ideologies; Liberalism, Marxism, Fascism etc. have united and divided people across and within national borders in a way that simply can't be explained just in terms of nation-state power politics, and let's not even get into religion.. While I certainly don't discount nation-state politics' massive effect on the state of the world, I honestly don't think you can consider this as the only major driving force behind international politics. Ideas are at least as powerful, and long-term I would say much more powerful.
Ok the fires going, I've got his legs. Someone get his arms and we'll burn this heretic before his ideas spread..
Sorry, nothing personal, just a deep, deep hatred of Filemaker - admitedly from versions 5 and 6.
I hear the scripting language has variables now, and you can make functions with these things called arguments. Wow, another few years and the scripting language might have most of the functionality of a 1980s vintage BASIC interpreter..
I think that's a little simplistic; it's kind of true but it's not the whole story. It's a bit like saying that the internal laws of a state are dictated by the cooercive power of the government; true, but it ignores many of the forces, influences and philosophy that actually determine how a nation organises itself.
If international diplomacy was really just pure nineteenth-century-style nation states fighting for position you wouldn't have the genuine supranational organisations that we do have. The EU for example simply can't be explained in these terms. Nor can the UN, although that may seem strange to an American... but if you look at how the UN is respected in a nation that is not the global superpower you would see what I mean: UN authority (or the lack of it) for going into Iraq was a very big deal in Britain before the war; much of the parlimentary opposition to it was from MPs who simply considered an offensive war without UN authorisation to be illegal.
At the end of the day politics, both national and international is about people. And people are complex little buggers; if you model them as simple units that just serve their state you end with a very over simplified view of the world IMO.
While technological advances have occured during most times, what has changed a lot is the perception of them (this is western Europe specific): until about the mid-eighteenth century western European thought did not really encompass the concept of Progress - by which I mean the concept (which is so embedded into our current thought as to be an axiom) of idea building on idea, and Mankind slowly improving itself.
On the contary, the philosophical underpinnings of western European thought where Chrtistian - they looked back towards perfection before the Fall (and also towards Roman times), rather than forwards.
The concept of progress was a big deal at the time - the core of what came to be known as the Enlightenment. This is not to say that there weren't technological advances during medeival times, just that the idea of progress; of things being better than they were in the past, and of getting better in the future, was not part of the contemporary mindset.
Er, why would you think that? I doubt your average Ethiopian computer user buys a brand new machine everytime a component fails, so logically they'll be a lot of dealers in components.
Just on that point, my understanding that shipping (ie actually using a ship) stuff around is extremely efficent - a container ship may have a big engine, but the amount of cargo it shifts is vast.
How on earth did you get that through the lamness filter?
That pretty much sums up TFA; and it's a tried and tested strategy that has worked well for Microsoft and others for a very long time - if you want to give -10 points to Business Week it should be as Redundant.
Whether it will actually work in an environment where Microsoft seems currently unable to come up with an OS which is worth a paid upgrade over XP is the real question. Rent seeking behaviour only works when no one is offering free accommodation with acceptable functionality. It's up to Microsoft to beat Linux now - it will be interesting to see if they do, and ultimately it will be users who reap the benefit of competition.
[sits back, reaches for popcorn]
Thanks for posting that. I hope the Tories wake up on this issue. I would be quite likely to vote for them next time, but even though it's hardly the most vital issue in the world I simply refuse to vote for a party that plans to extend copyright terms.
While that's a fair comment, I think you do have to take a step back and say that there is a limit to how much the rest of us can be inconvenienced in exchange for a workable business model for the content industries.
They aren't *that* important in the grand scheme of things, certainly not as important as the internet, or the electronics industries. Or universities come to that. Yet they're set on a route which may seriously damage one or all of these things just to enable them to keep their current business model.
I mean how bad would it really be if the whole thing broke down, and we have a world where - for a time - you can't make money selling content.
It's not good I quite agree, but this is the absolute rock bottom worst case senario, and its not as bad as what the content industry is willing to do to protect its current model.
Basicaly what I'm saying is; let 'em sink or swim on their own, and don't let them drag anyone else under.
Would you accept the idea that there is a hint of vanity in posting on a forum? Or indeed in opening your mouth and speaking when not absolutely essential? Not meant as a bad thing or an insult or anything, just saying that by it's very nature posting a comment draws attention to the poster.
If you agree with that you have your answer.
I dunno - making an error in a post about errors has a degree of irony to it, although it would have been better if he misspelled the word error. It's not massively ironic I grant you, but there is a hint of a lesson about the pitfalls of vanity there, and that is the core of irony.
I dunno, if you sent a 20MB attachemnt to any email address of mine, I'd support the mailserver going round your house and throwing a brick through your window..
Not a fucking chance mate, cheers!
We Apologise For The Inconvenience
Try setting your Comments preferences to Highest Scores First; grandparent was the first comment I read.
They shed subpenas
As an Autumn tree does leaves
Winter closes in.
Not meant to completely reject, that in the short-term at least, there can be problems caused by mechanisation, but there's a great quote from That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen (Frederic Bastiat, 1850) on this subject.
As other replies have said, you can't just cut them off. The law and all that. But after about number 3 I'd have given him a full refund and tell him to stick to blowing up my competitors products in future.
Heh,the comic travel writer Bill Bryson says his favourite English newspaper headline was: "Fog in Channel - Continent Cut Off!"