what's culturally british? ruling at the barrel of a gun for a century, poaching wildlife to extinction, or collapsing stable democracies so that you can rape a country of its natural resources?
Not distinctive enough. That could be American, or Spanish, or Roman or...
No, culturally British means "badly done cockney accents, in rubbish games that only see the light of day due to my tax money being used to subsidise them."
You make civil war sound like a bad thing. When your government rapes its citizens and pisses in the face of its founding principles, then civil war is a good thing.
You seem to be confusing a civil war with a revolution. I wouldn't wish a civil war on anyone.
Hmm, I'd have thought quite the reverse. iTunes and Amazon are the merchants here as I understand it; they've charged the cards and hold the funds. Presumably they have then paid out commission to these crooks for the "sales".
So now that the fraud has been spotted, the card holders will obviously do chargebacks, and since they obviously had no part in these transactions their card issuers will refund them, same as for any other fraudulent use of a card.
And as for any other chargeback, the banks will simply recover the money from the merchant, who as always bears 100% of the losses (plus transaction fees probably).
So as I see it: Apple and Amazon lose the money, and are out not only their profit, but the commissions paid to the crooks, and any other costs they have incurred as a part of these transactions. They will presumably attempt to recover what they can during these thieves prosecution.
The victims of card fraud are not the card holders (as long as they spot the fraudulent transaction), but whatever poor sod charged the cards and is now out the goods/services they provided.
Actually, I think lack of respect for patents and copyright laws is probably one of the big drivers in the Chinese economic boom. Because there's no artificial limitations on what you can build and sell, all manner of artefacts are effectively 'open source'.
It's a sensible way to develop an economy. Which is why the US didn't recognise foreign copyrights or patents until 1891.
I had a look around and found this pdf addressing it - this is from some artificial reef creation society so is very much the case for..
However, even if one could remove everything from these ships down to the rivets, and obtain
optimal values, there is likely substantially less than a million dollars worth of value on one of the
Destroyers. Then there would be the very substantial cost of disassembly, likely more than what
all the scrap is worth. On the other hand, sinking them as artificial reefs creates jobs, and millions
of dollars of income for the tourism industry, year after year after year. I mentioned earlier that, in
1989, the total value of dive tourism in BC was $2.3 million annually. I the past 11 years, it has
about quadrupled, and we know that the "Saskatchewan", alone, is worth over two and a half
million dollars a year. This growth can be largely attributed to our artificial reef program.
That was the worst part about the coke, man, was being in that bathroom with that stranger at the end of the night. Wasn't it, huh? Talking about shit like solving the world's problems and the only reason you're in there is because he has the coke. That should have been a fucking sign, don't ya think? I mean if Hitler had coke, there'd be Jews in the bathroom going, "I know you didn't do it. *snort* I like your mustache. *snort* Fucking Himmler. *snort*"
A-52. Achieving success means that, particularly late in the campaign, it may be necessary to negotiate with the enemy. Local people supporting the COIN operation know the enemy's leaders. They even may have grown up together. Valid negotiating partners sometimes emerge as the campaign progresses. Again, use close interagency relationships to exploit opportunities to co-opt segments of the enemy. This helps wind down the insurgency without alienating potential local allies who have relatives or friends among insurgents. As an insurgency ends, a defection is better than a surrender, a surrender better than a capture, and a capture better than a kill.
I believe they're perfectly legal tender in the rest of the UK, but you get funny looks from people anywhere much past north England.
That isn't entirely correct, although in practice that is pretty much how it works. From here:
Are Scottish & Northern Irish notes legal tender?
In short 'No' these notes are not legal tender; only Bank of England notes are legal tender but only in England and Wales.
The term legal tender does not in itself govern the acceptability of banknotes in transactions. Whether or not notes have legal tender status, their acceptability as a means of payment is essentially a matter for agreement between the parties involved. Legal tender has a very narrow technical meaning in relation to the settlement of debt. If a debtor pays in legal tender the exact amount he owes under the terms of a contract, he has good defence in law if he is subsequently sued for non-payment of the debt. In ordinary everyday transactions, the term 'legal tender' has very little practical application.
The time is fast approaching when someone will be able to do this themselves without being detected using tiny cameras hidden around an ordinary vehicle, and off the shelf software. Is Greece planning to prevent google from providing every citizen with detailed street-level imagery when any citizen can gather the information themselves? All they will do is create a black market for street-level imagery; black markets provide income to criminals, especially when the barrier is high, because then only organized criminals can afford to participate.
I don't really see it myself. Leaving aside my skepticism that anyone other than a large company or a government could organise a comprehensive effort like that, if we really do move into a world of citizen-provided Streetview then it is obviously going to happen without the ability to enforce the privacy steps that Google are taking - obscuring faces and number plates, and the honouring of take-down requests.
I don't think something like that would be allowed to survive, and I don't see a major problem in governments stomping on it if they had a mind. Not so much that the images have to be hosted on a server somewhere in the real world, but that a service like that is going to have big bills (and presumably someone who wants to make a profit on it), which means they need revenue (ie advertising), which means they can be shut down by making it illegal to advertise on it.
For the record I'm actually a fan of streetview, but I don't see it as an inevitable consequence of digital cameras and the internet.
There already IS a compromise like that, it's called what google is already doing. Google is NOT infringing on anyone's privacy because by definition anything that they are photographing is visible from a public thoroughfare.
You do know that Greece isn't in the USA?
It may surprise you, but there are some other countries around that have a culture and history even older than the US! Really!!
And, shocking as this surely is to any right-thinking person, sometimes they come up with their own laws, customs and attitudes towards things.
Interestingly it appears someone wrote a sequel to Wyndham's classic a few years back, and it seems to have good reviews. Never knew that, time for an Amazon order me thinks.
One further point. I've never noticed that drives tend to fail within a month, or any other set period of time. They either tend to be dead on arrival or fail at some point many years or months down the line - the distribution as regards time seems to be even (I could be wrong, this is just how it feels to me, I've never actually analyzed it).
A 12% failure rate within a month indicates that either all the drives die pretty soon, or there is some spike in failures early on. Neither of these coincides with my experience and would seem to indicate that something odd is happening. Someone at your place didn't sleep with the delivery driver's sister did he?:)
Well as well as just selling drives (where the customer may just go through manufacturers' warranty and never talk to us) we also fit drives in laptops, with a promise that if the drive fails within 3 months we will make no labour charge to fit the warranty replacement - I would assume we here from nearly every failure here. Well under 1% take us up on this, so that is less than 1% failure within 3 months.
Now these are consumer 2.5" drives, and a failure is defined as it failing to the point where the customer notices. Possibly you are using a different metric and calling a drive failed where the average user wouldn't even notice the problem? If not you really must have some sort of problem. . . The hard drive industry really couldn't survive on that sort of warranty replacement rate.
In my experience, 1/8 of hard drives fail within a month
Man, what do you do to your drives?:)
I've sold hard drives for years and I can tell you that 1 in 8 in a month is seriously out of whack. Yes drives are orders of magnitude more likely to fail than any other component, but 1 in 8 within a month is either fantasy, terrible bad luck, or an indication that something you are doing is causing them damage.
Speak for yourself, mate. Seriously, if that's your idea of a sensible proposal I'd rather have George W Bush running my country than you, I kid you not.
I think LEGO is pretty safe, there's a good post above about what the LEGO brand gives a game like this and to be honest I think they are on to a very good thing.
As long as the quality of the games is at least reasonable all they are doing is adding to the strength of their already very strong brand, and coining risk-free licensing money at the same time.
I actually just went looking to see if you can buy any stock in the company, and was rather disappointed to find it is privately owned.
I'm wondering if that part of the summary is just a troll. "Astonishingly, the collection is covered by numerous copyright laws, according to the legal page" says the summary. Looking at the only legal page I can find: http://www.wdl.org/en/legal.html it says:
About Copyright and the Collections
Content found on the WDL Web site is contributed by WDL partners. Copyright questions about partner content should be directed to that partner. When publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in a WDL partner's collections, the researcher has the obligation to determine and satisfy domestic and international copyright law or other use restrictions.
You can find out more information about copyright law in the World Intellectual Property Organization's member states at http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/.
Maybe I've missed another page or something, but that just seems like a standard bit of CYA, not an attempt to extend copyrights by millennia.
Wouldn't it count as a cover version? If so, then if this was being sold on CD then he would need to buy a mechanical licence (about 10 cents a copy I believe). Not sure how that applies to a non-commercial digital distribution though.
I prefer to get my information from brands I trust, not those Google selects for me. So, you may not go to the NYTimes, you end up on some overseas website whose authority you have no clue about.
A simple 2 step solution will solve your problem:
Learn to read. This will let you read the name of the site you are about to visit. (you'll also probably find it helps understand the content once you get to the site)
Develop you manual dexterity to the point you can click on the link you intend to.
Once you have mastered these two simple abilities you will be able to use Google News and never stray outside the safe area of your comfort zone.
Why are you all so loving of Google, they are a massive corporation driven solely by traffic, keeping you moving, keeping you coming back.
What's not theirs to use? The snippet? While it true it is not theirs, I think you'll find that any interpretation of fair use says that they have every right to use it.
Why do I love Google? They offer services and features no one else does or of a quality that shits all over their competition. When that changes so will the amount of time I spend on Google web sites.
I think you're missing the point. The point of a war is to win, if that can be accomplished by filling body bags then great. If, as the US military realised in Iraq, doing so actually hurts your cause then you need a different approach.
I'm not trying to moralise at you or anything. I'm just saying that your approach to the Iraq war DID NOT WORK, which is why the US changed tactics late 2006/early 2007, and why Iraq got much better once they did.
Slashdot Mirror
We've got a major scandal over Members of Parliaments expenses going on at present.
Not distinctive enough. That could be American, or Spanish, or Roman or...
No, culturally British means "badly done cockney accents, in rubbish games that only see the light of day due to my tax money being used to subsidise them."
You heard it here first.
You seem to be confusing a civil war with a revolution. I wouldn't wish a civil war on anyone.
Hmm, I'd have thought quite the reverse. iTunes and Amazon are the merchants here as I understand it; they've charged the cards and hold the funds. Presumably they have then paid out commission to these crooks for the "sales".
So now that the fraud has been spotted, the card holders will obviously do chargebacks, and since they obviously had no part in these transactions their card issuers will refund them, same as for any other fraudulent use of a card.
And as for any other chargeback, the banks will simply recover the money from the merchant, who as always bears 100% of the losses (plus transaction fees probably).
So as I see it: Apple and Amazon lose the money, and are out not only their profit, but the commissions paid to the crooks, and any other costs they have incurred as a part of these transactions. They will presumably attempt to recover what they can during these thieves prosecution.
The victims of card fraud are not the card holders (as long as they spot the fraudulent transaction), but whatever poor sod charged the cards and is now out the goods/services they provided.
From what I've heard, they are not only large, but also considerably better armed than you would expect!
It's a sensible way to develop an economy. Which is why the US didn't recognise foreign copyrights or patents until 1891.
-Denis Leary
General David Petraeus. See here.
That isn't entirely correct, although in practice that is pretty much how it works. From here:
I don't really see it myself. Leaving aside my skepticism that anyone other than a large company or a government could organise a comprehensive effort like that, if we really do move into a world of citizen-provided Streetview then it is obviously going to happen without the ability to enforce the privacy steps that Google are taking - obscuring faces and number plates, and the honouring of take-down requests.
I don't think something like that would be allowed to survive, and I don't see a major problem in governments stomping on it if they had a mind. Not so much that the images have to be hosted on a server somewhere in the real world, but that a service like that is going to have big bills (and presumably someone who wants to make a profit on it), which means they need revenue (ie advertising), which means they can be shut down by making it illegal to advertise on it.
For the record I'm actually a fan of streetview, but I don't see it as an inevitable consequence of digital cameras and the internet.
You do know that Greece isn't in the USA?
It may surprise you, but there are some other countries around that have a culture and history even older than the US! Really!!
And, shocking as this surely is to any right-thinking person, sometimes they come up with their own laws, customs and attitudes towards things.
Or a Triffid.
Interestingly it appears someone wrote a sequel to Wyndham's classic a few years back, and it seems to have good reviews. Never knew that, time for an Amazon order me thinks.
One further point. I've never noticed that drives tend to fail within a month, or any other set period of time. They either tend to be dead on arrival or fail at some point many years or months down the line - the distribution as regards time seems to be even (I could be wrong, this is just how it feels to me, I've never actually analyzed it).
:)
A 12% failure rate within a month indicates that either all the drives die pretty soon, or there is some spike in failures early on. Neither of these coincides with my experience and would seem to indicate that something odd is happening. Someone at your place didn't sleep with the delivery driver's sister did he?
Well as well as just selling drives (where the customer may just go through manufacturers' warranty and never talk to us) we also fit drives in laptops, with a promise that if the drive fails within 3 months we will make no labour charge to fit the warranty replacement - I would assume we here from nearly every failure here. Well under 1% take us up on this, so that is less than 1% failure within 3 months.
Now these are consumer 2.5" drives, and a failure is defined as it failing to the point where the customer notices. Possibly you are using a different metric and calling a drive failed where the average user wouldn't even notice the problem? If not you really must have some sort of problem. . . The hard drive industry really couldn't survive on that sort of warranty replacement rate.
Man, what do you do to your drives? :)
I've sold hard drives for years and I can tell you that 1 in 8 in a month is seriously out of whack. Yes drives are orders of magnitude more likely to fail than any other component, but 1 in 8 within a month is either fantasy, terrible bad luck, or an indication that something you are doing is causing them damage.
Speak for yourself, mate. Seriously, if that's your idea of a sensible proposal I'd rather have George W Bush running my country than you, I kid you not.
It's actually quite an apt comparison, and shows how little we have changed as a species
I think LEGO is pretty safe, there's a good post above about what the LEGO brand gives a game like this and to be honest I think they are on to a very good thing.
As long as the quality of the games is at least reasonable all they are doing is adding to the strength of their already very strong brand, and coining risk-free licensing money at the same time.
I actually just went looking to see if you can buy any stock in the company, and was rather disappointed to find it is privately owned.
I'm wondering if that part of the summary is just a troll. "Astonishingly, the collection is covered by numerous copyright laws, according to the legal page" says the summary. Looking at the only legal page I can find: http://www.wdl.org/en/legal.html it says:
Maybe I've missed another page or something, but that just seems like a standard bit of CYA, not an attempt to extend copyrights by millennia.
Wouldn't it count as a cover version? If so, then if this was being sold on CD then he would need to buy a mechanical licence (about 10 cents a copy I believe). Not sure how that applies to a non-commercial digital distribution though.
hey, Britain is part of western Europe too! You ain't travelling anywhere near 200mph on a British train I can assure you :(
A simple 2 step solution will solve your problem:
Once you have mastered these two simple abilities you will be able to use Google News and never stray outside the safe area of your comfort zone.
What's not theirs to use? The snippet? While it true it is not theirs, I think you'll find that any interpretation of fair use says that they have every right to use it.
Why do I love Google? They offer services and features no one else does or of a quality that shits all over their competition. When that changes so will the amount of time I spend on Google web sites.
I think you're missing the point. The point of a war is to win, if that can be accomplished by filling body bags then great. If, as the US military realised in Iraq, doing so actually hurts your cause then you need a different approach.
I'm not trying to moralise at you or anything. I'm just saying that your approach to the Iraq war DID NOT WORK, which is why the US changed tactics late 2006/early 2007, and why Iraq got much better once they did.