Posts by Tapeador 417 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Dec 2011
"Shares are a loan to the company at whatever price they were originally sold for and dividends are effectively loan interest payments."
Actually ordinary shares are merely a right to the residue following liquidation and sale of all of a company's assets. Some might have divident rights.
Well done for knowing the nominal rules! Un point.
However. There are about three doctrines of EU law which fundamentally prohibit the enforcement of the 200w limit (as distinct from the 250w limit on the mainland).
1) The UK is bound to implement the directive which features the 250w limit (due for completion in 2015 I believe). During this implementation period, it is strictly prohibited from acting contrary to the objects of the directive, i.e. it may not enforce the 200w limit.
2) The Cassis de Dijon, or mutual recognition rule: EU member states must accept goods on sale in other member states, unless there is a compelling and permitted reason not to (and subject to proportionality rules). Given people can ride faster than 15mph on ordinary bikes without wearing a helmet, it seems insupportible to force them to ride under it with one, on a mere 250w bike, which the 200w rule classifies as a motorbike.
3) Any national rule capable of preventing intra-EU trade is a prima facie breach of the treaty Article on free movement of goods, and must be subject to the proportionality test, above.
There are a few here
http://www.the-ebook-reader.com/large-ebook-readers.html
Some available in EU (altho Amazon US seem to have no problem sending stuff to me in the UK). Note that buying via mail with a UK credit card does give you UK Sale Of Goods Act protection via your credit card provider.
The article doesn't say that. It says "uses physical subversion to infiltrate and compromise networks and devices". It doesn't even single out companies.
That's a very different activity to the one your article described, it essentially means intercept information for public ends, whereas "subvert foreign companies" primarily implies industrial sabotage for mercantile ends.
If the NSA were a private entity it would succeed in a libel claim.
1) It also runs an interface virtually identical to Windows 7 (with some actual improvements as it happens) - as do all Windows 8 computers: it's a feature built in, which can be augmented by various free and paid-for pieces of third-party software.
2) It's not primarily a media consumption device, although those features are clearly impressive. It's a 4mb cache, 2.6ghz-at-boost, red-blooded, 8gb RAM touchscreen work machine with media consumption capabilities.
3) I have a Yoga 2 i7 and there is no bloatware. There might have been McAfee trial to begin with but I uninstalled it.
4) See 1)
5) A Macbook Air is not a touchscreen and has a puny resolution. The non-'pro' versions of the Lenovo retail from £600.
6) See 4). And if you need most enterprise or adaptive software then Windows is exactly what you require.
I don't get this being obsessively rude and condescending about others' OSs.
Good point, note though that Lenovo have realeased very similar non-'Pro' versions of the 13 inch model, featuring 1080p screens, and i3-i7 processors, for £600 upwards. Most of the goodness of the Pro model without the price tag.
I've got one - it's amazing for reading PDFs which you can resize, reposition, and highlight with your fingertip(s), and insert a note and type the content with a keyboard. Very speedy reading. Much nicer than having to do it all via the mouse or keyboard. Its basic benefit is having a third input/control method on top of the keyboard/mouse, and also for the ergonomic freedom to bend it around to whatever's most comfy. Just don't try using it one-handed on the Underground as a tablet.... your arm will ache vv much...
Sorry, how have you decided that an IP-dependent sector, recorded music sales, was somehow in decline without the influence of online digital piracy? What's your methodology exactly? Is it all down to the Smiths splitting up rather than IP theft? Downhill after "The Queen Is Dead"??
"they're probably loosing more to the MPIAA/RIAA/(whichever organization collects the revenue/sets the rates) than they really are loosing to piracy."
Spotify (which only exists because the alternative is zero revenue amid piracy) pays 0.007 USD per stream. So if you had a million plays that'd be 70 USD. You would get paid more working at the checkouts in Tesco.
The MPIAA/RIAA are unions/associations, which represent members (usuall record companies I gather), and membership is not mandatory. I think the real choice is between making record sales through record companies, and not making those sales. For you to argue that piracy does not impact artist income, you'd have to argue that artists under a pre-piracy regime got less on the market (including record co fees) than they do now under a piracy regime, typically with no (or far fewer) record company(s) with the funds to invest in the artists.
That's absurd.
"He wants to censor Google, but above all I guess he wants to be able to eavesdrop on people's google searches & gmail."
He might want to do that, but the measure seems to be primarily one of economic protectionism: site the workers and the technology in Russia, or be excluded (opening up the market for Russian competitors).
That depends on how you think moral revolutions happen: whether via the propagation of norms, or what. I think the people of whom you speak imagine that what they do is morally acceptable - and that others think so too. If they believe others do not think it acceptable, then it seems to me less likely such activity can thrive.
My 8-year-old Nokia 61 has been dropped on concrete so many times, that there are more chipped/scratched bits on the metal casing, than smooth bits, and each time it just bounces. A year ago there developed a small scratch on the screen.
It even survived being under several inches of water and the screen visibly filling up before powering itself off... two weeks in the airing cupboard with some silica gel and it's still fine.
"In fact studies have shown that free copying makes near zero impact on DRM infected purchases."
First of all DRMed purchases are only a subset of paid-for or what would have been paid-for creative output.
Secondly, "studies have shown" means a study has argued. I don't agree with every argument I hear. Do you? Perhaps you'd give a citation and tell us which bit you support. Because it seems to me trite economics, virtually beneath saying, that providing something for free destroys the market for it.
You also say there is "zero evidence that [advertising] is at the expense of purchases via the copyright cartels" - which seems to me incorrect, utterly, because the advertising money helps fund and incentivise the locker which destroys the market for goods. And in any case it's a form of profiting from theft.
Finally, you write that there is "zero evidence"; yet as I say, not only is it trite economics, as I mentioned above, but also in part counterfactual, owing not least to the incommensurability of today's market with one un-wrecked by digital copyright theft of 18 years ago - but counterfactual or not we can still make arguments and dismiss others. Methodologically, "zero evidence" claims seem to me deeply iffy in this case - you just mean you don't have any, which given how little you've thought about in a rounded way seems unsurprising.
So true, but then it's all a question of degree: we subsidise credit and throughput in our economies in the West through insuring banks, and through a wide variety of mechanisms, e.g. redistribution, automatic stabilisers, infrastructure builds, socialisation of healthcare to keep costs down, etc etc.
Granted, China take it to an astonishing degree.
I've had to revive my Huawei G300 Ascend, for complicated financial reasons. Nobody can understand a word I say on it, at all, the voice quality is that bad. Put the SIM in a 13 year old Nokia, no problem. 512mb RAM also rules out a whooole lot of software, even the latest Gmail update. It's pretty painful to use.
I don't know, nor do I know why you got three downvotes in response to that question, as opposed to an actual comment which surely wouldn't have been much more difficult.
The downvoting reminds me of what Peter Dinklage's character describes in GoT, of a third party offscreen who would take pleasure in nothing except bashing beetles with a rock and going "ugh, ugh, ugh", merely because he could.
Hi Sandtitz, no it's not completely legal; where the parties are not equally sophisticated, then any onerous or unusual terms cannot be incorporated unless they are appropriately brought to the attention of the customer - both under the Spurling v Bradshaw red hand rule (an onerous and unusual term must be brought to the attention of the offeree to be incorporated as a term); and under the snapping up rule, that where someone has not understood the price, and the price is dramatically at variance with what is normal, then the requisite intention to create legal relations does not exist - Hartog v Colin Shields.
These are common law rules but I have no doubt whatever they are norms of contract law replicated in civil jurisdictions. Europe has been looking after consumers since the days of Rome when dodgy charioteers would have tried it on and I have no doubt that a contract would not subsist in these situations. If a person chooses to pay that is another matter.
"I can see the banks jumping onto Apple Pay, and leaving Android handsets with NFC by the wayside as they have been doing since 2010."
Does not being able to pay by NFC really leave a handset "by the wayside"? My Moto G at least does swipey-text, has easy file transfer, and is actually affordable - these are much more valuable to me than being able to pay by NFC, a benefit by the way which seems to me is solely for retailers who can save five seconds per purchase (big deal...) rather than consumers who will likely be paying much more for the privilege, when all costs are apportioned.
"Or , if allergic to dogs, don't work in a job that has a legal requirement to carry assistance dogs."
Let me get right what you've just said: "if you're disabled, don't work in a job which as a legal requirement to do things which your disability prevents you from performing".
I think you're misunderstanding the nature of the "legal requirement". It's not absolute. It just typically requires that you make reasonable adjustments.
"Sorry, but no.
The law is there to protect the consumer and the driver. "
Well, no, the protection of producers' positions is not the objective of EU law. It is the creation of an efficient market which protects consumers, and through efficiency allocates resources best (thus increasing prosperity and raising the living standards of workers, supposedly). It tends to look down on producer-welfarism.
The minimum wage issue you mention is quite interesting in EU law terms - whether local sectoral minimum wage requirements (including a sectoral or guild-based requirement to pay for health insurance) trump freedom to provide services. Seems to me a question of fact as to the Luxembourg position. I instinctively think customer benefit should trump protectionism here - but my rationale is weak, because on the other hand you have fixed-price guilds for German legal work, and that system works very well indeed.
Whether an outright ban of Uber is the least restrictive option in fulfilling those of the objectives you mention which are legitimate under the Treaties, I very much doubt. I don't see why Uber can't increase its driver checks and require health checks.
As for liability insurance, that issue arises solely from the possibly illegitimate ban by the regional court just now - obviously Uber drivers wouldn't be permitted by Uber to drive without being fully insured.
This isn't a political question, it's a legal question solely concerning economic rights - no fundamental rights, no human rights, no free association or speech, no protection of consumers, no special strategic rationale for resource security, no special cultural protection rationales, no public health, nothing like that.
It's just old economy vs new economy. And the entire history of the caselaw affirms that where only economic rights are concerned then the Treaties apply.
Germany knows the jurisprudence on free movement of services, this is pretty standard stuff. They banned Cassis de Dijon liquer in 61 I think because "it wasn't strong enough for the German drinker..." And that was overturned in a trice by the CJEU, it's par for the course.
Truly, any EU lawyer is very familiar with the silly justifications for local protectionism which member states put forward on political grounds.
Free movement of services TFEU Article 56 http://euwiki.org/TFEU#Article_56 (Uber is based in NL), this is a classic case where the restriction on trade has no legitimate object permitted by the treaties (or by the Luxembourg court's jurisprudence). It claims to be for the defence of the consumer (which is a permitted object), however, we know that these restrictions on Uber are for the defence of the provider, i.e. existing taxi drivers!
Nor is it a proportionate measure rationally connected with any such acceptable object, nor is it the least restrictive option in obtaining such an object.
So expect the CJEU to urinate noisily all over the German law in question.
Actually all consumer purchases are "warranted" in the UK for up to six years under the Sale of Goods Act 1979, depending on how much you paid for it and thus what would in theory be just for a small claims judge to hold "reasonable durability" requires. Apple's gratuitous warranty and ridiculous Applecare is on top of that much more weighty obligation which you've already paid for, and it replicates it and (in the case of Applecare) charges you twice for it.
A term purporting to exclude batteries from the warranty only applies to the gratuitous "warranty" which the firm applies on top of your statutory rights. Even if it claims to exclude statutory liability, explicitly, such a clause will tend to be void under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999, depending on what seems just in a given case (the test for an unfair term is "creates an imbalance in the rights and obligations of the parties, to the detriment of the consumer, and contrary to the requirements of good faith.") So the more you pay for the phone, the more likely it is your battery ought to last a veery long time.
I can still remember the sound of the things loading.
(high pitched hum followed by quick chirp several tones higher)
(same high pitched hum followed by succession of high-pitched chirps like crashing waves of sound, continuing till almost loaded)
Several minutes later - crashes at end of recording.
Repeat for several hours until bootleg game loaded.
I agree, the reasons are severalfold.
Mainly that our legal system is complex, jargon-ridden, and costly and time-consuming to use; consumers don't have standing to injunct utilities to desist in using certain practices with other consumers (so the utility just settles, or pays up in small claims, no precedent is set). Even were a precedent set, nobody would know how to use it. The regulators don't even use the ordinary rules of contract formation to guide their regulatory instructions. The law views the disutility (or displeasure) of a breach of contract as relating to that individual alone, in consumer cases - rather than looking at aggregated disutility. I could go on and on.
But it's a problem with the nature of consumer law in the UK, and the ordinary norms of the law of contract not applying to it because of collective action problems, and structural problems with our legal and regulatory systems.
BT's business model: offer people expensive, uncompetitive contracts, because they don't trust other brands.
Actually ironically BT own plusnet I gather, who offer the same at vastly reduced prices - which goes to show there's price-reference-point marketing going on too.
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