Yes, it is a lose-lose, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't get involved... it's wrong that it's so easy to sue Doctors, but it's even worse to sugggest that you shouldn't help because you'll get sued.
"don't say you are a doctor. Don't volunteer to help in any situation, since you will be sued into oblivion whatever the outcome."
Don't volunteer in any situation, because you'll be sued.
Sounds to me like it easily covers the worst case. Even if you exempt imminent death, it's still a completely disgusting thing for a doctor's handbook to advise you ignore a patient in favor of saving your bank account.
You think it's okay for a doctor to ignore your broken leg because he's from Europe and doesn't want to get sued? C'mon. I know it's reprehensible, and you know it too. In fact, it's even MORE pathetic if you're talking about ignoring little Joey's sprained ankle, than if you're talking about a serious injury. What kind of asshole would ignore a kid who banged his head falling down because he's afraid of a lawsuit?
Any way you slice it, it's self-centered and mercenary. To be honest, though, I'm more inclined to believe that the original poster was making it up as a way to lend some shred of credibility to what is actually an just a bit of elitist anti-USA snobbery. If you're gonna take a shot at the US healthcare system, be a man and voice your own opinions. I'll take all comers on that score, you can be sure.
You'd have to be extra-vigilant for this to work... if you come across a situation where you might be able to save someone, and then don't, you expose yourself to lawsuits and possibly criminal prosecution.
The fact is, if you're a doctor and you see someone having a heart attack, you can be prosecuted for criminal negligence if you do nothing. If you save the guy's life you can be sued for breaking his ribs while you were starting his heart again.
All the doctors I know (and that's 10 or 12 actually so not a huge sample) would rather save the guy's life and let their insurance shield them than not volunteer. I think it's pretty pathetic that your unnamed European country suggests doctors let people die in the name of financial self-interest. I thought Europeans were supposed to be engaged in a caring, concerned social fabric free of the bitter struggles of the cutthroat consumer marketplace, and it was the US where people were mercenary capitalists only out for themselves.
One explanation might be that some companies may have tried to expand their coverage into areas where it ended up being pretty useless to have coverage. If you look at coverage maps of TX you'll see that the cities and the interstate corridors are completely covered, but much of the rest of the state is empty of coverage.
It could be that the market is significantly worse than in other states, because many of the towers cover areas that are remote or have so little cellular traffic that it wasn't worth the expense to offer coverage anymore.
Also, average population density is deceptive for states like TX where there are several huge cities which are very densely populated and the countryside is often completely empty for many miles in all directions.
For example, Houston alone has more people than Ireland! And Ireland covers an area about the size of W. Virginia, which is roughly equal to the Dallas/Houston/Austin triangle. I would be willing to bet that there are many more people in Dallas, Austin, and Houston than there are in W. Virginia... which leads me to something else.
I think you've made a slight flaw in equating People per Sq. Mile with Population. You're comparing the average population density of Texas and Washington or W. Virginia, and predicting the towers-for-sale per sq. mile, which is reasonable, but you can't get to a towers-per-person estimate from there, because you aren't talking about population, you're talking about average population density. What you're seeing is 3.3 times more towers per square mile, not 3.3 times more towers per person, because (among other reasons) the towers aren't all layed out in a grid, and neither are the people.
Re:Time-travel paradoxes...
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ChronoSpace
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Whiff.../me looks up and wonders what just went by...
Re:Time-travel paradoxes...
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heh.. yeah it is, isn't it.
Something about the disintegration of the tech economy has got a lot of people very testy lately.
Re:Time-travel paradoxes...
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How can people skip over the word "not"?
"looked like an interesting time-travel thriller-- something we've seen many of, but not a story that gets old due to its variations"
I wonder what would constitute a "useless object"... It's sure to affect the future and change the universe if we start shipping crates of Backstreet Boys CDs to the Jurassic Period...
I missed a point: Second, do you think it's right that women with children earn less money? Why aren't there salary differences between men with and without children? They should have just as much responsibility to care for the child.
To your first question, the answer is YES. I have three kids of my own (I'm one of the 6.9% of men who support the entire family) and I know exactly what is required to care for a child under 6 (because all three of mine are under 6). You absolutely cannot dedicate the same amount of time, even as a secondary parental figure, to a career as a single woman with no kids could. A woman who is married, works full-time, and is the primary parent (note I didn't say caregiver because a person working full-time CAN'T be the primary caregiver... they're absent for as much as 2/3rds of the child's waking life) absolutely can't give the same amount of time to a career as a single unmarried woman with no kids. Like it or not, you can't have wage parity and a family, and you shouldn't try. Part of the problem with NOW is that they propogate the lie that you can have your maternal cake and eat it too. If you want to raise a family, get used to the idea that your earnings are going to suffer because your attendance and dedication are going to suffer. Anybody who doesn't have that happen is cheating their own children for the sake of NOW-defined 'gender equity'.
Secondly, there are significant differences between single men and men who are the single parent of a family.
Thirdly, your assertion that the man has just as much responsibility to care for the child shows that you don't have any kids. A man CAN'T have as much responsibility for a well-cared-for baby, because he can't feed a baby. In fact (and the census info bears this out) the man's primary responsibility is to be the major breadwinner, while the mother either works part-time or not at all and cares for the kids.
Now, of course sometiems that's reversed, but the percentage of 'reversed' households is low (also in the census data), and the fact is, even the 'reversed' households have one primary caregiver who has the major responsibility for the kids, and one primary breadwinner who makes the money to keep the house running.
This disparity trends downward until after all the kids are in school, and further down after they leave, but by that time most men have been working full-time, year-round for 20+ years while most women have been working full-time, year-round for perhaps half that or less, and many not at all.
The fact is, men are just as much restricted by their requirement to feed the house as women are restricted by their need to care for it. The propoganda from NOW that caring for a house and a family is tantamount to betraying the 'movement' just serves to make some people feel guilty for doing what they want, others feel trapped by doing what they have to, and still others feeling superior because their success indicates that they're somehow 'better' or more 'socially aware' than their poor benighted sisters.
Umm, that's my point, there aren't a lot of women qualified to be president, partly because they don't have as many opportunities in politics. There's only a couple of women governors. In our society, most women expect to just be homemakers, wheras in other countries, more women seek and receive positions in politics.
Firstly, generalizations like that just expose your subserviance to the patriarchy...;)
Secondly, you're logic is reversed. You can't state the effect (no women you'd vote for), then pick a cause which suits your argument (women have no political opportunity!). It would be more legitimate to say that currently there aren't many female Presidential contenders because the current crop of political women aren't very popular with the voters. Does this expose some deep-rooted distrust of powerful women? Nope, it exposes the poor abilities of many female politicians. When the candidate is popular (Ms. Clinton in NY, Christie Whitman in NJ, Ann Richards in TX (thought she lost to Bush running for a second term)) they can beat a man, even in a tough race.
Like I said before, Condi Rice springs to mind immediately, a black woman currently acting as the head of the NSA (appointed by Bush no less). Hillary Clinton also comes to mind. I don't think I'd vote for Ms. Whitman, but I bet there are some nutjobs who'd pick Diane Feinstein. Ain't democracy great?
According to this 2002 NOW press release... And there's an unbiased source for you... I took the time to get the actual Census report... you can find it here (.pdf). Some other numbers from that report: Since 1993... Family households maintained by women with no husband present experienced a 28.9% increase (from $21,813 to $28,116), the largest among household types.
Of the 79.2 million men age 15 and over who worked in 2000, 78% of them worked full-time, year-round. 6.9% of these men are the sole earners for a two-parent family.
Only 70.8 million women worked in 2000 (even though there are slightly more women than men), and only 58.7% of those women worked full-time, year-round. How are the other half of the women surviving? Either they can get by on part-time work, they take government assistance, or they work part-time in a household where a man takes the brunt of the financial burden. Certainly, in the job climate that existed from 1993-2000, you can't claim that there were no jobs to be had...
For single men with families, earnings DROPPED 2.6% from 1999-2000, and only increased 20% for 1993-2000, whereas earnings for the same periods for single women with families INCREASED by 4% and 28.9%, respectively. That represents the largest increase of any group. The smallest increase was single men with no families, where income only increased 7.5%.
Looking at the historical data, women consistantly work less and in fewer numbers, so it's pretty pointless to look at the straight average of male/female earnings. Women tend to take more part-time jobs, which are necessarily lower earning positions with less chance of advancement or opportunity to gain valuable work experience that translates into higher earnings as they get older.
It's not a good idea... This isn't to say there aren't women who are qualified physically for these jobs who don't get them due to prejudice. My point was that 'feminists' and in particular NOW, specifically push for numbers of women as the almighty indicator of gender equity, and that forces people in jobs like firefighting to lower the standards for women, just to get the numbers up. Maybe there are qualified (on the male scale) wonem who get turned down, but there are definitely, provably, women (in particular in San Francisco) who have been hired as firefighters because the standards have been formally lowered for women.
'Feminism' once was about seeking equality (see the writing of Betty Friedan) but now is about payback and pursuing power specifically to the detriment of men (see Gloria Steinem's writing or any number of courses at Smith College).
If by "the detriment of men" you mean giving up some power, you're probably right. But I'm a man and I'm willing to give up some power if it'll help people like my girlfriend make a fare wage.
No, I meant specifically the detriment of men. Actually go out and read some of what Ms. Steniem thinks about men. Jokes about 'the patriarchy' are only slight exaggerations of stuff these women really believe about a conspiracy effort to maintain a male-dominated society and the militant, anti-male tactics needed to defeat it. I'm saying specifically that NOW has gone from being gender-equal to being anti-men. Lok up some of the work of Christina Hoff Sommers if you want good citations. As far as what would help your GF to make the same amount of money as a man, tell her to start working full-time when she's 15, get into a field where the pay is good and likely to increase (i.e. not nursing, teaching, or PR/HR), and work full-time, year-round until she's 50. Don't have any kids, and don't have a family. If she does have a family, don't take more than 4 days off work for the birth (that's what most men get) and make sure there's a man in the house who can take full- or part-time care of the child (including doctor's appointments, etc) so that she doesn't have to miss any work.
But the "number of women in a given job" is a good indicator of whether women have opportunities in that field...
Number of women in a given job is a piss-poor way to determine if they have opportunity. It's the worst possible way to determine equality, because it disregards every other factor in favor of bodies in the building. Who cares if they're competant, if they deserve to be there, if they worked for the position, if they even like the field! Get me more women, or we'll be percieved as gender-biased.
What if women don't WANT to be garbage collectors in a statistically significant proportion? Does that mean that garbage collecting companies are biased against women?
Dude, break out of the NOW nonsense and think about equality as it really means, i.e. equality of opportunity, not of result.
Lastly, our culture (as if it were an entity with a mind of its own and a specific adjenda) shouldn't be encouraging anyone to do any specific job, because equity of result is not important or desirable. The culture should foster an atmosphere where it's just as OK to want to stay home and have 5 kids as it is to want to be a futures trader or a Senator. Currently, what NOW and the feminist movement is aiming for is far from that.
Explain why biology does not affect salaries in women, given that the latest NOW earnings study showed that a: unmarried childless women make on average 98% of what men of a similar age make, and b: that average drops to 79% when married women who have had children are factored in.
Extra Credit: explain why it's a good idea to lower the skills requirements for, say, a firefighter or a member of an Infantry division, in order to have more women present in the name of equality.
'Feminism' once was about seeking equality (see the writing of Betty Friedan) but now is about payback and pursuing power specifically to the detriment of men (see Gloria Steinem's writing or any number of courses at Smith College).
Equality isn't about the number of women in a given job, it's about an equal (gender-blind)opportunity to achieve a position based on your ability to do so, in the same way that "civil rights" isn't about the number of black people present on a college campus, it's about an equal (race blind) shot at getting into college.
Re:Some Piers Anthony novels adults would enjoy.
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You've got to add Robert Jordan to this list... The Wheel of Time is dragging on interminably, the characters are supposed to be saving the world but can't get past their petty carping long enough to have a useful conversation about, umm, saving the world and stuff, and the end is nowhere in sight.
If it gets any worse, the end will come quite a bit before the ending.
The word (a la dictionary.com means: idyllically calm and peaceful; suggesting happy tranquillity; "a halcyon atmosphere" 2: joyful and carefree; "halcyon days of youth" 3: marked by peace and prosperity; "a golden era"; "the halcyon days of the clipper trade"
Which is probably why the dentists named their drug after it.
First, copyright doesn't grant you the ability to prevent people from sharing your work... it only grants you a remedy if somebody is making money (or causing you to lose money) from your work. It's not illegal to make a tape of a CD. It's not illegal to give that tape to your friend. It's only illegal if you make 100,000 tapes and sell them. You only get to stop someone from making more copies if you can show (like the RIAA managed to do with Napster) that the only reason for the copying system's existance is to make illegal copies and profit from them. That's why your dual-cassette deck isn't illegal, and why VCR's aren't illegal. If Napster's lawyers had been able to demonstrate 'substantial non-infringing uses' then they could have kept on exactly as they were.
As I've said before, the problem with copyright, and the reason this is such a contentious issue, is that nobody ever imagined in the 70's (the last time the copyright laws were revisited by Congress) that you could make unlimited copies of music and simultaneously share those copies with unlmited numbers of people, all without charging anything. Congress assumed that anybody making large numbers of copies would have to charge for them (which is a violation), just to recoup their expenses. The Fair Use clause of the copyright law allows you to do things like time-shift and space-shift a work, it allows you to quote a work, it allows you to share that work with others, but it does NOT allow you to make money off the work. It also doesn't speak to scale of sharing, or number of time/space shifted copies. Nothing in the copyright law expressly prevents me from burning a CD to my hard drive, making a copy of the MP3 for my portable player, then loaning out the player to my friend. The owner of the work would have to prove in court that my actions had financially harmed him in order for me to pay penalties for violation of his copyright. Likewise, nothing in the law expressly prevents me from burning a CD and sharing the MP3 with a friend via some P2P software, or sharing it with more than one friend, or with a million friends. The thing is, of course, nothing in the law expressly says it's OK to do that either, so we're left with legal arguments about financial harm and potential losses and such.
Copyright violations are not theft: theft is the taking of an object you don't own. It implies that the owner no longer has the object. There is a direct harm, and it's a criminal act. Duplicating a copyrighted work is not always (in fact, it's practically never) illegal. Taking something not owned by you is always illegal.
Do you see the difference?
Your example of cloning an object is ridiculous. Of course it wouldn't be stealing to replicate an object, assuming it was possible... theft implies that you have a: taken something without permission or payment, and b: caused the owner harm by depriving the owner of the object as a result of your action. While the company who makes your replication machine might be in serious trouble for violation of a giant stack of other people's patents, the actual replication isn't theft.
Finally: Copyright is based on scarcity. It relies on the concept that if I share a book with you, I don't have the book anymore. It's not designed to deal with digital media, and there really isn't any way to fix it. It is an idea which is practically useless. Regardless of the harm it might cause, it's going to be impossible to enforce without draconian laws like the one mentioned today about 'closing the analog hole' and the one Sen. Hollings is proposing. Even those systems will be cracked eventually.
Any law that protects owners will severely restrict users. Any law that provides good Fair Use will be too weak to prevent violations. You can no longer get a good balance. Copyright is based on scarcity, and, whatever the consequences, people must realize: If you make your money selling water in the desert, and it starts raining... what can you do? Shouting defiance at the sky certainly isn't going to help.
Also, how are they gonna manage the amount of naked kids in the book? The clothing issues and the psychology of being naked were an important part of the book.
Given the chances you've raised three genius-level exceptionally brilliant prodigies, I'd say your experiences count for very little. I think Card's characterizations are spot-on and perfectly legitimate.
Currently, I'm tutoring a 9-yr old girl in sophomore-level college English, because her parents felt like she needed some rounding-out before she got her BS. I think she'd do OK in Ender's world... she'd certainly feel more at home than she does now.
MS didn't reneg on their agreement. They just decided not to renew their contract. The effect of that, of course, was to put RealNames out of business. Apparently MS didn't want them around, even though they offered an attractive package.
That's perfectly within MS's rights, and isn't dishonest, mean-spirited, or anything else. If you make your money selling water you draw from my pump, you have little right to bitch if I decide to buy a box of dixie cups and stop renting the pump to you when your lease is up.
But only if EVERYONE got on the same fucking page and started thinking to solve problems
Mmmm, yummy groupthink.
Everybody likes what they get. Everybody thinks the same way to solve a problem. Anything else is doubleplus ungood.
Let's see, everyone has what they need (not 10 cars), everybody takes what they want. For an excellent example of this wonderful system at work, take a look at East Germany, circa 1980.
This idea is so flawed, on so many levels, it must be a troll. I guess I lose... but if you really do think this, reply and I'll help you through it.
Ahh, but there's nothing in the copyright laws that speaks to the ease of reproducing the work. Whether you share a digital copy or employ 30 monks to inscribe it a la The Book of Kells , it's legally the exact same thing.
What your argument here is really based on is the idea that libraries only exist because they cannot physically impact profit, due to the finite number of book available.
You're probably right. I dunno how well it would go over if my library bought 200 electronic copies of the latest NYT Bestseller, and loaned them out via copying one to my reader.
All the examples you cite are situations in which the player is profiting from the use of the music. Like I said, I can play the music, but I can't charge you to listen.
Radio Stations make money from advertizing, which they wouldn't make if they didn't play songs people want to hear.
Bars are making money from people who want to dance, or drink while listening to some music, in the form of a cover charge.
Wedding DJs are being payed to play music appropriate to weddings. Without the music, they make no money.
It is perfectly within my 'Fair Use' rights to put my stereo speakers in my window, throw 20 CD's into the changer, and play music while I fire up the BBQ outside. If a hundred people come over because they hear how completely kick-ass my BBQ is, and they all want some, I'm not violating any copyright laws.
If, however, I advertize that I'm having a "U2 Night", and I'm charging $5 a head to come in my house and listen to U2, I'm violating U2's copyright because it's not Fair Use anymore.
I guess that explains it. In the US, playing a recorded song in public isn't a 'performance', it's 'Fair Use'. It's the same as giving a reading of a poet or an author in public. Of course, claiming that you wrote the work is illegal, but reading it aloud (even with an audience) isn't. Charging to listen to a recorded song, though, is illegal. I can play it, but I can't make you pay me to listen.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it is a lose-lose, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't get involved... it's wrong that it's so easy to sue Doctors, but it's even worse to sugggest that you shouldn't help because you'll get sued.
Quoting from the parent post:
"don't say you are a doctor. Don't volunteer to help in any situation, since you will be sued into oblivion whatever the outcome."
Don't volunteer in any situation, because you'll be sued.
Sounds to me like it easily covers the worst case. Even if you exempt imminent death, it's still a completely disgusting thing for a doctor's handbook to advise you ignore a patient in favor of saving your bank account.
You think it's okay for a doctor to ignore your broken leg because he's from Europe and doesn't want to get sued? C'mon. I know it's reprehensible, and you know it too.
In fact, it's even MORE pathetic if you're talking about ignoring little Joey's sprained ankle, than if you're talking about a serious injury. What kind of asshole would ignore a kid who banged his head falling down because he's afraid of a lawsuit?
Any way you slice it, it's self-centered and mercenary. To be honest, though, I'm more inclined to believe that the original poster was making it up as a way to lend some shred of credibility to what is actually an just a bit of elitist anti-USA snobbery. If you're gonna take a shot at the US healthcare system, be a man and voice your own opinions. I'll take all comers on that score, you can be sure.
You'd have to be extra-vigilant for this to work... if you come across a situation where you might be able to save someone, and then don't, you expose yourself to lawsuits and possibly criminal prosecution.
The fact is, if you're a doctor and you see someone having a heart attack, you can be prosecuted for criminal negligence if you do nothing. If you save the guy's life you can be sued for breaking his ribs while you were starting his heart again.
All the doctors I know (and that's 10 or 12 actually so not a huge sample) would rather save the guy's life and let their insurance shield them than not volunteer. I think it's pretty pathetic that your unnamed European country suggests doctors let people die in the name of financial self-interest. I thought Europeans were supposed to be engaged in a caring, concerned social fabric free of the bitter struggles of the cutthroat consumer marketplace, and it was the US where people were mercenary capitalists only out for themselves.
I say again: pathetic.
One explanation might be that some companies may have tried to expand their coverage into areas where it ended up being pretty useless to have coverage. If you look at coverage maps of TX you'll see that the cities and the interstate corridors are completely covered, but much of the rest of the state is empty of coverage.
It could be that the market is significantly worse than in other states, because many of the towers cover areas that are remote or have so little cellular traffic that it wasn't worth the expense to offer coverage anymore.
Also, average population density is deceptive for states like TX where there are several huge cities which are very densely populated and the countryside is often completely empty for many miles in all directions.
For example, Houston alone has more people than Ireland! And Ireland covers an area about the size of W. Virginia, which is roughly equal to the Dallas/Houston/Austin triangle. I would be willing to bet that there are many more people in Dallas, Austin, and Houston than there are in W. Virginia... which leads me to something else.
I think you've made a slight flaw in equating People per Sq. Mile with Population. You're comparing the average population density of Texas and Washington or W. Virginia, and predicting the towers-for-sale per sq. mile, which is reasonable, but you can't get to a towers-per-person estimate from there, because you aren't talking about population, you're talking about average population density.
What you're seeing is 3.3 times more towers per square mile, not 3.3 times more towers per person, because (among other reasons) the towers aren't all layed out in a grid, and neither are the people.
Whiff... /me looks up and wonders what just went by...
heh.. yeah it is, isn't it.
Something about the disintegration of the tech economy has got a lot of people very testy lately.
How can people skip over the word "not"?
"looked like an interesting time-travel thriller-- something we've seen many of, but not a story that gets old due to its variations"
sheesh... use your head. Alaska is bigger but it's mostly empty. Texas is huge AND relatively populated throughout most of the state.
I wonder what would constitute a "useless object"... It's sure to affect the future and change the universe if we start shipping crates of Backstreet Boys CDs to the Jurassic Period...
Or have we all just given up commenting about it... Bruce's name is spelled wrong in the headline.
Sheesh...
I have an exclusive copy on my weblog...
[wink]
I missed a point:
Second, do you think it's right that women with children earn less money? Why aren't there salary differences between men with and without children? They should have just as much responsibility to care for the child.
To your first question, the answer is YES. I have three kids of my own (I'm one of the 6.9% of men who support the entire family) and I know exactly what is required to care for a child under 6 (because all three of mine are under 6). You absolutely cannot dedicate the same amount of time, even as a secondary parental figure, to a career as a single woman with no kids could. A woman who is married, works full-time, and is the primary parent (note I didn't say caregiver because a person working full-time CAN'T be the primary caregiver... they're absent for as much as 2/3rds of the child's waking life) absolutely can't give the same amount of time to a career as a single unmarried woman with no kids. Like it or not, you can't have wage parity and a family, and you shouldn't try. Part of the problem with NOW is that they propogate the lie that you can have your maternal cake and eat it too. If you want to raise a family, get used to the idea that your earnings are going to suffer because your attendance and dedication are going to suffer. Anybody who doesn't have that happen is cheating their own children for the sake of NOW-defined 'gender equity'.
Secondly, there are significant differences between single men and men who are the single parent of a family.
Thirdly, your assertion that the man has just as much responsibility to care for the child shows that you don't have any kids. A man CAN'T have as much responsibility for a well-cared-for baby, because he can't feed a baby. In fact (and the census info bears this out) the man's primary responsibility is to be the major breadwinner, while the mother either works part-time or not at all and cares for the kids.
Now, of course sometiems that's reversed, but the percentage of 'reversed' households is low (also in the census data), and the fact is, even the 'reversed' households have one primary caregiver who has the major responsibility for the kids, and one primary breadwinner who makes the money to keep the house running.
This disparity trends downward until after all the kids are in school, and further down after they leave, but by that time most men have been working full-time, year-round for 20+ years while most women have been working full-time, year-round for perhaps half that or less, and many not at all.
The fact is, men are just as much restricted by their requirement to feed the house as women are restricted by their need to care for it. The propoganda from NOW that caring for a house and a family is tantamount to betraying the 'movement' just serves to make some people feel guilty for doing what they want, others feel trapped by doing what they have to, and still others feeling superior because their success indicates that they're somehow 'better' or more 'socially aware' than their poor benighted sisters.
Name me three women you'd elect as President.
;)
Umm, that's my point, there aren't a lot of women qualified to be president, partly because they don't have as many opportunities in politics. There's only a couple of women governors. In our society, most women expect to just be homemakers, wheras in other countries, more women seek and receive positions in politics.
Firstly, generalizations like that just expose your subserviance to the patriarchy...
Secondly, you're logic is reversed. You can't state the effect (no women you'd vote for), then pick a cause which suits your argument (women have no political opportunity!). It would be more legitimate to say that currently there aren't many female Presidential contenders because the current crop of political women aren't very popular with the voters. Does this expose some deep-rooted distrust of powerful women? Nope, it exposes the poor abilities of many female politicians. When the candidate is popular (Ms. Clinton in NY, Christie Whitman in NJ, Ann Richards in TX (thought she lost to Bush running for a second term)) they can beat a man, even in a tough race.
Like I said before, Condi Rice springs to mind immediately, a black woman currently acting as the head of the NSA (appointed by Bush no less). Hillary Clinton also comes to mind. I don't think I'd vote for Ms. Whitman, but I bet there are some nutjobs who'd pick Diane Feinstein. Ain't democracy great?
According to this 2002 NOW press release...
And there's an unbiased source for you... I took the time to get the actual Census report... you can find it here (.pdf). Some other numbers from that report:
Since 1993... Family households maintained by women with no husband present experienced a 28.9% increase (from $21,813 to $28,116), the largest among household types.
Of the 79.2 million men age 15 and over who worked in 2000, 78% of them worked full-time, year-round. 6.9% of these men are the sole earners for a two-parent family.
Only 70.8 million women worked in 2000 (even though there are slightly more women than men), and only 58.7% of those women worked full-time, year-round. How are the other half of the women surviving? Either they can get by on part-time work, they take government assistance, or they work part-time in a household where a man takes the brunt of the financial burden.
Certainly, in the job climate that existed from 1993-2000, you can't claim that there were no jobs to be had...
For single men with families, earnings DROPPED 2.6% from 1999-2000, and only increased 20% for 1993-2000, whereas earnings for the same periods for single women with families INCREASED by 4% and 28.9%, respectively. That represents the largest increase of any group. The smallest increase was single men with no families, where income only increased 7.5%.
Looking at the historical data, women consistantly work less and in fewer numbers, so it's pretty pointless to look at the straight average of male/female earnings. Women tend to take more part-time jobs, which are necessarily lower earning positions with less chance of advancement or opportunity to gain valuable work experience that translates into higher earnings as they get older.
It's not a good idea... This isn't to say there aren't women who are qualified physically for these jobs who don't get them due to prejudice.
My point was that 'feminists' and in particular NOW, specifically push for numbers of women as the almighty indicator of gender equity, and that forces people in jobs like firefighting to lower the standards for women, just to get the numbers up. Maybe there are qualified (on the male scale) wonem who get turned down, but there are definitely, provably, women (in particular in San Francisco) who have been hired as firefighters because the standards have been formally lowered for women.
'Feminism' once was about seeking equality (see the writing of Betty Friedan) but now is about payback and pursuing power specifically to the detriment of men (see Gloria Steinem's writing or any number of courses at Smith College).
If by "the detriment of men" you mean giving up some power, you're probably right. But I'm a man and I'm willing to give up some power if it'll help people like my girlfriend make a fare wage.
No, I meant specifically the detriment of men. Actually go out and read some of what Ms. Steniem thinks about men. Jokes about 'the patriarchy' are only slight exaggerations of stuff these women really believe about a conspiracy effort to maintain a male-dominated society and the militant, anti-male tactics needed to defeat it. I'm saying specifically that NOW has gone from being gender-equal to being anti-men. Lok up some of the work of Christina Hoff Sommers if you want good citations.
As far as what would help your GF to make the same amount of money as a man, tell her to start working full-time when she's 15, get into a field where the pay is good and likely to increase (i.e. not nursing, teaching, or PR/HR), and work full-time, year-round until she's 50. Don't have any kids, and don't have a family. If she does have a family, don't take more than 4 days off work for the birth (that's what most men get) and make sure there's a man in the house who can take full- or part-time care of the child (including doctor's appointments, etc) so that she doesn't have to miss any work.
But the "number of women in a given job" is a good indicator of whether women have opportunities in that field...
Number of women in a given job is a piss-poor way to determine if they have opportunity. It's the worst possible way to determine equality, because it disregards every other factor in favor of bodies in the building. Who cares if they're competant, if they deserve to be there, if they worked for the position, if they even like the field! Get me more women, or we'll be percieved as gender-biased.
What if women don't WANT to be garbage collectors in a statistically significant proportion? Does that mean that garbage collecting companies are biased against women?
Dude, break out of the NOW nonsense and think about equality as it really means, i.e. equality of opportunity, not of result.
Lastly, our culture (as if it were an entity with a mind of its own and a specific adjenda) shouldn't be encouraging anyone to do any specific job, because equity of result is not important or desirable. The culture should foster an atmosphere where it's just as OK to want to stay home and have 5 kids as it is to want to be a futures trader or a Senator. Currently, what NOW and the feminist movement is aiming for is far from that.
How about Condi Rice? She's black AND Republican... gosh, what would the left do?
A brief exercise:
Name me three women you'd elect as President.
Explain why biology does not affect salaries in women, given that the latest NOW earnings study showed that a: unmarried childless women make on average 98% of what men of a similar age make, and b: that average drops to 79% when married women who have had children are factored in.
Extra Credit: explain why it's a good idea to lower the skills requirements for, say, a firefighter or a member of an Infantry division, in order to have more women present in the name of equality.
'Feminism' once was about seeking equality (see the writing of Betty Friedan) but now is about payback and pursuing power specifically to the detriment of men (see Gloria Steinem's writing or any number of courses at Smith College).
Equality isn't about the number of women in a given job, it's about an equal (gender-blind)opportunity to achieve a position based on your ability to do so, in the same way that "civil rights" isn't about the number of black people present on a college campus, it's about an equal (race blind) shot at getting into college.
You've got to add Robert Jordan to this list... The Wheel of Time is dragging on interminably, the characters are supposed to be saving the world but can't get past their petty carping long enough to have a useful conversation about, umm, saving the world and stuff, and the end is nowhere in sight.
If it gets any worse, the end will come quite a bit before the ending.
The word (a la dictionary.com means:
idyllically calm and peaceful; suggesting happy tranquillity; "a halcyon atmosphere" 2: joyful and carefree; "halcyon days of youth" 3: marked by peace and prosperity; "a golden era"; "the halcyon days of the clipper trade"
Which is probably why the dentists named their drug after it.
First, copyright doesn't grant you the ability to prevent people from sharing your work... it only grants you a remedy if somebody is making money (or causing you to lose money) from your work. It's not illegal to make a tape of a CD. It's not illegal to give that tape to your friend. It's only illegal if you make 100,000 tapes and sell them. You only get to stop someone from making more copies if you can show (like the RIAA managed to do with Napster) that the only reason for the copying system's existance is to make illegal copies and profit from them. That's why your dual-cassette deck isn't illegal, and why VCR's aren't illegal. If Napster's lawyers had been able to demonstrate 'substantial non-infringing uses' then they could have kept on exactly as they were.
As I've said before, the problem with copyright, and the reason this is such a contentious issue, is that nobody ever imagined in the 70's (the last time the copyright laws were revisited by Congress) that you could make unlimited copies of music and simultaneously share those copies with unlmited numbers of people, all without charging anything. Congress assumed that anybody making large numbers of copies would have to charge for them (which is a violation), just to recoup their expenses. The Fair Use clause of the copyright law allows you to do things like time-shift and space-shift a work, it allows you to quote a work, it allows you to share that work with others, but it does NOT allow you to make money off the work. It also doesn't speak to scale of sharing, or number of time/space shifted copies. Nothing in the copyright law expressly prevents me from burning a CD to my hard drive, making a copy of the MP3 for my portable player, then loaning out the player to my friend. The owner of the work would have to prove in court that my actions had financially harmed him in order for me to pay penalties for violation of his copyright. Likewise, nothing in the law expressly prevents me from burning a CD and sharing the MP3 with a friend via some P2P software, or sharing it with more than one friend, or with a million friends. The thing is, of course, nothing in the law expressly says it's OK to do that either, so we're left with legal arguments about financial harm and potential losses and such.
Copyright violations are not theft: theft is the taking of an object you don't own. It implies that the owner no longer has the object. There is a direct harm, and it's a criminal act. Duplicating a copyrighted work is not always (in fact, it's practically never) illegal. Taking something not owned by you is always illegal.
Do you see the difference?
Your example of cloning an object is ridiculous. Of course it wouldn't be stealing to replicate an object, assuming it was possible... theft implies that you have a: taken something without permission or payment, and b: caused the owner harm by depriving the owner of the object as a result of your action. While the company who makes your replication machine might be in serious trouble for violation of a giant stack of other people's patents, the actual replication isn't theft.
Finally: Copyright is based on scarcity. It relies on the concept that if I share a book with you, I don't have the book anymore. It's not designed to deal with digital media, and there really isn't any way to fix it. It is an idea which is practically useless. Regardless of the harm it might cause, it's going to be impossible to enforce without draconian laws like the one mentioned today about 'closing the analog hole' and the one Sen. Hollings is proposing. Even those systems will be cracked eventually.
Any law that protects owners will severely restrict users. Any law that provides good Fair Use will be too weak to prevent violations. You can no longer get a good balance. Copyright is based on scarcity, and, whatever the consequences, people must realize: If you make your money selling water in the desert, and it starts raining... what can you do?
Shouting defiance at the sky certainly isn't going to help.
Also, how are they gonna manage the amount of naked kids in the book? The clothing issues and the psychology of being naked were an important part of the book.
Given the chances you've raised three genius-level exceptionally brilliant prodigies, I'd say your experiences count for very little. I think Card's characterizations are spot-on and perfectly legitimate.
Currently, I'm tutoring a 9-yr old girl in sophomore-level college English, because her parents felt like she needed some rounding-out before she got her BS. I think she'd do OK in Ender's world... she'd certainly feel more at home than she does now.
MS didn't reneg on their agreement. They just decided not to renew their contract. The effect of that, of course, was to put RealNames out of business. Apparently MS didn't want them around, even though they offered an attractive package.
That's perfectly within MS's rights, and isn't dishonest, mean-spirited, or anything else. If you make your money selling water you draw from my pump, you have little right to bitch if I decide to buy a box of dixie cups and stop renting the pump to you when your lease is up.
But only if EVERYONE got on the same fucking page and started thinking to solve problems
Mmmm, yummy groupthink.
Everybody likes what they get. Everybody thinks the same way to solve a problem. Anything else is doubleplus ungood.
Let's see, everyone has what they need (not 10 cars), everybody takes what they want. For an excellent example of this wonderful system at work, take a look at East Germany, circa 1980.
This idea is so flawed, on so many levels, it must be a troll. I guess I lose... but if you really do think this, reply and I'll help you through it.
Ahh, but there's nothing in the copyright laws that speaks to the ease of reproducing the work. Whether you share a digital copy or employ 30 monks to inscribe it a la The Book of Kells , it's legally the exact same thing.
What your argument here is really based on is the idea that libraries only exist because they cannot physically impact profit, due to the finite number of book available.
You're probably right. I dunno how well it would go over if my library bought 200 electronic copies of the latest NYT Bestseller, and loaned them out via copying one to my reader.
All the examples you cite are situations in which the player is profiting from the use of the music. Like I said, I can play the music, but I can't charge you to listen.
Radio Stations make money from advertizing, which they wouldn't make if they didn't play songs people want to hear.
Bars are making money from people who want to dance, or drink while listening to some music, in the form of a cover charge.
Wedding DJs are being payed to play music appropriate to weddings. Without the music, they make no money.
It is perfectly within my 'Fair Use' rights to put my stereo speakers in my window, throw 20 CD's into the changer, and play music while I fire up the BBQ outside. If a hundred people come over because they hear how completely kick-ass my BBQ is, and they all want some, I'm not violating any copyright laws.
If, however, I advertize that I'm having a "U2 Night", and I'm charging $5 a head to come in my house and listen to U2, I'm violating U2's copyright because it's not Fair Use anymore.
I guess that explains it. In the US, playing a recorded song in public isn't a 'performance', it's 'Fair Use'. It's the same as giving a reading of a poet or an author in public. Of course, claiming that you wrote the work is illegal, but reading it aloud (even with an audience) isn't. Charging to listen to a recorded song, though, is illegal. I can play it, but I can't make you pay me to listen.