If any other company behaved like this/. users would be almost unanimously up in arms. I haven't liked Apple since my initial experiences with them in the early to mid 80s. It seems to me they're getting much more customer hostile. They certainly aren't alone but isn't it time we stopped cutting them so much slack?
Who is this Nick Le Back these people on slashdot are referring to? Is he some dodgy french guy with a hairy back? I only know of a pop band called Nickelback. I mean I understand that the tedious prison and law breaking imagery, having the same sound for every song, and that never-changing voice that sounds like gravel smoothed over might get tedious, but if you're going to bag a band at least get the name of the band right. Otherwise you come across as an ignorant redneck tool whose opinion on anything let alone art or music can't be trusted.
That's right. 2004. Lots of free (and some paid) addons that keep the game incredibly diverse. Yes, it's got bugs, but you live with them for incredibly diversity you get. I have literally gigabytes of free addons.
Why not FSX? Because FSX is a piece of shit, created by a company and addon community that's become much more interested in milking every last cent out of the end user as it can than producing something truly realistic or usable. MS never use to be the most scrupulous company but this push for DRM has made it user-hostile. What's more the team developing FSX have repeatedly screwed it up. 2 service packs and an officially sanctioned addon later and its still unstable and unflyable, still causing problems to install and activate, still a resource hog. For every step forward in the sim it's taken 2 steps back. What's more the addons have doubled in price, old stuff is badly broken, and freeware development has all but ground to a halt (consisting largely of fixing old FS2004 models to work with FSX). Way to take a wonderful, educational and enjoyable game and turn it into a frustrating waste of cash.
My game of 2008 may be Enemy Engaged 2. I just picked that up on the cheap and am loving it. I never bought 1. Did I mention I like flight simulators?
TAFE teachers aren't all that well paid. They're still considered tradn technical college.
As for not paying someone who messes up, that depends on the contract. If the contract is for a result, okay don't pay. If the contract is for a fixed amount of time working, you must pay regardless of the outcome. Almost all teachers are paid for their time. The recourse you have if they do poorly is to not hire them again.
The amount of time you need colour is pitiful, and for home use (business should not be using inkjet, no excuse) it's virtually all for photos - that's the only real time a laser can't cut it, when you want a small glossy. Then, taking your photos on a card down to the local supermarket works out much, much, much cheaper.
I can get 5x7 or 6x8 or whatever the crappy standard size is at the store for much cheaper than I can print it. If I want an A4 print on the other hand, it costs me roughly 10-20 times as much as the cost to print it out myself. I do refill my cartridges, and dread the day when I can no longer do it.
I don't understand why people spend thousands on Digital SLRs, then print at those small sizes. Honestly A4 is about right if you want to see detail, if you want to frame it, and isn't too unwieldy if you want to carry it etc. I'd love to print larger but even A3 printers are disproportionately costly and printing and large picture printing from a shop/lab costs tens of dollars for something that'll only work on good top quality full res pics, and that isn't convenient to carry. Larger than A4 is basically only good for posters or large framed pics. So if I want a few dozen pics of say our wedding done, sure I'll go and spend cents per photo to print elsewhere, but if I want something to put in a folder and show, I'll print it myself A4.
I don't get why the Slashdot groupthink is trashing this. It's been vaporware for way too long, I for one look forward to the possibility that it will get taken off the vaporware list in the foreseeable future.
Take the best game of 2001 and release it today. How well do you think it'd fare?
If it's ever completed it's going to go straight from vaporware to abandonware. DNF will forever stand for "DID NOT FINISH". Get over it. Take a look at some of the good games out there today, for tomorrow they will be swalled in the crapfest that is DX10 and Vista DRM.
C course at a TAFE in Sydney, Australia
on
Your Worst IT Workshop?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The lecturer claimed he'd previous been working in the industry developing embedded C code. After 15 minutes of him explaining that # directives are evaluated at runtime, I couldn't take it. I put my hand up and simply said "you're wrong. That's what the precompiler does". I had a reputation for knowing what I was on about (I was there for a qualification, not because I didn't know C). He went beetroot red. In hindsight I should have talked to him after the class and had him correct his mistake the next week, but hey I was a cocky 18 year old, and he was talking BS. He was a nice guy and was genuinely trying to be helpful. He just wasn't very good.
Earlier this year (several months ago) they switched billing systems. You'd think this is a good thing as their previous billing system was a bit of a joke. (For a long time the only ways you could pay was via credit card or by walking into a telstra shop or post office. After years of this they added BPAY but not automatic payment).
- The new billing system still does not recognise certain discounts. I've called repeatedly about this and been promised they will be applied retrospectively once the billing system is fixed, but that they can't give an ETA. I don't know if I'll ever see that money, and I'm considering switching to a different ISP. (The only reason I'm hesitant is that I'm on cable and other ISPs would be ADSL. If my phone lines aren't niece in addition to setup costs I have to worry about an ADSL filter etc.)
- The new billing system allows for automatic payment. The old system did not. What they fail to explain to you when they tell you this is that if you apply for automatic payment, you will no longer receive paper bills. What's worse it's not even possible on their new system to have both paper bills and automatic payment. Email's nice but it's still difficult for some employers to accept an emailed bill if they're paying a portion of your Internet bill as part of your entitlements. (Fortunately it's not been as big a problem with my employer as I thought it would be).
- When I made a formal complaint through superviser, I was put on hold on and off for about an hour then told that the system was running slow and that I'd be called back to confirm the complaint had been put in. I provided my mobile number, which they did call just the once but since I didn't answer it they didn't bother to call or email again.
Bigpond has always been a pig of a company to deal with and they're only getting worse.
d; if one can read and discuss Shakespeare or Melville, one can read and discuss that EULA.
Oh and by the way reading Meliville and Shakespeare is called getting an education. It serves a purpose to learn about other times, other places, other language and about heritage. In contrast, reading a EULA is just a complete waste of time. If one does not understand the difference, then one's education has failed one miserably.
It is part of my job to be aware of EULAs and other licensing in the solutions I propose to my clients. For some reason software companies keep their EULAs concise and to the point, as they'd rather not have anyone violate it
You must have a very different definition of the word concise.
You take a very small excerpt from a random MS EULA and point out that it can be understood. So what. Quote the other 20 pages and see how reasonable it is. But that sounds like an exaggeration so let me produce something solid to counter your nonsense claim that EULAs are short.
- The Microsoft Word 2007 EULA is 19 pages in Acrobat format.
- Vista has a combined EULA for Home Basic, Home Premium and Ultimate. It is 14 pages long.
So if you buy a computer and with a word processor you're expected to digest 30-35 pages. Add a handful of other programs (heck add office) and soon you're into over a hundred pages. By the time you have a usable system for a power user you're probably somewhere around 500-1000 pages. So come on, be honest, even if you reject what I say (and I don't think it's an even slight exaggeration), even if it's only a couple of hundred pages, name me 5 people you know that read that many pages before touching their software! Be honest, and don't include people who are paid to do little other than evaluate software, or manage large installations.
It's getting worse too. The XP Pro EULA was just over 5 pages long.
Hey it's not just Microsoft, though they're becoming particularly bad offenders. Even the GNU Public Licenses take some time to understand fully, and even then there are debates about meaning. Heck I could spend all night adding up the pages for each EULA on the machine I'm using to prove my point conclusively, but I don't have any intention of wasting that time. You know I'm right.
EULAs often can't be rejected as publishers and distributors refuse or make it very difficult to take it back once the shrink wrap is broken (because assuming everyone is dishonest and will infringe on copyright is acceptable). So why bother reading something when you've already made the choice to buy the software?
This is not a reasonable way for things to be, and if you honestly expect people to be reading these, you're quite plainly gibbering mad.
If you install sufficient software it simply isn't possible to read all the EULAs. Anyone who says they do either doesn't install much, is paid to do little else, or is a liar.
The initial setup at the web GUI makes it apparent that it wants to send stats back to home-base. How this can take people by surprise is baffling....because of course you have read every word of every screen of every version of every installer you've ever used, and never just glossed over any detail. What's baffling is that comments like this get modded up.
Correction. The more GOOD QUALITY jobs you create for a particular labour pool, the more choice and the better off people are.
Creating low quality subsistence jobs that don't pay people enough to make a living can actually make things much much worse since they lower the acceptable standard for everyone.
Modded flamebait or not, I stand by what I said. You just want someone to do your dirty work for next to nothing. You have no interest in the quality of life of the people you use to do it EXCEPT to justify your bad behaviour to yourself.
You're surprised by this after the personal attacks?
Sure I do. Unlike you, I'm cognizant that increases in technology result in realworld increases in the standard of living.
Yeah I wonder why I might lose my temper huh? Where did I indicate that I didn't understand technology improves standard of living? You're the one who's trying to shift credit for increase in standard of living from technology to the provision of slave labour jobs.
I suggest that you look up the definition of 'stagnant'.
I suggest that you look up the definition of arrogant poser.
Give me a break - do you even know how the US defines poverty?
I'm willing to bet I know more about it than you do. A complete shift to personal attacks instead of refuting anything I said. I love it. You've run out of ideas so you resort to vilifying your opponent. Child!
Not really, people can get treatment for illnesses that were untreatable in past years. What's happening though is that these treatments are expensive, and it's gotten to the point that it's a major expense because we can treat so much, but don't often have 'magic cures'. A cancer that used to kill in three months now can be cured half the time- but takes a year of expensive treatment to do so....and if a cancer sufferer is too poor to afford the treatment, who cares if it's now technologically and medically possible. They're still just as dead without the treatment.
Heh - nope, I said the EMPLOYEES had started riding to work - first with bicycles, then later on to mopeds.
Oh wonderful. Now our slave workers can turn up to work an hour earlier.
Their children probably still walked to school - but they were going to school, and completing at least primary(elementary). The study didn't cover secondary education, past the terms of the study at the time I read about it....and did the study take into account other reasons why children may be finishing school, or the effects of having their parents removed for greater periods of time? Did the study cover improvement in standard of living or these generational changes you speak of?
Please point me to this study you speak of. People here are great at hand waving and making statements they can't back up. When you ask for proof 90% of the time they'll say they can't be bothered.
Just a vast source of optimisim aren't you? The factory employed adults - not children, actually reducing the child labor rates over the previous farms that pulled children out of school early to work on the farms.
Oh yeah I believe that. Because historically if you don't have any kind of legislation to prevent it children are never forced into jobs right? Optimism my arse. Has it occurred to you that learning a skill or trade in a family environment may be more beneficial than taking the kid's parents away 16 hours a day? Ever heard of a family business? Or is business only okay if it's big business?
And your complete misunderstanding, as the parents were working within the hours you mentioned.
You're telling me in a 3rd world environment where there was no "protectionalist" law to prevent abuse, parents were being made to work reasonable hours. Again show me the proof because quite frankly I think you're pulling this out of your backside. Even if you're not from what I've read it's the exception not the rule.
They were though, especially by the standards of the area. Again, it seems you'd prefer them to remain virtually grubbing in the mud rather than be employed for lower wages than the USA.
Proof please. Put up or shut up. What's the bet if you bother to provide it the wages will be at best meagre.
Again I'll repeat if you keep lowering the bar for what's acceptable to pay people, eventually every human being on earth that has paid work is working long hours for meagre pay. There are a lot more p
Goes up a tiny bit for billions. Stays pretty much stagnant for the USA
Or would you rather go back 30 years? I look around, plenty of people are buying 50" HTDVs, go back 20 and we'd be looking at 32" as 'big', or really expensive projection sets that needed lots of maintenance.
WOW! You really have NO IDEA how to measure the standard of living. Yeah the technology has gotten better right across the board. I think you'll find that the average wage peaked in the US (and other developed countries) and while there is still a small group of people who'll be able to afford luxury goods, the number of people living below the poverty line is actually increasing - you know the number of people who can actually afford those basic needs you keep saying are important. The average person's ability to get medical care for serious illness and injury is decreasing
Go back even 10 years and cars on average had less power, fewer features, and were more polluting
Yeah the technology is getting better. What's that got to do with outsourcing jobs to people who aren't qualified, or running sweat shops?
Anyways, I'm arguing for incremental improvement - you seem to be arguing for 'all or nothing' affairs. Fact is, in the report I read - the workers were riding bicycles in two years, and many had mopeds in 10. As a result, other businesses opened to sell and support the bicycles, and then the mopeds. Primary school completion was an order of magnitude higher for the kids of the employees over the farmers.
I'm not arguing for all or nothing affairs. I'm arguing for not trading well paid jobs for badly paid ones.
Okay so you're saying that kids who ride bikes and mopeds are better off because they get a primary school education (probably something the company encourages so they can have employees children in the same sweatshops their parents work in). However that same child is robbed of a parent that can afford to spend any time with them. The future has gone from one of starving, to one of likely becoming a virtual slave like their parents. I don't think that's fair or reasonable. What would be fair and reasonable is that the parents are paid well to enough to meet the basic needs of their family doing a reasonable number of hours (say 50) a week so they can also raise a family. Which brings us back to the protectionalism you so loath, and reasonable well regulated working conditions.
A COMPANY THAT CAN'T PROVIDE A LIVING WAGE FOR AN EMPLOYEE SHOULD NOT BE PERMITTED TO HIRE THAT EMPLOYEE.
What's more to be reasonably fair there has to be some kind of reward for working hard beyond simply subsisting. There has to be some reasonable prospect for someone in a 3rd world country of improving their situation. Again minimum subsistence wages that lead to a life of forced labour (on threat of starvation) just isn't enough. To trade even a small jobs that don't do this for a number of jobs that do is AWFUL for all of humanity because eventually that will become the norm (ie work, or die, there's someone else willing to take your place). What a horrible world that would be. Think of it this way, in such a world you wouldn't have access to the computer you're using or the time to argue with me.
I fail to see how all this isn't a good thing. Look at our history - even with the exploitation we eventually improved.
Yeah look at our history. It took violence and militant unionism to do it! People suffered and even died under such systems. whole generations grew up with a poor education. People who got sick or ill fell on the scrap heap of society. The absolute irony of your statement is disturbing.
There are actual slave-labor shops out there that do as you say - but they're a different matter.
You're very naive. In a country where there is no protection where company owners tell themselves they're doing their workforce a favour preventing them from starving by giving them sweatshop jobs, slave-labour will be the norm.
I'm not arguing a good driver isn't going to improve your chances. I've already said it takes all 3.
For example:
Good car, good road, bad driver = loses control and plows into tree.
Good car, dangerous road (say slippery slope), good driver = good chance that even this careful driver won't realize they're in trouble before their car slides off the road.
Bad car, good road, good driver = driver breaks down in the middle of nowhere in a snow storm and perishes trying to get help.
If you're traveling in snow you really want the good car, good road and good driver combination. Anything else is dangerous.
Disclaimer: I've never driven with snow tires. This is all second hand knowledge. Make of it what you will.
We never put chains on our wheels, it's forbidden by the Law because it breaks the roads.
In Australia we do use snow chains and in NZ even more so. Since they damage the car as well as the road, you can count on people being selfish and trying to prevent that. A new diff isn't cheap. The real danger is inexperience and a lack of knowledge about how and when to use snow chains.
It's all the driver, not the vehicle.
That's garbage. It's a combination of road, car and driver. If any one of these are bad, you may die. If 2 are bad I'd probably bet on it.
So basically you're saying you want a 3rd world slave in the comfort of your own room.
Disgusting! Even a half decent human being would feel bad about having a virtual slave like this. (That's okay Rapalumdi, if you want to quit you can always go back to starving. I knew you'd see it my way. Now hurry up with my crisps!). Even better if OLPC supplies the hardware so you don't have to fork out any extra.
Slashdot Mirror
If any other company behaved like this /. users would be almost unanimously up in arms. I haven't liked Apple since my initial experiences with them in the early to mid 80s. It seems to me they're getting much more customer hostile. They certainly aren't alone but isn't it time we stopped cutting them so much slack?
As fucked up as I am from all the porn I've seen, I think I'm pretty OK.
If you were as you put it f*cked up, you'd have no need for porn now would you!?
This sounds like a lame excuse to start implanting people with GPS trackers.
Who is this Nick Le Back these people on slashdot are referring to? Is he some dodgy french guy with a hairy back? I only know of a pop band called Nickelback. I mean I understand that the tedious prison and law breaking imagery, having the same sound for every song, and that never-changing voice that sounds like gravel smoothed over might get tedious, but if you're going to bag a band at least get the name of the band right. Otherwise you come across as an ignorant redneck tool whose opinion on anything let alone art or music can't be trusted.
That's right. 2004. Lots of free (and some paid) addons that keep the game incredibly diverse. Yes, it's got bugs, but you live with them for incredibly diversity you get. I have literally gigabytes of free addons.
Why not FSX? Because FSX is a piece of shit, created by a company and addon community that's become much more interested in milking every last cent out of the end user as it can than producing something truly realistic or usable. MS never use to be the most scrupulous company but this push for DRM has made it user-hostile. What's more the team developing FSX have repeatedly screwed it up. 2 service packs and an officially sanctioned addon later and its still unstable and unflyable, still causing problems to install and activate, still a resource hog. For every step forward in the sim it's taken 2 steps back. What's more the addons have doubled in price, old stuff is badly broken, and freeware development has all but ground to a halt (consisting largely of fixing old FS2004 models to work with FSX). Way to take a wonderful, educational and enjoyable game and turn it into a frustrating waste of cash.
My game of 2008 may be Enemy Engaged 2. I just picked that up on the cheap and am loving it. I never bought 1. Did I mention I like flight simulators?
TAFE teachers aren't all that well paid. They're still considered tradn technical college.
As for not paying someone who messes up, that depends on the contract. If the contract is for a result, okay don't pay. If the contract is for a fixed amount of time working, you must pay regardless of the outcome. Almost all teachers are paid for their time. The recourse you have if they do poorly is to not hire them again.
The amount of time you need colour is pitiful, and for home use (business should not be using inkjet, no excuse) it's virtually all for photos - that's the only real time a laser can't cut it, when you want a small glossy. Then, taking your photos on a card down to the local supermarket works out much, much, much cheaper.
I can get 5x7 or 6x8 or whatever the crappy standard size is at the store for much cheaper than I can print it. If I want an A4 print on the other hand, it costs me roughly 10-20 times as much as the cost to print it out myself. I do refill my cartridges, and dread the day when I can no longer do it.
I don't understand why people spend thousands on Digital SLRs, then print at those small sizes. Honestly A4 is about right if you want to see detail, if you want to frame it, and isn't too unwieldy if you want to carry it etc. I'd love to print larger but even A3 printers are disproportionately costly and printing and large picture printing from a shop/lab costs tens of dollars for something that'll only work on good top quality full res pics, and that isn't convenient to carry. Larger than A4 is basically only good for posters or large framed pics. So if I want a few dozen pics of say our wedding done, sure I'll go and spend cents per photo to print elsewhere, but if I want something to put in a folder and show, I'll print it myself A4.
I don't get why the Slashdot groupthink is trashing this. It's been vaporware for way too long, I for one look forward to the possibility that it will get taken off the vaporware list in the foreseeable future.
Take the best game of 2001 and release it today. How well do you think it'd fare?
If it's ever completed it's going to go straight from vaporware to abandonware. DNF will forever stand for "DID NOT FINISH". Get over it. Take a look at some of the good games out there today, for tomorrow they will be swalled in the crapfest that is DX10 and Vista DRM.
The lecturer claimed he'd previous been working in the industry developing embedded C code. After 15 minutes of him explaining that # directives are evaluated at runtime, I couldn't take it. I put my hand up and simply said "you're wrong. That's what the precompiler does". I had a reputation for knowing what I was on about (I was there for a qualification, not because I didn't know C). He went beetroot red. In hindsight I should have talked to him after the class and had him correct his mistake the next week, but hey I was a cocky 18 year old, and he was talking BS. He was a nice guy and was genuinely trying to be helpful. He just wasn't very good.
a^2 + b^2 = c^2 only applies for Euclidean geometry. In spherical geometry Pythagoras does not apply and angles of a triangle don't add to 180
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem
I'd say write to your Member of Parliament, but I suspect you'll get the same answer there too.
It seems to me that this is anti-competitive. That's exactly the sort of thing the Australian Competetion and Consumer Commission (ACCC) should look into. The problem tends to be that the ACCC seems to be a very political organisation.
Earlier this year (several months ago) they switched billing systems. You'd think this is a good thing as their previous billing system was a bit of a joke. (For a long time the only ways you could pay was via credit card or by walking into a telstra shop or post office. After years of this they added BPAY but not automatic payment).
- The new billing system still does not recognise certain discounts. I've called repeatedly about this and been promised they will be applied retrospectively once the billing system is fixed, but that they can't give an ETA. I don't know if I'll ever see that money, and I'm considering switching to a different ISP. (The only reason I'm hesitant is that I'm on cable and other ISPs would be ADSL. If my phone lines aren't niece in addition to setup costs I have to worry about an ADSL filter etc.)
- The new billing system allows for automatic payment. The old system did not. What they fail to explain to you when they tell you this is that if you apply for automatic payment, you will no longer receive paper bills. What's worse it's not even possible on their new system to have both paper bills and automatic payment. Email's nice but it's still difficult for some employers to accept an emailed bill if they're paying a portion of your Internet bill as part of your entitlements. (Fortunately it's not been as big a problem with my employer as I thought it would be).
- When I made a formal complaint through superviser, I was put on hold on and off for about an hour then told that the system was running slow and that I'd be called back to confirm the complaint had been put in. I provided my mobile number, which they did call just the once but since I didn't answer it they didn't bother to call or email again.
Bigpond has always been a pig of a company to deal with and they're only getting worse.
d; if one can read and discuss Shakespeare or Melville, one can read and discuss that EULA.
Oh and by the way reading Meliville and Shakespeare is called getting an education. It serves a purpose to learn about other times, other places, other language and about heritage. In contrast, reading a EULA is just a complete waste of time. If one does not understand the difference, then one's education has failed one miserably.
It is part of my job to be aware of EULAs and other licensing in the solutions I propose to my clients. For some reason software companies keep their EULAs concise and to the point, as they'd rather not have anyone violate it
You must have a very different definition of the word concise.
You take a very small excerpt from a random MS EULA and point out that it can be understood. So what. Quote the other 20 pages and see how reasonable it is. But that sounds like an exaggeration so let me produce something solid to counter your nonsense claim that EULAs are short.
Since you picked a EULA let me point you to:
http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/useterms/default.aspx
- The Microsoft Word 2007 EULA is 19 pages in Acrobat format.
- Vista has a combined EULA for Home Basic, Home Premium and Ultimate. It is 14 pages long.
So if you buy a computer and with a word processor you're expected to digest 30-35 pages. Add a handful of other programs (heck add office) and soon you're into over a hundred pages. By the time you have a usable system for a power user you're probably somewhere around 500-1000 pages. So come on, be honest, even if you reject what I say (and I don't think it's an even slight exaggeration), even if it's only a couple of hundred pages, name me 5 people you know that read that many pages before touching their software! Be honest, and don't include people who are paid to do little other than evaluate software, or manage large installations.
It's getting worse too. The XP Pro EULA was just over 5 pages long.
Hey it's not just Microsoft, though they're becoming particularly bad offenders. Even the GNU Public Licenses take some time to understand fully, and even then there are debates about meaning. Heck I could spend all night adding up the pages for each EULA on the machine I'm using to prove my point conclusively, but I don't have any intention of wasting that time. You know I'm right.
EULAs are often long.
EULAS are often vague.
EULAs often include onerous or questionable restrictions
http://www.eulahallofshame.com/yahoo-tos.html
EULAs often can't be rejected as publishers and distributors refuse or make it very difficult to take it back once the shrink wrap is broken (because assuming everyone is dishonest and will infringe on copyright is acceptable). So why bother reading something when you've already made the choice to buy the software?
This is not a reasonable way for things to be, and if you honestly expect people to be reading these, you're quite plainly gibbering mad.
I simply don't believe you read all your EULAs. Skim perhaps, even then I doubt you do that rigorously.
They are not in highschool English. They're in legalize that often has a very specific meaning that does not match common usage meaning.
If you install sufficient software it simply isn't possible to read all the EULAs. Anyone who says they do either doesn't install much, is paid to do little else, or is a liar.
The initial setup at the web GUI makes it apparent that it wants to send stats back to home-base. How this can take people by surprise is baffling. ...because of course you have read every word of every screen of every version of every installer you've ever used, and never just glossed over any detail. What's baffling is that comments like this get modded up.
Correction. The more GOOD QUALITY jobs you create for a particular labour pool, the more choice and the better off people are.
Creating low quality subsistence jobs that don't pay people enough to make a living can actually make things much much worse since they lower the acceptable standard for everyone.
Modded flamebait or not, I stand by what I said. You just want someone to do your dirty work for next to nothing. You have no interest in the quality of life of the people you use to do it EXCEPT to justify your bad behaviour to yourself.
Boy, you're just losing your temper, aren't you?
...and if a cancer sufferer is too poor to afford the treatment, who cares if it's now technologically and medically possible. They're still just as dead without the treatment.
...and did the study take into account other reasons why children may be finishing school, or the effects of having their parents removed for greater periods of time? Did the study cover improvement in standard of living or these generational changes you speak of?
You're surprised by this after the personal attacks?
Sure I do. Unlike you, I'm cognizant that increases in technology result in realworld increases in the standard of living.
Yeah I wonder why I might lose my temper huh? Where did I indicate that I didn't understand technology improves standard of living? You're the one who's trying to shift credit for increase in standard of living from technology to the provision of slave labour jobs.
I suggest that you look up the definition of 'stagnant'.
I suggest that you look up the definition of arrogant poser.
Give me a break - do you even know how the US defines poverty?
I'm willing to bet I know more about it than you do. A complete shift to personal attacks instead of refuting anything I said. I love it. You've run out of ideas so you resort to vilifying your opponent. Child!
Not really, people can get treatment for illnesses that were untreatable in past years. What's happening though is that these treatments are expensive, and it's gotten to the point that it's a major expense because we can treat so much, but don't often have 'magic cures'. A cancer that used to kill in three months now can be cured half the time- but takes a year of expensive treatment to do so.
Heh - nope, I said the EMPLOYEES had started riding to work - first with bicycles, then later on to mopeds.
Oh wonderful. Now our slave workers can turn up to work an hour earlier.
Their children probably still walked to school - but they were going to school, and completing at least primary(elementary). The study didn't cover secondary education, past the terms of the study at the time I read about it.
Please point me to this study you speak of. People here are great at hand waving and making statements they can't back up. When you ask for proof 90% of the time they'll say they can't be bothered.
Just a vast source of optimisim aren't you? The factory employed adults - not children, actually reducing the child labor rates over the previous farms that pulled children out of school early to work on the farms.
Oh yeah I believe that. Because historically if you don't have any kind of legislation to prevent it children are never forced into jobs right? Optimism my arse. Has it occurred to you that learning a skill or trade in a family environment may be more beneficial than taking the kid's parents away 16 hours a day? Ever heard of a family business? Or is business only okay if it's big business?
And your complete misunderstanding, as the parents were working within the hours you mentioned.
You're telling me in a 3rd world environment where there was no "protectionalist" law to prevent abuse, parents were being made to work reasonable hours. Again show me the proof because quite frankly I think you're pulling this out of your backside. Even if you're not from what I've read it's the exception not the rule.
They were though, especially by the standards of the area. Again, it seems you'd prefer them to remain virtually grubbing in the mud rather than be employed for lower wages than the USA.
Proof please. Put up or shut up. What's the bet if you bother to provide it the wages will be at best meagre.
Again I'll repeat if you keep lowering the bar for what's acceptable to pay people, eventually every human being on earth that has paid work is working long hours for meagre pay. There are a lot more p
Goes up a tiny bit for billions. Stays pretty much stagnant for the USA
Or would you rather go back 30 years? I look around, plenty of people are buying 50" HTDVs, go back 20 and we'd be looking at 32" as 'big', or really expensive projection sets that needed lots of maintenance.
WOW! You really have NO IDEA how to measure the standard of living. Yeah the technology has gotten better right across the board. I think you'll find that the average wage peaked in the US (and other developed countries) and while there is still a small group of people who'll be able to afford luxury goods, the number of people living below the poverty line is actually increasing - you know the number of people who can actually afford those basic needs you keep saying are important. The average person's ability to get medical care for serious illness and injury is decreasing
Go back even 10 years and cars on average had less power, fewer features, and were more polluting
Yeah the technology is getting better. What's that got to do with outsourcing jobs to people who aren't qualified, or running sweat shops?
Anyways, I'm arguing for incremental improvement - you seem to be arguing for 'all or nothing' affairs. Fact is, in the report I read - the workers were riding bicycles in two years, and many had mopeds in 10. As a result, other businesses opened to sell and support the bicycles, and then the mopeds. Primary school completion was an order of magnitude higher for the kids of the employees over the farmers.
I'm not arguing for all or nothing affairs. I'm arguing for not trading well paid jobs for badly paid ones.
Okay so you're saying that kids who ride bikes and mopeds are better off because they get a primary school education (probably something the company encourages so they can have employees children in the same sweatshops their parents work in). However that same child is robbed of a parent that can afford to spend any time with them. The future has gone from one of starving, to one of likely becoming a virtual slave like their parents. I don't think that's fair or reasonable. What would be fair and reasonable is that the parents are paid well to enough to meet the basic needs of their family doing a reasonable number of hours (say 50) a week so they can also raise a family. Which brings us back to the protectionalism you so loath, and reasonable well regulated working conditions.
A COMPANY THAT CAN'T PROVIDE A LIVING WAGE FOR AN EMPLOYEE SHOULD NOT BE PERMITTED TO HIRE THAT EMPLOYEE.
What's more to be reasonably fair there has to be some kind of reward for working hard beyond simply subsisting. There has to be some reasonable prospect for someone in a 3rd world country of improving their situation. Again minimum subsistence wages that lead to a life of forced labour (on threat of starvation) just isn't enough. To trade even a small jobs that don't do this for a number of jobs that do is AWFUL for all of humanity because eventually that will become the norm (ie work, or die, there's someone else willing to take your place). What a horrible world that would be. Think of it this way, in such a world you wouldn't have access to the computer you're using or the time to argue with me.
I fail to see how all this isn't a good thing. Look at our history - even with the exploitation we eventually improved.
Yeah look at our history. It took violence and militant unionism to do it! People suffered and even died under such systems. whole generations grew up with a poor education. People who got sick or ill fell on the scrap heap of society. The absolute irony of your statement is disturbing.
There are actual slave-labor shops out there that do as you say - but they're a different matter.
You're very naive. In a country where there is no protection where company owners tell themselves they're doing their workforce a favour preventing them from starving by giving them sweatshop jobs, slave-labour will be the norm.
Who
I'm not arguing a good driver isn't going to improve your chances. I've already said it takes all 3.
For example:
Good car, good road, bad driver = loses control and plows into tree.
Good car, dangerous road (say slippery slope), good driver = good chance that even this careful driver won't realize they're in trouble before their car slides off the road.
Bad car, good road, good driver = driver breaks down in the middle of nowhere in a snow storm and perishes trying to get help.
If you're traveling in snow you really want the good car, good road and good driver combination. Anything else is dangerous.
Disclaimer: I've never driven with snow tires. This is all second hand knowledge. Make of it what you will.
We never put chains on our wheels, it's forbidden by the Law because it breaks the roads.
In Australia we do use snow chains and in NZ even more so. Since they damage the car as well as the road, you can count on people being selfish and trying to prevent that. A new diff isn't cheap. The real danger is inexperience and a lack of knowledge about how and when to use snow chains.
It's all the driver, not the vehicle.
That's garbage. It's a combination of road, car and driver. If any one of these are bad, you may die. If 2 are bad I'd probably bet on it.
Can I just say you lucky lucky bastard. Was Sagan in the room that day?
So basically you're saying you want a 3rd world slave in the comfort of your own room.
Disgusting! Even a half decent human being would feel bad about having a virtual slave like this. (That's okay Rapalumdi, if you want to quit you can always go back to starving. I knew you'd see it my way. Now hurry up with my crisps!). Even better if OLPC supplies the hardware so you don't have to fork out any extra.