It's the main reason- remember, corporations are in fact sociopathic and focused on one issue only- profit. Once a corporation gets the copyright away from the original artist, not only is defense of that copyright going to be extreme and punative, but every imaginable form of derivitive (sp?) art is going to be created in an effort to get every last penny out of the franchise.
Well, one other option would be to do a New BSG style exterior shakey cam- complete with nausea-inducing zooms and (gasp) Newtonian Physics at Sublight Speeds!
Copyright protection isn't the problem- it's a right and good thing when done well. Copyright protection transferable to corporations and exceeding the original quarter-century-or-so protection period is a creeping destruction of our culture.
Some organizations are mainly management staff running pools of contractors (for example NASA). Is this the best use of Tax Payer Money?
Oregon Department of Transportation is begining to resemble that remark. Luckily we're trying not to in IT- and failing greatly, we had a 26% turnover when you include the consultants, for 2005.
Having said that- ODOT came under fire in the 1990s as the largest state agency. It's people who don't want to pay taxes who are driving this boondoggle, under the assumption that "Private Industry Can Always Do It Better", a mantra of small-government conservatives and libertarians that is a complete and utter myth to somebody like me who has worked both public and private sector. It's the stupidest thing imaginable- but I'm one of those contractors who was so valuable that I was brought in house for my third year with ODOT.
My current project did this successfully. We had a very good, aggressive PM and a couple of excellent team leads who realized about three months before the deadline that the current team of six was inadequate, and that all reasonable analysis showed that they were going to miss the deadline by about two weeks. A naive manager would assume that since there was 12 man-weeks more work than time, and 12 weeks remaining, he needed to add one person to make up the difference. Our PM added six more, and all of them senior, experienced developers. It took two weeks to get the new people on board, slowing the project some because existing devs had to spend time with the interviewing process. Then it took a month before the new people were really productive, during which time they slowed progress further. Six weeks after the decision was made to add staff, the team was five weeks behind schedule (they had been two weeks behind, remember). But at that point we had ~66 man-weeks of work remaining, and 72 man-weeks of developer time available (12 people times six weeks). Even that wasn't quite enough, but with the addition of a few weekends (all billable hours, increasing costs further), we finished development a week ahead of schedule, and had that time for bug fixing and cleanup before user acceptance testing started.
That's about as well as I've ever seen it work- but I'd still consider this a failed project. It came in over budget and required overtime to succeed, thus proving the ultimate point of Brook's Law: Adding developers to a late software project will only make it later
This never works - ever. Managers of IT projects who don't know much about IT seem to have this incredibly bizarre idea that IT people, programmers and analysts are all interchangeable. You can drop someone from a project two months away from the deadline, bring someone else in who knows nothing about what's going on and the new person will instantly hit the ground running. They also do it again, and again, and again and again. They also equate getting bodies on the project directly with getting it done faster. If something is late and obviously a complete mess it instantly becomes a resource problem. Not that I like calling 'people' 'resources'.
It's the Mythical Man Month- a lesson originally learned in 1968 that no project manager I've ever met seems to have ever heard of. This should be *MANDATORY* reading for anybody in project management, but nobody knows about it.
Well, that and us lower peons rarely have time for lunches and muffins. ESPECIALLY in IT- to relate back TFA- where there's no lunch left to steal at 4:00pm when we finally tear away long enough for a break.
Other countries with different morals HAVE completed the research- and almost all have abandoned embryonic stem cell lines in favor of adult stem cells for almost every purpose except one- human cloning research, where the intent is to grow an entire new organism from a single cell. The latest- adult hair stem cells, of which you personally have BILLIONS, can be used to replace everything except brain tissue. And brain stem cells may be unique, but they're also incredibly prolific if given the right growth medium- early research using mice as a growth medium for human brain stem cells shows that a single brain stem cell from an adult can eventually grow to the mass of 50,000 human brains. There just isn't any need for the embryonic research anymore- the science ended up outstriping the politics on this one.
The sad thing is, it turns out even the most right-wing religious whackos were right- if Terri Schivao had been allowed to live another decade, we might have been able to grow her a whole new brain. She wouldn't have been the same PERSON- but she would have been alive.
And they're cheaper than they should be. A good hooker should cost you around a million with my method of sexual morality; she's called a wife ($50,000/year for 20 years).
It was meant to be a bit of a joke- but I'm being karma bombed at the moment so it was moderated troll instead.
If there is any serious point to it, it's that a lot more than just textbooks will need revisions- or not as the case may be. But Have Spacesuit, now that I think about it, was trying to be a textbook in that story line- that's where I learned Mother Very Thoughtfully Made A Jelly Sandwitch Under No Protest which just wouldn't be the same without the Protest. And who can forget 5 days at 8 gravities with a skew flip is enough time to travel to Pluto- without any need for stupid hyperspace drives?
I understand how stem cells may help medical science in general. But I'm the type of American Bigot who fails to see how embryonic stem cells unrelated to the patient would help anybody at all. Add to that the fact that I've yet to see a single news story of embyronic stem cells curing any disease, but almost bimonthly now we have stories about adult patient donated stem cells curing that patient of something or another, I'd say the value of adult stem cells is well proven- and embryonic stem cell research appears to be an almost useless dead end.
Exactly - there were never any scientists with a burning need to tear apart embryos just because they seemed like nice spare parts to use.
Maybe not the scientists- but there were certainly those in the political fight with such dreams. Especially those who had lost body parts and functionality to accidents.
If I have to write a massive spec for everything I want you to do, I might as well replace you with some cheap team in India. They're great at giving you exactly what you ask for.
Exactly my point. It's no more true that you can help the poor with minimum or living wages than it's true that having children makes people poor. Both are stupid generalizations- I guess I should have used sarcasm tags.
I'm of the opinion that Marriage, Sex, and Parenthood are really three stages of the same basic act- raising the next generation.
In reality though, I see four types of marriage- Natural, Sacramental, Secular, and Sinful. Each of these is a corruption, because everything man tries to regulate, he corrupts. Natural marriage and sex are the same thing- you're doing something plearuable that is pleasurable solely to encourage you to create the next generation. If sex didn't create the next generation, it would not be pleasurable- because the people that did it would not be passing their genes on to the next generation. Simple evolution. Sacramental marriage is a corruption of this- but not much of one- it basically says "we need to have morals and we need to insure that the children have role models of both sexes to raise them". This is religious marriage in the most conventional sense- it completes the natural marriage act of sex by finishing the task. Secular marriage is the government getting involved- and saying, originally, "we want to encourage certain types of parents that seem most successfull with tax breaks and other benefits". One early form in the United States was that multiracial marriages did not make for good parents, and so they were banned. The final form, Sinful marriage, is the inevitable corruption once money is involved: "We want all the benefits of being married without the responsibility of raising children". Personally, I see this as no different than cheating on your taxes or any other form of stealing money from the government.
I can guarantee you, people of those opinions will still see a need for birth control.
Of course- having children would ruin their scam of stealing money from the government.
I honesly feel sorry for your sir, you obviously have been brainwashed since you were very young and are/have missed out on an excellent part of the human experience.
I can say the same thing about people who think that 30 seconds of pleasure shouldn't be paid for.
You view sex simply as a function of procreation, when it is in fact dual purpose. There are a great deal of positive things show by a number of studies I've read over the years.
Studies by biased people who have a reason to lie don't count.
I'm not able to post any links because I work for a government institution and viewing anything reguarding sex at work is strictly off limits. IIRC studies have shown that people who engage in sex on a regular basis tend to be much happier people, and also tend to live longer.
When done properly, it allows you to live forever, in a sense. But of course, that's the point of view that sex includes being a parent and raising children; anything less does not have that benefit.
Sure.... that makes sense... a person that by your definition is irresponsible by having sex in the first place because it was for recreational purposes is now supposed to be responsible enough to parent a child....
Marriage, having sex, and being a parent is all the same act. If they're responsible enough to be allowed to have sex, then they're mature enough to be a parent. In fact, one creates the other- having a child makes you grow up.
Many people out there wouldn't be poor if they didn't have kids they couldn't afford.
And nobody would be poor if we'd just enact a living wage. Stop with the stupid 19th century amorphisms and give it some thought for once.
Not slamming people who can't afford kids (I certainly can't) but remarking that the quality of life for those people would be better if they had been able to use a contraceptive or have an abortion, and then have children 5-10 years later.
And who's holding the gun to their head forcing them to have sex or work at a dead end service industry job? You can afford whatever you can budget- and kids are cheap entertainment at the price!
You have to have available birth control because a percentage of young people will gleefully start having sex as soon as their hormones kick into gear...No amount of education will stop this.
Not true at all. If you bother to tell kids the TRUTH about sex (that it has a specific purpose, procreation of the species, and that when done sucessfully it takes about 20 years, give or take 5 or ten for maturity levels of parent and child) then there's no problem with self control of hormones. For those who choose it, you simply marry them to their significant other, and no divorce allowed until the children are adults.
And when I say education, I mean education. I don't mean "teach abstinence". I mean "this is sex, this is what goes on, this is what you can catch, and this is how you can do it safely." I'm talking a significant course here, not just a day out of gym class.
Implying that it can be done "safely" is a lie at best. But the rest I most certainly DO agree with- just be sure to tell the WHOLE truth, not just the recreational half-truth that sex is just intercourse and only takes sleeping together and one night stands.
The only way to help people make the right descision, is to make sure they have access to all the information. They may go through the whole class and not learn a damn thing, but they have a much better chance than if you'd tried to keep them in ignorance all along.
Completely agreed. And when you have laws that back that up; requiring people take parental responsibility, then there's no need for birth control at all.
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Well, so would I- it's always better to have a leader who can actually read.
It's the main reason- remember, corporations are in fact sociopathic and focused on one issue only- profit. Once a corporation gets the copyright away from the original artist, not only is defense of that copyright going to be extreme and punative, but every imaginable form of derivitive (sp?) art is going to be created in an effort to get every last penny out of the franchise.
Well, one other option would be to do a New BSG style exterior shakey cam- complete with nausea-inducing zooms and (gasp) Newtonian Physics at Sublight Speeds!
Copyright protection isn't the problem- it's a right and good thing when done well. Copyright protection transferable to corporations and exceeding the original quarter-century-or-so protection period is a creeping destruction of our culture.
Some organizations are mainly management staff running pools of contractors (for example NASA). Is this the best use of Tax Payer Money?
Oregon Department of Transportation is begining to resemble that remark. Luckily we're trying not to in IT- and failing greatly, we had a 26% turnover when you include the consultants, for 2005.
Having said that- ODOT came under fire in the 1990s as the largest state agency. It's people who don't want to pay taxes who are driving this boondoggle, under the assumption that "Private Industry Can Always Do It Better", a mantra of small-government conservatives and libertarians that is a complete and utter myth to somebody like me who has worked both public and private sector. It's the stupidest thing imaginable- but I'm one of those contractors who was so valuable that I was brought in house for my third year with ODOT.
My current project did this successfully. We had a very good, aggressive PM and a couple of excellent team leads who realized about three months before the deadline that the current team of six was inadequate, and that all reasonable analysis showed that they were going to miss the deadline by about two weeks. A naive manager would assume that since there was 12 man-weeks more work than time, and 12 weeks remaining, he needed to add one person to make up the difference. Our PM added six more, and all of them senior, experienced developers. It took two weeks to get the new people on board, slowing the project some because existing devs had to spend time with the interviewing process. Then it took a month before the new people were really productive, during which time they slowed progress further. Six weeks after the decision was made to add staff, the team was five weeks behind schedule (they had been two weeks behind, remember). But at that point we had ~66 man-weeks of work remaining, and 72 man-weeks of developer time available (12 people times six weeks). Even that wasn't quite enough, but with the addition of a few weekends (all billable hours, increasing costs further), we finished development a week ahead of schedule, and had that time for bug fixing and cleanup before user acceptance testing started.
That's about as well as I've ever seen it work- but I'd still consider this a failed project. It came in over budget and required overtime to succeed, thus proving the ultimate point of Brook's Law: Adding developers to a late software project will only make it later
This never works - ever. Managers of IT projects who don't know much about IT seem to have this incredibly bizarre idea that IT people, programmers and analysts are all interchangeable. You can drop someone from a project two months away from the deadline, bring someone else in who knows nothing about what's going on and the new person will instantly hit the ground running. They also do it again, and again, and again and again. They also equate getting bodies on the project directly with getting it done faster. If something is late and obviously a complete mess it instantly becomes a resource problem. Not that I like calling 'people' 'resources'.
It's the Mythical Man Month- a lesson originally learned in 1968 that no project manager I've ever met seems to have ever heard of. This should be *MANDATORY* reading for anybody in project management, but nobody knows about it.
Well, that and us lower peons rarely have time for lunches and muffins. ESPECIALLY in IT- to relate back TFA- where there's no lunch left to steal at 4:00pm when we finally tear away long enough for a break.
So what we should really do is harvest the algae and make biodiesel to run our fishing vessels ....now there's a good thought.
Other countries with different morals HAVE completed the research- and almost all have abandoned embryonic stem cell lines in favor of adult stem cells for almost every purpose except one- human cloning research, where the intent is to grow an entire new organism from a single cell. The latest- adult hair stem cells, of which you personally have BILLIONS, can be used to replace everything except brain tissue. And brain stem cells may be unique, but they're also incredibly prolific if given the right growth medium- early research using mice as a growth medium for human brain stem cells shows that a single brain stem cell from an adult can eventually grow to the mass of 50,000 human brains. There just isn't any need for the embryonic research anymore- the science ended up outstriping the politics on this one.
The sad thing is, it turns out even the most right-wing religious whackos were right- if Terri Schivao had been allowed to live another decade, we might have been able to grow her a whole new brain. She wouldn't have been the same PERSON- but she would have been alive.
And they're cheaper than they should be. A good hooker should cost you around a million with my method of sexual morality; she's called a wife ($50,000/year for 20 years).
It was meant to be a bit of a joke- but I'm being karma bombed at the moment so it was moderated troll instead.
If there is any serious point to it, it's that a lot more than just textbooks will need revisions- or not as the case may be. But Have Spacesuit, now that I think about it, was trying to be a textbook in that story line- that's where I learned Mother Very Thoughtfully Made A Jelly Sandwitch Under No Protest which just wouldn't be the same without the Protest. And who can forget 5 days at 8 gravities with a skew flip is enough time to travel to Pluto- without any need for stupid hyperspace drives?
That it destroys a major plotline of Heinlien's clasic teen novel Have Spacesuit Will Travel
Whatcha talkin' about? I use my Windows key all the time- as a way to get to Program Files without using the mouse on any Windows system.
I understand how stem cells may help medical science in general. But I'm the type of American Bigot who fails to see how embryonic stem cells unrelated to the patient would help anybody at all. Add to that the fact that I've yet to see a single news story of embyronic stem cells curing any disease, but almost bimonthly now we have stories about adult patient donated stem cells curing that patient of something or another, I'd say the value of adult stem cells is well proven- and embryonic stem cell research appears to be an almost useless dead end.
Exactly - there were never any scientists with a burning need to tear apart embryos just because they seemed like nice spare parts to use.
Maybe not the scientists- but there were certainly those in the political fight with such dreams. Especially those who had lost body parts and functionality to accidents.
No difference at all, as far as I'm concerned- that's exactly what this so-called "pirate" was doing, except for slapping a new name on it...
This is fitting for the guy selling. As opposed to "casual" software piracy of the type that just about everybody does at some point.
If I have to write a massive spec for everything I want you to do, I might as well replace you with some cheap team in India. They're great at giving you exactly what you ask for.
Even if it is complete garbage.
What does it matter what Margaret Sanger thinks?
One should always know the intent of a bandwagon before jumping on it. The entire pro-choice movement is tainted by the eugenics beliefs of the few.
That is such a bad generationlization.
Exactly my point. It's no more true that you can help the poor with minimum or living wages than it's true that having children makes people poor. Both are stupid generalizations- I guess I should have used sarcasm tags.
I'm of the opinion that Marriage, Sex, and Parenthood are really three stages of the same basic act- raising the next generation.
In reality though, I see four types of marriage- Natural, Sacramental, Secular, and Sinful. Each of these is a corruption, because everything man tries to regulate, he corrupts. Natural marriage and sex are the same thing- you're doing something plearuable that is pleasurable solely to encourage you to create the next generation. If sex didn't create the next generation, it would not be pleasurable- because the people that did it would not be passing their genes on to the next generation. Simple evolution. Sacramental marriage is a corruption of this- but not much of one- it basically says "we need to have morals and we need to insure that the children have role models of both sexes to raise them". This is religious marriage in the most conventional sense- it completes the natural marriage act of sex by finishing the task. Secular marriage is the government getting involved- and saying, originally, "we want to encourage certain types of parents that seem most successfull with tax breaks and other benefits". One early form in the United States was that multiracial marriages did not make for good parents, and so they were banned. The final form, Sinful marriage, is the inevitable corruption once money is involved: "We want all the benefits of being married without the responsibility of raising children". Personally, I see this as no different than cheating on your taxes or any other form of stealing money from the government.
I can guarantee you, people of those opinions will still see a need for birth control.
Of course- having children would ruin their scam of stealing money from the government.
I honesly feel sorry for your sir, you obviously have been brainwashed since you were very young and are/have missed out on an excellent part of the human experience.
I can say the same thing about people who think that 30 seconds of pleasure shouldn't be paid for.
You view sex simply as a function of procreation, when it is in fact dual purpose. There are a great deal of positive things show by a number of studies I've read over the years.
Studies by biased people who have a reason to lie don't count.
I'm not able to post any links because I work for a government institution and viewing anything reguarding sex at work is strictly off limits. IIRC studies have shown that people who engage in sex on a regular basis tend to be much happier people, and also tend to live longer.
When done properly, it allows you to live forever, in a sense. But of course, that's the point of view that sex includes being a parent and raising children; anything less does not have that benefit.
Sure.... that makes sense... a person that by your definition is irresponsible by having sex in the first place because it was for recreational purposes is now supposed to be responsible enough to parent a child....
Marriage, having sex, and being a parent is all the same act. If they're responsible enough to be allowed to have sex, then they're mature enough to be a parent. In fact, one creates the other- having a child makes you grow up.
Many people out there wouldn't be poor if they didn't have kids they couldn't afford.
And nobody would be poor if we'd just enact a living wage. Stop with the stupid 19th century amorphisms and give it some thought for once.
Not slamming people who can't afford kids (I certainly can't) but remarking that the quality of life for those people would be better if they had been able to use a contraceptive or have an abortion, and then have children 5-10 years later.
And who's holding the gun to their head forcing them to have sex or work at a dead end service industry job? You can afford whatever you can budget- and kids are cheap entertainment at the price!
You have to have available birth control because a percentage of young people will gleefully start having sex as soon as their hormones kick into gear...No amount of education will stop this.
Not true at all. If you bother to tell kids the TRUTH about sex (that it has a specific purpose, procreation of the species, and that when done sucessfully it takes about 20 years, give or take 5 or ten for maturity levels of parent and child) then there's no problem with self control of hormones. For those who choose it, you simply marry them to their significant other, and no divorce allowed until the children are adults.
And when I say education, I mean education. I don't mean "teach abstinence". I mean "this is sex, this is what goes on, this is what you can catch, and this is how you can do it safely." I'm talking a significant course here, not just a day out of gym class.
Implying that it can be done "safely" is a lie at best. But the rest I most certainly DO agree with- just be sure to tell the WHOLE truth, not just the recreational half-truth that sex is just intercourse and only takes sleeping together and one night stands.
The only way to help people make the right descision, is to make sure they have access to all the information. They may go through the whole class and not learn a damn thing, but they have a much better chance than if you'd tried to keep them in ignorance all along.
Completely agreed. And when you have laws that back that up; requiring people take parental responsibility, then there's no need for birth control at all.