Here in Aberdeen, about a decade ago, the Council noticed that if a property had a door entry system on the common front door of a tenement it had slightly less chance of being burgled than if it didn't.
So, somebody had the bright idea of making such door entry systems mandatory on Council tenements. They assumed that if you reduced the break-ins to one property by 25% by fitting one, then you would reduce *all* break-ins by 25% if you fitted them everywhere.
This proved to be erroneous logic. The overall level of break-ins was unchanged. All that happened was that the distribution of them levelled out so that the door entry system no longer provided a "bonus". What they thought was an indication that a thief had been thwarted was simply a sign they moved on to somewhere that offered an easier target; the total number of crimes was unchanged.
But what it did do was inconvenience every person living in a tenement, with folk buzzing every flat in the block all hours of the day and night trying to get in, and continuing "service charges" to keep the systems working.
In the end, the whole "perceived safety" came at the cost of making everybody just that little bit more miserable on an ongoing basis. Almost exactly the same would have been achieved if, at the very beginning, they had *outlawed* such door-entry systems. The only people who would have lost out from such an action were the people who install and maintain door-entry systems./div>
The dog with the ears out, just below the centre of the tee shirt, is clearly a direct mirror image of the dog with the ears out one-fifth of the way in from the left and one row up from the bottom in the poster. I can't be bothered looking for the others, but that should be enough to substantiate the claim./div>
I'm in the UK, and I can name Ryan Giggs freely, because I am in Scotland. The arrogant English court system didn't realise that their injunction held no force here./div>
The point is that they want to sell the shows in other regions, and the TV companies will only buy them in those regions if they will bring eyeballs to their (and *only* their) advertisers.
A TV company can't be successful telling its advertisers "Oh, by the way, the folk *really* interested in seeing the show you're buying advertising in will already have seen it on YouTube"./div>
Just FYI, here in the UK we get either the long or short version of "Confidential" depending on the scheduling; usually we get the full 40-45 minute version with the original showing of an episode, but only the 12-15 minute version with the repeat.
And, trust me, you're not missing much. When you compare a 45-minute "Confidential" to its 15-minute counterpart, the extra half hour feels like "filler" and archive stuff not actually directly related to the episode./div>
Yup. That is a phenomenally irritating habit of the BBC's.
They have a selection of websites each with its own font size, but because they're all "bbc.co.uk" most browsers will apply the same magnification to each.
So, if you have a site open in a tab, look at a different site and need to zoom the text up, when you return to the original tab the site is "broken". (New BBC "Design guidelines" mean that most of the sites have text enclosed in fixed-size panels, so if you zoom it up the bottom couple of lines disappears...)/div>
Just FTI, the "Metatube" link doesn't seem to want to play for me. I'm outside the USA (Scotland) so that might be the problem. But if there's a copy on YouTube or any other less parochial site, I'd appreciate a link./div>
Aberdeen City Council once started demanding a £0.00 rent payment from me. They sent several reminders, but every time I 'phoned to query them I was told not to worry. Then came a "final reminder" followed by a letter telling me that they had contacted a debt collection agency and were taking steps to have me evicted.
They were most unhappy when I turned up at their payments desk with a cheque for £0.00 and demanded a receipt./div>
The problem with a request such as this is that the people making it have a different definition of "Porn" to the majority of people who actually watch porn. For example, from their POV, all the advertising revenue from a series of "Californication" would count as "Porn income", despite the fact that here in the UK it's shown on normal unencrypted broadcast TV./div>
A friend of mine used to run a BBS in Aberdeen that was quite popular in the USA. ("Dark Star", if anyone remembers it...) A couple of nights a week we'd all sit round at his place chatting to random Americans who dialed in. This would have been some five years before I got my first Internet connection... Happy days.
Oh, and it all ran on an early Amstrad "portable" computer, off two floppy drives, at 14.4kBaud. Not much file sharing.../div>
I hope that in this context, by "BT" you mean BitTorrent and not British Telecom. The latter is extremely effective at slowing your downloads to a crawl./div>
Safety for all - a real-world example.
So, somebody had the bright idea of making such door entry systems mandatory on Council tenements. They assumed that if you reduced the break-ins to one property by 25% by fitting one, then you would reduce *all* break-ins by 25% if you fitted them everywhere.
This proved to be erroneous logic. The overall level of break-ins was unchanged. All that happened was that the distribution of them levelled out so that the door entry system no longer provided a "bonus". What they thought was an indication that a thief had been thwarted was simply a sign they moved on to somewhere that offered an easier target; the total number of crimes was unchanged.
But what it did do was inconvenience every person living in a tenement, with folk buzzing every flat in the block all hours of the day and night trying to get in, and continuing "service charges" to keep the systems working.
In the end, the whole "perceived safety" came at the cost of making everybody just that little bit more miserable on an ongoing basis. Almost exactly the same would have been achieved if, at the very beginning, they had *outlawed* such door-entry systems. The only people who would have lost out from such an action were the people who install and maintain door-entry systems./div>
Where's Waldo(g)
Mandatory Shatner quote
A theory
Re: In the UK today...
Re:
A TV company can't be successful telling its advertisers "Oh, by the way, the folk *really* interested in seeing the show you're buying advertising in will already have seen it on YouTube"./div>
Re: Re: Nope, they still don't get it.
And, trust me, you're not missing much. When you compare a 45-minute "Confidential" to its 15-minute counterpart, the extra half hour feels like "filler" and archive stuff not actually directly related to the episode./div>
Re: Re: BBC Kill Off
They have a selection of websites each with its own font size, but because they're all "bbc.co.uk" most browsers will apply the same magnification to each.
So, if you have a site open in a tab, look at a different site and need to zoom the text up, when you return to the original tab the site is "broken". (New BBC "Design guidelines" mean that most of the sites have text enclosed in fixed-size panels, so if you zoom it up the bottom couple of lines disappears...)/div>
Re: Re: Re: Backup copy
Re: Re: Backup copy
One thing that may be skewing the figures...
It's not just Comcast
They were most unhappy when I turned up at their payments desk with a cheque for £0.00 and demanded a receipt./div>
Re: Re: Re: "The full report is below:"
Re: "The full report is below:"
"The full report is below:"
"The full report is below:"
Re: Nospam@nospam.com
Yes. Because the CD is circular. And it has a hole in the middle./div>
Define "Porn"
Re: Re:
Re: Re:
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