"Online book purchases require broadband" - not so. Kindle runs over both Wi-Fi and 3G (hardly "broadband") and on it you can browse, select and purchase books, and magazines that are downloaded in less than a minute. Everyone in the US in range of a cell tower can have any book in their hands within a couple of minutes.
Amazon pays it's fucking taxes you jerk. It doesn't collect taxes in states on behalf of state government because it's not required to by Federal law. Don't like that fact, then fuck off and change the law. Otherwise, on with you business. (and how much have you sent to your state tax collection agency for stuff you bought on line and was delivered tax free.... oh, yeah, none. It's a long way to the ground from your high horse isn't it)
A quick check of Amazon.com shows many Yaoi Kindle and paperbacks available (please do check for yourselves). Clearly Amazon has not removed Yaoi from its store. Applying Occam's Razor perhaps there is a simpler explanation. Perhaps the quality of materials provided by the publisher are not suitable for digital publication (corrupt files, low resolution artwork etc); Perhaps they don't pay their bills or generate a lot of customer complaints? Rather than jumping to the easy-and-fun-to-be-indignant "censorship" cry, why not wait for facts (and continue buying Yaoi on Amazon, 'cos it's there).
Let's be clear, monopolies are not illegal. Illegality is only established when a monopoly is proven to be conducting itself in an anti-competitive nature.
Depends on the terms of service, which no one reads (have you read the Slashdot Terms of Service?). So they may or may not have the right to take it back from the people to whom they sold a license to the work (I've not read the license agreement - but neither have you so your post is speculative at best and may be downright incorrect). Data people, data.
But you "censor" every day when you choose what to watch (or not) on TV, or on the radio, or that which you read. By your argument that Amazon should be required to sell everything, you should be required to consume everything. Oh and while I'm at it - you're an idiot: "just like how 80% of all industries are monopolized by 3 to 4 corporations" it's called a monopoly because there is just one ("mono"), not "3 to 4". And i have no idea what you mean by your cliched "Business is about nothing" - Business is actually about transactions and exchange of value.
Actually it's the folks at SUN who promised to create an independent foundation and then didn't, who owe the explanation. Then again the contributors who poured in their valuable contributions and watched, and waited and hoped are likewise culpable - expectations do not a legally binding commitment make.
"It's a crime that Oracle is allowed to have their clutches on it."
What exactly is the criminal activity in which Oracle has engaged? Or is your comment just foot-stomping hyperbole?
The fact is that anyone working on the project knew under what basis they were working. Getting all petulant after the fact is hardly a compelling argument.
First they ignore you: ""
Then they ridicule you: "Ho ho - tiny little screen; who'd buy one of these toys?"
Then they fight you: "Crap - we better make our own ebook reader and screw around with pricing to protect ourselves. But we're kinda late and our pricing strategies are reactive and ill thought out"
Then they loose: "Double crap - all our best selling authors are now publishing their own book directly on the Kindle and taking 85% of the revenue rather than the 10% we used to give them. Ingrates!"
Feel free to bookmark this post and come back to it in 5 years time to see how it all came true.....
You know, after getting up in the wee small hours of the morning, driving miles to find a spot to observe the launch and having paid good cash for a video camera (and PC and editing software), you'd think that the joker that took the video would learn **how to pan with the moving object**!. That's "pan with the object" not wait until the object has left the frame and then jerk the camera up until it's at the bottom. And you know, you can buy cameras these days with image stabilization (or even stabilize in post). *very* frustrating video.
Not that I've read TFA, but isn't this what free market economics is supposed to prevent? When a single entity can have that kind of power, isn't it a monopoly?
Holding a dominant position or a monopoly in a market is not illegal in itself, a monopoly is said to be coercive when the monopoly firm actively prohibits competitors from entering the field. In this case authors have many choices regarding publication: traditional publishers, self-publication; Publishers have choice over to whom they sell their books: Amazon, B&N, Borders and 1000's of independent book stores; E-book readers are increasingly entering this market segment: Kindle, Nook and many other that we saw demonstrated at CES a few weeks ago.
So no. This is what free market economics is supposed to encourage. In my opinion, Amazon trying to keep prices down is a great thing. The fact that some authors chose to publish their books with MacMillan who tried to reduce their readership by jacking up the price should give incentive to said authors to find a better publisher that actually wants to increase their readership.
From the article: "Federal law says recording companies are entitled to $750 to $30,000 per illegally downloaded song - but a jury may raise that to as much as $150,000 per track if it finds the infringements were willful."
Huh? So it *is* possible to use the "cat walked on my keyboard" defense and win? How can downloading music without adhering to the defined licensing terms not be willful? Ignorance is no defense for breaking the law (no matter if if it is a good or bad law).
"The majority of amazon hires quit in under 2 years"
Bullshit. From where are you getting your data?
Yes - Amazonians carry pagers when they are on call. Amazon engineers stand behind their code and their site and don't farm it off to teams in India or China like other companies.
To be on the list companies must submit their name for consideration. Amazon didn't, hence it's not on the list. Better things to do than self promotion I suspect;-)
Which is no different than any system that gets hacked/taken over. There is a cost associated with the intrusions *somewhere* along the way. It may be a 3rd party hosting charge, bandwidth or just your time (which may be considerable) in repairing graffiti, clearing your good name etc.
"At will" employment scares me especially since you can be fired without any good reason.
Means you can also quite without any good reason too. Quid pro quo. And the practical upshot is that the vast majority of companies will only terminate you for a *good* reason (do you really think that there are that many capricious employers that love nothing more than to hire staff only to fire them the next day? Hiring is an expensive process).
Working hours are ludicrous which seems to stem from the "at will" factor - people are too scared not to work those extra hours for fear of being fired.
Well, as a European living and working in the US, I've not seen evidence of people being scared such that they work "extra" hours. That's the good thing about employment at will; don't like the conditions/management etc, then quit. I've spent plenty of time in Japan (boy, do those guys work long hours - no one leaves until the boss leaves the office) + Germany, and UK and France -- same deal world wide; those that want to further their career either work harder or smarter (and harder is easier than smarter and equates to longer hours). Try telling a prospective Olympic athlete that they only have to put in 40 hours a week and take 5 weeks vacation every year...
In the EU it is illegal to work more than 48 hours a week without special dispensation
Lolz - so if I want to work longer, to complete a project, to beat the competition to make my company more successful and thus make myself more successful I can't do it? Seems kinda dumb to me. Oh, and the times that I spent in Germany, UK, France etc - no one seemed to pay attention to this rule (except the clock-watchers who would do this in any country and who are destined to a life of mediocrity anyway)
Walmart has a physical operation in NC and the ability to collect and process taxes. Out of state vendors (Amazon being just one or many, many) does not. Don't forget that this law, if it passes, will impact all out of state eCommerce vendors. Perhaps the large ones will say "we do enough business in NC and will set up a physical presence to process tax" but the many, many smaller entities will just drop this state. That will be painful for them and their customers within the State.
"I'm told that the reason for certification is not safety, but culpability.
Now who told you that nonsense? Of course it's for safety...
Manager giving employee their annual review: "Nice work Bob - the fact that those planes crashed last year and all those people died, well shoot, shit happens. Good news is that you were able to pin the responsibility on those tweakers at Boeing so they could have their asses sued into oblivion. Good job. Raises and promotions all round!"
"That's racial discrimination and should be illegal..."
- Since Europe and the US have citizens from every race on the planet (and perhaps a few off-planet...) I don't know how you can say that. Perhaps you mean "geographical discrimination"?
- "Should be illegal" - why? As an owner, you may decide how your work or art is displayed, sold, licensed etc. Why must you be forced to distribute it in a certain geographic region (especially when you have to cover the cost of manufacturing, distribution, merchandising etc)? Would get us rapidly to the point where nothing would be created as the cost of being forced to distribute it (as it would be "illegal" not to do so...) in every territory that wanted it would be prohibitively expensive.
There were many reasons why Micro Focus' COBOL compilers were written in COBOL - a large one being "eat your own dog food" aka "drink your own champagne". Every improvement we made to the compiler wrt performance and features benefited both the compiler itself and the applications it compiled.
Although the Compiler was written in COBOL, the run time system (on UNIX) was written in C. The Compiler back-end was written in COBOL with a bunch of machine-specific assembler for speed. I remember the porting of the compiler to the Convergent Tech system - just recompiled the C run time, copied across the compiler in its intermediate form, generate it using the back end and off you go (oh, after a crap load of testing).
Slashdot Mirror
"Online book purchases require broadband" - not so. Kindle runs over both Wi-Fi and 3G (hardly "broadband") and on it you can browse, select and purchase books, and magazines that are downloaded in less than a minute. Everyone in the US in range of a cell tower can have any book in their hands within a couple of minutes.
Amazon pays it's fucking taxes you jerk. It doesn't collect taxes in states on behalf of state government because it's not required to by Federal law. Don't like that fact, then fuck off and change the law. Otherwise, on with you business. (and how much have you sent to your state tax collection agency for stuff you bought on line and was delivered tax free.... oh, yeah, none. It's a long way to the ground from your high horse isn't it)
A quick check of Amazon.com shows many Yaoi Kindle and paperbacks available (please do check for yourselves). Clearly Amazon has not removed Yaoi from its store. Applying Occam's Razor perhaps there is a simpler explanation. Perhaps the quality of materials provided by the publisher are not suitable for digital publication (corrupt files, low resolution artwork etc); Perhaps they don't pay their bills or generate a lot of customer complaints? Rather than jumping to the easy-and-fun-to-be-indignant "censorship" cry, why not wait for facts (and continue buying Yaoi on Amazon, 'cos it's there).
getting hired? Not easily with a felony rap sheet.
Let's be clear, monopolies are not illegal. Illegality is only established when a monopoly is proven to be conducting itself in an anti-competitive nature.
Depends on the terms of service, which no one reads (have you read the Slashdot Terms of Service?). So they may or may not have the right to take it back from the people to whom they sold a license to the work (I've not read the license agreement - but neither have you so your post is speculative at best and may be downright incorrect). Data people, data.
But you "censor" every day when you choose what to watch (or not) on TV, or on the radio, or that which you read. By your argument that Amazon should be required to sell everything, you should be required to consume everything. Oh and while I'm at it - you're an idiot: "just like how 80% of all industries are monopolized by 3 to 4 corporations" it's called a monopoly because there is just one ("mono"), not "3 to 4". And i have no idea what you mean by your cliched "Business is about nothing" - Business is actually about transactions and exchange of value.
AltaVista is offering free searches to anyone still working at Pabst.....
www.onsmash.com
Actually it's the folks at SUN who promised to create an independent foundation and then didn't, who owe the explanation. Then again the contributors who poured in their valuable contributions and watched, and waited and hoped are likewise culpable - expectations do not a legally binding commitment make.
"It's a crime that Oracle is allowed to have their clutches on it."
What exactly is the criminal activity in which Oracle has engaged? Or is your comment just foot-stomping hyperbole?
The fact is that anyone working on the project knew under what basis they were working. Getting all petulant after the fact is hardly a compelling argument.
First they ignore you: ""
Then they ridicule you: "Ho ho - tiny little screen; who'd buy one of these toys?"
Then they fight you: "Crap - we better make our own ebook reader and screw around with pricing to protect ourselves. But we're kinda late and our pricing strategies are reactive and ill thought out"
Then they loose: "Double crap - all our best selling authors are now publishing their own book directly on the Kindle and taking 85% of the revenue rather than the 10% we used to give them. Ingrates!"
Feel free to bookmark this post and come back to it in 5 years time to see how it all came true.....
You know, after getting up in the wee small hours of the morning, driving miles to find a spot to observe the launch and having paid good cash for a video camera (and PC and editing software), you'd think that the joker that took the video would learn **how to pan with the moving object**!. That's "pan with the object" not wait until the object has left the frame and then jerk the camera up until it's at the bottom. And you know, you can buy cameras these days with image stabilization (or even stabilize in post). *very* frustrating video.
Not that I've read TFA, but isn't this what free market economics is supposed to prevent? When a single entity can have that kind of power, isn't it a monopoly?
Holding a dominant position or a monopoly in a market is not illegal in itself, a monopoly is said to be coercive when the monopoly firm actively prohibits competitors from entering the field. In this case authors have many choices regarding publication: traditional publishers, self-publication; Publishers have choice over to whom they sell their books: Amazon, B&N, Borders and 1000's of independent book stores; E-book readers are increasingly entering this market segment: Kindle, Nook and many other that we saw demonstrated at CES a few weeks ago.
So no. This is what free market economics is supposed to encourage. In my opinion, Amazon trying to keep prices down is a great thing. The fact that some authors chose to publish their books with MacMillan who tried to reduce their readership by jacking up the price should give incentive to said authors to find a better publisher that actually wants to increase their readership.
"that isn't company growth.
Sure it is Sherlock. Amazon just announced Q4 results: Revenue rose 42 percent to $9.52 billion.
Please tell me how that isn't growth...?
From the article: "Federal law says recording companies are entitled to $750 to $30,000 per illegally downloaded song - but a jury may raise that to as much as $150,000 per track if it finds the infringements were willful."
Huh? So it *is* possible to use the "cat walked on my keyboard" defense and win? How can downloading music without adhering to the defined licensing terms not be willful? Ignorance is no defense for breaking the law (no matter if if it is a good or bad law).
"The majority of amazon hires quit in under 2 years"
Bullshit. From where are you getting your data? Yes - Amazonians carry pagers when they are on call. Amazon engineers stand behind their code and their site and don't farm it off to teams in India or China like other companies.
To be on the list companies must submit their name for consideration. Amazon didn't, hence it's not on the list. Better things to do than self promotion I suspect ;-)
Which is no different than any system that gets hacked/taken over. There is a cost associated with the intrusions *somewhere* along the way. It may be a 3rd party hosting charge, bandwidth or just your time (which may be considerable) in repairing graffiti, clearing your good name etc.
"At will" employment scares me especially since you can be fired without any good reason.
Means you can also quite without any good reason too. Quid pro quo. And the practical upshot is that the vast majority of companies will only terminate you for a *good* reason (do you really think that there are that many capricious employers that love nothing more than to hire staff only to fire them the next day? Hiring is an expensive process).
Working hours are ludicrous which seems to stem from the "at will" factor - people are too scared not to work those extra hours for fear of being fired.
Well, as a European living and working in the US, I've not seen evidence of people being scared such that they work "extra" hours. That's the good thing about employment at will; don't like the conditions/management etc, then quit. I've spent plenty of time in Japan (boy, do those guys work long hours - no one leaves until the boss leaves the office) + Germany, and UK and France -- same deal world wide; those that want to further their career either work harder or smarter (and harder is easier than smarter and equates to longer hours). Try telling a prospective Olympic athlete that they only have to put in 40 hours a week and take 5 weeks vacation every year...
In the EU it is illegal to work more than 48 hours a week without special dispensation
Lolz - so if I want to work longer, to complete a project, to beat the competition to make my company more successful and thus make myself more successful I can't do it? Seems kinda dumb to me. Oh, and the times that I spent in Germany, UK, France etc - no one seemed to pay attention to this rule (except the clock-watchers who would do this in any country and who are destined to a life of mediocrity anyway)
The possessive form of the word is spelled "their" ;-)
Walmart has a physical operation in NC and the ability to collect and process taxes. Out of state vendors (Amazon being just one or many, many) does not. Don't forget that this law, if it passes, will impact all out of state eCommerce vendors. Perhaps the large ones will say "we do enough business in NC and will set up a physical presence to process tax" but the many, many smaller entities will just drop this state. That will be painful for them and their customers within the State.
"I'm told that the reason for certification is not safety, but culpability.
Now who told you that nonsense? Of course it's for safety...
Manager giving employee their annual review: "Nice work Bob - the fact that those planes crashed last year and all those people died, well shoot, shit happens. Good news is that you were able to pin the responsibility on those tweakers at Boeing so they could have their asses sued into oblivion. Good job. Raises and promotions all round!"
"That's racial discrimination and should be illegal..."
- Since Europe and the US have citizens from every race on the planet (and perhaps a few off-planet...) I don't know how you can say that. Perhaps you mean "geographical discrimination"?
- "Should be illegal" - why? As an owner, you may decide how your work or art is displayed, sold, licensed etc. Why must you be forced to distribute it in a certain geographic region (especially when you have to cover the cost of manufacturing, distribution, merchandising etc)? Would get us rapidly to the point where nothing would be created as the cost of being forced to distribute it (as it would be "illegal" not to do so...) in every territory that wanted it would be prohibitively expensive.
There were many reasons why Micro Focus' COBOL compilers were written in COBOL - a large one being "eat your own dog food" aka "drink your own champagne". Every improvement we made to the compiler wrt performance and features benefited both the compiler itself and the applications it compiled. Although the Compiler was written in COBOL, the run time system (on UNIX) was written in C. The Compiler back-end was written in COBOL with a bunch of machine-specific assembler for speed. I remember the porting of the compiler to the Convergent Tech system - just recompiled the C run time, copied across the compiler in its intermediate form, generate it using the back end and off you go (oh, after a crap load of testing).