Cheers for the info, mate, but... cash up front, non-refundable? Sweet mother of fuck, that's a shakedown. Nothing shady about it, that's pure-D corruption.

If this creative business model of theirs is then enforced by the police in such a manner as we witnessed in this clip, it might probably be a good idea to get the feds involved in this.

They had a business permit, just not the new one that Santa Ana came up with for Pot Dispensaries. These shops have been operating in legal grey areas in Orange County, awhile back Santa Ana decided that they'd directly permit for it... but did it in a really screwed up way. A lottery.

Anybody who wanted to operate a dispensary had to pay $1690, a non-refundable amount, to enter a lottery for the privilege to buy a permit. Santa Ana collected more than a million dollars in the lottery fees. There have been enough accusations of shady behavior with the lottery process that a Judge recently issued an order to stop the program from going forward until it can be investigated.

The business in the video has been around since well before the Lottery. They got word that the city was going to use the Police to raid them instead of doing any of the normal things when shutting down a business, which is why they setup the hidden cameras.

Yeah, that wasn't really directed at you, but more at the whole "give us an objective review" cry that's been going around.

For the record, my two favourite gaming sites are bluesnews (that's how I found the sift in the first place) and rockpapershotgun, for different reasons obviously.

The reason I like blues and the issue I have with news in video format is time. I can read a days page of news on blues in well under a minute, spawning tabs of interest as I go.

Your video is 6:25 long.
First up is the BAFTA awards: it's a fairly dry list with no commentary on it. If I want that information, a link to http://awards.bafta.org/award/2015/games is a much more succinct way of presenting it.

Then some news about Hawken: cool! Hawken is awesome and I've been hoping to hear more about it.

Elder Scrolls: don't care.
Nintendo licensing agreement: don't care
Nintendo's next console: don't care

Steam refund policy change: Interesting.
Kojima to leave Konami: interesting.

The point is not what I care about or don't care about, that's going to be different for everyone. The point is I have to fast forward to the news I'm interested in and as presented, it's an inherently bad format for that.

Maybe instead of one long video have a series of shorter videos linked via annotations? Or even timecodes in the description. That way, we can jump to the stories we're interested in.

HTH

The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back
The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back

So the FCC won't let me be
They want to stack the deck for the ISPs
but we've got a couple of tricks up our sleeves
It's far too important to leave to police
it could lead to the streets
a breach of the peace
and even decrease our freedom of speech
there's never been a bigger reason to read up
and see what's agreed 'cause of greed for the green and deceit
The greener the leaf, the sweeter the tree
the quicker they'll chop it down and leave nothing but tree stumps; debris
the damage is done, no refund received
see, the thing about net neutrality
is unless you get huge salaries
? the paramedic won't rescue casualties
' til they've seen to the rich next dude's allergies
they'll prioritise cash over content
wanna send one bit? That's one cent
What nonsense, man it's scaring me
a planet of plenty's selling scarcity
Innovation paved the way
Now invaders are paying to take it away
but they ain't gonna make it today
! Letting that happen's a major mistake
If Lessig was rapping he'd tell you the same
LETTING THAT HAPPEN'S A MAJOR MISTAKE
Tim Berners Lee baked us a cake
and they've taken the cherry.. AND THE CAKE
discrimination is happening today
to blacks and to gays and to packets of data
though ethically they're exactly the same
so Oi, we're not gonna stand 4 it m8

U WOT?
THE FOK U SAYIN BRUV?
U WOT M8??????
! THE FOK U SAYIN BRUV
U WOT?
FAK OFF U ARSEHOLE!

The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back
The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back

I'm from the place John Oliver came from
but no matter where you live you should be singing the same song
at long last, I'm putting Comcast on blast
'cause they never learn their lesson like they're in the wrong class
well I'm the professor and I'm setting you with one task
Get them knocked back like a shot glass
Straight in front of me's a cable company
The way they're behaving's unbelievable
Comcast is in league with the devil
and it's pissing me off, I'm not even American
! Take a peek, see from the evidence
Netflix had to pay a fee to get better links
it's a shakedown, communication breakdown
There's a bully in the playground
I had enough of that at school, won't lay down
lay a finger on me, you'll be laid out
You'll be laid out
You'll be laid ou
You'll be laid out
You'll be laid out
lay a finger on me, you'll be laid out

The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back
The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back

Taking it back, we're taking it back
We're taking it, we're taking back

ask for a refund.

Nearly pissed my pants, mate.

A friend of mine bought two of 'em to power his 4k setup, and he doesn't even want a refund. It irritates me to no end...

@dannym3141

Broadly speaking, I tend to subscribe to the view that capitalism is the worst economic system anyone ever invented, except for all the others. There are plenty of problems with it but also practical solutions that could be implemented. Pining for a better system is great, but this quasi-vague revolution that Brand is espousing is as almost guaranteed to be as direction-less and short lived as the Occupy movement.

Take campaign finance reform, of what I'm familiar the Mayday PAC in the US is proposing a voucher system where either (1) each voter is given and limited to a set amount tax refund they can spend on campaign contributions or alternatively (2) there is public finance for something like a 10 to 1 matching system for smaller donations. That seems like a good solution to the problem. It's not perfect though, as speech via the media (TV, internet) would still be wielded disproportionately by those with power. But it's a start. More transparency on where donations are coming from would also help.

I'm no fan of inequality either, but it's a far more difficult issue to grapple with. If you approach it with taxes, the problem is you need global coordination. A single country raising taxes will just see incomes shift elsewhere particular the highest percent who are the most mobile. There needs to be some kind of standard on taxation globally as to whether it is incurred where it is earned or where the company is registered, otherwise you have companies like Apple paying next to nothing because they avoid it in both countries (known as the double Irish, although this has now been eliminated it's a good example).

Should investment income be taxed higher? Probably, I'm not too well informed on this subject but it certainly entrenches established wealth. Should there be an estate-like tax of sorts that limits wealth passed on through generations? Perhaps, but it seems like a band-aid of sorts and a double dipping on what should really be collected through income tax in the first place.

I'm all for public services where it makes sense to provide them publicly. I don't like political cronyism either. But solutions need to be practical. Eliminating tax avoidance by multinationals is good policy because otherwise these companies paying virtually no tax intrinsically sets up barriers to entry to smaller competitors which is terrible economically and leads to monopolistic behaviour and higher prices. Targeting finance with a specific tax probably isn't. Business will just shift globally and countries like the UK will lose out more than they gain.

I believe the problem is with the government's use of competitive judiciary : where each side debates their case, regardless of merit, and the expectation is that the 'right' argument will win simply because truth should naturally be able to present a stronger argument.

This assumption not only leads to some face-palm-worthy cases/charges, it also inevitably leads to people being convicted in situations where everyone involved knows with absolute certainty that the defender is innocent (often because quirks within the rules of the official process).

In this case, the "right" thing to do is : Apologize to the man, and refund him any costs that he's incurred so far due to this mess.

But "process" requires that the government push their argument to its absolute limit, even with zero merit, because the officially sanctioned way by which the situation is resolved is via argument in court (conveniently, the need to do this is also decided by people working in court - effectively excusing their professional existence and securing their very employment).

There is no 'admitting there was a mistake'. A mistake has to be proven in court. So even though everyone involved knows that the man is not at any fault, they will still force him to spend his time and money arguing a case, just to jump through hoops, and in the end it's _extremely_ unlikely that his personal costs will be refunded to him (lawyer fees, etc).

In the mean time, everyone on the government side is simply doing their 9-5. None of this is a burden to them, and it's in fact 'how they put food on the table'. If they aren't charging him, they're charging someone else. This is just another day at the office.

The guy getting screwed can't say 'no thanks, I'll not participate', because men with guns will show up and drag him away (police arrest for not going to court). It's effectively a predatory practice whereby the government fleeces people. Everyone involved knows it's meritless, but they simply force you to dance [else go to jail], and collect some fees in the process.

Because, really, what's at stake is not 'the truth' or 'justice'. It's simply "process". An excuse to inflate the number of court cases, to keep court spending high (to secure next year's budget - "use it or lose it" accounting), to keep collections high, and generally keep the high paid welfare cases (9/10 govt employees) employed.
TBH, for a country that supposedly "hates communism", actual communist countries haven't even managed to work it out this well. (I'm not talking fairy tale boogey man communism like you see in old propaganda. I mean the practical day to day actual workings. Vast government employment, bureaucracy, "process above all".)

-scheherazade

The funny thing is, if this plan existed, there would be one upside. The national debt would be paid for so quick. Corporations would gladly pay huge percentages of their profits just to out-vote other corporations. We'd be able to keep our bloated defense budget. We'd be able to throw all kinds of money at infrastructure, education, and science.

They'd just use their paid for politicians to refund them all money they spent in one way or another. Kind of like they already do.

A program with the desired effect but fewer unintended harmful consequences would be to:
Firstly, eliminate payroll/sales tax and replace it with increase in upper income tax brackets.
Secondly, create a bigger refundable tax credit for everyone.
Thirdly, provide high quality free education for anyone, especially the unemployed and homeless.

A minimum wage is a price control, and price controls are with few exceptions very harmful. A minimum wage makes it harder to find work, and thus harder to gain experience to justify a higher wage, and riskier to move around for a better wage. High unemployment makes the even the employed into serfs with little mobility.

I actually set up such a BBS in 1994 but it never got off the ground. I had purchased my servers from a local shop and could never get them stable. The local shop took them back for troubleshooting/repair, but never returned them or my money.

I took the guy to small claims court where he lied about the state of the computers when they were returned, claiming at one point that I had removed all the mounting screws and taped the hardware together. The judge pointed out that, even if true, he was still required to either repair them (possibly at a cost), replace them, or refund them. Ultimately he claimed that I had cursed at his sister a couple years earlier (via BBS chat) and so he was justified in sabotaging my business. He lost, obviously, and ended up refunding my money. Unfortunately, I had still lost a few hundred on other expenses and the release of Quake was on the horizon, so the window of opportunity was nearly closed.

I actually have the "ACPi MultiPlayer Game Server" software sitting next to me on my desk. I came across it a few weeks ago while going through an old box of stuff. Even though it's completely useless, I can't bring myself to throw it out.

Can you imagine the nerd rage if you needed a top of the line PC to run Sim City? Or if the cities were even smaller? The servers run some of the simulation so that the game could run on most machines. This is why Maxis is taking responsibility. Polygon.com had answers from Maxis very quickly where they explain all this stuff. Something about each user needing 80% more processing than during the Beta because of some problem with databases and the crazy load from selling way more copies than the pre-orders had indicated. Whatever code runs on the servers now I am sure they could eventually run locally but they probably weren't planning on doing that work for years. If something doesn't work you will be able to get a refund if you push hard enough. That is what I would have done if I had bought the game and it didn't work.

I never paid to see it and I still want a refund.

The refund can be done on our side, but you'll need to contact @dag for that.

For the new charge, we can't initiate that on your behalf from our end, but you can do it simply by clicking the button on our support page.

Thanks!

If you think about it, a lot of us don't have the time or money to waste defending ourselves in court in the event of a collision we did not cause. I certainly wouldn't choose to waste my money repairing my vehicle and fronting fees I hoped would come back in a year or more, without even mentioning all the time it would cost me that can't be refunded.

While this does not mean the wealthy try to cause accidents, it probably does mean that they can drive their status vehicles carelessly and expect the rest of us to just try and dodge them. As long as we recognize the status message their vehicle is meant to send. So how long is all of this true before the owner turns into an entitled cunt? It seems inevitable, but then again it might be the result of them already being an entitled cunt.