Comment Re: Waste of money (Score 1) 341
So how do you explain all those single moms who manage to do both?
Why should I? You are bringing the hypothesis so you should bring the evidence.
So how do you explain all those single moms who manage to do both?
Why should I? You are bringing the hypothesis so you should bring the evidence.
To all the people who say "women don't want to work in tech", note that women were the MAJORITY in the early days of computing, right up until the advent of personal computers.
Ahhh... the old "god-of-the-gaps" argument - the old "if you can't explain the numbers then it must be sexism" chestnut. Do you realise that advocating that argument is the same as saying "well, you can't prove god DIDN'T do it".
Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack (or something like that
You mean hard wired to sacrifice themselves to take care of their family?
Funny how single moms manage to do both, isn't it?
Wait, what? It's okay if a man sacrifices but not if a woman sacrifices? Who's being sexist now?
money is a store of value
Sorry, no. Money doesn't store value, it measures it in much the same way that rulers don't store distance, they measure it.
> Thermostat yawn no big deal
Depends on where you live. Here in Seattle, every home I've been in that was built in the past twenty-five years has electric heat. If you turn the thermostat up too high, you will be likely to start a fire. My last house caught fire when the thermostat shorted out. I thought the house was too hot when I was leaving to meet a friend, but I was in a hurry so I didn't check on it. When I got home, my house was full of smoke and there were wisps of flames from the wooden frame around my window just above the electric heat. Another few minutes and it would have spread. Also, several fires a year here are started by children turning the thermostats up all of the way. Because there's no forced air in the vast majority of homes in this area, the heater can get hot enough to light paper and wood on fire while the thermostat still reads below 90.
I've got some bad news - the internet connected thingy... say... the next, for example... can still set your house on fire if it shorts out. Being IoT buzzword-ready does not imply that it is safer than the mechanical one.
Same goes for clocks, watches, and other such stuff as many of the gears and such are replaced with circuit boards.
Yup. Our vacuum cleaner went on the fritz. I thought, vacuum cleaners are very simple - I can handle this. Cracked it open and... big fancy circuit board! This model had a "bag full" sensor and two speeds, so I guess they put it on a board. At this point I Googled and found that the problem is common and that the board is essentially toast. Fortunately the same Google search showed that Hoover still does a 7 year warranty so I slapped it back together and got it fixed.
But yeah, a simple vacuum is now complicated. Next time I'll buy something with only an off-on switch.
Why not throw the board away and connect a high-voltage switch to power? I did this to a broken vacuum cleaner once - simply threw away the board and wired a switch to directly switch the motor. Put in two switches in and you could have two power levels.
Of course, you don't get all the value-add that the electronics mainboard gave you, like "bag-full" indicator, etc. But really, just empty the thing each time you're done vacuuming, which is probably what you're doing anyway.
less than $30 i can buy a blu ray with a digital copy redeemable on itunes or ultraviolet
But you have to wait several months and avoid spoilers in the meantime. For example, the film Hop took nearly a year after North American theatrical release to be published on DVD and BD in North America. And most people's audio systems are likely not up to par with that of a theater.
Most people turn on subtitles when playing a disk. That beats any "par" set by the theatre.
Racism masked as intelligent analysis. Colonialism/Apartheid and the viewing blacks as savages who are mentally inferior to whites is a big part of the reason they remain an underclass in South Africa.
That's what the stupid masses always say. You did know that I am not white, right? And FYI, the ruling class in SA is overwhelmingly black.
Finally, why are you still in SA? It sounds like a wretched mess. Turn off the lights on your way out....
Because, sadly, I'm divorced with a child who lives with my ex-wife. Any country I "flee" to with my son would happily hand myself and my son back to SA officials when his mum starts the legal process. If I were to leave, I would have to leave my son behind. I cannot do that. The only way to leave would be either:
a) His mum also agrees to leave, and to agree to sign a new contact agreement in the destination country. This is not going to happen as she is a lawyer and, as such, she is useless outside SA. She has no qualification that are applicable anywhere in the world other than in SA (laws differ from country to country and lawyers who are qualified to practice in on country have to redo their degree in another to practice in it).
b) The country itself falls apart to such an extent that I can reasonably claim refugee status in the destination country. They would not then send my son back (and I would not be arrested).
Considering that we run our power off a petrol generator sometimes, I expect anarchy before too long. The blackouts scheduled for Feb/March means that at any given time only one half of the country will have power. Civilisation doesn't last too long without food, and modern food depends on electricity. At the point that any country willingly offers refugee status to SA citizens, that is the point I will leave with my son. Until then I'll endure. My son is only 7, after all.
And what will all our fine corporate interests do when they run out of wage slaves?
I think you worry too much - I'm in the best part of Africa, the most progressive, the most modern, and even here the government can't even keep the lights on. Over here we just came out of a economy crippling 8-month strike (which was preceded by a 6 month strike). In December, due to cable-theft which the government does nothing about, our company ran on diesel generators for two full weeks (averaging 18l/hour).
Our workforce is mostly uneducated and they prefer it that way (seriously, they do). Our pass rate for high-school maths is around 10%. Our high school students rank close to last in maths and science. Our minister of education is on a mission to put religion into schools, as if that would alleviate the systemic problems in our educational system. Our populations is incredibly lazy and refuses to work. Their reasoning is mostly vindicated, as they keep voting for a government that takes from the imddle class and gives to their voter base.
We have roughly 5 million income tax payers supporting around 12 million welfare recipients. The aforementioned 5 million also pay for electricity while the 12 million get it for free. This ratio is only getting worse as time goes on. We have the least amount of corruption compared to any other African state, but we still have annual news about shady arms deals that line politicians pockets at the expense of the people, a president who, in his late 60's, is taking a sixth wife (that taxpayers have to support).
Our president has been found guilty by the public prosecutor of taking almost R300million from the public coffer for his private benefit, was the recipient of bribes in which the dodgy court found the other party guilty of giving the bribe to the president but refused to find the president guilty of accepting it, has been tried for rape (acquitted, though: he claimed it was consensual), believes that having a shower after sex will prevent him from getting HIV and is unable to read numbers with more than 5 digits (seriously, check youtube).
Multiple areas have to rely on cellphones, due to cable-theft affecting POTS lines (I'm in such an area), water routinely gets cut off due to not enough power to run pumping stations. The middle class (mentioned above) all pay for private security to guard their homes because the woefully underfunded and under-manned police force simply cannot keep up with the crime rate.
Yeah, I did mention that we are the best that Africa has to offer, right? Good luck to any company trying to set up manufacturing or processing facilities here - the population is so lazy, that even though we have a 25% unemployment rate (in practice it is higher, this low number is due to the way they count "unemployed") the only people who are willing to work as gardeners are from a neighbouring country.
The cherry on top? Your business could easily be nationalised if the president decides that the kickback is not high enough. Seriously, good luck with moving stuff from China to here. China has a well-earned reputation for being a nation of hard and industrious workers. They may steal ideas, but they still work more hours than everyone else. Your manufacturing facility is safe there. Our workers refuse to accept an double-inflation raise and strike for 8 months out of 12. Your manufacturing facility won't survive here - the automakers are now planning on moving out (they were the first to come here for the cheap labour).
I know we don't RTFA arounf here, but authors don't get paid when the book is downloaded, they get paid when someone reads at least 10% of the book.
Parents point still stands: I published on Amazon. I've still got a collection of short stories on Amazon. To game this system all I have to do is publish all my short stories as different books. Instead of one 40k word book that might get read 10% through, I can have 7 smaller "books" that will almost certainly hold the reader for 10% of each book.
The flat fee incentivises the wrong thing - it provides an incentive for crappy authors and/or crappy books to join en masse. The payoff is so small that any popular author (Stephen King, Pratchett, etc) will be stupid to join. The popular authors *are* the draw, and people who have paid the flat-fee will still shell out extra to get the popular author's latest work if it isn't in the flat-fee library.
So, this model incentivises crap being included and masterpieces being excluded - why do you think that you will see anything different in practice?
And free to get crushed by Amazon. There's no competing against a behemoth.
Smashwords seem to be doing just fine (see my link). An artist's biggest problem is obscurity not piracy. Amazon is not helping in this regard, and in fact their insistence on distributing only paid-for books and not free ones means that they (Amazon) are actually a poor platform for new authors.
I want people to read my book and remember my name. On Amazon I get maybe 30 downloads when the book goes for free for five days out of every 90. On Smashwords I get many more downloads (200+) in the same time period. Smashwords is helping me be an author, Amazon wants to help me be a business. I want to be an author.
If enough people decide that I'm a good author then I might decide to be a business, but for now I'm content with just being an author, and Smashwords furthers my goal more than Amazon does.
System going down in 5 minutes.
