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eBay Urges Rethink On EU Plan's "Brick and Mortar" Vendor Requirement 139

mernil writes with this snippet from Reuters: "According to a draft regulation drawn up by the European Commission and seen by Reuters, suppliers may be allowed to require that distributors have a 'brick-and-mortar' shop before they can sell online. The proposed rules would replace existing guidelines exempting companies from strict EU competition rules under certain circumstances. Those rules expire at the end of May."

Comment Re:Okay, I'll be the one to say it... (Score 1) 416

I think his point when he mentions the ...

"europeans are idiots" bonus (1 dollar = 1 euro)

... is that the companies don't sell them for the same price in europe as they do in the us (ie. they are more expensive in europe). Hence, the euro being more "valuable" than the dollar may be correct from the perspective of a conversion ratio but not from the perspective of how far it will go in its market.

Comment Re:My god. (Score 1) 806

It's one thing to say it to your friends, it's another thing to post it to all of your "facebook friends" on what amounts to a publicly visible web-site if you don't have your privacy settings appropriately adjusted.

Lots of lessons here. Don't make a public announcement of your intent to kill someone, even if it is in jest. Set your facebook privacy settings to friends only if you intend on posting anything that would negatively affect you professionally. Don't facebook friend every person you've had a 10 minute conversation with in the past 20 years. Be aware of your audience.

Luckily I'm sure she can either be re-admitted if she is very apologetic and explains her situation. And if not, she can find another college to go to and not make the same stupid mistakes.

Comment Re:Whats the hold up (Score 1) 177

Launch platform too.. I'd imagine that launching a rocket off of the moon would cost much less fuel than launching one from Earth and that it would be easier to maintain a sustainable base on the moon than floating in space. You could probably also construct and launch a much heavier Mars exploratory craft from parts shipped to a moon base than you could from Earth.

These things would be expensive, but if we had a sustainable / expanding base there it would get cheaper and easier over time.

Comment Re:good or bad? (Score 1) 180

I refer to a bureaucrat in this case as someone who is a narrow minded administrator of the bureaucracy that is the United States legal system, which is a perfectly valid definition and can be applied to a politician.

In this case, I also specified him as a bureaucrat who has no idea what he is talking about. The examples you gave would be bureaucrats who do, indeed, know what they are talking about :).

So, I would counter that it is you, sir, who does not completely understand the definition of a bureaucrat!

Comment Re:good or bad? (Score 3, Interesting) 180

I know I'm not the only one who FREAKING HATES the idea of bureaucrats making decisions on this shit about which they have NO IDEA what they are talking about.

Argh, I know it's happened and will happen for years, but I hate hate hate it. They need to make a board of legitimate professionals in the industry who know WTF they are talking about to come up with any regulations that might be made.

Comment Re:Not News!! (Score 1) 843

Definitely have not lol (I was IT in college and ran a few labs that had tons of annoying engineering specialization applications), hopefully with Vista and 7 being more like Linux in the security department (and I know this is probably hoping too much) new projects will start developing their windows applications from the ground up to run at user level so that we can actually effectively and simply secure the computer.

It won't happen, but I can always daydream.

Comment Re:Good (Score 1) 249

In at least 60% of the cases (and I am being very generous to windows in my percentage), you will either A. Have to upgrade the computer to use windows 7 to its potential, or B. buy a new computer to run it efficiently.

50% of statistics worldwide are made up entirely, /. accounts for 10% of statistics worldwide and 9.99999% of those that are made up.

Comment Re:Apples & Oranges (Score 1) 808

An 'IQ' is quantitative. The term 'smart' is qualitative. Comparing them at all is like comparing ones 'income' with how 'rich' they are.

Exactly, it's pretty damn obvious that IQ is just a measure of your brain's raw computing power. And we all know that just because you have a fast CPU doesn't mean your computer is great at everything, it depends heavily on the software and OS (experience).

Also to further the analogy, some stuff can run great on a weak CPU (math/science) but require a powerful sound card (music), GPU (art), fast burner (sports) or high quality monitor and keyboard/mouse (social).

Comment Re:Not News!! (Score 1) 843

We deal with a lot of industry specific software (ie. badly produced software) and many of the users need to have full access to absolutely everything in order for it to work, including mapped drives to the data!

In my administration experience, I've found that this is never the case. There is no such software that requires access to everything. It may require you to make exceptions for particular files or entries, and this may be painful to track down, but you will be rewarded by not having calls to re-install their computer.

I've seen horribly written engineering software that was written by maybe 3 guys in a lab somewhere and sold to maybe a few schools. I couldn't get the damn thing to run for hours in locked down user mode until I finally realized it required WRITE ACCESS to a .dll.... Which makes absolutely ZERO sense for an application but I just made an exception for that .dll and everything ran great.

Point being, the setup is a hassle but every application can run in user mode. IMHO, the cost of figuring out how to install and get an application running in user mode is your JOB as an IT professional and it will save you hundreds of man hours in fixing malware.

Normal users are retarded, but the worst are doctors and smart/high IQ people that think, "hey, I'm smart in this field, so I must be smart everywhere"... WRONG.

Comment Re:Not News!! (Score 1) 843

Also, I know from experience that getting over the initial hump of installing and getting all software to run in super locked down user mode (as in, write access to most of the root is locked out) saves you hundreds of hours of fixing malware/viruses.

People will bitch and moan about it to start, but once they realize their computers are running 5x faster than before, stuff works and they don't have to keep calling for help they'll get over it.

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