while there were various decent, proprietary, dialects that let you actually write code that did stuff, *standard* Pascal was as much use as a chocolate teapot
And that's still a problem today. There's no standard for OO Pascal, and the ANSI Pascal standards have been moribund since 1990.
That's why I abandoned Pascal (and Modula-2): I didn't want to get locked in to a single vendor.
More to the point, Android is an open source and freely redistributable platform.
There was no GPL purge.
Thanks, Baghdad Bob, but I've been monitoring the purge for some time.
Samba is no longer used in Mac OS X.
Apple got rid of it as part of their GPL software purge.
Yup, NSA has full access to Skype, with their cooperation.
Semantic indentation? Blech.
If you want Python, go write Python. Don't ruin Lisp trying to turn it into Python.
Actually, OS X contains code and bugs that date back to the 1970s.
Whether the term is enforceable or not is debatable and almost certain to be rendered moot. Unlike US Republicans, UK Conservatives do actually believe in the rule of law and honest business practices (sort of). There isn't any party who believes that screwing the consumer is a constitutional right. There will be a bill passed.
A rather more direct question is whether the hotelier was entitled to collect the charge under the credit card agreement. And that is unambiguous, he isn't. A credit card merchant cannot use a charge card to recover a disputed charge. It does not matter what the purported contract term was or if it is enforceable. The credit card agreements are designed to prevent cardholders from dishonest merchants. So the consumer will get their refund and the hotelier will find themselves facing a 30 quid chargeback fee.
The only option for the hotelier to recover would be to take the matter to court. The most he could win is the hundred pounds, if he lost he would likely be out the legal costs which could be a couple of thousand. Small claims courts don't usually award costs but they might well do so in this case. Judges tend to detest bullies.
Its more than that, without regulation you end up with a lemon-law market.
Lots of times the difference between an honest product and a dishonest one only becomes apparent years later. If the product is safety equipment you only find out if the hard hat works when someone drops the brick on your head.
The libertarian theory that self interest will drive people to make honest products has turned out to be utterly false. In fact it turns out to be quite difficult for a company that intends to do the right thing to do so. I once had to get a guy fired after I found he had goosed his response rates for customer support calls by deliberately setting the phone tree up as a maze.
People do all sorts of idiotic short sighted stuff. This hotelier for example got his pants in a twist over a bad review and now he has probably sunk his business completely.
Rational choice is not an empirical fact of human behavior. It is a modelling assumption that tends to give good results in certain cases. But it does not hold for corporations because the interests of the corporation are not identical to those of the employees. All those banks who go belly up because the traders get big rewards for raking in profits and face no consequences for a loss. I don't gamble with my own money but if you want to give me $100,000 to gamble with I am happy to take it to Vegas, find a roulette wheel and let you take 100% of any losses and 90% of any gains.
The ones he insists don't exist because the Guardian article is all lies?
If you're going to issue a denial, you should at least get your story internally consistent.
The news hit the developers in the Stockholm office very hard to the point that people were actually sobbing.
Yeah, they probably know how well being bought by Microsoft worked out for Sublogic. Or Oddworld Inhabitants. Or Bungie, even, forced to crank out endless formulaic sequels.
On the one hand, I can't blame notch, because if Microsoft offered me enough cash to retire, I'd sell out. But on the other hand, notch is already a millionaire, right? It's not like he needs the money.
Since I started avoiding bread, potato (not sweet potato), rice, pasta and sugar, I've lost a lot of weight.
I did even less -- I cut the added sugar (specifically fructose) to the AHA recommended limits, but I allowed myself to eat all the other carbs I liked, and as much raw fresh fruit as I liked. Weight fell off me and has stayed off for 6 months now. My waistline dropped by 4". So far it seems I can basically eat as much as I like, including carbs, whenever I'm hungry, and stay at a healthy weight, so long as I keep my sugar intake low. So personally, I'm pretty much convinced that Dr Robert Lustig is right about fructose.
Of course, YMMV, I'm not a doctor, etc etc.
On the one hand, I like my glasses. They have also prevented stuff from getting in my eyes more than once.
On the other hand, LASIK involves someone slicing into the front of my eyeballs while I am fully conscious and watching them do it.
If all else fails, lower your standards.
