Re: Hire peanuts, paid monkeys

and just how many IT projects in general go wrong because of that? Or, maybe more frequently, a "manager" or project "executive sponsor" who can barely spell IT but wants to write the spec?

Re: You're both right.

@AC to a point: maybe they're really angry because of course taking the piss out of the law is what MPs are for.

"Is Lord Reid a fucking idiot?"

I don't know. Is rain wet?

Re: But, but, but...all payment involves the payee in costs

credit cards are not a single payment type if different cards cost different amounts to process, they are multiple types ...

easier fix: make the companies in question show their actual costs for processing each payment type, explain "yes mr customer if you pay cash it'll cost us 10p, debit card 25p, personal card 2.3%, company card 2.8% - oh, and because we use dial-up, the phone line costs X whereas if we used IP it'd be Y, and keeping track of those difference costs us a few hours a quarter of management time so we have to factor that in too. The phone number for your bank's "business banking payment systems are too complex" complaints department is ..... "

Re: So you can write drivers in Java now?

"Of course, barking mad is something else. It would seem that you need a touch of the barking to make it into executive and senior management positions these days. No suggestion too stupid or mad. No common sense required." I thought that was a requirement for writing IT marketing materials?

Re: But, but, but...all payment involves the payee in costs

"If you pay by credit card, they pay a credit card fee." - which may vary depending on whether it's a consumer card or a corporate card, and depending on card brand may not be accepted at all. Charge cards like Amex are a different breed, too ...

"If you pay by cheque they (almost certainly) pay a cheque processing fee - and have to fill out payin slips etc. which takes time." so take the 30s it takes to fill out a paying in slip multiply it by checkout staff wage, add the processing fee and you have the cost

"If you pay by cash, they have to sort the cash, take it down to the bank, stand in line and (quite possibly) have to pay a fee for depositing it" - so again, take the actual time needed (again, maybe 30s or so) & multiply by checkout staff wage, add any fee, and you have the cost

"If you pay by debit card, they pay a small fee." 25p or so, not £5 or so though ...

If they want these regulations to work, won't it mean companies will have to actually handle differentiated pricing based on whether you are paying by corporate or personal cards, for example?

they've reserved the right to ignore things they don't like

Re: practicalities

This is not always a Good Thing, for the reasons you have given. They should not be copying websites as of today, and claiming that's the final version of the website, and website owners should be allowed to require them to update content on demand and remove all older versions of works that have been scraped in an older form. Oh, and if they are copying content for which you charge for access (they can demand password access it appears), and allowing other people to read it, unless there is a requirement for them to give you the full name and other details of each person so you can collect the money you are owed, that's just stupid.

There's more info at

http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/legaldeposit/introduction/index.html

Follow the links from there and you find this little gem:

"A publisher must also deliver a copy of any computer programs, tools, manuals and information—such as metadata, login details, and a means of removing individual DRM technical protection measures—that are necessary for using and preserving the publication."

So, if you build your website on top of an Oracle database, you have to give them a copy of Oracle? If you did graphics with Adobe Creative Suite you have to give them that?

Only a complete idiot could have approved these rules, Mr Vazey.

Re: It strikes at the core of the small enterprise space...

spoke to them about a similar issue a couple of months ago, and was told that if a given host will never, under any circumstances, run Oracle, it does not need to be covered but (big but) if VM mobility / migration to a given host is possible so that it might run Oracle, it does need to be covered.

Customer went with a different solution anyway :)

Re: What about forums on news related web sites?

in the amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill, there are some relevant definitions:

"A person who is the operator of a website is not to be taken as having editorial or equivalent responsibility for the decision to publish any material on the site, or for content of the material, if the person did not post the material on the site"

and

"The fact that the operator of the website may moderate statements posted on it by others does not matter for the purposes of subsection (3)."

There is also:

"Special interest titles

4 A person who publishes a title that—

(a) relates to a particular pastime, hobby, trade, business, industry or

profession, and

(b) only contains news-related material on an incidental basis that is

relevant to the main content of the title."

in the exemptions.

so things like The Register are probably safe - IF that amendment goes through without being changed at the behest of people who don't know how to change a PIN number.

"We need a government organised, determined, and, if you like, ruthless enough to push this through regardless of such concerns."

sadly the current UK government only has the third of those qualities ...

Re: Troll-olo...

that's an interesting conversation then :)

Having said that, if the ISO code for the UK is "GB", then ISO "GB" belongs to the UK.

Still more than a little unfair to those who are in Northern Ireland ...

Re: Minority report?

yes and no (sorry).

The argument should not apply in the case where "I" commit an criminal offence: I should be prosecuted - by the Police/CPS, as they are the people charged with enforcing criminal law (not charities, for example, who have no business crying poverty then paying lawyers more than minimum wage). In this case, surely these are civil offences, so isn't suing infringers the correct way forward? However in this case the judge has effectively decided that site access should also be denied to those who have done no wrong: if EMI etc want to stop this sort of thing, they should sue the individual infringers against whom they have specific, lawfully-gathered (no snooping on people's web traffic by anyone other than a warrant-holding police/security officer), and if they are too lazy to do that, they should be told to go home and stop wasting the courts' time.

I wonder what would happen if someone who merely liked the adverts shown on one of the sites in question and never downloaded a thing then sued BT for blocking access to site without any evidence of wrong doing? Would the same judge support suppression of free speech?

Re: I thought

http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/sl29f/

yes i'm bored

Re: Parental Responsibility

don't forget amanfrommars, that could be .. interesting ..

Re: Bah!

speaking of people who may or may not have overstayed their welcome, can you please - please? - keep Piers Morgan over there?

Re: Purpose of the fine

a good and valid point: still doesn't address the issue that the responsible people don't actually pay the fines personally, which is simply unjustifiable.

Anyone remember the Yes Minister about "failure standards"? The proposal slipped to the minister in a brown envelope was to make a named individual responsible for the success - or failure - of a given project (which should extend to task or role). Even allowing for the fact it was a TV comedy show, it's depiction of the entire civil service (both national and in local government) being horrified at that thought is clearly true, and almost certainly extends to the quangos and almos that run half of the public sector, otherwise any sensible government (of whichever party, the series was made in the 80s so all three major parties have had a chance by now) would have done it. Another reference from same series? The opposition in parliament is the "opposition in exile": the bureaucracy is the "opposition in residence".

Re: Why can't I sign my own stuff?

welcome back, Mr Urquhart. (Who's that American guy stealing your lines, by the way?)

Re: Oh, for the love of God...

", it must be a nice gig being Apple's outside counsel for intellectual property law..."

Very, they clearly have nor need intellect and are not in any meaningful sense* lawyers to a global business - "an unjust law is no law" etc should equally apply to service marks / trademarks / patents, and any lawyer who isn't just a windup would have told them not to bother with this nonsense

* i.e. they haven't considered any law outside the USA, or just how laughable this makes their client

Re: @Ragarath

no, not a season ticket user - but that shouldn't matter anyway.

i don't see any reason why non-season ticket users should not get compensation when train companies cant get their acts together. My usual route is on South Eastern, and they have one of the best scams ever - claiming to offer repayments on delays, but only offering credit against future journeys (so, not repayment) and only if delay more than 30 mins (so, not if delayed).

Re: twitter.fr vs Twitter Inc

they could - and they'd look incredibly petty for doing so (if they've been following UK courts when it comes to Internet stuff, they can learn how to do that really quickly). Alternatively they should prove they have jurisdiction over content published in other countries - or, more logically, they should simply claim jurisdiction over the person responsible for "importing" the content to France. That opens a new can of worms, of course. Or rather, cans of worms.

Still doesn't sort an issue raised by the second area i mentioned - people from outside the UK suing each other in UK courts because a website, merely accessible from UK but not hosted, edited or controlled from here, is visible from here. Only an idiot judge would claim such a website is published here wouldn't they -but some have?

Where is a website published? Take a site hosted by Amazon EC2 multiple locations in the US, having a Swedish domain name, but edited by someone in UK today but Ireland tomorrow, accessed via a TOR connection that could go pretty much anywhere, with content cached left right and centre? Where is that content published? A book isn't published in the UK simply because I can flick through it on the bookshelves of Foyles on Charing Cross Road.

Re: was there at the weekend

interesting idea: couple of caveats - don't sell gift cards / vouchers for a start! You could also setup concessions for manufacturers to rent, look at putting together financing packages that survive retailer demise (that can be done, although given derivatives are a bad word these days the ability to resell credit agreements is not an unuseful thing), and work out pass-through transactions so even though people have used your physical portal they are not actually your customer but are buying direct from manufacturer. You'd have to put in an amount of protection - UK-based subsidiaries of manufacturer should be on the hook for liabilities, and required to have stock in UK for any goods that are offered for sale in UK, with a customer acquiring a lien on goods at time of purchase if money taken.