Seriously? "Women should abandon their careers to beome housewives" gets modded +5? WTF is wrong with this website?
If you really need an answer to your stupid rhetorical question:
1. The vast majority of women in the US have little interest in permanently abandoning their careers.
2. Even if they wanted to, a lot of households NEED two incomes to make ends meet.
3. On-site daycare is a good way to attract employees, because it provides a benefit (having your kids in the same building) that is worth a lot more to the employees than it costs to the company.
4. If you lure those employees in with this benefit, thus potentially drawing them away from another job with a better salary, and then ditch the benefit, you're screwing them. I dunno if it's "age discrimination," but it's at least somewhat a dick move.
I don't think Apple can be classified as a purely "image-based" brand like you claim Estee Lauder and Harley-Davidson are. I'd say they're closer to BMW : a company that does have high image value, but also has pretty high quality which maintains that image. There are plenty of putzes who ride their Beamers and listen to their iPods just because the BMW logo and the white earbuds are a social status marker, but there are also plenty of people who just like cars/gadgets enough that they'll pay for quality. (And honestly, Macs usually aren't much more expensive than comparable Dells to begin with.)
TPB's openly admitted purpose for existing is in violation of Italian law.
This is actually why their letter is NOT an ad-hominem attack. "Fascism" means (among other things) using the government to restrict people's freedoms. Thus, their accusation of fascism calls into question the validity of Italian laws, and provides a reason for them to ignore those laws.
If you want a reply with more punch, take the parent post and replace "TPB" with "the Dalai Lama" and "Italian" with "Chinese."
If they're that useful, then local governments can pay for them, unless they're in national parks. I'm no small-government fanatic, but even I don't see why my taxes should help improve the lives of cyclists in Idaho.
Generally, hackers seem to do a pretty decent job keeping up with the iTunes DRM so users can strip it fairly painlessly; I guess the hope is that when iTMS finally kicks the bucket, there'll be at least one hacker with enough talent and free time to crack the DRM one last time, so everyone who cares enough can strip it.
First off, at least two of the things you mention are specifically disproven in the trailer.
But yeah, screw this adaptation to new media crap! What the hell was James Joyce thinking? Clearly the only way to do justice to a good piece of art is to shrink-wrap it in its original context so that only a privileged few are able to bask in its full glory.
This actually reminds me somewhat of academic publishing. One expert writes an article, and if it's a worthwhile article that gets attention and another expert has views that differ significantly, they can write a counterpoint.
The nice part about this new system is that the ORIGINAL article can be revised immediately. If the first author is intellectually honest, they'll take any criticisms into account and revise what they've written where they find it appropriate, and maybe add links to the counterpoint article. So ideally, you'd get a nice network of interrelated expert opinions that you could compare and contrast on their merits, rather than Wikipedia's studied "neutrality" that often ends up hurting as much as it helps.
I'm sorry that your cell phone only has enough storage for one number, but for most of us, finding our friends' and associates' numbers isn't really that much of a chore these days.
More importantly, the only thing that keeps third parties from gaining power in this country is thinking like yours.
I love this argument that everyone secretly WANTS Bob Barr or Harry Brown or whoever to be President, but they're just too darned scared to vote for a third party.
Doesn't it seem marginally possible that the majority of Americans actually don't WANT to gut all our social programs and government regulation, like the Libertarians do?
Take the name "YouTube" and replace any part of it with "porn" or "x" and type it into Google. There are PLENTY of free streaming porn sites on the Internet. Most of them even use the YouTube API stuff, I'd imagine. But YouTube itself is trying to be an online community with certain standards.
Your #1 and #2 are only "benefits" for a couple of people (the specific techies who work for the NYT). The company as a whole would benefit much more from having fewer and less-trained (i.e. cheaper) coders.
The most common "solution" to this dilemma among modern academic philosophers is some form of "compatibilism," the belief that free will is compatible with a physically-determined world.
For example, my friends could tell you with probably 99% assurance that I will go to work tomorrow. As I'm on my way to work, I'll bike past a busy road and not even worry about the possibility that a driver will decide to veer into me; in fact, I'd consider it more likely that one of the factory-tested parts in a car would break than that one of the drivers would utilize his free will to arbitrarily decide to hit me.
None of this is philosophically problematic to anybody. But suggest that somebody with 100% perfect knowledge of the world would be able to perfectly predict my actions, and all the sudden it's a huge metaphysical quandary.
Believe it or not, race DOES play a different factor in a society with a huge black minority that's been systematically oppressed for most of the past 3 centuries.
I'm guessing the black people you grew up with, poor and otherwise, didn't grow up in an entirely-black-and-Latino ghetto, weren't marked by heavy urban accents, and probably didn't even have to grow up in an area with utterly failed justice and education systems.
If you honestly think that your initial economic situation doesn't have any impact on educational level and success in life, you're a moron.
Largely, yes. But you have to bear in mind that, partly BECAUSE of that socio-economic situation, things may well suck for those 2% of would-be game designers who ARE black.
The only real way to "fix" this is to (a) make sure that discrimination is illegal, which we've already done, and (b) somehow eliminate the statistical correlation between race and poverty/education, which is a lot harder and will take at least a generation (and probably a lot longer, given how much we as a society suck at addressing the issue.)
Marilyn vos Savant explained the problem in Parade magazine, and a whole bunch of math professors wrote in to tell her that she was wrong... turns out it's kind of a bad idea to play "gotcha" with someone who has an IQ of 228.
Notice how the EU is all dark orange, except for parts of central Spain. Lots of people, more financial incentive to wire everything.
Notice how 80% of Canada is completely deserted, because it's too far north to be habitable. The Northern Yukon does an awful lot to decrease Canada's average population density, but since there's NOBODY there it doesn't affect the difficulty of wiring up broadband. Australia, same thing, except it's like 95% instead of 80% empty.
China is enough of a mix that it might make sense to compare to the US, but I'm guessing there are enough other issues with development, etc. to make it a tough comparison.
Well, basically, there is probably a loud (figuratively AND literally) minority that really wants cell phones and a quiet majority who finds them annoying but doesn't consider it a deal-breaker. So an airline that allowed cell-phones would take a minor hit from those of us who hate blather, but that would be more than matched by the many people (especially business-class yammering jerks) who would love to talk on planes. As a result, the vast majority of planes would probably allow phones.
This is basically the same dynamic as smoking bans in restaurants. As long as smoking isn't banned by the government, lots of bars and clubs felt obligated to allow it, because losing all your smoker patrons (and their friends) would be a bigger hit than losing those people who absolutely can't stand being in a smoky bar. Thus, a whole lot of bars allowed smoking.
But lo and behold, once statewide or citywide smoking bans go into effect, all businesses are hit equally, smokers whine a bit, and nonsmokers get to go home without smelling like an ashtray. Same effect in reverse here: if the phone ban is lifted, all the sudden every flight in the nation is filled with cell talkers, and the rest of us are stuck grumbling about it.
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So presumably the next step is for the calculator to run Linux?
Are you suggesting that browsing the Internet via wget is not a full-featured experience?
Seriously? "Women should abandon their careers to beome housewives" gets modded +5? WTF is wrong with this website?
If you really need an answer to your stupid rhetorical question:
1. The vast majority of women in the US have little interest in permanently abandoning their careers.
2. Even if they wanted to, a lot of households NEED two incomes to make ends meet.
3. On-site daycare is a good way to attract employees, because it provides a benefit (having your kids in the same building) that is worth a lot more to the employees than it costs to the company.
4. If you lure those employees in with this benefit, thus potentially drawing them away from another job with a better salary, and then ditch the benefit, you're screwing them. I dunno if it's "age discrimination," but it's at least somewhat a dick move.
I don't think Apple can be classified as a purely "image-based" brand like you claim Estee Lauder and Harley-Davidson are. I'd say they're closer to BMW : a company that does have high image value, but also has pretty high quality which maintains that image. There are plenty of putzes who ride their Beamers and listen to their iPods just because the BMW logo and the white earbuds are a social status marker, but there are also plenty of people who just like cars/gadgets enough that they'll pay for quality. (And honestly, Macs usually aren't much more expensive than comparable Dells to begin with.)
This is actually why their letter is NOT an ad-hominem attack. "Fascism" means (among other things) using the government to restrict people's freedoms. Thus, their accusation of fascism calls into question the validity of Italian laws, and provides a reason for them to ignore those laws.
If you want a reply with more punch, take the parent post and replace "TPB" with "the Dalai Lama" and "Italian" with "Chinese."
If they're that useful, then local governments can pay for them, unless they're in national parks. I'm no small-government fanatic, but even I don't see why my taxes should help improve the lives of cyclists in Idaho.
Who let you out of Sudakoff?
Generally, hackers seem to do a pretty decent job keeping up with the iTunes DRM so users can strip it fairly painlessly; I guess the hope is that when iTMS finally kicks the bucket, there'll be at least one hacker with enough talent and free time to crack the DRM one last time, so everyone who cares enough can strip it.
First off, at least two of the things you mention are specifically disproven in the trailer.
But yeah, screw this adaptation to new media crap! What the hell was James Joyce thinking? Clearly the only way to do justice to a good piece of art is to shrink-wrap it in its original context so that only a privileged few are able to bask in its full glory.
This actually reminds me somewhat of academic publishing. One expert writes an article, and if it's a worthwhile article that gets attention and another expert has views that differ significantly, they can write a counterpoint.
The nice part about this new system is that the ORIGINAL article can be revised immediately. If the first author is intellectually honest, they'll take any criticisms into account and revise what they've written where they find it appropriate, and maybe add links to the counterpoint article. So ideally, you'd get a nice network of interrelated expert opinions that you could compare and contrast on their merits, rather than Wikipedia's studied "neutrality" that often ends up hurting as much as it helps.
I'm sorry that your cell phone only has enough storage for one number, but for most of us, finding our friends' and associates' numbers isn't really that much of a chore these days.
More importantly, the only thing that keeps third parties from gaining power in this country is thinking like yours.
I love this argument that everyone secretly WANTS Bob Barr or Harry Brown or whoever to be President, but they're just too darned scared to vote for a third party.
Doesn't it seem marginally possible that the majority of Americans actually don't WANT to gut all our social programs and government regulation, like the Libertarians do?
What are they up to these days, again?
Those dihydrogen monoxide addicts will stop at nothing to get their next "hit"...
Take the name "YouTube" and replace any part of it with "porn" or "x" and type it into Google. There are PLENTY of free streaming porn sites on the Internet. Most of them even use the YouTube API stuff, I'd imagine. But YouTube itself is trying to be an online community with certain standards.
Your #1 and #2 are only "benefits" for a couple of people (the specific techies who work for the NYT). The company as a whole would benefit much more from having fewer and less-trained (i.e. cheaper) coders.
This plan didn't seem to work out too well for Curt Connors...
The most common "solution" to this dilemma among modern academic philosophers is some form of "compatibilism," the belief that free will is compatible with a physically-determined world.
For example, my friends could tell you with probably 99% assurance that I will go to work tomorrow. As I'm on my way to work, I'll bike past a busy road and not even worry about the possibility that a driver will decide to veer into me; in fact, I'd consider it more likely that one of the factory-tested parts in a car would break than that one of the drivers would utilize his free will to arbitrarily decide to hit me.
None of this is philosophically problematic to anybody. But suggest that somebody with 100% perfect knowledge of the world would be able to perfectly predict my actions, and all the sudden it's a huge metaphysical quandary.
Believe it or not, race DOES play a different factor in a society with a huge black minority that's been systematically oppressed for most of the past 3 centuries.
I'm guessing the black people you grew up with, poor and otherwise, didn't grow up in an entirely-black-and-Latino ghetto, weren't marked by heavy urban accents, and probably didn't even have to grow up in an area with utterly failed justice and education systems.
If you honestly think that your initial economic situation doesn't have any impact on educational level and success in life, you're a moron.
Largely, yes. But you have to bear in mind that, partly BECAUSE of that socio-economic situation, things may well suck for those 2% of would-be game designers who ARE black.
The only real way to "fix" this is to (a) make sure that discrimination is illegal, which we've already done, and (b) somehow eliminate the statistical correlation between race and poverty/education, which is a lot harder and will take at least a generation (and probably a lot longer, given how much we as a society suck at addressing the issue.)
In layman's terms, it means that your computer has already downloaded 40% of the porn torrent you're going to click on at 2am tonight.
I got my facts from the infinitely more trustworthy Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_hall_problem
Marilyn vos Savant explained the problem in Parade magazine, and a whole bunch of math professors wrote in to tell her that she was wrong... turns out it's kind of a bad idea to play "gotcha" with someone who has an IQ of 228.
Here's a global population density map: http://soils.usda.gov/use/worldsoils/mapindex/popden.html
Notice how the EU is all dark orange, except for parts of central Spain. Lots of people, more financial incentive to wire everything.
Notice how 80% of Canada is completely deserted, because it's too far north to be habitable. The Northern Yukon does an awful lot to decrease Canada's average population density, but since there's NOBODY there it doesn't affect the difficulty of wiring up broadband. Australia, same thing, except it's like 95% instead of 80% empty.
China is enough of a mix that it might make sense to compare to the US, but I'm guessing there are enough other issues with development, etc. to make it a tough comparison.
Well, basically, there is probably a loud (figuratively AND literally) minority that really wants cell phones and a quiet majority who finds them annoying but doesn't consider it a deal-breaker. So an airline that allowed cell-phones would take a minor hit from those of us who hate blather, but that would be more than matched by the many people (especially business-class yammering jerks) who would love to talk on planes. As a result, the vast majority of planes would probably allow phones.
This is basically the same dynamic as smoking bans in restaurants. As long as smoking isn't banned by the government, lots of bars and clubs felt obligated to allow it, because losing all your smoker patrons (and their friends) would be a bigger hit than losing those people who absolutely can't stand being in a smoky bar. Thus, a whole lot of bars allowed smoking.
But lo and behold, once statewide or citywide smoking bans go into effect, all businesses are hit equally, smokers whine a bit, and nonsmokers get to go home without smelling like an ashtray. Same effect in reverse here: if the phone ban is lifted, all the sudden every flight in the nation is filled with cell talkers, and the rest of us are stuck grumbling about it.