Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: The not-so-Evil Empire, in reply to Brian Fairchild,
Have you never felt aggrieved by the action of some entity that appears to be taking your custom for granted?
Of course. And it was Chris, not you, who characterised Apple's actions as "evil".
But the condition you object to is that they will debit your card to the sum of any purchase you've agreed to make. This isn't unusual: it's how buying digital goods works.
Moreover, it's evident from the correspondence you've quoted that they are willing to refund accidental purchases.
I get that you have the right to refuse the T&Cs, I'm just a bit puzzled as to why you would.
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Hard News: The not-so-Evil Empire, in reply to Brian Fairchild,
Computers make mistakes! That’s a new one! So who placed order number M3NVN9HTXV?
Oh lord, I don't know. But it hardly seems malicious, given that they were offering to refund the purchase.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Dinosaur Jams, in reply to Anonymous Author,
and this 16 year old:
Scary goddamn teenagers.
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Hard News: The not-so-Evil Empire, in reply to Brian Fairchild,
An online service that will let you use the ‘cooling-off’ rule is Air New Zealand.
That’s because you haven’t used the service though. And does that apply to the cheapie fares?
When I first sought assistance from Apple with regard to the functionality of my iPad I was accused by Apple of having made a purchase as per the following;
So they were mistaken and then apologised. They seem to have been polite throughout. And when they thought you'd made an accidental purchase they happily offered a refund.
It must have been frustrating to sort out but I’m struggling to see the evil here.
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Hard News: Higgs Live!, in reply to Bart Janssen,
If I had enough money (snort) yeah I’d consider spending some of it on getting support for improving presentations. The problem is that you frequently end up with a burgeoning marketing group that spends more time on new business logos and rebranding the institute than helping scientists make their talks just a bit better.
And that's perhaps the nub of the problem. Money goes on marketing rather than actual technical skills.
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Hard News: Higgs Live!, in reply to Bart Janssen,
but it scares the shit out of me watching a not so good scientist do a presentation with a really cool presentation.
It is those that get the ear of the managers and the marketers.
and in the ears of the politicians
Doesn't that suggest that it's in the interests of good scientists to communicate effectively?
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Hard News: The not-so-Evil Empire, in reply to Brian Fairchild,
The idea of anyone being able to ‘help them selves’ from my credit card because I clicked ‘agree’ doesn’t seem like a ‘natural’ justice to me.
Thanks for coming here and engaging, Brian.
But they're not "helping themselves" in my view -- they're charging your card to the sum of a purchase you've made. You raise an interesting point about being able to change your mind after making a purchase, but that general right is not offered in the Consumer Guarantees Act. The ministry says:
You don’t actually have the right to return goods for a refund if you just change your mind and decide you don’t want them.
I think there are cooling-off periods with certain kinds of purchases (door-to-door, for instance). But I don't know of any online service that lets you do this.
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Hard News: Who'd have thought?, in reply to Sacha,
At least he admits (clumsily) that these ‘standards’ never had anything to do with improving children’s learning; only with helping put-upon parents choose the ‘right’ school (despite them sneaky teachers keeping vital clues from them).
I would actually debate that. People in the ministry were focused on ways of making standards a good thing -- as in, a useful source of insight -- which is why they so strongly opposed the direction the editorial declares to be the purpose of standards.
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And so today the Herald has what is presumably a John Roughan editorial on the state of national standards.
It pretty much creates its own reality. And Roughan’s paranoia about teachers gallops onwards.
Many teachers will, for their part, be having a quiet chuckle. They have been able to utilise a belated Government concession to set their own goals and measure their pupils against them. Absent has been a single nationwide test, as is the case in Britain, Australia and the United States.
And:
The teacher union, the NZEI, has its own preference for reporting to parents. It remains adamantly opposed to any ranking of schools by aggregate test results, saying this takes no account of pupils’ socio-economic advantages. But that concern is irrelevant to most parents and, in any case, they are quite capable of factoring in decile rankings.
Parents want only to see their children in schools that promise the best results. They do not care about the home circumstances of other pupils.
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Hard News: Higgs Live!, in reply to Jarno van der Linden,
I believe these types of presentations also tend to get re-used a lot for different conferences, each with their different emphasis. So you just throw absolutely everything in there, and update it with new results as they come in. And if someone asks a question about some obscure detail of the research, you can be pretty sure you have the answer somewhere in the slides.
I see how that makes sense. Are there many presentational rockstars at serious conferences? And how are they regarded?
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