Darn. I'm going to reply to my own comment to head off some typical criticism.
YES, I'm suggesting people should work primarily for themselves. SOME folk will say that isn't practical, but these are the same folk who object to every move the corporations make to treat people like units. Jesus, pick a side. You can't have secured employment from a beneficent Santa-like corporation and a decent wage. A decent wage teeters on the precipice whose slopes are unemployment and death.
Make your own decisions. Help people. Get rich. It's pretty simple.
Are those strictly employee figures, or does this include contractors?
I'd guess contractors would bust those figures open.
I'm effectively self-employed in a non-IT engineering field. I work in a family business where my dad died last year and me and a brother and sister are now holding things together. I know what you're thinking but the second generation has been running things for several years now, though we have little expectation of being able to pass the business on to a third generation. We're in a dirt under your fingernails industry and we all came up through the ranks(ish) but that just wouldn't work with kids these days. Better off letting them do whatever they have a passion for, rather than trying to shoe-horn them into an industry the Chinese will probably dominate in ten years time. I say "an industry", when the "an" is redundant.
What surprises me is that IT professionals, mid-level software engineers or whatever the hell, are smarter than me, have trained longer than me, are in a much more competitive environment than me (the mechanical engineering field, excluding the automotive graveyard, is relatively tiny - there are demand issues that limit remuneration but it isn't horrible, though income is much less than for similar level IT) but make far less than me. I'm little more than a shop-keeper with a BIT of technical knowledge in my specific field. Most people never need to know any of my technical information. When they do they bounce off walls wondering what to do until they find me. The main difference is that I'm now third-owner in the business and decide how I'm paid. My salary is modest, but the bonuses and pension contributions are both amble and strategic. There's a decision every person can make, but most choose to band together as employees rather than go their own way. I suppose those high paid employees are worried that if they put their skills up for auction they wouldn't be SO necessary. Perhaps the premium is partially bought with expediency from the HR guys who have to process the paperwork every time they upgrade.
Oh and it shouldn't be a capital question. We have around 2 million quid of infrastructure to do what we do in mechanical engineering. With IT you need, what? A mobile phone and a website?
Those top-rated software engineers need to be looking at making some real money and throwing off their shackles.;) In fact EVERYONE should. Mass employment only ever served one specific.
Technically, I believe it was his child's right to have access to a father that they felt would be infringed by deporting him. It's a fine distinction but worth making. Not that I agree either way.
Odd, but this is the first time I feel like I got my money's worth from the Alpha. I still play but they more he adds, the more he takes away.
Worth fifty bucks of anyone's money... but hey, LOOK they've got it on sale for next to nothing. Grab it while you can! You will exhaust it eventually, but you'll tire yourself out in the process.
I still have a facebook account, but on it my wife is my brother (and yes, she's female in real life), an old co worker is my sister (he's female), my brother is my father, I'm widowed, I was born about 40 years earlier (makes for fun banner ads!), and I live in Beruit (versus living in northern San Diego).
Cute. Oh I see what you did. You took the point of Facebook and made it work against you. Clever. Those guys will never get any use from YOUR information. Of course, neither will you. Me, I just deleted my account. It is possible. Continuing to use the service and jumping through self-made hoops to obfuscate your data doesn't seem like an alternative to me. I could be wrong, but you seem like a smug, barely technologically literate asshole. All fights, no Admin Rights.
Facebook will be around for a while. Part of the ebb and flow of web traffic. Something will come along later that supersedes it and we'll all miss the good old days when cheery, benign Facebook ruled the roost. And then we'll die and none of it will matter.
Science Fiction is declining because every year we learn more and more about what isn't possible, and every year we get closer and closer to the singularity. Even twenty years ago you could imagine a future where space cowboys wrestled with aliens in a space station cantina, but even now we're all tacitly aware that our future is being funnelled in a particular direction and that wide open science fiction dreaming is just that, dreaming. Whatever version of humanity eventually does meet an alien, will be as alien as anything out there in the vastness of space, compared to modern, western mankind.
Speaking as a reasonably intelligent viewer, shows like Eureka, Stargate, Warehouse 13 and a bunch of others, actively insult my intelligence. They're written by old men or young men with unbelievably cynical attitudes, who either wilfully deny what's currently possible or casually treat technology like magic - and no, I don't want to read that ACC quote again because it isn't accurate - technologically deficient peoples will regard technology as magic, technological peoples will regard advanced technology as just that, they won't start pulling magicians out of their asses.
Stargate Universe had Scalzi on board and much as I love his first couple of Old Man's War books he obviously couldn't do much to staple together a bunch of glaring plot holes and plain stupid decisions. I hope he made a boatload of money off it, but he'll be tainted if he hangs around TV studio execs too long. The last decent TV SF writer was MJS and before that you probably have to go back to Ellison, god bless his cantankerous soul.
I think we all agree that the most likely explanation for this would be that the prosecution introduced false testimony because they thought it would bolster their case, perhaps in light of a specific point the judge had raised.
What I don't get it is why so many people automatically assume the prosecution lied and there can be no other explanation, but will twist logic into pretzels to explain the what if and maybe scenarios that justify what the defendant did in the first place. I mean, maybe he was modding Xboxes because he'd been sent back in time and that was the only way to stop the Martians stealing our women in 2050. That seems more likely than an explanation that turns him into a Robin Hood character, hacking Xboxes to run Famicon emulators and using the money he charged to help the local orphanage.
Love the game, liked the movie. It's a three star movie that's a homage to the game, at best. Great lead, small budget, action film. Hey, if people don't like it I understand, but it's no worse than a LOT of other dreck we never hear about. Uwe for Dancing With The Stars in 2012? Huh? Hey, you haters are the ones making him a personality. I'm just a couch potato. Also liked Bloodrayne. In the Name of the King was poor but I watched it through; they could have done so much more with that cast.
There are FAR WORSE film makers out there, but because he messes with film adaptations he's a pariah. Sometimes I feel like I have a million ideas exploding in my head at once. It's disorientating. I think that's how Uwe feels when he gets up. God bless him. We have porn and we have Russ Meyer porn. We have a choice.
Hmmm. I may have declared that Uwe Boll is the Russ Meyer of game franchise movie production. I really hope that catches on.
Uwe, if you're out there... you rock, dude! I've liked more than two thirds of your movies that I've seen and I think you have an accomplished eye for a shot. Seriously, look at his films and deny the way he frames a shot.
Uwe, you crazy diamond, long may you shine.
Automated news... flame me, but I find the idea quite liberating. I get angry at some of the crap I read, and hear, masquerading as news.I hate THOSE GUYS. If it's just a formula delivered by a script... I can relax a little and let the despair seep in naturally the way it's supposed to.
Don't hold your breath. He's a Conservative. Note that everything he said was to make things better for business. It's unlikely to end up a positive thing for the people.
Um, unless you want to live as a hunter-gatherer, you kinda need business. Now, BIG BUSINESS, ie the multi-national corporations, need curtailing. Those guys are unscrupulous. In Victorian England it was the mill-owners that opened the schools and hospitals and provided cheap housing for their workers, because it was ultimately beneficial to the business. Similarly, loosening the noose on copyright isn't so much to help the man in the street, it's to help the entrepreneur in the street make money, any benefit to the hobbyist is just trickle-down. But it's all good.
Kindergarten Etiquette falls down when you're arguing against assholes who refuse to accept your carefully reasoned refutation of their insane ideas. That's why "Kindergarten Etiquette" doesn't work, in general.
If everyone is polite and open to new ideas, an asshole with a crazy scheme will own you. No matter how politely you argue the counter-point, they will win because they have no boundaries on the tools they will use to break what you say.
So, "Kindergarten Etiquette" actually leads to less civility, because it encourages sinful behaviour, like greed and anger.
Obviously, and classically, Kindergarten Etiquette has been involved in the majority of the most egregious sex crimes committed in the twentieth century. When it's wrong to disagree with an adult, what isn't wrong?
Kinda reminds me of the higher educational system described (briefly) in Cory Doctorow's Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom , which is an excellent free read from the days before he started to believe his own hype.
For me there are two categories of books - "average" books that I like, but not incredibly, that I get as ebooks, and there are those that I really treasure that I get as hard-covers. It must be something about the physical nature of books that ebooks just dont do for me. Admittedly a part of me is also always preparing for the post-apocalyptic scenario where there is no power - you dont see e-books giving you a 2% increase in skills.
You're going to burn the hard-covers as fuel? Not a bad plan.
Whatever you care to say about DRM, it is at least honest. Amazingly enough, some people prefer to do business with honest assholes than with dishonest nice guys.
Which I why I shop a lot at Brad Wardell's Stardock.
On paper/screen the apology looks fine. When delivered by a couple of idiots dressed as monks in fake cant on a Youtube video it doesn't really look so sincere.
So what's the alternative to Paypal for... oh, all those sites that use Paypal? With Paypal you register your details and use a, hopefully strong, password to log-in. Paypal is apple pie and Fort Knox. Despite the chaff around the Paypal email scams, Paypal is an established payment system with brand recognition and a track record.
With Paypal, I register my details once, and only have to log in to my account each time, using the tried and true one false log-in per attempt to defeat phishing. With a lot of these sites that use eg Visa, you have to register all your details over again and still jump through hoops to pay them.
Seriously, you like "Verified by Visa"?
Who do I trust.... the people who've been doing this for a decade or the, obviously trustworthy banks that have done such an exemplary job up until now?
The UK, as a whole, often gripes about the US coming into WWII late but there's no doubt the vast majority of us appreciate the sacrifices they made and the economic help that was extended to us and the rest of Europe afterwards. And to their credit the US does appear to be doing whatever they can do to make it into WWIII as early as possible.
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Darn. I'm going to reply to my own comment to head off some typical criticism.
YES, I'm suggesting people should work primarily for themselves. SOME folk will say that isn't practical, but these are the same folk who object to every move the corporations make to treat people like units. Jesus, pick a side. You can't have secured employment from a beneficent Santa-like corporation and a decent wage. A decent wage teeters on the precipice whose slopes are unemployment and death.
Make your own decisions. Help people. Get rich. It's pretty simple.
Are those strictly employee figures, or does this include contractors?
;) In fact EVERYONE should. Mass employment only ever served one specific.
I'd guess contractors would bust those figures open.
I'm effectively self-employed in a non-IT engineering field. I work in a family business where my dad died last year and me and a brother and sister are now holding things together. I know what you're thinking but the second generation has been running things for several years now, though we have little expectation of being able to pass the business on to a third generation. We're in a dirt under your fingernails industry and we all came up through the ranks(ish) but that just wouldn't work with kids these days. Better off letting them do whatever they have a passion for, rather than trying to shoe-horn them into an industry the Chinese will probably dominate in ten years time. I say "an industry", when the "an" is redundant.
What surprises me is that IT professionals, mid-level software engineers or whatever the hell, are smarter than me, have trained longer than me, are in a much more competitive environment than me (the mechanical engineering field, excluding the automotive graveyard, is relatively tiny - there are demand issues that limit remuneration but it isn't horrible, though income is much less than for similar level IT) but make far less than me. I'm little more than a shop-keeper with a BIT of technical knowledge in my specific field. Most people never need to know any of my technical information. When they do they bounce off walls wondering what to do until they find me. The main difference is that I'm now third-owner in the business and decide how I'm paid. My salary is modest, but the bonuses and pension contributions are both amble and strategic. There's a decision every person can make, but most choose to band together as employees rather than go their own way. I suppose those high paid employees are worried that if they put their skills up for auction they wouldn't be SO necessary. Perhaps the premium is partially bought with expediency from the HR guys who have to process the paperwork every time they upgrade.
Oh and it shouldn't be a capital question. We have around 2 million quid of infrastructure to do what we do in mechanical engineering. With IT you need, what? A mobile phone and a website?
Those top-rated software engineers need to be looking at making some real money and throwing off their shackles.
Eg this http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/8413787.stm where the burglary victim was jailed because he chased down the burglar and broke a cricket bat over his head.
Hitting him with the cricket bat at the scene of the crime probably no problem, and rightly so.
Technically, I believe it was his child's right to have access to a father that they felt would be infringed by deporting him. It's a fine distinction but worth making. Not that I agree either way.
It's a Beta.
Odd, but this is the first time I feel like I got my money's worth from the Alpha. I still play but they more he adds, the more he takes away.
Worth fifty bucks of anyone's money... but hey, LOOK they've got it on sale for next to nothing. Grab it while you can! You will exhaust it eventually, but you'll tire yourself out in the process.
I still have a facebook account, but on it my wife is my brother (and yes, she's female in real life), an old co worker is my sister (he's female), my brother is my father, I'm widowed, I was born about 40 years earlier (makes for fun banner ads!), and I live in Beruit (versus living in northern San Diego).
Cute. Oh I see what you did. You took the point of Facebook and made it work against you. Clever. Those guys will never get any use from YOUR information. Of course, neither will you. Me, I just deleted my account. It is possible. Continuing to use the service and jumping through self-made hoops to obfuscate your data doesn't seem like an alternative to me. I could be wrong, but you seem like a smug, barely technologically literate asshole. All fights, no Admin Rights.
Facebook will be around for a while. Part of the ebb and flow of web traffic. Something will come along later that supersedes it and we'll all miss the good old days when cheery, benign Facebook ruled the roost. And then we'll die and none of it will matter.
He might have just been shocked that you were tampering with his merchandise.
Science Fiction is declining because every year we learn more and more about what isn't possible, and every year we get closer and closer to the singularity. Even twenty years ago you could imagine a future where space cowboys wrestled with aliens in a space station cantina, but even now we're all tacitly aware that our future is being funnelled in a particular direction and that wide open science fiction dreaming is just that, dreaming. Whatever version of humanity eventually does meet an alien, will be as alien as anything out there in the vastness of space, compared to modern, western mankind.
Speaking as a reasonably intelligent viewer, shows like Eureka, Stargate, Warehouse 13 and a bunch of others, actively insult my intelligence. They're written by old men or young men with unbelievably cynical attitudes, who either wilfully deny what's currently possible or casually treat technology like magic - and no, I don't want to read that ACC quote again because it isn't accurate - technologically deficient peoples will regard technology as magic, technological peoples will regard advanced technology as just that, they won't start pulling magicians out of their asses.
Stargate Universe had Scalzi on board and much as I love his first couple of Old Man's War books he obviously couldn't do much to staple together a bunch of glaring plot holes and plain stupid decisions. I hope he made a boatload of money off it, but he'll be tainted if he hangs around TV studio execs too long. The last decent TV SF writer was MJS and before that you probably have to go back to Ellison, god bless his cantankerous soul.
If their business model is based on faxing then this might be the wake-up call they need to get into a new business.
Jesus, wtf are you thinking? What if someone in the TSA or equivalent is reading /.?
Given it's rapid expansion in recent years, it's almost inconceivable that someone from the TSA isn't reading this.
I think we all agree that the most likely explanation for this would be that the prosecution introduced false testimony because they thought it would bolster their case, perhaps in light of a specific point the judge had raised.
What I don't get it is why so many people automatically assume the prosecution lied and there can be no other explanation, but will twist logic into pretzels to explain the what if and maybe scenarios that justify what the defendant did in the first place. I mean, maybe he was modding Xboxes because he'd been sent back in time and that was the only way to stop the Martians stealing our women in 2050. That seems more likely than an explanation that turns him into a Robin Hood character, hacking Xboxes to run Famicon emulators and using the money he charged to help the local orphanage.
There are FAR WORSE film makers out there, but because he messes with film adaptations he's a pariah. Sometimes I feel like I have a million ideas exploding in my head at once. It's disorientating. I think that's how Uwe feels when he gets up. God bless him. We have porn and we have Russ Meyer porn. We have a choice.
Hmmm. I may have declared that Uwe Boll is the Russ Meyer of game franchise movie production. I really hope that catches on.
Uwe, if you're out there... you rock, dude! I've liked more than two thirds of your movies that I've seen and I think you have an accomplished eye for a shot. Seriously, look at his films and deny the way he frames a shot.
Uwe, you crazy diamond, long may you shine.
Automated news... flame me, but I find the idea quite liberating. I get angry at some of the crap I read, and hear, masquerading as news.I hate THOSE GUYS. If it's just a formula delivered by a script... I can relax a little and let the despair seep in naturally the way it's supposed to.
I just have to download this 900 gig Geocities torrent so I can properly RTFA.
Don't hold your breath. He's a Conservative. Note that everything he said was to make things better for business. It's unlikely to end up a positive thing for the people.
Um, unless you want to live as a hunter-gatherer, you kinda need business. Now, BIG BUSINESS, ie the multi-national corporations, need curtailing. Those guys are unscrupulous.
In Victorian England it was the mill-owners that opened the schools and hospitals and provided cheap housing for their workers, because it was ultimately beneficial to the business. Similarly, loosening the noose on copyright isn't so much to help the man in the street, it's to help the entrepreneur in the street make money, any benefit to the hobbyist is just trickle-down. But it's all good.
Kindergarten Etiquette falls down when you're arguing against assholes who refuse to accept your carefully reasoned refutation of their insane ideas. That's why "Kindergarten Etiquette" doesn't work, in general. If everyone is polite and open to new ideas, an asshole with a crazy scheme will own you. No matter how politely you argue the counter-point, they will win because they have no boundaries on the tools they will use to break what you say. So, "Kindergarten Etiquette" actually leads to less civility, because it encourages sinful behaviour, like greed and anger. Obviously, and classically, Kindergarten Etiquette has been involved in the majority of the most egregious sex crimes committed in the twentieth century. When it's wrong to disagree with an adult, what isn't wrong?
Well yeah, but if you delete anything you don't agree with, things can remain remarkably civil, wherever you control the edits.
Kinda reminds me of the higher educational system described (briefly) in Cory Doctorow's Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom , which is an excellent free read from the days before he started to believe his own hype.
For me there are two categories of books - "average" books that I like, but not incredibly, that I get as ebooks, and there are those that I really treasure that I get as hard-covers. It must be something about the physical nature of books that ebooks just dont do for me. Admittedly a part of me is also always preparing for the post-apocalyptic scenario where there is no power - you dont see e-books giving you a 2% increase in skills.
You're going to burn the hard-covers as fuel? Not a bad plan.
Whatever you care to say about DRM, it is at least honest. Amazingly enough, some people prefer to do business with honest assholes than with dishonest nice guys.
Which I why I shop a lot at Brad Wardell's Stardock.
On paper/screen the apology looks fine. When delivered by a couple of idiots dressed as monks in fake cant on a Youtube video it doesn't really look so sincere.
So what's the alternative to Paypal for... oh, all those sites that use Paypal? With Paypal you register your details and use a, hopefully strong, password to log-in. Paypal is apple pie and Fort Knox. Despite the chaff around the Paypal email scams, Paypal is an established payment system with brand recognition and a track record. With Paypal, I register my details once, and only have to log in to my account each time, using the tried and true one false log-in per attempt to defeat phishing. With a lot of these sites that use eg Visa, you have to register all your details over again and still jump through hoops to pay them. Seriously, you like "Verified by Visa"? Who do I trust.... the people who've been doing this for a decade or the, obviously trustworthy banks that have done such an exemplary job up until now?
I think it's incredible that those hardy Scandinavian reavers made it off world at all.
The UK, as a whole, often gripes about the US coming into WWII late but there's no doubt the vast majority of us appreciate the sacrifices they made and the economic help that was extended to us and the rest of Europe afterwards. And to their credit the US does appear to be doing whatever they can do to make it into WWIII as early as possible.
I won't have a 3D TV until (a) they don't require dorky glasses and (b) that eye of mine starts working again.