You're in school administration, aren't you? I'm guessing from the kneejerk mindless defense of any and all stupid, bureaucratic school policies.
My kid's public school district had absolutely insane policies that required not just a doctor's note, but signed and approved paperwork from the chief nurse's office for the school district, which was across the river about 20 miles away, and of course, they weren't open after work hours. Not like in the old days when you actually had a school nurse at the school, and could just leave the pills and a doctor's note with them. The process was designed to make sure you wouldn't have the energy or time to see that your kid got his meds in school unless it was life-threatening not to.
I worked around it, giving my kid her antibiotics before and after school, but she had to suffer a lot of brutal headaches and cramps needlessly, for want of being allowed to carry ibuprofen or Tylenol, or for even having someone onsite alllowed to dispense them. She called out sick more than once and missed school because of pain that a simple aspirin or ibuprofen would have allowed her to finish the day out. I cursed the fucking public school policy everytime my kid had to suffer needlessly because of it.
God, I was so relieved when I finally got her in a private school that had a sane policy! You know, one that actually had someone on-site who could give the kid an aspirin when she had a headache or ibuprofen for cramps. It was really cool to be all the way up to the late 19th century in pharamaceutical science again.
Fuck paranoid zero tolerance policies that make children suffer needlessly.
You know, I don't want my kid being taught that candy is a reward. Because that way leads to "food makes me feel better when life sucks" and 300 lb kids.
I'd much, much rather my kid think of candy or pastries as dessert, the course that follows the main entré if one is still interested in food at that point. Not a special reward you get if you are good and worth loving.
I carry a purse. Why men don't have something to carry their stuff in is one of those mysteries of culture and civilization.
In addition, I divide my keys up into sets: car keys on one ring, house keys on another, mom's house keys on a third, because I really don't trust random valet parking employees with the keys to my house, safety deposit box, etc. They only get the car ring, or even the sub-ring for that particular car (I have the car keys on dependent rings for each car, because pulling one key off from a bunch when you leave it for repairs is a tedious PITA.) So, when I go for a walk in the park, I don't have to lug along my purse--just DL and the car ring in my pockets. At work I have a change-purse for lunch money, and badge access, so I don't have to lug around my purse all day.
So, if you don't want to carry a purse, divide your keys into sets by usage, and only carry the rings you need for that errand or activity. Keep the rest in a standard place.
Actually, you're wrong. "Freedom of the press" was and is very definitely to protect political opinion-making. You didn't get shut down by the Crown back in the day for reporting the news, you got shut down for opining that government-backed mercantile monopolies were behaving like a bunch of thugs over here in the Colonies and deserved to be hanged en masse, not rewarded with more government privileges.
After the Constitution was written, the Supreme Court upheld the concept that publishing rude, even incendiary opinions about the president and other elected critters was exactly what the 1st Amendment was for, no matter how much heartburn it caused President John Adams.
Actually, we, "the people" consent to be governed, and delegate our decision-making authority to our representatives. The money IS mine, as I am a citizen of this country, I own my 1/300 millionth or so share of the things it buys, and I can tell the government how to spend my taxes. No guarantee they'll listen, but they generally do if a big enough collective of the citizen-owners yell about it. Governments don't work without the consent of the governed, especially this one.
If my elected delegates don't do a good job of representing me, I (collectively) can fire them and elect someone else who will.
Need to re-organize HR though; it's sticking me with really crappy interview candidates for the job.
I can tell you're not an American--you're used to being a 'subject' rather than a citizen.
I have the most fundamental moral and legal ground of all to think that I get a direct say in how my tax dollars are spent: "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"
Taking your money and using it for one's own purposes without your consent is called stealing, and government that does it is a tyranny.
Actually, I find NoScript does more of the ad-blocking for me than AdBlock Plus does. YMMV. Oh, and since GoogleAnalytics is a script, it'll block that.
Seriously, dude, carrying that big of a martyr complex around must be hard on your back. Set the load down, have a beer, enjoy the sunset. You'll enjoy life more.
You will not be persecuted for being moral and ethical in today's society. Really, you won't. I've never taken any abuse for being honest, compassionate, polite, generous, loving, or charitable of mind and deed. What you will take abuse for is being intolerant, proud, judgmental, abrasive, abusive and insulting. It is not a moral victory to take abuse for being a jerk, so don't mix that up with the righteous being persecuted by the evil of this world.
My personal take on this? You're being a judgmental ass. You suggest that people who have different opinions than you (or even request rational clarification on the matter) on what "freedom of expression" means are somehow unworthy to be allowed to participate in the public arena of ideas. So people should have freedom of expression as long as it's freedom to agree with you?
And which politician is going to vote to lower his constituents standard of living? No one who wants to be re-elected. Hell, no one who wants any kind of legacy, because anything that affects the bulk of the citizenry as badly as over $3 / gallon gas did the other year will be promptly repealed by the politicians still in office who want to stay in office--or not be lynched.
As eloquently explained in one of the above posts, major increases in the cost of gasoline would wreak havoc on the economy and the middle-class. I disagree with the poster that the middle-class would be hardest hit--2008's insane gas prices hurt the so-called "blue-collar" class the worst. Those were the guys who were just making ends meet, and whose jobs often depending on driving: truckers, cabbies, deliverymen, etc.
In addition, the higher cost of a necessity, gasoline, means less money to spend on anything else, so luxuries go by the wayside. What happens to the economy when people stop spending on anything except absolute necessities? If you answer, "the stock market crash and recession that started in 2008 and is still going on", you, sir, are a winner! (Yes, mismanagement by the big banks and insurance companies who apparently didn't plan for the possibility of an economic downturn exacerbated the crash, but there would have been no crash without that economic downturn).
In an ironic twist, when our gasoline prices approached those of Europe's, it clobbered Europe's economy as well. Seems like people just weren't buying European imports and taking European vacations any more...
I notice a distinct attitude difference between E-Book readers and PC Gamers. Gamers seem to feel slightly naughty if they download a cracked version of a game they paid for and are entitled to play as they see fit.
Quite a few E-Book readers, on the other hand, have a policy that they will not buy an e-book unless it is either DRM-free or has easily-cracked DRM that they have the crack for. I know I'm one. We've seen too many proprietary formats come and go, rendering eBook collections useless when the authentication servers went away; we've seen Amazon revoke people's books (the "1984" incident), we've seen formats that should be the same (Sony EPUB and B&N EPUB) turn out to be incompatible due to different DRM schemes (and no mention on the bookseller's site, either), so when we buy a DRM-infected book, the very first thing we do is strip the DRM off. AFAIK, no one who buys eBooks feels the least bit guilty about this; we're protecting our investment in our own property, and many thanks to the code-breakers who figured out how to strip the DRM.
Of course, we actually paid for the eBooks. We like reading, and we don't think the publisher or the bookseller has any business telling us how or when or with what machine we can read our books. Bugger them, it's none of their business once the check clears.
What gamers need are easy-to-use scripts & programs that let them do their own DRM-stripping, like we have for eBooks, so you don't have to download whole pirate versions of games. Then you could buy a legit game that's known to be strippable, run the program against it, and voila! no DRM, but no encouragement of acquiring stuff without paying for it. Convincing game companies not to use DRM would be even better, but I'm not sure that's going to happen any time soon.
Always live within your means and have some money set aside and/or invested, because shit happens. You may unexpectedly get laid off for a number of reasons, you be injured in an accident or contract cancer and be unable to work for a long time, a natural disaster may destroy your workplace, your workplace may mismanage itself into bankruptcy... There is no perfect job security.
(It helps to be raised by parents who grew up poor, and taught you their paranoia about not going into debt and setting something aside for hard times. It really does.)
Actually, since Kindle format is MOBI with Amazon's special DRM added, once you strip the DRM you can convert it to ePUB and use it on other readers. Not that that's how Amazon intended it to be done, and it's a lot of hoops to jump through, but...
Nobody has mentioned Baen Books and Webscriptions yet? Inexpensive, DRM-Free science-fiction & fantasy eBooks, lots of them. Sure, they don't specifically sell Kindle-format through Amazon, but wait--they have DRM-free MOBI format, which *IS* Kindle format minus the DRM. And you can load it on your Kindle.
Me, I have a Sony PRS-505, because I didn't want to be locked into Amazon's proprietary format and ugly-ass eReader.
I like e-Ink, I don't like Amazon's proprietary lock-in, so I got a Sony eReader, which handles ePub, PDFs, LRF, and everything else I want to read, Calibre converts for me. Except Kindle DRM format, of course. This might be useful as a method to buy Kindle books without a Kindle, crack them, and load them on my e-Reader, if there were any Kindle-exclusives I wanted.
Re:Can we please stop with the "denialist" crap?
on
The Limits To Skepticism
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
And if said scientists don't have the inclination to explain themselves as to why I should change my lifestyle/agree to huge new taxes/accept massive new government controls, I don't have the inclination to vote for these things or ask my elected representative to do so. "Because I said so" is not an acceptable reason when you are reaching for my wallet.
I couldn't say about California forest fires. I venture that California will have grass fires next year, and every year until global climate change makes that state a lot wetter in the summer. It's a seasonal natural phenomenon, like spring floods in rivers.
Note to humans with two brain cells to rub together: building houses on a hill covered with grass that turns into beautiful golden tinder every summer is just as stupid as building an unelevated house on the flood-plain of a major river.
Yes, but the FBI doesn't throw your relatives in jail for whatever YOU get up to in foreign countries. In fact, they don't even throw your relatives in jail for what you do in the U.S. They're aren't allowed to, and since doing so has nothing to do with catching criminals, they probably wouldn't want to. They don't even haul YOU in and beat you up because of what you post on the Internet, nor do they send you death threats warning you to shut up.
Now, explain to me your apparent equivalence between "keeps files on people protesting the government" and "sends death threats, threatens relatives, harshly interrogate, physically abuse, imprison on trumped-up charges, and otherwise behave like goons toward people protesting the government"?
Ask editors, agents and other professional readers as well: you'll find they love e-Readers because a stack of manuscripts is heavy! It's way easier to carry around and read a stack of electronic manuscripts on your Kindle or Sony E-Reader than it is to manhandle all that paper around.
Ask a group of extremely avid consumer readers: romance readers. This is a group whose typical readers go through multiple books a week, bought and paid for, not freebies from Project Gutenberg. They were the first group to get on the e-book bandwagon in a big way, and there are a number of e-only small publishing houses in the romance genre. In fact, I find it vaguely depressing that the commenters on a forum for geeks, etc (Slashdot) is less informed and less interested in e-books and e-readers than that of a popular romance blog Smart Bitches, Trashy books.
I also recommend the Teleread blog, for keeping up on things e-book.
Some metropolitan libraries are already moving into the 21st century and lending e-books (e.g. New York Public Library). They use DRM to enforce only checking out N copies at once.
Slashdot Mirror
You're in school administration, aren't you? I'm guessing from the kneejerk mindless defense of any and all stupid, bureaucratic school policies.
My kid's public school district had absolutely insane policies that required not just a doctor's note, but signed and approved paperwork from the chief nurse's office for the school district, which was across the river about 20 miles away, and of course, they weren't open after work hours. Not like in the old days when you actually had a school nurse at the school, and could just leave the pills and a doctor's note with them. The process was designed to make sure you wouldn't have the energy or time to see that your kid got his meds in school unless it was life-threatening not to.
I worked around it, giving my kid her antibiotics before and after school, but she had to suffer a lot of brutal headaches and cramps needlessly, for want of being allowed to carry ibuprofen or Tylenol, or for even having someone onsite alllowed to dispense them. She called out sick more than once and missed school because of pain that a simple aspirin or ibuprofen would have allowed her to finish the day out. I cursed the fucking public school policy everytime my kid had to suffer needlessly because of it.
God, I was so relieved when I finally got her in a private school that had a sane policy! You know, one that actually had someone on-site who could give the kid an aspirin when she had a headache or ibuprofen for cramps. It was really cool to be all the way up to the late 19th century in pharamaceutical science again.
Fuck paranoid zero tolerance policies that make children suffer needlessly.
You know, I don't want my kid being taught that candy is a reward. Because that way leads to "food makes me feel better when life sucks" and 300 lb kids.
I'd much, much rather my kid think of candy or pastries as dessert, the course that follows the main entré if one is still interested in food at that point. Not a special reward you get if you are good and worth loving.
I carry a purse. Why men don't have something to carry their stuff in is one of those mysteries of culture and civilization.
In addition, I divide my keys up into sets: car keys on one ring, house keys on another, mom's house keys on a third, because I really don't trust random valet parking employees with the keys to my house, safety deposit box, etc. They only get the car ring, or even the sub-ring for that particular car (I have the car keys on dependent rings for each car, because pulling one key off from a bunch when you leave it for repairs is a tedious PITA.) So, when I go for a walk in the park, I don't have to lug along my purse--just DL and the car ring in my pockets. At work I have a change-purse for lunch money, and badge access, so I don't have to lug around my purse all day.
So, if you don't want to carry a purse, divide your keys into sets by usage, and only carry the rings you need for that errand or activity. Keep the rest in a standard place.
Actually, you're wrong. "Freedom of the press" was and is very definitely to protect political opinion-making. You didn't get shut down by the Crown back in the day for reporting the news, you got shut down for opining that government-backed mercantile monopolies were behaving like a bunch of thugs over here in the Colonies and deserved to be hanged en masse, not rewarded with more government privileges.
After the Constitution was written, the Supreme Court upheld the concept that publishing rude, even incendiary opinions about the president and other elected critters was exactly what the 1st Amendment was for, no matter how much heartburn it caused President John Adams.
Actually, we, "the people" consent to be governed, and delegate our decision-making authority to our representatives. The money IS mine, as I am a citizen of this country, I own my 1/300 millionth or so share of the things it buys, and I can tell the government how to spend my taxes. No guarantee they'll listen, but they generally do if a big enough collective of the citizen-owners yell about it. Governments don't work without the consent of the governed, especially this one.
If my elected delegates don't do a good job of representing me, I (collectively) can fire them and elect someone else who will.
Need to re-organize HR though; it's sticking me with really crappy interview candidates for the job.
I can tell you're not an American--you're used to being a 'subject' rather than a citizen.
I have the most fundamental moral and legal ground of all to think that I get a direct say in how my tax dollars are spent: "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"
Taking your money and using it for one's own purposes without your consent is called stealing, and government that does it is a tyranny.
No, bunion-head, the 13th Amendment supercedes any and all "denial of service" laws. You CANNOT force a person to work for free. Period.
Actually, I find NoScript does more of the ad-blocking for me than AdBlock Plus does. YMMV. Oh, and since GoogleAnalytics is a script, it'll block that.
Self-righteous much?
Seriously, dude, carrying that big of a martyr complex around must be hard on your back. Set the load down, have a beer, enjoy the sunset. You'll enjoy life more.
You will not be persecuted for being moral and ethical in today's society. Really, you won't. I've never taken any abuse for being honest, compassionate, polite, generous, loving, or charitable of mind and deed. What you will take abuse for is being intolerant, proud, judgmental, abrasive, abusive and insulting. It is not a moral victory to take abuse for being a jerk, so don't mix that up with the righteous being persecuted by the evil of this world.
My personal take on this? You're being a judgmental ass. You suggest that people who have different opinions than you (or even request rational clarification on the matter) on what "freedom of expression" means are somehow unworthy to be allowed to participate in the public arena of ideas. So people should have freedom of expression as long as it's freedom to agree with you?
1) Why would you use your Real Life name on an Internet social forum?
Because part of the idea of that social network is so those people you knew 30 years ago can find you.
</quote>
What a horrifying thought! I can't think of anyone that is still alive from back when I was that young and stupid that I want finding me.
1) Why would you use your Real Life name on an Internet social forum?
2) Why in the Nine Hells would you tell your boss your Internet nickname on said social forum??
And which politician is going to vote to lower his constituents standard of living? No one who wants to be re-elected. Hell, no one who wants any kind of legacy, because anything that affects the bulk of the citizenry as badly as over $3 / gallon gas did the other year will be promptly repealed by the politicians still in office who want to stay in office--or not be lynched.
As eloquently explained in one of the above posts, major increases in the cost of gasoline would wreak havoc on the economy and the middle-class. I disagree with the poster that the middle-class would be hardest hit--2008's insane gas prices hurt the so-called "blue-collar" class the worst. Those were the guys who were just making ends meet, and whose jobs often depending on driving: truckers, cabbies, deliverymen, etc.
In addition, the higher cost of a necessity, gasoline, means less money to spend on anything else, so luxuries go by the wayside. What happens to the economy when people stop spending on anything except absolute necessities? If you answer, "the stock market crash and recession that started in 2008 and is still going on", you, sir, are a winner! (Yes, mismanagement by the big banks and insurance companies who apparently didn't plan for the possibility of an economic downturn exacerbated the crash, but there would have been no crash without that economic downturn).
In an ironic twist, when our gasoline prices approached those of Europe's, it clobbered Europe's economy as well. Seems like people just weren't buying European imports and taking European vacations any more...
I notice a distinct attitude difference between E-Book readers and PC Gamers. Gamers seem to feel slightly naughty if they download a cracked version of a game they paid for and are entitled to play as they see fit.
Quite a few E-Book readers, on the other hand, have a policy that they will not buy an e-book unless it is either DRM-free or has easily-cracked DRM that they have the crack for. I know I'm one. We've seen too many proprietary formats come and go, rendering eBook collections useless when the authentication servers went away; we've seen Amazon revoke people's books (the "1984" incident), we've seen formats that should be the same (Sony EPUB and B&N EPUB) turn out to be incompatible due to different DRM schemes (and no mention on the bookseller's site, either), so when we buy a DRM-infected book, the very first thing we do is strip the DRM off. AFAIK, no one who buys eBooks feels the least bit guilty about this; we're protecting our investment in our own property, and many thanks to the code-breakers who figured out how to strip the DRM.
Of course, we actually paid for the eBooks. We like reading, and we don't think the publisher or the bookseller has any business telling us how or when or with what machine we can read our books. Bugger them, it's none of their business once the check clears.
What gamers need are easy-to-use scripts & programs that let them do their own DRM-stripping, like we have for eBooks, so you don't have to download whole pirate versions of games. Then you could buy a legit game that's known to be strippable, run the program against it, and voila! no DRM, but no encouragement of acquiring stuff without paying for it. Convincing game companies not to use DRM would be even better, but I'm not sure that's going to happen any time soon.
Northern U.S. didn't have back-to-back blizzards dropping 3 f***ing feet of snow last January, either. Who is going to go rob houses in that?
Always live within your means and have some money set aside and/or invested, because shit happens. You may unexpectedly get laid off for a number of reasons, you be injured in an accident or contract cancer and be unable to work for a long time, a natural disaster may destroy your workplace, your workplace may mismanage itself into bankruptcy... There is no perfect job security.
(It helps to be raised by parents who grew up poor, and taught you their paranoia about not going into debt and setting something aside for hard times. It really does.)
No one wants anyone over 40 for rock
Those guys who played the half-time show at the Superbowl beg to differ...
Actually, since Kindle format is MOBI with Amazon's special DRM added, once you strip the DRM you can convert it to ePUB and use it on other readers. Not that that's how Amazon intended it to be done, and it's a lot of hoops to jump through, but...
Nobody has mentioned Baen Books and Webscriptions yet? Inexpensive, DRM-Free science-fiction & fantasy eBooks, lots of them. Sure, they don't specifically sell Kindle-format through Amazon, but wait--they have DRM-free MOBI format, which *IS* Kindle format minus the DRM. And you can load it on your Kindle.
Me, I have a Sony PRS-505, because I didn't want to be locked into Amazon's proprietary format and ugly-ass eReader.
I like e-Ink, I don't like Amazon's proprietary lock-in, so I got a Sony eReader, which handles ePub, PDFs, LRF, and everything else I want to read, Calibre converts for me. Except Kindle DRM format, of course. This might be useful as a method to buy Kindle books without a Kindle, crack them, and load them on my e-Reader, if there were any Kindle-exclusives I wanted.
And if said scientists don't have the inclination to explain themselves as to why I should change my lifestyle/agree to huge new taxes/accept massive new government controls, I don't have the inclination to vote for these things or ask my elected representative to do so. "Because I said so" is not an acceptable reason when you are reaching for my wallet.
*bored now, so pedantic nitpicking*
I couldn't say about California forest fires. I venture that California will have grass fires next year, and every year until global climate change makes that state a lot wetter in the summer. It's a seasonal natural phenomenon, like spring floods in rivers.
Note to humans with two brain cells to rub together: building houses on a hill covered with grass that turns into beautiful golden tinder every summer is just as stupid as building an unelevated house on the flood-plain of a major river.
Green technology patent trolls incoming in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1
Yes, but the FBI doesn't throw your relatives in jail for whatever YOU get up to in foreign countries. In fact, they don't even throw your relatives in jail for what you do in the U.S. They're aren't allowed to, and since doing so has nothing to do with catching criminals, they probably wouldn't want to. They don't even haul YOU in and beat you up because of what you post on the Internet, nor do they send you death threats warning you to shut up.
Now, explain to me your apparent equivalence between "keeps files on people protesting the government" and "sends death threats, threatens relatives, harshly interrogate, physically abuse, imprison on trumped-up charges, and otherwise behave like goons toward people protesting the government"?
Indeed!
Ask editors, agents and other professional readers as well: you'll find they love e-Readers because a stack of manuscripts is heavy! It's way easier to carry around and read a stack of electronic manuscripts on your Kindle or Sony E-Reader than it is to manhandle all that paper around.
Ask a group of extremely avid consumer readers: romance readers. This is a group whose typical readers go through multiple books a week, bought and paid for, not freebies from Project Gutenberg. They were the first group to get on the e-book bandwagon in a big way, and there are a number of e-only small publishing houses in the romance genre. In fact, I find it vaguely depressing that the commenters on a forum for geeks, etc (Slashdot) is less informed and less interested in e-books and e-readers than that of a popular romance blog Smart Bitches, Trashy books.
I also recommend the Teleread blog, for keeping up on things e-book.
Some metropolitan libraries are already moving into the 21st century and lending e-books (e.g. New York Public Library). They use DRM to enforce only checking out N copies at once.