"For those of you who have donated, I appreciate your support which makes this add-on possible. Visit www.myaddon.com for the latest updates"
Its not a solicitation, its a thank you to people who have donated, and the website is mentioned only as it pertains to upkeep of the software and directs them to your site for updates.
You;re wrong. You do not understand the problem here.
The problem is most end-users use an autoupdater or other tool, form a 3rd party website. So they NEVER SEE the coder's website. Without the in-game "beg", you'll never know that the author is asking for donations to allow him to keep working on the mod.
Experience shows that without the in-game beg, the money just does not come in, most often because people are completely un-aware that the author is even asking for them on his website, since they never SEE the website! They never see the website thanks to auto-updaters and 3rd party distribution.
This part, disallowing donation requests, is screwing the small-time guys who write these apps, and Blizz needs to roll it back. A lot of very good addon-ons are already folding up shop, like Quest Helper.
If you do not restrict redistribution of your source code (most of these are GPL'd), you have no other way of requesting voluntary contributions to help you pay for your time developing these apps.
"it happened already. The single most popular quest assistance addon, quest helper is officially discontinued because of this. Author stated his reasons in the update log very clearly - money loss due to inability to request donations in-game."
There - if he cannot ask for it with a load-time beg, he is not getting the donations!
This change has screwed a lot of UI makers who need the cash to justify the time put into the addon. the third-party aggregators, like Curse, have destroyed the UI coder's ability to solicit at the download site -- the autoupdater grabs it and goes, and the end user NEVER sees the author's site. the ONLY way for the author to have widespread distribution is to allow Curse to do the distro, and the only way to guaranteed that a beg for contributions is seen is to do it in-game at load time.
A tyranny? That's laughable. This fellow, if he isn't a troll is so twisted by his hatred that he has long ago lost touch with reality.
Go visit the hermit kingdom (N Korea) if you wish to see a tyranny. Or talk to the folks that lived under the thumb of the Stasi just a couple decades ago.
This used to be a good tech site with a libertarian bent, but its now becoming overrun with wannabes and knee-jerk haters.
The sad thing is, that sort of hate filled anti-US troll is becoming less and less distinguishable from the majority of actual posters at./
"someone who only believes in rights for the right people. [They] only believe in rights when it suits them, and only in freedom to behave as they deem appropriate. They are generally in favor of, if not a caste society, certainly a stratified one, where the rules and order they approve of are enforced."
Sounds more like collectivists/communists you have in mind there.
Fyi - I said "debt load" not debt - you severely misquoted me, There is a difference. The former is what was added (the debt load contained in the spending bill), the latter is the sum total.
Why DHS? Talk about throwing money into a trash disposal.
Why not NSA/CSS? They are already tasked with this and have budget. Plus they have produced viable useful solutions, SE-Linux for example. And they have competence, unlike the DHS, who seem more concerned with political correctness than securing the nation and the borders.
This smells of political back-scratching, not a solution to a problem.
Secondly how is this supposed to stimulate demand in the economy? Remember, that was the purpose of the huge debt load we just got saddled with.
Watch for crony-contracts, and the money to not produce anything other than rich politically connected friends.
For example: "stimulus plan that can save America's economy"
"can"? That remains to be seen, and many say it will not. Try being less of a cheerleader and tell the truth. "may save" is a better selection, and much closer to the truth, given several hundred prominent economists (and the CBO) have said this "stimulus" may end up hurting the economy due to the wasteful "political repayment" spending and huge debt load it contains.
Per the CBO a recovery, albeit slow, is predicted for later this year even were no "stimulus" package passed.
Go read up on the Nixon-Ford-Carter economy that used similar big-government Keynesian methods to stimulate the economy, and ended up producing "stagflation", high interest rates, high unemployment and high inflation (the latter two both in double digits).
Then go read Hazlitt and Hayek for why this Keynesian stuff doesn't work as intended.
In engineering terms, most learned this lesson in statics and dynamics class: You cannot push a rope.
"Doing that sort of stuff by 'bot degrades the things I earned by playing. "
I have always wondered about this claim...
How does it "degrade" what you've done?
Does anyone else on a raid with you know whether you botted or whether you manually clicked your way to high rating for fishing or killing large numbers of low level mobs?
No? Then how does it "degrade" you, given neither you nor they know this about each other, nor does it apparently make any difference other than time wasted/spent?
Then why are *you* so affected by what others do that you cannot know or detect?
LOL! If you only knew. But I'm not there anymore (wish I was still there, in a way. job security, ya know).
P.s. I love the "Flamebait" mod someone applied to my post above, gave me a laugh today.
I wonder if its someone at NSA all squirmy over my calling it "Black Tower" (see Tolkien), or a conspiracy guy pissed at me for debunking a pet bete noir of his.
Having worked there in the black tower at Ft Meade (and more importantly, the lower brick building with the looooong hallways that is connected to it, which is where the real work gets done), this guy is appearing to be less and less believable.
There one thing that rings the BS bell for this guy: NSA is VERY compartmentalized. Information simply does not cross boundaries there, and there are multiple checks and curbs to see that compartmentalized intelligence is not shared out, so that the sources and methods are protected. In the past, there have (allegedly) been times when people died or bad events were allowed in order to preserve sources and methods. This is RELIGION at NSA: protect sources and methods, PERIOD. That means compartmentalization really slices the world up, and you only get to see your sliver of it as an analyst.
That's one of the major frustrations I and others had there when working there as an analyst: you only get blindered, partial, or gappy info and data. Many times, the best you get are "sanitized" analyst/reporting products from other programs and compartments that has been scrubbed so clean of sources and methods that it is scarcely useful. This makes one's analysis necessarily incomplete in many case because one simply do not have the raw data on hand except that for which one's own compartment is responsible. As an analyst, you end up using hedge-words, and all kinds of "fudge factor" language.
So I doubt anyone his level or near his level (above him) has that much scope, nor has that sort of visibility into programs across such a broad swath of intelligence collection, processing, analysis and reporting. Because it would ring alarm bells in personnel security if one person of that level were to be read-on to so many special compartmented access programs, sufficent enough to be privy to so many programs, sources and methods.
Furthermore, he cites no real specifics in these cases, not a shred of *actionable* evidence, only vague and overly-broad allegations, all given in a conspiracy-tinged "dramatic" way.
He may have reported some issues correctly regarding telecom intercepts (the legality of which have been upheld, and which the Obama administration seems to find useful now that they are tasked with protecting the nation), but a lot of this seems to me to be simply speculation on his part.
The applicable USSIDs and Presidential Directives are pretty tight about these sorts of things, and the NSA Inspector General pounds people for violating these sorts of things. This is another reason Tice's claims seem hollow to an insider(aside from the utter lack of actionable specific hard evidence): he apparently never went to the IG.
Initially his claims appeared to merit attention, but all in all, Tice is beginning to sound more like a crank who wants face-time on Olberman than anyone with a legitimate, actionable claim, with evidence to back it up.
Advice from one ex-"A wing" denizen: Start naming names, places, and activities, ones that can be verified by the IG and the US Attorney General; they love to rip NSA program managers. Otherwise, Tice needs to realize he's not "Mother" and this isn't Sneakers.
So DUH, they don't work for children; that's not who they were designed for, nor marketed to! Fast reading of Tom Sawyer, or doing 100 Sudoku puzzles is hardly "kid" activity. This guy missed the purpose by a mile.
To verify, simply go to the Brain Age website and read the blurbs, all aimed clearly at "aging" adults.
For instance there's this on page 1 front and center:
Exercise is the key to good health both for body and mind - and now, with the Brain Age games, there's a way to make mental exercise fun, even competitive. Just minutes a day, that's all it takes to challenge your mind and, with Nintendo DS portability, you can play Brain Age at work, on vacation, or anywhere your day takes you.
And this piece of market-speak Inspired by the work of prominent Japanese neuroscientist Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, the Brain Age games feature activities designed to help stimulate your brain and give it the workout it needs
Vacation, workplace, brain stimulation (like a 10 year old needs MORE stimulation?), yeah all typical concerns of 10 year olds. I mean really this guy jumped the on failboat: they advertise/review this at AARP.org (link at the site)
So it seems me Cognitive Psych guy missed a very big cognitive clue: they aren't marketing most of these for children, but to aging boomers! What a dimwit he appears to be.
Brain Age is not aimed at helping kids learn, its aimed more at adults to allegedly stimulate cognitive centers of the brina via calculations and puzzles -- that is supposed to help keep the brain "young". Some studies have shown that puzzle games of the sorts in these games help hold off aging effects on the brain.
How well it works is up for discussion, but saying it doesn't work for 10 year olds for whom it isn't designed nor marketed, well, lets say the study psychologist may want to use Brain Age himself to see if it helps his cognition of the obvious, which is evidently lacking.
I could give a crap less over Google whining bout how this impacts their hiring ability. Its completely irrelevant to the issue at hand.
The issue at had is:
Was the process a legal one, did it conform to state law?
I have a feeling if the court overturns this on such a specious argument of wording, that you will see several of the justices who vote in favor of overturning will be removed via recall, and a far more hostile court will emerge.
Don't subvert direct democracy as written into the Constitution of CA, and instead try to impose your will against those of the majority via the courts and judicial fiat.
Prop-8's, get over it, you lost. Do not force this down the public's throat, you'll only force a bigger backlash than before.
Try convincing 6% of the people that voted the other way, and you'll win the next time.
Do the American thing, make your case to the public and try again!
The primary objection from the religious and other opponents of Prop8 seems to be one of genuine concern that they would be forced into a "moral equivalence" demanded of them, which directly violates their religious belief in terms of homosexual acts being inherently disordered and sinful (which they are free to hold under the 1st amendment). And it is chilling that there are people who would force them to act against their conscience (so long as they stick to the "Its the sin, not the sinner" approach most mainstream opposition state as being their beleif). That is why the first amendment is first: freedom to practice one;s religion, and one's conscience should not be abridge any more than speech -- its that important and should be given that much deference before putting in legislation to regulate it. Liberal fascism is no prettier than any other kind.
But gays should get the same legal rights as those who oppose them under the same doctrine. So who gets to force the other side to demolish their moral belief? Each side has a good case for being correct (from their own point of view), and each side forces something on the other that is abhorrent (to them).
How about this?
Cut the gordian knot.
The government should not be involved in marriage at all, only in the civil relationship, and only insofar as they are of benefit to a society, and deserving of protections and/or benefits.
When you get to the core of the marriage law, in terms of practical effects, its simply contract law governing the voluntary relationships.
So I say get rid of government involvement in "marriage" COMPLETELY. That way there is nothing to argue about. Recognize Civil Unions ONLY.
Abolish "Marriage" as a legal term, and simply set up partnership laws that establish certain contractual relationships and rights, including life-issues, insurance, inheritance, etc. Once these contracts are signed then the signees are eligible for governmental protection as deemed necessary by the government according to the type of contract they agree to. Dissolution of the contract is similarly goverened by well defined contract provisions in the law that are binding on all parties.
Then the government can decide who is eligible to participate in those contract and benefitss, by determining which sorts of relationships are beneficial to society, and to what degree, so that qualifications, benefits and protections can be assigned properly.
So if you wish to formalize your relationship in terms of religious or moral recognition, then you need only go to your Church, and you can be married. But to get the legal protections, you apply to the government. Render unto Caesar...
In some ways, civil unions may be superior to marriage in that the legal language is much better scrutinized and much less loaded with traditions that may not make legal sense. And the contract can be of various degrees, instead of a "one size fits all" model.
This means the religious can still get Married by the Church, which is where that sort of distinction makes a difference to them. The term "Marriage" then reverts to its original meaning, referring to the moral and sacramental nature of the relationship, not the legal one. Much like Catholics disagreeing with the legality and recognition of a divorce, and thus having their own "anullment" process, sacramental/moral Marriage would stay outside the government's purview. But the legal stuff is applied to all who qualify for it and sign up.
Basically, if your religion does not recognize "gay" marriage, then that's fine, you go do your thing and you don't have to marry gays, nor recognize their marriage in another faith tradition. Same goes for those religions that do recongnize things liek Unitarians who go for nearly anything - which is were gays can go to get married. You both can disagree with each other about that, the same way you can disagree about Buddha Vs Jehova.
And I should add, this is also fair to Atheists, in that they have the same standing as anyone else.
Yeah, but if the money was spent on an intuitive interface, it is a one-time expense. Training is an ongoing expense as you add customers and hence does not scale as well.
Actually, if you think about it, the result of training users who bought the software with the crappy UI is an ongoing REVENUE source for whoever is doing it.
Though this be madness, yet there is method in't. -- Polonius, Hamlet Act 2 Scene 2
-> I did NOT give them permission to place or inject their ads on *my* site.
-> I have no control over what ads are delivered with my content -- some of it may be counter to things I beleive, and some ads may imply an endorsement of products, people or policies that I abhor.
-> I am not recieving ad revenues from their ad hits which my site geneates for them.
To me, this is outright theft of my content to generate revenue for them. I beleive the legal term is "conversion", taking someone else's property and using it to make money as if it was your own property.
What legal recourse do content creators and holders have against this theft of thier content to produce revenues for someone else?
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent up - its not a troll, its the truth.
Serious players and guilds ALL use mods. Its the truth.
20 million downloads of his app says you are wrong.
The stats are there, and they pretty much knock down your ignorance-based assumptions.
I think you underestiamte how many people use addons.
Anyone that goes raiding, or levels hgih enough to group for advanced content, requires addons that help their class, especially healers.
As a matter of fact, almost every guild requires a given set of raid framework addons, aggro monitors, etc, before you can even get into a raid.
How about:
"For those of you who have donated, I appreciate your support which makes this add-on possible. Visit www.myaddon.com for the latest updates"
Its not a solicitation, its a thank you to people who have donated, and the website is mentioned only as it pertains to upkeep of the software and directs them to your site for updates.
That should be enough.
You;re wrong. You do not understand the problem here.
The problem is most end-users use an autoupdater or other tool, form a 3rd party website. So they NEVER SEE the coder's website. Without the in-game "beg", you'll never know that the author is asking for donations to allow him to keep working on the mod.
Experience shows that without the in-game beg, the money just does not come in, most often because people are completely un-aware that the author is even asking for them on his website, since they never SEE the website! They never see the website thanks to auto-updaters and 3rd party distribution.
This part, disallowing donation requests, is screwing the small-time guys who write these apps, and Blizz needs to roll it back. A lot of very good addon-ons are already folding up shop, like Quest Helper.
If you do not restrict redistribution of your source code (most of these are GPL'd), you have no other way of requesting voluntary contributions to help you pay for your time developing these apps.
Did you even read the post you replied to?
"it happened already. The single most popular quest assistance addon, quest helper is officially discontinued because of this. Author stated his reasons in the update log very clearly - money loss due to inability to request donations in-game."
There - if he cannot ask for it with a load-time beg, he is not getting the donations!
This change has screwed a lot of UI makers who need the cash to justify the time put into the addon. the third-party aggregators, like Curse, have destroyed the UI coder's ability to solicit at the download site -- the autoupdater grabs it and goes, and the end user NEVER sees the author's site. the ONLY way for the author to have widespread distribution is to allow Curse to do the distro, and the only way to guaranteed that a beg for contributions is seen is to do it in-game at load time.
You are a fool to think otherwise.
Good point.
A tyranny? That's laughable. This fellow, if he isn't a troll is so twisted by his hatred that he has long ago lost touch with reality.
Go visit the hermit kingdom (N Korea) if you wish to see a tyranny. Or talk to the folks that lived under the thumb of the Stasi just a couple decades ago.
This used to be a good tech site with a libertarian bent, but its now becoming overrun with wannabes and knee-jerk haters.
The sad thing is, that sort of hate filled anti-US troll is becoming less and less distinguishable from the majority of actual posters at ./
"someone who only believes in rights for the right people. [They] only believe in rights when it suits them, and only in freedom to behave as they deem appropriate. They are generally in favor of, if not a caste society, certainly a stratified one, where the rules and order they approve of are enforced."
Sounds more like collectivists/communists you have in mind there.
VB is hard, lets outsource it.
Fyi - I said "debt load" not debt - you severely misquoted me, There is a difference. The former is what was added (the debt load contained in the spending bill), the latter is the sum total.
Congress just bumped it up by almost double, in one month, what it took Bush 8 years to do, which was bad enough.
And they did fiscally what Bush and Congress did with the Patriot Act - created a crisis atmosphere and rammed a bill through without proper scrutiny.
Both were wrong.
Why DHS? Talk about throwing money into a trash disposal.
Why not NSA/CSS? They are already tasked with this and have budget. Plus they have produced viable useful solutions, SE-Linux for example. And they have competence, unlike the DHS, who seem more concerned with political correctness than securing the nation and the borders.
This smells of political back-scratching, not a solution to a problem.
Secondly how is this supposed to stimulate demand in the economy? Remember, that was the purpose of the huge debt load we just got saddled with.
Watch for crony-contracts, and the money to not produce anything other than rich politically connected friends.
For example: "stimulus plan that can save America's economy"
"can"? That remains to be seen, and many say it will not. Try being less of a cheerleader and tell the truth. "may save" is a better selection, and much closer to the truth, given several hundred prominent economists (and the CBO) have said this "stimulus" may end up hurting the economy due to the wasteful "political repayment" spending and huge debt load it contains.
Per the CBO a recovery, albeit slow, is predicted for later this year even were no "stimulus" package passed.
Go read up on the Nixon-Ford-Carter economy that used similar big-government Keynesian methods to stimulate the economy, and ended up producing "stagflation", high interest rates, high unemployment and high inflation (the latter two both in double digits).
Then go read Hazlitt and Hayek for why this Keynesian stuff doesn't work as intended.
In engineering terms, most learned this lesson in statics and dynamics class: You cannot push a rope.
Army 98? Good on you.
98C are the smartest monkey-wrenches in MI.
"Doing that sort of stuff by 'bot degrades the things I earned by playing. "
I have always wondered about this claim...
How does it "degrade" what you've done?
Does anyone else on a raid with you know whether you botted or whether you manually clicked your way to high rating for fishing or killing large numbers of low level mobs?
No? Then how does it "degrade" you, given neither you nor they know this about each other, nor does it apparently make any difference other than time wasted/spent?
Then why are *you* so affected by what others do that you cannot know or detect?
Thread of the year!
LOL! If you only knew. But I'm not there anymore (wish I was still there, in a way. job security, ya know).
P.s. I love the "Flamebait" mod someone applied to my post above, gave me a laugh today.
I wonder if its someone at NSA all squirmy over my calling it "Black Tower" (see Tolkien), or a conspiracy guy pissed at me for debunking a pet bete noir of his.
Gotta love Slashdot mods, they're +1 Funny!
Having worked there in the black tower at Ft Meade (and more importantly, the lower brick building with the looooong hallways that is connected to it, which is where the real work gets done), this guy is appearing to be less and less believable.
There one thing that rings the BS bell for this guy: NSA is VERY compartmentalized. Information simply does not cross boundaries there, and there are multiple checks and curbs to see that compartmentalized intelligence is not shared out, so that the sources and methods are protected. In the past, there have (allegedly) been times when people died or bad events were allowed in order to preserve sources and methods. This is RELIGION at NSA: protect sources and methods, PERIOD. That means compartmentalization really slices the world up, and you only get to see your sliver of it as an analyst.
That's one of the major frustrations I and others had there when working there as an analyst: you only get blindered, partial, or gappy info and data. Many times, the best you get are "sanitized" analyst/reporting products from other programs and compartments that has been scrubbed so clean of sources and methods that it is scarcely useful. This makes one's analysis necessarily incomplete in many case because one simply do not have the raw data on hand except that for which one's own compartment is responsible. As an analyst, you end up using hedge-words, and all kinds of "fudge factor" language.
So I doubt anyone his level or near his level (above him) has that much scope, nor has that sort of visibility into programs across such a broad swath of intelligence collection, processing, analysis and reporting. Because it would ring alarm bells in personnel security if one person of that level were to be read-on to so many special compartmented access programs, sufficent enough to be privy to so many programs, sources and methods.
Furthermore, he cites no real specifics in these cases, not a shred of *actionable* evidence, only vague and overly-broad allegations, all given in a conspiracy-tinged "dramatic" way.
He may have reported some issues correctly regarding telecom intercepts (the legality of which have been upheld, and which the Obama administration seems to find useful now that they are tasked with protecting the nation), but a lot of this seems to me to be simply speculation on his part.
The applicable USSIDs and Presidential Directives are pretty tight about these sorts of things, and the NSA Inspector General pounds people for violating these sorts of things. This is another reason Tice's claims seem hollow to an insider(aside from the utter lack of actionable specific hard evidence): he apparently never went to the IG.
Initially his claims appeared to merit attention, but all in all, Tice is beginning to sound more like a crank who wants face-time on Olberman than anyone with a legitimate, actionable claim, with evidence to back it up.
Advice from one ex-"A wing" denizen: Start naming names, places, and activities, ones that can be verified by the IG and the US Attorney General; they love to rip NSA program managers. Otherwise, Tice needs to realize he's not "Mother" and this isn't Sneakers.
So DUH, they don't work for children; that's not who they were designed for, nor marketed to! Fast reading of Tom Sawyer, or doing 100 Sudoku puzzles is hardly "kid" activity. This guy missed the purpose by a mile.
To verify, simply go to the Brain Age website and read the blurbs, all aimed clearly at "aging" adults.
For instance there's this on page 1 front and center:
Exercise is the key to good health both for body and mind - and now, with the Brain Age games, there's a way to make mental exercise fun, even competitive. Just minutes a day, that's all it takes to challenge your mind and, with Nintendo DS portability, you can play Brain Age at work, on vacation, or anywhere your day takes you.
And this piece of market-speak Inspired by the work of prominent Japanese neuroscientist Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, the Brain Age games feature activities designed to help stimulate your brain and give it the workout it needs
Vacation, workplace, brain stimulation (like a 10 year old needs MORE stimulation?), yeah all typical concerns of 10 year olds. I mean really this guy jumped the on failboat: they advertise/review this at AARP.org (link at the site)
So it seems me Cognitive Psych guy missed a very big cognitive clue: they aren't marketing most of these for children, but to aging boomers! What a dimwit he appears to be.
Brain Age is not aimed at helping kids learn, its aimed more at adults to allegedly stimulate cognitive centers of the brina via calculations and puzzles -- that is supposed to help keep the brain "young". Some studies have shown that puzzle games of the sorts in these games help hold off aging effects on the brain.
How well it works is up for discussion, but saying it doesn't work for 10 year olds for whom it isn't designed nor marketed, well, lets say the study psychologist may want to use Brain Age himself to see if it helps his cognition of the obvious, which is evidently lacking.
If you can find a car manufacturer which regularly replaces 4-6 power trains while the car is still under 3-year warranty, I'll buy you a shot.
See Hyundai.
Now where's that shot?
Is whether its constitutional.
I could give a crap less over Google whining bout how this impacts their hiring ability. Its completely irrelevant to the issue at hand.
The issue at had is:
Was the process a legal one, did it conform to state law?
I have a feeling if the court overturns this on such a specious argument of wording, that you will see several of the justices who vote in favor of overturning will be removed via recall, and a far more hostile court will emerge.
Don't subvert direct democracy as written into the Constitution of CA, and instead try to impose your will against those of the majority via the courts and judicial fiat.
Prop-8's, get over it, you lost. Do not force this down the public's throat, you'll only force a bigger backlash than before.
Try convincing 6% of the people that voted the other way, and you'll win the next time.
Do the American thing, make your case to the public and try again!
The primary objection from the religious and other opponents of Prop8 seems to be one of genuine concern that they would be forced into a "moral equivalence" demanded of them, which directly violates their religious belief in terms of homosexual acts being inherently disordered and sinful (which they are free to hold under the 1st amendment). And it is chilling that there are people who would force them to act against their conscience (so long as they stick to the "Its the sin, not the sinner" approach most mainstream opposition state as being their beleif). That is why the first amendment is first: freedom to practice one;s religion, and one's conscience should not be abridge any more than speech -- its that important and should be given that much deference before putting in legislation to regulate it. Liberal fascism is no prettier than any other kind.
But gays should get the same legal rights as those who oppose them under the same doctrine. So who gets to force the other side to demolish their moral belief? Each side has a good case for being correct (from their own point of view), and each side forces something on the other that is abhorrent (to them).
How about this?
Cut the gordian knot.
The government should not be involved in marriage at all, only in the civil relationship, and only insofar as they are of benefit to a society, and deserving of protections and/or benefits.
When you get to the core of the marriage law, in terms of practical effects, its simply contract law governing the voluntary relationships.
So I say get rid of government involvement in "marriage" COMPLETELY. That way there is nothing to argue about. Recognize Civil Unions ONLY.
Abolish "Marriage" as a legal term, and simply set up partnership laws that establish certain contractual relationships and rights, including life-issues, insurance, inheritance, etc. Once these contracts are signed then the signees are eligible for governmental protection as deemed necessary by the government according to the type of contract they agree to. Dissolution of the contract is similarly goverened by well defined contract provisions in the law that are binding on all parties.
Then the government can decide who is eligible to participate in those contract and benefitss, by determining which sorts of relationships are beneficial to society, and to what degree, so that qualifications, benefits and protections can be assigned properly.
So if you wish to formalize your relationship in terms of religious or moral recognition, then you need only go to your Church, and you can be married. But to get the legal protections, you apply to the government. Render unto Caesar...
In some ways, civil unions may be superior to marriage in that the legal language is much better scrutinized and much less loaded with traditions that may not make legal sense. And the contract can be of various degrees, instead of a "one size fits all" model.
This means the religious can still get Married by the Church, which is where that sort of distinction makes a difference to them. The term "Marriage" then reverts to its original meaning, referring to the moral and sacramental nature of the relationship, not the legal one. Much like Catholics disagreeing with the legality and recognition of a divorce, and thus having their own "anullment" process, sacramental/moral Marriage would stay outside the government's purview. But the legal stuff is applied to all who qualify for it and sign up.
Basically, if your religion does not recognize "gay" marriage, then that's fine, you go do your thing and you don't have to marry gays, nor recognize their marriage in another faith tradition. Same goes for those religions that do recongnize things liek Unitarians who go for nearly anything - which is were gays can go to get married. You both can disagree with each other about that, the same way you can disagree about Buddha Vs Jehova.
And I should add, this is also fair to Atheists, in that they have the same standing as anyone else.
Splitter!
Yeah, but if the money was spent on an intuitive interface, it is a one-time expense. Training is an ongoing expense as you add customers and hence does not scale as well.
Actually, if you think about it, the result of training users who bought the software with the crappy UI is an ongoing REVENUE source for whoever is doing it.
Though this be madness, yet there is method in't. -- Polonius, Hamlet Act 2 Scene 2
As a web author:
-> I did NOT give them permission to place or inject their ads on *my* site.
-> I have no control over what ads are delivered with my content -- some of it may be counter to things I beleive, and some ads may imply an endorsement of products, people or policies that I abhor.
-> I am not recieving ad revenues from their ad hits which my site geneates for them.
To me, this is outright theft of my content to generate revenue for them. I beleive the legal term is "conversion", taking someone else's property and using it to make money as if it was your own property.
What legal recourse do content creators and holders have against this theft of thier content to produce revenues for someone else?