So the bottom line here is that you are not a good citizen. It is your right to be a self-centered jerk, and I defend your right to be one, but I'm still going to call it what it is.
"From what I remember, there were few people on/. who cried foul when Apple pulled several Christian apps that were offensive to the gay community."
I was one of them, however. I'm a member of the gay community, I was offended by them, and I criticized Apple for removing them.
"Amazon is not a government actor here, so this is not censorship."
Any entity with enough power can engage in censorship. A sufficiently powerful religious organization can do it (the Vatican officially appoints "censors"), and a sufficiently powerful business can do it. For example, in the US, magazine distributors did it to comics by refusing to carry anything that didn't contain a Comics Code Authority seal. Saying "that's not censorship, that's just business" is most charitably described as "naïve".
OK, yes, the submitter should have explained the term. (Too bad you don't have an internet connection that you could use to look it up.)
"Manga" is the Japanese word for "comics". In English usage, it means "comics from japan", which are usually sold as 200-ish-page graphic novels.
"Yaoi" is a vaguely defined term coined from a Japanese phrase, referring to manga written about romanticized male/male relationships. They are written and drawn mostly by women, and read mostly by women, though some gay men enjoy them too. Some yaoi manga are sexually explicit, but usually softcore in nature rather than hardcore. (Japanese culture shies away from drawing cocks.) Quite a few of them are tame enough to be sold to minors in the US: kissing, hand-holding, intense hugging, etc. The characters in them are often young (as is typical in coming-of-age stories), and in some cases are below the age of consent in many parts of the US. But since A) they aren't real people, and B) the drawings aren't usually pornographic per se, it would terribly inaccurate to call it "child porn".
"Can't say I'll miss porn written for schoolgirls..."
But that's just where it starts.* I don't want to misapply Martin Niemöller's "first they came for the Jews...." quote here, because he was talking about something even worse than censorship, but the principle is the same. If you wait until they get around to affecting you directly, that's way too late. Regardless of what one thinks of these graphic novels (which are the male/male equivalent of disposable paperback romance novels), it should be alarming that the world's largest book seller is removing them from the world's largest e-bookstore. If you have any "guilty pleasures" at all in your entertainment choices (gross-out movies, violent action films, slasher videos, "edgy" comedians, any variety of porn), keep in mind that there are people who want to suppress those too. So it should be important to you – personally – to stop them long before they get there.
*Actually it started (as far as I've heard) with erotic novels that contained the word "rape" in the title. Amazon's been quietly disappearing books from the Kindle store for a while now.
"Where do people go when they give up Amazon?"
Barnes and Noble would be the closest equivalent, both in terms of online dead-tree retailing and a good ebook/reader system. I haven't heard of them pulling books from that system based on someone disapproving of the content. At least not yet.
Whether it's true or not, I don't know, but disclosing this does have propaganda value. Most Americans (and people in general) have made up their minds that Bin Laden was a horrible human being. And there's a population of bitter and persecuted-feeling Muslims who believe that Osama could do no wrong. But there are some who fall in between: such as Muslims who agree with his criticisms of the US, but are uncomfortable with some of his tactics, or people who shared his hatred for the West but don't buy his theology. Those people might be swayed away from him (and al-Qaeda) by news that (seemingly) exposes him as a porn-watching fundie hypocrite. They may not be convinced that it's true... but the seed of doubt has been sown, and that can grow.
This is so very naive. If legislators were term-limited, their unelected staff would take their place as the career-oriented power brokers of Washington, with the party's latest nominee serving a term as chief fund-raiser and public-relations face for the office. And if you term-limited the staff as well, that revolving door of new legislators and new staff every X years would lead to a greater reliance on.... that's right: lobbyists. Make no mistake about it: in a large republic, the job of legislating will be done by professionals. The only question is whether they'll be professional representatives you can fire at the ballot box, professional staffers you can try to fire through civil-service regulations, or professional lobbyists you can only fire by (heh) legislating against them. I'll opt for the first.
At what point in their respective orbits? The distance from Earth to Neptune varies by about three hundred million kilometers depending on what time of year.
And there are certifiably paranoid haterz who would respond to news of Apple removing location services from iOS with shrieks that this proves they will instead be locating cell phones covertly, at the same time they complain that augmented reality and navigation apps would subsequently suck ballz on the iPhone.
Taking advice from random people on/. (particularly if they're typing with Caps Lock on) about how to get along well with fellow (senior) employees is like asking your new hair stylist to help you decide between USB3 and Thunderbolt. It's not impossible that you'll get good advice that fits your situation... but I wouldn't count on it.
Exactly. As stupid as it is to keep all of your data on-site, it's even stupider to keep it all at some other site. Even having two redundant remote services fails to accommodate for some plausible contingencies that could take them both out at once. Hint: they aren't all technological. Suppose the company has a cash-flow problem and can't afford to pay their bills. Do you really want to gamble the company's entire dataset on the hope that one of the two service providers will be nice and won't cut them off?
Professional competence. If you don't know how to do this –and don't realize that it is part of the IT department's job – please get out of the tech job market and enroll in a Nursing program.
And in other news, a group of gamblers has won tens of millions of dollars in a lottery, a woman has had her 115th birthday, a park ranger has been struck by lightning seven times, and a couple who met on Slashdot are celebrating their 10th anniversary.
When I worked in IT at a college in the 1990s, the Kermit protocol was the most readily available lingua franca for transferring files between our VAXen and PCs. I remember creating an icon of Kermie (kermit.ico) for running the Kermit terminal emulator for DOS under Windows 3.1, so people could log in to a VAX and offload copies of their mail onto floppies, or maybe up/download a WordPerfect document. Another bit of my youth, consigned to history.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, it just wouldn't have been as obvious what they were doing.
"That's their problem, not mine."
So the bottom line here is that you are not a good citizen. It is your right to be a self-centered jerk, and I defend your right to be one, but I'm still going to call it what it is.
"From what I remember, there were few people on /. who cried foul when Apple pulled several Christian apps that were offensive to the gay community."
I was one of them, however. I'm a member of the gay community, I was offended by them, and I criticized Apple for removing them.
"Amazon is not a government actor here, so this is not censorship."
Any entity with enough power can engage in censorship. A sufficiently powerful religious organization can do it (the Vatican officially appoints "censors"), and a sufficiently powerful business can do it. For example, in the US, magazine distributors did it to comics by refusing to carry anything that didn't contain a Comics Code Authority seal. Saying "that's not censorship, that's just business" is most charitably described as "naïve".
Defending freedom of speech is part of the definition of "good citizen". So not just booksellers, but them too.
OK, yes, the submitter should have explained the term. (Too bad you don't have an internet connection that you could use to look it up.)
"Manga" is the Japanese word for "comics". In English usage, it means "comics from japan", which are usually sold as 200-ish-page graphic novels.
"Yaoi" is a vaguely defined term coined from a Japanese phrase, referring to manga written about romanticized male/male relationships. They are written and drawn mostly by women, and read mostly by women, though some gay men enjoy them too. Some yaoi manga are sexually explicit, but usually softcore in nature rather than hardcore. (Japanese culture shies away from drawing cocks.) Quite a few of them are tame enough to be sold to minors in the US: kissing, hand-holding, intense hugging, etc. The characters in them are often young (as is typical in coming-of-age stories), and in some cases are below the age of consent in many parts of the US. But since A) they aren't real people, and B) the drawings aren't usually pornographic per se, it would terribly inaccurate to call it "child porn".
"Can't say I'll miss porn written for schoolgirls..."
But that's just where it starts.* I don't want to misapply Martin Niemöller's "first they came for the Jews...." quote here, because he was talking about something even worse than censorship, but the principle is the same. If you wait until they get around to affecting you directly, that's way too late. Regardless of what one thinks of these graphic novels (which are the male/male equivalent of disposable paperback romance novels), it should be alarming that the world's largest book seller is removing them from the world's largest e-bookstore. If you have any "guilty pleasures" at all in your entertainment choices (gross-out movies, violent action films, slasher videos, "edgy" comedians, any variety of porn), keep in mind that there are people who want to suppress those too. So it should be important to you – personally – to stop them long before they get there.
*Actually it started (as far as I've heard) with erotic novels that contained the word "rape" in the title. Amazon's been quietly disappearing books from the Kindle store for a while now.
"Where do people go when they give up Amazon?"
Barnes and Noble would be the closest equivalent, both in terms of online dead-tree retailing and a good ebook/reader system. I haven't heard of them pulling books from that system based on someone disapproving of the content. At least not yet.
"...Islamic fundamentalists...."
But I wasn't talking about them. Work on your reading comprehension.
"99% of bin Laden's fans..."
But I wasn't talking about them. Work on your reading comprehension.
The US is not the only (or even most) sexphobic society in the world. This news is intended for the one that is.
Whether it's true or not, I don't know, but disclosing this does have propaganda value. Most Americans (and people in general) have made up their minds that Bin Laden was a horrible human being. And there's a population of bitter and persecuted-feeling Muslims who believe that Osama could do no wrong. But there are some who fall in between: such as Muslims who agree with his criticisms of the US, but are uncomfortable with some of his tactics, or people who shared his hatred for the West but don't buy his theology. Those people might be swayed away from him (and al-Qaeda) by news that (seemingly) exposes him as a porn-watching fundie hypocrite. They may not be convinced that it's true... but the seed of doubt has been sown, and that can grow.
I predict that PROTECT IP will get farther than COICA because it sounds more wholesome and less naughty.
This is so very naive. If legislators were term-limited, their unelected staff would take their place as the career-oriented power brokers of Washington, with the party's latest nominee serving a term as chief fund-raiser and public-relations face for the office. And if you term-limited the staff as well, that revolving door of new legislators and new staff every X years would lead to a greater reliance on.... that's right: lobbyists. Make no mistake about it: in a large republic, the job of legislating will be done by professionals. The only question is whether they'll be professional representatives you can fire at the ballot box, professional staffers you can try to fire through civil-service regulations, or professional lobbyists you can only fire by (heh) legislating against them. I'll opt for the first.
"The most popular in-bed activity is accessing social networks."
Is that what the kids are calling "hooking up" these days?
At what point in their respective orbits? The distance from Earth to Neptune varies by about three hundred million kilometers depending on what time of year.
People who die of brain tumors or swelling have the same problem.
You'd expect doctors to know how to use contraceptives to prevent this.
And there are certifiably paranoid haterz who would respond to news of Apple removing location services from iOS with shrieks that this proves they will instead be locating cell phones covertly, at the same time they complain that augmented reality and navigation apps would subsequently suck ballz on the iPhone.
Taking advice from random people on /. (particularly if they're typing with Caps Lock on) about how to get along well with fellow (senior) employees is like asking your new hair stylist to help you decide between USB3 and Thunderbolt. It's not impossible that you'll get good advice that fits your situation... but I wouldn't count on it.
Right because the judicial system is so incredibly good at restoring lost data.
Exactly. As stupid as it is to keep all of your data on-site, it's even stupider to keep it all at some other site. Even having two redundant remote services fails to accommodate for some plausible contingencies that could take them both out at once. Hint: they aren't all technological. Suppose the company has a cash-flow problem and can't afford to pay their bills. Do you really want to gamble the company's entire dataset on the hope that one of the two service providers will be nice and won't cut them off?
Professional competence. If you don't know how to do this –and don't realize that it is part of the IT department's job – please get out of the tech job market and enroll in a Nursing program.
What kind of idiot doesn't have a on-site backup of their off-site storage?
And in other news, a group of gamblers has won tens of millions of dollars in a lottery, a woman has had her 115th birthday, a park ranger has been struck by lightning seven times, and a couple who met on Slashdot are celebrating their 10th anniversary.
When I worked in IT at a college in the 1990s, the Kermit protocol was the most readily available lingua franca for transferring files between our VAXen and PCs. I remember creating an icon of Kermie (kermit.ico) for running the Kermit terminal emulator for DOS under Windows 3.1, so people could log in to a VAX and offload copies of their mail onto floppies, or maybe up/download a WordPerfect document. Another bit of my youth, consigned to history.
At least this answers the question that pagan fanboys have been asking for millennia: "Who'd win, Mercury or Enlil?"