Also, your theory doesn't hold true if someone is hired for one salaried position, but then promoted to a different position with on-call responsibilities
It holds perfectly true, unless employment law is particularily bizarre where you live a change of employment contract will be mutually agreed. Don't want the promotion with on-call? Don't agree to the promotion (and risk being sidelined of course...)
What is bad for you is the fact you critised someones behaviour based on the extremely flawed assumption that him using stereotypical examples with blatant humour means he acts this way himself. Protip: There is a reason why the expression "Assumption is the mother of all fuckups" is still around.
Picasa is one of the few pieces of software that impresses me, and continues to impress me more with each revision. From the way it imports and sorts, through the quality of its automated colour/light fixing to features like face recognition, online gallery integration and tagging it makes organising 'home' photos a pleasent experience rather than a task.
Maybe better software exists, and it probably isn't as useful to serious photographers but everyone I've shown it to from Grandparents to early teens have become loyal users.
Or maybe the few million people in New York could scrape together enough money to provide the infrastructure without being subsidised? The OPs point was that there is a limit to the services you can expect to be provided to you if you choose to live in a remote location.
If I go and build a house 80 miles from the nearest village, I don't expect the goverment to provide me with a highway, mains gas and electric, water and waste pipes as well as a school and emergency room next door.
I don't believe that every community should be forced to shoulder the full costs of all infrastructure, but raising prices for everyone so that the few can get 100mb internet seems a little stupid.
You missed his point. He wasn't questioning the use of gagging orders, he was pointing out the issue with the 'blogosphere' etc being used to subvert them. We celebrate the justice of the internet when it is used to leak information that shouldn't be hidden, but it can just as easily be used to spread information that we may wish was kept private.
You can know whatever you like. Throughout history people have known no end of things, the list of things they knew to be impossible but happened is undoubtedly inconceivable. After all it was known that 64k should be enough... that cavalry would always be vital in an army... that the world was flat... that afrikans were a lesser species.. that genetic mutation is impossible...
We are still so far from understanding what makes the mind work that to say you know it can't be replicated artificially just makes you look foolish.
Personally, as someone who believes that all life was created purely as an inevitable consequence of time and the natural laws, and that humans evolved from less complex lifeforms. I find that much harder to believe than the idea that an AI with sufficient processing power will be 'self-aware'.
So what you're saying is that they lie about the price
What you would prefer that instead of seeing $200 dollars on the sticker, it should say $500 TCO? They aren't lieing about the price, they aren't lieing at all, have you ever heard anyone at Nintendo suggest you could do more with a Wii than use the software they make available?
If I can give someone x for 1 year at a cost of y, knowing that the typical user will generate y profit per year for 3 years it makes perfect sense (and is not remotely immoral) to offer to discount the product).
You have also to realize that electricity costs less per mile/Km than petrol.
Exactly. I drive somewhere in the region of 500 miles a week including my work commute. Petrol is costing me in the region of £200-£250pm. Given the rate I can get electricity at (overnight) the cost saving would be massive. The only thing that would stop me buying an electric car at the moment is the range limitation, even 150 miles would be enough to cover the vast majority of my journeys.
Factor in that many households in the UK have 2 cars and the need to have both cars capable of travelling large distances decreases further.
It doesn't sound like flamebait, just painfully niave. Firstly as Excel is not designed to offer the functionality of those programs nor do I want it to, secondly because I use the tools provided to me by my employer. The planning solution they have built up over the last 8 years is based on Excel, it will be replaced by a sizable extension to our ERP system next year. Suggesting that I should try and force my employer to replace a excel based planning system with one created in a mathematics/statistics package would be stupid enough even if you ignore the aformentioned timeline.
As to why I like the ribbon. Functions I use regularily enough to remember I use shortcuts or add them to the quick access toolbar (which gives them ANOTHER shortcut as well). Functions I use far less, generally presentation related functions like con-formating, format painting and the like are available on the home tab (ie at the top of my screen 95% of the time). If I need to do something I am not familiar with (often the case in word which I barely scratch the surface one) the ribbon tabs group functions in a way I find intuitive.
I've been using office for years, and in my current role have to use excel excessively. To guestimate, I would say 60% of my time is spent working in that program. I would hate to have to give up 2007 and the ribbon.
Anyone who has been using Excel 2007 for months and estimates their productivity has taken a sizeable drop isn't a advanced or intermediate user. I can respect the view that 2007 is less intuitive (even though I disagree) but it is plain bollocks to say it is slower once you know how to use it (and an advanced user is capable of learning new methods ffs).
When I hear morons talk about muscle memory in Excel I know they don't understand what an advanced user is. Did ANY advanced user actually grab the mouse and click on a menu option rather than using one of the numerous keyboard shortcuts?
Not versed on tax law enough to say if Microsoft is breaking the law but its a given they are bending it to the absolute limit if they aren't out right breaking it, like most big corporations.
You're not versed on tax law so wtf makes you think you can even state they are pushing the bounds? It is either illegal or it isn't, and given that thousands of companies big and small do the same thing MS is doing I doubt its legal status is particularly contentious.
An individual or company is doing nothing wrong by minimising it's tax liabilities in a legal way. If the tax system is either poorly thought out or full of 'loopholes' then get those fixed. Generally, one of the biggest problems with western tax systems is complexity. Simpler taxation tends to be fairer.
In the UK we have an incredibly complex tax system, we get taxed on savings (except ISAs which can only have so much paid in per year, and that quantity varies depending on whether you want to save only cash or cash/shares). If you own sufficient assets it can be worth creating a corporation and gradually transferring ownership to your children to avoid inheritance tax etc. This complexity virtually always benefits the rich, as only experts can understand enough to play the system well.
You explain the current situation rather well. I'd much prefer a system where IP, like patents, lasts a fixed period from being produced rather than the rather strange system of years from death. The ability to control your IP for 10, 15 or 20 years seems fair to reward the author, the current system that can leave works under copyright for 100 years can only stiffle the creation of more and better works.
Just imagine if Roman-Latin has been stabilized in 500 A.D..... which would make communication between the peoples of the EU much easier.
Just imagine if the world settled on Microsoft Windows as the only operating system platform...
Freedom is being able to choose to change, especially when others thing that change is a bad idea. To say what is going on now is new is rubbish (see bastard latin) and we don't know whether it is a good or a bad change yet.
I live in a high energy efficiency property in the UK as well, we moved to energy efficient bulbs around 18 months ago and have noticed a sufficient decrease in energy use to believe it was worthwhile.
Obviously I don't know nearly enough about your situation to advise you, but I am not persuaded that heat produced due to inefficiency of lightbulbs or other devices is an economical source of heating.
You and other American short sighted creeps, who cannot see benefit to human progress from the freedom and codification of all human knowledge
Short sighted American creeps like the ones who founded google perhaps? I can't imagine how you managed to write that post without noticing the blatant hypocrisy.
Perhaps you can demonstrate your awareness of your belief in the freedom and codification of all human knowledge. Please inform us of your home address, bank account details, phone and email accounts and the relevant details of all family and close friends.... Wait, let me guess, that data doesn't count.
Bollocks. If a network operator agrees to terms with Apple offering them a deal they believe they can't beat by distrobuting the iPhone through multiple networks then Apple made the right call. I don't have or want an iPhone and Apple get away with murder without being called on it, but this isn't their fault.
Besides which how are you going to 'switch' networks? Pay off the remaining x months to AT&T and then get a new contract elsewhere?
I, for one, am getting really fed up with people trying to get in the way of Google, and others making more information available, for free.
And I'm fed up of people not being able to see costs that aren't prefaced by a $ sign. Google is in the fortunate position of having a monopoly on digitising orphaned works, and it got this monopoly by agreeing to pay an organisation which often has nothing to do with the creation of those works and no intention of paying the authors.
There is practically no slashdotter who doesn't like the idea of digitising these works, but most are able to see the wood for the trees, and that means opposing the creation of yet another monopoly.
In the UK I'm pretty sure the standard form of directions is by pub names "turn left at the King's Head, then right after the Fox & Hound and it should be on the opposite side to Pilgrim's progress", you could certainly get most places in Yorkshire using nothing but them!
Are there still signs on the side? If yes, you have everything you need to get anywhere.
I was way behind the curve in getting a sat-nav even though it fits the kind of tech-gadget market that should interest me. You're absolutely right that a sat-nav isn't vital for travel, but then nor were road signs if you have a map, a map isn't important if someone wrote the route down for you and writing it down isn't required if you just remember it in your head....
The point of a sat-nav isn't to make the impossible possible, it is to provide a quick and easy way to do something and a safety blanket if you go wrong. I must of used my sat-nav 50+ times now and the only time it has been really advantageous was when I got caught in a 5 mile queue of still traffic at a junction between motorways. I got it to plan an alternative that didn't use the next motorway and got home virtually as fast as originally planned. Yes it would be possible to get my map out and look for alternatives, but sat-nav does it quickly, optimally and can compare distances and times more easily, what's there not to like?
Of course this got modded flamebait, but in reality is quite insightful.
No it's flamebait that happened to stray near to valid points while insulting people.
I am offended that you think you can put me at risk any time you please.
I'm not a cyclist and I commute a considerable distance down country roads used by bikes, walkers, tractors etc and I find your self-centric view of who the road is for to be condemnable. Roads are for use by vehicles and any competent driver can share them with other forms of traffic without difficulty. More bike lanes would be great but spending a small fortune adding them where their isn't sufficient traffic to justify it is wasteful when so many other things could do with government expenditure.
I'd actually enjoy seeing what happened if this ever became law. My expectation is that the vast majority of content providers would simply authorise linking in a linking.txt page or XHTML markup on pages. The few content providers who don't want to allow everyone to link to them won't.
I don't care enough to fight for a change, but I always found the change in rights Google has been leading to leave a bad taste. I don't like the idea that companies have the right to do what they want with my site content, books, images etc unless I take the effort to tell them.
they are not nearly as wealthy, populated or well armed.
At least when someone is wealthy they have something to lose, it's not like holding Afghanistan was of any real benefit to Russia other than in saving face. I'm not sure that justifying support of the Taliban on those grounds is a particularly strong arguement.
I'm sorry, I expected people to be able to infer at least one step from the things I spelt out in plain English.
If it was legal to buy discount DVDs in India and sell them in America then DVD producers etc would stop selling in India at the lower rate. Why would you sell cheap DVDs in India to earn negligible income there,if this will cost you masses of money by losing higher revenue sales of US goods. Ergo, the price disparity can't be legally exploited when it exists because it is not legal to exploit it.
Don't worry if you still don't get it, its safe to say you won't be setting economic policy any time soon.
There is *no* reason the clothes, drugs, movies, songs, etc. etc. should have that extreme of a price difference.
Just because you haven't been able to think of the reason doesn't mean there isn't one.
To take the example of a DVD, only considering America and India. A film has a fixed cost of say $100 million to recoup from DVD sales, and each individual DVD has a cost of say $0.20 to produce and sell. If the DVD seller only sold at $19.99 in both countries then sales in India would be negligible, meaning that sales in America will need to cover the entire cost of both making the film and pressing the DVDs.
If they sold DVDs at $2.50 everywhere then the margin would be insufficient to cover their costs.
What you are ignoring is that the by selling the DVD in India at $2.50 the company knows it wont cover all the overhead costs, but it will cover some of them. If Indian sales generate $5 million then it lowers the amount they need to charge in America to make a profit by $5 million. If films etc weren't sold at a lower price in countries with lower wages then they would have higher prices in the countries where they are sold in order to cover the lost revenue.
Slashdot Mirror
It holds perfectly true, unless employment law is particularily bizarre where you live a change of employment contract will be mutually agreed. Don't want the promotion with on-call? Don't agree to the promotion (and risk being sidelined of course...)
What is bad for you is the fact you critised someones behaviour based on the extremely flawed assumption that him using stereotypical examples with blatant humour means he acts this way himself. Protip: There is a reason why the expression "Assumption is the mother of all fuckups" is still around.
Picasa is one of the few pieces of software that impresses me, and continues to impress me more with each revision. From the way it imports and sorts, through the quality of its automated colour/light fixing to features like face recognition, online gallery integration and tagging it makes organising 'home' photos a pleasent experience rather than a task.
Maybe better software exists, and it probably isn't as useful to serious photographers but everyone I've shown it to from Grandparents to early teens have become loyal users.
Or maybe the few million people in New York could scrape together enough money to provide the infrastructure without being subsidised? The OPs point was that there is a limit to the services you can expect to be provided to you if you choose to live in a remote location.
If I go and build a house 80 miles from the nearest village, I don't expect the goverment to provide me with a highway, mains gas and electric, water and waste pipes as well as a school and emergency room next door.
I don't believe that every community should be forced to shoulder the full costs of all infrastructure, but raising prices for everyone so that the few can get 100mb internet seems a little stupid.
You missed his point. He wasn't questioning the use of gagging orders, he was pointing out the issue with the 'blogosphere' etc being used to subvert them. We celebrate the justice of the internet when it is used to leak information that shouldn't be hidden, but it can just as easily be used to spread information that we may wish was kept private.
You can know whatever you like. Throughout history people have known no end of things, the list of things they knew to be impossible but happened is undoubtedly inconceivable. After all it was known that 64k should be enough... that cavalry would always be vital in an army... that the world was flat... that afrikans were a lesser species.. that genetic mutation is impossible...
We are still so far from understanding what makes the mind work that to say you know it can't be replicated artificially just makes you look foolish.
Personally, as someone who believes that all life was created purely as an inevitable consequence of time and the natural laws, and that humans evolved from less complex lifeforms. I find that much harder to believe than the idea that an AI with sufficient processing power will be 'self-aware'.
What you would prefer that instead of seeing $200 dollars on the sticker, it should say $500 TCO? They aren't lieing about the price, they aren't lieing at all, have you ever heard anyone at Nintendo suggest you could do more with a Wii than use the software they make available?
If I can give someone x for 1 year at a cost of y, knowing that the typical user will generate y profit per year for 3 years it makes perfect sense (and is not remotely immoral) to offer to discount the product).
Exactly. I drive somewhere in the region of 500 miles a week including my work commute. Petrol is costing me in the region of £200-£250pm. Given the rate I can get electricity at (overnight) the cost saving would be massive. The only thing that would stop me buying an electric car at the moment is the range limitation, even 150 miles would be enough to cover the vast majority of my journeys.
Factor in that many households in the UK have 2 cars and the need to have both cars capable of travelling large distances decreases further.
It doesn't sound like flamebait, just painfully niave. Firstly as Excel is not designed to offer the functionality of those programs nor do I want it to, secondly because I use the tools provided to me by my employer. The planning solution they have built up over the last 8 years is based on Excel, it will be replaced by a sizable extension to our ERP system next year. Suggesting that I should try and force my employer to replace a excel based planning system with one created in a mathematics/statistics package would be stupid enough even if you ignore the aformentioned timeline.
As to why I like the ribbon. Functions I use regularily enough to remember I use shortcuts or add them to the quick access toolbar (which gives them ANOTHER shortcut as well). Functions I use far less, generally presentation related functions like con-formating, format painting and the like are available on the home tab (ie at the top of my screen 95% of the time). If I need to do something I am not familiar with (often the case in word which I barely scratch the surface one) the ribbon tabs group functions in a way I find intuitive.
I've been using office for years, and in my current role have to use excel excessively. To guestimate, I would say 60% of my time is spent working in that program. I would hate to have to give up 2007 and the ribbon.
Anyone who has been using Excel 2007 for months and estimates their productivity has taken a sizeable drop isn't a advanced or intermediate user. I can respect the view that 2007 is less intuitive (even though I disagree) but it is plain bollocks to say it is slower once you know how to use it (and an advanced user is capable of learning new methods ffs).
When I hear morons talk about muscle memory in Excel I know they don't understand what an advanced user is. Did ANY advanced user actually grab the mouse and click on a menu option rather than using one of the numerous keyboard shortcuts?
You're not versed on tax law so wtf makes you think you can even state they are pushing the bounds? It is either illegal or it isn't, and given that thousands of companies big and small do the same thing MS is doing I doubt its legal status is particularly contentious.
An individual or company is doing nothing wrong by minimising it's tax liabilities in a legal way. If the tax system is either poorly thought out or full of 'loopholes' then get those fixed. Generally, one of the biggest problems with western tax systems is complexity. Simpler taxation tends to be fairer.
In the UK we have an incredibly complex tax system, we get taxed on savings (except ISAs which can only have so much paid in per year, and that quantity varies depending on whether you want to save only cash or cash/shares). If you own sufficient assets it can be worth creating a corporation and gradually transferring ownership to your children to avoid inheritance tax etc. This complexity virtually always benefits the rich, as only experts can understand enough to play the system well.
You explain the current situation rather well. I'd much prefer a system where IP, like patents, lasts a fixed period from being produced rather than the rather strange system of years from death. The ability to control your IP for 10, 15 or 20 years seems fair to reward the author, the current system that can leave works under copyright for 100 years can only stiffle the creation of more and better works.
Just imagine if the world settled on Microsoft Windows as the only operating system platform...
Freedom is being able to choose to change, especially when others thing that change is a bad idea. To say what is going on now is new is rubbish (see bastard latin) and we don't know whether it is a good or a bad change yet.
I live in a high energy efficiency property in the UK as well, we moved to energy efficient bulbs around 18 months ago and have noticed a sufficient decrease in energy use to believe it was worthwhile.
Obviously I don't know nearly enough about your situation to advise you, but I am not persuaded that heat produced due to inefficiency of lightbulbs or other devices is an economical source of heating.
Short sighted American creeps like the ones who founded google perhaps? I can't imagine how you managed to write that post without noticing the blatant hypocrisy.
Perhaps you can demonstrate your awareness of your belief in the freedom and codification of all human knowledge. Please inform us of your home address, bank account details, phone and email accounts and the relevant details of all family and close friends.... Wait, let me guess, that data doesn't count.
Bollocks. If a network operator agrees to terms with Apple offering them a deal they believe they can't beat by distrobuting the iPhone through multiple networks then Apple made the right call. I don't have or want an iPhone and Apple get away with murder without being called on it, but this isn't their fault.
Besides which how are you going to 'switch' networks? Pay off the remaining x months to AT&T and then get a new contract elsewhere?
And I'm fed up of people not being able to see costs that aren't prefaced by a $ sign. Google is in the fortunate position of having a monopoly on digitising orphaned works, and it got this monopoly by agreeing to pay an organisation which often has nothing to do with the creation of those works and no intention of paying the authors.
There is practically no slashdotter who doesn't like the idea of digitising these works, but most are able to see the wood for the trees, and that means opposing the creation of yet another monopoly.
You really think "A piece of music playing software has been released for another platform" makes a worthy slashdot story?
The only reason this story is on Slashdot is because there was perceived to be a high chance Apple would block it.
In the UK I'm pretty sure the standard form of directions is by pub names "turn left at the King's Head, then right after the Fox & Hound and it should be on the opposite side to Pilgrim's progress", you could certainly get most places in Yorkshire using nothing but them!
I was way behind the curve in getting a sat-nav even though it fits the kind of tech-gadget market that should interest me. You're absolutely right that a sat-nav isn't vital for travel, but then nor were road signs if you have a map, a map isn't important if someone wrote the route down for you and writing it down isn't required if you just remember it in your head....
The point of a sat-nav isn't to make the impossible possible, it is to provide a quick and easy way to do something and a safety blanket if you go wrong. I must of used my sat-nav 50+ times now and the only time it has been really advantageous was when I got caught in a 5 mile queue of still traffic at a junction between motorways. I got it to plan an alternative that didn't use the next motorway and got home virtually as fast as originally planned. Yes it would be possible to get my map out and look for alternatives, but sat-nav does it quickly, optimally and can compare distances and times more easily, what's there not to like?
No it's flamebait that happened to stray near to valid points while insulting people.
I'm not a cyclist and I commute a considerable distance down country roads used by bikes, walkers, tractors etc and I find your self-centric view of who the road is for to be condemnable. Roads are for use by vehicles and any competent driver can share them with other forms of traffic without difficulty. More bike lanes would be great but spending a small fortune adding them where their isn't sufficient traffic to justify it is wasteful when so many other things could do with government expenditure.
I'd actually enjoy seeing what happened if this ever became law. My expectation is that the vast majority of content providers would simply authorise linking in a linking.txt page or XHTML markup on pages. The few content providers who don't want to allow everyone to link to them won't.
I don't care enough to fight for a change, but I always found the change in rights Google has been leading to leave a bad taste. I don't like the idea that companies have the right to do what they want with my site content, books, images etc unless I take the effort to tell them.
At least when someone is wealthy they have something to lose, it's not like holding Afghanistan was of any real benefit to Russia other than in saving face. I'm not sure that justifying support of the Taliban on those grounds is a particularly strong arguement.
I'm sorry, I expected people to be able to infer at least one step from the things I spelt out in plain English.
If it was legal to buy discount DVDs in India and sell them in America then DVD producers etc would stop selling in India at the lower rate. Why would you sell cheap DVDs in India to earn negligible income there,if this will cost you masses of money by losing higher revenue sales of US goods. Ergo, the price disparity can't be legally exploited when it exists because it is not legal to exploit it.
Don't worry if you still don't get it, its safe to say you won't be setting economic policy any time soon.
Just because you haven't been able to think of the reason doesn't mean there isn't one.
To take the example of a DVD, only considering America and India. A film has a fixed cost of say $100 million to recoup from DVD sales, and each individual DVD has a cost of say $0.20 to produce and sell. If the DVD seller only sold at $19.99 in both countries then sales in India would be negligible, meaning that sales in America will need to cover the entire cost of both making the film and pressing the DVDs.
If they sold DVDs at $2.50 everywhere then the margin would be insufficient to cover their costs.
What you are ignoring is that the by selling the DVD in India at $2.50 the company knows it wont cover all the overhead costs, but it will cover some of them. If Indian sales generate $5 million then it lowers the amount they need to charge in America to make a profit by $5 million. If films etc weren't sold at a lower price in countries with lower wages then they would have higher prices in the countries where they are sold in order to cover the lost revenue.