The fact that if I built my road first, it's logical that I also built the cross-connections to other roads and towns. So how do you propose to build your second road alongside mine without crossing or connecting to it

This isn't a hard scenario to imagine - look at any random chunk of road in your neighborhood, imagine the roads are privately owned (by folks hostile enough to you that you're trying to build your own), and for the sake of argument, give yourself infinite money - enough to buy whatever lands and right-of-ways you need, but not enough to buy out the Evil Roadowner you're competing with.

Now, where do you propose to run your Alternate Road System?

Although I notice you didn't answer the question - you say you'll work for free on a comic book. So, no objections to someone else treating you like an employee in every other fashion (hours of work, dress code, targets to meet), and keeping all the benefit from your work? You'll just do it out of the goodness of your heart? (Or maybe just for a nice letter from me gushing about how gullible,er, hard-working you were)

I don't remember the details so well, but wasn't part of that problem that MS wasn't treating them like contractors? (i.e. they were treating them like employees until it was payday, at which point they magically turned back into contractors?)

True, but you're glossing over the detail of "we want you to have experience before we hire you".

So now it's not a question of taking a half-assed donut, it's being *forced* to take a half-ass donut as a prerequisite for *maybe* getting a better donut later. (But of course, no guarantees!)

I suppose you could decline the offer - just like you can decline to eat or have a place to live.

That's easy - just ask yourself the reverse question. Why would anyone offer a paid internship when you can get away with offering an unpaid one instead?

Read through the earlier comments - the folks who got paid internships are generally in industries where they're *required* to do a paid internship (either because the degree or their industry association required it). Thus, companies can't get away with offering unpaid ones because they can't even call it "work experience" - it doesn't count.

All this ruling does is extend the logic across the board.

I get the initialization error a lot, but the feeds still show up. (Apparently they just like to be grumpy about all the mal-formed RSS feeds).

The big selling feature for me was that it's self-hosted, so I never have to worry about migrating again.

Also, because everyone wants to see the Battle Room.

There's plenty of interesting elements and themes in Ender's Game, but I'm under no illusions that why it's being made, and why it's being made *now* is that they finally figured out how to show the Battle Room in a (presumably) non-lame way.

As for Mr. Card's views, I would paraphrase a quote from another - "Card is a wonderful author, just a really second-rate human being".

I wonder if the folks calling for a boycott are also going to boycott Star Wars and Indiana Jones now, because Harrison Ford has sullied himself...

Also, there's some simple BizMath at work - sales and marketing people bring in customers (and thus, are a net positive to the bottom line). Everyone else, while "necessary", doesn't, are are thus net negatives to the bottom line. That's why it's engineering and admin and warehouse folks who are the first on the chopping block when management needs to hit their bonus numbers.

If by "all the time" you mean "four measures before the song starts"... seems way simpler to have the next person tap them in (or squeeze or whatever they sort out) than to haul in a bunch of extra hardware.

Plenty of precedent too - it's fairly common to turn pages for fellow orchestra members when they're busy in a solo or more complicated part.

So, I'm not allowed to wear Glasses while driving. Yet, I'm *required* to wear glasses while driving (due to my prescription).

So, if my prescription glasses have Google Glass installed, am I supposed to or prohibited from wearing them?

Yes, because men have such a long-standing and renowned respect for women's opinions, particularly when being told that they might be a bit disrespectful.

Which, if memory serves, has been measured at about $75K a year (as in, that's the point where making more money stops equating to additional "happiness", just more toys.

Not always an option - some universities/college require students to live in the dorm (at least for the first couple years).

Couple tips from my past dorm-life (where I remember being able to sing along with the music playing in the rec room... four floors down from me).

• I'd try music again - personally I found jazz with no singing was the right balance of white-noise without being attention grabbing. Some other genre might work for you. There's also some nice white-noise generators out there that aren't crazy expensive.
• If you're looking for plain silence, perhaps invest in a decent pair of noise-cancelling headphones (the nice big over-the-ears kind), and just don't plug it in to anything.
• Double-check your dorm rules - there might be limits on noise at particular hours. Alternately, there might be other floors/areas of the dorm with stricter rules that might be a better fit for you.
• Barring that, find a library or study room that works more to your liking. Do a bit of exploring - a lot of campuses have study areas in hard-to-find places (either intentionally or accidentally) that are usually far quieter than the popular areas.

Either way, best of luck to you!

Guess what - your museum almost certainly is *also* funded by taxes. Otherwise some businessman would open up Bob's Museum and Smokeshop and make a profit.

Neither - I support taxes because it's cheaper than paying for my own firefighters and teachers and doctors and nurses, and far cheaper than building my own library or playground or swimming pool or skating rink. It's no different than splitting the cost of the fence with your neighbor instead of building two back-to-back - if we all pitch in we can have a library AND a playground AND a pool AND a rink (and firehalls, etc, etc.)

And to round back to the original argument, it's cheaper to help folks get back on their feet than to pay for the social ills that come from ignoring them. (And there's no lack of studies backing *that* up)