If you only ever focus on what you consider the most fundamental rights, you will never lift the base level of human rights. We should, by now, be able to meet the rights for food and shelter and protection from harm (I know it's not an ideal world and many parts of it still do not) - there's nothing wrong with trying to improve the basic levels of other aspects of life. I already live in a country where I can walk into a doctor's office and demand a checkup. I also live in a country where the government provides internet access to all (maybe not a computer per person, but there are libraries for the poorest to still have access). Neither of these feel like some unwieldy burden, both feel like something a responsible society ought to be able to offer to its most desperate citizens.
That doesn't change GP's underlying point that banks are about the exchange of money - I can put it in in the form of savings and take it out in the form of loans. I don't see FB offering an equivalent service. Being able to pay into a service and take delivery of the service at some future date, or pay into a service and allow someone else to take delivery does not a bank make - even if said service sets up some arrangement with real banks to make payments more efficient.
It kind of depends how they pitch it. Sure if they say "give us your money and we'll open an account" people might steer clear. If, on the other hand, they say "Free Farmville credits for all... you just need to set up an account for us to pay them into" they'll likely get a few people take it up.
Charles Stross' book Halting State deals with some vaguely similar themes and features a virtual bank robbery on a... I'm loathe to say MMORPG, it's more like a virtual platform connecting multiple games which acts as a point to meet and transfer cash and in-game items. It's a good read but the chances of Facebook getting to this point (especially in the next four years) are hopefully slim to none.
Interesting point , if they hold a profile on me in my name, then Id be entitled to see it under my countries data protection laws.
Unless you have a peculiarly unique name I suspect that's not the case. I don't have a right to look at the personal data of everyone who has the same name as me. Of course, if they're using more than just your name to tie that information directly to you that's a different matter.
It's generally the case that this happens when you're adding features that benefit gamers, though. In this case the only thing that's being added is yet more DRM nonsense, it doesn't benefit legitimate users (and at worst it can be a huge inconvenience), it's arguable whether it actually benefits the game developers (when offset against the cost of implementation).
Minor nitpick - the oil didn't give the robots energy, it was a permanent lubricant. Or it would have been, if they hadn't mysteriously disappeared around the time Zoidberg's people arrived on the planet.
That's different because humans are prevalent across the whole planet. Letting some die won't stop others replacing them, so showing compassion by sending aid doesn't negatively impact the planet. Saving a different species that would otherwise have died out potentially is having a negative impact by preventing either that species overcoming its weaknesses or an alternative species taking its place.
Unless you're suggesting humans have the cognitive abilities and morals of a fox that's clearly a false argument. We have the ability to make much more informed decisions about where our food comes from, there's no real excuse to eat an animal into extinction (albeit we still do). We at least have the ability to debate our actions and decide on a course of action that isn't entirely self serving.
I've always thought there was some hypochrisy where someone can, on the one hand, say that humans polluting is bad, but on the other say that humans saving a species from extinction is good (unless, of course, it's the human pollution causing the extinction). To me both are interfering in the course of nature. Either they're both bad or they're both good or they both make no difference. How do we know that the continued survival of one species that would have died out without human intervention isn't hampering the evolution of other species, for instance? It's just as much playing god in my mind to try and preserve nature as it is right now in time as it is to assume we can just take what we want and watch the planet suffer for it.
I think their argument is that, compared to taking exercise, it's your resting heart beat that's elevated while playing the game. I still think the article (and the "newspaper") is utter garbage - at the very least they could have tested a larger sample of people and a larger sample of entertainment devices to give this some meaning. But it's the Sun, they don't care about meaning, they just care about fear mongering the latest must have gadget.
You're right that it's often demotional but is a pretty standard operating procedure. A lot of companies have bonus schemes related to sales or profits which don't make sense for a reasonable subset of employees. If you're working in the IT department you might have gone way above and beyond the call of duty keeping everything up and running through some particular crisis and, just because some people in some other department failed to sell X items, you don't get a bonus. For many companies it still makes sense because, if you fail to sell X number of items, you might not be able to afford to pay a bonus to your employees, but it really is incredibly demoralising when you have put in some real effort and lose out through no fault of your own. Companies would gain more goodwill by just treating their employees with a little more respect the whole time not just tying that to an annual monetary goal that can be missed.
I'm not even convinced that this is real - from TFA:
"So much so that, according to Business Insider's Nicholas Carlson, Page last Friday distributed a memo to all employees informing them that 25 percent of their annual bonus in 2011 will depend on the success of Google's social media efforts."
Given that last Friday was April 1st, it seems an odd time to release an announcement that 25% of your bonus will be tied to some trendy new search feature if it's not a joke. Having said that, FB is arguably Google's biggest threat right now so it wouldn't be that unreasonable for them to predict that the social aspects of search are going to be increasingly important in the near future.
Besides, every word in the dictionary was a "made up word" at some point. Who would stand judge of when a word had been around long enough or was in popular enough usage that it should be deemed a proper word?
Agreed. It always makes me chuckle to hear people (especially English teachers who should know better) decry the use of slang and yet hark back to Shakespeare as a paragon of the language, despite the fact that, at the time, he riddled his works with slang, and even words he invented, to make them more accessible to the people. Language is primarily about communication, tying ourselves to an archaic set of rules doesn't advance that goal, it's just elitism. Sorry, I really didn't intend the pun!
It's "can do so with pride" - I made the same mistake of thinking it was an opening bracket until I realised there was no closing bracket and it was actually a C (note there's no "d" for it to be "and"). Also, I can't believe I just typed this. I plead extreme boredom.
I suspect you're being facetious. Words in the OED always come with a pronunciation guide, so it will tell you exactly how "1337" should be pronounced, and this doesn't create some new linguistic rule which overwrites all other numeric pronunciation.
I don't know why they'd need to change anything - "Cable thief kills the internet" is just as funny without generating some pseudo debate about her actual motives and legal classification.
I think they probably have wooden poles because it's cheaper, lighter and warmer to the touch after it's been left out in the cold all night. I've never seen a wooden handle spade marketed as safe to slice through electricity-bearing cables.
Same here - I also noticed that the "post anonymously" checkbox doesn't seem to work. I assume this is linked to my install of FF4 yesterday, I'm sure it was fine previously.
Slashdot Mirror
If you only ever focus on what you consider the most fundamental rights, you will never lift the base level of human rights. We should, by now, be able to meet the rights for food and shelter and protection from harm (I know it's not an ideal world and many parts of it still do not) - there's nothing wrong with trying to improve the basic levels of other aspects of life. I already live in a country where I can walk into a doctor's office and demand a checkup. I also live in a country where the government provides internet access to all (maybe not a computer per person, but there are libraries for the poorest to still have access). Neither of these feel like some unwieldy burden, both feel like something a responsible society ought to be able to offer to its most desperate citizens.
That doesn't change GP's underlying point that banks are about the exchange of money - I can put it in in the form of savings and take it out in the form of loans. I don't see FB offering an equivalent service. Being able to pay into a service and take delivery of the service at some future date, or pay into a service and allow someone else to take delivery does not a bank make - even if said service sets up some arrangement with real banks to make payments more efficient.
It kind of depends how they pitch it. Sure if they say "give us your money and we'll open an account" people might steer clear. If, on the other hand, they say "Free Farmville credits for all... you just need to set up an account for us to pay them into" they'll likely get a few people take it up.
Charles Stross' book Halting State deals with some vaguely similar themes and features a virtual bank robbery on a... I'm loathe to say MMORPG, it's more like a virtual platform connecting multiple games which acts as a point to meet and transfer cash and in-game items. It's a good read but the chances of Facebook getting to this point (especially in the next four years) are hopefully slim to none.
Interesting point , if they hold a profile on me in my name, then Id be entitled to see it under my countries data protection laws.
Unless you have a peculiarly unique name I suspect that's not the case. I don't have a right to look at the personal data of everyone who has the same name as me. Of course, if they're using more than just your name to tie that information directly to you that's a different matter.
It's generally the case that this happens when you're adding features that benefit gamers, though. In this case the only thing that's being added is yet more DRM nonsense, it doesn't benefit legitimate users (and at worst it can be a huge inconvenience), it's arguable whether it actually benefits the game developers (when offset against the cost of implementation).
Minor nitpick - the oil didn't give the robots energy, it was a permanent lubricant. Or it would have been, if they hadn't mysteriously disappeared around the time Zoidberg's people arrived on the planet.
That's different because humans are prevalent across the whole planet. Letting some die won't stop others replacing them, so showing compassion by sending aid doesn't negatively impact the planet. Saving a different species that would otherwise have died out potentially is having a negative impact by preventing either that species overcoming its weaknesses or an alternative species taking its place.
Unless you're suggesting humans have the cognitive abilities and morals of a fox that's clearly a false argument. We have the ability to make much more informed decisions about where our food comes from, there's no real excuse to eat an animal into extinction (albeit we still do). We at least have the ability to debate our actions and decide on a course of action that isn't entirely self serving.
I've always thought there was some hypochrisy where someone can, on the one hand, say that humans polluting is bad, but on the other say that humans saving a species from extinction is good (unless, of course, it's the human pollution causing the extinction). To me both are interfering in the course of nature. Either they're both bad or they're both good or they both make no difference. How do we know that the continued survival of one species that would have died out without human intervention isn't hampering the evolution of other species, for instance? It's just as much playing god in my mind to try and preserve nature as it is right now in time as it is to assume we can just take what we want and watch the planet suffer for it.
I think their argument is that, compared to taking exercise, it's your resting heart beat that's elevated while playing the game. I still think the article (and the "newspaper") is utter garbage - at the very least they could have tested a larger sample of people and a larger sample of entertainment devices to give this some meaning. But it's the Sun, they don't care about meaning, they just care about fear mongering the latest must have gadget.
You're right that it's often demotional but is a pretty standard operating procedure. A lot of companies have bonus schemes related to sales or profits which don't make sense for a reasonable subset of employees. If you're working in the IT department you might have gone way above and beyond the call of duty keeping everything up and running through some particular crisis and, just because some people in some other department failed to sell X items, you don't get a bonus. For many companies it still makes sense because, if you fail to sell X number of items, you might not be able to afford to pay a bonus to your employees, but it really is incredibly demoralising when you have put in some real effort and lose out through no fault of your own. Companies would gain more goodwill by just treating their employees with a little more respect the whole time not just tying that to an annual monetary goal that can be missed.
I'm not even convinced that this is real - from TFA:
Given that last Friday was April 1st, it seems an odd time to release an announcement that 25% of your bonus will be tied to some trendy new search feature if it's not a joke. Having said that, FB is arguably Google's biggest threat right now so it wouldn't be that unreasonable for them to predict that the social aspects of search are going to be increasingly important in the near future.
And click on "Post Anonymously". Oh well, I guess it's keeping us honest :)
Besides, every word in the dictionary was a "made up word" at some point. Who would stand judge of when a word had been around long enough or was in popular enough usage that it should be deemed a proper word?
Inclusion in the OED doesn't "legitimise" a word, it just points to its usage in common language.
Agreed. It always makes me chuckle to hear people (especially English teachers who should know better) decry the use of slang and yet hark back to Shakespeare as a paragon of the language, despite the fact that, at the time, he riddled his works with slang, and even words he invented, to make them more accessible to the people. Language is primarily about communication, tying ourselves to an archaic set of rules doesn't advance that goal, it's just elitism. Sorry, I really didn't intend the pun!
It's "can do so with pride" - I made the same mistake of thinking it was an opening bracket until I realised there was no closing bracket and it was actually a C (note there's no "d" for it to be "and"). Also, I can't believe I just typed this. I plead extreme boredom.
I suspect you're being facetious. Words in the OED always come with a pronunciation guide, so it will tell you exactly how "1337" should be pronounced, and this doesn't create some new linguistic rule which overwrites all other numeric pronunciation.
Maybe he accidentally deleted the files while looking for his minority report.
You already got the woooosh, so I'll just add the why.
I don't know why they'd need to change anything - "Cable thief kills the internet" is just as funny without generating some pseudo debate about her actual motives and legal classification.
I think they probably have wooden poles because it's cheaper, lighter and warmer to the touch after it's been left out in the cold all night. I've never seen a wooden handle spade marketed as safe to slice through electricity-bearing cables.
Because that's much more plausable than just following someone, or waiting in a secldued area for someone to wander by.
Same here - I also noticed that the "post anonymously" checkbox doesn't seem to work. I assume this is linked to my install of FF4 yesterday, I'm sure it was fine previously.