First off, might I applaud Davey Winder for his even handed non-biased journalism:
The nice thing about blogs as a form of journalism is that people don't/have/ to be non-biased. What we get is even better, they can be openly biased -- leaving no doubt as to how their own personal beliefs influence what we read.
Do you really want to go down the road of making value judgments on the lives of other people? This person is too old to be of value, that person is not productive enough. Maybe the guy over there is in the wrong caste? Or that lady in back, is her skin the right color?
Of all the reasons to speak against universal healthcare, "theft of property and labor" based on your value judgment of another life is not one of them.
You mean they shouldn't punnish corporation that harm the free market?
I think you might have an odd definition of "free market". IANAE, but it seems to me that a business protecting its interests against competition is a fundamental part of the free market concept.
Is it me or is no one even remotely interested in following capitalistic rules?
The ultimate state of any corporation in a sufficiently large market is to become a monopoly - and the only way to do that is to stifle or absorb all competition. This vaunted competition that drives the free market also drives the free market toward the consolidation which forms monopolies.
As soon as the government starts interfering, it's no longer a true "free market" - and certainly isn't adhering to the "capitalistic rules".
Obviously she should have used common sense, but the penalty for failing to use common sense when handling a cup of coffee should not be 3rd degree burns.
Accepting responsibility would have been dealing with the annoying chafing from mild surface burns, replacing the pair of paints, fixing her own upholstery. Hospitalization from (and let me repeat) a cup of coffee is above and beyond what one should reasonably expect from a lapse in common sense.
The key word - which I didn't include in my original post, alas - is "unsubstantiated". I looked at the blog and just saw someone's rant and claims of receiving an email. Is he telling the truth? Probably. But if he wants to make his point, he includes all the evidence that he has to date -- there should be plenty.
And I don't mean buried in older blog posts - I mean in the post that was submitted to slashdot, and thus subject to the scrutiny of hundreds of thousands of people .
Monster Cable has a generous and prompt replacement policy on their cables. I've had a couple of cable returns with them and it was about as hassle free as an RMA can be.
Easy to do, when you charge 2-50x what something is worth -- and people happily pay for it.
Cars: No. A car analogy really doesn't work here. All it ever does is spawn countless arguments about how your analogy was flawed. Not content to leave it at that, people will add more complexity to it, as if that somehow makes it better. And then people will reply to them, making the analogy even MORE outlandish...
So while it's great for amusement value -- after all, who could fail to find amusement in watching nerds try to stick a square peg into a round hole -- it's almost never appropriate for any discussion. Unless, of course, we're talking about cars - but usually, that just means someone will make an analogy to a computer.
The legitimate, if somewhat carebearish, reason they do that, whether they know it or not, is that if someone reasonably believes you're offering legal advice, and she follows your advice and loses some legal right or money, she can sue you for legal malpractice.
You think that's why most slashdotters do that? You're very generous. I suspect most slashdot readers did not know that little tidbit of info until you posted it. Instead, they say IANAL because it leaves an "out" for when someone more knowledgeable comes along. It's almost like a talisman against being insulted by someone who knows what thye're talking about...
Yes, frustrating as hell. I'd love to use public transit, but my options are:
1) walk two miles to a bus station, adding 20-30 minutes to my daily commute.
2) drive 20 minutes to the train station - in the opposite direction of work
Pisses me off, because it/would/ be cheaper in gas and parking to take the train. Just not enough cheaper to merit wasting an extra hour of my time every day.
Your point is very accurate, but I figured it might be worth mentioning that the free win server 2003 resource kit contains cdburn.exe and isoburn.exe command line burning tools. In spite of the name, it install on XP just fine.
(Not that Joe would know this... he'd be stuck at the idea of "ISO" as you said.)
I've been using Win7 on a VM over a LAN for a few months, performance has been fine even with the basic theme/appearance enabled. (KVM is the hypervisor)
Even a generous company like google, where 20% of your time goes into a project of your choosing, looks like it requires you to do something with that 80% of the time.
Yes, they generously allow you to spend 20% of your 60-80 hour week on a project of your choosing (if it is of potential use to Google). Quite nice, really.
And if you had cancer you wouldn't think twice about rolling the dice either.
I've had it. In spite of this, I maintain that there is perhaps a reason why people/not/ emotionally involved are better equipped to oversee this and make decisions.
The problem here is that assuming that only the big corps would use this system is naive at best. For them, I suspect it would work as you say - especially if you open up the possibility of criminal prosecution when negligence can be proven.
The issue is that anyone selling snakeoil can do it at massive profit, and no liability.The people who would engage in this practice aren't going to stick around and wait for the aftermath. In this situation, you certainly can't trust the judgment of the people who have been handed a death sentence - they will grasp at any straw given if they can be convinced that there's a chance.
If there is truly "balance" to be had in nature, then it will happen no matter what we do. If it doesn't, then any concept of such a balance is a fiction.
Well said. This is more or less what I was thinking; but I thought "hey it's 3:30a, maybe I'm making a really stupid leap in logic here, I'd best not make this post". You phrased it better than I would've in my sleepless state...
Slashdot Mirror
First off, might I applaud Davey Winder for his even handed non-biased journalism:
The nice thing about blogs as a form of journalism is that people don't /have/ to be non-biased. What we get is even better, they can be openly biased -- leaving no doubt as to how their own personal beliefs influence what we read.
Piracy is nothing more than selfish humans leeching other people's work and not wanting to lose the free ride.
Modern copyright law is nothing more than selfish and greedy middlemen not wanting to lose their free ride.
And apparently, "paying for goods and services rendered" is an outdated way of consuming.
I agree there's obviously a sweet spot, but for me it's more like 12-13 inches rather than 10.
That's what she... aw skip it.
Of all the reasons to speak against universal healthcare, "theft of property and labor" based on your value judgment of another life is not one of them.
You mean they shouldn't punnish corporation that harm the free market?
I think you might have an odd definition of "free market". IANAE, but it seems to me that a business protecting its interests against competition is a fundamental part of the free market concept.
Is it me or is no one even remotely interested in following capitalistic rules?
The ultimate state of any corporation in a sufficiently large market is to become a monopoly - and the only way to do that is to stifle or absorb all competition. This vaunted competition that drives the free market also drives the free market toward the consolidation which forms monopolies.
As soon as the government starts interfering, it's no longer a true "free market" - and certainly isn't adhering to the "capitalistic rules".
Obviously she should have used common sense, but the penalty for failing to use common sense when handling a cup of coffee should not be 3rd degree burns.
Accepting responsibility would have been dealing with the annoying chafing from mild surface burns, replacing the pair of paints, fixing her own upholstery. Hospitalization from (and let me repeat) a cup of coffee is above and beyond what one should reasonably expect from a lapse in common sense.
And I don't mean buried in older blog posts - I mean in the post that was submitted to slashdot, and thus subject to the scrutiny of hundreds of thousands of people .
Damnit. I meant to write that as "Random unsubstantiated rants..."
For some reason I had assumed you were living with her, and you were one of the kids in question. I have no idea why I reached that conclusion...
Now get off my lawn, damned greedy kid.
Monster Cable has a generous and prompt replacement policy on their cables. I've had a couple of cable returns with them and it was about as hassle free as an RMA can be.
Easy to do, when you charge 2-50x what something is worth -- and people happily pay for it.
So while it's great for amusement value -- after all, who could fail to find amusement in watching nerds try to stick a square peg into a round hole -- it's almost never appropriate for any discussion. Unless, of course, we're talking about cars - but usually, that just means someone will make an analogy to a computer.
In short: just say NO to car analogies.
I think it's a case of Chris being an idiot and Slashdot demonstrating, once again, a complete lack of quality content.
Seconded. Random rants on customer service? Hardly seems the place for it...
My aunt is of the "Buy new computer when kids fuck up OS by downloading any random shit they come across" mentality.
Nice, that's way better than actually being intelligent about the files you download.
I don't mind. I get a reasonably-new computer every year to cannibalize for parts out of it.
I wish she'd just let me fix it so she could buy a much nicer computer for them to really break something in every two years for better parts...
Plus you get to spend someone else's money. Hopefully you'll grow out of that, but it seems fewer and fewer are every generation.
Yep - wasn't criticizing the practice. Just thinking that GP's assumption for the reasoning was probably more than a bit off-base.
The legitimate, if somewhat carebearish, reason they do that, whether they know it or not, is that if someone reasonably believes you're offering legal advice, and she follows your advice and loses some legal right or money, she can sue you for legal malpractice.
You think that's why most slashdotters do that? You're very generous. I suspect most slashdot readers did not know that little tidbit of info until you posted it. Instead, they say IANAL because it leaves an "out" for when someone more knowledgeable comes along. It's almost like a talisman against being insulted by someone who knows what thye're talking about...
1) walk two miles to a bus station, adding 20-30 minutes to my daily commute.
2) drive 20 minutes to the train station - in the opposite direction of work
Pisses me off, because it /would/ be cheaper in gas and parking to take the train. Just not enough cheaper to merit wasting an extra hour of my time every day.
(Not that Joe would know this... he'd be stuck at the idea of "ISO" as you said.)
I've been using Win7 on a VM over a LAN for a few months, performance has been fine even with the basic theme/appearance enabled. (KVM is the hypervisor)
Even a generous company like google, where 20% of your time goes into a project of your choosing, looks like it requires you to do something with that 80% of the time.
Yes, they generously allow you to spend 20% of your 60-80 hour week on a project of your choosing (if it is of potential use to Google). Quite nice, really.
And if you had cancer you wouldn't think twice about rolling the dice either.
I've had it. In spite of this, I maintain that there is perhaps a reason why people /not/ emotionally involved are better equipped to oversee this and make decisions.
The problem here is that assuming that only the big corps would use this system is naive at best. For them, I suspect it would work as you say - especially if you open up the possibility of criminal prosecution when negligence can be proven.
The issue is that anyone selling snakeoil can do it at massive profit, and no liability.The people who would engage in this practice aren't going to stick around and wait for the aftermath. In this situation, you certainly can't trust the judgment of the people who have been handed a death sentence - they will grasp at any straw given if they can be convinced that there's a chance.
Moving the desert is a better choice.
If the Mohammed will not go to the mountain, the mountain will come to Mohammed. Or, erm, something like that ;)
If there is truly "balance" to be had in nature, then it will happen no matter what we do. If it doesn't, then any concept of such a balance is a fiction.
Well said. This is more or less what I was thinking; but I thought "hey it's 3:30a, maybe I'm making a really stupid leap in logic here, I'd best not make this post". You phrased it better than I would've in my sleepless state...
Life on earth survived for what, like a billion years without modern man fucking it up? Pretty much a model for sustainability if you ask me.
Yeah, then those dinosaurs came along and fucked with the natural order, and look what happened to them.