Yeah, because everyone knows that without collusion of either side, both sides, the workers and the multi-billion dollar global corporations, have exactly equal bargaining power.
He had a perfectly reasonable explanation for that. He says he tripped and fell into a lifeboat, and then was "stuck" there for an hour before it was lowered into the water. Now, before you say that's an unlikely explanation, imagine if the captain was Mr Bean.
Indeed - the glow effect in the sky caused by light pollution is visible up to 80km from the light source according to the accompanying BBC article. That makes it pretty hard to find anywhere in the UK without some light pollution (take a look at the map further down the page, a few small pockets in Scotland is about it for the UK stargazer).
My guess is they'll wait until everyone is tired of hearing about SOPA/PIPA and then they'll pass a slightly watered down version and claim democracy in action. The cynic in me wonders if that wasn't the plan all along - intentionally create a bill so odious it could never pass, let everyone complain, water it down a little then make a big song and dance about how great the protestors were and how this is much better.
It does seem a little odd. Also, the suggestion of Samsung distancing itself from the Android eco-system (in the BGR article) is the opposite of what I want from a phone manufacturer. I have the Galaxy Nexus, and the pairing of Samsung's phone design and Android ICS is very slick. If anything, I'd say there's a big shiny niche in the market for the first manufacturer to decide to offer vanilla ICS on all their handsets instead of adding their own UI over the top.
You're missing the point of this, it's not a workdesk. Besides, we're at the point where voice control is now feasible for almost all the tasks you'd need this for (with the likes of Kinect, Siri, Google Voice search etc proving the concept). If you're trying to do your accounts or write a novel on this thing you're missing the point (having said that, no reason it couldn't work with a bluetooth keyboard).
Apparently standard displays have 5% transparency, this pushes that to 15-20%, so it's still an improvement (and probably less of a power drain during daylight when it doesn't need edge lighting - or not so much - as it can rely on natural light).
You can even just turn off Javascript and use the site entirely as normal (with CSS et al), but I would advise not to - it's a worthy cause and we should be supportive of it, even if it's a little inconvenient.
I'd read that the window was "one way". I assumed, since you can see out (clearly, from the example) this meant that people couldn't see in (i.e. the windows would be blacked out). That would make much more sense, there's rarely a good reason for people being able to see into your home and lots of bad reasons.
There's no indication yet that this will be a common thing. So far they've announced they will be offline for a grand total of one day. That's hardly going to kill you, you have advance notice so you can plan around it, too - they could have a technical outage at any time with the same affect but you're not refusing to donate until they can prove they have sufficient levels of failover support I assume? You really need to listen to yourself - this is a huge issue with potential for global impact and you're whining because you can't look up information from this one service (the rest of the internet is largely going to be there) for one single 24 hour period.
Indeed - if the laws in the US attack US sites that have a global audience, we already have a vested interest. When those laws seek to punish sites outside the US, even more so. We also live in a world where alleged copyright infringers are now being extradited to the US for trial - nobody who lives in a country with a US extradition treaty is safe from this garbage or should stand idly by (and certainly nobody has the right to complain that a free site will be offline for a single day when the cause is so laudable).
Although of course, if you do want to play the money game, the best way to play against the content industry is to not buy their crap. That would hurt them far more than trying to outbid for politicians (and it might get them to change their ways without us having to further corrupt our political process).
You don't think SOPA/PIPA will affect you if you live outside the USA? This kind of policy has a tendency to spread to other countries with like-minded politicians. I'm in the UK and my only wish was that more big tech companies would follow suit (imagine if Twitter, Facebook, even Google all turned their services off for the day). We hear it time and again that the ordinary man in the street doesn't know or understand about these issues - well maybe this is the best way to get the message across.
Erm, for anyone who works all week and also has to commute so doesn't have time to get to the shop, and doesn't want to waste their weekend making a special journey to the shop just to sell their phone - yeah it would be nice to sell old phones in the middle of the night. After all, I can already go to supermarkets and buy phones in the middle of the night, so it's only logical.
The difference is the shop clerk needs a shop to operate out of. This just needs a couple of square feet of floorspace in a mall. They could even do a deal with people who operate those change converting machines to put both systems in one (share the running costs and rental overheads for machines that probably sit unused for 90% of the time).
I'm pretty sure they will have considered at least some of the more obvious scams and figured out ways around them. Once your phone is inside the machine they could run some diagnostics on the screen with the data cable plugged in and scan that to ensure it's a properly working model. They could even use this opportunity to test things like the bluetooth/wifi/speakers/audio jack if those things affect the price sufficiently.
Bonus points if it opens a little drawer full of cash and, as the seller is reaching for it, slaps them in handcuffs to await the arrival of the police.
Demand a credit or debit card and make the payment to that account? Sure you can drop a stolen phone in there if you want the police to pay a visit to the account holder.
The problem with the current system is that drug users have no choice but to deal with criminals in order to get their fix. Those criminals have a vested interested in selling the users onto harder and more addictive substances to ensure repeat business and/or higher profits. Remove the criminal element and you might find that you negate the slippery slope somewhat - it's not like there aren't countries already trying this out with reasonably positive results.
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Yeah, because everyone knows that without collusion of either side, both sides, the workers and the multi-billion dollar global corporations, have exactly equal bargaining power.
Damn, I had points but I've already commented so I'll just say bravo.
He had a perfectly reasonable explanation for that. He says he tripped and fell into a lifeboat, and then was "stuck" there for an hour before it was lowered into the water. Now, before you say that's an unlikely explanation, imagine if the captain was Mr Bean.
True, but SOPA is very much anti-lulz, so the two aims of stopping SOPA and having lulz aren't mutually exclusive.
There is nothing funny about clowns.
Indeed - the glow effect in the sky caused by light pollution is visible up to 80km from the light source according to the accompanying BBC article. That makes it pretty hard to find anywhere in the UK without some light pollution (take a look at the map further down the page, a few small pockets in Scotland is about it for the UK stargazer).
My guess is they'll wait until everyone is tired of hearing about SOPA/PIPA and then they'll pass a slightly watered down version and claim democracy in action. The cynic in me wonders if that wasn't the plan all along - intentionally create a bill so odious it could never pass, let everyone complain, water it down a little then make a big song and dance about how great the protestors were and how this is much better.
It does seem a little odd. Also, the suggestion of Samsung distancing itself from the Android eco-system (in the BGR article) is the opposite of what I want from a phone manufacturer. I have the Galaxy Nexus, and the pairing of Samsung's phone design and Android ICS is very slick. If anything, I'd say there's a big shiny niche in the market for the first manufacturer to decide to offer vanilla ICS on all their handsets instead of adding their own UI over the top.
Clearly you don't understand.
Meet them halfway and fly those little gyrocopters you operate with an Android/iOS phone :)
You're missing the point of this, it's not a workdesk. Besides, we're at the point where voice control is now feasible for almost all the tasks you'd need this for (with the likes of Kinect, Siri, Google Voice search etc proving the concept). If you're trying to do your accounts or write a novel on this thing you're missing the point (having said that, no reason it couldn't work with a bluetooth keyboard).
Apparently standard displays have 5% transparency, this pushes that to 15-20%, so it's still an improvement (and probably less of a power drain during daylight when it doesn't need edge lighting - or not so much - as it can rely on natural light).
You can even just turn off Javascript and use the site entirely as normal (with CSS et al), but I would advise not to - it's a worthy cause and we should be supportive of it, even if it's a little inconvenient.
I'd read that the window was "one way". I assumed, since you can see out (clearly, from the example) this meant that people couldn't see in (i.e. the windows would be blacked out). That would make much more sense, there's rarely a good reason for people being able to see into your home and lots of bad reasons.
There's no indication yet that this will be a common thing. So far they've announced they will be offline for a grand total of one day. That's hardly going to kill you, you have advance notice so you can plan around it, too - they could have a technical outage at any time with the same affect but you're not refusing to donate until they can prove they have sufficient levels of failover support I assume? You really need to listen to yourself - this is a huge issue with potential for global impact and you're whining because you can't look up information from this one service (the rest of the internet is largely going to be there) for one single 24 hour period.
Indeed - if the laws in the US attack US sites that have a global audience, we already have a vested interest. When those laws seek to punish sites outside the US, even more so. We also live in a world where alleged copyright infringers are now being extradited to the US for trial - nobody who lives in a country with a US extradition treaty is safe from this garbage or should stand idly by (and certainly nobody has the right to complain that a free site will be offline for a single day when the cause is so laudable).
Although of course, if you do want to play the money game, the best way to play against the content industry is to not buy their crap. That would hurt them far more than trying to outbid for politicians (and it might get them to change their ways without us having to further corrupt our political process).
You don't think SOPA/PIPA will affect you if you live outside the USA? This kind of policy has a tendency to spread to other countries with like-minded politicians. I'm in the UK and my only wish was that more big tech companies would follow suit (imagine if Twitter, Facebook, even Google all turned their services off for the day). We hear it time and again that the ordinary man in the street doesn't know or understand about these issues - well maybe this is the best way to get the message across.
Erm, for anyone who works all week and also has to commute so doesn't have time to get to the shop, and doesn't want to waste their weekend making a special journey to the shop just to sell their phone - yeah it would be nice to sell old phones in the middle of the night. After all, I can already go to supermarkets and buy phones in the middle of the night, so it's only logical.
The difference is the shop clerk needs a shop to operate out of. This just needs a couple of square feet of floorspace in a mall. They could even do a deal with people who operate those change converting machines to put both systems in one (share the running costs and rental overheads for machines that probably sit unused for 90% of the time).
I'm pretty sure they will have considered at least some of the more obvious scams and figured out ways around them. Once your phone is inside the machine they could run some diagnostics on the screen with the data cable plugged in and scan that to ensure it's a properly working model. They could even use this opportunity to test things like the bluetooth/wifi/speakers/audio jack if those things affect the price sufficiently.
Bonus points if it opens a little drawer full of cash and, as the seller is reaching for it, slaps them in handcuffs to await the arrival of the police.
Demand a credit or debit card and make the payment to that account? Sure you can drop a stolen phone in there if you want the police to pay a visit to the account holder.
Maybe you have to provide bank account details or have the money paid onto a debit/credit card or something similarly easy to trace.
The problem with the current system is that drug users have no choice but to deal with criminals in order to get their fix. Those criminals have a vested interested in selling the users onto harder and more addictive substances to ensure repeat business and/or higher profits. Remove the criminal element and you might find that you negate the slippery slope somewhat - it's not like there aren't countries already trying this out with reasonably positive results.