The Hugos aren't organized in a way that would make that possible.
Some hundreds of people, who either wanted to attend Worldcon or cared enough to buy a supporting membership, voted for the books, and short stories, and movies, and artists, and editors we thought were best this year. It's an instant-runoff ballot, ranking candidates from one to five, rather than a vote for only one choice, and I'd be surprised if any two ballots had been identical.
If it were a publicity stunt, someone would have arranged for Rowling to send a representative to make a thank-you speech. The con committee is happy to step in when asked--the person who presented the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation also read Ang Lee's thank-you letter to the audience--so it didn't matter whether she knew anyone who was going to be in Philadelphia.
The Harry Potter book really is what enough voters preferred. I didn't vote for it myself--my first choice was Ken MacLeod's The Sky Road--but I have no reason to doubt the honesty of the people who did. Their judgment, perhaps: it's easy to question people whose preferences don't match my own. But not their sincerity.
Fittingly, the person who announces that he'd never hire someone who expected to be paid for working nights and weekends doesn't want to admit to his identity either.
Either being on call is work, or it isn't. If it is, people should be paid for it. If it isn't, the company shouldn't demand it.
We aren't going to work just for fun, you know: overtime should be rewarded, either with pay when the poster is actually called in, or with a higher pay-rate or a bonus in return for agreeing to be available when and as needed.
If, as we keep hearing--especially from managers who are justifying their own time off--a week away from work energizes people and makes them more productive when they get back, it might be worth Sun's while to make everyone take that break.
I'd also assume there are Sun employees--especially in support positions--who do take their vacation time. Some of them have already used this year's time, and will be forced into unpaid leave, so that's some salary saved.
This is also a week where Sun won't have to pay temps to cover for anyone: temps fill in for people on vacation, out sick, on maternity leave. If everyone is taking vacation the same week, there's no need to cover for the sick receptionist or the secretary who's visiting her family.
Or maybe they're just trying to impress the stock market.
Okay, fine, it's business. They basically offer a service which includes a bunch of yes/no choices: do you want to receive this, that, and the other.
All of a sudden, they're saying "we know you said you don't want this, but we don't believe you meant it. Let us know if you did."
The point isn't setting up filters. (It isn't even that filters mean the stuff is still going through your ISP.) The point is trust.
Would you do business with a car dealership that sent you a letter saying they were altering your lease, and call by the end of the month if you don't want to pay more? Sure, you have the chance to keep it the way it is. But you shouldn't have to go to extra trouble to get them to stick to an agreed-on set of rules.
This month, they're saying they'll spam people unless they opt out again. A company that would do that is entirely capable of sending out email saying "we noticed an error in your registration. Please log in and go to thus-and-such if you really don't want us selling your name and address."
Yes, eBay has a good record so far. They also have no actual product--they're an intermediary between buyers and sellers. If they lose trust, they're hosed. And this sort of behavior does not inspire me to trust them.
This was discussed at some length at rec.arts.sf.fandom, and one thing we noticed is that Deja is using a *different* special X-header than Remarq offered when people wanted them not to insert ads in our Usenet postings.
We all know that X-headers are, by definition, not standardized: nonetheless, it would have simplified things for Deja to use the same X-no-markup header Remarq used before they backed down from the whole thing (in part because people figured out ways to mess up their displays by inserting HTML in posts).
Here's an idle thought: if Deja can change the rules without notifying people (even those who have accounts at Deja found out about this only by accident), why can't we? What happens if I include, in my Usenet posts, something like the following:
"This post copyright 2000 by Vicki Rosenzweig. Permission to insert hyperlinks for advertising purposes is available for $100 per post. Insertion of such links constitutes acceptance of these terms."
It would be interesting to see their response when the bill showed up.
I still hope that, somehow, birds are descended from dinosaurs, largely because there's a pleasure in looking at ducklings on the salt marsh and saying "Baby dinosaurs!"
<p>Feathers might have evolved twice, and I definitely want more data: did this creature have a breastbone? Can we run the line of descent from <i>Longisquama</i> to <i>Archeopteryx</i> through the dinosaur kin, and keep the seagulls flying at the end of the dinosaur exhibit at the Museum of Natural History?
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Some hundreds of people, who either wanted to attend Worldcon or cared enough to buy a supporting membership, voted for the books, and short stories, and movies, and artists, and editors we thought were best this year. It's an instant-runoff ballot, ranking candidates from one to five, rather than a vote for only one choice, and I'd be surprised if any two ballots had been identical.
If it were a publicity stunt, someone would have arranged for Rowling to send a representative to make a thank-you speech. The con committee is happy to step in when asked--the person who presented the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation also read Ang Lee's thank-you letter to the audience--so it didn't matter whether she knew anyone who was going to be in Philadelphia.
The Harry Potter book really is what enough voters preferred. I didn't vote for it myself--my first choice was Ken MacLeod's The Sky Road--but I have no reason to doubt the honesty of the people who did. Their judgment, perhaps: it's easy to question people whose preferences don't match my own. But not their sincerity.
Fittingly, the person who announces that he'd never hire someone who expected to be paid for working nights and weekends doesn't want to admit to his identity either.
Either being on call is work, or it isn't. If it is, people should be paid for it. If it isn't, the company shouldn't demand it.
We aren't going to work just for fun, you know: overtime should be rewarded, either with pay when the poster is actually called in, or with a higher pay-rate or a bonus in return for agreeing to be available when and as needed.
If, as we keep hearing--especially from managers who are justifying their own time off--a week away from work energizes people and makes them more productive when they get back, it might be worth Sun's while to make everyone take that break.
I'd also assume there are Sun employees--especially in support positions--who do take their vacation time. Some of them have already used this year's time, and will be forced into unpaid leave, so that's some salary saved.
This is also a week where Sun won't have to pay temps to cover for anyone: temps fill in for people on vacation, out sick, on maternity leave. If everyone is taking vacation the same week, there's no need to cover for the sick receptionist or the secretary who's visiting her family.
Or maybe they're just trying to impress the stock market.
Okay, fine, it's business. They basically offer a service which includes a bunch of yes/no choices: do you want to receive this, that, and the other.
All of a sudden, they're saying "we know you said you don't want this, but we don't believe you meant it. Let us know if you did."
The point isn't setting up filters. (It isn't even that filters mean the stuff is still going through your ISP.) The point is trust.
Would you do business with a car dealership that sent you a letter saying they were altering your lease, and call by the end of the month if you don't want to pay more? Sure, you have the chance to keep it the way it is. But you shouldn't have to go to extra trouble to get them to stick to an agreed-on set of rules.
This month, they're saying they'll spam people unless they opt out again. A company that would do that is entirely capable of sending out email saying "we noticed an error in your registration. Please log in and go to thus-and-such if you really don't want us selling your name and address."
Yes, eBay has a good record so far. They also have no actual product--they're an intermediary between buyers and sellers. If they lose trust, they're hosed. And this sort of behavior does not inspire me to trust them.
This was discussed at some length at
rec.arts.sf.fandom, and one thing we noticed is that Deja is using a *different* special X-header than Remarq offered when people wanted them not to insert ads in our Usenet postings.
We all know that X-headers are, by definition, not standardized: nonetheless, it would have simplified things for Deja to use the same X-no-markup header Remarq used before they backed down from the whole thing (in part because people figured out ways to mess up their displays by inserting HTML in posts).
Here's an idle thought: if Deja can change the rules without notifying people (even those who have accounts at Deja found out about this only by accident), why can't we? What happens if I include, in my Usenet posts, something like the
following:
"This post copyright 2000 by Vicki Rosenzweig. Permission to insert hyperlinks for advertising purposes is available for $100 per post. Insertion of such links constitutes acceptance of these terms."
It would be interesting to see their response when the bill showed up.
I still hope that, somehow, birds are descended from dinosaurs, largely because there's a pleasure in looking at ducklings on the salt marsh and saying "Baby dinosaurs!"
<p>Feathers might have evolved twice, and I definitely want more data: did this creature have a breastbone? Can we run the line of descent from <i>Longisquama</i> to <i>Archeopteryx</i> through the dinosaur kin, and keep the seagulls flying at the end of the dinosaur exhibit at the Museum of Natural History?