It's not the human *touch* that people crave in a complicated interaction with a system. It's human *versatility*.

Thus more personnel does no good, if those personnel are rigidly controlled, lack information to advise or authority to act. The fact that they're also expected to be jolly and upbeat as they follow their rigid and unyielding rules only turns the interaction with them into a travesty of a social interaction.

What would work better is a well-designed check-in system that handles routine situations nearly all the time, along with a few personnel who have the training and authority to solve any passenger problems that come up.

I'm pretty sure birth control exists.

I can only go with the experience of my friends, who've gone both routes successfully.

It's true that traditional publishers expect mid-list authors to shoulder most of the promotion efforts these days. I never said they didn't. Fiction authors are now expected to maintain a platform, which used to be a non-fiction thing. Certainly traditional publishers have become more predatory and less supportive than they were twenty years ago. I don't have an inside track on why that is, but I suspect there are several causes. One is that POD allows publishers to make an reliable though modest profit from their mid-list authors, which ironically makes them more risk averse. But publishers still provide production and editing services on a MS that'd cost you maybe ten thousand dollars if you were contracting those services out. They also get your book in bricks-and-mortar bookstores, which is a bridge too far for most indy authors, even the successful ones.

A lot of the bad feeling that publishers get from indy authors comes from two sources. First, a long history with rejection. Second the lack of respect indy authors get relative to traditionally published authors. We can see it in this discussion elsewhere, where one poster puts "authors" in quotes when referring to indy authors. And it's easy to see why because most indy authors just aren't good enough to get traditionally published. *Some* indy authors put out a product that's every bit as good as the mid-list authors from the big publishing houses, but most just dump their terrible manuscripts on Amazon with a clip-art cover and no copy editing, much less developmental editing.

The statistic that most indy authors make their investment back plus 40% didn't impress me, because (a) that counts the author's labor as free and (b) most indy authors don't invest much cash in their projects. The percentage of indy authors that clear, say, five thousand dollars in profit are very small.

It's not that indy publishing doesn't have its points, and my traditionally published friends are certainly thinking about dipping their toe in the water. But it's not as cheap as it looks if you want a comparable product, and you give up certain things. I was in Manhattan recently and went to the 5th Avenue branch of the NYPL. My traditionally published friends' books were either on the shelves our out circulating. The NYPL had *none* of my indy author friends' books, even though at least one of them has made the New York Times best seller list.

I don't think it's as simple as Amazon is good or Amazon is evil. Amazon is powerful, and that needs watching.

Now I have a number writer friends, one of whom is published both with traditional imprints like TOR and with Amazon's new in-house publishing imprints. She has good things to say about Amazon's imprints, but one thing you have to take into account is that nobody will stock your book *but* Amazon if you publish with them. That's giving up a lot, so they treat authors reasonably well. But that doesn't mean the corporation actually cares about authors. Amazon needs reliable mid-list authors to make their publishing ventures a success, and by cutting out the middleman can afford generous royalties. But if Amazon succeeds in putting a stake in the heart of traditional publishing, I wouldn't care to speculate on what will happen to authors.

Nor should what traditional publishers do for authors be underestimated. I have friends who are successful indy writers, but it's not like being a writer, it's more like running a small publishing house yourself. They hire story editors, copy editors and artists, and manage promotion and publicity. It's a lot of work; that plus actually writing pretty much precludes a day job. It's not for everyone.

It's a lot like being an engineer. Engineers are smart people who usually have a lot of insight into the companies they work for, but that doesn't mean that most engineers want to run businesses. Some do, but most would rather have other people take care of that stuff so they can concentrate on what they feel they're best at.

Many writers choose the indy market because it's the only way they'll ever get published. They just dump their manuscript on the market without editing, design or promotion and hope for the best. They rarely succeed. Others choose the indy route because they thrive on running and controlling their own small business, the way some engineers step naturally into the role of entrepreneur. They're well positioned for the future. But most writers need support to reach their full potential.

Years ago, when static electricity was bad news for computers, I had the idea for a "data processing shoe" that would have a little conductive ribbon that would drag along the floor and ground out static electricity. Such a thing is of course no longer needed, but given the apparent popularity of data breeches these days maybe the concept could be resurrected as a fashion statement.

Not pour billions of pounds down the drain into it?

You appear to know something that the opinion polls don't. What is it?

Where did you pull this nonsense from?

I dunno. Has Obama come out in favor of it yet?

This is what comes to my mind whenever I hear of Creative. Nice enough hardware, but shockingly bad software, 80% of which no-one ever had any need for. And it would invariably all be set up to load at boot-time, sucking up resources and RAM.

I'm sure many unemployed black people would like being slaves for rich folk again, since they'd get to serve in the kinds of houses they couldn't afford. </sarcasm>

If you are just starting out learning to program, you are not in a position to determine which language is best to learn by. You have to take advice, or take what you are given. If you feel 'force fed' you are either way over-opinionated for someone who knows nothing, or are an idiot who has booked themselves onto the wrong course.

This is pretty common on slashdot. A hazard of submitted stories where the person submitting it is very familiar with the people/companies/concepts/software/whatever concerned, and can't imagine anyone who isn't.

You just hope to god they don't also write documentation.

Nah, I'm just not under the illusion that we are special in any way. The universe doesn't give a shit about whether we survive or not, that we often want to is simply a personal bias, not an inherent truth, and those personal biases can vary..

Whether we survive or not is just a thing that happens, it's not inherently "right" or "wrong". No matter what happens to us the universe keeps turning, doing it's thing.

You don't need that assumption to make atheism practical. Atheism is practical because "god" is not a falsifiable concept, this doesn't make it wrong, but it puts it in the realm of other things of that realm like the tooth fairy and santa. Things that even if they so happened by some freaky coincidence to be right there is no possible way to have evidence of it because of the lack of ability of the conjecture to be tested.

Critical rationalism allows atheism to function. Not in a hard "there is no god, for sure" stance, but in the "there is no reason, and can be no reason to prefer the conjecture that there is a god, so I'm going to totally ignore it like all other untestable things" sense.

Why? what justification do you have for this?

Just because someone doesn't think that it is an inherent truth that it is "right" that all people should continue to exist doesn't mean they think that people should not exist

What people consider to be a benefit or detriment depends entirely on their desired outcomes and priorities, which can be arbitrary. When what is "benefit" is arbitrary so too can be your morals if what is of benefit is your guiding light.