Um
I think Zuckerberg was designing the site for this dude and it was basically a fine for him delivering it late?
180 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Sep 2009
Check out ES File Explorer if you haven't already - can access Windows shares remotely.
I switched from an iPhone 3G to the Desire about a month ago and the extra freedom it gives you is a breath of fresh air. I always got the impression that the iTunes experience on the PC was being made intentionally sub par so as to subtly nudge users towards getting a Mac. Gave my old phone to my fiancée and every time she asks about how you do this or that within Apple's ridiculous limitations it makes me value the Desire more (although the battery life is shocking, alas).
Google is a behemoth in search - MS as a whole has more employees but surely spread over more diverse areas?
You couldn't take the head of a subsidiary in a global group company to task for describing a competitor in his/her specific market as bigger just because the group their sub is part of is very large. So when Ballmer talks of that one part of the MS group he's right. Which doesn't happen too often, admittedly.
Surely the bricks and mortar stores will be closed in the areas with high internet access (i.e. where their customers will not be excessively put out or unable to actually purchase the products or use the services)? Thus the costs for whichever business you are talking about are cut and, presumably, prices for all will fall (or profits for shareholders will rise)? So the urban internet users are actually benefitting everyone else?
Or are you suggesting that a bank, for example, thinks "Oh, well, people in London now have net access so I will close my branch in Cardiff to save costs!" If they close their branch in an obscure place surely it is likely to be because it is unprofitable to keep it open (not enough customers to justify the costs) rather than because someone somewhere else has high speed net access?
Also, as noted elsewhere, including by me, it sounds like she could get net access through other routes that would leave her able to access these services, just not as fast as she'd like. Plus there's postal banking and phone banking and various other means.
Not to flog a dead horse but, you live in a high population density area and some things will be cheaper (e.g. wiring and plumbing related items based on physical distance and things that are based on scale) and others will be more expensive (space is at a premium). The inverse is obviously true. To just cherry pick one or the other is to my mind highly dubious.
But by that argument the unselfish thing to do is to help me buy a bigger house in the city? Saying that the unselfish thing to do is to give someone something is just lazy. It can also be selfish to expect someone else to give you it. But then I said that in my earlier post. You know, the one you quoted from?
I don't think that the banks should have to open a branch in her area so I'm not sure where you got that from? If it's not cost effective for them then I don't believe that they should be forced to operate a branch there.
I'm not sure also why the government has to provide her with "a manned office to look things up"?
I'm not arguing against removing doctors and medical facilities from her area either.
People living in cities and dense population areas have indeed had the advantage from the benefits of living near lots of other people. They have also had the costs of that. People living in the country have had a different set of costs, one of which is the difficulty and inefficiency in running wiring around the place. If they want that cost to fall on others then I think it is only fair that some of the costs of living in a city are shared out too. I'd bet that if she wanted to buy a house in her area it would be a damn sight more than £150K for the equivalent property in mine. I'll chip in the £150K for her net connection if she'll put up the balance of the cost of buying a three bedroom detached house in the burbs of London.
Finally, you may note that in my very first post I asked if she had access to satellite internet. It's not perfect but it's surely enough to make it unreasonable to expect everyone else to pay out £150K on her behalf for an upgrade?
But kudos on drawing so much irrelevant FUD into your post.
Fair points and thanks for not insulting me :O)
I was pondering on this concept but more around the Government moving things online. I don't take your point about banks etc as those are private companies (present public shareholdings aside - that's supposed to be an abberation) and they can decide where to cut costs and who they offer services to. If the Government puts vital services and information online and therefore essentially everyone saves then I can see an argument for some cross-subsidy if the market will not provide a minimum service. But, as I said initially, can she not get a satellite service for a reasonable price? It might not be as fast as she would like and it might cost a bit more than she would like but that's the breaks for living in a low density population area.
Ok, so the person in the city gets a smaller house for the same price. Which is exactly what I said, isn't it? So by extension of that argument this lady should get the best internet she can for £20 per month (or whatever) as a city dweller. In this case that is apparently none (unless she can promise to sign up for one hell of a long contract).
But she wants the same service for the same price, regardless of cost. So my suggestion is, should I get the same house size as a country dweller at the same price? Evidently not.
But it seems stupid to me to say "well, you get 1% of the space and quality of life for 33% of the price so shut the hell up!" Also, thus far (an admittedly very short space of time) no evidence for the 66% actually means or how it has been calculated has been forthcoming (no doubt it will have arrived while I was typing this).
And yeah, London isn't the only city. So maybe it's fine for the country dwellers to subsidise the house prices for the 8 million odd people who live there...
Look, there are differences everywhere and everyone can find something to grumble about regarding where they live and what things cost and what service they get and so on. My basic point is that you should be bloody wary about simply taking the cost implications of where you live and just saying "well, everyone else will just have to pay for that because I want it." As a starting point it's exceptionally selfish.
Also, I find it interesting what people consider selfish - I'm getting roundly blasted by about half the people here (based on current up/down votes) for saying "I'm not sure I should have to pay for that" when, in fact, she's the one saying that. From my perspective it is selfish to expect everyone else to pay your bill for something like this.
Letting the faceless majority pick up your tab seems to be a fairly common theme in this country at the moment though.
Also, just to respond to some other points, I make no comment about whether this price is indicative of some gross inefficiency on BT's part or whatever - someone mentioned CAT5 cables and such like and that my indeed be cheaper. As someone else said though, once you're into digging up roads or dealing with any major work (surveying, planning permissions, engineer teams whatever - am speculating here of course) then the costs become astronomical.
If you can show me some backup for that assertion then I'll happily change my tune but I seriously doubt a like for like comparison will show that, for example, a three bedroom detached house in London is 66% cheaper than one on the sticks somewhere?
At the peak of the housing boom the flat I currently live in was assessed as being worth about £350K (I rent it - could never afford it otherwise). A quick scan of the classifieds suggested I could get a very respectable house in a rural part of Kent for about that sum (as opposed to a relatively small flat with no land and so on). Of course transport links would be useless and jobs lower paid and such like so I pay my money and I make my choice.
People need to accept the practicalities of where they choose to live - you want to run a network connection miles away from anyone else and it's going to cost a fortune. Why should everyone else have to cover it? I live in a city and don't see people in the countryside subsidising the cost of housing for me. I choose to live where I am so I have to accept the practical implications of that (smaller, more expensive housing, dirtier air, fewer green spaces, traffic noise, fewer appealing nature scenes to gaze at out of my window etc).
Can she not get satellite internet, anyway?
No, he wants the media he consumes to be served up to him without effort or fuss. FFS, how hard is that to understand? If there was a similar legal model for movies and TV shows I'd use it like a shot (just as I now use Steam for my pc games - I can fire up any pc capable of playing said games and pull a copy off the server quickly and without fuss. Some games even now retain the settings.)
It being difficuly for your customers to access your products is one thing. Intentionally overlooking technology that you could leverage to make it easier is just bad business.
Agreed - psychologically the impact of having your house broken into and your TV stolen is far worse than hearing on the news that some dude was evading taxes. It can be absolutely devastating to your confidence and ability to feel secure in your own home (I'm lucky enough to have never had it happen to me but I know people who are less fortunate).
I agree that in this case the treatment of the guy has been a bit of a joke but the OP shouldn't overlook the impact on wider-society of people being in fear in their own homes (or, to go a step further) on the streets.
To put it another way, if you offered people a choice between a world without burglars and muggers or white collar fraudsters of the type in this article, what do you think most people would plump for?
If I recall, some tech illiterate judge was once prevailed upon by a slick prosecutor to consider the viewing of an image in a computer as involving the "creation" of that image (since it didn't exist on the computer before you copied it there for viewing). Since there is zero public outcry about the law in this area being so blatantly abused (those affected by it not being a particularly popular demographic) this has become standard practice (again, if I recall correctly - if I'm wrong no doubt someone will correct me below).
Which is utterly brain dead but that may well explain why he's allowed to walk around despite that apparently serious charge being levied against him (which in itself is to admit that the creating images charge probably isn't justified).
The failure of understanding demonstrated by these authors is astonishing. Good grief, even in Blast Thru/Arkanoid I don't think you asked permission of whoever's blocks they were to trash them.
Must've been fun, as a legal expert, to sit in on some of these games and put your mighty brain up against the "challenge" of finding violations of internal law, though:
Report moron: So, the player, working for NOD, just nuked a city. Does that count?
Lawyer: Uh, yeah, I'd say so.