You have the attitude of a serf, or of a "wage slave". Your boss needs you as much as you need him or her; that is the nature of your relationship, and why you are paid money to show up and do your job. It costs money to lose an employee. If a business turns over employees fast enough for long enough, it will die. Sure, many employers can take advantage of the fact they have hundreds of employees, and assign the extra work from a lost employee to other employees, but only so much, and only so often before those employees also leave. This is also why an organized group of workers have power to negotiate with their employer.
You still have vastly disproportionate bargaining power. Each employee has only one employer, but each employer has many employees. Which one do you think can afford to risk taking the other on in any kind of confrontation?
Most people don't want to lose their job to prove a point. As you correctly state, organised workers are the ones with real power to negotiate, because they have taken the step of aggregating their otherwise small bargaining power.
So, according to your system, the one person who buys the land at the top of the stream has the right to extort the rest of society for the privilege of drinking?
All engineered to standards that don't even exist yet.
So there you have it. If Apple is funding the development of technology to send their designers into the future, where they must then spend years infiltrating futuristic IEEE meetings before returning to the present to design laptops, then of course their machines will be a little more expensive.
But just think of the money you'll save when you can browse the Omninet using remote mind-control in 3245AD while those Dell suckers are stuck with forking out for Dell's by-then outdated brain-implant technology.
You will also get some brands of Windows laptop much cheaper by shopping around. In fact, Dell is one of the only companies who don't fall into this category.
Not to mention that the review picks Lenovo and Sony, two of the most expensive brands. Where is Asus, for instance?
To reply to my own post, knocking the 13" Macbook up to the same specs as the Lenovo in terms of RAM, HDD, and video out increases the price to $1,457.00, or $150-200 more than the Lenovo depending on whether we go by the "sale price" or the list price.
So in summary: yes, there is a "Mac tax" (which incidentally is a phrase which was in use long before MS adopted it).
There are many, many examples of how the 'reviewer' has simply picked the wrong comparisons. Sony and Lenovo are notoriously expensive. Generic Dells are notoriously crappy. And of course, where the Apple is deficient (e.g. hard disk space or RAM) the reviewer doesn't add the necessary upgrades at Apple's prices to make the price comparison fair, it simply ignores them.
I can't link to it because of Dell's site, but for about $100 more Dell currently has an XPS 1330 which whips the Macbook in virtually every respect: much better graphics, much more RAM and HDD, significantly faster CPU, bigger battery, better connectivity, and so on. Mysteriously, the reviewer has instead selected a relatively poor quality Dell as a comparison point.
Some other selections from TFA:
Those Windows cheapies are simply a different class of computer
How? This is not explained. Does "different class" mean "much cheaper?
I looked for ones with 13-inch screens and Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs, and I priced them in build-to-order configurations sold directly by the manufacturers so I could customize them to match the MacBook when possible.
I understand that the objective is to compare "like-for-like" and see whether Apple is adding a premium, but if an AMD chip (or a different Intel chip) offers comparable or better performance but is not available on a Mac, then how is that not part of the 'cost' of buying Apple? Limiting it to Core 2 Duo seems unneccessary. And why is it legitimate to reconfigure the competition, but not the Mac? Could it be that Apple savagely gouge you for any upgrades?
I configured the MacBook, white Macbook, and Sony with 160GB drives The Dell and Lenovo come with 25GGB ones. Theyâ(TM)re all 5400rpm models. ADVANTAGE: DELL AND LENOVO
Why not pay whatever Apple charges for the same capacity? One of the biggest Apple gouges is when you add RAM or storage to their preconfigured systems. Ignoring this is not justified.
Macs sometimes suffer in comparison to Windows PCs when it comes to the quantity of USB ports, but all these machines seems to provide just two of âem. PARITY
And yet, there would be hundreds of x86 laptops on the market that provide 4 or more.
Everybody can output to a VGA display, but the MacBook has the new DisplayPort connector, and you need to buy a $29 adapter to do VGAâ"but on the other hand, you can also buy a $99 dual-link adapter that can drive a 30-inch display. The white MacBook has mini-DVI, and also needs an extra cost adapter to do VGA. The Dell, Lenovo, and Sony have standard VGA connectors. Iâ(TM)ve going to give the ADVANTAGE to the MacBook for its power but also to the Dell, Lenovo, and Sony for their convenience.
Or you could pick a different Dell, like an XPS series model, and get HDMI, s-video and DVI as standard. In addition, the review does not appear to add in the cost of Apples various dongles and attachments.
Theyâ(TM)ve all got audio in, audio out, and a microphone; the MacBooks are the only ones with optical in and out, or at least the only ones that tout it. ADVANTAGE: BOTH MACBOOKS
HDMI equates to "optical out" and is arguably more useful for modern hi-fi equipment. I am relatively ignorant about audio in options.
Iâ(TM)m going to give the MacBook the ADVANTAGE here, for the aluminum case and near-seamless design
Again, this is simply a result of picking the wrong competition - again check out (for instance) Dell XPS laptops, which are extremely well built and solid.
I'm afraid you've rather missed the point of copyright in this type of situation (noting that Australia is not a part of the United States). It's not the factual information which receives protection, it's the compilation itself.
So for example, you can tell your friend that the news comes on at 10:00pm without infringing anyone's copyright. But you can't take the TV guide and reproduce it (either in its entirety, or a substantial part thereof) without infringing the copyright in the compilation.
The line which must be drawn in these cases is whether the compilation itself actually involved the expenditure of a minimum level of skill and labour to bring it within the copyright scheme. This will be a central issue on this appeal. Obviously with very basic information (e.g. a list of presidents and dates), there is less scope for any real expenditure of skill and labour.
No-one can ever copyright a fact, but they can copyright a particular expression of facts.
Thank you for succinctly explaining the philosophical difference between US and Australian copyright law, and indeed for pointing out that there is a difference.
In fact, you need to add a further distinction. Continental Europe tends to favour unassignable, everlasting rights held by the author of a work, whereas the UK and common law world is more inclined to allow the complete assignment of rights.
In Australia there are now 'moral rights' under the Copyright Act which remain with an author no matter what happens to the work itself (e.g. the right to attribution and against false attribution), so we have shifted towards a somewhat more continental view of copyright (thanks mostly to TRIPS).
Another key difference which apparently escapes our American friends in this discussion is the distinction between claiming copyright in a "fact" (which is not happening here) and claiming copyright in a compilation of facts (which is happening here). The fact that a particular program is on at a particular time cannot be protected under Australian copyright law, whereas the work which contains a compilation of such facts can be protected in some circumstances.
Because it is tritely applying US copyright law to a non-US jurisdiction, being Australia.
Copyright in the UK and Australia (and no doubt many other parts of the common law world) can in some circumstances protect works which do not contain anything which would be regarded as "creative" in the "creative expression" sense. Our law recognises copyright in a compilation is significant skill and labour are involved in its creation. The factual information contained in the work is not protected per se, but the work itself is (i.e. you cannot simply reproduce it verbatim without permission).
The appeal is not 'groundless'. Do you really think our High Court spends its time hearing pointless and trivial cases?
I should add that even under your own system (assuming you are American) there is no requirement that a work "contribute anything meaningful to society". Copyright protects expression, but there is no qualitative test which determines whether it does or does not attach to a particular work.
You cannot copyright a "fact", but you can copyright a compilation of factual information if sufficient skill and labour has gone into its production.
For example, I can tell you that The Simpsons is on at 6:30pm next Wednesday on a particular channel without infringing copyright. However, if I take the entire compilation comprised in your weekly TV schedule as published on your website, or a substantial part of it, and reproduce it, then I may well infringe copyright.
Many people here seem to be missing this distinction.
You're full of crap. If our elections are affecting you that much, that's your own fault. You should be electing leaders who would separate your country from ours as much as possible, instead of hitching your horses to our wagon (which is headed over a cliff).
Great, so you're going to withdraw all of your military forces back within your own borders like a normal country? And you'll abandon the Project for a New American Century and similar programs? And you're going to stop cranking out more greenhouse gases than countries double your size? Excellent, this is all fantastic. What's that? You'll even stop sponsoring nasty dicatorships to further your own interests because you've finally learnt the lessons of Afghanistan/Chile/Venezuela/Iraq/Iran/etc? Great! And you'll stop using your massive political, economic and military power to pressure other liberal democracies into following you down the road to an Orwellian super-state? Super.
Oh, no? You're not going to do all of that? Then in that case, I'm afraid US domestic politics will continue to be a very significant issue for the rest of us.
My vote this November is going to be for Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party.
Congratulations on choosing irrelevance on the basis of your own ignorance.
This is exactly the kind of attitude the OP was talking about. I find it ironic that there are engaged and interested people all over the world who would love to have your vote, yet you refuse to apply your brain and engage in the political process because the candidates don't differ on your pet issues.
From the perspective of the rest of the world, Barak "Let's Talk to Both Our Friends and Our Enemies" Obama is a lot less of a worry than John "Bomb-bomb-bomb, Bomb-bomb-Iran" McCain. Obama has had to talk tough during the campaign to avoid a smear campaign, but it's clear that he favours engagement and multilateralism. McCain appears to favour the 'Bush Doctrine'.
From a domestic perspective, I would have thought that Obama's consistent view, expressed both before and after the current financial crisis, that the Federal Government has a significant role to play in regulating financial markets would be dramatically more appealing than McCain's consistent view that the free market should be left to its own devices at all times, no matter how compelling the evidence to the contrary.
There is also the fact that McCain has shown himself ready and willing to cater to absolute lunatics on the religious right who are anti-science, anti-liberal democracy, and just generally scare the hell out of most sane people. I have seen no evidence that Obama will be similarly beholden. I do not want a person who will tolerate the assertion by their running mate that dinosaurs and humans coexisted in charge of a nuclear arsenal.
Finally, and probably most singificantly, the next President will probably replace three of the most liberal judges on the Supreme Court. Do you want men like Scalia and Roberts to dominate the Court, or do you want moderate/progressive judges to provide a counterbalance to the extreme conservatives on the bench at present? In practical terms, if McCain wins, Roe v Wade is gone, gun control laws are gone, separation of church and state is gone, limits on executive power are gone, and any form of affirmative action is gone. Those things seem pretty significant to me.
There's no doubt Obama has engaged in plenty of compromising. As you would be well aware, the nature of your political system is such that there are plenty of times when a vote is going to pass anyway so moderates on either side of the aisle will vote for it. It's stupid and it shouldn't be that way, but it also means that voting records are not an accurate reflection of ideology.
Although there is something intellectually repellant about it, you are very naive if you think that you don't, or can't, make certain judgments about people based upon appearance.
For one thing (and generalising horribly), from a biological point of view how attractive you find someone is likely to have some correlation to whether they are likely to be a good (i.e. successful) match for you, or for propagating your genes.
From a social point of view, the way someone looks and presents themself also communicates a large amount of information to you non-verbally. To me, the 'after' picture has the subtle look of someone who is attempting to present themself in conformity to a certain standard, which is not a standard I find particularly compelling.
Finally, is it impossible to think that someone who is conventionally pretty might be exposed to a different set of experiences to someone who is not regarded as such? This might natually have some impact on personality.
All of the above are generalisations. I totally agree that ideally one should not make snap judgments about people based on appearance. Nevertheless, I maintain that everyone does it, and that it is not entirely invalid (from a logical, not moral, point of view).
As for 'sexism', it is nothing of the sort. If it's anything, it's reverse discrimination against blandly pretty people, which is probably not all that high on the list of terrible things happening in the world today.
I fly Qantas all the time (unfortunately) and I have never heard any of that type of stuff. The typical Qantas script is:
1. You must watch this pointless video about what to do during a water landing (even though a wide bodied aircraft has never made a successful water landing).
2. Your mobile phone and, somehow, MP3 player can interfere with the craft's navigation and must be switched off for the first and last 20 minutes of flight (but of course despite the insane danger which this would pose, we won't require you to put them in your checked baggage).
3. Please buy some stuff from our in-flight shopping menu. Please.
4. Don't worry about the part which just fell off the plane, it was 'non-essential'.
That the 'before' picture is much more appealing. She has nice eyes and an interesting, engaging face. She looks like someone who would be worth talking to.
The 'after' picture looks like a generic pretty-but-not-beautiful girl. She looks like she would be interested in shopping and hairstyles. The world would be very boring if everyone looked like that.
I don't see how compulsory voting can be justified in a democracy, particularly where preferential voting means you basically have to vote for one of two parties in the end.
I would agree with it if there was a "none of the bastards" option on every ballot paper - indicating general disdain for the candidates on offer is a legitimate democratic right, IMHO.
Otherwise our system works reasonably well, although the power we give to the executive is getting a bit out of control.
Yes there's mostly two parties, but its much easier for smaller parties to actually win some seats and make a real difference and we've had a mostly stable system.
Minor parties have virtually no chance of winning a seat other than in the Senate, where they are more or less irrelevant unless they hold the balance of power.
Our system is pretty good in some ways, but I strongly, strongly object to being forced into choosing between voting for one of the major parties or voting for no-one at all (and having my vote recorded as "spoiled").
Australia should move to optional preferential voting in the lower house - number as many boxes as you want, but if you don't want to vote Labor or Liberal in the end, you don't have to.
So, you don't want anything posted on places like Facebook, showing a list of your friends along with articles you have written, journal entries, ties to items you have posted about, etc. But, you have no problem with the same on Slashdot?
Four friends listed A page filled with your posts to submitted articles Three journal entries Three fans
I know some people on Facebook that maintain some privacy: one never fills in all the fields or puts in erroneous information, one puts her middle name as her last name and posts an avatar instead of a photo.
And how, pray tell, is any of that linked to a real person in meatspace?
I have found an excellent compromise on Facebook is to use a fake name. I tell people who I actually want to add me as a friend who I am in Facebook-land, and it works well. The only downside is that it makes it harder for people to find me who I don't already have contact with already but... well, that's not really a downside. And anyone who actually knows me will work out who I am via my other friends or from photos.
No doubt teh Evil Facebook Corporation can still figure out who I am via the interactions I have with other people - but through a fairly simple tactic I've made that a lot harder than simply matching a name to a bunch of data.
Facebook also allows you to 'untag' yourself from other people's photos - the photo itself might remain, but it will not be linked to you in any obvious way.
GMail, similarly, can be used easily enough with a fake name.
Universities might think they are being quirky, hip and clever doing this stuff, but what they are really doing is legitimising the view that anything vaguely humanities-oriented is a waste of time and should not be funded by any government or serious organisation. Unis are already struggling for funds in these areas, so why give the critics actual ammunition to help them?
If they really want to do something useful, they could try to integrate humanities subjects into non-humanities disciplines, to restore the notion of getting a 'well rounded education' and to give students of those disciplines a broader, better developed understanding of their discipline's context in the world. E.g. get mathematicians study the history and psychology of maths; get lawyers to lawyers study criminology and sociology; get engineers to study subjects which encourage a more holistic understanding of the effect of their discipline and the ways in which it can help or damage humanity and the environment.
In fact, fuck it: every single degree should include a component of studying (real) literature and history. The reason why should be self-evident if you take a quick look at Ms Palin's attempted book-banning antics.
I have been an Apple customer from time to time and they annoy the absolute crap out of me. They deny problems, use proprietary software
Don't blame Apple for using proprietary software; Windows is just as proprietary as Mac OS X. The only way I can see to get away completely from proprietary software is to use coreboot + gNewSense.
Perhaps I should have been more specific - I was referring to (for example) the lock-in of ipod+itunes+quicktime, which can only be circumvented using a hack (e.g. Winamp 5 does a reasonable job of this).
In comparison, there are Windows-based hardware/software music combinations which allow you to use whatever you want as your music software and don't require you to install bundled media player software.
However, the reason for Apple's popularity is a massive generalisation:
Apple appeals to more and more consumers because the hardware is slick, the price is OK, and Apple doesn't annoy its customers (or allow third parties to).
The hardware is slick, but it seems to be getting worse (or being exposed to more scrutiny) as it becomes more and more mainstream. The hardware also has little to do with MS and its products success or failure, in the sense that it is perfectly possible to spend Apple-type dollars on a Windows PC and get a very solid, high performance machine.
The price is ok - I won't restart that debate but it remains the case that Apple is typically somewhat pricier for the equivalent hardware.
But the last part really annoys me - I have been an Apple customer from time to time and they annoy the absolute crap out of me. They deny problems, use proprietary software, aggressively attack anyone who attempts to open up their hardware platforms, and generally act in a self-righteous manner.
What Microsoft needs to realise is not that Apple is gaining on it because it "just works", it is gaining because it works at all, unlike many aspects of Vista.* There are plenty of ways to attack Apple, but unless you have a product that is at least competently made there is no way you can do it.
A case in point is the revised Zune - it looks like in many ways (other than MS's bullshit DRM/proprietary interface stuff) it is the equal of the equivalent ipod. If MS can do the same with its OS, then suddenly it has a product as good as Apple and 80%+ of the PC market already in its corner.
* and yes, I do know what I'm talking about, I have done several Vista uninstalls which have dramatically improved stability and performance of new laptops
Slashdot Mirror
You have the attitude of a serf, or of a "wage slave". Your boss needs you as much as you need him or her; that is the nature of your relationship, and why you are paid money to show up and do your job. It costs money to lose an employee. If a business turns over employees fast enough for long enough, it will die. Sure, many employers can take advantage of the fact they have hundreds of employees, and assign the extra work from a lost employee to other employees, but only so much, and only so often before those employees also leave. This is also why an organized group of workers have power to negotiate with their employer.
You still have vastly disproportionate bargaining power. Each employee has only one employer, but each employer has many employees. Which one do you think can afford to risk taking the other on in any kind of confrontation?
Most people don't want to lose their job to prove a point. As you correctly state, organised workers are the ones with real power to negotiate, because they have taken the step of aggregating their otherwise small bargaining power.
So, according to your system, the one person who buys the land at the top of the stream has the right to extort the rest of society for the privilege of drinking?
How can it support a standard which doesn't exist yet?
A device which doesn't exist but which will conform to a standard which does exist, maybe. But a standard which doesn't exist?
From Apple's Macbook mini-site:
So there you have it. If Apple is funding the development of technology to send their designers into the future, where they must then spend years infiltrating futuristic IEEE meetings before returning to the present to design laptops, then of course their machines will be a little more expensive.
But just think of the money you'll save when you can browse the Omninet using remote mind-control in 3245AD while those Dell suckers are stuck with forking out for Dell's by-then outdated brain-implant technology.
Interesting. Does Apple offer a refund for OS X to make itself competitive in this regard?
You will also get some brands of Windows laptop much cheaper by shopping around. In fact, Dell is one of the only companies who don't fall into this category.
Not to mention that the review picks Lenovo and Sony, two of the most expensive brands. Where is Asus, for instance?
To reply to my own post, knocking the 13" Macbook up to the same specs as the Lenovo in terms of RAM, HDD, and video out increases the price to $1,457.00, or $150-200 more than the Lenovo depending on whether we go by the "sale price" or the list price.
So in summary: yes, there is a "Mac tax" (which incidentally is a phrase which was in use long before MS adopted it).
There are many, many examples of how the 'reviewer' has simply picked the wrong comparisons. Sony and Lenovo are notoriously expensive. Generic Dells are notoriously crappy. And of course, where the Apple is deficient (e.g. hard disk space or RAM) the reviewer doesn't add the necessary upgrades at Apple's prices to make the price comparison fair, it simply ignores them.
I can't link to it because of Dell's site, but for about $100 more Dell currently has an XPS 1330 which whips the Macbook in virtually every respect: much better graphics, much more RAM and HDD, significantly faster CPU, bigger battery, better connectivity, and so on. Mysteriously, the reviewer has instead selected a relatively poor quality Dell as a comparison point.
Some other selections from TFA:
How? This is not explained. Does "different class" mean "much cheaper?
I understand that the objective is to compare "like-for-like" and see whether Apple is adding a premium, but if an AMD chip (or a different Intel chip) offers comparable or better performance but is not available on a Mac, then how is that not part of the 'cost' of buying Apple? Limiting it to Core 2 Duo seems unneccessary. And why is it legitimate to reconfigure the competition, but not the Mac? Could it be that Apple savagely gouge you for any upgrades?
Why not pay whatever Apple charges for the same capacity? One of the biggest Apple gouges is when you add RAM or storage to their preconfigured systems. Ignoring this is not justified.
And yet, there would be hundreds of x86 laptops on the market that provide 4 or more.
Or you could pick a different Dell, like an XPS series model, and get HDMI, s-video and DVI as standard. In addition, the review does not appear to add in the cost of Apples various dongles and attachments.
HDMI equates to "optical out" and is arguably more useful for modern hi-fi equipment. I am relatively ignorant about audio in options.
Again, this is simply a result of picking the wrong competition - again check out (for instance) Dell XPS laptops, which are extremely well built and solid.
I'm afraid you've rather missed the point of copyright in this type of situation (noting that Australia is not a part of the United States). It's not the factual information which receives protection, it's the compilation itself.
So for example, you can tell your friend that the news comes on at 10:00pm without infringing anyone's copyright. But you can't take the TV guide and reproduce it (either in its entirety, or a substantial part thereof) without infringing the copyright in the compilation.
The line which must be drawn in these cases is whether the compilation itself actually involved the expenditure of a minimum level of skill and labour to bring it within the copyright scheme. This will be a central issue on this appeal. Obviously with very basic information (e.g. a list of presidents and dates), there is less scope for any real expenditure of skill and labour.
No-one can ever copyright a fact, but they can copyright a particular expression of facts.
Thank you for succinctly explaining the philosophical difference between US and Australian copyright law, and indeed for pointing out that there is a difference.
In fact, you need to add a further distinction. Continental Europe tends to favour unassignable, everlasting rights held by the author of a work, whereas the UK and common law world is more inclined to allow the complete assignment of rights.
In Australia there are now 'moral rights' under the Copyright Act which remain with an author no matter what happens to the work itself (e.g. the right to attribution and against false attribution), so we have shifted towards a somewhat more continental view of copyright (thanks mostly to TRIPS).
Another key difference which apparently escapes our American friends in this discussion is the distinction between claiming copyright in a "fact" (which is not happening here) and claiming copyright in a compilation of facts (which is happening here). The fact that a particular program is on at a particular time cannot be protected under Australian copyright law, whereas the work which contains a compilation of such facts can be protected in some circumstances.
Because it is tritely applying US copyright law to a non-US jurisdiction, being Australia.
Copyright in the UK and Australia (and no doubt many other parts of the common law world) can in some circumstances protect works which do not contain anything which would be regarded as "creative" in the "creative expression" sense. Our law recognises copyright in a compilation is significant skill and labour are involved in its creation. The factual information contained in the work is not protected per se, but the work itself is (i.e. you cannot simply reproduce it verbatim without permission).
The appeal is not 'groundless'. Do you really think our High Court spends its time hearing pointless and trivial cases?
I should add that even under your own system (assuming you are American) there is no requirement that a work "contribute anything meaningful to society". Copyright protects expression, but there is no qualitative test which determines whether it does or does not attach to a particular work.
IAAAL (I am an Australian lawyer).
You cannot copyright a "fact", but you can copyright a compilation of factual information if sufficient skill and labour has gone into its production.
For example, I can tell you that The Simpsons is on at 6:30pm next Wednesday on a particular channel without infringing copyright. However, if I take the entire compilation comprised in your weekly TV schedule as published on your website, or a substantial part of it, and reproduce it, then I may well infringe copyright.
Many people here seem to be missing this distinction.
that John McCain changed your name from "Joe Sixpack" to "Joe the Plumber" last night, actually.
Great, so you're going to withdraw all of your military forces back within your own borders like a normal country? And you'll abandon the Project for a New American Century and similar programs? And you're going to stop cranking out more greenhouse gases than countries double your size? Excellent, this is all fantastic. What's that? You'll even stop sponsoring nasty dicatorships to further your own interests because you've finally learnt the lessons of Afghanistan/Chile/Venezuela/Iraq/Iran/etc? Great! And you'll stop using your massive political, economic and military power to pressure other liberal democracies into following you down the road to an Orwellian super-state? Super.
Oh, no? You're not going to do all of that? Then in that case, I'm afraid US domestic politics will continue to be a very significant issue for the rest of us.
Congratulations on choosing irrelevance on the basis of your own ignorance.
This is exactly the kind of attitude the OP was talking about. I find it ironic that there are engaged and interested people all over the world who would love to have your vote, yet you refuse to apply your brain and engage in the political process because the candidates don't differ on your pet issues.
From the perspective of the rest of the world, Barak "Let's Talk to Both Our Friends and Our Enemies" Obama is a lot less of a worry than John "Bomb-bomb-bomb, Bomb-bomb-Iran" McCain. Obama has had to talk tough during the campaign to avoid a smear campaign, but it's clear that he favours engagement and multilateralism. McCain appears to favour the 'Bush Doctrine'.
From a domestic perspective, I would have thought that Obama's consistent view, expressed both before and after the current financial crisis, that the Federal Government has a significant role to play in regulating financial markets would be dramatically more appealing than McCain's consistent view that the free market should be left to its own devices at all times, no matter how compelling the evidence to the contrary.
There is also the fact that McCain has shown himself ready and willing to cater to absolute lunatics on the religious right who are anti-science, anti-liberal democracy, and just generally scare the hell out of most sane people. I have seen no evidence that Obama will be similarly beholden. I do not want a person who will tolerate the assertion by their running mate that dinosaurs and humans coexisted in charge of a nuclear arsenal.
Finally, and probably most singificantly, the next President will probably replace three of the most liberal judges on the Supreme Court. Do you want men like Scalia and Roberts to dominate the Court, or do you want moderate/progressive judges to provide a counterbalance to the extreme conservatives on the bench at present? In practical terms, if McCain wins, Roe v Wade is gone, gun control laws are gone, separation of church and state is gone, limits on executive power are gone, and any form of affirmative action is gone. Those things seem pretty significant to me.
There's no doubt Obama has engaged in plenty of compromising. As you would be well aware, the nature of your political system is such that there are plenty of times when a vote is going to pass anyway so moderates on either side of the aisle will vote for it. It's stupid and it shouldn't be that way, but it also means that voting records are not an accurate reflection of ideology.
Although there is something intellectually repellant about it, you are very naive if you think that you don't, or can't, make certain judgments about people based upon appearance.
For one thing (and generalising horribly), from a biological point of view how attractive you find someone is likely to have some correlation to whether they are likely to be a good (i.e. successful) match for you, or for propagating your genes.
From a social point of view, the way someone looks and presents themself also communicates a large amount of information to you non-verbally. To me, the 'after' picture has the subtle look of someone who is attempting to present themself in conformity to a certain standard, which is not a standard I find particularly compelling.
Finally, is it impossible to think that someone who is conventionally pretty might be exposed to a different set of experiences to someone who is not regarded as such? This might natually have some impact on personality.
All of the above are generalisations. I totally agree that ideally one should not make snap judgments about people based on appearance. Nevertheless, I maintain that everyone does it, and that it is not entirely invalid (from a logical, not moral, point of view).
As for 'sexism', it is nothing of the sort. If it's anything, it's reverse discrimination against blandly pretty people, which is probably not all that high on the list of terrible things happening in the world today.
I fly Qantas all the time (unfortunately) and I have never heard any of that type of stuff. The typical Qantas script is:
1. You must watch this pointless video about what to do during a water landing (even though a wide bodied aircraft has never made a successful water landing).
2. Your mobile phone and, somehow, MP3 player can interfere with the craft's navigation and must be switched off for the first and last 20 minutes of flight (but of course despite the insane danger which this would pose, we won't require you to put them in your checked baggage).
3. Please buy some stuff from our in-flight shopping menu. Please.
4. Don't worry about the part which just fell off the plane, it was 'non-essential'.
That the 'before' picture is much more appealing. She has nice eyes and an interesting, engaging face. She looks like someone who would be worth talking to.
The 'after' picture looks like a generic pretty-but-not-beautiful girl. She looks like she would be interested in shopping and hairstyles. The world would be very boring if everyone looked like that.
I don't see how compulsory voting can be justified in a democracy, particularly where preferential voting means you basically have to vote for one of two parties in the end.
I would agree with it if there was a "none of the bastards" option on every ballot paper - indicating general disdain for the candidates on offer is a legitimate democratic right, IMHO.
Otherwise our system works reasonably well, although the power we give to the executive is getting a bit out of control.
I'm not advocating a two-party system as perfect. I just can't see anything better in practice today.
Australian system, compulsory preferential voting and proportional representation in the upper house.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_electoral_system
Yes there's mostly two parties, but its much easier for smaller parties to actually win some seats and make a real difference and we've had a mostly stable system.
Minor parties have virtually no chance of winning a seat other than in the Senate, where they are more or less irrelevant unless they hold the balance of power.
Our system is pretty good in some ways, but I strongly, strongly object to being forced into choosing between voting for one of the major parties or voting for no-one at all (and having my vote recorded as "spoiled").
Australia should move to optional preferential voting in the lower house - number as many boxes as you want, but if you don't want to vote Labor or Liberal in the end, you don't have to.
So, you don't want anything posted on places like Facebook, showing a list of your friends along with articles you have written, journal entries, ties to items you have posted about, etc. But, you have no problem with the same on Slashdot?
Four friends listed
A page filled with your posts to submitted articles
Three journal entries
Three fans
I know some people on Facebook that maintain some privacy: one never fills in all the fields or puts in erroneous information, one puts her middle name as her last name and posts an avatar instead of a photo.
And how, pray tell, is any of that linked to a real person in meatspace?
I have found an excellent compromise on Facebook is to use a fake name. I tell people who I actually want to add me as a friend who I am in Facebook-land, and it works well. The only downside is that it makes it harder for people to find me who I don't already have contact with already but... well, that's not really a downside. And anyone who actually knows me will work out who I am via my other friends or from photos.
No doubt teh Evil Facebook Corporation can still figure out who I am via the interactions I have with other people - but through a fairly simple tactic I've made that a lot harder than simply matching a name to a bunch of data.
Facebook also allows you to 'untag' yourself from other people's photos - the photo itself might remain, but it will not be linked to you in any obvious way.
GMail, similarly, can be used easily enough with a fake name.
Agree.
Universities might think they are being quirky, hip and clever doing this stuff, but what they are really doing is legitimising the view that anything vaguely humanities-oriented is a waste of time and should not be funded by any government or serious organisation. Unis are already struggling for funds in these areas, so why give the critics actual ammunition to help them?
If they really want to do something useful, they could try to integrate humanities subjects into non-humanities disciplines, to restore the notion of getting a 'well rounded education' and to give students of those disciplines a broader, better developed understanding of their discipline's context in the world. E.g. get mathematicians study the history and psychology of maths; get lawyers to lawyers study criminology and sociology; get engineers to study subjects which encourage a more holistic understanding of the effect of their discipline and the ways in which it can help or damage humanity and the environment.
In fact, fuck it: every single degree should include a component of studying (real) literature and history. The reason why should be self-evident if you take a quick look at Ms Palin's attempted book-banning antics.
I have been an Apple customer from time to time and they annoy the absolute crap out of me. They deny problems, use proprietary software
Don't blame Apple for using proprietary software; Windows is just as proprietary as Mac OS X. The only way I can see to get away completely from proprietary software is to use coreboot + gNewSense.
Perhaps I should have been more specific - I was referring to (for example) the lock-in of ipod+itunes+quicktime, which can only be circumvented using a hack (e.g. Winamp 5 does a reasonable job of this).
In comparison, there are Windows-based hardware/software music combinations which allow you to use whatever you want as your music software and don't require you to install bundled media player software.
There's no question Apple is improving its brand.
However, the reason for Apple's popularity is a massive generalisation:
The hardware is slick, but it seems to be getting worse (or being exposed to more scrutiny) as it becomes more and more mainstream. The hardware also has little to do with MS and its products success or failure, in the sense that it is perfectly possible to spend Apple-type dollars on a Windows PC and get a very solid, high performance machine.
The price is ok - I won't restart that debate but it remains the case that Apple is typically somewhat pricier for the equivalent hardware.
But the last part really annoys me - I have been an Apple customer from time to time and they annoy the absolute crap out of me. They deny problems, use proprietary software, aggressively attack anyone who attempts to open up their hardware platforms, and generally act in a self-righteous manner.
What Microsoft needs to realise is not that Apple is gaining on it because it "just works", it is gaining because it works at all, unlike many aspects of Vista.* There are plenty of ways to attack Apple, but unless you have a product that is at least competently made there is no way you can do it.
A case in point is the revised Zune - it looks like in many ways (other than MS's bullshit DRM/proprietary interface stuff) it is the equal of the equivalent ipod. If MS can do the same with its OS, then suddenly it has a product as good as Apple and 80%+ of the PC market already in its corner.
* and yes, I do know what I'm talking about, I have done several Vista uninstalls which have dramatically improved stability and performance of new laptops