* Posts by JS001

30 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Aug 2011

Sony tells hacked gamer to pay for crooks' abuse of PlayStation account

JS001

"We do insist (an obligation outlined in our Terms of Service) that the SEN account holder is responsible for all activity and transactions made on their account - due to the nature of digital content, in that it is made available immediately and cannot be returned, we need to insist that the account holder take full responsibility for their account security. To do otherwise would create an opportunity for consumers to claim that they were not responsible for a purchase on their account, receive a refund and yet retain the content."

But in this case (and others that I've heard of) Sony has accepted the purchase was not made by the account holder. And why can't and/or won't Sony simply revoke access to that content and stop chasing the account holder for the money?

"If the reported unauthorised transactions were made on a console other than the one owned by the account holder, the person responsible must have had details of the account sign-in ID and password."

Because Sony has never been hacked, right? It can't possibly be Sony's fault. But even if it isn't Sony's fault, what on earth is their major malfunction in not revoking access to the fraudulently purchased content and not chasing the account holder for the money?

Basic minimum income is a BRILLIANT idea. Small problem: it doesn't work as planned

JS001

Re: Hmm

"Why dont they have paid work? "

For example, because of the financial crisis, recession...? Lots of businesses had difficulties or even went bust - difficult for e.g. a retail worker made redundant to walk into another retail job when other retailers are struggling or folding and it's difficult to 'retrain' or 'upskill' for different work if money is tight.

JS001

Re: Overly simplistic?

The basic income proposals I've seen for the UK leave disability benefit as-is.

JS001

Re: What about inflation?

"Why is wanting to own your own home called an 'obsession' by so many people? "

I wasn't alluding to home ownership particularly but that it simply MUST increase in value.

JS001

From the abstract:

"The U.S. and Canadian governments conducted five negative income tax experiments between 1968 and 1980"

JS001

Re: Hmm

"Basic income- aka the pleasure of paying people to do nothing. The major flaw is already obvious"

Better than means-testing or no state support at all.

"There is a good way to give people more money to spend. You dont take it from them in the first place. "

How do they earn money without paid work?

JS001

Not basic income, they trialled negative income tax.

JS001

Re: What about inflation?

"When were you last in the rental market?"

I've been a London tenant for nearly twenty years. Several flats and houses.

"It's a vicious circle. Housing benefit puts a floor under rents and drives them up. So yields for landlords are supported, and they're prepared to pay high prices, and house prices in turn are driven up. "

What proportions of house price increases do you attribute respectively to,

1. housing benefit

2. scarcity of housing (fewer houses being built than 30, 40 years ago)

3. availability of credit (e.g. mortgages)

4. government subsidising property ownership (e.g. right-to-buy, help-to-buy, interest-free loans)

5. wage increases

"So government sees homes are "unaffordable" and pours yet more money in, pushing up prices and rents all over again."

Seems to me the government pours money in because of the British obsession with property.

JS001

Re: Working through the numbers

"Worstall hints at having worked through the numbers. Someone's done it for real here. "

But that person suggests taxing the 'universal benefit'. We don't want to tax a basic income. The basic income should be tax free. What you earn on top of that should be taxed.

JS001

Re: What about inflation?

" And rents are massively inflated by means-tested housing benefit which removes all incentive to seek lower rents, and would therefore stand to fall substantially if we moved to a flat-rate basic income where everyone is incentivised to seek value."

Really?

I thought wages and scarcity drive rents and housing benefit was capped below 'market rates'.

JS001

Why do you say that pdf is about "basic income"? The pdf doesn't mention basic income, citizen's income, citizen's dividend or demogrant. It says "The negative income tax was tested in four separate experiments" - it is talking about negative income tax, not basic income.

JS001

Re: @JS001 The devil is in the details

I'm for basic income.

re point 4, we should just let people get on with it. How they spend their money is up to them, we can''t control it so don't bother worrying about it. Just give them a lump sum, say that's your lot. If they spend it on fags and booze then the public purse sees some return.

"Some think recipients should perform work before receiving the "free" cash."

Yes. Which is nonsensical in an economy where work is scarce.

"Workfare has its appeals..."

Workfare has been used to give businesses free labour - funny how we object to handouts except to businesses (and 'people like us'). The workfare workers don't get the minimum wage* and paid workers lose out.

* I'm inclined to think the minimum wage could be abolished if basic income were introduced.

JS001

" Because we've actually done trials of this, in the US in the 1960s and 1970s."

Was basic income tried in the US in the 70s? Or was it more like negative income tax?

And were the trials methodologically flawless?

Unfortunately Tim Worstall hasn't gone into any depth here, so we don't know how he arrived at his conclusion. But if the trials weren't of basic income and/or they were methodologically flawed, they would undermine his conclusion.

JS001

"This is why we're better off with the current approach, increase the tax free allowance for everyone, so that instead of being given money for nothing, you instead get to keep more of the money that you earn in the first place. "

1. The current approach is to give people money for "nothing"

2. Under your proposal, merely increasing the tax free allowance, how do you earn money if you have no work?

Assange's cop chaperones have cost £10 MEEELLION to date

JS001

Re: He's obviously dangerous

Assange was alleged by the European Arrest Warrant to have committed four offences, one of which was rape. Assange contended (among other things) his High Court appeal that "the offence as described in the EAW was not "rape"; if it had been fairly or accurately described in the EAW, it still would not have disclosed the offence of "rape"." The High Court disagreed with him.

Zimmermann slams Cameron’s ‘absurd’ plans for crypto ban

JS001

If encryption is broken by the government, we'll all have more to fear from run-of-the-mill criminals than the paedo-terrorists.

JS001

Re: The Point

"Who cares who you get up to things with?"

Er... aside from criminals, much of the rest of society!

"Oh, you're scared of ridicule? "

Or social tyranny. Or being imprisoned for things that shouldn't in a free society be crimes.

Snowden journo's partner wins partial injunction on seized data

JS001

Re: There's more going on here...

RIPA wasn't used. Schedule 7 Terrorism Act was used. The person must "give the examining officer any information in his possession which the officer requests".

JS001

Re: There's more going on here...

"Miranda almost certainly did hand over the decryption keys to the files, because he would have been prosecuted if he didn't."

AIUI he wasn't given the decryption keys. He did give them passwords to his computer, phone and storage devices.

Don't get sued or cuffed on Twitter: Read these top 10 pitfalls

JS001

"Taking Paul Chambers as an example, had he been saying it face-to-face, the person on the other end would probably have seen a cheeky smile and thought "what a joker". Put it into text and the intent is less obvious. There may be other reasons they persued Mr Chambers but you get the idea."

From the appeal judgement ([2012] EWHC 2157):

"There was no evidence before the Crown Court to suggest that any of the followers of the appellant’s “tweet”, or indeed anyone else who may have seen the “tweet” posted on the appellant’s time line, found it to be of a menacing character or, at a time when the threat of terrorism is real, even minimally alarming."

Doctor Who to unwrap new sidekick in Christmas TV special

JS001

Re: Daleks?

One leads to tragedy, millions are a statistic.

Government pledges tougher games sales law

JS001

Re: Loosing the BBFC report is a pity

" I find the simple 12, 16 or 18 rating too simplistic."

Visit the PEGI website, then. There is less detail than on the BBFC website but more than a simple 12, 16, or 18 rating.

JS001

Re: What about US (and other non-EU) imports ?

I'm surprised you would be able to play it anyway, as Xbox titles are usually region-locked.

Game of Thrones Blu-ray disc set

JS001

Re: Undoubtably a good series

As far as I know, there is no evidence from the games market that if you lower price you *will* make more profit - publishers tend to be pretty cagey with their data. Gabe Newell's (Steam) oft-cited interview is actually about *promoted discounts* improving *gross revenues* not lower pricing in general improving profits.

Certainly it would be more difficult to have discounts if the day one price was near the manufacturing cost (aside from the fact that no-one in between the manufacturer and the customer would bother getting out of bed).

Perhaps some people forget there is a large capital investment in making a videogame and putting it in a box, which is a cost that must be recouped otherwise the business goes under - therefore there is a relatively high day one price (that inevitably decreases over time).

The excuse for piracy here is "I want this game now but I don't want to wait until next month when it will be half the price".

Sky follows BT in blocking Newzbin2

JS001

That's what I thought on reading the story: why aren't Sky doing this anyway?

(regardless of whether *we* think it is right or wrong for them to block)

97% of Three's network traffic is data

JS001

Terrible customer service at Three compared to O2.

Data is excellent during the morning to mid-afternoon. Three then seems to throttle bandwidth it mid-afternoon through to the night.

Bandwidth is nevertheless much better than O2.

Web block would 'spark arms race' against pirates

JS001

Broadly speaking I support copyright...

... but, given that blocking will be ineffective (for various values of ineffective) and inevitably there will be collateral damage, I can't support blocking.

I think David W.'s comment, "Presumably, then, the responsibility for preventing crime falls on the department of transportation?" is incisive.

The comment from Warner Bros. that "just because it was hard to enforce the law didn't mean you shouldn't try to enforce it" is rather superficial.

This is spot on I think: "It's not about about technology, technology can always be circumvented. It's about incentives, we put the technologists back in the box, and started to look at why people do it. It's about how you change the incentive structure, it's not a technological thing."

Hey, Music Industry. You're suing the wrong people

JS001

re: Global Markets

"As for the whingers blaming everything on the quality of music today - I find it hilarious that anyone with access to the Internet is unable to use the Internet to find good contemporary music."

"The internet changes that - it's never been easier to discover things."

Quite!

What's interesting is that the whingers seem compelled to pirate the crap.

JS001

the industry is suing the right people

On the contrary, it seems to me the industry is suing the right people, because the people too poor to pay for music aren't going to have much money to go after in court, are they?

Good point about the relative expense of goods in different countries, but there is of course a limit to how low the price can bet set, assuming one wants to at least break even.

JS001

re: I did buy lots of CDs

"why did I have to buy everything again from vinyls/tapes to CDs/DVDs?"

You didn't have to buy everything again. It wasn't obligatory.