At least in the UK, almost all extended warranties aren't worth the paper they're written on - AppleCare included. Not because the service is poor, but simply because under UK law, all consumer items sold must be "reasonably durable". If they fail early, you get your money back or a repair. The only reason stores get away with selling the warranties is that most people don't have a clue what their consumer rights entail.
Now what's meant by "reasonably durable" is not defined, but a motherboard or screen on a $2000 laptop failing within 2 (or even 3) years sounds pretty unreasonable to me. Even if it's been knocked about -- after all, that's the whole point of a laptop. So UK buyers -- if your Mac fails, march back down to the store where you bought it and demand a repair or your money back.
Reminds me of the old joke about two efficient-market economists walking down the street.
Economist one: "Look - there's a $50 bill on the sidewalk"
Economist two: "Don't be stupid, if it was somebody would have picked it up already"
I reckon that's about the predictive power of this initiative.
Unless it was specifically excluded in the bill, it's almost certain that the DMCA does apply outside the USA. Of course foreign courts won't take any notice of it, but if the record companies have evidence that you breached it while abroad, they'll probably be able to bring an action against you in the US courts.
You're absolutely right that language colours our thinking in many ways (no pun intended), but my example of colour names was not anecdotal. Check out this newsletter for an interesting article with links into the scientific literature.
When you're looking down from a position of linguistic dominance, it's very easy to ridicule other culture's attempts to preserve their identity. Language is the cornerstone of most cultural identities - right down to the accent that identifies which village you come from.
And language is more than merely a tool for communicating. It influences the way you think. For example, not all languages have the same number of words for basic colours. (English had no word for "orange" until the middle ages. It was considered a shade of yellow). Neurological studies have shown that without the word for a colour, your brain doesn't even recognise that shade as being different from whatever other shade the language assimilates it to. (So in a language where red and green are the same word, the entire population is red-green colorblind). [If you wonder how different societies can end up with different words for colours, imagine you spend your life in the arctic. Differences in shades of white will be far more important to you than telling red from yellow.]
Also, before laughing at the French, Americans should look at their own history. Following independence, there was a deliberate attempt to cement the new American identity by differentiating the language from "British" English. A certain Mr Webster took this to heart and drew up a dictionary where he deliberately created differences from accepted English spellings (there was no such thing as truly standard spelling in those days). And that's how the US ended up with color, thru and -ize.
So should the French government be trying to protect the French language? Well let's just say that it's not as crazy as it sounds.
Have you considered that maybe Central Americans are trying to preserve a Central American identity, which includes aspects of Spanish culture, and the Quebecois are trying to keep their French-originated Quebecois identity.
And frankly, it ill behoves Americans to accuse others of being cultural bastards. You think that the Irish think Irish Americans (i.e. anyone with one or more Irish ancestors within the last 200 years) are Irish, or Italians that watching the Sopranos and eating spaghetti and meatballs (which is never seen in Italy) makes someone Italian?
I strongly agree with the parent: good design is too often held back by an unadventurous client. What you're confusing is what the client wants and what the end-user wants. The job of a good designer is to turn the client's needs into something the end user can effectively use.
At our company we recently had a major redesign of our website (which is the major point of access for most people to our products). But instead of letting the designers focus on what users want, a lot was dictated by marketing, branding and advertising considerations. We're a publisher but we've ended up with pages that give more space to logos and ads than to the articles themselves. And yes, the designers know that this isn't what the users want (as proved by subsequent usability tests), but they have to stick to their brief.
Design breakthroughs need two things: a visionary designer, obviously, but also a visionary client. The iMac is a great example -- Jonathan Ives could have designed it for anyone, but can you imagine Dell or Compaq or IBM running with it? But of course once someone's done it succesfully, it becomes the new paradigm and everyone copies it. Keyboards are another great example. We're stuck with a keyboard layout designed to help prevent mechanical typewriters from jamming. It's ergonomically poor, results in many people getting RSI, but we're resistant to change. People won't buy "different" keyboards because they like what they're used to, even if they're demonstrably better.
It's an issue that goes well beyond geekdom. Almost everyone has entrenched preferences based on the status quo, so very often radical good design is rejected in favour of something inoffensive and traditional. Domestic architecture is probably the worst for this - most people don't like overtly modern architecture for their homes, even when it offers better energy efficiency, space utilisation etc. Yet the great architects are those people who restarted from scratch and designed their buildings to be used...
Refusing to pay a civil judgment is not contempt of court. This is a civil case, and you don't get criminal judgements from civil suits. This is because you have the option of enforcing the judgment (go see a bailiff and put a siezure before judgment on their stuff).
OK I should have been more specific. First of all, what I write refers to British not US law, though the two systems have a great deal in common. Contempt of court is classified as civil offence. But the punishment can include being sent to prison - where you count as a "civil prisoner". But try telling someone that you were sent to prison but never committed a crime... the distinction here is overwhelmingly semantic rather than practical. (The main practical difference is that civil prisoners can wear their own clothes, can continue to vote, don't have to work, and aren't eligible for early release..)
In the UK at least, the main differences between the two is that civil prisoners can wear their own clothes and vote, but aren't always
for both types is the same -- in particular, you can be sent to prison for certain civil contempt, including failure to comply with a judgment. Effectively, that makes contempt a criminal offence
Well, I can't speak for US laws but in the UK while strictly speaking there are criminal and civil contempts, the difference is really semantic. You can go to prison for a civil contempt of court,
Refusing to comply with a judgment is a pretty serious contempt.
Can someone explain to me the logic of not only announcing your new products months before they ship, but pulling the old ones straight away? What I mean is, Apple is currently not selling Powermacs. The G4s have vanished from the store, and you won't get your G5 until god knows when in August.
I bet a lot of people who are currently interested in getting a mac are now going to get windows machines instead, because either they don't fancy a maybe 2-month wait for a machine, or they don't want to splash out on the higher-priced G5s. Apple would have done a lot better to at least keep selling G4s until August - preferably at a discount. But then Apple marketing appears to be confusing. Powerbook prices are dropped in the run-up to a new product announcement...but instead of announcing new portables, they launch a new desktop. Surely the big question now is when the G5s move into the powerbooks and the G4s into the iBooks. a 64-bit notebook -- now that really would be a first
I think you'll find that sub-Saharan Africa was more or less unexposed to either European or Middle-Eastern culture (excluding a narrow coastal strip along the east coast) until the Portuguese and Spanish tried sailing south.
As for India, if you're coming from the west (i.e. Iran, Pakistan) there's no need to cross the Himalayas. One of the shorter roots passes over the flattish coastal plains.
In either case, it should be pointed out that both sub-Saharan africa and southern india developed their own advanced civilisations independently. Unfortunately for the Africans, their societies were pretty much destroyed by the advent of large-scale slave trading (by Europeans, Americans and Arabs). As for south india, the indigenous Dravidian culture there is still very distinct from the Hindi culture of the north.
What does it mean if a contract is "void"? It means that each party is put back in the same position as if the contract had never existed. So in the current case, the company would give back the code and the developer would give back the money he got.
However, in this case the problem was that the developer never got any money. The reason he was able to sue on the contract and win shows that the contract is valid. The court ruling was to enforce the contract according to its original terms, not to annul it. Having enforced the contract, all terms in the contract will still be valid, including any relating to IP.
If the company is refusing to pay up even after the judgment, then it's in contempt of court. That's a criminal offence, so what our screwed-over friend needs to do is threaten to report the company to the local DA. In terms of collecting the judgment, he can try a debt collection agency but they'll take a cut of the winnings.
What our friend should have done is consulted a lawyer before going to court. If his case was as open-and-shut as it sounds, then there's no doubt that the court would have awarded him legal costs against the company. So he wouldn't have paid a penny for his lawyer, and the lawyer would know exactly what to do to get hold of the money (and would do it quick since he wants to get hold of his money).
that makes sense because the way an LCD monitor works is using pixels to block off the backlight.
So whereas on a CRT, an "activated" pixel corresponds to a bright spot (it's where electrons are hitting the screen and making it fluoresce), on an LCD activating the pixel makes the area dark. Each pixel is transparent until an electric field is applied to line up the liquid crystals. This polarises the light coming through and depending on the degree of polarisation, the transmitted light is blocked by a cross-polarised layer on the screen.
Presumably "burn-in" occurs when the LCD fails to completely return to its non-polarising state. I'd guess this is because the screen builds up some electric charge in those areas, like a capacitor.
If that's correct, then all that's needed is a "degauss"-type function on the screen that neutralises any built-up charges.
10 000 pictures... I'm glad I'm not invited to his end-of-trip slideshow.
You know, since my camera broke, it's revolutionised my vacations. You've no idea of the difference it makes when you use both eyes to look at something. Depth perception, it brings a whole new dimension to your holiday.
I take the complete opposite point of view. Inheritance tax should be 100% and sales tax should be abolished.
Why is inheritance tax good? Because otherwise rich families stay wealthy and in power for ever. I have problems seeing why somebody should get to live in luxury without working their entire lives just because their grandfather made a fortune. Work to give your children a better life, sure -- having rich parents will always give you a headstart in life. But your kids should still have to go out and work for their living.
Why is sales tax bad? Because it disproportionately impacts the poor. The difference between what the poorest and richest members of society spend is far smaller than the difference in their earnings. (In fact most poor people are in debt, ie they spend more than they earn), so they pay a disproportionate amount of their income on tax.
Further, sales tax is a tax on consumption. It actively hinders economic growth. Income tax affects you the same way whether you choose to spend or save, but sales tax only hits if you spend. Now maybe that's a good thing if you want to encourage saving, but in the present economic climate we want people out spending more. Switching taxes from sales to income would be the best way to encourage that without eroding the tax base.
The only reason most countries have ever-increasing rates of sales tax (up from 7.5% to 17.5% in the UK over 20 years) is that it's the easiest way to squeeze money from people without them noticing. You put up income tax, everyone sees the money come out of their paycheck and immediately blames the government. Put up sales tax and people see prices in stores go up, so they blame the stores. (That doesn't apply so much in the US where stores display pretax prices and add tax on at the till -- which is probably why sales tax in the US is generally lower than in the EU).
It's pretty obvious to customs when something is liable for duty because (a) the packaging usually says "Amazon" or the name of whatever store you bought the item at and (b) when you post packages overseas, you have to fill out a customs declaration form listing the contents and their value.
I think you'll find that most overseas shipped goods ordered over the internet get charged duty on arrival. (It's happened to me.)
The point of the EU making US e-commerce sites charge VAT on sales in the EU is not to charge on physically delivered goods - they see those anyway - but to catch purchases for services and online content/software that otherwise would escape the customs system.
The British didn't invent the Imperial system, it has its origins in ancient Rome. We just went on using it after the rest of Europe had converted to metric and then with characteristic arrogance assumed that it was our creation all along.
Same thing with the pound streling. The livre (french for pound, from latin libra) was the basic unit of French currency before the revolution. Italians used "lira" (same origin) until the launch of the Euro, the Turks still do. But most of us Brits, in our usual insular fashion, assume that it must be a British concept.
It's probably because they were French that the Brits took 200 years to adopt metric units. Even the British currency wasn't even decimalised until the 1970s (240 pence to a pound in the good old days). And we didn't bin imperial measures decades ago -- it's still perfectly legal to display prices per pound or per pint, so long as they're also labelled with metric.
I just find it funny that the British regard using pounds, ounces etc. as a sign of their patriotic heritage, when they're no less a continental European import than euros and kilos...
it deployed the lander, but an attitude problem meant that the lander actually missed the planet entirely!
Yup, I can just imagine what was going through the spacecraft's mind. "Now I've finally escaped the USSR there's no way I'm going to land on some red planet."
But when people are forced to slow down, they have more time to think about what they're writing rather than just writing about what they think. The advantages of word processing - speed and being able to edit what you've written - are double-edged swords. When you've become used to writing up everything on a computer, you forget how to plan and construct a document from the start -- instead you (or at least I) tend to put down a mishmash of ideas and then slowly work them into shape.
Now I don't doubt that for most written work, I end up with a better result the word-processed way. And many people never need to write anything longer than a birthday card by hand. But the mental skill of being able to develop a proper argument as you go along is essential in many other ways. I'm thinking of SPEAKING.
Maybe I'm just an old fogey (and I'm not even 30) but it seems to me that kids today have a much harder time having a proper conversation than they used to. They seem to have a 5-word cap on sentences. ("And he was like, yes. And I was like, no. So I said, hi. You what? Oh My God!") Now I'm studying law and I need to be able to stand up in court and make an improvised speech that will persuade a judge and jury, so I'm having to learn those skills back over.
"Vener-" is also the origin of the word venereal in English. venereal diseases being of course those that come from love. (so strictly "erotic disease" would be a better term, but that just sounds too funny)
Slashdot Mirror
At least in the UK, almost all extended warranties aren't worth the paper they're written on - AppleCare included. Not because the service is poor, but simply because under UK law, all consumer items sold must be "reasonably durable". If they fail early, you get your money back or a repair. The only reason stores get away with selling the warranties is that most people don't have a clue what their consumer rights entail.
Now what's meant by "reasonably durable" is not defined, but a motherboard or screen on a $2000 laptop failing within 2 (or even 3) years sounds pretty unreasonable to me. Even if it's been knocked about -- after all, that's the whole point of a laptop. So UK buyers -- if your Mac fails, march back down to the store where you bought it and demand a repair or your money back.
Reminds me of the old joke about two efficient-market economists walking down the street. Economist one: "Look - there's a $50 bill on the sidewalk" Economist two: "Don't be stupid, if it was somebody would have picked it up already" I reckon that's about the predictive power of this initiative.
Unless it was specifically excluded in the bill, it's almost certain that the DMCA does apply outside the USA. Of course foreign courts won't take any notice of it, but if the record companies have evidence that you breached it while abroad, they'll probably be able to bring an action against you in the US courts.
You're absolutely right that language colours our thinking in many ways (no pun intended), but my example of colour names was not anecdotal. Check out this newsletter for an interesting article with links into the scientific literature.
When you're looking down from a position of linguistic dominance, it's very easy to ridicule other culture's attempts to preserve their identity. Language is the cornerstone of most cultural identities - right down to the accent that identifies which village you come from.
And language is more than merely a tool for communicating. It influences the way you think. For example, not all languages have the same number of words for basic colours. (English had no word for "orange" until the middle ages. It was considered a shade of yellow). Neurological studies have shown that without the word for a colour, your brain doesn't even recognise that shade as being different from whatever other shade the language assimilates it to. (So in a language where red and green are the same word, the entire population is red-green colorblind). [If you wonder how different societies can end up with different words for colours, imagine you spend your life in the arctic. Differences in shades of white will be far more important to you than telling red from yellow.]
Also, before laughing at the French, Americans should look at their own history. Following independence, there was a deliberate attempt to cement the new American identity by differentiating the language from "British" English. A certain Mr Webster took this to heart and drew up a dictionary where he deliberately created differences from accepted English spellings (there was no such thing as truly standard spelling in those days). And that's how the US ended up with color, thru and -ize.
So should the French government be trying to protect the French language? Well let's just say that it's not as crazy as it sounds.
Have you considered that maybe Central Americans are trying to preserve a Central American identity, which includes aspects of Spanish culture, and the Quebecois are trying to keep their French-originated Quebecois identity.
And frankly, it ill behoves Americans to accuse others of being cultural bastards. You think that the Irish think Irish Americans (i.e. anyone with one or more Irish ancestors within the last 200 years) are Irish, or Italians that watching the Sopranos and eating spaghetti and meatballs (which is never seen in Italy) makes someone Italian?
If nothing else, this is proof that the geek job market is far from recovering...
I strongly agree with the parent: good design is too often held back by an unadventurous client.
What you're confusing is what the client wants and what the end-user wants. The job of a good designer is to turn the client's needs into something the end user can effectively use.
At our company we recently had a major redesign of our website (which is the major point of access for most people to our products). But instead of letting the designers focus on what users want, a lot was dictated by marketing, branding and advertising considerations. We're a publisher but we've ended up with pages that give more space to logos and ads than to the articles themselves. And yes, the designers know that this isn't what the users want (as proved by subsequent usability tests), but they have to stick to their brief.
Design breakthroughs need two things: a visionary designer, obviously, but also a visionary client. The iMac is a great example -- Jonathan Ives could have designed it for anyone, but can you imagine Dell or Compaq or IBM running with it? But of course once someone's done it succesfully, it becomes the new paradigm and everyone copies it. Keyboards are another great example. We're stuck with a keyboard layout designed to help prevent mechanical typewriters from jamming. It's ergonomically poor, results in many people getting RSI, but we're resistant to change. People won't buy "different" keyboards because they like what they're used to, even if they're demonstrably better.
It's an issue that goes well beyond geekdom. Almost everyone has entrenched preferences based on the status quo, so very often radical good design is rejected in favour of something inoffensive and traditional. Domestic architecture is probably the worst for this - most people don't like overtly modern architecture for their homes, even when it offers better energy efficiency, space utilisation etc. Yet the great architects are those people who restarted from scratch and designed their buildings to be used...
the 12" powerbook is ageing? seems only a few monthes ago slashdot was alive with its praises...
Refusing to pay a civil judgment is not contempt of court. This is a civil case, and you don't get criminal judgements from civil suits. This is because you have the option of enforcing the judgment (go see a bailiff and put a siezure before judgment on their stuff).
OK I should have been more specific. First of all, what I write refers to British not US law, though the two systems have a great deal in common. Contempt of court is classified as civil offence. But the punishment can include being sent to prison - where you count as a "civil prisoner". But try telling someone that you were sent to prison but never committed a crime... the distinction here is overwhelmingly semantic rather than practical. (The main practical difference is that civil prisoners can wear their own clothes, can continue to vote, don't have to work, and aren't eligible for early release..)
In the UK at least, the main differences between the two is that civil prisoners can wear their own clothes and vote, but aren't always for both types is the same -- in particular, you can be sent to prison for certain civil contempt, including failure to comply with a judgment. Effectively, that makes contempt a criminal offence Well, I can't speak for US laws but in the UK while strictly speaking there are criminal and civil contempts, the difference is really semantic. You can go to prison for a civil contempt of court, Refusing to comply with a judgment is a pretty serious contempt.Can someone explain to me the logic of not only announcing your new products months before they ship, but pulling the old ones straight away? What I mean is, Apple is currently not selling Powermacs. The G4s have vanished from the store, and you won't get your G5 until god knows when in August.
I bet a lot of people who are currently interested in getting a mac are now going to get windows machines instead, because either they don't fancy a maybe 2-month wait for a machine, or they don't want to splash out on the higher-priced G5s. Apple would have done a lot better to at least keep selling G4s until August - preferably at a discount. But then Apple marketing appears to be confusing. Powerbook prices are dropped in the run-up to a new product announcement...but instead of announcing new portables, they launch a new desktop. Surely the big question now is when the G5s move into the powerbooks and the G4s into the iBooks. a 64-bit notebook -- now that really would be a first
I think you'll find that sub-Saharan Africa was more or less unexposed to either European or Middle-Eastern culture (excluding a narrow coastal strip along the east coast) until the Portuguese and Spanish tried sailing south.
As for India, if you're coming from the west (i.e. Iran, Pakistan) there's no need to cross the Himalayas. One of the shorter roots passes over the flattish coastal plains.
In either case, it should be pointed out that both sub-Saharan africa and southern india developed their own advanced civilisations independently. Unfortunately for the Africans, their societies were pretty much destroyed by the advent of large-scale slave trading (by Europeans, Americans and Arabs). As for south india, the indigenous Dravidian culture there is still very distinct from the Hindi culture of the north.
if the contract was not fulfilled then it is void
This is a misconception of contract law.
What does it mean if a contract is "void"? It means that each party is put back in the same position as if the contract had never existed. So in the current case, the company would give back the code and the developer would give back the money he got.
However, in this case the problem was that the developer never got any money. The reason he was able to sue on the contract and win shows that the contract is valid. The court ruling was to enforce the contract according to its original terms, not to annul it. Having enforced the contract, all terms in the contract will still be valid, including any relating to IP.
If the company is refusing to pay up even after the judgment, then it's in contempt of court. That's a criminal offence, so what our screwed-over friend needs to do is threaten to report the company to the local DA. In terms of collecting the judgment, he can try a debt collection agency but they'll take a cut of the winnings.
What our friend should have done is consulted a lawyer before going to court. If his case was as open-and-shut as it sounds, then there's no doubt that the court would have awarded him legal costs against the company. So he wouldn't have paid a penny for his lawyer, and the lawyer would know exactly what to do to get hold of the money (and would do it quick since he wants to get hold of his money).
that makes sense because the way an LCD monitor works is using pixels to block off the backlight.
So whereas on a CRT, an "activated" pixel corresponds to a bright spot (it's where electrons are hitting the screen and making it fluoresce), on an LCD activating the pixel makes the area dark. Each pixel is transparent until an electric field is applied to line up the liquid crystals. This polarises the light coming through and depending on the degree of polarisation, the transmitted light is blocked by a cross-polarised layer on the screen.
Presumably "burn-in" occurs when the LCD fails to completely return to its non-polarising state. I'd guess this is because the screen builds up some electric charge in those areas, like a capacitor.
If that's correct, then all that's needed is a "degauss"-type function on the screen that neutralises any built-up charges.
Surely the reason Europe lacks a first amendment is that we got it right the first time around
10 000 pictures... I'm glad I'm not invited to his end-of-trip slideshow.
You know, since my camera broke, it's revolutionised my vacations. You've no idea of the difference it makes when you use both eyes to look at something. Depth perception, it brings a whole new dimension to your holiday.
Name me one significant application that is not avalible on OS X...
Quark XPress. But of course, Quark was never considered a reason for buying a Mac anyway.
please excuse this post, it came from an alternate universe
Not to mention the 24 frames per second you get in a movie theatre. Sheesh, no wonder I get a headache every time I go to the cinema...
I take the complete opposite point of view. Inheritance tax should be 100% and sales tax should be abolished.
Why is inheritance tax good? Because otherwise rich families stay wealthy and in power for ever. I have problems seeing why somebody should get to live in luxury without working their entire lives just because their grandfather made a fortune. Work to give your children a better life, sure -- having rich parents will always give you a headstart in life. But your kids should still have to go out and work for their living.
Why is sales tax bad? Because it disproportionately impacts the poor. The difference between what the poorest and richest members of society spend is far smaller than the difference in their earnings. (In fact most poor people are in debt, ie they spend more than they earn), so they pay a disproportionate amount of their income on tax.
Further, sales tax is a tax on consumption. It actively hinders economic growth. Income tax affects you the same way whether you choose to spend or save, but sales tax only hits if you spend. Now maybe that's a good thing if you want to encourage saving, but in the present economic climate we want people out spending more. Switching taxes from sales to income would be the best way to encourage that without eroding the tax base.
The only reason most countries have ever-increasing rates of sales tax (up from 7.5% to 17.5% in the UK over 20 years) is that it's the easiest way to squeeze money from people without them noticing. You put up income tax, everyone sees the money come out of their paycheck and immediately blames the government. Put up sales tax and people see prices in stores go up, so they blame the stores. (That doesn't apply so much in the US where stores display pretax prices and add tax on at the till -- which is probably why sales tax in the US is generally lower than in the EU).
It's pretty obvious to customs when something is liable for duty because (a) the packaging usually says "Amazon" or the name of whatever store you bought the item at and (b) when you post packages overseas, you have to fill out a customs declaration form listing the contents and their value.
I think you'll find that most overseas shipped goods ordered over the internet get charged duty on arrival. (It's happened to me.)
The point of the EU making US e-commerce sites charge VAT on sales in the EU is not to charge on physically delivered goods - they see those anyway - but to catch purchases for services and online content/software that otherwise would escape the customs system.
The British didn't invent the Imperial system, it has its origins in ancient Rome. We just went on using it after the rest of Europe had converted to metric and then with characteristic arrogance assumed that it was our creation all along.
Same thing with the pound streling. The livre (french for pound, from latin libra) was the basic unit of French currency before the revolution. Italians used "lira" (same origin) until the launch of the Euro, the Turks still do. But most of us Brits, in our usual insular fashion, assume that it must be a British concept.
It's probably because they were French that the Brits took 200 years to adopt metric units. Even the British currency wasn't even decimalised until the 1970s (240 pence to a pound in the good old days). And we didn't bin imperial measures decades ago -- it's still perfectly legal to display prices per pound or per pint, so long as they're also labelled with metric.
I just find it funny that the British regard using pounds, ounces etc. as a sign of their patriotic heritage, when they're no less a continental European import than euros and kilos...
it deployed the lander, but an attitude problem meant that the lander actually missed the planet entirely!
Yup, I can just imagine what was going through the spacecraft's mind. "Now I've finally escaped the USSR there's no way I'm going to land on some red planet."
But when people are forced to slow down, they have more time to think about what they're writing rather than just writing about what they think. The advantages of word processing - speed and being able to edit what you've written - are double-edged swords. When you've become used to writing up everything on a computer, you forget how to plan and construct a document from the start -- instead you (or at least I) tend to put down a mishmash of ideas and then slowly work them into shape.
Now I don't doubt that for most written work, I end up with a better result the word-processed way. And many people never need to write anything longer than a birthday card by hand. But the mental skill of being able to develop a proper argument as you go along is essential in many other ways. I'm thinking of SPEAKING.
Maybe I'm just an old fogey (and I'm not even 30) but it seems to me that kids today have a much harder time having a proper conversation than they used to. They seem to have a 5-word cap on sentences. ("And he was like, yes. And I was like, no. So I said, hi. You what? Oh My God!") Now I'm studying law and I need to be able to stand up in court and make an improvised speech that will persuade a judge and jury, so I'm having to learn those skills back over.
But how do you tell the difference between a caffeine overdose and a pizza overdose?
"Vener-" is also the origin of the word venereal in English. venereal diseases being of course those that come from love. (so strictly "erotic disease" would be a better term, but that just sounds too funny)