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Comment: Credit cards blocked in Africa? (Score 1) 146

by Paktu (#31972166) Attached to: Bridging the Digital Divide In Uganda, By Freight
"Most merchants and payment gateway providers automatically block all credit cards from Africa"
Would someone knowledgable explain the reasoning behind this? I know Africa has more than its share of scammers, but why couldn't a merchant simply set rules requiring the funds to clear, a minimum amount of time between the purchase date and ship date, etc.? Why is an outright ban needed?

Comment: Re:Indian Copyright Bill (Score 1, Insightful) 192

by Paktu (#31965178) Attached to: Indian Copyright Bill Declares Private, Personal Copying "Fair Dealing"
I suspect I'm going to get modded down for saying this, but...
You might be able to make the case that Indians work hard, but are they actually productive. I read one anecdote after another about terrible performance from Indian web designers, programmers, call center workers, etc.

I am very reluctant to believe that Indians are somehow inherently "better workers" than Americans.

Comment: Re:Disclosure At the Table (Score 5, Insightful) 217

by Paktu (#30974794) Attached to: Mum's the Word On Google Attack At Davos
I am seeing countries continually regressing in the moral and ethical obligations, a degradation of honesty, transparency, and openness all in the name of making more money. I hear this mantra repeated on /. and elsewhere that the whole world is in moral and ethical decline. Really? Please give me a time period, anytime in world history, where nations were upstanding, moral, open, and fair to everyone. It's fine if you want to argue that globalization has negative consequences that outweigh its positive effects. But don't act like there was some bygone golden age in the past where everything was awesome. Societies act solely in their own self interest, always have, always will.

Comment: This stat is rather curious (Score 3, Interesting) 157

by Paktu (#30843160) Attached to: New Study Shows Youth Plugged In Most of the Day
The survey taker's school "doesn't use grades" for 0% of heavy users, 3% of medium users, and 10% of light users. This statistic by itself makes me unconvinced about the overall findings...do you mean to tell me that 0% of heavy internet users attend schools that don't give grades? What the hell is the sample size, anyway???

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