Just a point that there's nothing unusual at all about Australian banks doing this
Never said there was anything unusual about it, in fact as we both pointed out it's quiet "usual".
As I was trying to point out, this is how Australian banks like to rip people off. Not only do they take 2% of a transaction when it's completed in a foreign currency (we are one of the _few_ nations where this is done, let alone the norm) but you also pay a $4 flat fee for using a visa cash advance and possibly a $2 fee for using a different banks ATM. Most people don't actually know about the % fee for using your debit or credit card for overseas purchases, banks like to bury this little detail deep down in their fee schedule so few people see it.
With most Australian banks I can walk into a branch to address issues with my account.
Seeing as NAB (National Australia Bank) doesn't have a branch open on a Saturday within cooee of where I live (15 minutes from a CBD) and CBA's (Commonwealth Bank of Australia) list of fees and charges are ridiculous compared to NAB's. It not that easy.
If I do take time from work in order to go to a bank all I'll get is a form to fill out. Tellers are handy for opening accounts, deposits, withdrawals and most other activities that are now online but they cannot make decisions (by bureaucratic design, tellers aren't retarded). After that form is lodged I have to wait up to 28 days to see any action on it.
I dot consider Paypal trustworthy in any way but it seems they are trying to shaft us in fewer ways then the banks are. I do a lot of transactions in foreign currency, there are few forex services in Australia that deal with SE Asian currencies with a low flat fee. I am yet to find a bank that will do ATM or POS transactions for less then a flat $4 fee and 2% of the transaction amount (CBA is 3%). I have a friend who lives in Spain, he finds it easier to use Paypal to move currency into and out of Australia.
It's not all bad, as many other posters have pointed out the online systems are fairly good, reducing the actual need for me to take time off of work to go into branches.
"Responsive and Trusted" does not mean in any way shape or form that PayPal and similar services are in any way responsive or trustworthy. All this story indicates is that they are _more_ trustworthy then they big four banks.
Some banks have effectively shut down operations outside of normal business hours making it difficult to impossible for some Australians to get to an actual bank, fees are hidden and slanted towards the banks favour to the point of outright fraud in some cases and the only method of appeal is to go via the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission), basically a government enquiry (as much good as the ACCC does, it does it very slowly).
It's next to impossible to find a credit (or debit) card that will not charge a minimum of 2% on top for foreign currency transactions. Paypal is not in any way trustworthy, but they are better then Aussie banks.
ow do you shoplift $75,000 and not have it be armed robbery? Walk out of costco with a pallet of 65" TVs?
Exactly, just walk out the back door. Your issue is logistics but anyone who knows someone in a crime syndicate (bikers, Mafia) can move 20 TV's. This is how the syndicates work. Working Stiff wants to make some extra cash, sells a pallet of TV's to a Mafioso who cleans them and sells them on. If anyone is likely to get done, it's the working stiff being caught in the act.
In addition to this, if you can get access to the locked cabinets, it's easy to walk out with US$75 K worth of jewellery in your pockets.
I'll repeat: pirating music is not like stealing cars.
Correct.
Copyright infringement is not theft at all, it's fraud.
In this case, the only fair punishment is to take a multiple sum of what the infringer earned by the sale of said product as 1 pirated sale is equivalent to 1 actual sale (more or less, there was money exchanged for an infringed product). Now how much did ms Thomas make from the sale of that infringed material, multiply that by 2 or 3 and there you have the appropriate penalty.
So 3 x 0 is...
Copyright infringement is fraud but this is only significant when money is actually exchanged.
The reason why copyright infringement penalties are so high is because they were set long before the internet when they only parties interested in infringement were commercial outfits who were actually making a tidy sum from the sale of infringed works, under this system the outrageous penalties seem appropriate. Now technology has changed, the blanket penalties are no longer appropriate and the law needs to catch up. So as I said, a multiple of the amount of money earned (or estimated to be earned so long as there is sufficient evidence of money being made) is the only fair way, punishing people who are actually taking money away from rights holders whilst preventing rights holders from using the law as a cudgel against ordinary people.
2. Ring the number and type in the 36 character long string displayed on screen.
3. THEM: Hello Welcome to Microsoft Australia (from a man with a thick Indian accent) ME: Uhh, Hi, I'm unable to activate Windows. THEM: Your activation limit has been reached. ME: I've had to get my PC repaired. THEM: Please type this code into the box one number at a time in six number blocks. /minutes of bad Indian accents and slow typing. THEM: Windows should have now activated. THEM: Is there anyting else I can help you with. THEM: Would you mind completing a short survey about your experience with Microsoft support? ME: No thank you. /click.
4. Profit^W Activation.
As I said, no need to make shit up, if you cant figure out this simple process I've been using for years then it really must suck to be you.
Interestingly, this means that Microsoft are essentially forcing small PC shops (which can't reasonably be expected to keep a good stock of spares for every PC they've ever built, not when motherboards seldom stay on the market that long) to either break the terms of the license or absorb quite a bit of additional risk
Or call Microsoft to have the activation limit reset. BTW, I think for a retail copy of Windows that limit is about 3.
I hate Microsoft as much as the next/.er but they do enough actual evil. We don't need to make shit up.
Also, tasteful, inoffensive ads are considered "worthless" by advertisers because they, well, they are tasteful and inoffensive, they get overlooked and are easily forgotten.
I disagree, a good, tasteful and inoffensive ad campaign is more effective then any other type, take the Bunnings ad campaign, it's been going on for over a decade. The problem is that a good tasteful and inoffensive ad is hard (expensive) to make whilst less effective, offensive and tasteless ads are easy (cheap). The reduction in effectiveness is outweighed by the savings.
Ad companies can churn out crappy, "in your face" advertising by the truckload for pennies, ads like the Rube Goldberg car ad cost a lot and take a while to make so most companies pick the cheap and easy option.
I think in the Australia episode (somewhere in the first couple of seasons?) the subject of ridicule wasn't so much Australia as it was stereotypical American views of Australia.
I agree with the GP that the episode in question was not very funny but we Australian's dont complain about these kinds of things, that wouldn't be very Australian.
The Simpsons takes the piss out of everyone, as the GP said but they tend to have a go at US stereotype more often then other countries, I think quite a few of the jokes are things only a foreigner will get (non-USian, where I am you are the foreigner (yes I may live in Soviet Russia OR Soviet Russia may live in you)).
if you make a raw dollar comparison, and they aren't starving.
Plus things get a lot cheaper being that close to China and SE Asia. Electronics in Korea can easily cost half of what they do in the west.
Paying 1/3 in wages means you cut 2/3 of the cost of keeping someone in store to sell something or to move it. The cost of manpower accounts for quite a bit of prices in the west.
Muslims are disproportionally highly represented among those who don't integrate
Muslims are disproportionately highly represented among those who are disliked. Same with Roma.
I live in a nation without such xenophobic tendencies and most Muslims living here have integrated, Australia makes it very easy to integrate and ethnic groups tend not to form blocks or quarters along ethnic lines in our cities.
Governments like France's are trying to get popular support behind nationalistic banners so lashing out against the Muslims is easy way to do this, they are someone to blame all of societies problems on, because not many people know Muslims they become someone easy to dehumanise and easy to hate. I can remember not so long ago Europe did this with another ethnic group (and the Roma, they always seem to be getting screwed by someone).
It wasn't the free sharing of this book that boosted its sales.
True
What boosted sales was that the artist got tipped off about it, and had a chance to introduce himself and interact with the pirates, and put a face on "the copyright holder" for them.
Not so,
What the artist did is called "good marketing".
If the artist had of run in and shouted "Pirates, ha, I'll sue you, and you and your grandma, I'll dig up her grandma and sue her after I finish having my sweet, sweet way with her corpse" the people would have just said "what a douche, I'll just copy his crap".
Instead he walked in and said "so... you like my work, lets talk about it". From this people got the impression that he was creating things because he wanted to, not to make a quick buck. It's not about guilting them into it as you've inferred. If it were that easy the RIAA would have a picture of a kitten with a gun to it's head on every street corner to remind everyone of the "real" cost of copyright infringement. His sales increased because people liked him, this is part of the reason Valve is doing so well, people like them.
What, and Windows users aren't? I agree that most Mac users aren't exactly the brightest computer users, but get real, most Windows users don't even know other OS's exist
Mac users tend to be the kind of people who have trouble using windows. Having to support Mac's in an enterprise environment they expect their hand to be held at all times. In 2009 I had to show one how to click and drag and she'd been using Mac's since 2002. Seriously, she cried to her boss when I said "welcome to 1998" after teaching her that dragging a file into an new Outlook message will attach it, not complaining, not a bit cut but she was actually bawling.
Per machine, I spent more time hand-holding Mac users then I did fixing Windows.
You want your programs to use their repository features you submit it to their repository. Just like if you want you programs to be included in a Linux repository you submit it to the repository maintainer.
Actually no you don't, you can set up your own repository and point people to that in order to update. I don't know of a Linux distro that forbids the addition of thrid party repo's (there probably is one though). Certainly not Ubuntu, RH or Debian.
Now at the moment Apple are not restricting programs not installed via their repo and it's not like they have a history of locking down platforms in order to prevent thrid party sources of applications from being used...
No... Wait...
They do and it's bigger then OS X. A quite ominous precedent.
It is far more likely that Mac's will be switched to run IOS rather then OSX in order to homogenise the environment. OS X and OS X server will be merged into a server/high end desktop only available on machines starting at US$4K+. Application signing will come in that form, this is just easing you into it, boiling the frog as it were.
Remember the people that use OSX for very technical purposes are in the extreme minority. Such a tiny segment of less then 3% of the market it's not even worth mentioning. Mac users are primarily designers (which is why no one at Apple is an engineer, they are all "computer designers") who believe the FUD that Win/Linux cant do graphics, then people who hate windows. These people will not swtich so long as Apple makes sure there is some kind of photoshop available (I believe there already is an IOS version). Steve doesn't care about the/.er who claims he'll switch if Mac goes IOS, they are happy to sacrifice you to maintain the purity of the platform.
Honestly, I think if Apple mishandles this it'll be disastrous for the Mac
Ha ha, he he, ho ho,
Best laugh I've had in ages. Fanboys will keep buying Mac even if Steve has an intern defecate into a box and sticks an Apple logo on it. It doesn't matter what abuses they have to suffer, these people have too much invested, both financially and emotionally to even consider doing anything that may ever indicate that they were wrong.
Amazing, considering Australia was founded by thieves, murderers and whores.
Actually, the murders and whores stayed in merry old England where the whores were getting murdered.
The kind of people transported were petty criminals, people in debt and Irish (as Irish nationalism was a crime, read: displaying an Irish flag).
The reason murderers were kept in England was because after a sentence was completed, convicts were given a parcel of land that they could work. You don't give murderers an enormous open land they can hide in.
Tell the customs worker that you have a lot of porn on your laptop and you'd like to declare it. Then show him hundreds of pictures of feet. Just feet. Nothing else
Nice way to waste customs time.
Secondly, foot fetishes aren't illegal.
But they'll take 3 seconds to look at it and think your full of shit and wasting their time. AQIS isn't staffed by the same power mad morons that the US hires.
Slashdot Mirror
Never said there was anything unusual about it, in fact as we both pointed out it's quiet "usual".
As I was trying to point out, this is how Australian banks like to rip people off. Not only do they take 2% of a transaction when it's completed in a foreign currency (we are one of the _few_ nations where this is done, let alone the norm) but you also pay a $4 flat fee for using a visa cash advance and possibly a $2 fee for using a different banks ATM. Most people don't actually know about the % fee for using your debit or credit card for overseas purchases, banks like to bury this little detail deep down in their fee schedule so few people see it.
Seeing as NAB (National Australia Bank) doesn't have a branch open on a Saturday within cooee of where I live (15 minutes from a CBD) and CBA's (Commonwealth Bank of Australia) list of fees and charges are ridiculous compared to NAB's. It not that easy.
If I do take time from work in order to go to a bank all I'll get is a form to fill out. Tellers are handy for opening accounts, deposits, withdrawals and most other activities that are now online but they cannot make decisions (by bureaucratic design, tellers aren't retarded). After that form is lodged I have to wait up to 28 days to see any action on it.
I dot consider Paypal trustworthy in any way but it seems they are trying to shaft us in fewer ways then the banks are. I do a lot of transactions in foreign currency, there are few forex services in Australia that deal with SE Asian currencies with a low flat fee. I am yet to find a bank that will do ATM or POS transactions for less then a flat $4 fee and 2% of the transaction amount (CBA is 3%). I have a friend who lives in Spain, he finds it easier to use Paypal to move currency into and out of Australia.
It's not all bad, as many other posters have pointed out the online systems are fairly good, reducing the actual need for me to take time off of work to go into branches.
"Responsive and Trusted" does not mean in any way shape or form that PayPal and similar services are in any way responsive or trustworthy. All this story indicates is that they are _more_ trustworthy then they big four banks.
Some banks have effectively shut down operations outside of normal business hours making it difficult to impossible for some Australians to get to an actual bank, fees are hidden and slanted towards the banks favour to the point of outright fraud in some cases and the only method of appeal is to go via the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission), basically a government enquiry (as much good as the ACCC does, it does it very slowly).
It's next to impossible to find a credit (or debit) card that will not charge a minimum of 2% on top for foreign currency transactions. Paypal is not in any way trustworthy, but they are better then Aussie banks.
Also, US$75K is about 75 Iphones, that will fit into a large backpack.
Exactly, just walk out the back door. Your issue is logistics but anyone who knows someone in a crime syndicate (bikers, Mafia) can move 20 TV's. This is how the syndicates work. Working Stiff wants to make some extra cash, sells a pallet of TV's to a Mafioso who cleans them and sells them on. If anyone is likely to get done, it's the working stiff being caught in the act.
In addition to this, if you can get access to the locked cabinets, it's easy to walk out with US$75 K worth of jewellery in your pockets.
Correct.
Copyright infringement is not theft at all, it's fraud.
In this case, the only fair punishment is to take a multiple sum of what the infringer earned by the sale of said product as 1 pirated sale is equivalent to 1 actual sale (more or less, there was money exchanged for an infringed product). Now how much did ms Thomas make from the sale of that infringed material, multiply that by 2 or 3 and there you have the appropriate penalty.
So 3 x 0 is...
Copyright infringement is fraud but this is only significant when money is actually exchanged.
The reason why copyright infringement penalties are so high is because they were set long before the internet when they only parties interested in infringement were commercial outfits who were actually making a tidy sum from the sale of infringed works, under this system the outrageous penalties seem appropriate. Now technology has changed, the blanket penalties are no longer appropriate and the law needs to catch up. So as I said, a multiple of the amount of money earned (or estimated to be earned so long as there is sufficient evidence of money being made) is the only fair way, punishing people who are actually taking money away from rights holders whilst preventing rights holders from using the law as a cudgel against ordinary people.
1. Select "Activate by telephone".
/minutes of bad Indian accents and slow typing.
/click.
2. Ring the number and type in the 36 character long string displayed on screen.
3. THEM: Hello Welcome to Microsoft Australia (from a man with a thick Indian accent)
ME: Uhh, Hi, I'm unable to activate Windows.
THEM: Your activation limit has been reached.
ME: I've had to get my PC repaired.
THEM: Please type this code into the box one number at a time in six number blocks.
THEM: Windows should have now activated.
THEM: Is there anyting else I can help you with.
THEM: Would you mind completing a short survey about your experience with Microsoft support?
ME: No thank you.
4. Profit^W Activation.
As I said, no need to make shit up, if you cant figure out this simple process I've been using for years then it really must suck to be you.
Or call Microsoft to have the activation limit reset. BTW, I think for a retail copy of Windows that limit is about 3.
/.er but they do enough actual evil. We don't need to make shit up.
I hate Microsoft as much as the next
I disagree, a good, tasteful and inoffensive ad campaign is more effective then any other type, take the Bunnings ad campaign, it's been going on for over a decade. The problem is that a good tasteful and inoffensive ad is hard (expensive) to make whilst less effective, offensive and tasteless ads are easy (cheap). The reduction in effectiveness is outweighed by the savings.
Ad companies can churn out crappy, "in your face" advertising by the truckload for pennies, ads like the Rube Goldberg car ad cost a lot and take a while to make so most companies pick the cheap and easy option.
I agree with the GP that the episode in question was not very funny but we Australian's dont complain about these kinds of things, that wouldn't be very Australian.
The Simpsons takes the piss out of everyone, as the GP said but they tend to have a go at US stereotype more often then other countries, I think quite a few of the jokes are things only a foreigner will get (non-USian, where I am you are the foreigner (yes I may live in Soviet Russia OR Soviet Russia may live in you)).
That is a punishment only reserved for the worst of offenders, oh and Americans (this includes you, Canada and Mexico).
Plus things get a lot cheaper being that close to China and SE Asia. Electronics in Korea can easily cost half of what they do in the west.
Paying 1/3 in wages means you cut 2/3 of the cost of keeping someone in store to sell something or to move it. The cost of manpower accounts for quite a bit of prices in the west.
Muslims are disproportionately highly represented among those who are disliked. Same with Roma.
I live in a nation without such xenophobic tendencies and most Muslims living here have integrated, Australia makes it very easy to integrate and ethnic groups tend not to form blocks or quarters along ethnic lines in our cities.
Governments like France's are trying to get popular support behind nationalistic banners so lashing out against the Muslims is easy way to do this, they are someone to blame all of societies problems on, because not many people know Muslims they become someone easy to dehumanise and easy to hate. I can remember not so long ago Europe did this with another ethnic group (and the Roma, they always seem to be getting screwed by someone).
Well I get my games from the same place I get my women,
Cheap, from some Asian country.
True
Not so,
What the artist did is called "good marketing".
If the artist had of run in and shouted "Pirates, ha, I'll sue you, and you and your grandma, I'll dig up her grandma and sue her after I finish having my sweet, sweet way with her corpse" the people would have just said "what a douche, I'll just copy his crap".
Instead he walked in and said "so... you like my work, lets talk about it". From this people got the impression that he was creating things because he wanted to, not to make a quick buck. It's not about guilting them into it as you've inferred. If it were that easy the RIAA would have a picture of a kitten with a gun to it's head on every street corner to remind everyone of the "real" cost of copyright infringement. His sales increased because people liked him, this is part of the reason Valve is doing so well, people like them.
This is good marketing.
Here's your rope, that's $29.95, hanging pole is to your right.
Shortly there after Steve died of blood loss caused by trying to tape a cat to a piece of bread.
Mac users tend to be the kind of people who have trouble using windows. Having to support Mac's in an enterprise environment they expect their hand to be held at all times. In 2009 I had to show one how to click and drag and she'd been using Mac's since 2002. Seriously, she cried to her boss when I said "welcome to 1998" after teaching her that dragging a file into an new Outlook message will attach it, not complaining, not a bit cut but she was actually bawling.
Per machine, I spent more time hand-holding Mac users then I did fixing Windows.
Yes they can, I'll explain.
Actually no you don't, you can set up your own repository and point people to that in order to update. I don't know of a Linux distro that forbids the addition of thrid party repo's (there probably is one though). Certainly not Ubuntu, RH or Debian.
Now at the moment Apple are not restricting programs not installed via their repo and it's not like they have a history of locking down platforms in order to prevent thrid party sources of applications from being used...
No...
Wait...
They do and it's bigger then OS X. A quite ominous precedent.
Yes,
/.er who claims he'll switch if Mac goes IOS, they are happy to sacrifice you to maintain the purity of the platform.
It is far more likely that Mac's will be switched to run IOS rather then OSX in order to homogenise the environment. OS X and OS X server will be merged into a server/high end desktop only available on machines starting at US$4K+. Application signing will come in that form, this is just easing you into it, boiling the frog as it were.
Remember the people that use OSX for very technical purposes are in the extreme minority. Such a tiny segment of less then 3% of the market it's not even worth mentioning. Mac users are primarily designers (which is why no one at Apple is an engineer, they are all "computer designers") who believe the FUD that Win/Linux cant do graphics, then people who hate windows. These people will not swtich so long as Apple makes sure there is some kind of photoshop available (I believe there already is an IOS version). Steve doesn't care about the
Ha ha, he he, ho ho,
Best laugh I've had in ages. Fanboys will keep buying Mac even if Steve has an intern defecate into a box and sticks an Apple logo on it. It doesn't matter what abuses they have to suffer, these people have too much invested, both financially and emotionally to even consider doing anything that may ever indicate that they were wrong.
There, fixed that for you.
Geeks have a pasion for gadgets that actually do something, which eliminates the device talked about in TFA (The Fucking obvious Advertisement)
Actually, the murders and whores stayed in merry old England where the whores were getting murdered.
The kind of people transported were petty criminals, people in debt and Irish (as Irish nationalism was a crime, read: displaying an Irish flag).
The reason murderers were kept in England was because after a sentence was completed, convicts were given a parcel of land that they could work. You don't give murderers an enormous open land they can hide in.
Nice way to waste customs time.
Secondly, foot fetishes aren't illegal.
But they'll take 3 seconds to look at it and think your full of shit and wasting their time. AQIS isn't staffed by the same power mad morons that the US hires.
It worked, I have travelled back to the year 2000.