UK minister says 53 UK pounds is fine for him!
Says our source from a British public school: I herd it with me own eers!
We are outraged that the governments in the Western hemisphere have kept this secret for so long.
But the cat is out of the bag now after British minister Ian Duncan Smith replied in the affirmative to a BBC question.
Yes, was the answer when asked if a person could live on 53 quid a week.
Governments across Europe, including the fat cats (sorry to our cats) of the EU need to see their immense paychecks cut NOW!
We don't want them to starve, so we would be okay with 60 UK pounds per week.
That is a substantial increase over the 53 mentioned in the interview.
It ensures work will pay.
[Update 3 April]
The Queen will get 5 million more for household expenses, which is only fair because she is not a government worker. You have to spend money to make money when your future has not much more to offer than fish and chips and a quaint monarchy.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Alien ice
Can we borrow your mass spectrometer?
Ever since the post about the devil on a snow-covered roof, the resident philosopher has kept a watchful eye on the garage roof.
With winter winding down, all the snow and ice melted, except this one patch. It is oval shaped and about six inches wide. It looks like plain old ice, white, a little sparkly when hit by the sun.
It refuses to go away.
We did not dare touch it.
After the rest of the roof had been clear and dry except this very annoying white pimple, as we affectionately called it, we began looking for a solution.
Take a torch to it, said one.
What if it's really alien, the energy from the torch might bring it to life?
That's all these bad horror movies speaking.
Then make a better suggestion!
We finally settled on a mass spectrometer. If they can use it in some TV crime show to figure out the lost recipe of grandma's hot sauce, surely we should be able to detect any alien properties of the ice patch?
[Tuesday, 2 April]
After several restless nights caused by the irritating icy pimple, or maybe also by all those hard boiled Easter eggs, the night was quiet.
This morning the ice had disappeared.
Great, said the non-philosopher.
What do you mean, great? Now I'm getting really worried. What if it heard us talk about running it through a mass spec and decided that would blow its cover?
Let's not talk about this any more. Instead, let's go and read the online version of the London Telegraph, where they are deeply committed to how the not-very-intelligent survive in an information-based free-market economy?
Ever since the post about the devil on a snow-covered roof, the resident philosopher has kept a watchful eye on the garage roof.
With winter winding down, all the snow and ice melted, except this one patch. It is oval shaped and about six inches wide. It looks like plain old ice, white, a little sparkly when hit by the sun.
It refuses to go away.
We did not dare touch it.
After the rest of the roof had been clear and dry except this very annoying white pimple, as we affectionately called it, we began looking for a solution.
Take a torch to it, said one.
What if it's really alien, the energy from the torch might bring it to life?
That's all these bad horror movies speaking.
Then make a better suggestion!
We finally settled on a mass spectrometer. If they can use it in some TV crime show to figure out the lost recipe of grandma's hot sauce, surely we should be able to detect any alien properties of the ice patch?
[Tuesday, 2 April]
After several restless nights caused by the irritating icy pimple, or maybe also by all those hard boiled Easter eggs, the night was quiet.
This morning the ice had disappeared.
Great, said the non-philosopher.
What do you mean, great? Now I'm getting really worried. What if it heard us talk about running it through a mass spec and decided that would blow its cover?
Let's not talk about this any more. Instead, let's go and read the online version of the London Telegraph, where they are deeply committed to how the not-very-intelligent survive in an information-based free-market economy?
The UK Telegraph knows why "the Left" fails the vulnerable
At the root of this issue there is a fundamental question – how do the
not-very-intelligent survive in an information-based free-market
economy? Until the Left deals with that in an honest, non-PC way,
they’ll continue to fail the vulnerable.
Today's Telegraph out of London delivers us this perfect quote for a post.
We decided to ditch the planned rant about how institutions and companies and invisible beings and abstract entities are being protected against being bad-mouthed.
Instead, we decided to be all shocked and upset about the journalistic quality of the Telegraph.
Not about the quote, no, we would expect nothing less.
About the absence of a solution.
May we offer a modest proposal, something traditional that emphasizes personal responsibility and service?
Put them in the army, or ship them to Australia.
What? You cannot do that anymore?
Ah well...and the only commentator job at the Telegraph is already taken, as the quote shows.
Today's Telegraph out of London delivers us this perfect quote for a post.
We decided to ditch the planned rant about how institutions and companies and invisible beings and abstract entities are being protected against being bad-mouthed.
Instead, we decided to be all shocked and upset about the journalistic quality of the Telegraph.
Not about the quote, no, we would expect nothing less.
About the absence of a solution.
May we offer a modest proposal, something traditional that emphasizes personal responsibility and service?
Put them in the army, or ship them to Australia.
What? You cannot do that anymore?
Ah well...and the only commentator job at the Telegraph is already taken, as the quote shows.
The cease & desist industry
Germany's equivalent to ambulance chasers, with much less of a conscience. If you are an American reader, the 'much less of a conscience' clause tells you everything.
Now that the second legislative chamber has passed the law requiring websites to obtain a license for link preview snippets, the German web may get a little duller than it already is.
The colloquial name for the law was "the Google law", illustrating the goal much more clearly than its official name ever will.
Once it is signed by the German president, the lawyers who work in the "cease and desist" industry will cash in, say the opponents of the legislation.
Small German website operators are worried about the impact on their work since the law fails to provide clear definitions and exceptions.
While not for profit sites are supposedly unaffected, it remains to be seen if running a couple of Google ads to recoup server costs will be considered "commercial".
We understand the concern of bloggers and non-profits, because the way cease and desist lawyers work puts the little guys at a disadvantage.
Cease and desist letters are not court orders but 'private' instruments. They come with a restitution demand for alleged damages as well as an invoice for legal expenses of the claimant. The amounts used to be in the sole discretion of the lawyers sending a cease and desist letter but there was talk of capping the legal expenses portion. There is a built-in bias favoring claimants, and in a country without small claims courts this favors the bully.
Web sites based in Germany are subject to some rules we consider a weird mix of the old print media laws plus "no clue of technology" laws. For instance, if you run a Germany based site, you are required by law to have a link disclaimer telling the world that you are not responsible for the content of a page your site links to.
And you have to have an editorial contact blurp, with name, address, and contact telephone number.
Both of these requirements have been targeted by shady cease and desist lawyers.
We'll see how bad the new snippet preview law turns out to be.
[Update 10/31/2016] As netzpolitik reported on 6 October 2016, changes to the law in 2013 aimed at capping the restitution amount and the legal fees have effectively failed. A graphic on the website shows the result of a survey by consumer protection organizations that illustrates that legal fees went down while demanded restitution amounts went up.
Why?
Because a whopping 35% of cases are justified as "exceptions" under an ill-defined clause of the law that allows higher demands "when reasonable".
For claimants and their lawyers, a lot appears reasonable.
The prospects for changes to reign in this multi-billion Euro undertaking are somewhere close to nil in an environment that recently saw egregious EU level proposals, such as copyrighting hyperlinks.
Now that the second legislative chamber has passed the law requiring websites to obtain a license for link preview snippets, the German web may get a little duller than it already is.
The colloquial name for the law was "the Google law", illustrating the goal much more clearly than its official name ever will.
Once it is signed by the German president, the lawyers who work in the "cease and desist" industry will cash in, say the opponents of the legislation.
Small German website operators are worried about the impact on their work since the law fails to provide clear definitions and exceptions.
While not for profit sites are supposedly unaffected, it remains to be seen if running a couple of Google ads to recoup server costs will be considered "commercial".
We understand the concern of bloggers and non-profits, because the way cease and desist lawyers work puts the little guys at a disadvantage.
Cease and desist letters are not court orders but 'private' instruments. They come with a restitution demand for alleged damages as well as an invoice for legal expenses of the claimant. The amounts used to be in the sole discretion of the lawyers sending a cease and desist letter but there was talk of capping the legal expenses portion. There is a built-in bias favoring claimants, and in a country without small claims courts this favors the bully.
Web sites based in Germany are subject to some rules we consider a weird mix of the old print media laws plus "no clue of technology" laws. For instance, if you run a Germany based site, you are required by law to have a link disclaimer telling the world that you are not responsible for the content of a page your site links to.
And you have to have an editorial contact blurp, with name, address, and contact telephone number.
Both of these requirements have been targeted by shady cease and desist lawyers.
We'll see how bad the new snippet preview law turns out to be.
[Update 10/31/2016] As netzpolitik reported on 6 October 2016, changes to the law in 2013 aimed at capping the restitution amount and the legal fees have effectively failed. A graphic on the website shows the result of a survey by consumer protection organizations that illustrates that legal fees went down while demanded restitution amounts went up.
Why?
Because a whopping 35% of cases are justified as "exceptions" under an ill-defined clause of the law that allows higher demands "when reasonable".
For claimants and their lawyers, a lot appears reasonable.
The prospects for changes to reign in this multi-billion Euro undertaking are somewhere close to nil in an environment that recently saw egregious EU level proposals, such as copyrighting hyperlinks.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Level headed
The story of Nathan Blanc as told in The Guardian on Easter Monday is one of those news items the world really needs every once in a while.
He is about to go to military prison for the 8th time as a conscientious objector.
What strikes us about the young man is a level-headedness so genuine that it will make the stomach of every middle aged male a little queasy.
We repeat what we have said before: If you are honest with yourself, you will cop to having taken the easy way out one or more times in your life.
Nathan does not claim pacifist status under Israeli law because he does not believe he is what Christians would call a saint. Which would be the kind of level of pacifist thinking required to obtain status.
Judging by how panels in several countries used to ascertain the true beliefs of conscientious objectors, the friendly panel members would ask questions like: imagine you are walking in a park at night with your girlfriend and a gang encircles you and threatens to rape and kill your girl. You happen to have a gun on you. What would you do?
As in the few previously reported similar cases, reactions run the whole gamut of arguments, from plain old traitor to something along the lines of "I understand, but you are delegitimizing the defense forces".
In our view, it is one of the great mental leaps backwards that we humans are so good at: there is one little guy who would love to do national service but does not claim the equivalent of sainthood - and this one individual is all of a sudden attributed the superpower of being able to delegitimize one of the best fighting forces on the planet.
At age 19, Nathan has life ahead of him. We wish him luck.
He is about to go to military prison for the 8th time as a conscientious objector.
What strikes us about the young man is a level-headedness so genuine that it will make the stomach of every middle aged male a little queasy.
We repeat what we have said before: If you are honest with yourself, you will cop to having taken the easy way out one or more times in your life.
Nathan does not claim pacifist status under Israeli law because he does not believe he is what Christians would call a saint. Which would be the kind of level of pacifist thinking required to obtain status.
Judging by how panels in several countries used to ascertain the true beliefs of conscientious objectors, the friendly panel members would ask questions like: imagine you are walking in a park at night with your girlfriend and a gang encircles you and threatens to rape and kill your girl. You happen to have a gun on you. What would you do?
As in the few previously reported similar cases, reactions run the whole gamut of arguments, from plain old traitor to something along the lines of "I understand, but you are delegitimizing the defense forces".
In our view, it is one of the great mental leaps backwards that we humans are so good at: there is one little guy who would love to do national service but does not claim the equivalent of sainthood - and this one individual is all of a sudden attributed the superpower of being able to delegitimize one of the best fighting forces on the planet.
At age 19, Nathan has life ahead of him. We wish him luck.
1 April
The long announced panhandling app for iPhone and Android will be released on 1 April 2014, we think, we expect, or we hope.
We are sorry for any inconvenience, and thank you for not smoking.
And remember, it is not a good idea to hand in a resignation effective 1 April.
One of our contributors did just that.
[Update 6 minutes to midnight] The report that IDS said the British welfare reforms and cuts are "fair" may look like an April Fool story, but it ain't.
We are sorry for any inconvenience, and thank you for not smoking.
And remember, it is not a good idea to hand in a resignation effective 1 April.
One of our contributors did just that.
[Update 6 minutes to midnight] The report that IDS said the British welfare reforms and cuts are "fair" may look like an April Fool story, but it ain't.
Amazon goodies
The rotten Easter egg for Europe -- fee hikes.
Third party retailers in several European countries are crying foul because Amazon is raising fees right after Easter.
Dear Amazon Marketplace retailers:
Suck it up. Finding and retrieving old rocket engines in an ocean takes a lot of cash, which has to be earned. Especially since it's not just any ocean, but an ocean full of salt water. (*)
Shopping online is kind of cool in a country where the 24 hour brick and mortar store does not exist.
Germans are still finding their way around the boundless world of spending money, especially the American kind of money, money they don't have. Let them have some fun.
There seems to be another, darker side to Amazon. According to a course email from an economics professor, Amazon does something you won't find in bookstores:
When demand for a textbook goes up, they charge the customer more.
The publisher does not get more, thanks for asking. The publisher gets the same price no matter what the demand.
We have not verified this independently, but it sounds like something that would flourish in the corporate world.
A recently publicized tax trick is that Amazon pockets a huge part of the sales tax on books due to a legal provision on sales tax in Europe. Amazon Europe books all sales in Luxembourg at the bargain basement sales tax rate of 3%, but customers in the country where the customer lives get charged the local rate of, say 20%. The 17% go into Amazons coffers.
(*) Sorry about the seemingly redundant statement that the ocean is full of salt water. We are merely trying to keep this post understandable for future post global warming readers who may call an ocean a "vast expanse of weak acid".
Third party retailers in several European countries are crying foul because Amazon is raising fees right after Easter.
Dear Amazon Marketplace retailers:
Suck it up. Finding and retrieving old rocket engines in an ocean takes a lot of cash, which has to be earned. Especially since it's not just any ocean, but an ocean full of salt water. (*)
Shopping online is kind of cool in a country where the 24 hour brick and mortar store does not exist.
Germans are still finding their way around the boundless world of spending money, especially the American kind of money, money they don't have. Let them have some fun.
There seems to be another, darker side to Amazon. According to a course email from an economics professor, Amazon does something you won't find in bookstores:
When demand for a textbook goes up, they charge the customer more.
The publisher does not get more, thanks for asking. The publisher gets the same price no matter what the demand.
We have not verified this independently, but it sounds like something that would flourish in the corporate world.
A recently publicized tax trick is that Amazon pockets a huge part of the sales tax on books due to a legal provision on sales tax in Europe. Amazon Europe books all sales in Luxembourg at the bargain basement sales tax rate of 3%, but customers in the country where the customer lives get charged the local rate of, say 20%. The 17% go into Amazons coffers.
(*) Sorry about the seemingly redundant statement that the ocean is full of salt water. We are merely trying to keep this post understandable for future post global warming readers who may call an ocean a "vast expanse of weak acid".
Outsourced IT support at GM Germany
"Narrow minded nitwit" -- Attribute describing the writer of this post.
It had to be said.
With this out of the way, the author can go back to a great example of good companies gone bad.
One of the less satisfying aspects of being a small time consumer is that some ethically challenged companies are so big and have their sticky fingers in many sectors.
Voting with your wallet may work for a consumer company, but what about an 'enterprise' division?
A post on this blog deplored the old concept of 'Sippenhaft' - collective punishment - but it is hard to resist when a corporation is concerned. It has to do, of course, with the feeling of impotence and powerlessness.
So, this nitwit writer swallowed his pride and did a quiet 'vote with your wallet' on Hewlett Packard to the tune of about 1500 dollars. That's the amount diverted from HP in the last six months because of the inherent evilness of gouging customers for printer ink.
Check our new year's resolution if you want to feel righteous. Or if you want to confirm that the nitwit attribute really applies to the author of the current post.
So, it is not completely without sadness that we read about HP shuttering the IT support at the largest GM plant in Germany.
Having seen what corporate ink wizards can do, we can speculate about how they do IT support levels 1 through 3.
Let's have a go at it. And if you work at HP, drop us a mail to congratulate us or to tell us why we are dead wrong. If we believe you, we'll publish your rebuttal.
Level 1: Fresh graduates with no more than 4 to 6 weeks of client training. Based in a notorious low wage country like India or China, they are little more than telephone wallas and whatever the Chinese call that.
Turnover about 80% per year.
Level 2: Folks with a year or two of experience in a medium wage country. Ireland comes to mind first. They pick up where the telephone wallas' standard remedy of "turn off your computer and turn it back on" fails.
Turnover in the order of 40 to 50 percent.
Level 3: The pros. Called by the Level 2 guys. Level 3 people are the specialists who will show up at the client's office or server room and fix the problem.
When we talk about a plant like that GM plant, it is reasonable to assume that the Level 3 folks are housed on the same grounds as the client, no more than a few hundred yards from any computer that prompted the call to the Level 1 folks.
We have heard first hand how IT support at GM worked but won't go into detail because the person who told us did so under the "you won't believe it" banner.
We wish you ethics and self-confident customers.
It had to be said.
With this out of the way, the author can go back to a great example of good companies gone bad.
One of the less satisfying aspects of being a small time consumer is that some ethically challenged companies are so big and have their sticky fingers in many sectors.
Voting with your wallet may work for a consumer company, but what about an 'enterprise' division?
A post on this blog deplored the old concept of 'Sippenhaft' - collective punishment - but it is hard to resist when a corporation is concerned. It has to do, of course, with the feeling of impotence and powerlessness.
So, this nitwit writer swallowed his pride and did a quiet 'vote with your wallet' on Hewlett Packard to the tune of about 1500 dollars. That's the amount diverted from HP in the last six months because of the inherent evilness of gouging customers for printer ink.
Check our new year's resolution if you want to feel righteous. Or if you want to confirm that the nitwit attribute really applies to the author of the current post.
So, it is not completely without sadness that we read about HP shuttering the IT support at the largest GM plant in Germany.
Having seen what corporate ink wizards can do, we can speculate about how they do IT support levels 1 through 3.
Let's have a go at it. And if you work at HP, drop us a mail to congratulate us or to tell us why we are dead wrong. If we believe you, we'll publish your rebuttal.
Level 1: Fresh graduates with no more than 4 to 6 weeks of client training. Based in a notorious low wage country like India or China, they are little more than telephone wallas and whatever the Chinese call that.
Turnover about 80% per year.
Level 2: Folks with a year or two of experience in a medium wage country. Ireland comes to mind first. They pick up where the telephone wallas' standard remedy of "turn off your computer and turn it back on" fails.
Turnover in the order of 40 to 50 percent.
Level 3: The pros. Called by the Level 2 guys. Level 3 people are the specialists who will show up at the client's office or server room and fix the problem.
When we talk about a plant like that GM plant, it is reasonable to assume that the Level 3 folks are housed on the same grounds as the client, no more than a few hundred yards from any computer that prompted the call to the Level 1 folks.
We have heard first hand how IT support at GM worked but won't go into detail because the person who told us did so under the "you won't believe it" banner.
We wish you ethics and self-confident customers.
How cool is that?
Iceland is gender equality paradise.
An article in today's Zeit online (in German) gives German readers a taste of gender equality, and Iceland holds the top spot according to the latest Global Gender Gap Report.
Germans will find little consolation in making the 11th place, because they come behind countries like Lesotho and the Philippines. Ah, those developing countries we look down upon.
That should hurt.
Of course, you can go on an on about how small Iceland is with its population of 300 000, or you can rub in their failure as yet another small banking island that nearly sunk in the most recent fuck-up of the century.
But it won't help.
The one point you gotta love in the thinking of Iceland's legislature when they put gender equality legislation on the agenda ten years ago is this: women having children creates uncertainty for employers - the solution is to make male behavior equally uncertain.
Pure, unadulterated genius.
Employers can no longer make the simple equation that women take a baby break and men won't.
Oh, and regarding the German efforts, we did a little bit of research. Yes, we know, we don't do research, and we promise not to do it again.
Here is the finding: Germans have been whining about too few babies and too few opportunities for their women for a frigging half century.
Check the old papers yourself if you don't believe us.
What have they done about it, I mean, really done?
Window dressing, courtesy of a bunch of old guys.
Stop whining, you old guys, stop praying for the advancement of women, get off your nicely ironed behinds, and do something for your women and children.
An article in today's Zeit online (in German) gives German readers a taste of gender equality, and Iceland holds the top spot according to the latest Global Gender Gap Report.
Germans will find little consolation in making the 11th place, because they come behind countries like Lesotho and the Philippines. Ah, those developing countries we look down upon.
That should hurt.
Of course, you can go on an on about how small Iceland is with its population of 300 000, or you can rub in their failure as yet another small banking island that nearly sunk in the most recent fuck-up of the century.
But it won't help.
The one point you gotta love in the thinking of Iceland's legislature when they put gender equality legislation on the agenda ten years ago is this: women having children creates uncertainty for employers - the solution is to make male behavior equally uncertain.
Pure, unadulterated genius.
Employers can no longer make the simple equation that women take a baby break and men won't.
Oh, and regarding the German efforts, we did a little bit of research. Yes, we know, we don't do research, and we promise not to do it again.
Here is the finding: Germans have been whining about too few babies and too few opportunities for their women for a frigging half century.
Check the old papers yourself if you don't believe us.
What have they done about it, I mean, really done?
Window dressing, courtesy of a bunch of old guys.
Stop whining, you old guys, stop praying for the advancement of women, get off your nicely ironed behinds, and do something for your women and children.
Stretched Vagina
A dilated vagina on TV in the American ShowTime series "Shameless". Rare, even on premium cable.
There have been rumors of late that German TV has the odd show or episode that tries to be more rounded, gritty, and deep than the bland programming of yore.
Which is the kind of programming that's like RTE but with one hundred times the Irish TV budget.
But until we see proof, we go through the quirky American series, and right now that is "Shameless", which is an American remake of a British series.
The American version is set on the Southside of Chicago, as familiar to Americans as East LA, and familiar to old Europeans from the song Bad, Bad Leroy Brown. Younger European may have heard that a somewhat well known politician came out of the Chicago, Il. democratic machine.
To us, Chicago means O'Hare, the L and Olga's Deli, where you can get great Germanic sandwiches and Bavarian potato salad. Roughly enough calories in one meal to tie you over for a week, yummy.
'Shameless' is gorgeous, hilarious, depressing, philosophical, with super acting by William H. Macy as drunk, drugged out Frank and impressive performances by the young actors playing the kids Frank fathered.
Over Easter this year, we are doing a 'Shameless' marathon, and loving it.
Minutes before publishing this post, we saw a teaser telling us to go to shamelessawards.com to track shameless behavior across the US.
Alarm bells went off!
Had we crossed into jackass land? Gingerly, we checked, and we were relieved. Some marketing folks at showtime were trying to be funny, we did not agree, but were had not been had.
You may like this show if you enjoyed: Deadwood, South Park, Family Guy, Justified, or Weeds.
There have been rumors of late that German TV has the odd show or episode that tries to be more rounded, gritty, and deep than the bland programming of yore.
Which is the kind of programming that's like RTE but with one hundred times the Irish TV budget.
But until we see proof, we go through the quirky American series, and right now that is "Shameless", which is an American remake of a British series.
The American version is set on the Southside of Chicago, as familiar to Americans as East LA, and familiar to old Europeans from the song Bad, Bad Leroy Brown. Younger European may have heard that a somewhat well known politician came out of the Chicago, Il. democratic machine.
To us, Chicago means O'Hare, the L and Olga's Deli, where you can get great Germanic sandwiches and Bavarian potato salad. Roughly enough calories in one meal to tie you over for a week, yummy.
'Shameless' is gorgeous, hilarious, depressing, philosophical, with super acting by William H. Macy as drunk, drugged out Frank and impressive performances by the young actors playing the kids Frank fathered.
Over Easter this year, we are doing a 'Shameless' marathon, and loving it.
Minutes before publishing this post, we saw a teaser telling us to go to shamelessawards.com to track shameless behavior across the US.
Alarm bells went off!
Had we crossed into jackass land? Gingerly, we checked, and we were relieved. Some marketing folks at showtime were trying to be funny, we did not agree, but were had not been had.
You may like this show if you enjoyed: Deadwood, South Park, Family Guy, Justified, or Weeds.
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