'Technical American' is surely the phrase of choice to describe any American, whose is currently employed in firing the anti-aircraft gun they've welded to the back of their (monster) pick-up truck, in works of post-apocalyptic Infernokrusher diesalpunk?
Jon Meltzer @319
Actually, given the level of organisational fail implied by KeithS's -- very plausible -- scenario, I would bet it actually isn't cold bloodedly justified on a spreadsheet anywhere, that would be giving management way too much credit for foresight and planning.
I bet you this way of (not properly) doing things just grew, and everyone just accepts that that is the way things are done, and hey! we're amazon.com, highly successful behemoth poised for world domination, that *proves* we must have our (to an outsider insane) working practices and hastily duct taped together business systems right. That stuff is the unique special sauce (rather than first mover advantage, luck, hidebound competition and hardball business tactics) that got us where we are today, right? Right?
I wouldn't be completely surprised to find there is/was a certain amount of organisational pride that they *don't* have a working system designed specifically for censoring stuff from peoples searches and lists, because that proves, proves! to themselves that they're not that evil nasty censoring bookstore that they *could* be in their dark imaginings.
The fact that instead everyone is using godawful ad-hoc 3 a.m. hacks that cause random PR disasters to perform the censorship function and just not calling it that even to themselves, tends to slip the mind. That's if anyone in the organisation ever gets enough sleep, given the working practices people seem to be describing, to have a still functioning mind at all.
Yeah, I'm possibly being a little harsh here.
It does emphasize Patrick's original point about the field being tilted so things roll down hill and always hitting the same darn people everytime, even if nobody dropping the rocks to roll down the slope ever thinks they 'meant' it.
I now find myself intrigued by the fact that it seems only to be the French who explicitly embed the version numbers in the formal naming scheme (Second Empire, Fifth Republic etc.), whilst everyone else seems to hide the information from the user.
I guess Germany might also have been doing it back before the emergency deployment of Grundgesetz 1.0, but I'm not sure whether the blackhats who rooted the box and installed their 'Reich 3.x' back in the 1930s, were actually following any previous naming scheme that was *real*, or they just made that whole thing up as part of the phishing scam they used to get the login credentials.
Gordon Brown then in return freezing the assets of one of the key banks didn't help either. We're in good company here: UK Financial Sanctions. I had no idea that Landsbanki, a bank, could be an evil regime.
I thought it was Kaupthing? The one that hadn't yet gone to the wall before that point.
I'm deeply ashamed of my country (and extremely angry at my government) for doing that. When the ship capsizes and everyone has been spilled into the briney, you do *not* help push the guy who is closest to drowning under, and justify it on the basis that as he was splashing and flailing about so desperately he elbowed you in the chest. You do not do that.
Well, apparently we do.
You'd think that the fact we're all essentially roped together in this global financial mess, and the more countries, companies and people who go down, the more it drags everyone under, would have given the government some pause -- I'm sure that not doing that sort of thing is on the Evil Overlord list somewhere -- but obviously not.
However, that we used what was supposedly a anti-terrorism law to do it doesn't shock me at all, at this point that sort of thing just seems inevitable.
I'm convinced that threading is the devil.
I don't know why it's the devil, or by what precise mechanism it's devilry acts, but I've seen enough times the scenario where a place with good, or even exceptional conversation, gets popular enough that the people hosting it decide 'we need to put in threading!' and things are never the same ever again. It seems an inevitable signifier that the glory days are now in the past.
Maybe it's just the traffic getting too big to sustain a decent conversation, hits at exactly the point were people start feeling they need threading, but I don't really believe it.
Adding threading always seems to make things worse. Always.
Vermin Supreme?
You know, if CMOT Dibbler ever jumped onto the Celebrity Chef bandwagon and opened a swanky upscale restaurant serving Klatchian Cuisine as chronicled in an accompanying TV Series...
gutherie @ 11
I think the politicans are too cheap
In the future your Congressmen will -- like your nuclear electricity today -- become, not just cheap, but too cheap to meter!
I have to admit that my immediate deeply and doubtless unfairly cynical reaction to the Kindle was 'ooooooo, interesting indirect slushpile monetisation scheme!'.
Because you just know that some fraction of those poor would be wordsmiths who somehow just can't get past level 7 on the Slushkiller scale -- definitely not talking about Jim and Deb here -- are going to upload their baby to Amazon's Digital Text Platform and then persuade all their friends and relations that they just *have* to all rush out and buy a $400 Kindle in order to read and purchase their now *published* ('It's on Amazon and its got an ISBN and everything!') magnum opus, just like they just did themselves.
Amazon going after the *really long* part of the long-tail, so to speak.
Zeynep @ 2
Perhaps because I cannot emphatize enough with the troll to try to get across its motivation to a third party
The motivation is this startling discovery that you too have the power to, via a few well chosen words dropped casually into a discussion, instantly turn what seemd a previously sane environment into an angry trainwreck of a screaming shitstorm of madness hundreds and hundreds of posts long. Reliably, repeatedly. Preditably. Time after time after time. It's just like magic! Or at least just like dropping alkalai group metals into containers of water.
Okay so it's probably wouldn't be most people's first choice of superpower even for the wannabe supervillains among us, but unlike the the really cool stuff such as teleportation, mindreading, shapeshifting, laser-beam eyes, or waving your magic wand around and having reality bend interesting ways, it actually works reliably in the real world.
Which is a really quite amazingly cool thing for an otherwise imaginary evil superpower.
*cue villainous laughter and twirling of mustachios*
...necessary to give the Terrorists...
YM 'Gully Foyle'
...a transcendental experience allowing them to be spiritually reborn as stronger more determined and unbreakable human...
...who is able to perform a Space Jaunt.
ask most Americans if they'd like a nice bunny stew
Damn you Fragano @ 90! Damn you! Now you've got me craving the rabbit pies our local baker used to do back when I was a wee peerie lad, and that I've never found the like of since. Gaaaah!
Disclaimer: Not an American
And with a bowling alley and flags of all nations
An Iron Lung guy? With a mirror? I seem to recall someone in an iron lung. Pretty sure there was a cheesy piano player too...
...needless to say it was many many years ago that I saw this thing. Tho' not 1976.
The Big Bus (1976)
Nuclear powered, it was, I seem to remember.
That they probably contravene the Trade Practices Act, I shall leave to the ACCC to determine.
Here is the the ACCC, who describe themselves as 'Australian government organisation responsible for ensuring compliance with the Trade Practices Act 1974'. So I assume they are the relevant guys (I'm not myself an Australian, or even been there).
Hmmm, I wonder if there's a section in that Act about the practice of sending out invoices for goods or services nobody actually purchased, which tends to be rather illegal in lots of places.
...Ah found it here. Ayup, as I thought.
...
TRADE PRACTICES ACT 1974 - SECT 64
Assertion of right to payment for unsolicited goods or services or for making entry in directory
(1) A corporation shall not, in trade or commerce, assert a right to payment from a person for unsolicited goods unless the corporation has reasonable cause to believe that there is a right to payment.
(2A) A corporation shall not, in trade or commerce, assert a right to payment from a person for unsolicited services unless the corporation has reasonable cause to believe that there is a right to payment.
(3) A corporation shall not assert a right to payment from any person of a charge for the making in a directory of an entry relating to the person or to his or her profession, business, trade or occupation unless the corporation knows or has reasonable cause to believe that the person has authorized the making of the entry.
(4) A person is not liable to make any payment to a corporation, and is entitled to recover by action in a court of competent jurisdiction against a corporation any payment made by the person to the corporation, in full or part satisfaction of a charge for the making of an entry in a directory unless the person has authorized the making of the entry.
(5) For the purposes of this section, a corporation shall be taken to assert a right to a payment from a person for unsolicited goods or services, or of a charge for the making of an entry in a directory, if the corporation:
(a) makes a demand for the payment or asserts a present or prospective right to the payment;
(b) threatens to bring any legal proceedings with a view to obtaining the payment;
(c) places or causes to be placed the name of the person on a list of defaulters or debtors, or threatens to do so, with a view to obtaining the payment;
(d) invokes or causes to be invoked any other collection procedure, or threatens to do so, with a view to obtaining the payment; or
(e) sends any invoice or other document stating the amount of the payment or setting out the price of the goods or services or the charge for the making of the entry and not stating as prominently (or more prominently) that no claim is made to the payment, or to payment of the price or charge, as the case may be.
...snipped section 6, as it's about directories rather than invoices, so is not relevant here...
(7) For the purposes of this section, an invoice or other document purporting to have been sent by or on behalf of a corporation shall be deemed to have been sent by that corporation unless the contrary is established.
...weirdly there is no section 8...
(9) In a proceeding against a corporation in respect of a contravention of this section:
(a) in the case of a contravention constituted by asserting a right to payment from a person for unsolicited goods or unsolicited services--the burden lies on the corporation of proving that the corporation had reasonable cause to believe that there was a right to payment; or
(b) in the case of a contravention constituted by asserting a right to payment from a person of a charge for the making of an entry in a directory--the burden lies on the corporation of proving that the corporation knew or had reasonable cause to believe that the person had authorised the making of the entry.
...
Quite possibly, all sorts interesting sections in that and other Laws that might also apply.
Me @ 167
Baan HTML formatted books
And if you think those are something you should try reading SAP or Peoplesoft HTML formatted books on your PSP! Alas, the J.D. Edwards ones suck.
...Yes, I did actually mean Baen there :)
Mary @ 119 Ebook Readers.
I read ebooks on: My desktop PC running Windows XP (19" CRT monitor), My Sony PSP (4.5" Backlit TFT) and My HTC s710 Smartphone running Windows Mobile 6 (2.5" Backlit TFT).
The Desktop PC can read everything I've thrown at it no matter what the DRM because all the umpty-billion ebook DRM formats have a reader that runs on Windows XP, but it's ummm, not exactly portable, and a 19" CRT isn't the greatest thing for reading books on. It's actually too big, and the brightness and contrast level I want for reading ebooks, is different from the one I want for doing other stuff.
...
The Sony PSP can't do DRM of any kind, but has a web browser so can read books in HTML and plain text format. Unlike a desktop PC it's actually portable, and the TFT screen is really quite reasonable for reading. However, it's fairly heavy, and the inbuilt web browser is not ideal for ebook reading as the controls are a bit clunky when reading a book. It also tends to get really slow on some HTML ebook layouts. Generally when they stick all the text for the entire book in one file and have a big picture of the front cover at the top of the page, it tends to have performance problems.
(Tip for reading Baan HTML formatted books on a PSP, link to the contents page of each book from your homemade booklist index page, rather than the usual Baan start-of-book page, as this will strip out all the navigation cruft that just gets in the way on the PSP.)
...
The phone can handle most DRM types because it's running Windows Mobile. As long as it isn't DRM'd PDFs -- too heavyweight, out of date software from Adobe -- I can probably find something that does the job to put on the phone. It is portable and light, and the screen is actually really nice, but obviously it's just too small.
It's not actually as bad as 2.5" sounds because most ebook reading software will let you jack up font size to something reasonble and set scrolling options and things. However 40 words per 'page' is not exactly ideal. I haven't even tried HTML or plain-text on it, I just can't see there being enough flexibiity in a web-browser or text-editor application to get a comfortable setup for reading on a screen that small.
...
So if you want a more-portable-than-a-laptop device primarily for reading ebooks on, I guess I would say you want a PDA of some kind running Windows Mobile/Pocket PC, with a TFT screen of a similar size to the PSP or bigger, should such a thing exist. This would give the most DRM compatibility in a smallish device, at a reasonable screen size for reading.
If you don't need *quite* as much DRM compatbility then a PDA with Palm-OS rather than Windows is probably just as good if not better.
You'll also want a flash memory card of an appropriate type to stick your books on.
If you don't mind being locked into a single DRM format then you have more choices, including the various types dedicated ebook reader hardware, for your first device, and then probably subsequently horribly limited ones for future devices due to the DRM lock-in.
If you don't need or want to read DRM'd material at all, you are in the happy position of being able to choose practically anything that's in the right form factor with a screen you like that can read html or plain-text, including Linux-y things like the Nokia N800 (as recomended by Mr. Stross I believe).
And as that Wikipedia article Gag references says your really should 'see Back to Basics (campaign)'
They have a list, a looooong list :)
If you are acquiring this posting on behalf of any unit or agency of the United States Government, the following provisions apply. The Government agrees the posting and foregoing thread were developed at private expense and are provided with "RESTRICTED RIGHTS". Use, duplication, or disclosure by the Government is subject to restrictions as set forth in this thread and in DFARS 227.7202-1(a) and 227.7202-3(a) (1995), DFARS 252.227-7013(c)(1)(ii) (Oct 1988), FAR 12.212(a)(1995), FAR 52.227-19, (June 1987) or FAR 52.227-14(ALT III) (June 1987), as amended from time to time. In the event that this thread, or any part thereof, is deemed inconsistent with the minimum rights identified in the Restricted Rights provisions, the minimum rights shall prevail.
(As a .uk citizen I've always wondered what CEO and corporate accountant terrifying activities the US government gets up to if you forget to include that disclaimer)
If it's a sudden onset of bizarreness frome someone who was perfectly reasonable beforehand, then yes I can see a medical problem, or a personal crisis leading to a mental health emergency, or something of that sort possibly turning out to be the explanation for the behaviour of this guy...
...however, as well as the people who are just generally bug-fuck crazy, there are many more of us (possibly most of us?) who are bug-fuck crazy over one particular specific issue. The "Oh my god, don't get him started on $ISSUE, or he'll unleash his inner kook!" factor.
Since the 'Ev1ls of the Romance Novel1st', don't normally come up as a subject of debate by politicians -- unless Texas political debate is even more different from that here in .uk than I had previously thought -- then presumably Mr.Head, if this is an 'inner kook' problem rather than a medical problem, would not have previously been subject to the temptation to pontificate on the matter publically, until it turned out that his opponent was one of the dread tribe who must be destroyed.
For instance, how would you know by looking at someone's legislative record, or their everyday political statements, if they were a hardcore follower of Veliokovsky (sp?), a believer in The Ancient Astronauts of Atlantis, or bore hideous mental scars from exposure to the writings of Dame Barbara Cartland during their impressionable youth?
They're just not the sort of things tend to come up in most legislative sessions as far as I can see; unlike perfectly mainstream and standard obsessions such as the need to teach our children the god-given rightness of Intelligent Design Creationism, the immense sympathetic magical powers inherent in making said children peform loyalty oaths to pieces of coloured cloth that are not for burning, the conviction that Tony Blair once of non-Evil alignment, or a firm belief in the moral soundness and functional utility of torture, detention without trial, and preventive war.
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