No I'm not 22 and no I'm not American and more importantly, no I'm not a contractor.
Being a contractor involves taking risks and is not comparable to the security you get from having a regular job... at least here in Europe.
Being a contractor is like the step between having a job and being an entrepeneur. Imagine coding an application without a contract or employer and hoping to sell it afterwards without any guarantees of ever regaining your investement.
Writing a book can be like being a contractor or like being an entrepeneur. It certainly isn't like having a job. And that was the point I was making.
"or the people who are keeping them behind an iron wall of intellectual property?" Let me rephrase that for you: "or the writers who are exercising their legal right to control and make some money off the creative works they wrote."
Without even going into the more sticky question if copyright should extend after death, these are still living writers who've invested a lot of time and effort and faith into creating these stories and novels, for your enjoyment. They took a huge chance, investing a lot of time and effort into writing them whilst there's a real chance no publisher or magazine would even accept the stories and they wuold remain unpublished forever.
I think people tend to forget that for for every Bear, Vance or Anderson there are at least 10 other writers struggling to sustain themselves who need every last dollar their published works are making them and at least 20 others who tried to get published and failed.
Writing a book is an investment, not a job. It's taking risks, and if you don't reward those who take the risk and succeed, not very many people are going to be inclined to take that risk again.
1) The works aren't exactly making a ton of money or circulation. How would you know? You don't, do you?
2) They got paid when they sold the books for quite some time, why not give that money to their kids? Who says they haven't? Anyway, why is it up to you to decide what they do with their money?
3) How many jobs keep paying you money after you've died? Why do authors deserve this special privilege? How about calling it an investment? These are big names who've made it as writers. Do you know how many people are struggling to make a living off writing? Do you know what kind of investment it takes to write a book, putting years of your life into it, and not knowing at all if it will pay off?
After clicking throught the age warning warning warning explicit sexual content etc no one under 21 years of age etc. It's not like you type poesjes.nl in your browser and the vagina's pop up in your face.
I understand your point, but it illustrates the problem with the 'solution' Mrs. Perry proposes. It's just not feasable unless we globally decide to move all the porn sites to a special tld. And this will always be blocked by people who oppose porn on principle grounds and think their principles extend to others or at least should do so.
"The Freescale i.MX25 based fridge by Electrolux (Frigidaire) provides the expected bits such as temperature controls and pre-set modes (vacation, party)" Expected bits? Preset modes? Pardon? Submitter must be from an altogether other planet where all the fridges hum cheerfull songs and do your groceries for you. My fridges, on the other hand, comes with a knob that reads 1-5 and controls the temperature. When I go on a long vacation, I pull the plug and jam the door with a stone so it won't stink when I return.
" as well as a special purpose drawer that cools your drinks and food with a beautiful UI." I knew enlightenment was cool, but I now realise this is not only in a figure of speech kind of way. Frightening! Will it 'cool' my processor too?
"It also ships with handful applications for contacts, calendar, reminder, digital picture frame and even an illustrated recipe book from a famous Brazilian magazine." Nifty! Nice recipes in Brazilian Portugese!
Or you could just follow the line of reasoning most people here follow: if the phone is so liable to break from normal day-to-day usage, the manufactorer should have build it better. Which I'd consider a quite reasonable train of thought.
I'll add a car analogy just for fun: if the frontshield window of your car would shatter instead of crack from pebbles and small debris on the road, would you:
A. Buy a protective cover B. Complain with the manufactorer and try to get your money back
Parent is correct, article summary is very imprecise... slow news day?
Someone, not mentioned explicitely in the article, complained to the OPTA, saying that hotels should be considered ISPs. OPTA considered the wording of the laws they are enforcing and said ' yeah, they might be right ' and has now summoned a few hotels to register as ISP's, to see where this leads.
Obviously, the law is poorly worded and this is a side effect nobody foresaw or intended. This will be probably be fixed, if even necessary.
Please stop with all the efforts to make every little hickup in the law system armaggedon for freedom, please. It's cheap and sensationalist.
"The fact is that public transport at least, consumes more energy per mile than cars."
This is not true, at least not according to your own link and assuming you mean 'more energy per mile per passenger' which would be the only sane unit to compare both.
I have a rule of thumb in choosing whether to take the car or public transportation; driving alone in a car is always less efficient than taking public transportation. The numbers in the linked article seem to warrant this rule, see the efficiency for a solo driven car, which is third worse in the list.
"Jobs' position is one where key technologies, such as playing video, should be done by the web browser and not held for randsom by 3rd party plugin developers who'se best interest is to put their app on every device out there."
Exactly. They should be held ransom by the person who knows whats best for you.. His Jobness and his High Council of the Apple.
Yes of course please feel free to only counter one of my objections if you have no decent answers to the other ones...
But why bother repeating known arguments, this is essentially the same discussion as pro/con death penalty and an educated, sane and well informed conservative redneck like you will most definitely know all about miscarriages of justice.
Yeah never mind technical problems, unclear boundaries or abductions that trigger the injection inadvertently. Who cares, they're just convicts, aren't they? Even the ones that were convicted wrongly.
And hell, let's absolutely not consider the possiblity that minor infractions of the conditions do not warrant a death penalty. Or minor crimes like drug abuse or small scale fraud. I mean, it's not like you ever break the law, do you?
Now, back to the topic in question. So I own a company. I pay for the computer. I pay for the internet connection, electricity, desk, and even for the time you are there, supposed to be working. And I can't check on you ? Does that strike anyone else as utterly ridiculous ? Ok, I will accept (not agree) having to inform the employees the company will be monitoring. But not being able to check if the person is doing the work they get payed to do, is just stupid.
Agreed, and this is not at all what the law proposes; it just sets limits to what, where and how the employer can check. E.g. no video camera's on the toilets, only medical exams pertaining to strictly work related stuff, no reading of personal emails etc.
Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
As a last note: you can spy on your employees all you want but that'll never be a replacement for trust and mutual benefit.
I've never heard of the enthusiastic consent movement before, but it sounds awfully rational to me.
For one, I'd say that enthusiastic consent to sexual acts very rarely is a verbal act -- in my experience, very little is said explicitely in the mating dance, especially when not in a relationship.
For another, enthusiastic consent can very quickly change in embarrassed silence the next morning... especially when large amounts of alcohol or other drugs are involved.
Also, in all the examples given you're assuming some kind of pressure exerted. I mean, come on -- saying everyone does it, especially when true, is a very weak kind of pressure indeed. I find it pretty patronizing to suggest women not to be able to withstand such talk, if they really do not want to have sex. Same with relationships -- if you're going to give in to your husband wanting sex _now_ because he says you're obliged to by your marital status... hah, you have very serious problems with your self-esteem indeed... not to mention your choice of partners.
Moreover, there are many social circumstances wherein women and men are assumed to withstand such pressures... it's just your own responsibility and should be... be it sexual acts you don't want to do, drugs or alcohol you don't want to take, after work hours you don't want to make or whatever. If everybody jumps of the cliff, etc.
"It does mean that they're indicative of a society which sees little wrong with unenthusiastic sexual encounters..." I'm not american, so I'm not going to comment on the american views of sexuality, but fact is that sex and sexual appeal are means of power for both men and women and thus have been, are, and will be used to gain things in life other than sex for mutual enjoyment. If your body is your only currency, odds are you will use it to advance in life. I haven't ever been in this situation, I hope you have neither, but dismissing people who have been in a situation where they found selling their body preferable over the alternative is very judgemental indeed. Hoping to create a society any time soon where nobody is forced to make these choices is very idealistic indeed. And saying that not forbidding these kinds of exchanges is equivalent to a society seeing nothing wrong in them would be very short-sighted.
In the feces of cats, not the urine. From the wikipedia enty:
"Toxoplasmosis is a parasitic disease caused by the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii.[1] The parasite infects most genera of warm-blooded animals, including humans, but the primary host is the felid (cat) family. Animals are infected by eating infected meat, by ingestion of feces of a cat that has itself recently been infected, or by transmission from mother to fetus. Although cats are often blamed for spreading toxoplasmosis, contact with raw meat is a more significant source of human infections in many countries, and fecal contamination of hands is a greater risk factor.[2]"
"It's completely ridiculous that they can't give GM crops to starving people because protestors, that aren't starving, think it's better to let the people starve than give them more viable crops that offer more nutrients than other crops, which aren't even being offered, would."
Yeah right, because that's the real reason GM crops aren't feeding starving people.
Most people are malnurished or starving because THEY HAVE NO MONEY TO PAY FOR FOOD.
And... Monsanto and other GM companies ARE IN IT FOR THE MONEY.
I'll leave it as an exercise to you to finish the sum and to conclude if GM is an answer to starvation.
Although I don't agree with John's 'close ties to Monsanto. If you actually follow up on the links provided, Prof. Jones is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Mendel Biotechnologies, which in turn does business with Monsanto.
This does not qualify him as a shill.
And I agree with his point that regulation is creating monstrosities like Monsanto, only not with his answer: regulate less.
It took us decades to fully realize the danger of radioactive materials, it might take decades to fully understand the implications of GM. Until we have a reasonable comprehension of the dangers and risks, we should use other methods for improving crop yields, which, also as the Prof. tells, are to be easily found in better irrigation and fertilisation for third world countries.
And let's not forget; famine is mostly an economical problem these days, bringing in the likes of monsanto to 'solve' this will not bring relief to the starving and ill nourished people of the world.
Slashdot Mirror
No I'm not 22 and no I'm not American and more importantly, no I'm not a contractor.
Being a contractor involves taking risks and is not comparable to the security you get from having a regular job ... at least here in Europe.
Being a contractor is like the step between having a job and being an entrepeneur. Imagine coding an application without a contract or employer and hoping to sell it afterwards without any guarantees of ever regaining your investement.
Writing a book can be like being a contractor or like being an entrepeneur. It certainly isn't like having a job. And that was the point I was making.
I AM a software engineer, you insensitive clod. It's my dayjob, it pays the bills.
If you're coding even barely decent software and not getting paid for it, you are doing something very very wrong.
And comparing it to writing a book is just idiotic. Imagine working on a software project for 1-10 years and then getting paid for it ... or not.
Who says these works are not in active circulation? And even so, that's still up to the writer to decide, as long as he's alive.
"or the people who are keeping them behind an iron wall of intellectual property?"
Let me rephrase that for you: "or the writers who are exercising their legal right to control and make some money off the creative works they wrote."
Without even going into the more sticky question if copyright should extend after death, these are still living writers who've invested a lot of time and effort and faith into creating these stories and novels, for your enjoyment. They took a huge chance, investing a lot of time and effort into writing them whilst there's a real chance no publisher or magazine would even accept the stories and they wuold remain unpublished forever.
I think people tend to forget that for for every Bear, Vance or Anderson there are at least 10 other writers struggling to sustain themselves who need every last dollar their published works are making them and at least 20 others who tried to get published and failed.
Writing a book is an investment, not a job. It's taking risks, and if you don't reward those who take the risk and succeed, not very many people are going to be inclined to take that risk again.
1) The works aren't exactly making a ton of money or circulation.
How would you know? You don't, do you?
2) They got paid when they sold the books for quite some time, why not give that money to their kids?
Who says they haven't? Anyway, why is it up to you to decide what they do with their money?
3) How many jobs keep paying you money after you've died? Why do authors deserve this special privilege?
How about calling it an investment? These are big names who've made it as writers. Do you know how many people are struggling to make a living off writing? Do you know what kind of investment it takes to write a book, putting years of your life into it, and not knowing at all if it will pay off?
After clicking throught the age warning warning warning explicit sexual content etc no one under 21 years of age etc. It's not like you type poesjes.nl in your browser and the vagina's pop up in your face.
I understand your point, but it illustrates the problem with the 'solution' Mrs. Perry proposes. It's just not feasable unless we globally decide to move all the porn sites to a special tld. And this will always be blocked by people who oppose porn on principle grounds and think their principles extend to others or at least should do so.
Strange name for a woman, Sudo, she a foreigner?
"The Freescale i.MX25 based fridge by Electrolux (Frigidaire) provides the expected bits such as temperature controls and pre-set modes (vacation, party)"
Expected bits? Preset modes? Pardon? Submitter must be from an altogether other planet where all the fridges hum cheerfull songs and do your groceries for you. My fridges, on the other hand, comes with a knob that reads 1-5 and controls the temperature. When I go on a long vacation, I pull the plug and jam the door with a stone so it won't stink when I return.
" as well as a special purpose drawer that cools your drinks and food with a beautiful UI."
I knew enlightenment was cool, but I now realise this is not only in a figure of speech kind of way. Frightening! Will it 'cool' my processor too?
"It also ships with handful applications for contacts, calendar, reminder, digital picture frame and even an illustrated recipe book from a famous Brazilian magazine."
Nifty! Nice recipes in Brazilian Portugese!
Any your lack of adequate cuss-words. I mean, you can only get so far with just 'scheisse'.
Lovingly,
a neighbour
Or you could just follow the line of reasoning most people here follow: if the phone is so liable to break from normal day-to-day usage, the manufactorer should have build it better. Which I'd consider a quite reasonable train of thought.
I'll add a car analogy just for fun: if the frontshield window of your car would shatter instead of crack from pebbles and small debris on the road, would you:
A. Buy a protective cover
B. Complain with the manufactorer and try to get your money back
?
Well, feel free to stay at home then.
Parent is correct, article summary is very imprecise ... slow news day?
Someone, not mentioned explicitely in the article, complained to the OPTA, saying that hotels should be considered ISPs. OPTA considered the wording of the laws they are enforcing and said ' yeah, they might be right ' and has now summoned a few hotels to register as ISP's, to see where this leads.
Obviously, the law is poorly worded and this is a side effect nobody foresaw or intended. This will be probably be fixed, if even necessary.
Please stop with all the efforts to make every little hickup in the law system armaggedon for freedom, please. It's cheap and sensationalist.
"The fact is that public transport at least, consumes more energy per mile than cars."
This is not true, at least not according to your own link and assuming you mean 'more energy per mile per passenger' which would be the only sane unit to compare both.
I have a rule of thumb in choosing whether to take the car or public transportation; driving alone in a car is always less efficient than taking public transportation. The numbers in the linked article seem to warrant this rule, see the efficiency for a solo driven car, which is third worse in the list.
"Jobs' position is one where key technologies, such as playing video, should be done by the web browser and not held for randsom by 3rd party plugin developers who'se best interest is to put their app on every device out there."
Exactly. They should be held ransom by the person who knows whats best for you .. His Jobness and his High Council of the Apple.
Yes of course please feel free to only counter one of my objections if you have no decent answers to the other ones ...
But why bother repeating known arguments, this is essentially the same discussion as pro/con death penalty and an educated, sane and well informed conservative redneck like you will most definitely know all about miscarriages of justice.
Yeah never mind technical problems, unclear boundaries or abductions that trigger the injection inadvertently. Who cares, they're just convicts, aren't they? Even the ones that were convicted wrongly.
And hell, let's absolutely not consider the possiblity that minor infractions of the conditions do not warrant a death penalty. Or minor crimes like drug abuse or small scale fraud. I mean, it's not like you ever break the law, do you?
Idiot.
*sigh* I shouldn't feed the trolls
Now, back to the topic in question. So I own a company. I pay for the computer. I pay for the internet connection, electricity, desk, and even for the time you are there, supposed to be working. And I can't check on you ? Does that strike anyone else as utterly ridiculous ? Ok, I will accept (not agree) having to inform the employees the company will be monitoring. But not being able to check if the person is doing the work they get payed to do, is just stupid.
Agreed, and this is not at all what the law proposes; it just sets limits to what, where and how the employer can check. E.g. no video camera's on the toilets, only medical exams pertaining to strictly work related stuff, no reading of personal emails etc.
Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
As a last note: you can spy on your employees all you want but that'll never be a replacement for trust and mutual benefit.
I've never heard of the enthusiastic consent movement before, but it sounds awfully rational to me.
For one, I'd say that enthusiastic consent to sexual acts very rarely is a verbal act -- in my experience, very little is said explicitely in the mating dance, especially when not in a relationship.
For another, enthusiastic consent can very quickly change in embarrassed silence the next morning ... especially when large amounts of alcohol or other drugs are involved.
Also, in all the examples given you're assuming some kind of pressure exerted. I mean, come on -- saying everyone does it, especially when true, is a very weak kind of pressure indeed. I find it pretty patronizing to suggest women not to be able to withstand such talk, if they really do not want to have sex. Same with relationships -- if you're going to give in to your husband wanting sex _now_ because he says you're obliged to by your marital status ... hah, you have very serious problems with your self-esteem indeed ... not to mention your choice of partners.
Moreover, there are many social circumstances wherein women and men are assumed to withstand such pressures ... it's just your own responsibility and should be ... be it sexual acts you don't want to do, drugs or alcohol you don't want to take, after work hours you don't want to make or whatever. If everybody jumps of the cliff, etc.
"It does mean that they're indicative of a society which sees little wrong with unenthusiastic sexual encounters ..."
I'm not american, so I'm not going to comment on the american views of sexuality, but fact is that sex and sexual appeal are means of power for both men and women and thus have been, are, and will be used to gain things in life other than sex for mutual enjoyment. If your body is your only currency, odds are you will use it to advance in life.
I haven't ever been in this situation, I hope you have neither, but dismissing people who have been in a situation where they found selling their body preferable over the alternative is very judgemental indeed. Hoping to create a society any time soon where nobody is forced to make these choices is very idealistic indeed. And saying that not forbidding these kinds of exchanges is equivalent to a society seeing nothing wrong in them would be very short-sighted.
In the feces of cats, not the urine. From the wikipedia enty:
"Toxoplasmosis is a parasitic disease caused by the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii.[1] The parasite infects most genera of warm-blooded animals, including humans, but the primary host is the felid (cat) family. Animals are infected by eating infected meat, by ingestion of feces of a cat that has itself recently been infected, or by transmission from mother to fetus. Although cats are often blamed for spreading toxoplasmosis, contact with raw meat is a more significant source of human infections in many countries, and fecal contamination of hands is a greater risk factor.[2]"
"Before the magazine's demise, many of the subscribers lived at home with parents."
And this changed how exactly after the bankrupcy of the magazine?
Maybe a bankrupcy of slashdot would be a good thing for the readers too ...
"It's completely ridiculous that they can't give GM crops to starving people because protestors, that aren't starving, think it's better to let the people starve than give them more viable crops that offer more nutrients than other crops, which aren't even being offered, would."
Yeah right, because that's the real reason GM crops aren't feeding starving people.
Most people are malnurished or starving because THEY HAVE NO MONEY TO PAY FOR FOOD.
And ... Monsanto and other GM companies ARE IN IT FOR THE MONEY.
I'll leave it as an exercise to you to finish the sum and to conclude if GM is an answer to starvation.
Sorry for shouting, Thank you for your attention.
This isn't Monsanto speaking. RTA, follow the links, I don't think this Prof Jones is a shill for Monsanto.
Spot on.
Although I don't agree with John's 'close ties to Monsanto. If you actually follow up on the links provided, Prof. Jones is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Mendel Biotechnologies, which in turn does business with Monsanto.
This does not qualify him as a shill.
And I agree with his point that regulation is creating monstrosities like Monsanto, only not with his answer: regulate less.
It took us decades to fully realize the danger of radioactive materials, it might take decades to fully understand the implications of GM. Until we have a reasonable comprehension of the dangers and risks, we should use other methods for improving crop yields, which, also as the Prof. tells, are to be easily found in better irrigation and fertilisation for third world countries.
And let's not forget; famine is mostly an economical problem these days, bringing in the likes of monsanto to 'solve' this will not bring relief to the starving and ill nourished people of the world.
If it does, just imagine what your reaction to this implies about you!
Mea culpa mate for misquoting you and for not feeling "publicly humiliated" by your insulting way of replying.