Really? Cuz, last I heard, the kiwis had even setup a special island colony just so the teenagers could be made fair game. Brings new meaning to the term "smoothie bar" for sure....mmmm, get the buttah!
So is it to filter out child pornography, or to filter out anything the gov says is "inappropriate?" It seems even the people doing the "protecting" arent exactly sure about what they are supposed to be protecting people from, or whom they are supposed to be protecting.
We always heard you australians were supposed to be a tough lot. You look more like sheep from here.
Uh huh. Because, in spite of rampant soccer moms and closeted politicians we still don't have to worry about nonsense like "the great firewall of Australia."
And what exactly does the rest of the world have to lose? What Ozzie generated content, besides the Register, even matters outside that weird little island?
Actually, a turd is mostly water, therefore hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Once superman squeezed all the water out, there wouldn't be much left for polishing.
Honestly, I dont get all this windows stuff. 90 seconds to boot and that's an improvement?
How the hell is this NOT a jailable offense? If this had been a MAN at the other end of the line pretending to be a "hot young boy" wooing a 13 year old girl, HE would most certainly have been prosecuted.
How in the hell is this NOT predatory? Apparently "predator" only applies to MEN LOOKING FOR SEX.
This mother needs to be in jail. And she needs to lose custody of her girl.
No adult who would do something so twisted - so obsessive and predatory - to a young person deserves to survive.. nor does any society so hypocritical that it allows something like this to go unpunished when countless others go to jail for so much less.
Exactly. I've not seen anyone else really touch on this and am quite surprised by it. Maybe in ozzland senators dont actually DO anything, but in the US senators put forth all sorts of pork barrel legislation to help along THEIR constituency. Any idealistic community who elected one fo these robotroid senators would be selling themselves completely shrt because they would be giving up this voice in their favor. Yeah it's idealistic and looks like a noble goal, but in the real world such idealism is also quite stupid.
Everyone who buys an office appialce buys it with an operating system - windows, almost universally. There is, included in the box or on the hard drive, a system restoration cd. Any system running windows will inevitably require reloading at some point. When this is done that system is placed back in, from the owner's pov, "from scratch." Unless they are using a system and have never installed ANY software on it - never run updates, installed winzip or an mp3 player or a dvd viewer - then they have to reinstall that software and "reconfigure their system."
It doesnt matter that you don't know any "system builders" who can earn a living. Your opinion is irrelevant. You are not a special and happy flower. You are a decaying piece of meat who is incapable of rational thought or consistency of behavior. So there. Blah.
We can't count exactly and it doesn't matter. If you are choosing to support linux, all that matters is how much money you make off it. And I know for a fact there's nearly enough linux use even here, in the middle of freaking nowhere, to start making money - especially with all those Dells and Emachines and Gateways shipping with Vista. Vista is the best friend linux has had in a long time.
First, a big fuck you for assuming I am a low rent "appliance geek" working out of my garage. I'm not terribly offended but I think you're an ass for assuming this to be the case anyway. How do you know I don't work for Gateway or Dell? Point in fact, I DID work for Gateway for some time. I don't now, but I most certainly don't work out of my garage. I can't even get in my garage anymore, it's too full of crap. Anyway.
Another half-a-fuck-you point on behalf of pretty much every windows user out there. I keep hearing this "not many people have installed an operating system" but the reality is I know LOTS of people who have done so - most of them bootleg windows installs. I think pretty much everyone under 40 has probably installed windows at least once. Myabe it was a reload, maybe it was a bootleg upgrade - don't matter. I can't see anyone using windows for a lengthy period of time and not having to relaod, and I am dead certain anyone with a major brand pc will have at least reloaded windows.
"From scratch?" Yes, from scratch. Because everyone has stuff they want to install. That means every relaod is "from scratch" especially if you are using XP on a machine that came with 98 (as many still do). This also means fucking with drivers that require.net, package installers that require "upgraded dlls," and have to track down the occasional cryptic error message via a tech support call or web forum. In short, every time I watch my buddy install XP on someone's machine (no, I don't touch windows unless I absolutely have to) I thank my lucky stars I swore off that shit years ago. It's neither easier to use nor (especially) to install even when install means having to edit a text file. Who the fuck can't copy and paste text? It's not difficult, it's simply a problem of perception.
Especially when using ubuntu. Because any newbie using ubuntu (and especially any of my customers) is initially, or soon after the upgrade, going to visit the forums where they will likely find information about privoxy. Anyone running ubuntu I installed doesn't even need to go to the forums to have privoxy installed because I do it for them.
Privoxy allows you to replace the browser information string. I do this as a matter of course and there are instructions on the forums on how to do this. As a result, sites by default think I am using Windows XP with MSIE6. Why? Because there are fewer problems when I hit a site that uses embedded media. Opera allows this same sort of functionality and I recall doing the same thing ages ago when I used that with windows.
Now, how many of those linux installs are actually saying MSIE?
"Market share" only counts MONEY, not "free" installs. If I download ubuntu and install it on my laptop, how do they know? They don't - and they don't care, because there are no beans for the bean counters to count.
Likewise, bootleg installs. I have not yet had a single person seriously inquire about "upgrading" to vista. Many people have, however, brought in spanking new machines to be retrograded - either XP or linux. Many more come in with Vista licenses on the box and unregistered XP installs on the hd.
emachines, gateway and all are now shipping with vista and yet the users are still screaming abou tit and doing everything they can to undo the damage. These folks can spin numbers all they like, real world surveys provide ample proof of the suckitude of vista.
Of course they contract with AT&T - but I don't. I have no agreement with them, and they have no agreement with me stating they have the right to cut off my service if I bitch about AT&T.
Regarding fiber, I dont think anyone around here has to be concerned about that within the next decade or two. WiMax or some evolution of it will likely become the "last mile" long before fiber arrives in this area's thinly populated communities.
No. It isnt a monopoly. I live in a very rural area served by bellsouth and it is most definitely NOT a monopoly. We have no cable or other wireless service aside from cellular - the only "last mile" into my house is a phone line. I have DSL. And that DSL is NOT a monopoly.
There are at least 4 differnt providers in my area offering DSL. I pay my provider a fairly high sixty a month for 3Mbps service. I intentionally avoid the phone company because the phone company sucks. I have no "land line" service - I have DSL on an otherwise "dead" phone line. I don't pay Bellsouth or AT&T for anything; I have no contract with them. Bellsouth was required to unbundle this service as part of its AT&T merger settlement with the FTC. I have no idea if this applies throughout the US, but it most definitely applies to Bellsouth customers.
The guy didnt ASK for anything - he's a fucking journalist and he wrote a review. Reviews are open to further review and CRITICISM. I post three paragraphs of valid points and one sentence taking the reviewer to task in personal fashion and you think that makes me a troll? Obviously you have never seen FOX NEWS.
Before blathering on more bullshit about something which you obviously know nothing of why don't you visit the ubuntu forums? You will find there HUNDREDS of posts from me in which I (like so many others) helped countless people there, most of whom ask the same questions already answered days or weeks before because they're either incapable of locating the answer using the fairly feeble "search" or they are simply too lazy. Not once have I smacked someone down for this, although I have had numerous runins with egomaniacal admins to the point I eventually was kicked. Point being, yeah I'm an asshole but I have never smacked down a newbie for not knowing anything - a point I though I made abundantly clear by mentioning "shop" and "customers." Kinda hard to have many of those when you go around pissing people off and belittling them.
Point of fact: It would be economic suicide to convert many windows users over to linux. Its not something that is suggested for everyone and, in fact, I'm fairly selective about it. The shop owner is even more selective about it. Not because most people are too stupid to use linux but because WINDOWS IS BRITTLE AND BREAKS. P2P software is one of the best tools for doing this - and everyone seems to want to run it.
god bless Kazaa! With the help of this tool alone, Windows breaks so easily in the hands of "typical users" that the simple act of backing up data and reloading machines constitutes a significant income flow. In fact, it's probably 75% of the shop's traffic.
If everyone coming into "my" shop were converted to linux, the shop would soon be out of business - machines would go out the door and the people who paid for them would never return until something mechanical failed. This is where Vista presents a potential problem - all the folks coming into the shop now with newer pcs who are utterly frustrated by Vista and want it GONE. Given the choice of paying nearly 200 bucks to reload it with XP or 60 bucks to reload it with ubuntu, many are choosing linux. Might be good for linux market share, but who cares? Most shops would rather have the repeat business.
MBAs who are employed (one would assume this is the WSG audience) can afford to pay a tech for basic stuff that is over their heads. And, the thing is (and the reviewer doesnt mention) is that once these things are done its very unlikely they will need re-doing any time soon.
If you are a shareware whore who needs to load up your pc with every stupid widget windows hawks offer you then you are going to fuck up your machine and it will need reloading. And few of these people seem competent to do more than insert the cd and wipe everything when their "computer gets slow." But THERE ARE NO widgets offered at every turn in linux so this is an unlikely fate for such users.
I have a user now who came into the shop with a fairly new but ailing laptop. He was completely unhappy with the installed vista so I offerd to hook him up with ubuntu. He has DSL so there were no modem issues; I installed ubuntu, installed the codecs and various few packagses needed for other typical things (like flash, decss, etc) and sent him on his way. Both he and his wife use it, and she uses it for school. In months now he has come back with questions exactly once - they both love it.
Most people need help installing windows and getting their system up and running. It may arrive running OOTB but windows most always eventually dies and when that happens most "typical users" who know nothing about the behind the scenes stuff will either ask a friend (who may be just as clueless as them but foolhardy enough to give it a go anyway) or pay a shop to fix their machine. At that point linux WILL have a lower cost of ownership and greater overall reliability - even for the "average user."
Why should anyone believe a guy who cant even find the freaking mouse control panel? Is he really so stupid he can't fiugure out the mouse panel just might fix the touchpad settings on his mouse-less laptop?
And you're completely overlooking the point. Creating a society where both parents in traditionally two parent homes (or, lately, one parent homes) are removed from the task of raising the family for pretty much most of the day is not healthy. Japan had a culture of long hours and hard work too, but they also were still tied to the traditional gender roles - ie there was usually a mother at home to care for the kids. Thanks to the post-war "cultural revolution" in this country that is largely impractical here. This pressure on the middle class has helped to create our present downwardly mobile society; while we have more wealthy families we also have more struggling to get by and the gap continues to widen. Conservatives like to blather on about the threat to the american family yet they repeatedly side with the corporate interests that increasingly demand workers take time away from those families in a zealous pursuit of dollars to feed the fattened bellies of shareholders.
the higher pay, the fact that you're sitting in a climate-controlled office...
So because the job is physically less demanding on the worker all that time away from family is less toxic to our culture? Not looking that way...
And the reason those "scabs" are not bein pummelled and abused and left at the factory gates for their families to haul to the hospital is because, in large part, of the worker's rights fought for and won nearly a century ago.
Obviously? Just as the very definition of "child porn" varies greatly even among the individuals of a geographic community, this whole thing about the ethics of overtime is a problem of our own doing. Why do salaried employees feel the need to work 60 or more hours per week? Because all the other salaried employees feel the need to work 60 hours per week and one has to compete to keep one's job. And don't come back with that nonsense about all the time IT people "waste" doing things unrelated to their work; no one can sustain 8 hours a day of sustained concentration on such complex problems without going batty. Muscles might be able to recover after a few minutes of rest, but the human mind is no mere muscle and requires different recovery patterns.
If IT (or any other salaried) employees had any sense they would begin organizing toward ending this practice of compulsory overtime. Call it unions if you will, that's essentially what's going on - but labor unions effectively ended this problem for auto workers who once faced the exact same issues. Granted, IT workers are rarely beaten and carried to the gate for "causing trouble," but the pattern of corporate exploitation in this society now parallels that of the earliest days of the industrial revolution in many other ways. There are other forms of coercion and abuse than physical, and modern corporations have carefully crafted the laws to maximize their ability to practice this culturally toxic exploitation.
Church members who donate to churches DO pay taxes, as do employees of churches.
So what? Employees pay income tax and then pay sales tax - double taxation - and yet we seem to be ok with that. Why is it OK to tax Ford and not The Pope?
I'm sure you won't take such a hard stance towards the Brookings Institute and the Harvard School of Business.
Sure? Then you're just wrong. As long as we're going to have taxes, non-profit organizations should not exist. Because they indirectly increase the tax burden on us all (they pay no taxes on donations and the one making the donation then gets to deduct that money from taxable income) they violate our right to free association - taxation without representation.
I had no idea there were perfect humans! You never make the wrong choice? Willingly? Virtually everyone I know does on almost a daily basis - myself, I know I am too fat and yet every day I choose again to do nothing about it. A third of the people of this country do the exact same thing, each and every day. If you are a christian moslem or jew, how often do you choose to not go to temple services? How often do parents sit the kids in front of the tv rather than actively involving their kids in something as a family?
You can't make a choice where someone "innocent" will be hurt? I don't know anyone truly innocent except maybe a baby - and kids need choices made for them that often involve them being hurt. You balance the hurt they experience now against the potential for greater pain an suffering - but there is no way around some amount of pain no matter how some may try to pretend. Isn't that what religion is supposed to be there for? To help us weak and feeble creatures cope?
Workers rights are right in the constitution: the right to free association. Unions have no power to force membership (unlike the government and taxes) but, of course, the government meddling (in the interest of empowering corporations against those who choose to organize) is what fucks the rest of it up.
BTW, I (dunno about parent) am against the FDA and "net neutrality" and msot of the rest. The FCC should exist to allocate blocks of spectrum in the interest of the people, not to the highest bidder, and to ensure reliable communications - just like a highway department that ensures safe roads, etc. Just since you mentioned it...
Activity that is stimulating, rewarding, satisfying and glorifying.
How can activity be stimulating and satisfying and glorifying if there is no choice? Either ther is free will or there isn't. Without free will there is no choice, and with free will there is the implicit option of making the WRONG choice - ie doing evil.
Man was supposedly created to be a companion to god and to glorify him - this is why we have free will. If there is glory in heaven, then there must exist the potential for evil. That means, if heaven exists, there still exists within that realm the potential to lose one's grace and thus being ejected.... or, it's just emotional and intellectual nothingness. Some paradise.
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Really? Cuz, last I heard, the kiwis had even setup a special island colony just so the teenagers could be made fair game. Brings new meaning to the term "smoothie bar" for sure. ...mmmm, get the buttah!
So is it to filter out child pornography, or to filter out anything the gov says is "inappropriate?" It seems even the people doing the "protecting" arent exactly sure about what they are supposed to be protecting people from, or whom they are supposed to be protecting.
We always heard you australians were supposed to be a tough lot. You look more like sheep from here.
Baaaaaaaahhhh... baaaaaaahhh...
Ha. I see it's not just the US that also has its fair share of "love it or leave it" redneck types.
Uh huh. Because, in spite of rampant soccer moms and closeted politicians we still don't have to worry about nonsense like "the great firewall of Australia."
And what exactly does the rest of the world have to lose? What Ozzie generated content, besides the Register, even matters outside that weird little island?
Seriously. They just made the olsen twins website, Disney, and any other website containing a picture of a child illegal.
Morons.
Actually, a turd is mostly water, therefore hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Once superman squeezed all the water out, there wouldn't be much left for polishing.
Honestly, I dont get all this windows stuff. 90 seconds to boot and that's an improvement?
How the hell is this NOT a jailable offense? If this had been a MAN at the other end of the line pretending to be a "hot young boy" wooing a 13 year old girl, HE would most certainly have been prosecuted.
How in the hell is this NOT predatory? Apparently "predator" only applies to MEN LOOKING FOR SEX.
This mother needs to be in jail. And she needs to lose custody of her girl.
No adult who would do something so twisted - so obsessive and predatory - to a young person deserves to survive.. nor does any society so hypocritical that it allows something like this to go unpunished when countless others go to jail for so much less.
Let's have the candidates debate the freakin CONSTITUTION. You know... that withered old piece of paper they're sworn to defend?
Exactly. I've not seen anyone else really touch on this and am quite surprised by it. Maybe in ozzland senators dont actually DO anything, but in the US senators put forth all sorts of pork barrel legislation to help along THEIR constituency. Any idealistic community who elected one fo these robotroid senators would be selling themselves completely shrt because they would be giving up this voice in their favor. Yeah it's idealistic and looks like a noble goal, but in the real world such idealism is also quite stupid.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
Everyone who buys an office appialce buys it with an operating system - windows, almost universally. There is, included in the box or on the hard drive, a system restoration cd. Any system running windows will inevitably require reloading at some point. When this is done that system is placed back in, from the owner's pov, "from scratch." Unless they are using a system and have never installed ANY software on it - never run updates, installed winzip or an mp3 player or a dvd viewer - then they have to reinstall that software and "reconfigure their system."
It doesnt matter that you don't know any "system builders" who can earn a living. Your opinion is irrelevant. You are not a special and happy flower. You are a decaying piece of meat who is incapable of rational thought or consistency of behavior. So there. Blah.
We can't count exactly and it doesn't matter. If you are choosing to support linux, all that matters is how much money you make off it. And I know for a fact there's nearly enough linux use even here, in the middle of freaking nowhere, to start making money - especially with all those Dells and Emachines and Gateways shipping with Vista. Vista is the best friend linux has had in a long time.
First, a big fuck you for assuming I am a low rent "appliance geek" working out of my garage. I'm not terribly offended but I think you're an ass for assuming this to be the case anyway. How do you know I don't work for Gateway or Dell? Point in fact, I DID work for Gateway for some time. I don't now, but I most certainly don't work out of my garage. I can't even get in my garage anymore, it's too full of crap. Anyway.
.net, package installers that require "upgraded dlls," and have to track down the occasional cryptic error message via a tech support call or web forum. In short, every time I watch my buddy install XP on someone's machine (no, I don't touch windows unless I absolutely have to) I thank my lucky stars I swore off that shit years ago. It's neither easier to use nor (especially) to install even when install means having to edit a text file. Who the fuck can't copy and paste text? It's not difficult, it's simply a problem of perception.
Another half-a-fuck-you point on behalf of pretty much every windows user out there. I keep hearing this "not many people have installed an operating system" but the reality is I know LOTS of people who have done so - most of them bootleg windows installs. I think pretty much everyone under 40 has probably installed windows at least once. Myabe it was a reload, maybe it was a bootleg upgrade - don't matter. I can't see anyone using windows for a lengthy period of time and not having to relaod, and I am dead certain anyone with a major brand pc will have at least reloaded windows.
"From scratch?" Yes, from scratch. Because everyone has stuff they want to install. That means every relaod is "from scratch" especially if you are using XP on a machine that came with 98 (as many still do). This also means fucking with drivers that require
Especially when using ubuntu. Because any newbie using ubuntu (and especially any of my customers) is initially, or soon after the upgrade, going to visit the forums where they will likely find information about privoxy. Anyone running ubuntu I installed doesn't even need to go to the forums to have privoxy installed because I do it for them.
Privoxy allows you to replace the browser information string. I do this as a matter of course and there are instructions on the forums on how to do this. As a result, sites by default think I am using Windows XP with MSIE6. Why? Because there are fewer problems when I hit a site that uses embedded media. Opera allows this same sort of functionality and I recall doing the same thing ages ago when I used that with windows.
Now, how many of those linux installs are actually saying MSIE?
"Market share" only counts MONEY, not "free" installs. If I download ubuntu and install it on my laptop, how do they know? They don't - and they don't care, because there are no beans for the bean counters to count.
Likewise, bootleg installs. I have not yet had a single person seriously inquire about "upgrading" to vista. Many people have, however, brought in spanking new machines to be retrograded - either XP or linux. Many more come in with Vista licenses on the box and unregistered XP installs on the hd.
emachines, gateway and all are now shipping with vista and yet the users are still screaming abou tit and doing everything they can to undo the damage. These folks can spin numbers all they like, real world surveys provide ample proof of the suckitude of vista.
Of course they contract with AT&T - but I don't. I have no agreement with them, and they have no agreement with me stating they have the right to cut off my service if I bitch about AT&T.
Regarding fiber, I dont think anyone around here has to be concerned about that within the next decade or two. WiMax or some evolution of it will likely become the "last mile" long before fiber arrives in this area's thinly populated communities.
No. It isnt a monopoly. I live in a very rural area served by bellsouth and it is most definitely NOT a monopoly. We have no cable or other wireless service aside from cellular - the only "last mile" into my house is a phone line. I have DSL. And that DSL is NOT a monopoly.
There are at least 4 differnt providers in my area offering DSL. I pay my provider a fairly high sixty a month for 3Mbps service. I intentionally avoid the phone company because the phone company sucks. I have no "land line" service - I have DSL on an otherwise "dead" phone line. I don't pay Bellsouth or AT&T for anything; I have no contract with them. Bellsouth was required to unbundle this service as part of its AT&T merger settlement with the FTC. I have no idea if this applies throughout the US, but it most definitely applies to Bellsouth customers.
The guy didnt ASK for anything - he's a fucking journalist and he wrote a review. Reviews are open to further review and CRITICISM. I post three paragraphs of valid points and one sentence taking the reviewer to task in personal fashion and you think that makes me a troll? Obviously you have never seen FOX NEWS.
Before blathering on more bullshit about something which you obviously know nothing of why don't you visit the ubuntu forums? You will find there HUNDREDS of posts from me in which I (like so many others) helped countless people there, most of whom ask the same questions already answered days or weeks before because they're either incapable of locating the answer using the fairly feeble "search" or they are simply too lazy. Not once have I smacked someone down for this, although I have had numerous runins with egomaniacal admins to the point I eventually was kicked. Point being, yeah I'm an asshole but I have never smacked down a newbie for not knowing anything - a point I though I made abundantly clear by mentioning "shop" and "customers." Kinda hard to have many of those when you go around pissing people off and belittling them.
Point of fact: It would be economic suicide to convert many windows users over to linux. Its not something that is suggested for everyone and, in fact, I'm fairly selective about it. The shop owner is even more selective about it. Not because most people are too stupid to use linux but because WINDOWS IS BRITTLE AND BREAKS. P2P software is one of the best tools for doing this - and everyone seems to want to run it.
god bless Kazaa! With the help of this tool alone, Windows breaks so easily in the hands of "typical users" that the simple act of backing up data and reloading machines constitutes a significant income flow. In fact, it's probably 75% of the shop's traffic.
If everyone coming into "my" shop were converted to linux, the shop would soon be out of business - machines would go out the door and the people who paid for them would never return until something mechanical failed. This is where Vista presents a potential problem - all the folks coming into the shop now with newer pcs who are utterly frustrated by Vista and want it GONE. Given the choice of paying nearly 200 bucks to reload it with XP or 60 bucks to reload it with ubuntu, many are choosing linux. Might be good for linux market share, but who cares? Most shops would rather have the repeat business.
MBAs who are employed (one would assume this is the WSG audience) can afford to pay a tech for basic stuff that is over their heads. And, the thing is (and the reviewer doesnt mention) is that once these things are done its very unlikely they will need re-doing any time soon.
If you are a shareware whore who needs to load up your pc with every stupid widget windows hawks offer you then you are going to fuck up your machine and it will need reloading. And few of these people seem competent to do more than insert the cd and wipe everything when their "computer gets slow." But THERE ARE NO widgets offered at every turn in linux so this is an unlikely fate for such users.
I have a user now who came into the shop with a fairly new but ailing laptop. He was completely unhappy with the installed vista so I offerd to hook him up with ubuntu. He has DSL so there were no modem issues; I installed ubuntu, installed the codecs and various few packagses needed for other typical things (like flash, decss, etc) and sent him on his way. Both he and his wife use it, and she uses it for school. In months now he has come back with questions exactly once - they both love it.
Most people need help installing windows and getting their system up and running. It may arrive running OOTB but windows most always eventually dies and when that happens most "typical users" who know nothing about the behind the scenes stuff will either ask a friend (who may be just as clueless as them but foolhardy enough to give it a go anyway) or pay a shop to fix their machine. At that point linux WILL have a lower cost of ownership and greater overall reliability - even for the "average user."
Why should anyone believe a guy who cant even find the freaking mouse control panel? Is he really so stupid he can't fiugure out the mouse panel just might fix the touchpad settings on his mouse-less laptop?
And you're completely overlooking the point. Creating a society where both parents in traditionally two parent homes (or, lately, one parent homes) are removed from the task of raising the family for pretty much most of the day is not healthy. Japan had a culture of long hours and hard work too, but they also were still tied to the traditional gender roles - ie there was usually a mother at home to care for the kids. Thanks to the post-war "cultural revolution" in this country that is largely impractical here. This pressure on the middle class has helped to create our present downwardly mobile society; while we have more wealthy families we also have more struggling to get by and the gap continues to widen. Conservatives like to blather on about the threat to the american family yet they repeatedly side with the corporate interests that increasingly demand workers take time away from those families in a zealous pursuit of dollars to feed the fattened bellies of shareholders.
the higher pay, the fact that you're sitting in a climate-controlled office...
So because the job is physically less demanding on the worker all that time away from family is less toxic to our culture? Not looking that way...
And the reason those "scabs" are not bein pummelled and abused and left at the factory gates for their families to haul to the hospital is because, in large part, of the worker's rights fought for and won nearly a century ago.
Know your roots, bro.
Obviously? Just as the very definition of "child porn" varies greatly even among the individuals of a geographic community, this whole thing about the ethics of overtime is a problem of our own doing. Why do salaried employees feel the need to work 60 or more hours per week? Because all the other salaried employees feel the need to work 60 hours per week and one has to compete to keep one's job. And don't come back with that nonsense about all the time IT people "waste" doing things unrelated to their work; no one can sustain 8 hours a day of sustained concentration on such complex problems without going batty. Muscles might be able to recover after a few minutes of rest, but the human mind is no mere muscle and requires different recovery patterns.
If IT (or any other salaried) employees had any sense they would begin organizing toward ending this practice of compulsory overtime. Call it unions if you will, that's essentially what's going on - but labor unions effectively ended this problem for auto workers who once faced the exact same issues. Granted, IT workers are rarely beaten and carried to the gate for "causing trouble," but the pattern of corporate exploitation in this society now parallels that of the earliest days of the industrial revolution in many other ways. There are other forms of coercion and abuse than physical, and modern corporations have carefully crafted the laws to maximize their ability to practice this culturally toxic exploitation.
Church members who donate to churches DO pay taxes, as do employees of churches.
So what? Employees pay income tax and then pay sales tax - double taxation - and yet we seem to be ok with that. Why is it OK to tax Ford and not The Pope?
I'm sure you won't take such a hard stance towards the Brookings Institute and the Harvard School of Business.
Sure? Then you're just wrong. As long as we're going to have taxes, non-profit organizations should not exist. Because they indirectly increase the tax burden on us all (they pay no taxes on donations and the one making the donation then gets to deduct that money from taxable income) they violate our right to free association - taxation without representation.
I had no idea there were perfect humans! You never make the wrong choice? Willingly? Virtually everyone I know does on almost a daily basis - myself, I know I am too fat and yet every day I choose again to do nothing about it. A third of the people of this country do the exact same thing, each and every day. If you are a christian moslem or jew, how often do you choose to not go to temple services? How often do parents sit the kids in front of the tv rather than actively involving their kids in something as a family?
You can't make a choice where someone "innocent" will be hurt? I don't know anyone truly innocent except maybe a baby - and kids need choices made for them that often involve them being hurt. You balance the hurt they experience now against the potential for greater pain an suffering - but there is no way around some amount of pain no matter how some may try to pretend. Isn't that what religion is supposed to be there for? To help us weak and feeble creatures cope?
Workers rights are right in the constitution: the right to free association. Unions have no power to force membership (unlike the government and taxes) but, of course, the government meddling (in the interest of empowering corporations against those who choose to organize) is what fucks the rest of it up.
BTW, I (dunno about parent) am against the FDA and "net neutrality" and msot of the rest. The FCC should exist to allocate blocks of spectrum in the interest of the people, not to the highest bidder, and to ensure reliable communications - just like a highway department that ensures safe roads, etc. Just since you mentioned it...
Activity that is stimulating, rewarding, satisfying and glorifying.
How can activity be stimulating and satisfying and glorifying if there is no choice? Either ther is free will or there isn't. Without free will there is no choice, and with free will there is the implicit option of making the WRONG choice - ie doing evil.
Man was supposedly created to be a companion to god and to glorify him - this is why we have free will. If there is glory in heaven, then there must exist the potential for evil. That means, if heaven exists, there still exists within that realm the potential to lose one's grace and thus being ejected.... or, it's just emotional and intellectual nothingness. Some paradise.