Because they've milked money off you elsewhere to subsidise it, or have milked enough money off others through methods related to the the promotion on average to subsidise it.
Either way they're not getting a discount on the gift card, they're subsidising it themselves either through a calculation that to get that gift card you had to spend enough on something else to make up for it, or through a careful calculated estimation that by drawing you into the store to buy their discounted cards, you'll spend enough on other things to make up for it.
Yes, except for games like Minecraft Microsoft have offered to wave that fee so that it can continue to provide updates meaning Microsoft does make concessions based on the business case which unfortunately runs a steamroller over your argument that there's somehow some kind of double standards going on here.
Well, they do have a right to exert pressure, if for example that means banning all financial transactions to those companies if they don't meet their standards.
The fact is, these nations benefit from supporting tax dodgers, so if the US wants to counter that by removing any benefit then that's perfectly warranted.
It's not like they're directly threatening any action in the country itself, they're just saying we wont allow our nation to link to your nation unless you play by the rules.
"JavaScript is a really nice language if you ignore the parts of it that are terrible."
I'm sure Hitler was a really nice guy if you ignore the bits that were terrible too, but that doesn't strike me as a particularly strong argument for something being good.
Let's be honest, people use Javascript because it's the only serious client-side scripting language supported by browsers. If browsers supported a number of languages client-side, including some of the most popular ones about in general today, I suspect Javascript would be far down the list of popular choices.
Though I do agree with much of what you say, it is a primarily functional language and most people don't get that, though I would argue that's part the problem in itself. Functional is neither the most common or arguably even the most natural programming paradigm to work with, so when people start learning to programming it's unlikely they'll learn in the functional way.
But regardless, I think the whole HTTP stack is past it's prime anyway in terms of the way it's trying to be mangled into a web application platform. I think we need a new platform for web applications, built from the ground up. HTTP and it's related technologies like XHMTL, CSS, Javascript and so forth should be relegated to what they're good at - document production and presentation, not continue to try to be shoe-horned into wider application developement.
When you say it's something completely different, then what exactly is it?
I ask because to date, apologists for the way the Swedish justice system has handled this case don't seem to be able to back up this claim, and even the Ecuadorian's cited it as an invalid claim in their decision to give Assange asylum.
As such I'm not convinced there is any merit to that argument in reality, even though it seems to be spread as a kind of popular myth.
The problem is a lot of greivances people have who vote for UKIP, are based on complete lies and ignorance. UKIP for example outright lie about the benefits the UK gets from the EU and completely overplay the costs of membership (I mean costs in the broadest sense, not just financial) and many of it's supporters greivances are based on this fundamental spread of propaganda.
I actually largely agree with the GP, there really is little difference between them deep down. A quick look shows that UKIP for example list being against equal rights for homosexuals proudly on their website as their first policy point. I think like you say their supporters aren't necessarily all so blatantly far right as in the BNP, and even some of their MEPs for that matter, but I think the leadership are clearly far right, and they've done well enough of masking their true thoughts and feelings to attract the not quite, but very borderline right/far right Daily Mail crowd.
Given 100% of power, as if often granted in our broken FPTP electoral system, I suspect UKIP would rapidly show it's true colours in the same way the 1930s Nazi party did when it too started to gain a real footing.
As we all know, power corrupts, but when you have a party that's seen a number of officials done for corruption, and has arguably quite corrupt undertones I think they're at least as dangerous as the BNP, and so should similarly be rejected as such. In fact, you might argue the BNP deserve more credit - at least they're honest about what they really feel, and what they really want, UKIP just pretend to be something they're not.
They even asked the UK to hold Assange in solitary confinement whilst he awaited the outcome of his extradition appeals (bear in mind, Assange still, to this day, has not been charged with anything so they were asking for solitary without even a charge being brought) but luckily British justice is at least not quite as backwards as in Sweden.
It's weird because their neighbour, Norway, has arguably the most progressive justice system in the world in contrast and the countries otherwise have a lot of shared history and culture. I don't know why the Swedes handle justice in such a barbaric backwards manner in comparison.
It's funny you mention special treatment for councillors etc. I used to leave near Mary Creagh (Labour MP) and it's a little village she lives in of literally only about 10 hours with a road going through the middle in the middle of the countryside. Surrounding that small 10 dwelling village are "mother and child signs" (Really? what would mothers and children be doing in the middle of nowhere?), speed bumps, speed warning signs, multiple markers, barriers to prevent parking, a speed camera, brand new speed limit signs, and a chicane.
The worst part is, the roads surrounding it are full of potholes and are even sinking to the side at some points, the level of obviousness in terms of biased spending and corruption is disgusting - this is the same council I mentioned previously.
"But I'm not sure either of these points really contradicts the original discussion, where I was noting that, as a matter of fact and for better or worse, it is not the police who do the kind of enforcement we were talking about in much of the UK today."
No I agree it's not, my point was that it should be. That the council should see their budget for traffic enforcement decreased and the money instead handed to the police so that they can afford to deal with it. Ultimately it all comes from the public coffers, so it's really just a transfer of money from local government to the police. You could probably even move the same old traffic wardens themselves over too and force them to work under a regime where there is at least some degree of accountability, and at least prevent snooping council workers accessing databases they shouldn't.
I don't think that really alters his point to be fair.
If local councils have the money to pay for parking inspectors, and local police forces don't, decrease the council budget, and increase the police budget.
I sympathise with your point about dangerous parking, but agree with the GP this should be the police's realm as they're far more accountable and held to proper standards.
I've had a parking ticket before so maybe I'm biased, but consider my circumstance, I parked in an open council car park with no security, literally an open concrete flat area with about 100 spaces. It was fairly late, about 20 minutes before the free parking time, and I genuinely forgot to get a ticket. I'd parked here 1000 times before at this time and had always gotten a ticket, but this one time simply forgot - an honest mistake that people do. I came back and found I'd received a ticket, but the galling thing was the time the parking officer from the council said he'd seen me arrive, and the time he'd issued the ticket meant he'd actually have had to watch me get out of my car and walk away. Now, the stated aim of parking inspectors is to make sure people buy tickets- that's what the councils own blurb says, so I asked the council the question, why, if that is their job, did he simply not tell me I needed a ticket given that he obviously saw me walking away from my car and the ticket machine out of the car park? I got stonewalled, no one would answer this question, just that I had to pay the fine. This really stinks because a) it was an honest mistake, b) I paid council tax to this council to pay for the car park and the guy's job in the first place, and c) The car park had about 3 cars in it so it's not as if I was taking up a space a paying customer would've used.
Worse, the fine was for £60 instead of £45 because there are two types of parking enforcement laws councils can work under, the £60 one is now obsolete and the councillors in our council had moved to the new one 2 years previous, yet the council despite this had not done so, they were purposely dragging their heals. So I effectively paid a higher fine under a scheme that should never have even been in place given the will of the electorate's represenatitives, but again, no accountability, the council doesn't care. Bear in mind also, that given the time I arrived - around 20mins before the car park became free anyway, and the fact I'd paid many times before, means that I'd have had to pay for an hours parking (because that's the min they allow on a ticket) for only 20mins of paid parking time, and that I'd done this before - meaning I'd always paid for longer than I'd used anyway more than covering the cost of that one moment of forgetfulness.
So what I find particularly galling is that the council are fairly clearly using this as an unofficial revenue stream in a manner the law absolutely never intended they do so - the law was intended for the situations you cite, not to make a fortune off the 1 in 1000 chance that someone forgets to get a ticket, which, given the number of visitors to the city means they'll get a good few of those each day because they have a few thousand people coming in. I think councils shouldn't have access to people's personal data if they're just abusing it for an unofficial revenue collection stream like this, as much as they are for legitimate enforcement. I'd also actually worked for this council for years, so I wasn't particularly surprised- of course, this made it more frustrating again for me, because part the reason I left that job is that I got sick of the level of ineptitude and waste and know full well first hand that if they managed it a bit better they wouldn't even need the parking revenue stream full stop, there was many multiples enough money to be saved there that parking in the whole city could trivially be made free, hence boosting income for shops that are current struggling there too.
It's short sighted of them anyway, I no longer live under that council's cou
Because the post was completely off-topic, and full of lies perhaps?
It's an attempt to derail the conversation away from the actual topic and spread anti-Google, pro-MS propaganda related to privacy in a topic that has nothing to do with privacy.
Why would we want to facilitate that, and allow the shill at the other end to get paid for it exactly?
Well look on the bright side, if Apple and Google are working together at least it wont create a new storm of iOS vs. Android patent wars.
The only victim in this would probably be Microsoft, then MS would have less money to pay first post brand new user Slashdot shills to talk bollocks. Wouldn't that be a shame?
High UID brand new account, anti-Google, pro-Microsoft, long first post, no other posting history shill is back again.
I guess Microsoft started paying for their subscription to Fuckface & Wankhead or whatever that PR agency is called.
Or maybe Florian Mueller is doing a bit of shilling on the side now that the mainstream press seems to have finally realised he's wrong about just about everything since 99% of the patent claims against Android would successfully win against Android, and, er, didn't. Hard times to be a shill I guess now that the world has woken up to the FUD.
Yeah, it would actually. I'm really tired if I get my 8 hours, so 10:30pm to 6:30am is the absolute minimum for me if I want to be awake enough for the next day (which is kind of important when you're a) driving, and b) working on complex maths and programming problems for a living).
Being tired for a console just isn't worth it, especially when the competitors don't have such absurd artificial restrictions.
Yeah, I was somewhat tempted to buy a WiiU, I don't know why, impulse purchase thing I guess, but this has really closed the doors for me on the idea.
I only really like adult games, with a few exceptions like Mario, Zelda and Pikmin, childish games that plagued the Wii never really did it for me, I like something with a nice gritty story line or just generally a bit more adult in nature.
But seeing as I get up for work at 6:30am each morning, and so tend to go to bed about 10:30pm nowadays (gone are the late night gamer days - growing up sucks!) and don't tend to deviate much from that on weekends it basically means I'd either have to stay up and be tired when driving to work, or forego exactly the type of content that I would play.
So it's lost them at least one sale here, and I suspect many more.
It's not really suprising either, having worked in local government it's about the most unaccountable workplace you could imagine so to hear employees are abusing systems is not a suprise.
If you have a problem with a council you can refer it to the ombudsman, but guess whose in charge there? An ex council chief.
Nice to see the DVLA taking unilateral action on this, as there would be no hope of the councils sorting it out unless there was some kind of root and branch change in the way councils are run and managed to make them accountable organisations.
You're funny, it's like you actually believe your own bullshit, morally superior? no company worth loving or hating?
Oh, and that first sentence you struggled with? It's perfectly valid English, I guess you're not very well versed in the English language.
But the really funny thing, the most incredible thing about your posts is you say what makes sense- that you shouldn't love or hate any company, but then you completely fail to practice that by being the worst Apple fanboy in the history of Slashdot.
Have you really not noticed that in stories about Apple doing wrong, genuine, inexecusable wrong, you're about the only one defending them? That isn't because Slashdot has an anti-Apple bias, it's because you're the most rabid fanboy of them all.
The issue is that some animals are smarter than others, just as you might get bored and actually feel mental anxiety if you were locked in a colourless room for 24hrs of the day different treatment can have different effects on different animals.
Fish wont care if they're in a tank, or the sea (assuming the tank is of adequate size, cleanliness, etc.) because they don't have the mental capacity to know any different.
Dogs are often fine stuck inside a house for a few hours, as they naturally sleep a lot during the day anyway, though outside those hours you should walk them so they can enjoy the scents and so forth.
I used to have a pair of rabbits (and a guinea pig too) and I very clearly remember how if he was in his cage for more than just the night because we'd forgotten to let him out, he'd have his teeth around the wire mesh on his cage and would violently shake it like a prisoner desperate to get out of his cell.
I don't honestly know enough about parrots to say, but they are smart animals so it would make sense that they'd want to exercise their brains a lot and that being stuck in a single place would cause them a lot of issues if they're not otherwise somehow kept busy.
It's not a fair argument therefore to say that because you keep rabbits in cages, because you keep fish in a tank, that parrots must inherently be okay with being stuck in a corner. If you make that argument and ignore the differences in needs and intelligence then you must surely extend your argument to humans as we are just animals too - would you really be happy if you were stuck in a single corner of a room all your life?
Oh so you did know about Samsung doing the exact same thing is Apple then, and are hence admitting you lied when you said only Apple is doing it?
It's okay you don't have to pretend to be all high and mighty with me, I've seen your game on Slashdot long enough to know you're full of shit. It's just amusing watching your desperate attempt to grasp for excuses when you get called out on it.
"Indeed, it's not about appearing weak, it's about being terminated."
To be fair I think that's what they're saying - they're one and the same, it's the culture that's the problem - effectively they're terminating your employment because they think you're a weak employee for not coming in when sick. That's what they mean when referring to appearing weak and the culture surrounding it I suspect.
I'll step out now as you've merely descended into another mindless rant laced with insults, and more lies and falsehoods.
You're obviously too far lost in your far right mindset, so I guess there's really any hope of rationality from you at this point. If you can't see why the rise of the far right through politics in nations with some of the highest defence expenditure in the world and nuclear weapons fitted on global delivery systems (Britain, Russia, and France) is a bigger threat than a bunch of angry people living in abject poverty in nations like Saudi Arabia whose military is only a signature in the Whitehouse away from losing the funding it requires to survive turning the nation and it's leadership into the latest target of the arab spring then you really aren't capable of having this discussion.
It's just a shame that you have become exactly what you claim to preach against - an extremist, and that what you claim to argue for, internet freedom, you don't actually want.
"The real question is, why is NO other company doing this."
and:
"Things are obviously not perfect at FoxConn but Apple is trying to make them better, in a way that anyone can keep track of. No other company is providing any kind of visibility into these issues."
Slashdot Mirror
Because they've milked money off you elsewhere to subsidise it, or have milked enough money off others through methods related to the the promotion on average to subsidise it.
Either way they're not getting a discount on the gift card, they're subsidising it themselves either through a calculation that to get that gift card you had to spend enough on something else to make up for it, or through a careful calculated estimation that by drawing you into the store to buy their discounted cards, you'll spend enough on other things to make up for it.
Yes, except for games like Minecraft Microsoft have offered to wave that fee so that it can continue to provide updates meaning Microsoft does make concessions based on the business case which unfortunately runs a steamroller over your argument that there's somehow some kind of double standards going on here.
There's nothing fair about skimming 30% off the profits of small companies.
How else do you think AIDS made the jump from monkeys to humans?
Well, they do have a right to exert pressure, if for example that means banning all financial transactions to those companies if they don't meet their standards.
The fact is, these nations benefit from supporting tax dodgers, so if the US wants to counter that by removing any benefit then that's perfectly warranted.
It's not like they're directly threatening any action in the country itself, they're just saying we wont allow our nation to link to your nation unless you play by the rules.
One would think most people on Slashdot are technically competent enough to Google for this sort of thing.
Apparently not.
"JavaScript is a really nice language if you ignore the parts of it that are terrible."
I'm sure Hitler was a really nice guy if you ignore the bits that were terrible too, but that doesn't strike me as a particularly strong argument for something being good.
Let's be honest, people use Javascript because it's the only serious client-side scripting language supported by browsers. If browsers supported a number of languages client-side, including some of the most popular ones about in general today, I suspect Javascript would be far down the list of popular choices.
Though I do agree with much of what you say, it is a primarily functional language and most people don't get that, though I would argue that's part the problem in itself. Functional is neither the most common or arguably even the most natural programming paradigm to work with, so when people start learning to programming it's unlikely they'll learn in the functional way.
But regardless, I think the whole HTTP stack is past it's prime anyway in terms of the way it's trying to be mangled into a web application platform. I think we need a new platform for web applications, built from the ground up. HTTP and it's related technologies like XHMTL, CSS, Javascript and so forth should be relegated to what they're good at - document production and presentation, not continue to try to be shoe-horned into wider application developement.
When you say it's something completely different, then what exactly is it?
I ask because to date, apologists for the way the Swedish justice system has handled this case don't seem to be able to back up this claim, and even the Ecuadorian's cited it as an invalid claim in their decision to give Assange asylum.
As such I'm not convinced there is any merit to that argument in reality, even though it seems to be spread as a kind of popular myth.
The problem is a lot of greivances people have who vote for UKIP, are based on complete lies and ignorance. UKIP for example outright lie about the benefits the UK gets from the EU and completely overplay the costs of membership (I mean costs in the broadest sense, not just financial) and many of it's supporters greivances are based on this fundamental spread of propaganda.
I actually largely agree with the GP, there really is little difference between them deep down. A quick look shows that UKIP for example list being against equal rights for homosexuals proudly on their website as their first policy point. I think like you say their supporters aren't necessarily all so blatantly far right as in the BNP, and even some of their MEPs for that matter, but I think the leadership are clearly far right, and they've done well enough of masking their true thoughts and feelings to attract the not quite, but very borderline right/far right Daily Mail crowd.
Given 100% of power, as if often granted in our broken FPTP electoral system, I suspect UKIP would rapidly show it's true colours in the same way the 1930s Nazi party did when it too started to gain a real footing.
As we all know, power corrupts, but when you have a party that's seen a number of officials done for corruption, and has arguably quite corrupt undertones I think they're at least as dangerous as the BNP, and so should similarly be rejected as such. In fact, you might argue the BNP deserve more credit - at least they're honest about what they really feel, and what they really want, UKIP just pretend to be something they're not.
Sweden seems to have a hardon for solitary confinement, that's why, and it's been criticised for it's overuse of it on a number of occasions:
http://www.thelocal.se/1927/20050822/#.UMXFq4Yyryg
http://www.thelocal.se/22620/20091013/#.UMXFuIYyryg
They even asked the UK to hold Assange in solitary confinement whilst he awaited the outcome of his extradition appeals (bear in mind, Assange still, to this day, has not been charged with anything so they were asking for solitary without even a charge being brought) but luckily British justice is at least not quite as backwards as in Sweden.
It's weird because their neighbour, Norway, has arguably the most progressive justice system in the world in contrast and the countries otherwise have a lot of shared history and culture. I don't know why the Swedes handle justice in such a barbaric backwards manner in comparison.
It's funny you mention special treatment for councillors etc. I used to leave near Mary Creagh (Labour MP) and it's a little village she lives in of literally only about 10 hours with a road going through the middle in the middle of the countryside. Surrounding that small 10 dwelling village are "mother and child signs" (Really? what would mothers and children be doing in the middle of nowhere?), speed bumps, speed warning signs, multiple markers, barriers to prevent parking, a speed camera, brand new speed limit signs, and a chicane.
The worst part is, the roads surrounding it are full of potholes and are even sinking to the side at some points, the level of obviousness in terms of biased spending and corruption is disgusting - this is the same council I mentioned previously.
"But I'm not sure either of these points really contradicts the original discussion, where I was noting that, as a matter of fact and for better or worse, it is not the police who do the kind of enforcement we were talking about in much of the UK today."
No I agree it's not, my point was that it should be. That the council should see their budget for traffic enforcement decreased and the money instead handed to the police so that they can afford to deal with it. Ultimately it all comes from the public coffers, so it's really just a transfer of money from local government to the police. You could probably even move the same old traffic wardens themselves over too and force them to work under a regime where there is at least some degree of accountability, and at least prevent snooping council workers accessing databases they shouldn't.
I don't think that really alters his point to be fair.
If local councils have the money to pay for parking inspectors, and local police forces don't, decrease the council budget, and increase the police budget.
I sympathise with your point about dangerous parking, but agree with the GP this should be the police's realm as they're far more accountable and held to proper standards.
I've had a parking ticket before so maybe I'm biased, but consider my circumstance, I parked in an open council car park with no security, literally an open concrete flat area with about 100 spaces. It was fairly late, about 20 minutes before the free parking time, and I genuinely forgot to get a ticket. I'd parked here 1000 times before at this time and had always gotten a ticket, but this one time simply forgot - an honest mistake that people do. I came back and found I'd received a ticket, but the galling thing was the time the parking officer from the council said he'd seen me arrive, and the time he'd issued the ticket meant he'd actually have had to watch me get out of my car and walk away. Now, the stated aim of parking inspectors is to make sure people buy tickets- that's what the councils own blurb says, so I asked the council the question, why, if that is their job, did he simply not tell me I needed a ticket given that he obviously saw me walking away from my car and the ticket machine out of the car park? I got stonewalled, no one would answer this question, just that I had to pay the fine. This really stinks because a) it was an honest mistake, b) I paid council tax to this council to pay for the car park and the guy's job in the first place, and c) The car park had about 3 cars in it so it's not as if I was taking up a space a paying customer would've used.
Worse, the fine was for £60 instead of £45 because there are two types of parking enforcement laws councils can work under, the £60 one is now obsolete and the councillors in our council had moved to the new one 2 years previous, yet the council despite this had not done so, they were purposely dragging their heals. So I effectively paid a higher fine under a scheme that should never have even been in place given the will of the electorate's represenatitives, but again, no accountability, the council doesn't care. Bear in mind also, that given the time I arrived - around 20mins before the car park became free anyway, and the fact I'd paid many times before, means that I'd have had to pay for an hours parking (because that's the min they allow on a ticket) for only 20mins of paid parking time, and that I'd done this before - meaning I'd always paid for longer than I'd used anyway more than covering the cost of that one moment of forgetfulness.
So what I find particularly galling is that the council are fairly clearly using this as an unofficial revenue stream in a manner the law absolutely never intended they do so - the law was intended for the situations you cite, not to make a fortune off the 1 in 1000 chance that someone forgets to get a ticket, which, given the number of visitors to the city means they'll get a good few of those each day because they have a few thousand people coming in. I think councils shouldn't have access to people's personal data if they're just abusing it for an unofficial revenue collection stream like this, as much as they are for legitimate enforcement. I'd also actually worked for this council for years, so I wasn't particularly surprised- of course, this made it more frustrating again for me, because part the reason I left that job is that I got sick of the level of ineptitude and waste and know full well first hand that if they managed it a bit better they wouldn't even need the parking revenue stream full stop, there was many multiples enough money to be saved there that parking in the whole city could trivially be made free, hence boosting income for shops that are current struggling there too.
It's short sighted of them anyway, I no longer live under that council's cou
Because the post was completely off-topic, and full of lies perhaps?
It's an attempt to derail the conversation away from the actual topic and spread anti-Google, pro-MS propaganda related to privacy in a topic that has nothing to do with privacy.
Why would we want to facilitate that, and allow the shill at the other end to get paid for it exactly?
Well look on the bright side, if Apple and Google are working together at least it wont create a new storm of iOS vs. Android patent wars.
The only victim in this would probably be Microsoft, then MS would have less money to pay first post brand new user Slashdot shills to talk bollocks. Wouldn't that be a shame?
High UID brand new account, anti-Google, pro-Microsoft, long first post, no other posting history shill is back again.
I guess Microsoft started paying for their subscription to Fuckface & Wankhead or whatever that PR agency is called.
Or maybe Florian Mueller is doing a bit of shilling on the side now that the mainstream press seems to have finally realised he's wrong about just about everything since 99% of the patent claims against Android would successfully win against Android, and, er, didn't. Hard times to be a shill I guess now that the world has woken up to the FUD.
Yeah, it would actually. I'm really tired if I get my 8 hours, so 10:30pm to 6:30am is the absolute minimum for me if I want to be awake enough for the next day (which is kind of important when you're a) driving, and b) working on complex maths and programming problems for a living).
Being tired for a console just isn't worth it, especially when the competitors don't have such absurd artificial restrictions.
Yeah, I was somewhat tempted to buy a WiiU, I don't know why, impulse purchase thing I guess, but this has really closed the doors for me on the idea.
I only really like adult games, with a few exceptions like Mario, Zelda and Pikmin, childish games that plagued the Wii never really did it for me, I like something with a nice gritty story line or just generally a bit more adult in nature.
But seeing as I get up for work at 6:30am each morning, and so tend to go to bed about 10:30pm nowadays (gone are the late night gamer days - growing up sucks!) and don't tend to deviate much from that on weekends it basically means I'd either have to stay up and be tired when driving to work, or forego exactly the type of content that I would play.
So it's lost them at least one sale here, and I suspect many more.
It's not really suprising either, having worked in local government it's about the most unaccountable workplace you could imagine so to hear employees are abusing systems is not a suprise.
If you have a problem with a council you can refer it to the ombudsman, but guess whose in charge there? An ex council chief.
Nice to see the DVLA taking unilateral action on this, as there would be no hope of the councils sorting it out unless there was some kind of root and branch change in the way councils are run and managed to make them accountable organisations.
You're funny, it's like you actually believe your own bullshit, morally superior? no company worth loving or hating?
Oh, and that first sentence you struggled with? It's perfectly valid English, I guess you're not very well versed in the English language.
But the really funny thing, the most incredible thing about your posts is you say what makes sense- that you shouldn't love or hate any company, but then you completely fail to practice that by being the worst Apple fanboy in the history of Slashdot.
Have you really not noticed that in stories about Apple doing wrong, genuine, inexecusable wrong, you're about the only one defending them? That isn't because Slashdot has an anti-Apple bias, it's because you're the most rabid fanboy of them all.
The issue is that some animals are smarter than others, just as you might get bored and actually feel mental anxiety if you were locked in a colourless room for 24hrs of the day different treatment can have different effects on different animals.
Fish wont care if they're in a tank, or the sea (assuming the tank is of adequate size, cleanliness, etc.) because they don't have the mental capacity to know any different.
Dogs are often fine stuck inside a house for a few hours, as they naturally sleep a lot during the day anyway, though outside those hours you should walk them so they can enjoy the scents and so forth.
I used to have a pair of rabbits (and a guinea pig too) and I very clearly remember how if he was in his cage for more than just the night because we'd forgotten to let him out, he'd have his teeth around the wire mesh on his cage and would violently shake it like a prisoner desperate to get out of his cell.
I don't honestly know enough about parrots to say, but they are smart animals so it would make sense that they'd want to exercise their brains a lot and that being stuck in a single place would cause them a lot of issues if they're not otherwise somehow kept busy.
It's not a fair argument therefore to say that because you keep rabbits in cages, because you keep fish in a tank, that parrots must inherently be okay with being stuck in a corner. If you make that argument and ignore the differences in needs and intelligence then you must surely extend your argument to humans as we are just animals too - would you really be happy if you were stuck in a single corner of a room all your life?
I can't believe this made it onto Slashdot, but this bad ass motherfucker in his bitch mobile didn't:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20614593
Oh so you did know about Samsung doing the exact same thing is Apple then, and are hence admitting you lied when you said only Apple is doing it?
It's okay you don't have to pretend to be all high and mighty with me, I've seen your game on Slashdot long enough to know you're full of shit. It's just amusing watching your desperate attempt to grasp for excuses when you get called out on it.
"Indeed, it's not about appearing weak, it's about being terminated."
To be fair I think that's what they're saying - they're one and the same, it's the culture that's the problem - effectively they're terminating your employment because they think you're a weak employee for not coming in when sick. That's what they mean when referring to appearing weak and the culture surrounding it I suspect.
I'll step out now as you've merely descended into another mindless rant laced with insults, and more lies and falsehoods.
You're obviously too far lost in your far right mindset, so I guess there's really any hope of rationality from you at this point. If you can't see why the rise of the far right through politics in nations with some of the highest defence expenditure in the world and nuclear weapons fitted on global delivery systems (Britain, Russia, and France) is a bigger threat than a bunch of angry people living in abject poverty in nations like Saudi Arabia whose military is only a signature in the Whitehouse away from losing the funding it requires to survive turning the nation and it's leadership into the latest target of the arab spring then you really aren't capable of having this discussion.
It's just a shame that you have become exactly what you claim to preach against - an extremist, and that what you claim to argue for, internet freedom, you don't actually want.
"The real question is, why is NO other company doing this."
and:
"Things are obviously not perfect at FoxConn but Apple is trying to make them better, in a way that anyone can keep track of. No other company is providing any kind of visibility into these issues."
Well, except they are:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20491086
Sorry to burst your (reality distortion) bubble.