Self-publishing is much more different from vanity publishing than it used to be. Self-publishing is closer to micro-press publishing these days, thanks to automation in production and access to distribution chains formerly inaccessible. It's far easier (and more profitable) nowadays to self-publish a manuscript and contract out the same freelance editors as large commercial publishers use.
Your response is predicated on the assumption that the Amazon Algorithms operate in a logic-based environment. This has not been proven to be the case. Amazon can remove books and other items from its store arbitrarily, and according to no logic known to humankind. It does the same to reviews of books and other products.
I've gotten ebooks (from major publishers, I might add) with artifacts of conversion that were far more egregious than hyphens (leftover XML code, LaTeX symbols, etc.) from Amazon.
Some books will feature complaints about formatting or editing in dozens of reviews and Amazon does nothing, while others, like this one, will be pulled for unsubstantiated customer complaints, or worse--customer complaints about an entirely different book! The almighty algorithms are great 90% of the time, but humans do still need to oversee.
This is where patent law fails. Don't force them to keep producing the drug if it's not making them money. But then, they forfeit the rest of the time on the patent, too. Somebody else can start making the drug, freeing the original produce to go make their new thing. Anything else is patent-trolling. It's patenting something useful just to keep anyone else from making it, and in this case, it may be costing lives.
Libertarians also believe that no one would willingly ever sell an unsafe untested product, because that would harm their business.
Bullshit. I'm a Libertarian and I believe no such thing. Corporations are evil because people are evil and corporations are just a bunch of irresponsible, short sighted people who will choose profit over pretty much any other value. Profit at any price. Corporations are indistinguishable from what we would call a 'sociopath' if it were an individual. Although, unlike governments, they at least usually stop short of actual acts of violence.
You mean like intentionally taking away people's maintenance medication? You are still engaged in thinking that corporations would sell an actual product on the way to making a profit. A corporation's "moral duty" according to shareholder devotion, would be to sell absolutely nothing, while collecting as much money for it as possible. The most moral, free-market business in the world, then, is picking pockets.
As a libertarian I believe in the free market not because it is perfect in every way. There is no perfect system. But because I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. I think genuine freedom is worth the price of not being able to reign in bad/evil corporations as quickly as in this case.
That is of course when the system actually works and it doesn't always.Things don't usually turn out like this. This is not a typical outcome of the system. Generally the government has a cozy relationship with large corporations like this and lets them get a away with all kinds of evil and greedy shit.
And in your total free-market system, there would be no government to even put up a token protest or "let" them get away with their evil and greedy shit. If you really, honestly believe that the absence of governMENT would equal the absence of governANCE, then I don't know what to tell you, but your paragraph above pretty much sums it up. The system doesn't work. Genuine freedom is meaningless if you can't trust that at least there's *some* regulation on the pills you take. Or the food you eat, or the air you breathe, or the water you drink. The "market" will always put profits before people. If you really believe you can live in a world like that, I hope you have a strong constitution.
So the system worked this time. Yay. Before we all start celebrating consider the bullshit extension they are getting on nothing more than a coated pill. Until fucking 2025. That makes *no* sense and is obviously an abuse of the system. Extended release pills should not be grounds for a patent extension unless maybe the process used is more effective than any done currently, but then the novel process itself would qualify for the patent. Not the actual drug which is no longer 'novel'. It's a perfect example of how governments and corporations are often partners.
Here, we agree. This instance is bullshit and shows why the law needs to be changed. Fun thing is, with a civic entity of government, citizens, not boards of directors, can effect changes in the laws. The "market" does not give a shit if people don't get their meds. The "market" will let them die because it's cheaper and more profitable to hold out for more money. I can't abide that, because people and reality matter more than free-market theoretical philosophy that fails anywhere it's used outside of a laboratory exercise.
You'd think the FDA and Big Pharma would *want* to have definitive proof that illegal Russian/Canadian pharmaceuticals were EvilWickedMeanBadNasty things.
My guess is that the stuff sold illegally is the same stuff sold in legit pharmacies a good portion of the time. Possibly from the same companies who sold it to the wholesalers. They just need the drugs to be more expensive here to make up the profits from selling them cheaper in tighter markets.
I use adblock, and I make my kid use it, too. It's really cut down on the idiot-toolbars, "browser helpers" and "download managers" he's managed to inadvertently download/install instead of his minecraft mods.
Cut down on, but not eliminated. And these ads are effective, because some of them get around adblock and fool you into thinking you're downloading the thing you asked for, when that thing is a tiny text link, and the ad is a big, friendly, green "Download" button. On the upside, the kid is learning to read more carefully. On the downside, I get tired of having to remove the same stupid browser-hijacks over and over again.
And don't even get me started on my dad and the "FBI warning" browser hijack...
You underestimate the power of radical ideologies. [...snippage of Godwin-y-ness (shut up, it's a word if I say it is)...] We killed off OBL, but he wasn't really running things when we did, and Taliban and Al Qaeda still remain. And even if they didn't, the people in those organizations just change their name, and regroup. This is the same tactic used by most counter culture politics.
The only effective tactic we have at this time is to target and kill the leadership, until the organization crumbles from lack of leaders. We don't need a standing army to do this, just Letters of Marque.
You might be overestimating the life-cycle of radical ideologies. The thing that makes them radical gives them "teeth" - they need to constantly gin up an immediate threat to "rebel" against. And while they can do that with whatever actions western powers take, people can only be on high-alert or militant-zealot mode for so long before the adrenaline rush slows down and they crash into either outrage fatigue or terror fatigue. Al Qaeda now seems most concerned with managing its public image, and the Taliban doesn't appear to be getting nearly as much mileage over their activities. ISIL is new and scary and has done abominable, shocking things that we haven't seen since...oh, the last bunch of radical militants who did pretty much the same thing. People will notice and be scared for awhile (rightly so, because these are awful people), but the lack of clean water or stability will eventually wear away the enthusiasm. Rebels rarely make good Establishment. If they get bigger, they'll have to go more into strategy and less into just doing abominable things for shock value and recruitment, and strategy takes time and planning and coordination, and that's boring. Radicals want action.
The problem is, of course, that many innocent people will be hurt in the meantime, and the lives that will be wasted between now and the time when the leaders will get too used to the attention and/or money and start tearing each other apart.
governANCE is not governMENT, which seems to be the original point--tossing out governMENT does not leave one free from governANCE, and in fact, almost ensures that the governance is going to eventually approach the most brutish and simplistic system available at the time.
Vasectomy procedures are covered by office visits.
When a condom can also be used to internally regulate hormones, mitigate poly-cystic ovarian syndrome, and providecinternal-medicine solutions to both reproductive and non-reproductive health issues, then we can talk.
For the record, though, condoms should be free. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, our student health center, planned parenthood, and the student health centers of most of the colleges around my area handed them out like free candy.
The owners' objections to the 4 types not covered are based on religious ignorance rather than actual understanding of how the medications work. The HL CEO is inserting himself between his female employees and their medical professionals.
And if he truly had objections to supporting "abortions" with his money, he wouldn't buy all his stock from a country that's been known to force abortion in its population control efforts. I guess his company's "religion" only extends to its bottom line.
Question: What prevents every single Corp in the US from suddenly developing a fit of "religious" vapors over, say, interfering with 'God' s will" via implementing OSHA safety standards?
So basically, you're saying that you hate being misunderstood. You hate assumptions being made that cast you in a negative light, that see you as "less than." You hate not being able to speak out without retribution. And you hate being blamed for something you're not.
Welcome to being a woman.
If you feel inferior when women point out the misogyny, that's your problem, not ours. Go make misogynist jokes about women just like the bullies that used to make fun of you in school made geek jokes about you. But you're different, right?
It is not your geekiness. It is not your nerd-on--women are as passionate about nerdy things as men, and can get as into oddly-specific hobbies as any guy. And you'd better believe women can appreciate intelligence--in ourselves as well as in others.
But here's the thing. If you lack empathy, if you see women as trophies to be won, achievements to be unlocked, or the guaranteed prize in your cereal box--*we pick that up.* Because we have HAD to learn to pick that up for survival's sake.
#notallmen do these things. But given the ones who do, #yesallwomen have to assume guilt until proven otherwise, because there are too many times when our lives have depended on it.
I hate that this is true, and I hate tarring all men with the same brush. And for what it's worth, that initial suspicion does go away in the fraction of a second it takes for a man to prove that he can empathize with me, relate to me, or simply look at me as if I'm a person and not an object. It's that easy.
I once read a quote that said something to the tune of, "Homophobia is the fear that gay men will treat straight men the way that straight men treat women," and there's a lot of truth in that statement. At the very least, it helps underscore the cultural gender bias that may be obfuscating understanding in the discussion.
It's not like Comcast is running out of electrons.:/
The underlying problem is that the cable providers do not want to upgrade their aging infrastructure. But, as recently seen when AT&T pitched a fit over a municipality wanting to run muni-fiber in places AT&T *wasn't going to run anything anyway,* neither do they want anyone else to. They would rather collect the subsidies for doing nothing, and continue to find a way to rent-seek from their already locked-in prisoners--I mean, customers. Fundamentally, it's an industry that seeks a stable, continuous, easily-predictable stream of costs going out (service providing) and revenues coming in (customers paying bills). It's an industry that wants to have already set up an infrastructure, and now lets the business run itself, with occasional maintenance. Cable packages allowed that to be the case forever, but now data needs are changing so fast, the business can no longer count on steady, predictable revenue streams and cost centers. And as we all know, anything unpredictable in business causes suits to shit their pants. Throttling carves off more of a variable situation's baseline and attempts to make it predictable. At the expense of true innovation.
Home invasions are rare because of the 2nd Amendment. Look up the "hot burglary" (burglaries when people are in the structure) numbers for the United Kingdom sometime. People are disinclined to rob an occupied structure in the United States because they know the laws of all 50 States permit the occupiers to shoot them dead as soon as they come inside.
People are disinclined to rob an occupied structure because burglary is not assault. If I want your stuff, I will wait until you leave, break in and take it, and get out without having to confront you. I want your stuff, not your life. If I want to assault you, *then* I'll go looking for a fight. If I'mma break into your house, I'm already fixing to break the law, I'm not exactly concerned with whether or not I could sue you if you shoot me.
If you're grappling on the ground you've probably already lost. I know that looks awesome when you see it in "Ultimate Fighting" on TV, but in the real world ground fighting is something you truly want to avoid.
There's already far too many "Ultimate Fighting" TV scenarios surrounding guns as it is.:/ There's just too much cognitive dissonance for me to live in the NRA's world. If the world is full of gun-totin' criminals, I'm simultaneously supposed to believe that everyone around me who is armed is gunning for me, so I need to be armed to protect myself, but at the same time, I'm supposed to believe that everyone armed is just a bunch of "good guys with guns" until they aren't. I do not buy the fear they are selling.
Besides, the people who are performing the wholesale looting of our collective coffers are either doing so from comfy chairs in China/Russia/Nigeria, or they're wearing suits and running for re-election every two years. Your gun is useless against either of those, I'm afraid.
Handguns probably get people up in arms (seewhatIdidthere) because of the handgun manufacturers. Follow the money. Sell the fear, and the guns sell themselves. When you've got 'em convinced that there's a crazy with a gun lurking behind every bush and that nothing more than fifty bucks can buy them Rambo skills, they'll line up and beg you to take their money. Cha-ching!
So if the gun does not "shoot itself" then all those cases (about 30-50 a week) where the gun accidentally "goes off" are not, in fact, accidents, and are rather negligence, which clearly indicates that the owners are not, in fact, *responsible* gun owners at all.
If I had mod points for this, I would give them all to you, Zontar. Outreach programs *are* needed, because they change the cultures that allow the male butthurt over having to share job space with women to *interfere* with good project management, clean coding, and innovation. Another poster upthread claimed, with broad brushstrokes that "women couldn't hack it," but I would challenge the poster to try their own hand at "hacking it" in an environment where they are constantly berated, talked down to, disrespected, and more than occasionally sexually harassed from everyday, casual micro-aggressions all the way up to threats and institutional sexism.
Seems like this is a dust-up that will settle right back down when the other orgs put their funding into the outreach as contracted, and gnome puts up a little more solid of a wall between the outreach and the other areas of the operating budget.
It was also due to the car companies seeing the writing on the wall. They knew the regulations were coming and they figured out how to turn the changes mandated by regulations into a feature. If regulating agencies had no teeth, the car companies wouldn't have bothered. The market pressure came from impending regulations made popular by the public. Waiting for the market to correct would put the industry behind the curve of public pressure and opinion, and done irreparable damage to the car makers.
...outside of the touchy-feely eye-candy desktop stuff....
Answered your own question there.:) In case the 9 bazillion people camped out overnight to buy the latest iPhone didn't tip you off, people dig touchy-feely eye-candy stuff.
I'm no fan of Unity's UI, but I have to say, it was the only UI that made sense to run on my little netbook (those were a thing, for about five minutes in between laptops and tablets). I really think on one level, it was visionary--the devs/designers could see tablets and phones on the horizon, and wanted to make something that would be native, natural, and perhaps become the default user expectation for a simple, portable, consumption device that also had enough under the hood to handle some task-work.
Unfortunately, they rather clunkily forced people who'd stuck with Gnome because of its design stability into Unity, a drastic change to even flexible desktoppers. It was a community fail on Canonical's part, and likely exacerbated by the fact that their customers by and large aren't paying customers, so it's doubly hard to gauge what's just background noise versus legitimate deal-breaking gripes.
Slashdot Mirror
Self-publishing is much more different from vanity publishing than it used to be. Self-publishing is closer to micro-press publishing these days, thanks to automation in production and access to distribution chains formerly inaccessible. It's far easier (and more profitable) nowadays to self-publish a manuscript and contract out the same freelance editors as large commercial publishers use.
Whereas "chicken fried steak" probably indicates that one is in possession of domestic fowl with culinary skills...
Your response is predicated on the assumption that the Amazon Algorithms operate in a logic-based environment. This has not been proven to be the case. Amazon can remove books and other items from its store arbitrarily, and according to no logic known to humankind. It does the same to reviews of books and other products. I've gotten ebooks (from major publishers, I might add) with artifacts of conversion that were far more egregious than hyphens (leftover XML code, LaTeX symbols, etc.) from Amazon. Some books will feature complaints about formatting or editing in dozens of reviews and Amazon does nothing, while others, like this one, will be pulled for unsubstantiated customer complaints, or worse--customer complaints about an entirely different book! The almighty algorithms are great 90% of the time, but humans do still need to oversee.
This is where patent law fails. Don't force them to keep producing the drug if it's not making them money. But then, they forfeit the rest of the time on the patent, too. Somebody else can start making the drug, freeing the original produce to go make their new thing. Anything else is patent-trolling. It's patenting something useful just to keep anyone else from making it, and in this case, it may be costing lives.
Libertarians also believe that no one would willingly ever sell an unsafe untested product, because that would harm their business.
Bullshit. I'm a Libertarian and I believe no such thing. Corporations are evil because people are evil and corporations are just a bunch of irresponsible, short sighted people who will choose profit over pretty much any other value. Profit at any price. Corporations are indistinguishable from what we would call a 'sociopath' if it were an individual. Although, unlike governments, they at least usually stop short of actual acts of violence.
You mean like intentionally taking away people's maintenance medication? You are still engaged in thinking that corporations would sell an actual product on the way to making a profit. A corporation's "moral duty" according to shareholder devotion, would be to sell absolutely nothing, while collecting as much money for it as possible. The most moral, free-market business in the world, then, is picking pockets.
As a libertarian I believe in the free market not because it is perfect in every way. There is no perfect system. But because I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. I think genuine freedom is worth the price of not being able to reign in bad/evil corporations as quickly as in this case.
That is of course when the system actually works and it doesn't always.Things don't usually turn out like this. This is not a typical outcome of the system. Generally the government has a cozy relationship with large corporations like this and lets them get a away with all kinds of evil and greedy shit.
And in your total free-market system, there would be no government to even put up a token protest or "let" them get away with their evil and greedy shit. If you really, honestly believe that the absence of governMENT would equal the absence of governANCE, then I don't know what to tell you, but your paragraph above pretty much sums it up. The system doesn't work. Genuine freedom is meaningless if you can't trust that at least there's *some* regulation on the pills you take. Or the food you eat, or the air you breathe, or the water you drink. The "market" will always put profits before people. If you really believe you can live in a world like that, I hope you have a strong constitution.
So the system worked this time. Yay. Before we all start celebrating consider the bullshit extension they are getting on nothing more than a coated pill. Until fucking 2025. That makes *no* sense and is obviously an abuse of the system. Extended release pills should not be grounds for a patent extension unless maybe the process used is more effective than any done currently, but then the novel process itself would qualify for the patent. Not the actual drug which is no longer 'novel'. It's a perfect example of how governments and corporations are often partners.
Here, we agree. This instance is bullshit and shows why the law needs to be changed. Fun thing is, with a civic entity of government, citizens, not boards of directors, can effect changes in the laws. The "market" does not give a shit if people don't get their meds. The "market" will let them die because it's cheaper and more profitable to hold out for more money. I can't abide that, because people and reality matter more than free-market theoretical philosophy that fails anywhere it's used outside of a laboratory exercise.
When was the last time you saw, "Clue required," on an executive level job description?
You'd think the FDA and Big Pharma would *want* to have definitive proof that illegal Russian/Canadian pharmaceuticals were EvilWickedMeanBadNasty things. My guess is that the stuff sold illegally is the same stuff sold in legit pharmacies a good portion of the time. Possibly from the same companies who sold it to the wholesalers. They just need the drugs to be more expensive here to make up the profits from selling them cheaper in tighter markets.
I use adblock, and I make my kid use it, too. It's really cut down on the idiot-toolbars, "browser helpers" and "download managers" he's managed to inadvertently download/install instead of his minecraft mods. Cut down on, but not eliminated. And these ads are effective, because some of them get around adblock and fool you into thinking you're downloading the thing you asked for, when that thing is a tiny text link, and the ad is a big, friendly, green "Download" button. On the upside, the kid is learning to read more carefully. On the downside, I get tired of having to remove the same stupid browser-hijacks over and over again. And don't even get me started on my dad and the "FBI warning" browser hijack...
You underestimate the power of radical ideologies. [...snippage of Godwin-y-ness (shut up, it's a word if I say it is)...] We killed off OBL, but he wasn't really running things when we did, and Taliban and Al Qaeda still remain. And even if they didn't, the people in those organizations just change their name, and regroup. This is the same tactic used by most counter culture politics.
The only effective tactic we have at this time is to target and kill the leadership, until the organization crumbles from lack of leaders. We don't need a standing army to do this, just Letters of Marque.
You might be overestimating the life-cycle of radical ideologies. The thing that makes them radical gives them "teeth" - they need to constantly gin up an immediate threat to "rebel" against. And while they can do that with whatever actions western powers take, people can only be on high-alert or militant-zealot mode for so long before the adrenaline rush slows down and they crash into either outrage fatigue or terror fatigue. Al Qaeda now seems most concerned with managing its public image, and the Taliban doesn't appear to be getting nearly as much mileage over their activities. ISIL is new and scary and has done abominable, shocking things that we haven't seen since...oh, the last bunch of radical militants who did pretty much the same thing. People will notice and be scared for awhile (rightly so, because these are awful people), but the lack of clean water or stability will eventually wear away the enthusiasm. Rebels rarely make good Establishment. If they get bigger, they'll have to go more into strategy and less into just doing abominable things for shock value and recruitment, and strategy takes time and planning and coordination, and that's boring. Radicals want action.
The problem is, of course, that many innocent people will be hurt in the meantime, and the lives that will be wasted between now and the time when the leaders will get too used to the attention and/or money and start tearing each other apart.
governANCE is not governMENT, which seems to be the original point--tossing out governMENT does not leave one free from governANCE, and in fact, almost ensures that the governance is going to eventually approach the most brutish and simplistic system available at the time.
There is no difference between Comcast and the government, except that the government has to at least pretend to respect your rights.
That, and you can Vote the Gubmint Bums Out every coupla years. When was the last time anybody voted out a cable company CEO?
Vasectomy procedures are covered by office visits. When a condom can also be used to internally regulate hormones, mitigate poly-cystic ovarian syndrome, and providecinternal-medicine solutions to both reproductive and non-reproductive health issues, then we can talk. For the record, though, condoms should be free. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, our student health center, planned parenthood, and the student health centers of most of the colleges around my area handed them out like free candy.
The owners' objections to the 4 types not covered are based on religious ignorance rather than actual understanding of how the medications work. The HL CEO is inserting himself between his female employees and their medical professionals. And if he truly had objections to supporting "abortions" with his money, he wouldn't buy all his stock from a country that's been known to force abortion in its population control efforts. I guess his company's "religion" only extends to its bottom line. Question: What prevents every single Corp in the US from suddenly developing a fit of "religious" vapors over, say, interfering with 'God' s will" via implementing OSHA safety standards?
Godzilla! Get back in your cave! The other hatchlings aren't going to babysit themselves, you know.
So basically, you're saying that you hate being misunderstood. You hate assumptions being made that cast you in a negative light, that see you as "less than." You hate not being able to speak out without retribution. And you hate being blamed for something you're not.
Welcome to being a woman.
If you feel inferior when women point out the misogyny, that's your problem, not ours. Go make misogynist jokes about women just like the bullies that used to make fun of you in school made geek jokes about you. But you're different, right?
It is not your geekiness. It is not your nerd-on--women are as passionate about nerdy things as men, and can get as into oddly-specific hobbies as any guy. And you'd better believe women can appreciate intelligence--in ourselves as well as in others.
But here's the thing. If you lack empathy, if you see women as trophies to be won, achievements to be unlocked, or the guaranteed prize in your cereal box--*we pick that up.* Because we have HAD to learn to pick that up for survival's sake.
#notallmen do these things. But given the ones who do, #yesallwomen have to assume guilt until proven otherwise, because there are too many times when our lives have depended on it.
I hate that this is true, and I hate tarring all men with the same brush. And for what it's worth, that initial suspicion does go away in the fraction of a second it takes for a man to prove that he can empathize with me, relate to me, or simply look at me as if I'm a person and not an object. It's that easy.
I once read a quote that said something to the tune of, "Homophobia is the fear that gay men will treat straight men the way that straight men treat women," and there's a lot of truth in that statement. At the very least, it helps underscore the cultural gender bias that may be obfuscating understanding in the discussion.
It's not like Comcast is running out of electrons. :/
The underlying problem is that the cable providers do not want to upgrade their aging infrastructure. But, as recently seen when AT&T pitched a fit over a municipality wanting to run muni-fiber in places AT&T *wasn't going to run anything anyway,* neither do they want anyone else to. They would rather collect the subsidies for doing nothing, and continue to find a way to rent-seek from their already locked-in prisoners--I mean, customers. Fundamentally, it's an industry that seeks a stable, continuous, easily-predictable stream of costs going out (service providing) and revenues coming in (customers paying bills). It's an industry that wants to have already set up an infrastructure, and now lets the business run itself, with occasional maintenance. Cable packages allowed that to be the case forever, but now data needs are changing so fast, the business can no longer count on steady, predictable revenue streams and cost centers. And as we all know, anything unpredictable in business causes suits to shit their pants. Throttling carves off more of a variable situation's baseline and attempts to make it predictable. At the expense of true innovation.
Home invasions are rare because of the 2nd Amendment. Look up the "hot burglary" (burglaries when people are in the structure) numbers for the United Kingdom sometime. People are disinclined to rob an occupied structure in the United States because they know the laws of all 50 States permit the occupiers to shoot them dead as soon as they come inside.
People are disinclined to rob an occupied structure because burglary is not assault. If I want your stuff, I will wait until you leave, break in and take it, and get out without having to confront you. I want your stuff, not your life. If I want to assault you, *then* I'll go looking for a fight. If I'mma break into your house, I'm already fixing to break the law, I'm not exactly concerned with whether or not I could sue you if you shoot me.
If you're grappling on the ground you've probably already lost. I know that looks awesome when you see it in "Ultimate Fighting" on TV, but in the real world ground fighting is something you truly want to avoid.
There's already far too many "Ultimate Fighting" TV scenarios surrounding guns as it is. :/ There's just too much cognitive dissonance for me to live in the NRA's world. If the world is full of gun-totin' criminals, I'm simultaneously supposed to believe that everyone around me who is armed is gunning for me, so I need to be armed to protect myself, but at the same time, I'm supposed to believe that everyone armed is just a bunch of "good guys with guns" until they aren't. I do not buy the fear they are selling.
Besides, the people who are performing the wholesale looting of our collective coffers are either doing so from comfy chairs in China/Russia/Nigeria, or they're wearing suits and running for re-election every two years. Your gun is useless against either of those, I'm afraid.
Handguns probably get people up in arms (seewhatIdidthere) because of the handgun manufacturers. Follow the money. Sell the fear, and the guns sell themselves. When you've got 'em convinced that there's a crazy with a gun lurking behind every bush and that nothing more than fifty bucks can buy them Rambo skills, they'll line up and beg you to take their money. Cha-ching!
So if the gun does not "shoot itself" then all those cases (about 30-50 a week) where the gun accidentally "goes off" are not, in fact, accidents, and are rather negligence, which clearly indicates that the owners are not, in fact, *responsible* gun owners at all.
If I had mod points for this, I would give them all to you, Zontar. Outreach programs *are* needed, because they change the cultures that allow the male butthurt over having to share job space with women to *interfere* with good project management, clean coding, and innovation. Another poster upthread claimed, with broad brushstrokes that "women couldn't hack it," but I would challenge the poster to try their own hand at "hacking it" in an environment where they are constantly berated, talked down to, disrespected, and more than occasionally sexually harassed from everyday, casual micro-aggressions all the way up to threats and institutional sexism. Seems like this is a dust-up that will settle right back down when the other orgs put their funding into the outreach as contracted, and gnome puts up a little more solid of a wall between the outreach and the other areas of the operating budget.
Pretty soon, we'll have people using the poles to hang out the washing, too! ;) Unregulated undies, FTW!
Didn't Google buy Motorola? Could they use that as an inroad to telecom? Or am I way off base?
It was also due to the car companies seeing the writing on the wall. They knew the regulations were coming and they figured out how to turn the changes mandated by regulations into a feature. If regulating agencies had no teeth, the car companies wouldn't have bothered. The market pressure came from impending regulations made popular by the public. Waiting for the market to correct would put the industry behind the curve of public pressure and opinion, and done irreparable damage to the car makers.
...outside of the touchy-feely eye-candy desktop stuff....
Answered your own question there. :) In case the 9 bazillion people camped out overnight to buy the latest iPhone didn't tip you off, people dig touchy-feely eye-candy stuff.
I'm no fan of Unity's UI, but I have to say, it was the only UI that made sense to run on my little netbook (those were a thing, for about five minutes in between laptops and tablets). I really think on one level, it was visionary--the devs/designers could see tablets and phones on the horizon, and wanted to make something that would be native, natural, and perhaps become the default user expectation for a simple, portable, consumption device that also had enough under the hood to handle some task-work.
Unfortunately, they rather clunkily forced people who'd stuck with Gnome because of its design stability into Unity, a drastic change to even flexible desktoppers. It was a community fail on Canonical's part, and likely exacerbated by the fact that their customers by and large aren't paying customers, so it's doubly hard to gauge what's just background noise versus legitimate deal-breaking gripes.