Congratulations! Your pedantry allowed you to contest the OP's primary point while completely missing that point in entirety.
Sure, in the hypothetical situation explained by the OP, California legalizing pot wouldn't make it legal. So adjust the hypothetical. I could say that smoking pot in the U.S. is illegal. This is true. If a law is written that makes it so there is no longer a federal ban against pot smoking, then that statement would not be true any longer. And, thus, legislation would have changed the truth.
Did that hypothetical make the point clear to you, or do you have some other overly pedantic nit pick that will allow you to miss the context of the discussion entirely?
but how about in-car interference of the cellphone frequency?
Yeah! And then when you actually do get in a car accident in which you are pinned inside the car, you have no viable means of contacting 9-1-1. What a great idea! Why didn't anyone else think of that?
You might want to look into the right to trial by written declaration. I know it doesn't exist everywhere, but in some states at least, you are entitled the right to formulate a case by written testimony and gathered evidence which you simply mail to the court. Then the accuser (officer, camera reviewer, whatever) is required to file a testimony for their side of the story (also written). A judicial officer reviews the matter and makes a decision based on the two submissions. The added perk is that facing an officer in traffic court pays the officer over time usually, so they are often prone to show up for prosecution. However, trials by written declaration are nothing but paper work that they have to do during scheduled hours on the job. They don't get any personal benefit out of filling out all the required paper work, so they are more prone to say screw it and not bother. This is especially true if they hand out a lot of tickets regularly as they won't want to be bothered to remember your case in particular.
Anyways, it's something to look into in your state. Also, once a verdict is passed in a written declaration trial, if you don't like it, you can still request a court appearance and try to fight another battle. Drag it out long enough and the courts/officer may just say "Fuck it. I don't want to bother anymore."
Moral of the story, don't take this crap lying down. The only way to keep our governmental authorities honest is to make prosecuting civilians a difficult enough task that it is no longer a way to make a quick and easy buck. If they want your money, make them fucking earn it just like you did.
Skimming is only a mitigation strategy, it will never collect all of the oil.
Hey, at least it's a start....If you're on a sinking ship that has 400 passengers, but you only have enough lifeboats for 200 passengers, do you demand that all 400 people stay on board and go down with the ship because saving 200 won't save all of the people, or do you at least try to save 200 and try to come up with ways to save the rest all the while?
Someone other than BP is paying for this because while BP does whatever it is that it's doing, there are some organizations in this world that actually do recognize a shitfest when they see it and, despite it not being their fault, those same organizations recognize that after the shit has hit the fan, the responsible thing to do is to clean up all the shit, not stand around and point fingers at each other saying, "It was YOU that threw the shit balloon at the fan!"
I, for one, am glad that there are at least some large organizations out there that seem to want to make the world a better place, whether the bad things in the world are their fault or not..... Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire comes to mind right about now.
Who says they aren't? But that will come in another press announcement that will also include the information that the sequel is going to be produced by Michael Bay. Only this time, instead of an ice berg sinking the Titanic, it will be an experimental submarine with tactical nuke torpedoes! And instead of Leo Di Caprio falling in love, we will be treated to a lead role as performed by Bruce Willis! And instead of falling in love with a rich girl, he will uncover a secret plot where the captain plans to steal the ship and turn it over to the Russians to cement their naval dominance of the Black Sea. Of course, Bruce will only be able to challenge the captain, as played by Kevin Spacey, with the aid of his lithe but sassy sidekick Lucy Liu! The whole thing will be so epic that the only way Bruce and Lucy can escape is on the back of sharks with friggin' laser beams attached to their foreheads. Avatar look out! Titanic in 3-D is making a run at your box office records!
One is to preserve the legacy of the ship by enhancing the story of the Titanic itself.
And by this part, I suppose they mean to "preserve the legacy of the ship by enhancing the story of a ridiculous show of hubris and excess built on the backs or hundreds of poor workers by a Victorian aristocracy that was as far removed from reality as is possible before a society starts to break down."
That's not saying that folks in the present day couldn't learn a thing or two from the story of the titanic, but I doubt the right folks will be paying attention.
Can you imagine if the federal government picked up Google tools as it's primary software? Those targeted ads would be amazing. It would make the U.S. the number one customer of some other, less popular countries industries:
"Need to spy on your citizens better, faster, and longer? Buy this new tracking software from Chang industries in China!"
"Citizens misbehaving? Pacify them with some good ol' Soviet era violence with the Stalin sub 1000!"
"Local press causing too much of a raucous? Take a lesson from down under and get Australia's new censor software 2.0!"
I'm sure you can all come up with some more creative ones.
First off I want to make apparent the number one logical inconsistency of this argument. The glaringly obvious error is that postulate 4 (it is more likely that the universe was created) does not follow from the previous three postulates. Even if the previous three postulates held true (which they do not by necessity), then number 4 would not necessarily follow. Supposing that the universe does have a starting moment, this starting moment could easily have been a stochastic event, rather than a probabilistic one. In other words, the universe could have "just happened" just like how radioactive decay "just happens." There is no necessity for it to be created.
However, suppose you want to ignore that logical hole, let's move on. The first postulate, that adding a finite amount of time to a negative infinity betrays the arguments ignorance of limit theorems in mathematics. When taking Calc 3 in college, we learned that various infinite limits certainly could result in finite sums. In fact, this is the basis for the modeling of all trig functions if I remember correctly. That is to say, given the appropriate function, one can look at the limit as a variable approaches infinity and mathematically determine the result to be a finite number. This also holds true for negative infinity. Thus, if we suppose that reality, as we describe it, is modeled by a function of similar nature to those I just described, one could see how time could, in fact, approach negative infinity but still result in a finite value (that finite value could be the necessary number to equal present day). Thus, time very well could be negatively infinite and still result in a finite universe given the appropriate underlying mathematical engine.
So, your first postulate is an unwarranted one at best. As such, the second and third postulates do not necessarily follow and the leap to postulate four is unnecessary. In other words, your entire argument is a logical failure at postulate one as I have successfully demonstrated one system that disproves its truth. Therefore, even if the Kalam Argument somehow justified creationism in the first place, the fact that it is flawed leaves the theory of creationism in the realm of fantasy.
No. What's going to happen is the self-righteous goody-goody people in our society who think that they never drink, never screw, never do anything wrong...
FTFY. Everyone has skeletons mate, it's just a matter of convincing them you're trustworthy enough for them to tell you. Now excuse me while I go conspire with Beelzebub to corrupt some innocents.
Don't worry, in a second you'll be modded troll for questioning the holy ones. Then some human sympathizer will mod you underrated. Then someone who is stoned will mod you funny. And finally all those mods will get their mod privileges revoked by kdawson for abuse. Meanwhile you'll end up with a net Karma score of "P." It is Slashdot 2.0 after all.
We have to be more careful about logging on and off because our bosses finally figured out what all those hits to slashdot.org meant on their server logs.
Those horizontal and vertical control surfaces are going to make some hellish oscillations upon reentry and even during simple orbital maneuvers. To damp those responses, you are going to need very expensive materials and very complex control systems. It's not an unsolvable problem, but it is an expensive one to solve. The nice thing about capsule style landers is that the simple structural framework they are built around negates these problems without more machinery and exotic materials. That's probably one of the design drivers when drafting plans for a quick turn around, reusable space transportation system. Less complexity also means less maintenance costs.
They just have a faulty set of data from which they're making judgments.
For some of us, that is the very definition of stupid/dumb/anti-braincell. You can make all the excuses you want for the anti-nuclear energy zealots, but their passionate 'belief' that nuclear power plants are epic catastrophes simply waiting to happen do not measure up the cold, hard facts that can be found when researching modern reactor designs AND the present safety record of the entire US nuclear energy industry. As such, they continue to make judgments based on beliefs rather than facts which is the very definition of stupid in my opinion. There is no way to pretty it up. We call people stupid for believing in unicorns and pixies because reality shows that they don't exist. Similarly, we should call anti-nuclear zealots stupid for believing in some hyperbolic boogeyman when both history and science (reality) shows that such fears are unfounded at best, and downright stupid at worst.
It applies because decisions and mandates that get handed down, such as the one you mentioned (shorter deadlines), do not take into account the actual mission of the business. A newspaper or journalism outlet's primary responsibility is supposed to be the distribution of rigorously checked, factual news. Providing such a product should, theoretically, net you the profit necessary to keep your business running. It may not net you enough profit that your shareholders become millionaires (or maybe it will, who knows), but it should generate enough income to keep your business afloat. If it does not, then it reflects the values of the society you are operating in and you need to accept the fact that the product you are providing is not actually valued anymore.
Parallel this to the engineering world. Again, mandates and decisions get handed down from on high that do not account for the company's mission. Instead, the decisions shoot for a quick, short term profit. The mission of an engineering company is to provide a robust, capable system that meets mission requirements. To do this, engineers need to take time to work out bugs and find failure modes and so on. However, if management breathes down your neck with answers like, "Well just finish it, or just do what you have to do to put it out," then the design gets compromised. The company failures to adhere to it's mission because it over promised and under studied the problem in an attempt to garner contract award fees that look good on single quarter profit reports.
Thus, the same problem, bad business management, causes similar symptoms, a harder life for the bottom-rung grunt workers (you know, the ones actually creating the products that the company is supposed to be taking pride in). The analogy, therefore, holds to be very applicable and I contest your notion that it is bad. The similarities may be subtle, but by applying a wee bit of critical thinking you should be able to derive the comparisons rather aptly. Of course, critical thinking and your type of knee-jerk, "Nah ah! You're wrong!" responses never did go hand in hand really, did they?
"Young engineers once dreamed of hacking the globe in pursuit of a new invention, but the NY Times now reports that instead many are working shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh bug or try to solve some miniscule problem involving the smallest of system parts — anything that will impress executive boards and draw bonuses their way. Lockheed Martin, The Boeing Company, and Northrop Grumman all peddle very advanced defense technologies to the United States Government that require armies of engineers to aggregate existing subcomponents from other contractors in order to generate cost plus revenue on project contracts. 'At a [traditional] engineering company, your stress point is just before the design review with the customer, where you are trying to explain the solution to his problem with a last-minute presentation. 'Now at any point in the day starting at 5 in the morning, there can be that same level of intensity and pressure to get something out when one of your middle manager bosses comes knocking at your cubicle entrance for a surprise study of your progress.' The pace has led to substantial turnover in staff at large engineering firms all over the nation. At all three major defense contractors, hundreds of engineers have been laid off due to contract cancellations resulting from schedule overruns. 'When my students come back to visit, they carry the exhaustion of a person who's been working for a decade, not a couple of years,' says [Random Engineering Professor] of the [Random Engineering College]. 'I worry about burnout.'"
Yup...it fits well enough. Burnout is what happens when retarded business majors and incompetent morons get promoted up the company power ladder for slightly increasing this quarter's profit. If you head up organizations with short term thinkers, then it is the grunt workers at the bottom that suffer in every industry. This is the result of living in a money-worshiping society that values the next dollar above all else.
You want to do your part to change the way things work in your industry young reporters? It's simple. Stop working for the large media outlets that treat you like a consumable resource. Instead, find a nice local newspaper that treats its employees with respect or, better yet, start your own independent blog. Will you make as much money? Nah. Will you live longer with more sanity? Probably. You can't have your cake and eat it to. Have enough respect for yourself to make your income a means to an end, rather than the end itself, and your employers will start to treat you with respect as well. If you are insecure enough in your persona to let a large company rape you up and down the halls in terms of stress and hours worked, then you are going to get stomped on throughout your entire career until you are finally subdued into a finally beaten pulp of what was once a human being.
I suppose that's true to an extent, but frankly, there is a limit to how you can apply that logic. For me, I used to love using Myspace and I hated facebook (years ago). Myspace was lighter, simpler, and had more interesting bits to it. Since they were both free, I opted for Myspace and stuck with it. Then Myspace changed their UI, did some stuff that I still don't understand to their messaging system, and all around broke their website on my older hardware computers (yes, I intend to upgrade soon, but I shouldn't have to do so for a damned website). So, I became dissatisfied with a free service because the free service simply stopped working. If a website goes from loading promptly and successfully every time, to crashing my browser every time, then it is no longer working. So sure, Myspace was giving me something for free, a broken website.
So, I switched to Facebook. It wasn't the best in the world but it worked well enough and, as you said it was free. Well, some of their more recent changes significantly hinder my browsing experience. Their IM client spawns in random portions of my screen. It autologs me out every once in awhile, even when I am active. I lose more posts to/dev/null than I do on Slashdot. All in all, over the past 4 months, Facebook's changes have been slowly breaking the website. Eventually, I figure it will break entirely just like Myspace did. So again, is it free? Yes. Does it work? Not so much anymore.
So, in the end, yes, you get a free service. But if the service is so buggy it's broken then users will stop using it and rank it as a piece of crap. The same thing happens in the free software world. If a piece of software becomes so buggy it is too hard to get it to work efficiently, most people will just describe it as poor in quality and stop using it. If someone walked up to someone else on the street, and said, "Do you want this free iPod?" most people would say yes if there wasn't a catch involved. Then, if they took that free iPod, and turned it on, and it didn't play any music, they'd still call it garbage. Is that entitlement or just common sense? If someone offers to provide you something, even if it is free, there is a minimum level functionality to be expected. When this functionality does not exist, then the person receiving the service will say, "This is crap and I can't trust you to offer me free stuff anymore." That's not really entitlement, its just frustration at the dubious nature of some snake oil salesman.
So the moral of the story? Is Facebook free? Yes. Does that mean the users should not expect any functionality whatsoever? Not necessarily. But you can call the entitlement if you want.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a write-in option on your ballot for a reason. ;)
Congratulations! Your pedantry allowed you to contest the OP's primary point while completely missing that point in entirety.
Sure, in the hypothetical situation explained by the OP, California legalizing pot wouldn't make it legal. So adjust the hypothetical. I could say that smoking pot in the U.S. is illegal. This is true. If a law is written that makes it so there is no longer a federal ban against pot smoking, then that statement would not be true any longer. And, thus, legislation would have changed the truth.
Did that hypothetical make the point clear to you, or do you have some other overly pedantic nit pick that will allow you to miss the context of the discussion entirely?
What's the eleventh space junk mission? NASA employees are subjected to a briefing of the most recent Congressional budget plans for NASA....
but how about in-car interference of the cellphone frequency?
Yeah! And then when you actually do get in a car accident in which you are pinned inside the car, you have no viable means of contacting 9-1-1. What a great idea! Why didn't anyone else think of that?
I really hope you were joking.
You might want to look into the right to trial by written declaration. I know it doesn't exist everywhere, but in some states at least, you are entitled the right to formulate a case by written testimony and gathered evidence which you simply mail to the court. Then the accuser (officer, camera reviewer, whatever) is required to file a testimony for their side of the story (also written). A judicial officer reviews the matter and makes a decision based on the two submissions. The added perk is that facing an officer in traffic court pays the officer over time usually, so they are often prone to show up for prosecution. However, trials by written declaration are nothing but paper work that they have to do during scheduled hours on the job. They don't get any personal benefit out of filling out all the required paper work, so they are more prone to say screw it and not bother. This is especially true if they hand out a lot of tickets regularly as they won't want to be bothered to remember your case in particular.
Anyways, it's something to look into in your state. Also, once a verdict is passed in a written declaration trial, if you don't like it, you can still request a court appearance and try to fight another battle. Drag it out long enough and the courts/officer may just say "Fuck it. I don't want to bother anymore."
Moral of the story, don't take this crap lying down. The only way to keep our governmental authorities honest is to make prosecuting civilians a difficult enough task that it is no longer a way to make a quick and easy buck. If they want your money, make them fucking earn it just like you did.
Skimming is only a mitigation strategy, it will never collect all of the oil.
Hey, at least it's a start....If you're on a sinking ship that has 400 passengers, but you only have enough lifeboats for 200 passengers, do you demand that all 400 people stay on board and go down with the ship because saving 200 won't save all of the people, or do you at least try to save 200 and try to come up with ways to save the rest all the while?
Someone other than BP is paying for this because while BP does whatever it is that it's doing, there are some organizations in this world that actually do recognize a shitfest when they see it and, despite it not being their fault, those same organizations recognize that after the shit has hit the fan, the responsible thing to do is to clean up all the shit, not stand around and point fingers at each other saying, "It was YOU that threw the shit balloon at the fan!"
I, for one, am glad that there are at least some large organizations out there that seem to want to make the world a better place, whether the bad things in the world are their fault or not..... Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire comes to mind right about now.
Who says they aren't? But that will come in another press announcement that will also include the information that the sequel is going to be produced by Michael Bay. Only this time, instead of an ice berg sinking the Titanic, it will be an experimental submarine with tactical nuke torpedoes! And instead of Leo Di Caprio falling in love, we will be treated to a lead role as performed by Bruce Willis! And instead of falling in love with a rich girl, he will uncover a secret plot where the captain plans to steal the ship and turn it over to the Russians to cement their naval dominance of the Black Sea. Of course, Bruce will only be able to challenge the captain, as played by Kevin Spacey, with the aid of his lithe but sassy sidekick Lucy Liu! The whole thing will be so epic that the only way Bruce and Lucy can escape is on the back of sharks with friggin' laser beams attached to their foreheads. Avatar look out! Titanic in 3-D is making a run at your box office records!
One is to preserve the legacy of the ship by enhancing the story of the Titanic itself.
And by this part, I suppose they mean to "preserve the legacy of the ship by enhancing the story of a ridiculous show of hubris and excess built on the backs or hundreds of poor workers by a Victorian aristocracy that was as far removed from reality as is possible before a society starts to break down."
That's not saying that folks in the present day couldn't learn a thing or two from the story of the titanic, but I doubt the right folks will be paying attention.
Can you imagine if the federal government picked up Google tools as it's primary software? Those targeted ads would be amazing. It would make the U.S. the number one customer of some other, less popular countries industries:
"Need to spy on your citizens better, faster, and longer? Buy this new tracking software from Chang industries in China!"
"Citizens misbehaving? Pacify them with some good ol' Soviet era violence with the Stalin sub 1000!"
"Local press causing too much of a raucous? Take a lesson from down under and get Australia's new censor software 2.0!"
I'm sure you can all come up with some more creative ones.
First off I want to make apparent the number one logical inconsistency of this argument. The glaringly obvious error is that postulate 4 (it is more likely that the universe was created) does not follow from the previous three postulates. Even if the previous three postulates held true (which they do not by necessity), then number 4 would not necessarily follow. Supposing that the universe does have a starting moment, this starting moment could easily have been a stochastic event, rather than a probabilistic one. In other words, the universe could have "just happened" just like how radioactive decay "just happens." There is no necessity for it to be created.
However, suppose you want to ignore that logical hole, let's move on. The first postulate, that adding a finite amount of time to a negative infinity betrays the arguments ignorance of limit theorems in mathematics. When taking Calc 3 in college, we learned that various infinite limits certainly could result in finite sums. In fact, this is the basis for the modeling of all trig functions if I remember correctly. That is to say, given the appropriate function, one can look at the limit as a variable approaches infinity and mathematically determine the result to be a finite number. This also holds true for negative infinity. Thus, if we suppose that reality, as we describe it, is modeled by a function of similar nature to those I just described, one could see how time could, in fact, approach negative infinity but still result in a finite value (that finite value could be the necessary number to equal present day). Thus, time very well could be negatively infinite and still result in a finite universe given the appropriate underlying mathematical engine.
So, your first postulate is an unwarranted one at best. As such, the second and third postulates do not necessarily follow and the leap to postulate four is unnecessary. In other words, your entire argument is a logical failure at postulate one as I have successfully demonstrated one system that disproves its truth. Therefore, even if the Kalam Argument somehow justified creationism in the first place, the fact that it is flawed leaves the theory of creationism in the realm of fantasy.
No. What's going to happen is the self-righteous goody-goody people in our society who think that they never drink, never screw, never do anything wrong...
FTFY. Everyone has skeletons mate, it's just a matter of convincing them you're trustworthy enough for them to tell you. Now excuse me while I go conspire with Beelzebub to corrupt some innocents.
Don't worry, in a second you'll be modded troll for questioning the holy ones. Then some human sympathizer will mod you underrated. Then someone who is stoned will mod you funny. And finally all those mods will get their mod privileges revoked by kdawson for abuse. Meanwhile you'll end up with a net Karma score of "P." It is Slashdot 2.0 after all.
Soundwave! Play back Laserbeak's findings!
I can die happy now.
We have to be more careful about logging on and off because our bosses finally figured out what all those hits to slashdot.org meant on their server logs.
Those horizontal and vertical control surfaces are going to make some hellish oscillations upon reentry and even during simple orbital maneuvers. To damp those responses, you are going to need very expensive materials and very complex control systems. It's not an unsolvable problem, but it is an expensive one to solve. The nice thing about capsule style landers is that the simple structural framework they are built around negates these problems without more machinery and exotic materials. That's probably one of the design drivers when drafting plans for a quick turn around, reusable space transportation system. Less complexity also means less maintenance costs.
They just have a faulty set of data from which they're making judgments.
For some of us, that is the very definition of stupid/dumb/anti-braincell. You can make all the excuses you want for the anti-nuclear energy zealots, but their passionate 'belief' that nuclear power plants are epic catastrophes simply waiting to happen do not measure up the cold, hard facts that can be found when researching modern reactor designs AND the present safety record of the entire US nuclear energy industry. As such, they continue to make judgments based on beliefs rather than facts which is the very definition of stupid in my opinion. There is no way to pretty it up. We call people stupid for believing in unicorns and pixies because reality shows that they don't exist. Similarly, we should call anti-nuclear zealots stupid for believing in some hyperbolic boogeyman when both history and science (reality) shows that such fears are unfounded at best, and downright stupid at worst.
It does have 9 planets. Vulcan's real you insensitive clod!
That was the best smart ass comment I've read on Slashdot today.
Meh, they still have a better record than slashdot summaries. =P
It applies because decisions and mandates that get handed down, such as the one you mentioned (shorter deadlines), do not take into account the actual mission of the business. A newspaper or journalism outlet's primary responsibility is supposed to be the distribution of rigorously checked, factual news. Providing such a product should, theoretically, net you the profit necessary to keep your business running. It may not net you enough profit that your shareholders become millionaires (or maybe it will, who knows), but it should generate enough income to keep your business afloat. If it does not, then it reflects the values of the society you are operating in and you need to accept the fact that the product you are providing is not actually valued anymore.
Parallel this to the engineering world. Again, mandates and decisions get handed down from on high that do not account for the company's mission. Instead, the decisions shoot for a quick, short term profit. The mission of an engineering company is to provide a robust, capable system that meets mission requirements. To do this, engineers need to take time to work out bugs and find failure modes and so on. However, if management breathes down your neck with answers like, "Well just finish it, or just do what you have to do to put it out," then the design gets compromised. The company failures to adhere to it's mission because it over promised and under studied the problem in an attempt to garner contract award fees that look good on single quarter profit reports.
Thus, the same problem, bad business management, causes similar symptoms, a harder life for the bottom-rung grunt workers (you know, the ones actually creating the products that the company is supposed to be taking pride in). The analogy, therefore, holds to be very applicable and I contest your notion that it is bad. The similarities may be subtle, but by applying a wee bit of critical thinking you should be able to derive the comparisons rather aptly. Of course, critical thinking and your type of knee-jerk, "Nah ah! You're wrong!" responses never did go hand in hand really, did they?
"Young engineers once dreamed of hacking the globe in pursuit of a new invention, but the NY Times now reports that instead many are working shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh bug or try to solve some miniscule problem involving the smallest of system parts — anything that will impress executive boards and draw bonuses their way. Lockheed Martin, The Boeing Company, and Northrop Grumman all peddle very advanced defense technologies to the United States Government that require armies of engineers to aggregate existing subcomponents from other contractors in order to generate cost plus revenue on project contracts. 'At a [traditional] engineering company, your stress point is just before the design review with the customer, where you are trying to explain the solution to his problem with a last-minute presentation. 'Now at any point in the day starting at 5 in the morning, there can be that same level of intensity and pressure to get something out when one of your middle manager bosses comes knocking at your cubicle entrance for a surprise study of your progress.' The pace has led to substantial turnover in staff at large engineering firms all over the nation. At all three major defense contractors, hundreds of engineers have been laid off due to contract cancellations resulting from schedule overruns. 'When my students come back to visit, they carry the exhaustion of a person who's been working for a decade, not a couple of years,' says [Random Engineering Professor] of the [Random Engineering College]. 'I worry about burnout.'"
Yup...it fits well enough. Burnout is what happens when retarded business majors and incompetent morons get promoted up the company power ladder for slightly increasing this quarter's profit. If you head up organizations with short term thinkers, then it is the grunt workers at the bottom that suffer in every industry. This is the result of living in a money-worshiping society that values the next dollar above all else.
You want to do your part to change the way things work in your industry young reporters? It's simple. Stop working for the large media outlets that treat you like a consumable resource. Instead, find a nice local newspaper that treats its employees with respect or, better yet, start your own independent blog. Will you make as much money? Nah. Will you live longer with more sanity? Probably. You can't have your cake and eat it to. Have enough respect for yourself to make your income a means to an end, rather than the end itself, and your employers will start to treat you with respect as well. If you are insecure enough in your persona to let a large company rape you up and down the halls in terms of stress and hours worked, then you are going to get stomped on throughout your entire career until you are finally subdued into a finally beaten pulp of what was once a human being.
I suppose that's true to an extent, but frankly, there is a limit to how you can apply that logic. For me, I used to love using Myspace and I hated facebook (years ago). Myspace was lighter, simpler, and had more interesting bits to it. Since they were both free, I opted for Myspace and stuck with it. Then Myspace changed their UI, did some stuff that I still don't understand to their messaging system, and all around broke their website on my older hardware computers (yes, I intend to upgrade soon, but I shouldn't have to do so for a damned website). So, I became dissatisfied with a free service because the free service simply stopped working. If a website goes from loading promptly and successfully every time, to crashing my browser every time, then it is no longer working. So sure, Myspace was giving me something for free, a broken website.
/dev/null than I do on Slashdot. All in all, over the past 4 months, Facebook's changes have been slowly breaking the website. Eventually, I figure it will break entirely just like Myspace did. So again, is it free? Yes. Does it work? Not so much anymore.
So, I switched to Facebook. It wasn't the best in the world but it worked well enough and, as you said it was free. Well, some of their more recent changes significantly hinder my browsing experience. Their IM client spawns in random portions of my screen. It autologs me out every once in awhile, even when I am active. I lose more posts to
So, in the end, yes, you get a free service. But if the service is so buggy it's broken then users will stop using it and rank it as a piece of crap. The same thing happens in the free software world. If a piece of software becomes so buggy it is too hard to get it to work efficiently, most people will just describe it as poor in quality and stop using it. If someone walked up to someone else on the street, and said, "Do you want this free iPod?" most people would say yes if there wasn't a catch involved. Then, if they took that free iPod, and turned it on, and it didn't play any music, they'd still call it garbage. Is that entitlement or just common sense? If someone offers to provide you something, even if it is free, there is a minimum level functionality to be expected. When this functionality does not exist, then the person receiving the service will say, "This is crap and I can't trust you to offer me free stuff anymore." That's not really entitlement, its just frustration at the dubious nature of some snake oil salesman.
So the moral of the story? Is Facebook free? Yes. Does that mean the users should not expect any functionality whatsoever? Not necessarily. But you can call the entitlement if you want.
Well, it is a story about Google. =P
It still seems like a bit of an enigma....