English vs English

[fuchikoma]

We use half past, or "thirty" here... I think if you said it was "half 4" to someone, they'd probably say "Half for what?"

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah if you said "half four" in the US no one would have any idea wtf you were talking about.

 

Old people will still say "half past four", but everyone else just says "four-thirty". Same goes for "quarter til", "quarter after", "ten til", etc, it's just an old person thing, everyone else just says the time as a number.

[fuchikoma]

Old people will still say "half past four", but everyone else just says "four-thirty". Same goes for "quarter til", "quarter after", "ten til", etc, it's just an old person thing, everyone else just says the time as a number.

 

Haha... I used to argue with my parents about that when I was 8 or 10. They'd try to get me interested in reading analog watches when I'd say something like "three fifty five" they'd tell me to use "five to four" and I'd point out that I'm saying exactly what's on my watch and reencoding it like that is just pointless extra work.

The funny thing is... now I mostly wear analog watches in the last couple years because I love seeing the mechanism work in mechanical skeleton watches. I wouldn't get an electronic watch with hands unless I needed it for something specific though...

[TheFlyingGerbil]

rather than after and til we'd say quarter to and quarter past etc. Though I use them I do think it is slightly old fashioned and most people over here would read the numbers too. Like Fuchikoma said, I guess it's linked to the rise of digital watches/phones. I know loads of people just don't wear watches at all now and just use their phones to check the time.

[Battra92]

Yeah if you said "half four" in the US no one would have any idea wtf you were talking about.

 

Old people will still say "half past four", but everyone else just says "four-thirty". Same goes for "quarter til", "quarter after", "ten til", etc, it's just an old person thing, everyone else just says the time as a number.

 

In New England / New York a lot of younger people still say quarter after, half past etc. so it's not an age thing out here.

[deanb]

 

vs

 

 

Our Now 42 came out in 1999.

 

edited by dean again: Fixed link back to the original one that I linked cos it made more sense than posting the base "Now that's what I call music" wiki page when I'm saying out Now 42 came out in 1999. ¬_¬, Ethan!

Edited April 24, 2012 by Deanb
fixed link(Ethan)

[Thursday Next]

Is it the same brand?

[deanb]

Is it the same brand?

Yeah it's the same brand. US started getting them in '98.

[Yantelope V2]

I remember the commercial for the first "Now" album complete with Spice Girls and some other crap. I was astounded that they were up to 42 let alone 81.

[Battra92]

I remember the commercial for the first "Now" album complete with Spice Girls and some other crap. I was astounded that they were up to 42 let alone 81.

 

One of my younger sister's jobs is DJing middle-school age kids' dances and that sort of thing. She buys the NOW CDs as its a cheap way to get the crap the kids want to play for them.

 

But yes, the crap continues on ...

[Yantelope V2]

I just found it ironically named "That's what I call music" because it's exactly what I call crap.

[deanb]

vs

 

 

Also since the topic cropped up:

For TV we have:

Analog - the current de facto of the past however many decades. It'll be dead by the end of the year. It has 5 channels: BBC 1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4 and Five.

Freeview - This is what's taking over once the digital switchover is complete. It's terrestrial, broadcast out towers. You might recognise a couple. As the name implies, it's free. As long as you have a digibox or your TV supports it.

Virgin Media - Virgin as in Richard Branson. This is cable TV. You'll probably recognise a lot more of the channels.

Sky/BSkyB - Satellite TV. Pretty popular, I think it's the top as far as premium TV goes, but Virgin may have closed the gap since. (Nope they're the top)

YouView - The closest thing we'll have to Hulu once it takes off. But for now Ofcom are dicking about (mainly cos Virgin n Sky don't like it). It is the phoenix out the ashes of a previous service planned called (at the time) "Project Kangaroo". Until then we have iPlayer n such.

 

So there you go. Want cable? Got Virgin. Want satellite? Got Sky. Want free TV? Well you can't have it! TV License motherfucker. (actually you can watch recorded TV after it's aired, so iPlayer is fine to watch free)

[CorgiShinobi]

Learned about Action Man from a Ashens review.

 

It's so surreal watching something UK related and making the comparison to a US product, like Kinder Surprise to the now defunct Nestle Wonder Ball.

[fuchikoma]

Virgin seems like a cool brand, though their exposure is more limited in Canada... I remember they published 7th Guest back when they dabbled with software. We actually have Virgin Mobile for phones here... except we don't! It's really Bell Mobility - just a vanity label to make it look like we have competition.

 

TV also shows the lack of media competition... In the West, we have Shaw, cable and satellite TV - also a cable Internet and landline VOIP provider. Bell, a cellular phone, satellite TV and Internet provider that does cable TV and landline phones in the East, and Telus, a landline phone, cellular phone, dialup and ADSL Internet, fiber-optic cable and satellite TV provider. Out East, they also have Rogers cable TV instead of Shaw, and cable Internet, but here it's mostly just cellular phones. Quebec is sorta different from other provinces in many ways and they often use Videotron, which is no better than the rest. (Also, Shaw, Rogers and Bell own groups of TV channels of their own, and at least some of them publish magazines too...)

 

And... those guys pretty much run the whole show here, for whatever kind of data service you want to buy. If you want to stick it to them and go with an alternative mobile phone carrier, you can choose Fido, Koodo, Solo or Virgin Mobile, which are all just brands run by the giants. There are small players available in certain places, but they are generally buying usage of the infrastructure laid by the top 3-4 companies which lobby very hard to keep foreign competition from breaking the price collusion they've all locked into - making them the most profitable phone carriers in the developed world and some of the very biggest companies in Canada, among other things.

 

For those thinking "aren't monopolies illegal?" Yes! But this is an oligopoly, and that's all fine as long as our regulatory body has former big telecom execs deciding the rules their former (and sometimes future) employers have to follow.

[TheMightyEthan]

I don't know about other countries, but in the US monopolies themselves aren't illegal, just anti-competitive practices (price fixing, selling at a loss to drive smaller competitors out of business, etc).

[deanb]

I'll let Thursday fill in. But we have have plenty of nationalised services so I'm pretty sure monopolies are fine. As long as they're not dicks. We have plenty of regulatory bodies too. Like the previosly mentioned OFCOM, which rule over TV/phone/interwebs. And especially BT. Though BT fall under phone/interwebs in a big way. They control most of the UKs phone lines n sell it on wholesale. So while we have plenty of ISPs and phone providers n all that, they all (except Virgin since they have their own lines) go through BT first. So there's an example of a big monopoly and how it's controlled.

[fuchikoma]

Maybe so, but this is an infamous case of a few companies doing everything they can to prevent further competition and charging more for less while making more profits than the vast majority of other providers worldwide.

 

Though I didn't intend to start a political discussion - this is just a basic picture of how the TV companies here work. Bell, Rogers and Telus carry most of the national mass media and data lines in any format because they own most of all of them.

[Thursday Next]

As Dean says, monopolies in themselves are not illegal, otherwise you could never start up a truly new business.

 

What is illegal is anti-competitive practices such as, restricting where and for how much a product may be sold. Market dominance is a determining factor as to whether your anti-competitive behaviour is illegal or not.

 

For example, a company trialling a new product or business model may want to restrict sales to a single country (say Germany) to see what consumer demand is like. Switzerland is a German / French speaking nation and so will often take German product. Because the introduction of another country would skew the results of your trial you may legitimately say to wholesalers "You may only sell this product to German retailers.".

 

On the other hand, if you know that the Swiss will pay more for a product than the Germans (they will) you will want to sell to Swiss wholesalers at a higher price. However you may not restrict German suppliers from selling the product they got from you at German wholesale prices to the Swiss, either undercutting the Swiss wholesalers or making more profit. If you do this and are in a position of Market dominance, you will likely cop a big fat fine.

 

Technically all price fixing is illegal, however, most authorities turn a blind eye to the practice of setting a maximum price since it is beneficial to consumers.

[TheMightyEthan]

We do have lots of government-enforced local monopolies, but in general they tend to be for utilities in smaller towns where there wouldn't be enough business if they had to compete. So like a city government will say to a cable company "if you will come to our town and provide cable service, we won't let any other cable companies compete with you" because the alternative is not having any cable at all. Usually those kinds of deals have requirements like the company granted the monopoly has to provide service to everyone within the city limits, can't charge a certain amount above cost, etc to ensure they don't abuse the monopoly.

[Johnny]

Sweden has a government-enforced monopoly on most alcoholic drinks.

 

*sits back and waits for people to freak out*

[MasterDex]

The Irish government has a monopoly on Ireland.

 

*sits back and waits for people to nod in agreement*

[Battra92]

We do have lots of government-enforced local monopolies, but in general they tend to be for utilities in smaller towns where there wouldn't be enough business if they had to compete.

 

More or less every utility company is a chartered monopoly. The reason is mostly infrastructure and the only way for a company to cease existing is for the demand of the utility to go away.

 

Of course, these utility companies are usually regulated heavily by the Department of Public Utilities, Department of Energy etc. Oil and Propane companies on the other hand are usually only regulated by the Department of Transportation as they are merely a delivery company (same with coal deliveries for houses.)

 

Usually those kinds of deals have requirements like the company granted the monopoly has to provide service to everyone within the city limits, can't charge a certain amount above cost, etc to ensure they don't abuse the monopoly.

 

I don't know how the cable company works but I do know that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts requires that the electric and gas companies charge their customers the price they pay for energy (rarely is an energy producer also a reseller and I believe laws prohibit that.) They are then allowed to tack on a delivery charge that is set by the state as a "fair" amount. The state also tacks in some hidden redistribution of wealth in there by making customers who are paying their bill subsidize the losses of those who don't pay their bill, while also forbidding the companies from shutting them off.

 

Due to the large amount of infrastructure required on public land (telephone and electric poles, cable and gas lines buried underground and under city streets etc.) there's no real way around a utility company being anything but a sort of government sponsored monopoly.

 

Can you tell I work in a utility related industry?

[MasterDex]

Due to the large amount of infrastructure required on public land (telephone and electric poles, cable and gas lines buried underground and under city streets etc.) there's no real way around a utility company being anything but a sort of government sponsored monopoly.

 

I may be talking out of my arse but will that always be the case? With the increase in private funding for R&D regarding new and sustainable energy, could the model change to a more competitive, less restrictive one as the old limitations of nuclear, hydroelectic and fossil fuel energy are conquered by new and more efficient types of energy - at least on a private scale?

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I used "utility" more broadly than is common, some of what I said was really more applicable to cable companies, local telephone, etc, rather than traditional utilities.

[fuchikoma]

Sweden has a government-enforced monopoly on most alcoholic drinks.

 

*sits back and waits for people to freak out*

 

When I was little, every liquor store in Alberta was run by the government. They were these bland, dark brick buildings with plain lettering, and the teller would sit in a booth with an impact resistant window to deter robberies. I believe it worked pretty well. Like most things though, it was privatized in my lifetime. Now... there's more than healthy competition there because the product is booze. No problem finding willing players there.

 

Electric and gas utilities were privatized, but as Battra92 suggested, that left a monopoly. There's a great amount of discontent now as utility prices have skyrocketed and people have literally died from it (think I linked to that before,) but since there's no alternative, people pay what they ask.

 

The provincial phone service, AGT was privatized when I was a kid too - they became Telus which... well... marches in lockstep with the other telecom oligarchs to charge rates for basic service that anyone south of the border would balk at and probably assume they were joking. Only recently have I heard rumors that people can now get a phone on contract for less than three years - locked, of course - you don't get unlocked handsets. I think now you can pay another $60 or something after your contract is up and you've fully paid off the phone to have it unlocked.

 

I'm not sure why all the defense of monopolies here; I know that it's not monopoly itself that's the issue, but anticompetitive practices - I didn't expect my comment to be dissected for one careless sentence, but over here it's no secret that data providers collude to keep prices high and competition locked out (which strict foreign ownership rules help to ensure it stays that way. Any Cdn startups would just be buying time on the big three's networks anyway so competition is just subletting from the big three, who may throttle the little guys' connections to make them less competitive - actually that's just a Bell thing.) While we have great health and safety regs here, "consumer protection" largely means that the law will be set up to protect large corporations from angry consumers.

 

Actually, our greatest tool in telecoms regulation lately is a grassroots movement that starts Internet petitions. They rose to fame when the big three decided to employ usage-based billing for Internet connections and after drawing hundreds of thousands of signatures and gaining the prime minister's attention... it was decided that per-gigabyte Internet bills were better charged to smaller ISPs instead of directly to consumers, but the practice was still ok despite the public resistance to it. Still, at the hearings it was almost funny how badly they failed to show that there was any congestion issue, that heavy use was costing them more, or how they didn't already have more than enough money to keep their systems fit for a larger, heavier userbase.