If I were Larry Page I'd have laughed them out of my office.
Frankly, this kind of behaviour from them makes me WANT to pirate their content [on the assumption that it was worth watching in the first place, in reality, there's too much garbage] - just because they're being arseholes.
But seriously, I sincerely hope that Google tells the studios to go fuck themselves.
I've had numerous discussions with just such a person (who also believes in the Austrian school of economics) about this topic - although he's even worse, as he also takes the free education, subsidized housing, free Internet and access to free healthcare (among a myriad of other benefits) that wouldn't be offered to him in numerous other countries.
In addition, he *chooses* to live in that country (he's not a citizen of the country in question) although he claims this is because his parents made him move there (and not the US? Or UK? Surely his parents would be equally happy with his degree being obtained in either of those countries rather than the one he's in). I suggested to him on numerous occasions that he transfers to a country where he has to actually pay for all these things but he flat out refused (citing the parent issue).
When I last brought up these things with him on he simply blocked me. But boy oh boy, you should see his arguments and ability to avoid answering the questions - he could almost run for political office:D
As for where I immigrated to... check my sig. I was born in one and immigrated to the other. I can't just get up and walk away from my situation due to the "child" involved (that is, the start-up, which she so is not capable of looking after).
Been where you are. Pretty recently, actually (this year). Fortunately we weren't married or even living together yet.
My pain point is that I left a decent life in Europe to move here and as part of the immigrating, I ended up forming a startup in which she had been... not involved, but certainly supporting me in the endeavour (every way except financially) and being my muse. Now, I have to continue with that despite everything she did and now that we're no longer together, as I can't exactly just close everything up and walk away... it's *almost* like I was saddled with a child, in a certain respect.
She doesn't seem to want to be far from my thoughts as she calls me quite frequently - not to tell me of her regrets, but much rather for things far more inane, and tries to keep me on the phone for - in some cases literally - hours, despite her knowing I'm 99% likely to be busy. And yes, when we were still together I made time for her - to the point of losing out on sleep (what the hell, might as well prepare for sleepless nights, should I one day have kids, right?)
Weirdly, within the last week she even asked if she could start working for me, so my conclusion is that she is definitely a master-mindfucker, but I grew up with a grandmother who is famously manipulative so I'm at least partially immune and I can tune her out if I'm otherwise engaged.
Georgian names aren't entirely dissimilar: "-shvili" is like "child of" (sort of like the Icelandic "-sson" or "-sonur"), and I wouldn't be surprised if "Gobeji" was the name of a village or something.
I'd be interested to know who *doesn't* do this already - and why not.
Recently transitioned from Ubuntu (12.10 broke a lot of stuff that I had set up nicely in 12.04) to Fedora 17 myself... seemed to work mostly OK and best of all, almost everything was kept intact, right down to desktop icons and background images.
Steam will cut you off of your sizeable and paid for and possibly extensive games library simply for moving into another region. Amazon will cut you off of your whole Kindle library simply for moving into another region.
You forgot Apple.
Otherwise I'm in full agreement - this is why I keep "spare" copies of everything I buy digitally and/or will probably support Mega when it comes out.
I have 3 bloody Apple accounts right now that I've used in 3 different countries I've lived in over the last few years. As a result I get emails from Apple in 3 languages about the same 3 shitty (but pretty) products every time there's a new release. (Yes, I have a reason to keep those coming in).
Happy to compensate artists - and yes, even publishers - for their work but FFS the distribution mechanisms just aren't suited for increasingly mobile people like myself who now, as it happens, lives in a country where the services we've mentioned aren't even bloody well available to me anymore anyway (no Netflix, no Hulu, no Spotify, no nothing... except Reliance BigFlix which is, let's say, extremely poor - and doesn't have ANYTHING I'm even remotely interested in, and the foreign content it does have is... limited).
This, despite me having valid payment credentials for the countries where the services and content I want *are* available. Except HBO Go when I'm in NZ but that's another story.
So, dear lawyers, please realize that my IP address doesn't always correlate with my residence permit, citizenship or sometimes both, and that by disallowing me access to something I've paid for a license to watch or listen to, you're making an incorrect assumption about who I am. So damn well let me listen to it otherwise I have no choice but to download the stuff I've paid for through "alternate channels" and if the publishers want to accuse me of piracy then they may find me replying with some variant of "stick it up your arse" or "gfy".
Newsflash: Significant percentage of Indians *are* vegetarians.
The ease of feeding the populace wouldn't come from omnivores becoming herbivores, it would come from fewer inefficiencies (mostly in government, I may be placing the blame wrongly) when it comes to distribution and storage.
Millions of tonnes of grain, crops and staples rot every year in this country instead of making it to those who need it most - some estimates put the wastage at a third of the total produce.
We admire the number of doctorates and highly intelligent people from India and European countries. They are no more intelligent than Americans, but because of multilingualism, they are better at thinking out of the box.
While I agree for the most part about multilingualism and whatnot (I speak a couple other than English myself) but as far as [Indians specifically] being better at thinking out of the box, I very much have to disagree based on my 4 years (so far) here.
There is very much a mob mentality, and education focuses more on passing the exams with flying colours than gaining actual knowledge and learning how to work stuff out (that is to say, memorizing the answers, getting 98% and having your picture put on a posterboard on the street to show that your parents spent an extra 6,000 rupees on your education this semester and thus the family is doing well).
As it translates to real life, though, I sometimes find it very difficult to find employees who are technically competent enough to meet my personal standards - even after relaxing my standards and I have this trouble both with recent graduates and with "seasoned professionals".
Worse still, if you try and hire graduates from certain schools (xIIT) they have a god complex whereby they feel entitled to certain things (the job, a higher salary etc) without actually being able to demonstrate the basic skills I require. I'll happily pay more if I get what I want but from those guys... they're usually unmanageable anyway so my usual phrase is "get out of my office".
It's nearly at the point where I prefer to take people on who are enthusiastic and train them on the job so that they do things up to the standards I expect.
Actually, it's interesting you bring this up - electricity (and most other measured utilities, such as water and gas) are measured at the user's premises, right?
That being the case, any usage over and above the metered amount (due to leaky pipes or some energy sucking device) is the responsibility of the consumer, whereas any leak between the power plant or water treatment facility becomes the responsibility of the company that runs it - they don't charge all the consumers connected to the same water main for a leak in the main, do they?
On the other hand, the ISPs expect us (you) to believe that what we say you used, you used, and when your router (in OP's case, his router running Tomato) reports a number that is significantly different from ours (the company), you're expected to believe the company and/or shut up and accept when the company says "proprietary information".
Something seems a bit odd here. Perhaps more routers/modems need to include traffic management and measurement facilities, and if they're locked down by the ISP then the router can surely send it's measurements to the ISP for the purposes of billing - the devices that Truenet in NZ (which are just D-LINK DIR-615s with custom firmware) give out report speeds in to a database when they run their network tests, what's to stop such devices being programmed to send usage statistics to the ISPs?
On behalf of Indians, non-Indians living in India, NRIs, NROs, NREs, and any tourist who has ever had to ride in a Tata-branded vehicle, I'm sorry in advance for the atrocity that will soon be thrust upon you.
Telemarketers and SPAM SMSes are a half-hourly occurrence unless you put yourself on the DNC (do-not-call) list. Then it's maybe daily (because some firms don't take the DNC list seriously - I'm looking at you Reliance General and Club Mahindra Holidays who are perfectly OK with hiring organizations that don't follow the rules and then get pissed off when you send them a bill for your inconvenience).
Them: You actually expect us to pay this? Me: Yes. That's why I sent it, shithead.
Even if I was willing to pay it myself, I could not have gotten account for myself. Lots of security and physical address verification before they give you an account. Police are worried about terrorists and rabble rousers using disposable accounts. Would not say their fears are totally off base.
I would. There are places that will just give you a SIM card and use someone elses documents. It's in the papers all the time. And it's not stopped any terrorists in the 4 years I've been here.
Your rates are a little outdated - calling and sms rates are less. Data charges at Rs98/2GB are for 2G only - 3G is around 5-6x as expensive per GB (250-300/GB). Rs2/minute to the US suggests Reliance. Airtel does it for 60p/min at the moment;)
That's because he's the minister for technology and communications, ergo, somewhat related to the/. audience:)
The PM and whatnot are just... well they don't even get in the news here as much as some of the other politicians. Parliament seems to be a competition for "who can stir the most shit this week".
I mean, sure, you can call a switchboard who MIGHT give you to an appropriate person if you're lucky, otherwise you might be given 4 local telephone numbers of which 3 won't work and 1 won't be answered and IF you get your call answered then you probably called someone in a completely different part of the city who will be able to OR will refuse to help you.
Slashdot Mirror
For the US, try Xero.
If I were Larry Page I'd have laughed them out of my office.
Frankly, this kind of behaviour from them makes me WANT to pirate their content [on the assumption that it was worth watching in the first place, in reality, there's too much garbage] - just because they're being arseholes.
But seriously, I sincerely hope that Google tells the studios to go fuck themselves.
Yes, because things get done here on time and under budget. Oh, wait...
Most likely reality? Money raised. Pockets opened. Cash disappeared. News censored.
Mod parent up.
I've had numerous discussions with just such a person (who also believes in the Austrian school of economics) about this topic - although he's even worse, as he also takes the free education, subsidized housing, free Internet and access to free healthcare (among a myriad of other benefits) that wouldn't be offered to him in numerous other countries.
In addition, he *chooses* to live in that country (he's not a citizen of the country in question) although he claims this is because his parents made him move there (and not the US? Or UK? Surely his parents would be equally happy with his degree being obtained in either of those countries rather than the one he's in). I suggested to him on numerous occasions that he transfers to a country where he has to actually pay for all these things but he flat out refused (citing the parent issue).
When I last brought up these things with him on he simply blocked me. But boy oh boy, you should see his arguments and ability to avoid answering the questions - he could almost run for political office :D
Ah, you used to help your ex too. Yes. Guilty.
As for where I immigrated to... check my sig. I was born in one and immigrated to the other. I can't just get up and walk away from my situation due to the "child" involved (that is, the start-up, which she so is not capable of looking after).
Been where you are. Pretty recently, actually (this year). Fortunately we weren't married or even living together yet.
My pain point is that I left a decent life in Europe to move here and as part of the immigrating, I ended up forming a startup in which she had been... not involved, but certainly supporting me in the endeavour (every way except financially) and being my muse. Now, I have to continue with that despite everything she did and now that we're no longer together, as I can't exactly just close everything up and walk away... it's *almost* like I was saddled with a child, in a certain respect.
She doesn't seem to want to be far from my thoughts as she calls me quite frequently - not to tell me of her regrets, but much rather for things far more inane, and tries to keep me on the phone for - in some cases literally - hours, despite her knowing I'm 99% likely to be busy. And yes, when we were still together I made time for her - to the point of losing out on sleep (what the hell, might as well prepare for sleepless nights, should I one day have kids, right?)
Weirdly, within the last week she even asked if she could start working for me, so my conclusion is that she is definitely a master-mindfucker, but I grew up with a grandmother who is famously manipulative so I'm at least partially immune and I can tune her out if I'm otherwise engaged.
So, yeah, you have my sympathy, mate.
No mod points today, so +1
Georgian names aren't entirely dissimilar: "-shvili" is like "child of" (sort of like the Icelandic "-sson" or "-sonur"), and I wouldn't be surprised if "Gobeji" was the name of a village or something.
I'd be interested to know who *doesn't* do this already - and why not.
Recently transitioned from Ubuntu (12.10 broke a lot of stuff that I had set up nicely in 12.04) to Fedora 17 myself... seemed to work mostly OK and best of all, almost everything was kept intact, right down to desktop icons and background images.
Legit services will do this to you:
Steam will cut you off of your sizeable and paid for and possibly extensive games library simply for moving into another region.
Amazon will cut you off of your whole Kindle library simply for moving into another region.
You forgot Apple.
Otherwise I'm in full agreement - this is why I keep "spare" copies of everything I buy digitally and/or will probably support Mega when it comes out.
I have 3 bloody Apple accounts right now that I've used in 3 different countries I've lived in over the last few years. As a result I get emails from Apple in 3 languages about the same 3 shitty (but pretty) products every time there's a new release. (Yes, I have a reason to keep those coming in).
Happy to compensate artists - and yes, even publishers - for their work but FFS the distribution mechanisms just aren't suited for increasingly mobile people like myself who now, as it happens, lives in a country where the services we've mentioned aren't even bloody well available to me anymore anyway (no Netflix, no Hulu, no Spotify, no nothing... except Reliance BigFlix which is, let's say, extremely poor - and doesn't have ANYTHING I'm even remotely interested in, and the foreign content it does have is... limited).
This, despite me having valid payment credentials for the countries where the services and content I want *are* available. Except HBO Go when I'm in NZ but that's another story.
So, dear lawyers, please realize that my IP address doesn't always correlate with my residence permit, citizenship or sometimes both, and that by disallowing me access to something I've paid for a license to watch or listen to, you're making an incorrect assumption about who I am. So damn well let me listen to it otherwise I have no choice but to download the stuff I've paid for through "alternate channels" and if the publishers want to accuse me of piracy then they may find me replying with some variant of "stick it up your arse" or "gfy".
Newsflash: Significant percentage of Indians *are* vegetarians.
The ease of feeding the populace wouldn't come from omnivores becoming herbivores, it would come from fewer inefficiencies (mostly in government, I may be placing the blame wrongly) when it comes to distribution and storage.
Millions of tonnes of grain, crops and staples rot every year in this country instead of making it to those who need it most - some estimates put the wastage at a third of the total produce.
We admire the number of doctorates and highly intelligent people from India and European countries. They are no more intelligent than Americans, but because of multilingualism, they are better at thinking out of the box.
While I agree for the most part about multilingualism and whatnot (I speak a couple other than English myself) but as far as [Indians specifically] being better at thinking out of the box, I very much have to disagree based on my 4 years (so far) here.
There is very much a mob mentality, and education focuses more on passing the exams with flying colours than gaining actual knowledge and learning how to work stuff out (that is to say, memorizing the answers, getting 98% and having your picture put on a posterboard on the street to show that your parents spent an extra 6,000 rupees on your education this semester and thus the family is doing well).
As it translates to real life, though, I sometimes find it very difficult to find employees who are technically competent enough to meet my personal standards - even after relaxing my standards and I have this trouble both with recent graduates and with "seasoned professionals".
Worse still, if you try and hire graduates from certain schools (xIIT) they have a god complex whereby they feel entitled to certain things (the job, a higher salary etc) without actually being able to demonstrate the basic skills I require. I'll happily pay more if I get what I want but from those guys... they're usually unmanageable anyway so my usual phrase is "get out of my office".
It's nearly at the point where I prefer to take people on who are enthusiastic and train them on the job so that they do things up to the standards I expect.
I would assume that, based on this, you've never been here for any significant period of time, if at all.
Some speak English very well (if they were educated at an English-medium school or went to school abroad, like my SO, for example), most... do not.
Actually, it's interesting you bring this up - electricity (and most other measured utilities, such as water and gas) are measured at the user's premises, right?
That being the case, any usage over and above the metered amount (due to leaky pipes or some energy sucking device) is the responsibility of the consumer, whereas any leak between the power plant or water treatment facility becomes the responsibility of the company that runs it - they don't charge all the consumers connected to the same water main for a leak in the main, do they?
On the other hand, the ISPs expect us (you) to believe that what we say you used, you used, and when your router (in OP's case, his router running Tomato) reports a number that is significantly different from ours (the company), you're expected to believe the company and/or shut up and accept when the company says "proprietary information".
Something seems a bit odd here. Perhaps more routers/modems need to include traffic management and measurement facilities, and if they're locked down by the ISP then the router can surely send it's measurements to the ISP for the purposes of billing - the devices that Truenet in NZ (which are just D-LINK DIR-615s with custom firmware) give out report speeds in to a database when they run their network tests, what's to stop such devices being programmed to send usage statistics to the ISPs?
I'm surprised that this didn't come up yet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN7o2Iy89WQ
On behalf of Indians, non-Indians living in India, NRIs, NROs, NREs, and any tourist who has ever had to ride in a Tata-branded vehicle, I'm sorry in advance for the atrocity that will soon be thrust upon you.
That's fine because you live in a country where VOIP to PSTN is legal. That is not the case in India.
No. No they're not. No VOIP (yet) in India http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3154149&cid=41579425 and http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3154149&cid=41579539
Also, US$0.019/min isn't cheap enough for you?
I miss France. We had both Free and Neuf where I lived, but we were ONE building away from delicious delicious fiber.
In India that would be a disaster.
Telemarketers and SPAM SMSes are a half-hourly occurrence unless you put yourself on the DNC (do-not-call) list. Then it's maybe daily (because some firms don't take the DNC list seriously - I'm looking at you Reliance General and Club Mahindra Holidays who are perfectly OK with hiring organizations that don't follow the rules and then get pissed off when you send them a bill for your inconvenience).
Them: You actually expect us to pay this?
Me: Yes. That's why I sent it, shithead.
Even if I was willing to pay it myself, I could not have gotten account for myself. Lots of security and physical address verification before they give you an account. Police are worried about terrorists and rabble rousers using disposable accounts. Would not say their fears are totally off base.
I would. There are places that will just give you a SIM card and use someone elses documents. It's in the papers all the time. And it's not stopped any terrorists in the 4 years I've been here.
Your rates are a little outdated - calling and sms rates are less. Data charges at Rs98/2GB are for 2G only - 3G is around 5-6x as expensive per GB (250-300/GB). Rs2/minute to the US suggests Reliance. Airtel does it for 60p/min at the moment ;)
That's because he's the minister for technology and communications, ergo, somewhat related to the /. audience :)
The PM and whatnot are just... well they don't even get in the news here as much as some of the other politicians. Parliament seems to be a competition for "who can stir the most shit this week".
India is not one of those countries.
I mean, sure, you can call a switchboard who MIGHT give you to an appropriate person if you're lucky, otherwise you might be given 4 local telephone numbers of which 3 won't work and 1 won't be answered and IF you get your call answered then you probably called someone in a completely different part of the city who will be able to OR will refuse to help you.
I speak from experience.
No VOIP in India yet (at least not with e.164 compliant phone numbers - you can do PC to PC and stuff but otherwise...)