What about those who haven't opted out, either because they can't (mentally ill, non-residents), or they want to leave that decision to the survivors?
If someone is incapable of understanding organ donation due to being mentally ill when they were alive then they won't care one way or the other when they are dead. Non residents are not necessarily covered by these sorts of laws, so I am sure their needs can be accommodated. If you want your relatives to decide, then tough luck. The problem is that too many people are doing exactly this, which results in too few organ donations.
The doctors might see your organ as dollar signs.
As I already said, I think most doctors are ethical people who care about their patients. But if you are really concerned, then make it so that the doctor who treats a patient cannot benefit from any organ harvesting. It could be done by a central body run by the government.
I am impressed! That has to be the first time that I have seen someone who claims not to be a prude-butt actually turn out not be a prude-butt. When a phrase begins with "I'm not a [prude|racist|grammar nazi], but...", it is usually followed with a statement that is incredibly [prudish|racist|linguistically pedantec*]. It is nice that your post contained no moral judgements (other than that disease and the slave trade is bad).
We have legal prostitution in Australia, but it hasn't completely wiped out the illegal brothels with women forced to participate. The example in the article would still be illegal here. That said, legalised brothels (which have rules like you advocated) are still much better than sweeping the problem under the carpet.
-------- * It is also traditional for grammar nazis to include one mistake of their own.
Considering that icebraining advocated that there should be an opt-out for organ donation, then you are worried for no reason because you still have the option to refuse. In fact, being on an opt-out list would mean that the doctors would know that it wasn't worth their time to stop resuscitation early so they can go badger the wife. So you could end up being safer.
That said, I think that 99.99% of doctors would behave more ethically than you describe. And there can be systems in place that require a second opinion from someone on an ethics board before any organ harvesting can take place.
It would simplify things (and be fairer) if the same registry for organ donation was also used as the list of the eligible recipients of organs. Any risk of the rare case of someone dying early for their organs would be offset by the benefit of the far less rare case of requiring an organ transplant.
There is very little benefit in having open source software which people can't alter and distribute because it would infringe on someone's patent. That is not open. Of course they could always write a statement promising not to sue over patent infringement, but that would water down the patent.
And we are all free not the respond. So, as a weapon it is entirely ineffective. The power is in the response, not the speech.
You are incorrect. The power is not in the response, because if it was then Assange could just ignore the PM's claim and there would be no problem. But there was a problem. In this case MasterCard has allegedly based (at least in part) their decision to block the payments on the government's statement.
And what if MasterCard didn't block the payment? They could have conceivably ended up facing a public backlash against them because they were seen to facilitate the funding of an alleged illegal group. So the original incorrect claim could have had repercussions all the way down the line. If that scenario happened, what could MasterCard do to prevent it? You think that Assange should sue MasterCard, so does that mean you think that MasterCard should sue all their customers that stopped using their credit card in protest?
So you see, the power of defamation is can be far reaching. If you think that this is a free speech issue, then why should people be allowed to make false and damaging claims about anyone? Whose best interest does this serve?
Actually, I made no judgement call at all one way or the other. I was talking about the legal tactics of MasterCard's defense and of Assange needing to address the actual defamation that they allege has occurred rather than an outcome of that defamation claim.
You hold them accountable for what they do, not what they say.
But talking is what politicians do. It is their main weapon.
This is a textbook case of how defamation can result in actual material loss. It is obvious from your statements that you disagree with the defamation law, but right now it is a law on our books and so it is quite justifiable to sue the Prime Minister for this. If you are so against the practice then lobby your representative to change the law, but I doubt that you will be successful.
It would be premature to sue MasterCard when they can fall back on the defense that they relied on the statements of the Prime Minister. Deferring to the authority of the government seems quite reasonable and makes for a compelling defense.
The first step is to have the original statement ruled as libelous before tackling MasterCard. They can still say that they acted in good faith at the time, but it means that they could not as easily justify continuing to block payments to Wikileaks.
WHOOOOOSHHH That's the joke blowing right past you.
There was no joke, just some sarcastic diatribe. The sound you meant to say was "WHOOOOOSHHH THUMP", because that was the sound of your alleged "joke" calling flat.
What I do is open the message that I want to mod in a new window and mod it there. That way I know that I am modding the message that I want to mod, and that I will not accidentally change the mod with the mouse wheel. I can also see if anyone else has modded the message since I first loaded the page.
I guess it is like previewing the mods in reverse.
That's an interesting analogy. I am curious as to how you think that it is dumbed-down. What features in Office got lost in the move from menus to the ribbon? Also, I think you are underplaying just how much text is on the ribbons. It is not just pictures and icons.
As I said previously, I was a passionate hater of the ribbon when I first used it, so I can identify with your feelings on the subject. But I can't agree with your final paragraph. I am not going to magically forget how to use other user interfaces just because I start using the ribbon. Similarly, my knowledge of my iPhone (which has no drop down menus) has not rendered me incapable of using a desktop computer.
I hated the Ribbon in Office 2007 for a few reasons.
I had to re-learn where everything was.
Microsoft's rule that an option could not appear on multiple ribbons meant that some things on the home ribbon were isolated from their related options on other ribbons.
It failed the telephone test because it became harder to talk someone through an unfamiliar operation to them.
The important ribbon that had the file open and save functions was hidden behind what just looked like a logo. They did fix this with Office 2010.
But having watched the staff at my company use Office 2003, I came to realise that the ribbon was an excellent invention for them. Most of them refused to use menus, instead prefering the toolbar for absolutely everything. Even when I stood next to them and told them which menu to choose, they would slowly hover over every single button on the toolbars trying to find the function they wanted. I used to find this extremely frustrating. But now they have got used to the new layout, the ribbon makes it much easier for them to navigate having to go near a menu.
Oh, and as a tablet user of Windows from way back, I can see the advantage of the ribbon when controlling the OS with a pen or your finger. It wasn't until I realised that this new system wasn't just replacing the menus, it was replacing the menus and dialog boxes. So while some things may take more clicks, other take much fewer. I now find myself less tolerant of large portions of the screen changing with a popup windows. Having most options available on the ribbon is a much more serene experience.
Which is why I hate Windows 8. Changing the start menu into a full screen popup is a completely jarring experience. And if I hated the ribbon that was hidden behind what looked like a decoration, you can image how much I hate having to click in the space where the start button used to be to access the horrible metro interface. How intuitive is that? Not very. It is as Paul Allen said: puzzling and confusing.
Did you miss the bit in the summary about cycling saving money by making people healthier?
I certainly can't find that part of the summary about saving money. A lifetime of constant care for someone with a head injury is going to be very expensive.
The problem isn't just with manuals. It starts with a website. As a programmer, you might rely on other people to write your documentation but those people will never even learn your product without knowing what the hell it does.
I have lost track of the number of times that I have stumbled upon a project's website only to be confronted with a changelog rather than a description of the product. There have been some (mostly open source) programs where I have eventually left the site without ever finding out what the software was actually for.
Every webpage should have a short statement of what the project is designed to do, along with what OS it runs on. You don't have to be a great tech writer to do it, just imagine what a complete newbie would want to see the first time they happen across your site.
Don't assume that your audience are also programmers and you might just get people interested who can actually write your documentation for you.
Try searching again without surrounding the phrase with quotes. If you let Google do a partial match then it will find plenty of pages with variations on the saying. EG. Never put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear.
It is an old saying telling you not to stick things in your ear to clean it of earwax. Not only can you cause damage, but you lose the benefits of earwax.
So why mention the elbow? Because it won't fit in you ear, and you also can't touch your ear with your elbow even if it did fit.
i don't think that they were fined 300%, but that the reduce the excess by the time Mixrosoft gad used $70k's worth if power. From the article:
The utility board capitulated and reduced the amend to $60k
If nothing else, using that much electricity in one burst is a negotiating tactic as it puts a lot more pressure on the infrastructure than if it had been part of an increase over the entire year. They may have even needed to buy in power from other, perhaps more dirty sources to cope with the peak demand.
Where did you find it on the website where they said it had to run on Windows? All I found was that it had to use the SLC API, which uses the Java SDK. In theory it should run on any platform.
I could be wrong though. I am current browsing on my iPhone, and it a pain to navigate the site in on the mobile.
For all the bad things that Microsoft has done, abusing user expectations of privacy was not one. As far as I can remember, it have always been upfront about what it does with user information, and generally allow opt-out settings.
I always prefer other search engines because Google have its hooks in too many webpages with Analytics and advertising that it can track back to my gmail account.
Why would people who pirate things not use an anonymizing proxy? Is there something about the bidirectional aspect of bittorrent protocol that stops this working?
I tried one for web browsing when they were discussing the establishment of the great firewall of Australia (which failed to eventuate), and while it did slow things down, it seemed to work fine. Websites that guessed at my location would be completely wrong.
The question was "Are Commercial Games Finally Going To Make It To Linux?", and MrEricSir answered quite correctly. Commercial games have been made for Linux in the past. It is true that the lack of success previously does not present a good case for the assumptions made in the summary because it is entirely based on the idea that the major games have never been ported before, and so if they did it now then they would find a viable market.
It is fairly obvious really. There are two statements to this argument:
Nobody will use Linux because there are no good games.
There is a viable market for games on Linux.
If it is true that the lack of games is holding Linux back, then this obviously means that the game buying public have not yet moved to the OS. To put it another way, if there already was an untapped market of gamers on this platform then it would not be true that the lack of games was holding Linux back.
That said, with the clout of Steam behind this push, there is a much greater chance of success this time around. This is because some gamers will follow Steam to Linux rather than due to the existing Linux users buying the games themselves. This is why the Humble Bundles sell so well on Linux. The existing users are not that interested in gaming (otherwise they would use Windows), and so the appeal of the casual indie games is high.
The biggest problem with this whole idea is that if the gamers move from Windows to Linux because there are games available, all you have done is fragment the market rather than grow into a new userbase. There doesn't seem to be any real advantage to the AAA game publishers to start supporting a new platform.
Wikipedia describes the OS as open source. I tried to look it up, but my knowledge of any language other than English is virtually non-existent. You would need to ask a native speaker who owns the phone to tell for sure.
Well, if we're going to play Microsoft analogies, you could say that Alibaba is attempting to play "embrace and extingush".
No, if they were playing the embrace and extinguish game then they would need to call their OS Android. If they are merely forking the code and calling it by another name (Aliyun OS) then it is more like LibreOffice vs OpenOffice.org.
What Microsoft did was refuse to sell Windows to OEMs who also offered competitive products like DR-DOS.
No, Microsoft sold Windows to OEMs at substantial discounts if they exclusively used the OS. They did not refuse to sell to them at all.
Google have described Aliyun as "an incomplete version of Android". This is the same argument levelled against Google when they used Java technology in Android. In that case Google also didn't attempt to call their product Java, and in my opinion this should mean that what Google did was perfectly acceptable. The same defense applies to Alibaba's OS too.
It seems quite reasonable for Google to want to distance themselves from Aliyun OS, but is it reasonable for them to then say that Acer is also cut off from Google for any Android branded smartphone too? That is an attempt to bully an OEM into only using Android exclusively. That is even worse than what Microsoft did, and it sucks.
Look... I'm a fan of shock humor and make grossly inappropriate jokes myself. But you *always* have to consider audience and context if you don't want to come off as an ass.
True, and if the original joke had been told to a support group of victims of domestic violence then it would be inappropriate. But this is Slashdot. It's a bunch of mostly male nerds.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you think they are embracing and extending? How are the 3 Es relevant in this case?
What about those who haven't opted out, either because they can't (mentally ill, non-residents), or they want to leave that decision to the survivors?
If someone is incapable of understanding organ donation due to being mentally ill when they were alive then they won't care one way or the other when they are dead. Non residents are not necessarily covered by these sorts of laws, so I am sure their needs can be accommodated. If you want your relatives to decide, then tough luck. The problem is that too many people are doing exactly this, which results in too few organ donations.
The doctors might see your organ as dollar signs.
As I already said, I think most doctors are ethical people who care about their patients. But if you are really concerned, then make it so that the doctor who treats a patient cannot benefit from any organ harvesting. It could be done by a central body run by the government.
I am impressed! That has to be the first time that I have seen someone who claims not to be a prude-butt actually turn out not be a prude-butt. When a phrase begins with "I'm not a [prude|racist|grammar nazi], but ...", it is usually followed with a statement that is incredibly [prudish|racist|linguistically pedantec*]. It is nice that your post contained no moral judgements (other than that disease and the slave trade is bad).
We have legal prostitution in Australia, but it hasn't completely wiped out the illegal brothels with women forced to participate. The example in the article would still be illegal here. That said, legalised brothels (which have rules like you advocated) are still much better than sweeping the problem under the carpet.
--------
* It is also traditional for grammar nazis to include one mistake of their own.
Considering that icebraining advocated that there should be an opt-out for organ donation, then you are worried for no reason because you still have the option to refuse. In fact, being on an opt-out list would mean that the doctors would know that it wasn't worth their time to stop resuscitation early so they can go badger the wife. So you could end up being safer.
That said, I think that 99.99% of doctors would behave more ethically than you describe. And there can be systems in place that require a second opinion from someone on an ethics board before any organ harvesting can take place.
It would simplify things (and be fairer) if the same registry for organ donation was also used as the list of the eligible recipients of organs. Any risk of the rare case of someone dying early for their organs would be offset by the benefit of the far less rare case of requiring an organ transplant.
There is very little benefit in having open source software which people can't alter and distribute because it would infringe on someone's patent. That is not open. Of course they could always write a statement promising not to sue over patent infringement, but that would water down the patent.
It is their main weapon.
And we are all free not the respond. So, as a weapon it is entirely ineffective. The power is in the response, not the speech.
You are incorrect. The power is not in the response, because if it was then Assange could just ignore the PM's claim and there would be no problem. But there was a problem. In this case MasterCard has allegedly based (at least in part) their decision to block the payments on the government's statement.
And what if MasterCard didn't block the payment? They could have conceivably ended up facing a public backlash against them because they were seen to facilitate the funding of an alleged illegal group. So the original incorrect claim could have had repercussions all the way down the line. If that scenario happened, what could MasterCard do to prevent it? You think that Assange should sue MasterCard, so does that mean you think that MasterCard should sue all their customers that stopped using their credit card in protest?
So you see, the power of defamation is can be far reaching. If you think that this is a free speech issue, then why should people be allowed to make false and damaging claims about anyone? Whose best interest does this serve?
Actually, I made no judgement call at all one way or the other. I was talking about the legal tactics of MasterCard's defense and of Assange needing to address the actual defamation that they allege has occurred rather than an outcome of that defamation claim.
You hold them accountable for what they do, not what they say.
But talking is what politicians do. It is their main weapon.
This is a textbook case of how defamation can result in actual material loss. It is obvious from your statements that you disagree with the defamation law, but right now it is a law on our books and so it is quite justifiable to sue the Prime Minister for this. If you are so against the practice then lobby your representative to change the law, but I doubt that you will be successful.
He should sue MasterCard.
It would be premature to sue MasterCard when they can fall back on the defense that they relied on the statements of the Prime Minister. Deferring to the authority of the government seems quite reasonable and makes for a compelling defense.
The first step is to have the original statement ruled as libelous before tackling MasterCard. They can still say that they acted in good faith at the time, but it means that they could not as easily justify continuing to block payments to Wikileaks.
WHOOOOOSHHH That's the joke blowing right past you.
There was no joke, just some sarcastic diatribe. The sound you meant to say was "WHOOOOOSHHH THUMP", because that was the sound of your alleged "joke" calling flat.
What I do is open the message that I want to mod in a new window and mod it there. That way I know that I am modding the message that I want to mod, and that I will not accidentally change the mod with the mouse wheel. I can also see if anyone else has modded the message since I first loaded the page.
I guess it is like previewing the mods in reverse.
That's an interesting analogy. I am curious as to how you think that it is dumbed-down. What features in Office got lost in the move from menus to the ribbon? Also, I think you are underplaying just how much text is on the ribbons. It is not just pictures and icons.
As I said previously, I was a passionate hater of the ribbon when I first used it, so I can identify with your feelings on the subject. But I can't agree with your final paragraph. I am not going to magically forget how to use other user interfaces just because I start using the ribbon. Similarly, my knowledge of my iPhone (which has no drop down menus) has not rendered me incapable of using a desktop computer.
I hated the Ribbon in Office 2007 for a few reasons.
But having watched the staff at my company use Office 2003, I came to realise that the ribbon was an excellent invention for them. Most of them refused to use menus, instead prefering the toolbar for absolutely everything. Even when I stood next to them and told them which menu to choose, they would slowly hover over every single button on the toolbars trying to find the function they wanted. I used to find this extremely frustrating. But now they have got used to the new layout, the ribbon makes it much easier for them to navigate having to go near a menu.
Oh, and as a tablet user of Windows from way back, I can see the advantage of the ribbon when controlling the OS with a pen or your finger. It wasn't until I realised that this new system wasn't just replacing the menus, it was replacing the menus and dialog boxes. So while some things may take more clicks, other take much fewer. I now find myself less tolerant of large portions of the screen changing with a popup windows. Having most options available on the ribbon is a much more serene experience.
Which is why I hate Windows 8. Changing the start menu into a full screen popup is a completely jarring experience. And if I hated the ribbon that was hidden behind what looked like a decoration, you can image how much I hate having to click in the space where the start button used to be to access the horrible metro interface. How intuitive is that? Not very. It is as Paul Allen said: puzzling and confusing.
Did you miss the bit in the summary about cycling saving money by making people healthier?
I certainly can't find that part of the summary about saving money. A lifetime of constant care for someone with a head injury is going to be very expensive.
The problem isn't just with manuals. It starts with a website. As a programmer, you might rely on other people to write your documentation but those people will never even learn your product without knowing what the hell it does.
I have lost track of the number of times that I have stumbled upon a project's website only to be confronted with a changelog rather than a description of the product. There have been some (mostly open source) programs where I have eventually left the site without ever finding out what the software was actually for.
Every webpage should have a short statement of what the project is designed to do, along with what OS it runs on. You don't have to be a great tech writer to do it, just imagine what a complete newbie would want to see the first time they happen across your site.
Don't assume that your audience are also programmers and you might just get people interested who can actually write your documentation for you.
Try searching again without surrounding the phrase with quotes. If you let Google do a partial match then it will find plenty of pages with variations on the saying. EG. Never put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear.
It is an old saying telling you not to stick things in your ear to clean it of earwax. Not only can you cause damage, but you lose the benefits of earwax.
So why mention the elbow? Because it won't fit in you ear, and you also can't touch your ear with your elbow even if it did fit.
Charging 300% makes no sense
i don't think that they were fined 300%, but that the reduce the excess by the time Mixrosoft gad used $70k's worth if power. From the article:
The utility board capitulated and reduced the amend to $60k
If nothing else, using that much electricity in one burst is a negotiating tactic as it puts a lot more pressure on the infrastructure than if it had been part of an increase over the entire year. They may have even needed to buy in power from other, perhaps more dirty sources to cope with the peak demand.
The software that they release is under the Apache licence. It was you who brought up GPL. No one else had even mentioned it.
Where did you find it on the website where they said it had to run on Windows? All I found was that it had to use the SLC API, which uses the Java SDK. In theory it should run on any platform.
I could be wrong though. I am current browsing on my iPhone, and it a pain to navigate the site in on the mobile.
And this relates to privacy... how?
For all the bad things that Microsoft has done, abusing user expectations of privacy was not one. As far as I can remember, it have always been upfront about what it does with user information, and generally allow opt-out settings.
I always prefer other search engines because Google have its hooks in too many webpages with Analytics and advertising that it can track back to my gmail account.
Why would people who pirate things not use an anonymizing proxy? Is there something about the bidirectional aspect of bittorrent protocol that stops this working?
I tried one for web browsing when they were discussing the establishment of the great firewall of Australia (which failed to eventuate), and while it did slow things down, it seemed to work fine. Websites that guessed at my location would be completely wrong.
The question was "Are Commercial Games Finally Going To Make It To Linux?", and MrEricSir answered quite correctly. Commercial games have been made for Linux in the past. It is true that the lack of success previously does not present a good case for the assumptions made in the summary because it is entirely based on the idea that the major games have never been ported before, and so if they did it now then they would find a viable market.
It is fairly obvious really. There are two statements to this argument:
If it is true that the lack of games is holding Linux back, then this obviously means that the game buying public have not yet moved to the OS. To put it another way, if there already was an untapped market of gamers on this platform then it would not be true that the lack of games was holding Linux back.
That said, with the clout of Steam behind this push, there is a much greater chance of success this time around. This is because some gamers will follow Steam to Linux rather than due to the existing Linux users buying the games themselves. This is why the Humble Bundles sell so well on Linux. The existing users are not that interested in gaming (otherwise they would use Windows), and so the appeal of the casual indie games is high.
The biggest problem with this whole idea is that if the gamers move from Windows to Linux because there are games available, all you have done is fragment the market rather than grow into a new userbase. There doesn't seem to be any real advantage to the AAA game publishers to start supporting a new platform.
Wikipedia describes the OS as open source. I tried to look it up, but my knowledge of any language other than English is virtually non-existent. You would need to ask a native speaker who owns the phone to tell for sure.
Well, if we're going to play Microsoft analogies, you could say that Alibaba is attempting to play "embrace and extingush".
No, if they were playing the embrace and extinguish game then they would need to call their OS Android. If they are merely forking the code and calling it by another name (Aliyun OS) then it is more like LibreOffice vs OpenOffice.org.
What Microsoft did was refuse to sell Windows to OEMs who also offered competitive products like DR-DOS.
No, Microsoft sold Windows to OEMs at substantial discounts if they exclusively used the OS. They did not refuse to sell to them at all.
Google have described Aliyun as "an incomplete version of Android". This is the same argument levelled against Google when they used Java technology in Android. In that case Google also didn't attempt to call their product Java, and in my opinion this should mean that what Google did was perfectly acceptable. The same defense applies to Alibaba's OS too.
It seems quite reasonable for Google to want to distance themselves from Aliyun OS, but is it reasonable for them to then say that Acer is also cut off from Google for any Android branded smartphone too? That is an attempt to bully an OEM into only using Android exclusively. That is even worse than what Microsoft did, and it sucks.
Look... I'm a fan of shock humor and make grossly inappropriate jokes myself. But you *always* have to consider audience and context if you don't want to come off as an ass.
True, and if the original joke had been told to a support group of victims of domestic violence then it would be inappropriate. But this is Slashdot. It's a bunch of mostly male nerds.