I live in a small town in the UK, and I sincerely believe that parking costs are the biggest factor in driving people from the town businesses to out of town supermarkets. I really believe upping business rates a little, and making parking free except for a few key places would spur growth in the town no end. For those who don't know English towns, space is _always_ at a premium, and generally there is little to no roadside parking - what parking there is is generally a council owned extortionate multi-storey relatively (hopefully) close to town centre.
I'm sure it is... however, leaving my wifi open is much more convenient for me alone anyway. It's a PITA getting everything to connect using WPA, especially when some devices don't support it. Leaving it open is better for me, if others use it so be it.
Credit cards actually offer loads more of consumer protection in the UK for purchases over £100 than debit cards, so they are definitely valid reasons for holding and using one if you can. I own one and use it sparingly.
Rent.
Car is now a hand me down from my parents - Citroen XM, worth basically nothing, but is reliable and is big and fast enough for now.
Phone is mobile 2 year contract - £15 a month, which is less than I was paying with PAYG
Internet is mobile broadband 2 year contract - £15 a month again, 15gb monthly allowance
No landline
TV - Don't pay BBC license fee, because I don't have a TV. I use BBC iPlayer and other internet TV which does not require it. I watch little TV anyway.
I don't need health insurance because I live in the UK:).... but I haven't used the health service for over 2 years (last time was a freak washing up accident - dangerous occupation, washing up..)
I pay £30 a month for my mobile, internet, and TV combined - I do this because I'm not rich at the moment. You can get by on very little, but loads of people seem to think sattelite TV is compulsory and spend crap loads on that. Up to them, I guess.
Exactly right. IMO, it's both; in oppressive states like NY, guns are indeed excessively regulated, and everywhere, cars (actually drivers) aren't regulated nearly enough. Why should anyone with a DWI be allowed to drive again? At the least, they should have their license revoked for 6 months or a year. And why should anyone with a revoked license found driving be given anything but an extremely harsh punishment, such as seizure of their vehicle and a year in jail?
I got a DUI (UK equivalent of DWI) back when I was 20. It was the morning after, about 5:30am, and I completely didn't think about my intake. I did no damage to anyone, and did not cause an accident, or get close to an accident. I was picked up because I was driving a little fast (only a little fast, 10mph over the limit or so). I should not have done it, and I got banned from driving for 2 years (which didn't affect me much at the time, I lived in London), and a fine. 10 years later I get turned down for a job because of that one incident 10 years ago. Now, I know I should have been punished for doing something stupid when I was 20. However, should I still be being punished at 30 for something _so_ long in the past?
In the UK drink driving convictions stay on your driving license _longer_ than death by dangerous driving convictions.
No, I was just trying to point out why car ownership may be a lot more important to most US citizens than gun ownership. I wasn't referring to the constitution at all.
If you are babysitting a 13 y/o girl, you've already accepted a position of responsibility to protect that girl, at least to some extent. If you share your internet connection, you are _not_ accepting a position of responsibility to protect that connection. One is an end in itself, the other is a means to an end.
Guns aren't as important as cars. That's the reason. You can live your life without a gun very easily - without a car, it can be difficult, especially in loads of places in the US AFAIK.
Until someone gets shot when trying to canvas for election, or something else. Honestly, do you really think that you have the absolute right of life and death over anyone "on your land"? What about someone fleeing from criminals, who has nowhere else to go? Sorry... not going to argue this point any more, as long as you state that any unknowns on land someone owns can be killed legitemately.
I've always had a complete disregard for security. Admittedly, most of the stuff I've ever owned hasn't been worth all that much... I've had expensive bikes, a few decent cars, expensive computers, moniters & TV's etc. I've never owned my own home. I leave just about everything unlocked, all the time. Currently I live in a "good" area, but I lived in Leytonstone and worked in Hackney for a few years when I was younger, and kept the same principle throughout. My complete disregard for security has served me _very_ well. I could very easily replace everything I own (and more) on the savings I have made by not buying insurance throughout. Two high quality £50 locks would cost me £100... if I had ever bought them, I'd be £100 down.
The law may or may not protect you, so why not just protect yourself and end the debate?
Because some people think that leaving wi-fi open is an expression of goodwill... sharing. I do not mind if others use my wifi, I quite like people doing so. If someone starts using lots of it, I'll block them, at least temporarily. That hasn't happened yet. There are people living close to me who are on low incomes (and bad credit ratings), and will find it tough to fork out for (or get) stable internet access. I do not mind sharing mine.
In the UK, the Conservatives recently campaigned hugely about "big society". Laws that hold those responsible for sharing liable go directly against that theme. Alienation from local issues destroys communities, lack of cooperation locally destroys communities.
Arguably during an accident a seatbelt can potentially keep the driver in his seat, and can keep the driver or passenger from becoming a missile and injuring someone else
Ok.... this kind of argument isn't going to help the pro-open access crowd. To be honest, the human missile argument wasn't really used all that much with regards to the seatbelt law either. Maybe it should have been, since there were thousands of third person human missile fatalities prior to compulsory seatbelting.
In fact, here in America, almost everything comes with an insanely complicated contract that grants all kinds of rights to the giant-mega-corp, and almost nothing to you. And you're paying them for that priviledge. Ain't capitalism grand?
Those clauses are not valid. If Sony for some reason decided to brick all PS3 units, the clauses in the contracts used when bought would count for squat, at least in the UK. There's things called "fit for purpose", and "advertised features" which hit pretty high in consumer trading laws. The contract can say what it wants, literally, and it means absolutely nothing if the contract is unfair or goes against explicit or even implicit claims associated with the product.
I know that the US has less rigorous consumer protection laws, but there are some, and the PS3 is an international product anyway. It'll be difficult to effect changes in different regions without affecting others.
If Joe Consumer buys a shiny box-o-shrinkwrap, he basically has zero power. Most stores won't do anything more than replacement-in-kind, for physical defects in the medium or accompanying accessories, no returns. The inevitable nasty EULA will be hiding inside the shrinkwrap that confirms your acceptance of it. His software may (typically) be fairly cheap; but he has absolutely fuck-all power of redress if it doesn't work(or if the online component changes without notice in 3 months, or a mandatory update breaks things, or whatever).
As mentioned previously in this thread, in the UK we do have recourse, though 99% of consumers do not know this. The sale of goods act requires that goods be fit for purpose, and if the goods are not, then the customer has the right of a full refund, _whatever_. This means that if you buy a buggy game you cannot play, you can go back to the shop and get a refund. "Not fit for purpose" is a magic phrase which may get you somewhere. If not, try "Trading standards". Consumers have _loads_ of rights in the UK that they do not know about.
Another example is distance selling regulations, which allow consumers to return a product bought from a company online, for any reason whatsoever, within 7 days, and get a refund. Unfortunately this does not apply to "audio or video recordings or computer software which were unsealed by the consumer" (thanks lobbyists), but it does apply to nearly everything else (perishables are another notable exception). Also, "The consumer is under no obligation to deliver the goods to the supplier except at the consumer's own premises and in pursuance of a written request by the supplier". Note this law applies to all hardware, and DOA excuses are not needed - you can just say you don't want it. You have an obligation to take reasonable care of the items until the seller collects them though, up until about 1 month.
I don't think that the consumer has too little rights in the UK, I think the consumer just doesn't know their rights. Personally I generally put bad purchases down to experience, though I've had few of them, and the ones I have had haven't been covered by law. I'm not getting screwed over by any big corporations - I try to milk their silly offers that they expect people to overuse and then hit clauses on.
How could there be a money consideration without payment? You says its questionable, but surely "money consideration" must require a payment.
Mozilla gain monetary benefit (over $50,000,000) from having more firefox users because of their contract making Google the default search engine. By using Firefox, you are increasing Mozilla's revenue, albeit by a very small amount. Granted, _you_ are not giving them money directly, but someone else is because of your use.
My perception from reading various reports on the Web is that most of the time, the big companies do get it right
Tell that to purchasers of Settlers 7. _Huge_ numbers of people were unable to play it because of the DRM included failing... a crack came out soon after release, and pirated copies were not affected by the problem. I wonder how many of the legit purchasers returned it. I personally have only had real problems with one game - Football Manager 2009, and I swore then and there I would never buy another game that required online connectivity. Fortunately, FM2010 removed the crappy DRM and I bought it.
My clean Vista64 installation was usable 15 seconds after boot... now it's longer (about 25) because I've installed loads of crap and not cleaned up my startup applications recently. One of the problems with pre-installs is the amount of crap that is installed with the OS - this partially funds cheaper prices, so if you don't want it, buy an OS seperately. Something may be slightly awry with your Vista installation if it takes that long to return.
I did have problems though - Vista borked at my nVidia motherboard chipset and more than 2Gb of RAM (BSOD reboot crash during install)... it's a known bug, but it was a pain trying to find out what was causing it. I installed with 2gb, installed the hotfix, then stuck the other 2gb stick back in, and it's worked (basically) perfectly ever since.
Yes they do. About 85% of Mozilla's revenue comes directly from Google, via a contract which makes Google the default web search on Firefox. The only reason they get this revenue is because of their userbase. Mozilla do directly benefit because of people using Firefox, by well over $50 million annually.
Clean cheap bountiful energy means overpopulation.
I guess that's why the developed world, which has cheap bountiful energy, has a much higher birth rate and population growth than the 3rd world. Or not - indigineous populations in the developed world have been declining for decades, with immigration and large immigrant families causing the population growth. I'm _not_ being racist here, nor claiming we should do anything about this fact, I'm just stating that the places where energy is cheapest (comparative to wealth) are the places with lowest population growth or population decline.
Here is what I hate: Everyone is complaining about the privacy concerns with many services, but nobody stops using them! Everyone feels they have the right for every service to work they way they want it to. Guess what, you don't. You don't like google? Stop using it!. I don't like microsoft. I Don't like anything from them. So, I don't use ANYTHING FROM THEM. Not their software, nor their services, nothing. On the other hand, we have people cracking their software and complaining when they are evil. They ARE evil? stay the hell away from it.
The trouble is that other user's use of locked in privacy invading software _does_ infringe upon you. If everyone is using a standard app that decides not to communicate with anything else, you're forced to use that app or not communicate with other people. That's the point of shouting about it - the less people who use privacy invasive applications, the easier it is to use your own non-privacy invasive application and still communicate.
I do agree absolutely with your sentiments, but the aforementioned ramifications will sometimes produce a world I don't want to live in... so I complain loudly about it.
The Data Protection Act in the UK was as a result of the Data Protection Directive from the EU. This severely limits what people and/or companies and/or governmental agencies (with some exceptions to the last) can do with information about you. I'm not aware of legislation as strong as this in the US, but I may be wrong.
I do agree that different countries treat privacy differently - I personally believe that anything I do in public is basically that - public. I won't ever carry papers in my own country, so if somehow the ID card in the UK goes through (looking very very unlikely at the moment), I'll just lose mine every time I get a new one, and reapply. Some people don't have a problem with such things, but I do. The EU is a very diverse place, but that data protection directive means that all EU countries have similar laws with regards to data protection AFAIK.
Gamefaqs still hosts all its faqs in text, which is one of the reasons I use it pretty exclusively. That and it being easily the most authorative faq site out there.
I did jury service and had almost exactly the opposite experience. It was a trial which hinged upon posession of something, and there was no direct evidence of that possession. I personally believed the guy on trial did the crime, and it was pretty obvious he did. However, there just not enough evidence there to avoid reasonable doubt. I was fully expecting to have to battle the other (100% white middle class) jurors over this issue.
As soon as we started discussing guilt, however, everyone basically immediately said almost exactly the same thing I was thinking - he probably did do it, but there's not quite enough evidence there, so it has to be not guilty. I was _very_ pleasantly suprised by this, maybe I just served with a decent jury.
Amusingly enough, I was locked up in the very same police station a couple of weeks after the defendant I was on jury service for was, but that did not disbar me from that jury service - if I had been interviewed by the same officers he was, it would have become a problem apparently. I just got a caution btw:P.
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I live in a small town in the UK, and I sincerely believe that parking costs are the biggest factor in driving people from the town businesses to out of town supermarkets. I really believe upping business rates a little, and making parking free except for a few key places would spur growth in the town no end. For those who don't know English towns, space is _always_ at a premium, and generally there is little to no roadside parking - what parking there is is generally a council owned extortionate multi-storey relatively (hopefully) close to town centre.
I'm sure it is... however, leaving my wifi open is much more convenient for me alone anyway. It's a PITA getting everything to connect using WPA, especially when some devices don't support it. Leaving it open is better for me, if others use it so be it.
Me :
Credit cards actually offer loads more of consumer protection in the UK for purchases over £100 than debit cards, so they are definitely valid reasons for holding and using one if you can. I own one and use it sparingly. :).... but I haven't used the health service for over 2 years (last time was a freak washing up accident - dangerous occupation, washing up..)
Rent.
Car is now a hand me down from my parents - Citroen XM, worth basically nothing, but is reliable and is big and fast enough for now.
Phone is mobile 2 year contract - £15 a month, which is less than I was paying with PAYG
Internet is mobile broadband 2 year contract - £15 a month again, 15gb monthly allowance
No landline
TV - Don't pay BBC license fee, because I don't have a TV. I use BBC iPlayer and other internet TV which does not require it. I watch little TV anyway.
I don't need health insurance because I live in the UK
I pay £30 a month for my mobile, internet, and TV combined - I do this because I'm not rich at the moment. You can get by on very little, but loads of people seem to think sattelite TV is compulsory and spend crap loads on that. Up to them, I guess.
Exactly right. IMO, it's both; in oppressive states like NY, guns are indeed excessively regulated, and everywhere, cars (actually drivers) aren't regulated nearly enough. Why should anyone with a DWI be allowed to drive again? At the least, they should have their license revoked for 6 months or a year. And why should anyone with a revoked license found driving be given anything but an extremely harsh punishment, such as seizure of their vehicle and a year in jail?
I got a DUI (UK equivalent of DWI) back when I was 20. It was the morning after, about 5:30am, and I completely didn't think about my intake. I did no damage to anyone, and did not cause an accident, or get close to an accident. I was picked up because I was driving a little fast (only a little fast, 10mph over the limit or so). I should not have done it, and I got banned from driving for 2 years (which didn't affect me much at the time, I lived in London), and a fine. 10 years later I get turned down for a job because of that one incident 10 years ago. Now, I know I should have been punished for doing something stupid when I was 20. However, should I still be being punished at 30 for something _so_ long in the past?
In the UK drink driving convictions stay on your driving license _longer_ than death by dangerous driving convictions.
No, I was just trying to point out why car ownership may be a lot more important to most US citizens than gun ownership. I wasn't referring to the constitution at all.
If you are babysitting a 13 y/o girl, you've already accepted a position of responsibility to protect that girl, at least to some extent. If you share your internet connection, you are _not_ accepting a position of responsibility to protect that connection. One is an end in itself, the other is a means to an end.
Guns aren't as important as cars. That's the reason. You can live your life without a gun very easily - without a car, it can be difficult, especially in loads of places in the US AFAIK.
Now, THAT is reasonable!!
Until someone gets shot when trying to canvas for election, or something else. Honestly, do you really think that you have the absolute right of life and death over anyone "on your land"? What about someone fleeing from criminals, who has nowhere else to go? Sorry... not going to argue this point any more, as long as you state that any unknowns on land someone owns can be killed legitemately.
I've always had a complete disregard for security. Admittedly, most of the stuff I've ever owned hasn't been worth all that much... I've had expensive bikes, a few decent cars, expensive computers, moniters & TV's etc. I've never owned my own home. I leave just about everything unlocked, all the time. Currently I live in a "good" area, but I lived in Leytonstone and worked in Hackney for a few years when I was younger, and kept the same principle throughout. My complete disregard for security has served me _very_ well. I could very easily replace everything I own (and more) on the savings I have made by not buying insurance throughout. Two high quality £50 locks would cost me £100... if I had ever bought them, I'd be £100 down.
The law may or may not protect you, so why not just protect yourself and end the debate?
Because some people think that leaving wi-fi open is an expression of goodwill... sharing. I do not mind if others use my wifi, I quite like people doing so. If someone starts using lots of it, I'll block them, at least temporarily. That hasn't happened yet. There are people living close to me who are on low incomes (and bad credit ratings), and will find it tough to fork out for (or get) stable internet access. I do not mind sharing mine.
In the UK, the Conservatives recently campaigned hugely about "big society". Laws that hold those responsible for sharing liable go directly against that theme. Alienation from local issues destroys communities, lack of cooperation locally destroys communities.
Arguably during an accident a seatbelt can potentially keep the driver in his seat, and can keep the driver or passenger from becoming a missile and injuring someone else
Ok.... this kind of argument isn't going to help the pro-open access crowd. To be honest, the human missile argument wasn't really used all that much with regards to the seatbelt law either. Maybe it should have been, since there were thousands of third person human missile fatalities prior to compulsory seatbelting.
In fact, here in America, almost everything comes with an insanely complicated contract that grants all kinds of rights to the giant-mega-corp, and almost nothing to you. And you're paying them for that priviledge. Ain't capitalism grand?
Those clauses are not valid. If Sony for some reason decided to brick all PS3 units, the clauses in the contracts used when bought would count for squat, at least in the UK. There's things called "fit for purpose", and "advertised features" which hit pretty high in consumer trading laws. The contract can say what it wants, literally, and it means absolutely nothing if the contract is unfair or goes against explicit or even implicit claims associated with the product.
I know that the US has less rigorous consumer protection laws, but there are some, and the PS3 is an international product anyway. It'll be difficult to effect changes in different regions without affecting others.
If Joe Consumer buys a shiny box-o-shrinkwrap, he basically has zero power. Most stores won't do anything more than replacement-in-kind, for physical defects in the medium or accompanying accessories, no returns. The inevitable nasty EULA will be hiding inside the shrinkwrap that confirms your acceptance of it. His software may (typically) be fairly cheap; but he has absolutely fuck-all power of redress if it doesn't work(or if the online component changes without notice in 3 months, or a mandatory update breaks things, or whatever).
As mentioned previously in this thread, in the UK we do have recourse, though 99% of consumers do not know this. The sale of goods act requires that goods be fit for purpose, and if the goods are not, then the customer has the right of a full refund, _whatever_. This means that if you buy a buggy game you cannot play, you can go back to the shop and get a refund. "Not fit for purpose" is a magic phrase which may get you somewhere. If not, try "Trading standards". Consumers have _loads_ of rights in the UK that they do not know about.
Another example is distance selling regulations, which allow consumers to return a product bought from a company online, for any reason whatsoever, within 7 days, and get a refund. Unfortunately this does not apply to "audio or video recordings or computer software which were unsealed by the consumer" (thanks lobbyists), but it does apply to nearly everything else (perishables are another notable exception). Also, "The consumer is under no obligation to deliver the goods to the supplier except at the consumer's own premises and in pursuance of a written request by the supplier". Note this law applies to all hardware, and DOA excuses are not needed - you can just say you don't want it. You have an obligation to take reasonable care of the items until the seller collects them though, up until about 1 month.
I don't think that the consumer has too little rights in the UK, I think the consumer just doesn't know their rights. Personally I generally put bad purchases down to experience, though I've had few of them, and the ones I have had haven't been covered by law. I'm not getting screwed over by any big corporations - I try to milk their silly offers that they expect people to overuse and then hit clauses on.
How could there be a money consideration without payment? You says its questionable, but surely "money consideration" must require a payment.
Mozilla gain monetary benefit (over $50,000,000) from having more firefox users because of their contract making Google the default search engine. By using Firefox, you are increasing Mozilla's revenue, albeit by a very small amount. Granted, _you_ are not giving them money directly, but someone else is because of your use.
My perception from reading various reports on the Web is that most of the time, the big companies do get it right
Tell that to purchasers of Settlers 7. _Huge_ numbers of people were unable to play it because of the DRM included failing... a crack came out soon after release, and pirated copies were not affected by the problem. I wonder how many of the legit purchasers returned it. I personally have only had real problems with one game - Football Manager 2009, and I swore then and there I would never buy another game that required online connectivity. Fortunately, FM2010 removed the crappy DRM and I bought it.
As long as you dot your is and cross your ts, I will.
My clean Vista64 installation was usable 15 seconds after boot... now it's longer (about 25) because I've installed loads of crap and not cleaned up my startup applications recently. One of the problems with pre-installs is the amount of crap that is installed with the OS - this partially funds cheaper prices, so if you don't want it, buy an OS seperately. Something may be slightly awry with your Vista installation if it takes that long to return.
I did have problems though - Vista borked at my nVidia motherboard chipset and more than 2Gb of RAM (BSOD reboot crash during install)... it's a known bug, but it was a pain trying to find out what was causing it. I installed with 2gb, installed the hotfix, then stuck the other 2gb stick back in, and it's worked (basically) perfectly ever since.
Yes they do. About 85% of Mozilla's revenue comes directly from Google, via a contract which makes Google the default web search on Firefox. The only reason they get this revenue is because of their userbase. Mozilla do directly benefit because of people using Firefox, by well over $50 million annually.
Clean cheap bountiful energy means overpopulation.
I guess that's why the developed world, which has cheap bountiful energy, has a much higher birth rate and population growth than the 3rd world. Or not - indigineous populations in the developed world have been declining for decades, with immigration and large immigrant families causing the population growth. I'm _not_ being racist here, nor claiming we should do anything about this fact, I'm just stating that the places where energy is cheapest (comparative to wealth) are the places with lowest population growth or population decline.
Here is what I hate: Everyone is complaining about the privacy concerns with many services, but nobody stops using them! Everyone feels they have the right for every service to work they way they want it to. Guess what, you don't. You don't like google? Stop using it!. I don't like microsoft. I Don't like anything from them. So, I don't use ANYTHING FROM THEM. Not their software, nor their services, nothing. On the other hand, we have people cracking their software and complaining when they are evil. They ARE evil? stay the hell away from it.
The trouble is that other user's use of locked in privacy invading software _does_ infringe upon you. If everyone is using a standard app that decides not to communicate with anything else, you're forced to use that app or not communicate with other people. That's the point of shouting about it - the less people who use privacy invasive applications, the easier it is to use your own non-privacy invasive application and still communicate.
I do agree absolutely with your sentiments, but the aforementioned ramifications will sometimes produce a world I don't want to live in... so I complain loudly about it.
The Data Protection Act in the UK was as a result of the Data Protection Directive from the EU. This severely limits what people and/or companies and/or governmental agencies (with some exceptions to the last) can do with information about you. I'm not aware of legislation as strong as this in the US, but I may be wrong.
I do agree that different countries treat privacy differently - I personally believe that anything I do in public is basically that - public. I won't ever carry papers in my own country, so if somehow the ID card in the UK goes through (looking very very unlikely at the moment), I'll just lose mine every time I get a new one, and reapply. Some people don't have a problem with such things, but I do. The EU is a very diverse place, but that data protection directive means that all EU countries have similar laws with regards to data protection AFAIK.
The Gulf of Mexican? Yeah, I've met her. Wait a minute... you mean this story's not about her?
Gamefaqs still hosts all its faqs in text, which is one of the reasons I use it pretty exclusively. That and it being easily the most authorative faq site out there.
I did jury service and had almost exactly the opposite experience. It was a trial which hinged upon posession of something, and there was no direct evidence of that possession. I personally believed the guy on trial did the crime, and it was pretty obvious he did. However, there just not enough evidence there to avoid reasonable doubt. I was fully expecting to have to battle the other (100% white middle class) jurors over this issue.
As soon as we started discussing guilt, however, everyone basically immediately said almost exactly the same thing I was thinking - he probably did do it, but there's not quite enough evidence there, so it has to be not guilty. I was _very_ pleasantly suprised by this, maybe I just served with a decent jury.
Amusingly enough, I was locked up in the very same police station a couple of weeks after the defendant I was on jury service for was, but that did not disbar me from that jury service - if I had been interviewed by the same officers he was, it would have become a problem apparently. I just got a caution btw :P.
it's pore, not pour, btw.