It looks to me like 'free' means 'I can do whatever I want even if it fucks over other people' in the USA.
You know you live in a society, right? Around other people, right? And being around them and sharing in communal things like the military that protects you and the roads that let you move around easily and laws that give you recourse against crimes etc etc means that you give up some of this 'freedom'?
That's the bargain. If you want to be around other people, then you fucking well follow the rules laid down by society that are designed to protect you and everyone else in it. If you don't agree with the rules, then you can advocate for change or go somewhere else with different rules. That's what the whole "your right to throw a punch ends at my face" saying means - if you live in a society, you can do what you want until you start to fuck it up for everyone else. So, you're not allowed to drive while being drunk. You're not allowed to attack people and take their stuff because you need it. And, ffs, you shouldn't be allowed to go without vaccinations just because you feel like being a contrary little shit.
The combined lives and health of many other people should be ranked higher in the grand scheme of things than your ignorant opinion on science you don't understand.
If the rules or the society don't work - and let's be honest, big chunks of them don't - then that's a good reason to strive for change and improvement. But this 'I'm free and you can't tell me what to do nyah nyah' bollocks is ridiculous.
Honestly, I know most Americans are fine, normal people, but stuff like this makes the country look like it's populated by nutballs.
Re: Did you get out of the bed the wrong this morning?
Just want to point out that people of all ages are dying or getting very sick in these outbreaks because of attitudes like yours regarding vaccinations somehow being junk science.
so (a) while the science shows that vaccines are largely a good thing for society, a minute number of allergic reactions notwithstanding, and (b) the outbreaks of these diseases can be directly traced to scientifically-illiterate individuals who refuse to vaccinate on grounds that are shaky at best and downright fucking stupid at worst:
Your surprise at G Thompson getting irritated and calling you names is a little weird.
Just want to make an addendum to all that... WORLDWIDE.
All the innovation you can pay for is partly wasted when you're locking out millions of potential customers with regional restrictions.
Why settle for making {bunch o' money x United States online population} when you could be, I dunno, using the GLOBAL COMMUNICATION NETWORK to make {bunch o' money x the whole online world}?
The first being that Hachette thinks it can dictate terms to other publishers in territories for which it has no rights. The arrogance of this takes my breath away. It's one thing to not want to follow a particular business model, but it's quite another to try to force a competitor not to follow it as well!
The second is that they may not have any standing to demand this. Who the authors license their work to in other territories, and under what conditions, is none of Hachette's business. But they can apply pressure, with the implicit understanding being that the authors will not get another book deal if they don't comply. Strong-arm tactics at their finest.
The third is that they are actually asking authors to take a hit on their livelyhood just to please them. We know DRM is ineffective. We know that it's so trivial to remove that there's no 'hardcore' stuff involved; the mainstream can do it easily, if they want. (And they will, if they find out that their books are restricted in stupid ways.) So they don't really have a leg to stand on here - they're essentially saying to authors, "You have to tell your other publishers to do something that will likely piss off your readers and damage your hard-won reputation for no benefit whatsoever, because we say so and we'll take our ball and go home otherwise."
This is honestly all kinds of ridiculous, and should be a giant red flag to authors everywhere that Hachette don't know what the hell they're doing and are not worth pitching their books to in future.
What really boggles my mind here is that the fact that Stephen Leather is making a living from his books ain't up for debate. So Ursula Mackenzie wants to see Stephen put his prices up because...? What exactly? She wants him to take a hit on his livelihood just to please her and the Publisher's Association?
What nonsense. She can moan all she likes, but she can't stop self-published authors from pricing their books however they want. Those authors are presumably reading and taking note of J.A. Konrath's blog posts on the matter, and pricing at $2.99 - that apparently being the price at which revenue is maximized.
It's getting to a point where it looks like wilful ignorance. The market has spoken. Authors are routinely bypassing publishers and making a nice profit on their own. It's not going to change because she, or any other publisher, wants it to change or has a couple of arguments as to why it should change. Frankly, if that's all they've got, they deserve to go out of business.
I know I'm not. This is pretty much par for the course, for the big publishers.
You're talking about a number of companies that have spent the best part of a hundred years or more selling to a particular market: bookstores. Their whole focus has been on selling paper books into businesses who then sell them to readers. Now they're being asked to sell to readers directly - and it's largely thrown them for a loop, because while they were trying to avoid getting into the whole messy digital thing, Amazon did exactly that and whipped the whole market out from under them.
They haven't a clue how to deal with that. They know how to sell to stores and to book critics. Tor and Baen know their stuff, but the rest of the big publishers wouldn't know an online marketing campaign if it jumped up and bit them in the face. Authors do their own online marketing - they have to, because (excluding Tor and Baen, like I said) there is no way for them to connect to an online reading audience through their publisher.
The publisher is not the brand. The publisher is the manufacturer and delivery service, at best. The author is the brand who makes use of them. No small wonder then, that bestselling authors (Barry Eisler, for example) just walk away when the deal isn't good enough, and take their brand recognition with them.
You think the music industry had it bad... The big publishers make them look clued-in in comparison. They have literally nothing to offer a new author bar some vague sense of legitimacy that's meaningless when it comes to sales, and they seem completely intent on keeping it that way - right up to the point where they go out of business.
Terrorists have an agenda. They generally have something like 'do this/stop doing this or we'll blow shit up' going on. The consequences of giving in to terrorists tends to be more terrorists making demands.
Anonymous? Not so much.
Anonymous don't threaten. You start doing something they don't like, they don't say 'stop that shit or we'll attack', like, say, a terrorist would. That implies a level of organizational control that they clearly don't have. They just attack, using whatever seems like a good idea or whatever will get the most laughs.
There is no intent, no logic, no consistency, and your only defence is avoiding their attention. There are no consequences to leaving them the hell alone and plenty of consequences to annoying them like this. The worst part of it is that the more you dig in and try to go after them, the more attention you draw and the more Anons get involved - as if poking a bear with a stick makes it harder to kill as well as angry enough to rip your head off.
Anyway - that whole 'hunting down terrorists' strategy seems to be doing a pretty good job of making lots more terrorists, so maybe you shouldn't be recommending it as a solution here.
...that, as someone who IS a filthy immigrant, the US looks like it's gone completely batcrap nuts.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" - what the hell ever happened to that? America used to be the ideal, the promised land; a place where any man could be judged on his merits, not his bloodline or his history or his religion. Now? It's like the whole country is eating its own tail, so wrapped up in being The Best Place in the World(TM) that it can't accept that today's immigrants could be just as worthy as the ones who built it.
I had to figure out where I wanted to go, when I decided that I had to leave Ireland. The US wasn't an option, not for a second. I couldn't put my future in the hands of a fickle bureaucracy who seem bent on looking down on me, who could make me jump through hoops for years and STILL deport me on a whim. I have friends who've been there for more than six years, working in fields that require Phds, and yet have no hope of getting a green card. Everything I know about or have heard of says the same thing: if you want to immigrate somewhere else, prove yourself, and build a better life, then forget about America. They don't want you there.
I went to Canada instead, probably the best decision I've ever made. The money that I'll be spending in the economy, the taxes I'll pay, the house I will buy, the children I will raise; it'll all be in the fine city of Vancouver BC.
As for the US? I'll visit, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live there.
Well, think about it this way - the whole 'introduce, fight, defeat/fail, introduce' tactic is really just training people to think about this and look at any new legislation more carefully. Do you think ACTA would have been defeated as easily if the SOPA protests hadn't been so loud?
If anything the ACTA defeat showed that people were ready, and had become more watchful. The rise of the Pirate parties in Europe are a good sign of that. It's demonstrated that this is something people care enough about to vote that way, and politicians are fools if they don't pay attention to that.
So... yeah. I am still hopeful. I don't think I'll be losing my money any time soon. I don't think there's enough money in the world to quash the natural inclination of seven billion people to create and share in the same way they've done for generations.
Yeah, 'cos the SOPA protest didn't happen, and the ACTA protests in Europe didn't happen, and they didn't defeat some of the biggest legislative ass-kissing Big Media could buy...
Chin up, anon. It ain't all about the money - not yet at any rate.
I honestly don't know where you're going with this. I have an opinion you don't agree with, ergo I am racist against white people?
I didn't say anything about organizations or groups. All I said, that he was responded to, was that white guys have it easier than others in a world that's largely run by and for white guys. I didn't bring up anything to do with groups automatically being racist because they work for white people, because:
That. Is not. My opinion.
-and-
It's tangential, at best, to this discussion.
So, again, where are you going with this? Where's he going with this?
There are other factors at play here, yes. And these are interesting statistics to consider in the greater social context of why there is a gap in what women earn vs what men earn.
The problem is that trying to separate and quantify the effects of each factor is very difficult. I think there's enough to suggest that bias has a significant influence, but this does not mean that bias is the ONLY factor at play here. It's also not enough to say that men have it just as bad - we do need more data in that respect, and I'm sure I read something on the effects of the recession on male employment a while back, but damned if I can remember what it was called.
One thing I would note is that whatever factors we can examine (apart from bias) to explain the gap between men vs women don't hold up as well when comparing white men vs black men. For example, if we are to explain the gender pay gap by positing that women are more likely to take part time work because of social or familial obligations, that same reason may not be a satisfactory explanation as to why black men are paid less overall than white men.
And your response is a snide implication that my having an opinion means I'm no good at math and logic?
No. Let us be civil. I apologise for my flippant tone; let's move this back to a proper discussion. Here are some studies on the existence of bias of various types:
The disproportionate number of blacks and Hispanics in prison is, of course, so well known that I don't think I need to cite any papers there.
Now, on affirmative action - those laws were put in place to combat decades of discrimination. They're not a perfect solution, and they wouldn't be needed in a perfect world, but we've only got this world to work with and it is a flawed place.
That white guys may experience discrimination as a result of affirmative action simply does not compare to decades of discrimination that has happened and continues to happen to non-white non-males, and it also does not have the same kind of negative effect in light of the fact that white males hold the vast majority of the world's power and economic wealth. So although your point may have merit, you have not presented anything to suggest that affirmative action results in discrimination against white men (all else being equal) nor that it produces a major negative overall on white males' lives in the same way as actual discrimination has on non-white non-males.
There are so many intersecting variables here that separating how much of an effect each one contributes to various different statistics is a nightmare, but I think it's clear that bias does still exist.
Oh noes! Laws designed to combat sexism and racism mean white guys DON'T automatically get jobs or university places over non-white non-males of equal or better skill and experience? Say it ain't so!
Guess the white guys will just have to settle for majority control over the world's money, governments, mass media, etc etc etc.
Seriously. White guys are not systematically denied jobs because the employer is worried they'll want to start a family or take time off to take care of their kids. White guys are not systematically paid less or passed over for promotion just because they're male and white. White guys are not systematically targeted by police just because they're white.
On the post: Thanks Anti-Vax Loons: The Return Of The Measles And The Backlash Against Jenny McCarthy
Re:
You know you live in a society, right? Around other people, right? And being around them and sharing in communal things like the military that protects you and the roads that let you move around easily and laws that give you recourse against crimes etc etc means that you give up some of this 'freedom'?
That's the bargain. If you want to be around other people, then you fucking well follow the rules laid down by society that are designed to protect you and everyone else in it. If you don't agree with the rules, then you can advocate for change or go somewhere else with different rules. That's what the whole "your right to throw a punch ends at my face" saying means - if you live in a society, you can do what you want until you start to fuck it up for everyone else. So, you're not allowed to drive while being drunk. You're not allowed to attack people and take their stuff because you need it. And, ffs, you shouldn't be allowed to go without vaccinations just because you feel like being a contrary little shit.
The combined lives and health of many other people should be ranked higher in the grand scheme of things than your ignorant opinion on science you don't understand.
If the rules or the society don't work - and let's be honest, big chunks of them don't - then that's a good reason to strive for change and improvement. But this 'I'm free and you can't tell me what to do nyah nyah' bollocks is ridiculous.
Honestly, I know most Americans are fine, normal people, but stuff like this makes the country look like it's populated by nutballs.
On the post: Thanks Anti-Vax Loons: The Return Of The Measles And The Backlash Against Jenny McCarthy
Re: Did you get out of the bed the wrong this morning?
so (a) while the science shows that vaccines are largely a good thing for society, a minute number of allergic reactions notwithstanding, and
(b) the outbreaks of these diseases can be directly traced to scientifically-illiterate individuals who refuse to vaccinate on grounds that are shaky at best and downright fucking stupid at worst:
Your surprise at G Thompson getting irritated and calling you names is a little weird.
On the post: If The RIAA Was Innovative: An Alternate Universe Timeline
All the innovation you can pay for is partly wasted when you're locking out millions of potential customers with regional restrictions.
Why settle for making {bunch o' money x United States online population} when you could be, I dunno, using the GLOBAL COMMUNICATION NETWORK to make {bunch o' money x the whole online world}?
On the post: Hachette Tells Authors And Tor To Use DRM Because It Is Awesome Or Something
This has three major issues:
The second is that they may not have any standing to demand this. Who the authors license their work to in other territories, and under what conditions, is none of Hachette's business. But they can apply pressure, with the implicit understanding being that the authors will not get another book deal if they don't comply. Strong-arm tactics at their finest.
The third is that they are actually asking authors to take a hit on their livelyhood just to please them. We know DRM is ineffective. We know that it's so trivial to remove that there's no 'hardcore' stuff involved; the mainstream can do it easily, if they want. (And they will, if they find out that their books are restricted in stupid ways.) So they don't really have a leg to stand on here - they're essentially saying to authors, "You have to tell your other publishers to do something that will likely piss off your readers and damage your hard-won reputation for no benefit whatsoever, because we say so and we'll take our ball and go home otherwise."
This is honestly all kinds of ridiculous, and should be a giant red flag to authors everywhere that Hachette don't know what the hell they're doing and are not worth pitching their books to in future.
On the post: Defensive Posturing: E-Book Author Takes On The 'Old Guard' At Crime Writing Festival [UPDATED]
What nonsense. She can moan all she likes, but she can't stop self-published authors from pricing their books however they want. Those authors are presumably reading and taking note of J.A. Konrath's blog posts on the matter, and pricing at $2.99 - that apparently being the price at which revenue is maximized.
It's getting to a point where it looks like wilful ignorance. The market has spoken. Authors are routinely bypassing publishers and making a nice profit on their own. It's not going to change because she, or any other publisher, wants it to change or has a couple of arguments as to why it should change. Frankly, if that's all they've got, they deserve to go out of business.
On the post: If This Is What Big Publishers Call Promotion, No Wonder They're In Trouble
Are you surprised?
You're talking about a number of companies that have spent the best part of a hundred years or more selling to a particular market: bookstores. Their whole focus has been on selling paper books into businesses who then sell them to readers. Now they're being asked to sell to readers directly - and it's largely thrown them for a loop, because while they were trying to avoid getting into the whole messy digital thing, Amazon did exactly that and whipped the whole market out from under them.
They haven't a clue how to deal with that. They know how to sell to stores and to book critics. Tor and Baen know their stuff, but the rest of the big publishers wouldn't know an online marketing campaign if it jumped up and bit them in the face. Authors do their own online marketing - they have to, because (excluding Tor and Baen, like I said) there is no way for them to connect to an online reading audience through their publisher.
The publisher is not the brand. The publisher is the manufacturer and delivery service, at best. The author is the brand who makes use of them. No small wonder then, that bestselling authors (Barry Eisler, for example) just walk away when the deal isn't good enough, and take their brand recognition with them.
You think the music industry had it bad... The big publishers make them look clued-in in comparison. They have literally nothing to offer a new author bar some vague sense of legitimacy that's meaningless when it comes to sales, and they seem completely intent on keeping it that way - right up to the point where they go out of business.
On the post: Not Wise: French T-Shirt Company Tries To Trademark Anonymous Logo
Re:
Anonymous? Not so much.
Anonymous don't threaten. You start doing something they don't like, they don't say 'stop that shit or we'll attack', like, say, a terrorist would. That implies a level of organizational control that they clearly don't have. They just attack, using whatever seems like a good idea or whatever will get the most laughs.
There is no intent, no logic, no consistency, and your only defence is avoiding their attention. There are no consequences to leaving them the hell alone and plenty of consequences to annoying them like this. The worst part of it is that the more you dig in and try to go after them, the more attention you draw and the more Anons get involved - as if poking a bear with a stick makes it harder to kill as well as angry enough to rip your head off.
Anyway - that whole 'hunting down terrorists' strategy seems to be doing a pretty good job of making lots more terrorists, so maybe you shouldn't be recommending it as a solution here.
On the post: A Floating Island Of Nerds... Or Just Evidence Of A Broken Immigration System?
I just want to say
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" - what the hell ever happened to that? America used to be the ideal, the promised land; a place where any man could be judged on his merits, not his bloodline or his history or his religion. Now? It's like the whole country is eating its own tail, so wrapped up in being The Best Place in the World(TM) that it can't accept that today's immigrants could be just as worthy as the ones who built it.
I had to figure out where I wanted to go, when I decided that I had to leave Ireland. The US wasn't an option, not for a second. I couldn't put my future in the hands of a fickle bureaucracy who seem bent on looking down on me, who could make me jump through hoops for years and STILL deport me on a whim. I have friends who've been there for more than six years, working in fields that require Phds, and yet have no hope of getting a green card. Everything I know about or have heard of says the same thing: if you want to immigrate somewhere else, prove yourself, and build a better life, then forget about America. They don't want you there.
I went to Canada instead, probably the best decision I've ever made. The money that I'll be spending in the economy, the taxes I'll pay, the house I will buy, the children I will raise; it'll all be in the fine city of Vancouver BC.
As for the US? I'll visit, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live there.
On the post: Claire Ryan's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re: Side show while we wait for Carreon's next move?
(It's spelled 'defamation', I think, not deformation.)
On the post: Claire Ryan's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re: Re: Re:
If anything the ACTA defeat showed that people were ready, and had become more watchful. The rise of the Pirate parties in Europe are a good sign of that. It's demonstrated that this is something people care enough about to vote that way, and politicians are fools if they don't pay attention to that.
So... yeah. I am still hopeful. I don't think I'll be losing my money any time soon. I don't think there's enough money in the world to quash the natural inclination of seven billion people to create and share in the same way they've done for generations.
On the post: Claire Ryan's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Claire Ryan's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re:
On the post: Claire Ryan's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
While I can
*insert witticisms here*
On the post: Claire Ryan's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re:
Chin up, anon. It ain't all about the money - not yet at any rate.
On the post: US Gov't And Hollywood Have Turned Kim Dotcom Into A Beloved Cult Hero
Dotcom would have to be drowning kittens or something to make people root for the American government.
On the post: Bias In Tech & Media: Lists That Perpetuate The Stereotypes
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Merit
I didn't say anything about organizations or groups. All I said, that he was responded to, was that white guys have it easier than others in a world that's largely run by and for white guys. I didn't bring up anything to do with groups automatically being racist because they work for white people, because:
That. Is not. My opinion.
-and-
It's tangential, at best, to this discussion.
So, again, where are you going with this? Where's he going with this?
On the post: Bias In Tech & Media: Lists That Perpetuate The Stereotypes
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Merit
The problem is that trying to separate and quantify the effects of each factor is very difficult. I think there's enough to suggest that bias has a significant influence, but this does not mean that bias is the ONLY factor at play here. It's also not enough to say that men have it just as bad - we do need more data in that respect, and I'm sure I read something on the effects of the recession on male employment a while back, but damned if I can remember what it was called.
One thing I would note is that whatever factors we can examine (apart from bias) to explain the gap between men vs women don't hold up as well when comparing white men vs black men. For example, if we are to explain the gender pay gap by positing that women are more likely to take part time work because of social or familial obligations, that same reason may not be a satisfactory explanation as to why black men are paid less overall than white men.
On the post: Bias In Tech & Media: Lists That Perpetuate The Stereotypes
Re: Re: Re: Re: Merit
You mean... all of them that ain't specifically working for non-whites, seeing as 'white' is seen as the default?
"would automatically be a racist hate filled group"
You said it, not me. I don't share that opinion.
"funny how "ONLY" whites can be guilty of "racism""
Again, you said it, not me. Not sure what point you're making here.
"look in the mirror buddy, your a racist"
It's spelled "you're". Just FYI.
On the post: Bias In Tech & Media: Lists That Perpetuate The Stereotypes
Re: Re: Re: Re: Merit
No. Let us be civil. I apologise for my flippant tone; let's move this back to a proper discussion. Here are some studies on the existence of bias of various types:
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/09/study-black-man-and-white-felon-same-chances-for-hir e/ - a study that shows white men were twice as likely as black men to receive a callback for a job, given equal skill and experience. Only in 2008, not that long ago.
http://scholar.harvard.edu/mullainathan/files/emilygreg.pdf - another study from 2004 showing a similar trend based on names that are identified as African American.
http://www.ncrw.org/news-center/in-the-news/study-spoiled-milk-experimental-examination -bias-against-mothers-who - bias against breastfeeding mothers in the workplace
http://hbr.org/2010/03/women-in-management-delusions-of-progress/ar/1 - women still discriminated against in higher level positions even after controlling for other factors like motherhood
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswom2009.pdf - the old faithful, the income wage gap between men and women
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1985377 - racial disparity in criminal charges; prosecutors are twice as likely to charge blacks with crimes that have a minimum sentence
The disproportionate number of blacks and Hispanics in prison is, of course, so well known that I don't think I need to cite any papers there.
Now, on affirmative action - those laws were put in place to combat decades of discrimination. They're not a perfect solution, and they wouldn't be needed in a perfect world, but we've only got this world to work with and it is a flawed place.
That white guys may experience discrimination as a result of affirmative action simply does not compare to decades of discrimination that has happened and continues to happen to non-white non-males, and it also does not have the same kind of negative effect in light of the fact that white males hold the vast majority of the world's power and economic wealth. So although your point may have merit, you have not presented anything to suggest that affirmative action results in discrimination against white men (all else being equal) nor that it produces a major negative overall on white males' lives in the same way as actual discrimination has on non-white non-males.
There are so many intersecting variables here that separating how much of an effect each one contributes to various different statistics is a nightmare, but I think it's clear that bias does still exist.
On the post: Bias In Tech & Media: Lists That Perpetuate The Stereotypes
Re: Re: Merit
Guess the white guys will just have to settle for majority control over the world's money, governments, mass media, etc etc etc.
Seriously. White guys are not systematically denied jobs because the employer is worried they'll want to start a family or take time off to take care of their kids. White guys are not systematically paid less or passed over for promotion just because they're male and white. White guys are not systematically targeted by police just because they're white.
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, mate.
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