The new rules, which go into effect today, follow President Barack Obama's March 9 executive order lifting a ban on embryonic stem cell research, an order that went into effect under his predecessor, George W. Bush....
In the interest of accuracy, I wish people would stop calling it a "ban on embryonic stem cell research".
While calling it a all out "ban on embryonic stem cell research" makes a great sound bite, it's horribly inaccurate. It was only a ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research for stem cell lines created after August 9, 2001. If you were willing to fund it yourself, you were free to do so. Bush's executive order didn't change that part at all which the misleading sound bite alludes to.
Now, with that interjected, back our regularly scheduled flame wars on this topic.
Actually one further nit, George W. Bush's executive order did change that part...it made funding available for that part.
The language, and the interpretations, are carefully preserved and taught in Islamic religious schools.
Ah, so the way I know what God wants is that some Authority tells me what is written in his Word, since I don't truly understand the language the Word of God was written in.
Learn and understand. Memorizing the entirety of the Holy Koran in its original is common among clergy. Think about Classical Arabic like reading Chaucer or maybe Beowulf. And your reward isn't some moldy old piece of literature written by dead European white men, your reward is knowing exactly what God meant for you, and how He meant you to live your life. It's all there, right down to which hand to wipe with, and it is all 100% true and undistorted by the centuries.
Just because someone memorizes the Koran in its original doesn't mean they understand what it meant when it was written.
And you're right it isn't moldy old literature written by dead European white men, it is terrible literature written by misogynistic Arab men.
How do you prove fraud and misrepresentation when they claim that they didn't say those things? They have evidence of what you said, but you have no evidence of what you claim they said.
So what you are saying is that anyone who does not speak the same dialect of Arabic as Mohamed cannot truly understand the word of God? Which effectively means that no one today understands the Koran because no one today speaks Arabic as it was spoken/written in the time of Mohamed.
First, most two party consent laws have an explicit exception that allows recording a person who is committing a crime without their consent (threatening to harm someone is a crime).
As to why two party consent laws are good I will give an example. I know someone who often records conversations without the other party's knowledge. They manipulate the conversation to get the other party to say something inappropriate. They then edit the recording so that what they said to trigger the other person's statement is removed and use it to put the second person they recorded in a negative light with other people. Fortunately, they have been unable to use these recordings as intended (to get people fired, to force a vendor to provide expensive services that weren't part of the contract) because they are illegal.
The jury is tainted when they reach a conclusion before they know all of the facts as presented by both sides in the courtroom. The idea is that the jury is supposed to enter the case without a preconceived notion of which side is in the right.
You don't understand the university has no interest in reducing the total cost of attendance. Universities that cost more are perceived as better than those that cost less. So it is not in the university's interest to lower costs.
The problem is that the "University" doesn't select textbooks, the professors do. Second, why should a university do this? Textbooks don't cost the university anything and the textbook publishers give the university all sorts of free stuff.
I read the link. The company was bought out by a competitor, so it makes the point of the original poster. Just because some company had a 1400 year lifetime in the market doesn't mean that any company will outlive its lifetime in the market. Look at the top companies in the world, only a handful of them were even in existence 100 years ago. Few of them were in business 50 years ago.
And I will give you a reply similar to the one he gave you. Please provide me with a list of publishers who supports more than one edition at once. I am unaware of any. This problem occurs because publishers come out with new editions precisely to render the used copies of old editions valueless.
The other part of your suggestion needs to be addressed to the professors themselves. If professors don't bother to choose textbooks based on cost, what makes you think they are going to go to the effort of creating a textbook for free?
There is a problem with his comment. He says that he only pays 17.7% on his income of $46 million and doesn't do any tax planning or tax shelters, yet the Federal tax rate for that would be 35%(http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm). So either he doesn't know what he pays in taxes, he is lying about his tax planning, or he is confusing (on purpose?) income tax with capital gains tax.
As another poster points out, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, Sr are arguing that other people don't pay enough tax. The article you referred to about Bill Gates, Sr was about inheritance tax. Of course he doesn't care about inheritance tax, his son is worth more than he is, and has already taken steps to insure that the inheritance tax won't effect his heirs.
As I have mentioned previously, the truly wealthy don't pay inheritance tax. They set up a "Charitable Trust" that pays a stipend to their heirs. I knew someone in a situation like that. His father and uncle had sold a large family owned company and set up such a Trust with the proceeds. The Trust paid an "allowance" to all of their heirs while the fathers were still alive. When their fathers die, there will be no inheritance tax, because the money is held by the Trust.
I used to manage college bookstores. If you came to us and asked what books were required for a particular class, we would tell you if we knew. We "required" professors tell us what book they were going to use by the week before finals of the preceding semester (end of April for Fall Semester, end of November for Spring Semester). Very few professors could be bothered to get their textbook list together by then.
At the larger school several of the professors got really angry that I didn't pay students more for used books. They said, "I always use the same book, so you should assume I'm going to use it again." I did that once, the professor (as usual) placed his textbook order a week before classes started. He had changed his book choice. When I asked him about it, he said something like, "Well, I didn't like the old book and decided this one was better." I asked him what I was supposed to do with the books I had bought from the students intending to resell to his new students, he didn't have an answer. I sold the books to a used textbook wholesaler for less than 10% of what I had paid for them.
Maybe, but there are plenty of people going to schools where one semester of tuition is $5,000. At that point, the difference between spending $400 and $150 a semester on books may not hold much sway.
This brings up an important point, the problem of the price of textbooks is the same as the problem of the price of college writ small. I haven't checked in a little over 10 years, but when I last looked into it, the cost of college tuition had risen at a faster rate than the cost of a college textbook. Around 1996 or so I calculated that textbook prices had risen at somewhere between 10% and 15% a year, college tuition had risen between 20% and 25% a year. I did a quick "back of the envelope" calculation again a couple of years later and the % rise was still about the same.
How do schools justify requiring the latest edition of a book to their students?
It is simple. The bookstore can only guarantee that they can get a copy of the latest edition of the book for each student. I worked in several college bookstores. Professors are notorious for placing their textbook orders late, even when they are going to use the same textbook as the previous semester. I had one professor who decided to use the old edition when the new edition came out, but he didn't tell me what book he was using until a week before classes started. He had 50 students, I was only able to find 25 copies of the book.
The problem with textbooks is the same as the problem with healthcare costs. The person making the purchasing decision is not the person paying. In healthcare, the patient makes the purchasing decision, but medical insurance pays. With textbooks, professors make the purchasing decision, the students pay.
Of course many times the students decide the value of the textbook does not match the cost and do not obtain a textbook. However, this does not create an alternate market (except for used copies) because generally a textbook only has any value for the student if their professor is using it. As a publisher there is limited incentive in producing an inexpensive textbook since most of the publisher's customers for textbooks (professors) don't pay any attention to the cost of the textbook. Even when they do, they don't usually actually understand the pricing. For example, I used to manage college bookstores. I had a professor change to a new textbook because it was "cheaper". The professor knew the price in the bookstore for the existing textbook. The publisher of an alternate textbook told him that the cost of the new textbook was $X, which was about $20 cheaper than the price in the bookstore of the textbook he had been using. The problem $X was about $10 more than the cost to the bookstore of the book he had been using, so the new text book cost the students $12 more than the old textbook. The price the publisher quoted the professor was the price they charged the bookstore, the price the professor knew for the old textbook was the price the bookstore charged the student.
The article says, "Look around. The big vendors controlling IT and the Web are...the same vendors that controlled it yesterday, and are likely the same vendors that will control it 10 years from now." Yeah, look around, who were the major players in IT in the 70's? How many of them are still around? Of those, how many are major players today? IBM, HP, that's all I can think of. Microsoft wasn't a major player, neither was Apple.
Take a look around, how many companies from the Dow Jones Industrial Average were around 100 years ago? Of those were any of them bug names at the time? Heck, IBM didn't make it onto the DJI until 1979. The AT&T that is on the DJI now didn't get on the list until 1999 (the old AT&T was on the DJI back in the day, but that was a different company).
(try reading a 500 or even 300 page book in 2 hours).
Over 2 hours to read a 300 page book? Only if I keep getting interrupted. Actually, it has been a while since I timed how long it takes me to read a book, but I generally figure about 2 hours to read a standard novel.
You know this is not about Google's search engine being anti-trust. It is about their deal/settlement on scanning books that are still under copyright but the author's of which they are unable to contact (also known as "orphan works"). I believe that this is a valid investigation. This deal allows Google to acquire control over the distribution of too much of our culture.
As others have pointed out, the correct solution to this issue is copyright reform. The current term of copyright is much too long. There is some disagreement as to how long copyright should be, but there are very few posters on slashdot who disagree with the premise that current copyright applies for too long after a work is produced.
May I suggest that we all get behind some idea such as the life of the author or 25 years from date of publication, whichever is longer. I think that is too long, but it is better than the current law and if people who want it shorter would get behind this it would be a move in the right direction.
I saw this article and couldn't figure out why I would want to run an x86 emulator in my browser, so I clicked to see other people's comments. Apparently no one else on slashdot can figure out why someone would want to do that either.
Please define "advanced". I will restate his question in simpler terms, if there is no Higher Power that I have to answer to, why should I give a s****?
Slashdot Mirror
In the interest of accuracy, I wish people would stop calling it a "ban on embryonic stem cell research".
While calling it a all out "ban on embryonic stem cell research" makes a great sound bite, it's horribly inaccurate. It was only a ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research for stem cell lines created after August 9, 2001. If you were willing to fund it yourself, you were free to do so. Bush's executive order didn't change that part at all which the misleading sound bite alludes to.
Now, with that interjected, back our regularly scheduled flame wars on this topic.
Actually one further nit, George W. Bush's executive order did change that part...it made funding available for that part.
The language, and the interpretations, are carefully preserved and taught in Islamic religious schools.
Ah, so the way I know what God wants is that some Authority tells me what is written in his Word, since I don't truly understand the language the Word of God was written in.
Learn and understand. Memorizing the entirety of the Holy Koran in its original is common among clergy. Think about Classical Arabic like reading Chaucer or maybe Beowulf. And your reward isn't some moldy old piece of literature written by dead European white men, your reward is knowing exactly what God meant for you, and how He meant you to live your life. It's all there, right down to which hand to wipe with, and it is all 100% true and undistorted by the centuries.
Just because someone memorizes the Koran in its original doesn't mean they understand what it meant when it was written.
And you're right it isn't moldy old literature written by dead European white men, it is terrible literature written by misogynistic Arab men.
How do you prove fraud and misrepresentation when they claim that they didn't say those things? They have evidence of what you said, but you have no evidence of what you claim they said.
So what you are saying is that anyone who does not speak the same dialect of Arabic as Mohamed cannot truly understand the word of God? Which effectively means that no one today understands the Koran because no one today speaks Arabic as it was spoken/written in the time of Mohamed.
First, most two party consent laws have an explicit exception that allows recording a person who is committing a crime without their consent (threatening to harm someone is a crime).
As to why two party consent laws are good I will give an example. I know someone who often records conversations without the other party's knowledge. They manipulate the conversation to get the other party to say something inappropriate. They then edit the recording so that what they said to trigger the other person's statement is removed and use it to put the second person they recorded in a negative light with other people. Fortunately, they have been unable to use these recordings as intended (to get people fired, to force a vendor to provide expensive services that weren't part of the contract) because they are illegal.
The jury is tainted when they reach a conclusion before they know all of the facts as presented by both sides in the courtroom. The idea is that the jury is supposed to enter the case without a preconceived notion of which side is in the right.
You don't understand the university has no interest in reducing the total cost of attendance. Universities that cost more are perceived as better than those that cost less. So it is not in the university's interest to lower costs.
The problem is that the "University" doesn't select textbooks, the professors do. Second, why should a university do this? Textbooks don't cost the university anything and the textbook publishers give the university all sorts of free stuff.
I read the link. The company was bought out by a competitor, so it makes the point of the original poster. Just because some company had a 1400 year lifetime in the market doesn't mean that any company will outlive its lifetime in the market. Look at the top companies in the world, only a handful of them were even in existence 100 years ago. Few of them were in business 50 years ago.
Are you serious? "Check their Twits"?
Tweets, people. Tweets!
You use twitter to tweet. You are a twit or Twitter user. You tweet. Tweeting is what twits do. "
There, fixed that for you.
And I will give you a reply similar to the one he gave you. Please provide me with a list of publishers who supports more than one edition at once. I am unaware of any. This problem occurs because publishers come out with new editions precisely to render the used copies of old editions valueless.
The other part of your suggestion needs to be addressed to the professors themselves. If professors don't bother to choose textbooks based on cost, what makes you think they are going to go to the effort of creating a textbook for free?
There is a problem with his comment. He says that he only pays 17.7% on his income of $46 million and doesn't do any tax planning or tax shelters, yet the Federal tax rate for that would be 35%(http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm). So either he doesn't know what he pays in taxes, he is lying about his tax planning, or he is confusing (on purpose?) income tax with capital gains tax.
As another poster points out, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, Sr are arguing that other people don't pay enough tax. The article you referred to about Bill Gates, Sr was about inheritance tax. Of course he doesn't care about inheritance tax, his son is worth more than he is, and has already taken steps to insure that the inheritance tax won't effect his heirs.
As I have mentioned previously, the truly wealthy don't pay inheritance tax. They set up a "Charitable Trust" that pays a stipend to their heirs. I knew someone in a situation like that. His father and uncle had sold a large family owned company and set up such a Trust with the proceeds. The Trust paid an "allowance" to all of their heirs while the fathers were still alive. When their fathers die, there will be no inheritance tax, because the money is held by the Trust.
I used to manage college bookstores. If you came to us and asked what books were required for a particular class, we would tell you if we knew. We "required" professors tell us what book they were going to use by the week before finals of the preceding semester (end of April for Fall Semester, end of November for Spring Semester). Very few professors could be bothered to get their textbook list together by then.
At the larger school several of the professors got really angry that I didn't pay students more for used books. They said, "I always use the same book, so you should assume I'm going to use it again." I did that once, the professor (as usual) placed his textbook order a week before classes started. He had changed his book choice. When I asked him about it, he said something like, "Well, I didn't like the old book and decided this one was better." I asked him what I was supposed to do with the books I had bought from the students intending to resell to his new students, he didn't have an answer. I sold the books to a used textbook wholesaler for less than 10% of what I had paid for them.
Maybe, but there are plenty of people going to schools where one semester of tuition is $5,000. At that point, the difference between spending $400 and $150 a semester on books may not hold much sway.
This brings up an important point, the problem of the price of textbooks is the same as the problem of the price of college writ small. I haven't checked in a little over 10 years, but when I last looked into it, the cost of college tuition had risen at a faster rate than the cost of a college textbook. Around 1996 or so I calculated that textbook prices had risen at somewhere between 10% and 15% a year, college tuition had risen between 20% and 25% a year. I did a quick "back of the envelope" calculation again a couple of years later and the % rise was still about the same.
schools will require the latest edition of a book
How do schools justify requiring the latest edition of a book to their students?
It is simple. The bookstore can only guarantee that they can get a copy of the latest edition of the book for each student. I worked in several college bookstores. Professors are notorious for placing their textbook orders late, even when they are going to use the same textbook as the previous semester. I had one professor who decided to use the old edition when the new edition came out, but he didn't tell me what book he was using until a week before classes started. He had 50 students, I was only able to find 25 copies of the book.
The problem with textbooks is the same as the problem with healthcare costs. The person making the purchasing decision is not the person paying. In healthcare, the patient makes the purchasing decision, but medical insurance pays. With textbooks, professors make the purchasing decision, the students pay.
Of course many times the students decide the value of the textbook does not match the cost and do not obtain a textbook. However, this does not create an alternate market (except for used copies) because generally a textbook only has any value for the student if their professor is using it. As a publisher there is limited incentive in producing an inexpensive textbook since most of the publisher's customers for textbooks (professors) don't pay any attention to the cost of the textbook. Even when they do, they don't usually actually understand the pricing. For example, I used to manage college bookstores. I had a professor change to a new textbook because it was "cheaper". The professor knew the price in the bookstore for the existing textbook. The publisher of an alternate textbook told him that the cost of the new textbook was $X, which was about $20 cheaper than the price in the bookstore of the textbook he had been using. The problem $X was about $10 more than the cost to the bookstore of the book he had been using, so the new text book cost the students $12 more than the old textbook. The price the publisher quoted the professor was the price they charged the bookstore, the price the professor knew for the old textbook was the price the bookstore charged the student.
I am married, but my wife has a Second Life, so she doesn't interrupt my first life very much.
The article says, "Look around. The big vendors controlling IT and the Web are...the same vendors that controlled it yesterday, and are likely the same vendors that will control it 10 years from now." Yeah, look around, who were the major players in IT in the 70's? How many of them are still around? Of those, how many are major players today? IBM, HP, that's all I can think of. Microsoft wasn't a major player, neither was Apple.
Take a look around, how many companies from the Dow Jones Industrial Average were around 100 years ago? Of those were any of them bug names at the time? Heck, IBM didn't make it onto the DJI until 1979. The AT&T that is on the DJI now didn't get on the list until 1999 (the old AT&T was on the DJI back in the day, but that was a different company).
(try reading a 500 or even 300 page book in 2 hours).
Over 2 hours to read a 300 page book? Only if I keep getting interrupted. Actually, it has been a while since I timed how long it takes me to read a book, but I generally figure about 2 hours to read a standard novel.
Infidel. Turn your geek badge on the way out.
So, you're saying I have it upside down?
You know this is not about Google's search engine being anti-trust. It is about their deal/settlement on scanning books that are still under copyright but the author's of which they are unable to contact (also known as "orphan works"). I believe that this is a valid investigation. This deal allows Google to acquire control over the distribution of too much of our culture.
As others have pointed out, the correct solution to this issue is copyright reform. The current term of copyright is much too long. There is some disagreement as to how long copyright should be, but there are very few posters on slashdot who disagree with the premise that current copyright applies for too long after a work is produced.
May I suggest that we all get behind some idea such as the life of the author or 25 years from date of publication, whichever is longer. I think that is too long, but it is better than the current law and if people who want it shorter would get behind this it would be a move in the right direction.
I saw this article and couldn't figure out why I would want to run an x86 emulator in my browser, so I clicked to see other people's comments. Apparently no one else on slashdot can figure out why someone would want to do that either.
I'm sorry, who on the religious right has ever expressed sentiments similar to what you are suggesting?
Please define "advanced". I will restate his question in simpler terms, if there is no Higher Power that I have to answer to, why should I give a s****?