Posts by Russell Clarke

IT executive at JP Morgan dies in fall from bank's London HQ

@DannyAston

So gallows humour == lack of human compassion for fuck sake.....?

It's still popular. Perhaps that says something about 'human'?

Re: Hmm...

Perhaps it is a little disturbing, but gallows humour is common and it's free expression. Are you advocating censorship on the grounds of 'taste'?

Big tech firms holding wages down? Marx was right all along, I tell ya!

Re: Labour theory of Value

There's recursion involved, you said:

"In your gold example, without labour that dirt is worthless. But if the capital isn't allowed to make its share of the profits then there won't be any capital. Just try mining for gold without drills, air pumps, metal pit props and all the other expensive things required to make a mine...

Also, by the same idea, if a car is entirely built by robots, the manufacturer should give it away free!"

The Marxist point is that the 'expensive things' (the drills, pumps et al) are also produced by labour too and take their Marxist value from that. Likewise the robots that build the car are themselves built by labour somewhere in their 'blockchain' (as it were) and will need labour to maintain them so the car isn't 'free' at all...

Web-email king Mail.ru gulps $15k fine, fights govt demand to slurp data

Re: Good for them!

Dear A. Coward... Yes. What's that got to do with what the Britsdid in 1947?

Did you know that around 500BCE the Achaemenid Persian Empire referred to the lower and middle Indus regions, respectively comprising Sindh and Sauvira, as the twentieth satrapy and called it, amongst other names, the Indian Satrapy?

Did you know that before 1776 the USA didnt exist as a country before the war against the British? There were just a variety of independant and/or autonomous nations all as every bit as bitey and back stabby as their European equivalents...

History eh? Great subject. "Doomed to repeat" and all that. I sometimes wish I'd been a history teacher rather than a(n) MoR IT techie!

However the signal/noise ratio to the replies now seems to be getting a bit low and IMNSHO are wide of my original point so it's TTFN.

Cheers all and good luck to mail.ru!

Re: Russell Clarke Good for them!

Matt... My response was no apology. And actually _nineteen_ states in the heartland of the US became a vast dust bowl (check this with the US).

You know, my reply to the original post was carefully reasoned - I am fairly knowledgeable about history and some of the events I mentioned are not so well known as perhaps they should be (politics of course which comes close to my point). I originally intended to treat your reply with the same respect, but then saw the bit about Islam and sighed... (though no silly FAIL icon).

One of the supposed pleasures of democracy is the dialectic or debate, but not always.

Anyway, you're right about the Great Purge but to return to my point - what has this to do with mail.ru and wedges?

Re: Good for them!

What particular thin ended wedge are you meaning? You seem just to want to make your own somewhat irrelevant statement of 'political ideal or convenience'. Historical fingers can be pointed anywhere... The USSR under Stalin was definitely no picnic but exchange that for being a serf in Czarist Russia? The USA in the 20's 'migrated' farmers into the Dakotas and whopee created the dust bowls and their immense poverty. Or how about the British and the 'Salt Wall' in India? Then as a final 'sc*ew you' to the Indian population at Independence the Brits partitioned India and mass migrated 'whole populations' to Pakistan and (now) Bangladesh. Look what that's done.

Let's just be positive that mail.ru are helping Russia move in the right direction (unless this is a smart bluff from his Putin-ness??).

And I feel for your wife. Surviving forced mass migration and seeing so many die is not something anyone should go through.

MI5 boss: Snowden leaks of GCHQ methods HELPED TERRORISTS

Re: Whats wrong with surveillance

...And isn't it weird how 'plod' never hands over his PCs, phones and so on to us... after all shirley 'plod' have nothing to hide...? Oh wait....

How much will Apple cough for ebook conspiracy? Trial starts May 2014

There is another side to this...

I'm interested to see that there doesn't seem to be an opposing view to the 'Apple did wrong' view. The book trade seems to see this differently....

"There is rarely a case in the book business in which a piece of news can be so differently received. Do you take the view that Apple, in its arrogance, deserves to pay the substantial sums which will be imposed because they have conspired to force up the price of ebooks for the consumer? This is the view from the world of technology as well as the legal one.

Or do you say, as much of the book trade on both sides of the Atlantic , including the Bookseller, has done, that it was just an attempt to stop Amazon trying to entice consumers to buy ebooks, especially through its Kindle device, at very low prices?

The regulatory authorities on both sides of the Atlantic have tended to support Amazon whenever it has come to a showdown. Many in the UK book trade were astounded when the giant internet retailer was allowed to go ahead with its purchase of The Book Depository, even though it was one of the few companies offering any challenge to Amazon. By deciding that Amazon did not yet have a dominant position in the UK book trade as a whole, the UK Office of Fair Trading ignored the fact that it certainly does have a monopoly in online book sales, and allowed the acquisition to go ahead.

Amazon does seem unstoppable and many suspect they have used low prices as a tool to drive their competitors out of business. Of course books were just a starting-point and the internet retailer now trades in many other areas, establishing dominance on the web in many countries."

Interesting view... will Amazon now raise the price of e-books?

Another thought... I'm not an author and have no idea how Amazon et al pay royalties to authors but something about the modern state of play for non mega-corporates or bankers makes me think it's not a lot and if e-book prices go down this can only get worse for them.

For 'context'... I do read books, I don't use or buy Apple products, I don't use or buy e-books and I don't buy from Amazon. I try not to use Google either but hey there are only so many impossible things you can do before breakfast!

Rebel Nominet director calls for the heads of Chairman and CEO

Seems a bit one sided...

This 'article' seems like it came straight from Jim Davies. Nominet members will have been able to see plenty of discussion about this on the Steering group mailing list. And, Jim apparently hasn't signed his non-executive director's contract yet.

See http://www.notnominet.org.uk/questions.htm for an alternative view!