Archive for the ‘misc’ Category

SOPA is the end of the world

Saturday, January 14th, 2012

Man with freedom of his mouth

SOPA, or Stop Online Piracy Act in its full form is an American bill. SOPA is a bill drawn up by the royalty collection agencies in America, its not a brand new idea. Versions of this bill have been put into place

Sinde Law

Sinde Law is seen as the Spanish version of America’s SOPA bill. It gives copyright holders the legal grounds to shutdown websites hosting or linking too illegal material

Protected data dvd and films

The detail of Sinde

Before a site can be shutdown, it must be given 10 days notice to remove any illegal material. If the site owner does not respond or cooperate a Spanish judge can order ISPs and other web hosts to stop providing access to said site. This means that ISPs and hosting providers will require a means of blocking portions of the internet according to the wishes of a judge. Of course its not like there’s ever been cases of laws being used outside of their intention..

(more…)

Are service providers servants?

Sunday, November 13th, 2011

Last night I took my Hungarian date out to dinner before our massage with very happy ending ;-) . We ate in a lovely Thai place. Something my Hungarian lady picked up on was another diner becoming more and more annoyed. Her frustration was based around a missing bowl of rice. Despite it only arriving 30 seconds after the rest of her meal, along with an apology from the head waitress she was determined to take this mistake as a personal insult.

At what point did society decide that if you are paying for a service, you are allowed to treat the people providing that service like feelingless object, happy to accept ridicule, abuse and a lack of manners? Surely this isn’t the sign of a civilised society.

Sites like Trip Advisor, Yelp idealistic in their aims to provide clear and concise information about a service that’s available fail to account for the attitude of the client. Other sites such as AdultWork and PunterNet serving some of the least respected service providers in the UK seem to do a better job at providing bother service providers and clients with a clearer picture of any disputed events that took place.

Have we become so used to the idea that money equals power with no responsibility? Or when we are paying for something, do we believe that the service provider becomes totally responsible for our well-being? Perhaps this is part of the escapist nature of today’s culture (time relevant). We aren’t just paying for you to feed us, drive us, have sex with us, talk to us. We want to not have to be responsible for any of the surrounding acts.

No need to be polite, no need to be hygienic, no need to be considerate. These are all things we didn’t bother with when we were children. Why would we have been when we weren’t responsible for our actions. I think its time people providing a service started treating poorly behaved clients like irresponsible children.

I’m sure the grumpy lady in the restaurant would have been a lot more bearable if she’d been made to sit in a corner and think about her behaviour for five minutes.

If you are a providing a service and your client is acting like a little brat, put them in timeout, refuse to serve them till they calm down or just fire them! There’s always the response “I’ll never come here again” or “I’ll tell so and so, you loose so much business”. The question is, if you value yourself, do you really want to be dealing with people who think it’s OK to treat you at best like their mother, at worst their personal servant