Posts by Graham Marsden 6899 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jan 2007
> Maybe the blame lies with the co-author(s).
Regrettably that's usually the case. When a Big Name Author starts franchising out the writing to someone else, it's never as good.
What's really galling is when you get caught by a Bait-and-Switch with the famous name in big bright letters on the front and the co-author's name in tiny, dark letters somewhere underneath and you don't realise it until after you've handed over the money :-(
... that EULAs which say "you don't anything, we just give you permission to use it" are being used against the companies who wrote them, if it wasn't for the fact that this is being used to circumvent the rights of users.
I sincerely hope that 1) The Feds get told by the Courts to take a running jump and 2) The EULA writers sort their bloody game out ASAP!
1) Privatise the prisons so companies like G4S get paid by the number of people in their institutions
2) Make it much more difficult for people to get legal aid by slashing the budget
3) Privatise the Courts system so the people running it are the same ones running the prisons
4) Profit!!!
> I don't care what happens to people who choose to impose prison on themselves....
"With less than 5 percent of the world’s population but nearly 25 percent of its incarcerated population, the United States imprisons more people than any other nation in the world – largely due to the war on drugs. Misguided drug laws and draconian sentencing requirements have produced profoundly unequal outcomes for communities of color. Although rates of drug use and selling are comparable across racial and ethnic lines, blacks and Latinos are far more likely to be criminalized for drug law violations than whites."
http://www.drugpolicy.org/resource/drug-war-mass-incarceration-and-race
... this examination of the historical facts (which is probably about as accurate as Plutarch's version...)
The difference between the situations you describe and what Apple has done is that the others require you to give your card information up front, so there is at least a *clue* that you're going to be charged once the trial period ends.
Apple, however, already *have* your payment information...
> What's the problem? Apple is only giving three months for free, after that you have to pay.
The problem is what's called Inertia Selling
"Apple set it up so that users of the trial period were automatically subscribed to the service when it expired. And thanks to the fact that the app is running on Apple's system – which in the vast majority of cases already contains people's credit card details – it was able to seamlessly sign people up without forcing them to enter their credit card details."
Signing people up to a service "for free" and then taking money off them if they don't unsubscribe is verging on the illegal and I hope it comes back to bite them on the arse if someone is willing to stand up to them (unfortunately, they'll need deep pockets...)
> The former is easily defined, the latter somewhat nebulous.
Alas, even the former is nebulous, hence the case of of the 14 year old boy having the crime of making and distributing indecent images recorded against him by police and there are other examples of people being convicted for having images of someone over 18, but who *looks* under 18.
If we can't even make clear definitions of the former, the latter is virtually impossible (of course that won't stop our Nanny Government trying to tell us that we're not allowed to see it in case it makes us do something bad...)
Unfortunately even if we *did* get a written Constitution, instead of getting clear, declarative rules, they would be so laden down with weasel phrases like "except to prevent terrorism or crime or protect children (or to stop anyone we don't like being able to exercise these rights)" that it wouldn't be worth the paper it's written on :-(
Unlike word of mouth, writing has a permanent form which can be referred back to, rather than relying on someone's (possibly unreliable) memory or the tendency of some people to embellish details.
Also (from another post) Printing is, ultimately, effectively just more efficient writing, allowing mass reproduction and distribution of information, rather than laboriously copying by hand, but really just a development of what already existed.
That rather relies on the publishers' service actually being important enough to the users that said users will stop blocking ads in order to see the content.
Sorry, publishers, but the vast majority of you are not indispensible...
I recall the first time I played the sit-in version and I was utterly blown away by the immersive experience of not just standing in front of a cabinet, but actually having the whole machine move around me in response to my controls!
There were others that followed, but I still hold a treasured memory of retfA renruB (as I used to refer to it since the title would spin round and reverse on screen ;-) )
> Your problem is not with these poor cold and wet guys on the street, it is with the advertisers.
FYI, in the past (long before the advent of MW) I have delivered leaflets, so I do know what is involved.
But you're right that my problem is with the advertisers because if they paid more than the minimum wage, the guys on the street would not be working below it if people put "no flyers" signs on their doors. Of course the advertisers won't pay more, because they'll argue that "if we pay more than the minimum wage, it will mean we have to charge more for our services and that would mean we couldn't employ so many people, so it would be *your* fault they're out of a job" (which actually means "I wouldn't be able to pay myself so much...")
However the point is that it's *my* front door and just because I have a letter box and a doorbell does *not* mean that everyone is free to shove their rubbish through it or disturb me when I'm working (I work from home), meaning I have to drop everything and find out it's some idiot wanting to sell me something I don't want and wouldn't buy at the front door even if I did or push their religious BS onto me.
This is no different from my browsing a website and someone's advert being stuck over what I'm trying to read or jumping up and down and flashing in my peripheral vision or unexpectedly blasting out sound from my speakers and if you do that to me, I *WILL* be a grumpy, miserable git!
> I have a plastic engraved plaque on my letter box flap with the same message and also 'no cold callers'
For brevity I didn't include the full version which is printed in big letters on an A4 sheet and says:
NO
FLYERS
MENUS
JUNK MAIL
SURVEYS
COLD CALLERS
RELIGIOUS PERSONS
YES, THIS DOES MEAN YOU!
There are still those stupid enough or arrogant enough to ignore it :-(
> If it is your ad that has annoyed them, then you will lose goodwill with that person and probably a potential customer too, because your company / product is associated with irritation and annoyance.
Hear hear!
A parallel example: I have a big sign on my front door that says "NO Flyers, Menus, Junk Mail", yet still some idiots shove their rubbish through my letter box.
I take great delight in phoning up the companies involved and informing them that, because of this, there is no way I will ever use their services since their employees have so little respect for my wishes.
Apropos of this: here's an article published just today "Now the Tories are allowing big business to design their own tax loopholes"
I am not a tax expert, so don't expect me to cite specific rules and I doubt you're an expert either, so even if I did, would you be able to validate my claims?
That is, however, of course, the point. Neither of us can afford the "buy in" which is the cost of the expensive accountants and tax experts who know the loopholes and avoidance methods that exist in the incredibly complicated tax rules we would need to negotiate to play the game on their level.
A lot better, because these cars are actually paying attention all around *all* the time, leaving the passenger free to make phone calls, play with their laptops or even doze off without endangering anyone else which is a big change from the current situation.
> Ram the driverless Volvo!
Are you aware that the driverless cars are fitted with cameras and lasers to scan the area around to them to enable them to *be* driverless? I think they'd be recording that data...
> What if a driverless Volvo and driverless Tesla hit each other?
Then one or both must have had a major systems failure (or been shunted into the other by another vehicle)
> I found the factory configuration menu of the neighbour's car.
Now that one *is* a serious concern, hopefully there's no hard-coded passwords or other such nonsense caused by Sales taking precedence over Security!
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