Swine flu panic was basically caused by erroneous death toll counts out of Mexico (basically panic hit such levels that if you died of anything that could not be instantly categorized as something else, e.g. bullet to the brain, it was classed as H1N1 until proven otherwise) and then fuelled by ignorant media looking for rating/wanting to sell papers
Simple fact is flu kills tens of thousands every single year.
The only thing special about H1N1 was the pointless panic it caused and the killing the Pharmaceuticals made from it
"If the computers at your bank have a glitch that tells you there is $11M in your checking account, should they have to make good on that? Or do you chalk it up to error?"
Non comparable scenario, you have not entered an agreement with the bank that if you give them something they give you the chance to win $11M. With the casino you have and it should not be your problem if they messing up rigging the game in their favor
And let’s take the reverse of the situation, if their machines are making mistakes in the customers favour you can bet your last dollar they are making a lot more mistakes the other way around...and not heard of any casinos chasing people down to tell them the $11 dollars they thought they just won should have been $11 million and did they want it is in check or cash?
So basically any equipment failure is to the casinos favour....
So if your bank has a glitch that TAKES $11m out of your account, should they make good on that? Or do you chalk it up to error?
It was a success if their objective was to earn some short term profits and instil in Joe public some uncertainty and fear
Unfortunately (from them) the fear and uncertainty was quickly overridden by downloader’s appetite for “free stuff”
If their objective was to stop downloading they would have had to bring all 18,000 to court (making sure press were there), but then that would have cost them a lot of money
So looking at it from the profit perspective, yet it was a success, the stopping piracy angle though was a total failure
But on the other hand, the whole thing was pretty damning for the legal system that was basically turned into the equivalent of a protection racket’s muscle, “pay up or you will wish you had after the boys drop you a few time”. If I was lawyer/judge who had some actual respect/love for the law I would be pretty pissed, but these day’s outside of law school those types seem few and far between
As to the reason for this ruling, from another source, key parts in bold
"A former partner of Perry’s in a real estate venture, David Wallace – who was also the mayor of Sugar Land, Texas, and a candidate for U.S. Congress – brought one of the defamation claims."
Definatly sounds like the 'old boys club' in action to me, if he appeals and gets the appeal out of area (or better yet out of texas) winning shold be a slam dunk
On behalf of corporate America I must object, don’t we pay enough “campaign contributions” to the law makers (politicians) to get things our way, we should not have to start paying the same for the actual interpreters of those laws to make sure we get the verdicts we want. Some things must be left to chance, otherwise what would be the point of a legal system anymore?
On behalf of vocal minority (but solid voting ) groups I support this idea, hell yeah bring it on, we need a G.W Bush in ever court house in America so we can get those pesky dope heads doing 20 years hard labour for smoking a joint, the gays and lesbians to automatically lose every court case and have whoever participates in the latest media scare activity sent to Gitmo and abortion doctors to be hung drawn and quartered
To anyone who thinks elected judges are a good idea, may I present the political system and the people it puts in power.
Do you really want people like them judging your court case?
"I also doubt that anyone watches a movie and thinks, "Wow James Bond drives a BMW! BMWs must be really cool cars if James Bond drives one!"
If no one thought that the companys would not do product placement and just stick to do ad's in the breaks.
While I agree that this bill is horse manure I will say in today’s world, of constantly changing faces, lack of corporate editorial control* and such it is becoming harder and harder to find out who is truly an impartial (though maybe opinionated) reporter/commentator and who is getting basically getting paid (one way or another) to push an angle/product.
The IPad is a prime example, the amount of pro ipad articles, both in the blogosphere and official media has been staggering, especially when you consider the fact that it’s just an oversized itouch/iPhone(without the phone). Nice if you want it (no one ‘needs’ it) but defiantly not revolutionary/game changing/must have that all the reporter’s/commentators would have us believe. And main reason they want us to believe this? Besides “perks” from apple, apple has managed to convince many of them that the ipad will bring them loads more customers and revenue streams. They want ipad to succeed because they see it benefiting themselves
It would be nice if someone could come up with a nice way to force reporters/blogger/commentators to give disclosure whenever they might have a conflict of interest so we don’t have to spend ages investigating them
*Yes newspapers/magazines can and generally are biased, but at least with them you quickly get to what their angle is and then it becomes safe to assume that every article in that paper no matter who writes it will be “following the party line”
"Every video clip I've seen has just been of Pelosi or some other progressive mocking Republicans and threatening Democrats who were against it."
And nearly every clip I have seen is Republicans talking about death panels, socialism and comparisons to Hitler
But I will agree with you, there was not much debate on healthcare because for the last year republicans were more interested in saying no to everything, spouting talking points and trying to score political points instead of actually debating anything
Difference in the UK on the DEB is there zero debate nor even really attempt at one, this really was 'shoved down the peoples throat'
"The media if rife with comments and commentary about how Windows is the next big dinosaur, soon to me replaced by the network os. "
We have been hearing some version of this for the last 15 years or so (basically since windows took over the desktop) and most likely be hearing it for the next 15 years with still little change
The "cloud" might eat into the desktop application's market a bit but it will have no impact on the OS market any time soon, people are just too used to windows and loath to change
Even then the cloud will have an impact nowhere near as much as the media goes on about and what impact it does have will actually be greater in the personal/home/small company computing market than the corp. market, large companies are loath to just hand over their data to some 3rd party, which might be in another country and governed by totally different rules (in some cases they are already laws against this, such as customers personal information being sent from UK to the US due to the lax US data protection laws)
MS have been slow on properly jumping into the mobile market, but then they always have been slow on everything they do. But when they fully get behind something they generally take over, not because they do best working product (that in this case, OS's, would be apple) but rather because they do the most flexible, easy to use, product that suits the needs of the widest possible audience (defiantly not apple)
"On the one hand, it tries to push everyone to open up their info, but then if anyone does anything useful with it, they threaten to sue? "
The reason is very simple if you ask yourself a simple question, how does facebook make money?
Via two methods. The obvious one is advertising, the second, not so obvious method is selling info like what was collected by this guy. He was cutting into their revenue stream, hence the trigger happy (but imo toothless) lawyers
"It's too bad that as Facebook gets bigger, we're hearing more and more stories of this kind of bullying activity."Par for the course for any growing company really
First the mindless management drones take over (you know the type, more interested in covering their own ass than anything else, unable to make a decision without a 10 committees backing them and 100’s of meetings to “get everyone on board”)
Due to these people being in charge and increasing costs dramatically this then leads to the accountants taking over (aka people with no knowadge of the company’s actual business, but basically acting as the power behind the throne, dictating how the company is run)
And because the accountant really don’t know how to run the business (and all decent managers left long ago) they then hire lots of lawyers to protect the company and the lawyers to justify their cost to the accountants start attacking everybody and viewing everything at a threat to the company
Then a few years later a new, dynamic, energetic forward thinking start up comes along and wipes them out (unless first company buys them up first) and whole process starts over again
"But unlike the relatively good, open Skype deal enjoyed by Hutch "3" subscribers in the UK"
Got any info on this "deal" ?
Because after playing around with my nokia 3 mobile phone this weekend discovered something interesting, the "skype client" on 3 is not actually a skype client but rather a iskoot client (even though it puts skype logo's everywhere to make it look like a skype client) that hooks into the "skype network".
And same as the verizon situation it only uses the 3G network for chat and control, voice is handled via the normal telephone network, basiclly all skype incoming and outgoing call's are routed via a 3 mobile number and from there passed to skype voip network via iskoot software (though this system is actually pretty good, even if you have poor 3G reception, the call quality is still perfect as long as normal cell signal is good) and multiple features of the normal mobile skype client are disabled, like skype msg to SMS.
Problem is customer service is becoming a lost art so the alternatives are or rapidly become just as bad
Was only thinking about this subject the other day due to something that happened recently...well actually it originally happened 3 and half years ago, booked a trip with Expedia, they messed up some details for the car rental which meant could not get the car (or any other) that I paid for.
Local car company just needed one thing changed and they could sort it out, but according to them that change request had to come from expedia. Unfortunately Expedia telephone lines were totally messed up that day and could not get though and needed a car straight away so eventually had to just rent another car (and pay for it all over again). Upon returning home sent a email to their customer service to see if could get my money back.
So why was I thinking it about it recently? Because I got a response from them asking me to contact them, 2 week ago...3 and half years after the original complaint/trip
Does Freedom Of The Press In The UK Include Just Making Things Up?
Err yes. Same as the US.
Just read any copy of the Sun, Mirror and you realise they can say anything they want.
In the US see the likes of National Enquirer or National Examiner
The only "risk" they run is of getting sued (and would say in this example guy would have a case in the UK with so many "false" direct quotes attributed to him and the harm they they might cause to his career)
Normally don't see such obvious cases in the likes of the Times, but last few years it has been going quite a bit downhill
At least until they get to vote!
You say that like might be a bad thing, compared to some people who can (and do) vote, chimps would be a major improvement
Re: Re: Re: Your problem is that the prosecutor has no "boss"
Plus it's better if thing's can be stopped from getting so far as Courts and judges due to time it takes (and wholr time leaving the defendant left hanging) and the cost to both the individual and the state.
If basic common sense can be used before resorting to the courts then it should be
On the post: WHO Exaggerated H1N1 Flu Problems, After Consulting With Consultants Working For Pharmaceutical Firms
Simple fact is flu kills tens of thousands every single year.
The only thing special about H1N1 was the pointless panic it caused and the killing the Pharmaceuticals made from it
On the post: More Casinos Succeeding With The 'That Jackpot You Won Was Really A Computer Glitch' Claim
Re: Re: Re: Wow...
Non comparable scenario, you have not entered an agreement with the bank that if you give them something they give you the chance to win $11M. With the casino you have and it should not be your problem if they messing up rigging the game in their favor
And let’s take the reverse of the situation, if their machines are making mistakes in the customers favour you can bet your last dollar they are making a lot more mistakes the other way around...and not heard of any casinos chasing people down to tell them the $11 dollars they thought they just won should have been $11 million and did they want it is in check or cash?
So basically any equipment failure is to the casinos favour....
So if your bank has a glitch that TAKES $11m out of your account, should they make good on that? Or do you chalk it up to error?
On the post: Defining Success: Were The RIAA's Lawsuits A Success Or Not?
Unfortunately (from them) the fear and uncertainty was quickly overridden by downloader’s appetite for “free stuff”
If their objective was to stop downloading they would have had to bring all 18,000 to court (making sure press were there), but then that would have cost them a lot of money
So looking at it from the profit perspective, yet it was a success, the stopping piracy angle though was a total failure
But on the other hand, the whole thing was pretty damning for the legal system that was basically turned into the equivalent of a protection racket’s muscle, “pay up or you will wish you had after the boys drop you a few time”. If I was lawyer/judge who had some actual respect/love for the law I would be pretty pissed, but these day’s outside of law school those types seem few and far between
On the post: Terrible Ruling: Forwarding A Link Can Be Considered Defamation
Re: Re:
As to the reason for this ruling, from another source, key parts in bold
"A former partner of Perry’s in a real estate venture, David Wallace – who was also the mayor of Sugar Land, Texas, and a candidate for U.S. Congress – brought one of the defamation claims."
Definatly sounds like the 'old boys club' in action to me, if he appeals and gets the appeal out of area (or better yet out of texas) winning shold be a slam dunk
On the post: Terrible Ruling: Forwarding A Link Can Be Considered Defamation
Re:
On behalf of vocal minority (but solid voting ) groups I support this idea, hell yeah bring it on, we need a G.W Bush in ever court house in America so we can get those pesky dope heads doing 20 years hard labour for smoking a joint, the gays and lesbians to automatically lose every court case and have whoever participates in the latest media scare activity sent to Gitmo and abortion doctors to be hung drawn and quartered
To anyone who thinks elected judges are a good idea, may I present the political system and the people it puts in power.
Do you really want people like them judging your court case?
On the post: Why Is Product Placement Okay On TV Without Disclosure?
Re:
If no one thought that the companys would not do product placement and just stick to do ad's in the breaks.
On the post: Michigan Politician Proposes Bill To Regulate Journalists So He Can Tell You Which Reporters To Trust
Would be nice
The IPad is a prime example, the amount of pro ipad articles, both in the blogosphere and official media has been staggering, especially when you consider the fact that it’s just an oversized itouch/iPhone(without the phone). Nice if you want it (no one ‘needs’ it) but defiantly not revolutionary/game changing/must have that all the reporter’s/commentators would have us believe. And main reason they want us to believe this? Besides “perks” from apple, apple has managed to convince many of them that the ipad will bring them loads more customers and revenue streams. They want ipad to succeed because they see it benefiting themselves
It would be nice if someone could come up with a nice way to force reporters/blogger/commentators to give disclosure whenever they might have a conflict of interest so we don’t have to spend ages investigating them
*Yes newspapers/magazines can and generally are biased, but at least with them you quickly get to what their angle is and then it becomes safe to assume that every article in that paper no matter who writes it will be “following the party line”
On the post: Pennsylvania AG Drops Twitter Subpoena
No it's not, that's the jury's/judges job
On the post: Digital Economy Bill Shoved Through With Minor Modifications
Re: Wait....
And nearly every clip I have seen is Republicans talking about death panels, socialism and comparisons to Hitler
But I will agree with you, there was not much debate on healthcare because for the last year republicans were more interested in saying no to everything, spouting talking points and trying to score political points instead of actually debating anything
Difference in the UK on the DEB is there zero debate nor even really attempt at one, this really was 'shoved down the peoples throat'
On the post: And The Next Battle Is Apple vs. Google... As Microsoft/Yahoo Fade Off Into The Sunset?
Re: Re:
We have been hearing some version of this for the last 15 years or so (basically since windows took over the desktop) and most likely be hearing it for the next 15 years with still little change
The "cloud" might eat into the desktop application's market a bit but it will have no impact on the OS market any time soon, people are just too used to windows and loath to change
Even then the cloud will have an impact nowhere near as much as the media goes on about and what impact it does have will actually be greater in the personal/home/small company computing market than the corp. market, large companies are loath to just hand over their data to some 3rd party, which might be in another country and governed by totally different rules (in some cases they are already laws against this, such as customers personal information being sent from UK to the US due to the lax US data protection laws)
MS have been slow on properly jumping into the mobile market, but then they always have been slow on everything they do. But when they fully get behind something they generally take over, not because they do best working product (that in this case, OS's, would be apple) but rather because they do the most flexible, easy to use, product that suits the needs of the widest possible audience (defiantly not apple)
On the post: The Story Behind Facebook Threatening To Sue Developer Into Oblivion For Highlighting Useful Facebook Data
The reason is very simple if you ask yourself a simple question, how does facebook make money?
Via two methods. The obvious one is advertising, the second, not so obvious method is selling info like what was collected by this guy. He was cutting into their revenue stream, hence the trigger happy (but imo toothless) lawyers
On the post: Facebook Threatens Greasemonkey Script Writer
First the mindless management drones take over (you know the type, more interested in covering their own ass than anything else, unable to make a decision without a 10 committees backing them and 100’s of meetings to “get everyone on board”)
Due to these people being in charge and increasing costs dramatically this then leads to the accountants taking over (aka people with no knowadge of the company’s actual business, but basically acting as the power behind the throne, dictating how the company is run)
And because the accountant really don’t know how to run the business (and all decent managers left long ago) they then hire lots of lawyers to protect the company and the lawyers to justify their cost to the accountants start attacking everybody and viewing everything at a threat to the company
Then a few years later a new, dynamic, energetic forward thinking start up comes along and wipes them out (unless first company buys them up first) and whole process starts over again
Basically the cycle of life, corporate style
On the post: Skype Deliberately Crippling Functionality of iPhone and WinMo and Verizon Apps?
UK deal
Got any info on this "deal" ?
Because after playing around with my nokia 3 mobile phone this weekend discovered something interesting, the "skype client" on 3 is not actually a skype client but rather a iskoot client (even though it puts skype logo's everywhere to make it look like a skype client) that hooks into the "skype network".
And same as the verizon situation it only uses the 3G network for chat and control, voice is handled via the normal telephone network, basiclly all skype incoming and outgoing call's are routed via a 3 mobile number and from there passed to skype voip network via iskoot software (though this system is actually pretty good, even if you have poor 3G reception, the call quality is still perfect as long as normal cell signal is good) and multiple features of the normal mobile skype client are disabled, like skype msg to SMS.
On the post: JetBlue To Most Loyal Customers: We're Too Busy To Help You, Sorry
Was only thinking about this subject the other day due to something that happened recently...well actually it originally happened 3 and half years ago, booked a trip with Expedia, they messed up some details for the car rental which meant could not get the car (or any other) that I paid for.
Local car company just needed one thing changed and they could sort it out, but according to them that change request had to come from expedia. Unfortunately Expedia telephone lines were totally messed up that day and could not get though and needed a car straight away so eventually had to just rent another car (and pay for it all over again). Upon returning home sent a email to their customer service to see if could get my money back.
So why was I thinking it about it recently? Because I got a response from them asking me to contact them, 2 week ago...3 and half years after the original complaint/trip
Now how's that for slow customer service?
On the post: Does Freedom Of The Press In The UK Include Just Making Things Up?
Err yes. Same as the US.
Just read any copy of the Sun, Mirror and you realise they can say anything they want.
In the US see the likes of National Enquirer or National Examiner
The only "risk" they run is of getting sued (and would say in this example guy would have a case in the UK with so many "false" direct quotes attributed to him and the harm they they might cause to his career)
Normally don't see such obvious cases in the likes of the Times, but last few years it has been going quite a bit downhill
On the post: If A Video Is Filmed By Chimps... Who Owns The Copyright?
Re: Re: Hmm...
You say that like might be a bad thing, compared to some people who can (and do) vote, chimps would be a major improvement
On the post: Unsubstantiated Claim: iTunes Success Makes It Harder To Discover New Music
Re: You're looking backward
Underground/Tube/Basements
Countryside and other areas with no/limited/spotty coverage
International Roaming charges
High data charges
Until all these are dealt with a mobile accesable cloud for everything is a pipe dream
On the post: PayPal Suspends WikiLeaks Account Yet Again; Freezes Assets
Re:
Many would like to see this as some government conspiracy but is more likely S.O.P by PayPal
On the post: Prosecutors Still Want To Charge Girl Who Sent Naked Photo Of Herself For Child Porn
Re: Re: Re: Your problem is that the prosecutor has no "boss"
If basic common sense can be used before resorting to the courts then it should be
On the post: Prosecutors Still Want To Charge Girl Who Sent Naked Photo Of Herself For Child Porn
Re:
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