Comment Re:Wouldn't time be better spent... (Score 1) 481
If they are so concerned about not being shot that they are willing to violate people's rights, why become police in the first place?
You know what a logo is? Same as a brand - it's a promise of quality. For good or bad. If a product can demand a 50% mark up because of a given logo, it's because the logo has built up a significant level of trust in the high quality of the product, either directly or by word of mouth.
Not exactly. While there is some truth to that analysis, it completely ignores the much larger effects of marketing and fashion. A Rolex doesn't cost 3 orders of magnitude more than a Chinese knockoff because it delivers 3 orders of magniute as much "quality"; the price is a reflection of fashion rather than functionality. Similarly, a basic Starbucks coffee costs 2-3 times as much as a coffee at the local diner, but certainly doesn't deliver 2-3 times the "quality". And don't get me started on the absurd amounts of money people are willing to pay to scam artists and frauds (eg. Sylvia Brown, "psychic", ~$700 per hour) who deliver absolutely nothing other than vague promises.
tl;dr: people will buy expensive shit for reasons that have nothing to do with quality.
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.
It must be wonderful to always have racism as an excuse. When shitty things like that happen to me, I have to wonder if maybe I screwed up somehow. You never have to question yourself; just blame whitey!
Maybe you should stop carrying a mop and bucket around with you? Just an idea
As an example, a business or industry that recruits heavily through word-of-mouth recommendations is likely to end up with a systematic racism problem
Dude, that TOTALLY explains why my career in the NBA never even got off the ground. Tell me - who do I complain to?
Why is it flamebait?
Because it's obviously off-topic, worded in a way that's intentionally incorrect and hopelessly hyperbolic, and evidently meant to evict an emotional response. It's the intellectual equivalent of saying "Hurr Durr, FOX is teh dumb and Micro$$$oft maeks crappy computers!". The article is about the military trying to plan for global warming, but you're taken it as an opportunity to slag random talking heads on the news and Lockheed Martin all in one stroke.
Or did you mean "why am I posting flamebait"? I'm not sure about the answer to that one, but I assume it's because you have nothing interesting to say about the actual article but are lonely and want someone to argue with. Was there some other reason which I'm not seeing?
The better question would be why is pure flamebait getting modded informative?
Initial set up of the device could certainly require setting a password to activate. However, there's nothing stopping, and many will, set an easily guessable password anyway.
We can do better. I bought a DIR-505 router-thingy a while back and it had a default password assigned, but it was a randomly generated string of characters that was then stuck on a sticker on the side of the device. That's even easier than making the user set up their own password initially. This way those who are most vulnerable (ie. people who don't know how to change the password, or would use a weak one if you give them the option) will be protected, while more advanced users will retain the ability to do whatever the hell they want.
Sure, maybe it costs a bit more to have randomly generated passwords and stickers on each device, but it's definitely money well spent.
Piracy is a civil matter, it doesn't demand the action of law enforcement agencies (or at least, it wouldn't if they were not owned by Disney).
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The power to enforce copyright laws was written into the constitution, which I'm fairly sure predates Disney by a few years or so. The constitution doesn't generally concern itself with "civil matters". Secondly, even civil matters "demand the action of law enforcement agencies" in the role of enforcement if nothing else, so that particular distinction is completely spurious. Lastly, which branch of the government is responsible for adjudicating or enforcing which laws is completely irrelevant when the topic of discussion is whether or not a particular action can actually be effectively addressed by legislative processes.
Basically everything you've said is completely wrong, in every way it's possible to be wrong.
Start reading here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
and don't stop until you get to the bottom. Then come back and try to contribute something a bit more factual / useful.
The same accusations were made against Anita Sarkeesian. For some reason she posted death and rape threats against herself on Twitter, in order to lose money by being unable to attend public speaking events.
Oh yeah, she lost boatloads of money. I mean getting $150,000 on kickstarter instead of the $6,000 she asked for
If you think any of these women are losing money, you're delusional. This kind of publicity is the best thing that could have happened to them.
Except that you're forgetting, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.
Oh but there is. You can complain really really loudly, and then summon an army of SJWs to also complain really really loudly. Then you can all use the resulting uproar to further promote your blog/book/online-business.
You know what they say; there's no such thing as bad publicity.
Which in no way changes the point.
They are illegal anywhere against anyone.
So is piracy. How are we doing at stopping that on the intertubes, anyway?
Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable, and three parts which are still under development.
