Oh, yes, I understand the legal implications. Regardless of whether the law makes sense or not, lines need to be drawn and crossing them is bad. I understand that.
I guess I was just musing on the insanity of the situation... They're characters in a video game. Their birthdates are an arbitrary fiction. The developer could just easily claim that they were 100 years old and had simply aged very well.
I was imagining some kind of Zelda-esque dramatic moment on their 18th birthday... You know, like when you pull the Master Sword from the stone, or whatever. It's nearing midnight... This 17-year-old combatant is asleep in her bed... The clock strikes 12:00, she's 18 now... Dramatic music, particle effects, glowing lights... Ding! Level Up! Womanhood Acquired, press "B" to equip!.
No child is being harmed, regardless of where you position the camera.
But Nintendo can be harmed when someone asks why the camera is being allowed that particular view. The game developer can be harmed when someone asks why the camera is being allowed that particular view.
Because there are no good answers.
There are good answers. Answers like:
What the hell? It's a fighting game. You punch people in the face. We built a game that allows you to do all kinds of funky combat moves. We added a photographer mode so you could capture pictures of you beating the crap out of people. We weren't really contemplating whether you could turn our bloody brawl game into some kind of cheesecake pornography generator. Absolutely nobody on staff even contemplated whether it was possible to get a good upskirt shot of some pixelated underage panties. I'm sorry the possibility of angling the camera to get a picture of some pixels positioned in the crotch of a 3D model in a video game offends you. I'm even more sorry that "can I get a picture of that underage virtual pussy" is the first place your mind went when we showed you the photographer mode.
Further, they're 17 in the game. Here in the US that's just one year shy of legal adulthood.
Just checking.... has anyone told you that Sweden, Denmark and Norway are NOT in the United States? Strange as it may seem to you, other countries do have different laws and the ones that the US enacts don't apply elsewhere.
You think maybe that's why I specified here in the US?
A quick Google search indicates that the age of consent across most of the EU is between 13 and 18, so it isn't like the laws here in the US are completely out of line. It isn't like these 17-year-old video game characters are still decades away from being considered legally adult video game characters.
Regardless... They're still video game characters, which makes this all kinds of ridiculous.
You've got to be kidding me... This is so ridiculous I can't believe it's real.
It's a video game. They aren't real people. It's pixels on a screen. No child is being harmed, regardless of where you position the camera.
I also doubt if there's much to look at under those skirts. I doubt if the developers spent much time rendering realistic genitalia that'll likely never be seen... And if they were seen, would just generate outrage.
Further, they're 17 in the game. Here in the US that's just one year shy of legal adulthood. Are you telling me that there's some magical transformation on your 18th birthday that renders you immune to the psychological harm of somebody looking at your crotch?
But even if we accept that this is some kind of virtual child pornography that's somehow exploiting underage pixels... If we really want to make sure we protect the children... It's somehow OK to brutally beat them to a pulp? I mean, Dead or Alive is a fighting game. A "beat'em up". Like Tekken or Soul Calibur or Mortal Combat or Street Fighter... It's OK to pummel some virtual 17-year-old girl into a bloody mess, but it isn't OK to look up her skirt? How does that make any kind of sense?
Apple frankly sucks at innovation. They are reasonably good at improving something somebody else has already invented, but where they truly excel is at marketing.
Granted, Apple does position itself as the premium product... They market and price their goods appropriately... But it really isn't just about marketing.
Apple takes a holistic approach to product development that very few technology companies do. Sure, lots of folks had MP3 players out there before the iPod... But Apple provided a player with a very simple, approachable interface, and provided a simple piece of software for both syncing the MP3 player and purchasing music. Apple may not have been the first, but they definitely improved on the user experience.
This improved experience is how they claim to be a "premium" product. Do you want some cludgy Windows PC where you have to jump through all sorts of hoops and worry about viruses and deal with blue-screens? Or do you want one of our iMacs that "just works"?
So that means it's now running with only user privileges instead of admin rights, which seems like a slight improvement for those dumb enough to install it.
It also means that whatever files exist and whatever changes are made live somewhere in that user's profile.
The Windows malware that does this is annoying because it can sneak in without admin rights... But it is easily removed by simply logging in as a different user and deleting the infected profile.
I think the observation is that most folks don't actually use the URL bar to type in a URL these days.
Oi! I do!
But I guess I'm not a "most folks" so I don't count.
I still type URLs into the URL bar all the time.
But a good 80% or more of my users don't do that. They'll hit something in their bookmarks, or type in some fragment of an address or a couple keywords and hope the browser can figure it out, or they'll throw something in the search box, or they'll go to Google/Bing/Yahoo/whatever and do a search from there.
Hell, half the time I give someone a full URL they wind up going to Google and putting it in the search box.
I use the Omnibar addon and it adds the ability to do all sorts of query commands into the URL bar already. It works well and it's convenient to use, and best of all, I keep my URL bar (albeit it's now a long address bar that incorporates the search bar into it). Why not go that direction?
Umm...
David Regev suggests that the location bar should be replaced with a tool to support more than just one command.
Isn't that exactly what he's suggesting?
Granted, if you look at the fine article, it isn't exactly a bar so much as a box... But it's the same idea. A multi-function interface element that allows you to enter searches, addresses, get page info, and whatever else.
I think the observation is that most folks don't actually use the URL bar to type in a URL these days. That's why so many browsers allow you to search directly from the URL bar - because people don't type out URLs, they type out searches. This is just a logical extension of that.
I started at age 11, mom sent me to local community college to learn pascal. Also wrote a lot of qbasic programs on my own before/after.
Where there's a will...
So, you're saying that you had the necessary resources. You had the money necessary to attend a local community college to learn pascal. And you had the time necessary to write a lot of qbasic programs on your own before and after.
What if you hadn't had the money to attend a community college? What if you hadn't had the time to write those qbasic programs?
And all this is being done for what? To give me 50 pixels? Whoop-dee-doo.
From Google's standpoint, lack of an address bar can steer more people back to Google for searches.
From a user's point of view... Well, I use the address bar... But about 80% of my users do not. Even if I give them a web address, they'll go to Google/Yahoo/Bing/whatever and type it in there. So it wouldn't be much of a change for them.
You left out the point that when Amazon removed 1984 (and Animal Farm too) from Kindle devices, it was because it was discovered that the books were added to the Kindle store by a publisher that didn't have the rights to sell the books. And that the books were subsequently re-added to the Kindle store by the publisher that DID have the rights to them. The customers were refunded and credited for their troubles.
The analogy that it's akin to breaking into one's home is a bit of a stretch.
Granted, the publisher did not have the rights to those books. That is true.
But it wasn't really those books being pulled from the store that surprised me. What surprised me was those books being deleted from Kindles.
If I go buy a paper copy of 1984 and it turns out that the publisher doesn't have the right to it, that book will be pulled from store shelves, but I'll still have my book sitting at home.
Amazon did the digital equivalent of sending someone to your house to forcibly collect the offending book. Sure, you were refunded... But that doesn't make me feel much better.
It doesn't matter what you think of yaoi, or manga, or erotica in general. Surely you can see where this is going. Stop supporting the thought police and put your money into companies that don't censor books. Amazon won't stop until they lose enough money. There's no telling when they'll start ruining classics.
Actually, I'm kind of surprised they haven't banned some of the classics yet... They're some of the most offensive, most often banned books out there.
When I was shopping for an eBook reader, I carefully considered all options, and ended up with... WAIT FOR IT... SONY - yeah, that's right. No DRM on their online bookstore, and it reads everything you throw at it - PDF,.epub, text, even MS Word files. Fully supported by the FLOSS Calibre book management software... Comes with SD card slot, replaceable battery, touch screen
Went with a nook myself.
Tried out the SONY ereader, but I didn't like it. Seemed a little clunky. Plus, I've been shopping at B&N's brick & mortar stores for decades.
B&N does do DRM on their online bookstore, but it really isn't terribly impressive. There are utilities out there to unwrap a B&N ebook with no effort at all.
The nook does EPUB and PDF... And it works great with Calibre to convert the formats it doesn't read natively. It's got an SD cardslot, and a replaceable battery. It's got a small touchscreen, but that's generally off when I'm just reading a book. And B&N has integrated very nicely with Google Books, so you have ready access to all sorts of free content.
It's really only an issue for the Kindle folks right now. Other readers (Nook, Kobo, ect) can use EPUB files, available from many different sources. If Amazon starts driving smaller stores out of business or the other stores start censoring as well, then it might be cause for concern. As it is, you can still find Yaoi from Barnes and Noble:
This is why I purchased a nook, instead of a Kindle.
Well, not this specifically... I'm not a big fan of yaoi...
But, thus far, B&N has not been pulling the same kind of crap that Amazon has. They haven't been pulling questionable titles and deleting books off of ereaders. And even if they did, I can buy my books somewhere else as an EPUB or a PDF.
Part of that I attribute to the fact that B&N is an actual bookstore, while Amazon is just a generic online retailer. You won't be buying a new computer from B&N. And, while they do stock music and movies... The selection of books absolutely dwarfs the selection of music and movies. Real bookstores are generally opposed to censorship. They're generally opposed to banning and burning books.
Amazon, on the other hand, is the on-line equivalent of Wal-Mart.
What we see now is a less tech-savvy public that would rather pull all their media from central distributors anyway, because they are ignorant of the alternatives. This is why DRM is being thrust upon us without a mass uproar.
It isn't ignorance.
Most of the non-technical folks I talk to on a daily basis are aware of what DRM does. They may not recognize the TLA... They may not understand the technological underpinnings that make it happen... But they do realize that if they buy a book, or game, or music, or movie on-line they are likely not going to be able to re-sell it to anyone else. That it'll be tied to them as an individual, or to a specific device they own.
And, for the large part, they don't care.
Most of these folks have never re-sold anything. Most of them haven't gone to a used bookstore or a flea market or a pawn shop or a Gamestop to get rid of their unwanted media. They've never looked at a box full of books they've already read and thought "I just don't have room for those anymore, I need to get rid of them."
We live in a largely disposable world, at least here in the US.
Most of the movies and music produced are absolutely forgettable. Folks will go to the theater, or rent it later, or buy an album on iTunes for $10... And then, a couple months later, completely forget about it. Folks don't buy DVDs to watch a movie years later. Folks don't buy CDs to listen to the same music years later. Games are purchased, played, and forgotten. They'll get tossed in a heap and shoved out of sight until the disc gets horribly scratched or cracked, and then it'll get thrown away. Books? Who reads books anymore? I don't remember the last time I ran into a random person who actually read novels for entertainment.
Folks understand what DRM does, in general. They just don't care.
Yaoi is actually a very broad term used to categorize just about any kind of homoerotic media (anime, manga, games, whatever) written by women, for women. So the whole "porn for schoolgirls" thing is a bit off-target.
And, unless you are a schoolgirl, I wouldn't expect you to miss it much.
But if you are a schoolgirl you just lost a safe way to explore your sexuality. Now you're being told, like so many other people, that you kink is not OK. That the things that interest you are not fit for mainstream consumption. That they need to be hidden away behind counters and curtains and closed doors. That you should be ashamed of your interests.
Yaoi (?)[nb 1][needs IPA] also known as Boys' Love, is a Japanese popular term for female-oriented fictional media that focus on homoerotic or homoromantic male relationships, usually created by female authors. Originally referring to a specific type of djinshi (self-published works) parody of mainstream anime and manga works, yaoi came to be used as a generic term for female-oriented manga, anime, dating sims, novels and djinshi featuring idealized homosexual male relationships. The main characters in yaoi usually conform to the formula of the seme ( lit. "attacker"?) who pursues the uke ( lit. "receiver"?).
Basically homoerotic media, generally created by women for women.
Back to paper books? I can think of half a dozen independent book stores within walking distance of my home, and I am in a medium sized town.
You've either got a different definition of "medium sized town" than I do... Or you've very lucky.
I also live in what I'd call a "medium sized town"... Biggish for a town, but absolutely nothing you could call a city. We have a Borders, and a used bookstore downtown.
Borders is becoming less and less of a book store every day. They've got more movies and music and calendars and coffee in there than books already. And the books they do have are a lousy selection. I don't remember the last time I went in there looking for a book that wasn't on a current best seller list and actually found it.
Yes, if the stars align just right, you can find some awesome stuff at the used bookstore... But more often than not they've just got used copies of the same stuff that Borders is carrying. Cheaper, sure, but I don't want to read it anyway.
There's a library of course... And they're terrific for some of the older/classic stuff... And reference materials... But they don't generally have newer stuff available. Either they don't have a copy, or the one copy is perpetually loaned out to someone.
All of which means that I do most of my book shopping on-line.
I bought a nook largely because I am impatient. I can buy a book on-line and have it download to my nook within a minute or two. And I can even make purchases through the nook itself, so I don't need to be sitting in front of a computer. Makes it much easier to get my hands on decent reading material. Almost makes it seem like I'm not living in the ass-end of nowhere.
Now, I went with a nook at least in part because of the crap that Amazon has been doing with their Kindle. So I am unaffected by Amazon's decisions right now. But there are a lot of folks out there with Kindles who are affected by these decisions. Who were using Amazon and the Kindle to gain access to reading material that just isn't available in their local area. Especially if we're talking about erotica and/or pornography. It's virtually impossible to find a good selection of erotica/pornography outside of a large city.
Alright... So you're going to go back to paper books purchased from any one of a half-dozen independant book stores within walking distance of your home in a medium sized town...
Assuming, of course, that you have the time to spend on those non-job tasks.
Do you watch TV? Idly click around on Slashdot/Facebook/Reddit/Whatever? There's your time right there.
These days? Yes, I do.
I don't expect you to click through every post I've ever written... I know I'm not quite that interesting...
But I mentioned elsewhere that at the age of 34 I finally have free time.
I was too busy with class and work throughout college. And my first three jobs afforded me absolutely no free time. I finally have a job now where I routinely leave work at 5:00, and have my weekends free.
But, at this point, I don't really need to spend my free time working on other projects to prove my abilities.
And back when I really should have been working on other projects to prove my abilities to prospective employers, I didn't have the free time.
I don't see a problem with this.. Consider the construction industry. You hire a guy to build your deck, you don't exactly want someone that's making it up as they go - you'd like to know they've accomplished similar projects in the past. It's fine if you hire someone with an apprentice - since the guy you're hiring is the one who's ultimately responsible.
But, see, the apprentice there is the whole point of the conversation.
Bob the Builder was willing to hire an apprentice of some sort to help him out. The apprentice is getting paid to learn. Later on, the apprentice will know enough to work on his own.
And what we're telling folks these days is never to hire an apprentice, because they aren't worth the trouble. Instead, just hire builders who already know everything.
As for fostering corporate loyalty - I've been with several firms (small ones even) that have internship programs - such interns almost never ultimately stay with the company
That's largely irrelevant though.
Yes, I did mention how folks used to start in the mailroom and work their way up. I didn't mean to suggest that everybody should be doing that everywhere. I simply meant to point out that upward mobility used to be possible without ever leaving the company you started with.
That is largely impossible these days. Generally speaking, companies do not promote from within.
We've got an intern at the hospital where I work right now. The kid is fresh out of college with absolutely no practical experience. He's doing things that need to be done, but not necessarily by somebody with real experience - cleaning viruses off of workstations, patching in wall jacks, running cable, deploying software, rolling out VoIP phones, throwing together scripts... Kind of mundane/menial stuff... But it needs to be done. And it's stuff he needs to know how to do. And he's also tagging along on more complex stuff.
We aren't wasting our time on crap work. The kid is learning all sorts of valuable stuff that'll help him land a job in the future.
He's great. I wouldn't mind at all if he hired on full-time once his internship was over. That'd be great. But, if he doesn't, we've still benefited, and so has he.
Assuming, of course, that you have the time to spend on those non-job tasks.
The nice thing about on-the-job training is that you get paid for it. So you don't have to go out and get another job to pay for your food/clothing/shelter while you get trained.
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IIRC the law has been sufficiently vague on some occasions that you might want to wait until the day after her birthday. Just to be safe.
Seriously? We're talking about video game characters here. Nobody is getting deflowered.
Oh, yes, I understand the legal implications. Regardless of whether the law makes sense or not, lines need to be drawn and crossing them is bad. I understand that.
I guess I was just musing on the insanity of the situation... They're characters in a video game. Their birthdates are an arbitrary fiction. The developer could just easily claim that they were 100 years old and had simply aged very well.
I was imagining some kind of Zelda-esque dramatic moment on their 18th birthday... You know, like when you pull the Master Sword from the stone, or whatever. It's nearing midnight... This 17-year-old combatant is asleep in her bed... The clock strikes 12:00, she's 18 now... Dramatic music, particle effects, glowing lights... Ding! Level Up! Womanhood Acquired, press "B" to equip!.
No child is being harmed, regardless of where you position the camera.
But Nintendo can be harmed when someone asks why the camera is being allowed that particular view. The game developer can be harmed when someone asks why the camera is being allowed that particular view.
Because there are no good answers.
There are good answers. Answers like:
What the hell? It's a fighting game. You punch people in the face. We built a game that allows you to do all kinds of funky combat moves. We added a photographer mode so you could capture pictures of you beating the crap out of people. We weren't really contemplating whether you could turn our bloody brawl game into some kind of cheesecake pornography generator. Absolutely nobody on staff even contemplated whether it was possible to get a good upskirt shot of some pixelated underage panties. I'm sorry the possibility of angling the camera to get a picture of some pixels positioned in the crotch of a 3D model in a video game offends you. I'm even more sorry that "can I get a picture of that underage virtual pussy" is the first place your mind went when we showed you the photographer mode.
Further, they're 17 in the game. Here in the US that's just one year shy of legal adulthood.
Just checking .... has anyone told you that Sweden, Denmark and Norway are NOT in the United States?
Strange as it may seem to you, other countries do have different laws and the ones that the US enacts don't apply elsewhere.
You think maybe that's why I specified here in the US?
A quick Google search indicates that the age of consent across most of the EU is between 13 and 18, so it isn't like the laws here in the US are completely out of line. It isn't like these 17-year-old video game characters are still decades away from being considered legally adult video game characters.
Regardless... They're still video game characters, which makes this all kinds of ridiculous.
You've got to be kidding me... This is so ridiculous I can't believe it's real.
It's a video game. They aren't real people. It's pixels on a screen. No child is being harmed, regardless of where you position the camera.
I also doubt if there's much to look at under those skirts. I doubt if the developers spent much time rendering realistic genitalia that'll likely never be seen... And if they were seen, would just generate outrage.
Further, they're 17 in the game. Here in the US that's just one year shy of legal adulthood. Are you telling me that there's some magical transformation on your 18th birthday that renders you immune to the psychological harm of somebody looking at your crotch?
But even if we accept that this is some kind of virtual child pornography that's somehow exploiting underage pixels... If we really want to make sure we protect the children... It's somehow OK to brutally beat them to a pulp? I mean, Dead or Alive is a fighting game. A "beat'em up". Like Tekken or Soul Calibur or Mortal Combat or Street Fighter... It's OK to pummel some virtual 17-year-old girl into a bloody mess, but it isn't OK to look up her skirt? How does that make any kind of sense?
Apple frankly sucks at innovation. They are reasonably good at improving something somebody else has already invented, but where they truly excel is at marketing.
Granted, Apple does position itself as the premium product... They market and price their goods appropriately... But it really isn't just about marketing.
Apple takes a holistic approach to product development that very few technology companies do. Sure, lots of folks had MP3 players out there before the iPod... But Apple provided a player with a very simple, approachable interface, and provided a simple piece of software for both syncing the MP3 player and purchasing music. Apple may not have been the first, but they definitely improved on the user experience.
This improved experience is how they claim to be a "premium" product. Do you want some cludgy Windows PC where you have to jump through all sorts of hoops and worry about viruses and deal with blue-screens? Or do you want one of our iMacs that "just works"?
They're only "new" in the movie.
They're completely untouched in the books and old series.
So that means it's now running with only user privileges instead of admin rights, which seems like a slight improvement for those dumb enough to install it.
It also means that whatever files exist and whatever changes are made live somewhere in that user's profile.
The Windows malware that does this is annoying because it can sneak in without admin rights... But it is easily removed by simply logging in as a different user and deleting the infected profile.
I think the observation is that most folks don't actually use the URL bar to type in a URL these days.
Oi! I do!
But I guess I'm not a "most folks" so I don't count.
I still type URLs into the URL bar all the time.
But a good 80% or more of my users don't do that. They'll hit something in their bookmarks, or type in some fragment of an address or a couple keywords and hope the browser can figure it out, or they'll throw something in the search box, or they'll go to Google/Bing/Yahoo/whatever and do a search from there.
Hell, half the time I give someone a full URL they wind up going to Google and putting it in the search box.
I use the Omnibar addon and it adds the ability to do all sorts of query commands into the URL bar already. It works well and it's convenient to use, and best of all, I keep my URL bar (albeit it's now a long address bar that incorporates the search bar into it). Why not go that direction?
Umm...
David Regev suggests that the location bar should be replaced with a tool to support more than just one command.
Isn't that exactly what he's suggesting?
Granted, if you look at the fine article, it isn't exactly a bar so much as a box... But it's the same idea. A multi-function interface element that allows you to enter searches, addresses, get page info, and whatever else.
I think the observation is that most folks don't actually use the URL bar to type in a URL these days. That's why so many browsers allow you to search directly from the URL bar - because people don't type out URLs, they type out searches. This is just a logical extension of that.
I started at age 11, mom sent me to local community college to learn pascal. Also wrote a lot of qbasic programs on my own before/after.
Where there's a will...
So, you're saying that you had the necessary resources. You had the money necessary to attend a local community college to learn pascal. And you had the time necessary to write a lot of qbasic programs on your own before and after.
What if you hadn't had the money to attend a community college? What if you hadn't had the time to write those qbasic programs?
Not everybody is as lucky as you were.
WHy are you majoring in CS... If you didnt already begin in a high school class, or at the very least on hobby projects?
Not all high schools have computer science-y classes. And not all prospective students have the kind of resources necessary for hobby projects.
And all this is being done for what? To give me 50 pixels? Whoop-dee-doo.
From Google's standpoint, lack of an address bar can steer more people back to Google for searches.
From a user's point of view... Well, I use the address bar... But about 80% of my users do not. Even if I give them a web address, they'll go to Google/Yahoo/Bing/whatever and type it in there. So it wouldn't be much of a change for them.
Steam is usually the gaming conglomerate that's most often mentioned on /. . (I only bother to play the free games in the Ubuntu repository.)
Valve is the company that developed Steam, as well as Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, etc.
Originally, they just developed games... But these days I think it's safe to say that more of their focus is on the Steam platform.
You left out the point that when Amazon removed 1984 (and Animal Farm too) from Kindle devices, it was because it was discovered that the books were added to the Kindle store by a publisher that didn't have the rights to sell the books. And that the books were subsequently re-added to the Kindle store by the publisher that DID have the rights to them. The customers were refunded and credited for their troubles.
The analogy that it's akin to breaking into one's home is a bit of a stretch.
Granted, the publisher did not have the rights to those books. That is true.
But it wasn't really those books being pulled from the store that surprised me. What surprised me was those books being deleted from Kindles.
If I go buy a paper copy of 1984 and it turns out that the publisher doesn't have the right to it, that book will be pulled from store shelves, but I'll still have my book sitting at home.
Amazon did the digital equivalent of sending someone to your house to forcibly collect the offending book. Sure, you were refunded... But that doesn't make me feel much better.
It doesn't matter what you think of yaoi, or manga, or erotica in general. Surely you can see where this is going. Stop supporting the thought police and put your money into companies that don't censor books. Amazon won't stop until they lose enough money. There's no telling when they'll start ruining classics.
Actually, I'm kind of surprised they haven't banned some of the classics yet... They're some of the most offensive, most often banned books out there.
When I was shopping for an eBook reader, I carefully considered all options, and ended up with... WAIT FOR IT... SONY - yeah, that's right. No DRM on their online bookstore, and it reads everything you throw at it - PDF, .epub, text, even MS Word files. Fully supported by the FLOSS Calibre book management software... Comes with SD card slot, replaceable battery, touch screen
Went with a nook myself.
Tried out the SONY ereader, but I didn't like it. Seemed a little clunky. Plus, I've been shopping at B&N's brick & mortar stores for decades.
B&N does do DRM on their online bookstore, but it really isn't terribly impressive. There are utilities out there to unwrap a B&N ebook with no effort at all.
The nook does EPUB and PDF... And it works great with Calibre to convert the formats it doesn't read natively. It's got an SD cardslot, and a replaceable battery. It's got a small touchscreen, but that's generally off when I'm just reading a book. And B&N has integrated very nicely with Google Books, so you have ready access to all sorts of free content.
It's really only an issue for the Kindle folks right now. Other readers (Nook, Kobo, ect) can use EPUB files, available from many different sources. If Amazon starts driving smaller stores out of business or the other stores start censoring as well, then it might be cause for concern. As it is, you can still find Yaoi from Barnes and Noble:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/King-of-Debt/Sanae-Rokuya/e/2940012508836/?itm=1&USRI=king+of+debt
This is why I purchased a nook, instead of a Kindle.
Well, not this specifically... I'm not a big fan of yaoi...
But, thus far, B&N has not been pulling the same kind of crap that Amazon has. They haven't been pulling questionable titles and deleting books off of ereaders. And even if they did, I can buy my books somewhere else as an EPUB or a PDF.
Part of that I attribute to the fact that B&N is an actual bookstore, while Amazon is just a generic online retailer. You won't be buying a new computer from B&N. And, while they do stock music and movies... The selection of books absolutely dwarfs the selection of music and movies. Real bookstores are generally opposed to censorship. They're generally opposed to banning and burning books.
Amazon, on the other hand, is the on-line equivalent of Wal-Mart.
What we see now is a less tech-savvy public that would rather pull all their media from central distributors anyway, because they are ignorant of the alternatives. This is why DRM is being thrust upon us without a mass uproar.
It isn't ignorance.
Most of the non-technical folks I talk to on a daily basis are aware of what DRM does. They may not recognize the TLA... They may not understand the technological underpinnings that make it happen... But they do realize that if they buy a book, or game, or music, or movie on-line they are likely not going to be able to re-sell it to anyone else. That it'll be tied to them as an individual, or to a specific device they own.
And, for the large part, they don't care.
Most of these folks have never re-sold anything. Most of them haven't gone to a used bookstore or a flea market or a pawn shop or a Gamestop to get rid of their unwanted media. They've never looked at a box full of books they've already read and thought "I just don't have room for those anymore, I need to get rid of them."
We live in a largely disposable world, at least here in the US.
Most of the movies and music produced are absolutely forgettable. Folks will go to the theater, or rent it later, or buy an album on iTunes for $10... And then, a couple months later, completely forget about it. Folks don't buy DVDs to watch a movie years later. Folks don't buy CDs to listen to the same music years later. Games are purchased, played, and forgotten. They'll get tossed in a heap and shoved out of sight until the disc gets horribly scratched or cracked, and then it'll get thrown away. Books? Who reads books anymore? I don't remember the last time I ran into a random person who actually read novels for entertainment.
Folks understand what DRM does, in general. They just don't care.
Can't say I'll miss porn written for schoolgirls
Yaoi is actually a very broad term used to categorize just about any kind of homoerotic media (anime, manga, games, whatever) written by women, for women. So the whole "porn for schoolgirls" thing is a bit off-target.
And, unless you are a schoolgirl, I wouldn't expect you to miss it much.
But if you are a schoolgirl you just lost a safe way to explore your sexuality. Now you're being told, like so many other people, that you kink is not OK. That the things that interest you are not fit for mainstream consumption. That they need to be hidden away behind counters and curtains and closed doors. That you should be ashamed of your interests.
Do you really think everyone knows what Yaoi manga is?
As per Wikipedia:
Yaoi (?)[nb 1][needs IPA] also known as Boys' Love, is a Japanese popular term for female-oriented fictional media that focus on homoerotic or homoromantic male relationships, usually created by female authors. Originally referring to a specific type of djinshi (self-published works) parody of mainstream anime and manga works, yaoi came to be used as a generic term for female-oriented manga, anime, dating sims, novels and djinshi featuring idealized homosexual male relationships. The main characters in yaoi usually conform to the formula of the seme ( lit. "attacker"?) who pursues the uke ( lit. "receiver"?).
Basically homoerotic media, generally created by women for women.
Where do people go when they give up Amazon?
Back to paper books? I can think of half a dozen independent book stores within walking distance of my home, and I am in a medium sized town.
You've either got a different definition of "medium sized town" than I do... Or you've very lucky.
I also live in what I'd call a "medium sized town"... Biggish for a town, but absolutely nothing you could call a city. We have a Borders, and a used bookstore downtown.
Borders is becoming less and less of a book store every day. They've got more movies and music and calendars and coffee in there than books already. And the books they do have are a lousy selection. I don't remember the last time I went in there looking for a book that wasn't on a current best seller list and actually found it.
Yes, if the stars align just right, you can find some awesome stuff at the used bookstore... But more often than not they've just got used copies of the same stuff that Borders is carrying. Cheaper, sure, but I don't want to read it anyway.
There's a library of course... And they're terrific for some of the older/classic stuff... And reference materials... But they don't generally have newer stuff available. Either they don't have a copy, or the one copy is perpetually loaned out to someone.
All of which means that I do most of my book shopping on-line.
I bought a nook largely because I am impatient. I can buy a book on-line and have it download to my nook within a minute or two. And I can even make purchases through the nook itself, so I don't need to be sitting in front of a computer. Makes it much easier to get my hands on decent reading material. Almost makes it seem like I'm not living in the ass-end of nowhere.
Now, I went with a nook at least in part because of the crap that Amazon has been doing with their Kindle. So I am unaffected by Amazon's decisions right now. But there are a lot of folks out there with Kindles who are affected by these decisions. Who were using Amazon and the Kindle to gain access to reading material that just isn't available in their local area. Especially if we're talking about erotica and/or pornography. It's virtually impossible to find a good selection of erotica/pornography outside of a large city.
Alright... So you're going to go back to paper books purchased from any one of a half-dozen independant book stores within walking distance of your home in a medium sized town...
So, where do the rest of us go?
Do you watch TV? Idly click around on Slashdot/Facebook/Reddit/Whatever? There's your time right there.
These days? Yes, I do.
I don't expect you to click through every post I've ever written... I know I'm not quite that interesting...
But I mentioned elsewhere that at the age of 34 I finally have free time.
I was too busy with class and work throughout college. And my first three jobs afforded me absolutely no free time. I finally have a job now where I routinely leave work at 5:00, and have my weekends free.
But, at this point, I don't really need to spend my free time working on other projects to prove my abilities.
And back when I really should have been working on other projects to prove my abilities to prospective employers, I didn't have the free time.
I don't see a problem with this.. Consider the construction industry. You hire a guy to build your deck, you don't exactly want someone that's making it up as they go - you'd like to know they've accomplished similar projects in the past. It's fine if you hire someone with an apprentice - since the guy you're hiring is the one who's ultimately responsible.
But, see, the apprentice there is the whole point of the conversation.
Bob the Builder was willing to hire an apprentice of some sort to help him out. The apprentice is getting paid to learn. Later on, the apprentice will know enough to work on his own.
And what we're telling folks these days is never to hire an apprentice, because they aren't worth the trouble. Instead, just hire builders who already know everything.
As for fostering corporate loyalty - I've been with several firms (small ones even) that have internship programs - such interns almost never ultimately stay with the company
That's largely irrelevant though.
Yes, I did mention how folks used to start in the mailroom and work their way up. I didn't mean to suggest that everybody should be doing that everywhere. I simply meant to point out that upward mobility used to be possible without ever leaving the company you started with.
That is largely impossible these days. Generally speaking, companies do not promote from within.
We've got an intern at the hospital where I work right now. The kid is fresh out of college with absolutely no practical experience. He's doing things that need to be done, but not necessarily by somebody with real experience - cleaning viruses off of workstations, patching in wall jacks, running cable, deploying software, rolling out VoIP phones, throwing together scripts... Kind of mundane/menial stuff... But it needs to be done. And it's stuff he needs to know how to do. And he's also tagging along on more complex stuff.
We aren't wasting our time on crap work. The kid is learning all sorts of valuable stuff that'll help him land a job in the future.
He's great. I wouldn't mind at all if he hired on full-time once his internship was over. That'd be great. But, if he doesn't, we've still benefited, and so has he.
Experience can be gained on non-job tasks.
Assuming, of course, that you have the time to spend on those non-job tasks.
The nice thing about on-the-job training is that you get paid for it. So you don't have to go out and get another job to pay for your food/clothing/shelter while you get trained.