What annoyed you today?

[Jonathan]

Boots ruining things!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1262516/Boots-refuses-print-photography-students-snaps--GOOD.html

Hmm, yeah.  I had a "discussion" with Amy about her mag's bandwagon coverage of this "story".

What do you want Boots to do?

If a client takes one of my prints, scans it and Boots print it then Boots are breaking the law.  (Or rather they are the people who could get sued since they have money...).  If they refuse to print pics they get ridiculed in the press. 

That's one of the reasons they are moving to unattended print kiosks.  Not only is it cheaper they bear no responsibility for what gets printed at them.  Even if it's Julia Somerville's baby pics.

[Hinfrance]

And, of course, Jonathan, if your clients let one of their friends or neighbours even look at the photograph, or worse still lend it to them or make a gift of it, then they are probably in breach of copyright law too, unless you have specifically granted them an extended licence. Breach of a licence is not a criminal offence, rather it gives rise to a civil claim. Personally I would never employ a professional to create anything for me who did not pass complete ownership to me in consideration of their fee.

Copyright law as it stands is hopelessly unfit for purpose - it has been for decades, but only now in the digital are the glaring inadequacies being fully exposed.

Probably the best example is the last stand of the recording industry, Canute like against the sea of reality that besets them. Their business model is based upon an unenforceable legal framework and completely ignores the world they operate in; only a few more realistic insiders have taken the challenge to mean that they need to change the way they make money. Some, like Kiss and Madonna, are very good at it.

In the meantime the only solution for commercial printers is to stop right now. They have no realistically practical way of establishing the provenance of anything they print. Unmanned booths would be no defence at law, as they are either facilitating an offence where there is a criminal act involved, or are jointly and severally liable in the event of a simple tort. Although won't everything shortly be an 'orphan' work under the new legislation?

Basically everyone needs to stay in bed and keep completely still. Just in case.

[Jonathan]

Breach of a licence is not a criminal offence, rather it gives rise to a civil claim.

Absolutely.  So if she had been robbing the pics then the lady in question would have been committing a civil offence.


Boots on the other hand would have been creating an infringing work for sale.  Which my book says can be a criminal offence.  Which is why they need to be more cautious than her.  In fact the law seems to say that even if it isn't a copy but that Boots had reason to believe it was then they would be breaking the law.

As I hinted above from a commercial point of view I'd be much more happy for Boots to commit a civil offence against me than a Polish student.  "Poverty" is a pretty good defence against getting sued.  Boots would have taken the hit.

[Forseti]

Why is it that it doesn't appear to be a prerequisite of Microsoft's Asian support employees to be at least capable (too much to expect fluent) in the language in which they are offering support. After 36 hrs (not the 24 hrs as stated on the MS web site) I finally get a reply offering me suggestions to remedy a problem that I wasn't even experiencing.  My problem was that when using the 'safely remove hardware' icon in the Windows 7 taskbar to remove plugged in hardware, it would indeed remove the hardware i.e. external hard drive, but would NOT shut down the power to it as was the case with Windows XP. In reply I was advised that if the 'safely remove hardware' icon was not showing in the taskbar then I should double-click on My Computer, right click on the drive and choose the Eject option.  

[picsfor]

Yep, been there, done that, bought the T shirt and video.

Several utility and suppliers have lost my custom because of that very issue. I even had one of them tell me my English was not up to scratch...

It's up there in this countries rants along with MP's Expenses and Immigration plundering our free health, homes, school places and taxes.

I've applied to join the cast of "Grumpy Old Men"

[Oldboy]

I've applied to join the cast of "Grumpy Old Men"

Haven't seen you application! Did you send it to the correct address?  

[ABERS]

A quote taken from a report on the BBC Sport web site:-

"Bayern manager Louis van Gaal disagreed with Ferguson's claims his side played a part in Rafael's dismissal, saying: "I thought England was a country of fair play and I don't think that is fair. I don't share Sir Alex's opinion."

Photography is only second to sport in my life and perhaps football ranks top of the lot, and it's heartening to hear that England is regarded by outsiders as a place where fair play is valued. The only problem is of course is that at the highest levels of football there is very little English participation in the game, so don't go looking for fair play amongst that lot. Go to the lower echelons of the game where the English fair play ethic is still valued by those that play and those that watch, not amongst those that come from elsewhere to earn a living and where cheating is regarded as an art to be practised and nurtured.

[Jonathan]

My website gets a reasonable amount of traffic.  I've been experiencing a 5 min outage every day at about 3:15 am for several weeks.  I assumed it was maintenance.

Couple of days ago the outages got more severe.  Yesterday there were about 4.  I called support.  They told me I was maxing out memory.  Hmmm.

It collapsed on at least 6 occasions this morning.

Several long chats later I paid an extra £120 for more memory.  [It's a VPS - I now have nearly halg a gig of dedicated memory].

It just collapsed again.  They are telling me that my traffic is too much to run a Wordpress blog on a VPS.  I have real time stats installed - actually a fairly light day with < 200 users on.  During the hour it failed there were fewer than 10 visitors none of whom appear to have tried to download the entire site.

So....either I need a very expensive upgrade or my hosts are lying to me.  And there's no obvious way to tell the difference.

ETA: I'm gearing up to expect 1K + visitors a day.  Who knows how much memory that will take?

[picsfor]

who's hosting it Jonathan?
Not sure i'm in agreement with them. 10 visitors should not take down a site even if they are downloading the entire library!

Something is very wrong with the set up...

I've always used http://www.bpweb.net for my hosting and never had an issue with them in 10 years.
I would drop them a line and ask the questions...

[Mick]

My website gets a reasonable amount of traffic.  I've been experiencing a 5 min outage every day at about 3:15 am for several weeks.  I assumed it was maintenance.

Couple of days ago the outages got more severe.  Yesterday there were about 4.  I called support.  They told me I was maxing out memory.  Hmmm.

It collapsed on at least 6 occasions this morning.

Having a little read up on this, it seems like a fairly common problem with WP    Have you tried the  "WordPress Super Cache plugin"? this is supposed to help with server load.  WP Super Cache

[Jonathan]

My website gets a reasonable amount of traffic.  I've been experiencing a 5 min outage every day at about 3:15 am for several weeks.  I assumed it was maintenance.

Couple of days ago the outages got more severe.  Yesterday there were about 4.  I called support.  They told me I was maxing out memory.  Hmmm.

It collapsed on at least 6 occasions this morning.

Having a little read up on this, it seems like a fairly common problem with WP    Have you tried the  "WordPress Super Cache plugin"? this is supposed to help with server load.  WP Super Cache

Yes the site is cached.  If anything that's making it worse since the cache uses memory to replace disk access.  Since I'm running out of memory that's a problem.

Problem has tentatively been traced to application error which causes memory leak but the website is down so we can't work on it.

Layershift have been great in the past but the last few days have really tested my patience.

[Oldboy]

Hearing that the three scumbag MP's who have been charged with fraud in relation to expenses are claiming legal aid!!!! 

[picsfor]

WRPMOT?

Getting issued with a ticket because Brighton have a reputation to maintain as the employers of the stingiest Traffic Wardens outside of Westminster.
They shutting off part of the sea front for the marathon on Sunday - a part with quite a few spaces. Like about 40 other car uses i parked having checked that i could, only to get back and find my car blocked in by a bollard and a ticket on my windscreen.

Just to really pxxs me off - some bully for hire (you know the ones - they have an HV Vest with the word Security written on it) came up and duly tried to inform me and about 15 other sufferers that we were all guilty as charged because he'd known about it since Monday. Needless to say i left him in do doubt that if he had enough intelligence to make a comment worth listening to he'd be able to get himself a real job. Small round of applause and he stomped off...

So now we all have to go through the issue of challenging fraudulently issued parking tickets. Gonna be glad to move out of Brighton i think 

[CML-1591]

WAMT?

Damn Dreamweaver, there is this one folder that nothing is (or shouldn't be) linked to yet without it it half the pages either don't show or they are screwed up.

Also one min I upload, some changes are there, the next they are there and the pages get a 403/4 error and other times the pages show  

[picsfor]

don't you just love wyswyg development software?

One of these days i'll try to get to learn how to use one properly - but i think i'm too stuck in the late 70's through to early 90's to really appreciate them...