ElBarto

Hongkong was taken away from China with cannons and drugs.

Handing it back was the right thing to do legally (for the new territories), morally, and historically.

It's sad to see people effectively praising European imperialism in 2019, reminds me of the old "civilising the natives" antics.

Edit since I'm being prevented from relying to comments:

There is no regression. Those protesters were charged under a colonial-era law.

Hongkong did not even have the Legislative Council under the British, which was created it as a 'gift' to the Chinese.

From the popular vote, it seems to me that the "pro-Beijing" camp has a majority, so that's what "the people want"...

Let's be realistic and put things in perspective, shall we.

Edit 2:

To the person who replied:

Meanwhile, during those 100 years, a new, distinct, non Chinese culture developed. Hong Kong people speak a different language than mainland, have different food, culture references and desires.

HK's culture is as Chinese as can be. In fact it is more traditional Chinese than the mainland. They speak Chinese (Cantonese is 'Chinese', it's the language spoken in Guangdong province hence why it is spoken in HK, 'Canton' is how Guangzhou used to be called...), they eat Chinese. It would be good to know a minimum about a topic before commenting.

An accident in a nuclear plant that was constructed in a highly seismic and tsunami-prone area isn't an argument against nuclear power.

I'm sure that Germany can find a more suited location if they wanted...

Anyway, France is peppered with nuclear plants and Germany is right downwind from many of them.

We have "probability different from zero" to be annihilated by an asteroid...

This is again spreading irrational fears.

We know how to make nuclear power safe. Nuclear power is safe.

It's not helpful to try to kill the discussion by stroking irrational fears.

An average onshore wind turbine with a capacity of 2.5–3 MW can produce more than 6 million kWh in a year

(Source: http://www.ewea.org/wind-energy-basics/faq/)

That's an actual average of 685 kW, so 4,700 turbines for Hinkley Point. But that's still the _average_ production. If, or rather when, there's no wind during a high demand period you get a nice blackout.

Also:

So a 2-megawatt wind turbine would require a total area of about half a square kilometer

(Source: https://sciencing.com/much-land-needed-wind-turbines-1230463...

So for those 4,700 turbines you need more than 2,350 km^2, so the whole of Dorset covered and as said, you'd still need a backup.

It does because it is a relatively industrialized country.

No, it does because its electricity comes from fossil fuels.

You are completely avoiding the point of my comment. Germany could have much, much lower emissions with nuclear but it has decided to continue emitting for political reasons, while trying to claim that they are 'green'...

Calculate how many wind generators you need to guarantee the same production as Hinkley point and you'll see that it is not really realistic.

Then, take into account the goal of making of vehicles electric in the next 20 years.

There is no viable alternative to nuclear as of today even if renewables should of course be pushed as much as possible.

Germany is emitting heavily because most of its electricity comes from fossil fuel and it decided to kill nuclear power of purely ideological reasons. (wood fired plants are counted as renewables in the EU, by the way)

The absolute priority should be to get rid of emissions, i.e. fossil fuels. Germany decided to get rid of nuclear energy first.

They are not a good example to follow.

"Unlimited vacation" is just a gimmick that originated in the US.

Since there are no legal right to anything over there they can advertise "unlimited vacation" but the reality can be quite different because (1) approval is obviously still required, and (2) there is obviously a pressure not to be seem as being a slacker.

In Europe you have 20-25 days mandated by law and people do use them because companies tend to force them for fear of getting into trouble for flaunting employment law.

Bugs are change requests like any others.

Trivial bugs can just be fixed.

Non-trivial, non-urgent bugs can go to the backlog for the next sprint(s).

Non-trivial, urgent bugs replace go into the current sprint, with planned dev. being kicked down to the next sprint.

What happens if you lose access to Stripe or they shut down?

Engineering is one thing but it must never trump strategic business thinking. Sometimes the cleverer engineering option is a business death trap.

Any solution that puts your balls into someone else's hands is suicidal.

Agreed.

In general, we think it's a good idea to make Stripe the "one true source" for as much of your customer and billing data as possible.

Customer and billing data are mission critical and as such having a third party payment processor as "one true source" seems suicidal, frankly.

We have Stripe handle the actual payments and nothing else.

The comparison was with the holocaust, and what China does, which you clearly don't know, has also nothing to do with the Nuremberg Laws.

This is getting beyond ridiculous.

The author (what's his authority, by the way?) agrees, though:

Well, it can't sell "copyright licenses," as that is a misrepresentation over the rights that Getty Images has -- but if it wants to try to get people to pay for stuff that is otherwise available for free, that's Getty's prerogative.

His point is that he does not think that Getty was selling licences. However Getty's past behaviour (and I'm sure their own website since I'm sure that the T&C and the licence are attached to any sale) suggests that this is exactly what they were doing:

The first one was brought by photographer Carol Highsmith, who sued Getty after Getty had sent a demand letter to her over her own images, which she had donated to the Library of Congress to be put into the public domain.

And yes, knowingly selling licences for rights you do not have is against the law. If you think it's not then I'm happy to sell you a licence to fish in the River Dee...

Is that settled in a court of law?

Yes, of course.

As said a licence is what the owner of some exclusive rights issues to grant someone else some of those rights.

The allegation is that they licensed public domain images, which is something obviously unlawful (and likely criminal if done knowingly) since they do not own the rights of a public domain image by definition.

If it is indeed work to find and catalogue those images then they are allowed to charge for access to that catalogue. But a public domain image cannot be licensed.

I'm gobsmacked that you do not know what the holocaust was, then.

China is not trying (and never has) to physically and systematically eradicate an entire ethnicity, nor are they trying to drive them out through ethnic cleansing. In fact under the 'one child policy' ethnic minorities have the right to have more children than ethnic Han.

I urge people to really learn history and to make appropriate comparisons.

Upholding copyrights in court seems the basis of the rule of Law, and quite far from the situation in China and Russia.

Living in a 'free' country' does not mean being able to flaunt the law, especially in this case what those sites do is hardly defensible.

the French court ruled that the two sites “clearly claim to be pirate platforms rejecting the principle of copyright and bypassing publishers’ subscription access portals.

This is a ridiculous comparison. China is not expanding and does not systematically imprison minorities (and as you know the holocaust is in another league altogether).

The point of my previous comment is also to avoid such comparisons that are unhelpful, to say the least. Don't overuse those terms (holocaust, nazi, etc)

You should be careful about the terms you use. Some terms should not be overused because overuse trivialises.

They should feel very guilty of confusing "numerique" and "digital" all the time.

In French, 'numerique' generally means 'digital' and 'digital' only means related to fingers (e.g. fingerprint is 'empreinte digitale').

Even in Chinese the order may change depending on style or when writing quickly in cursive.

So I think this tool is useful for both.

Yes. Perhaps my comment was a joke, you know...

I'm imaging the cockpit's screen showing a "Your computer needs to restart to install an update" right when the pilot is preparing for landing now... Is that why they grounded the fleet?

I don't think any parliament will allow a new vote because a member claims (s)he made a mistake. That would create too many problems.

There are legal speed limits. Drivers routinely ignore them. EU plans a system that automatically _alerts_ drivers when when they are exceeding the speed limit (something that essentially all sat nav do).

How dare they be so evil? Jeez.

It would be a civil case, not a criminal one, and it would be on the basis that they caused you a financial loss and a loss of reputation.

The main issue IMHO is not so much whether that would be possible but the fact that they have infinite financial resources while you and I probably have very little money to throw at legal costs. So we're screwed.

That goes without saying, yes.

It's arguably not the leanest, then.

IMHO, with payments processing to be setup and legal liabilities it is a good idea to completely separate that from your personal finances. On a more subjective note, it also projects a more profesional image.

It would be good if Jackypot would reply to comments so we could understand what is his issue with setting up a company.

Note, btw that it is not accurate to say that for a sole trader profits up to £12.5k are untaxed as this is the "personal allowance": This amount relates to your personal income as a whole.

It's not more complicated or more expensive to form a company.

For a Saas trading as a sole trader does not make much sense to me, as you are personally responsible, not a company. And you'll likely want to move to a company sooner than later, anyway.

Of course this is not something to do in general.

But let's face it, too many people in this industry think that they are geniuses and take it very badly when they are brought back down to Earth.

The guy has to sort so many contributions that at some point it's not crazy to shut some people out. The effect of Sturgeon's Law on someone a but rough like Linus...