Doesn't work like that, at least for me. I got a developer's account a couple of months ago, which is completely useless for anyone who is not actually a live real developer, or, at a pinch, at least has lots of friends with accounts among the developer's community. It gives you permissions to play with a separate sandbox - but not with the system that has been rolled out over the last week. You can play with experimental features, maybe an API soon if you are qualified to do this (I am not).I then got (as I assume everyone else with developer's accounts did) a standard account along with the other 100,000 people who were invited in the initial round. I don't think it is in any way different from other people's standard accounts - I have the same number of invites, and people who I have given them to don't seem to be getting them any quicker than anyone else. Perhaps there are some genuinely important people with uber-developers' accounts out there that do have more goodies attached (as noted - I only got mine through a fluke of being at the right place at the right time) - but I am not one of 'em.
I have a few invites (was at a tech conference this summer where I was erroneously identified as a future 'developer') - will happily invite the first few people who email me at henry*removethis*.farrell@gmail.com
Fwiw another F&SF subscriber, without any aspirations to write for them beyond vague aspirations of the 'maybe some day if my life was radically different' class.
There would also be the limited edition in 25 copies of Manet's letters described in the collection of Myles na Gopaleen's Cruiskeen Lawn columns, which was "printed on steam-rolled pig's liver, and bound with Irish thongs in desiccated goat-hide quilting, a book to treasure for all time, but to lock away in hot weather."
Disparate points ...
Heather at #1 - you are right; French trade unions are a mess. But there are some historical reasons for that, to do with the pronounced weirdnesses of French industrial relations (which give the worst of both worlds; a small set of unions which are officially recognized and have semi-monopoly status, hence not always being responsive to their members, and a highly fragmented negotiation system that gives incentives for strikes based on narrow grievances). Sweden or (to a lesser extent, Germany) are good examples of how unions can work well - and play an important role in,say, negotiating general public deals over economic reforms that make sure that workers don't get screwed (here, I am thinking of the role of German unions in pushing for worker retraining as a stimulus/response to the risk of increased unemployment) over the last few months.
Patrick at #5 - Adam Smith (who really deserves to be read - he is not the caricature that right wing nutcases make out) had this down pat. I quote:
"We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of. Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do, without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people."
And one final point on unions for management - we have them across large chunks of Europe - they are called employers' associations, and play a big role in collective negotiations over wage setting etc. However, business hasn't wanted this to spread, for example, to the European Union level or to various places overseas, because (and this is a sort of realpolitik corollary to Mark's original point) business is often stronger when it is weaker. That is - if there is no collective business organization that can make binding commitments for its members in negotiations, then unions etc have to bargain with each individual firm, which is a lot harder to do. Hence, business may actively prefer not to have a collective bargaining association, because this means that it cannot be bound easily.
Jim Henley linked to this a couple of days ago, which may be where you saw it.
I think that this is all right on target, but while I don't feel suspicious of Obama's charisma, I sometimes feel suspicious of my reaction to Obama's charisma. That is, it's very easy to get swept away by him without thinking too hard about the disappointments that are inevitable if he gets elected, given that he is more moderate than I'd like on many things, the inevitable difficulty of steering change through in a political system that is in part purpose-designed to stop it, etc etc. None of which is to say that he isn't a great candidate on the merits, but that it's sometimes necessary to pinch yourself a bit if you're one of his supporters, think realistically about what he is and is not likely to do &c&c.
I'm with Patrick on the Obama/Blair distinction. Blair had charisma, but it was pretty clear from the start that he was also trying to sell you a bill of goods. Obama, I don't think is. If anything, he seems to me to be more like John Smith (whose death was an enormous tragedy for UK politics) - closer to the right than I would like on some issues, but as best as can be discerned a genuinely decent and intelligent human being. On the one hand, I don't want to get swept up too much by the Obama charisma, but on the other, I think that you have to recognize (as Patrick says) that it is a potent force that can really change people's sense of what is politically possible and what isn't. I hope that Obama has both the political intelligence and moral center to use this in the right way - he may not, but I think it's a gamble well worth taking.
Very sorry to hear this. Get OK soon.
Did anyone else look at all those motivational poster slogans and find themselves thinking of Loyal to the Group of Seventeen from The Book of the New Sun?
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the venomous parodies of motivational literature in William Browning Spencer's _Resume with Monsters_ yet - the pamphlets advising ghouls not to eat their co-workers are especially droll.
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