Yeah. Sure thing there genius.

And if I want to, say, hunt down who you are and hate-speech, ridicule, belittle and bully you into a public melt-down that's all right then?

Fantastic, because all of your private moments are now public and if I have the means and the motive I most certainly will have the opportunity.

Welcome to America 2.0. Freedom+$$$ vs Privacy+$$$. Let's see which one wins!

The State of Minnesota will do the following for people who have Coursera degrees:

They will not hire you
If you work at a company that has a State contract you may not work on the State project in any capacity.
Fines, lawsuits, etc.

I worked for the state for about three years. They have a lot of contracts in the private sector.

But feel free to take the courses. I'm sure it will all work out.

PREAMBLE TO THE CHARTER OF THE UNITED NATIONA
    WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

        to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
        to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
        to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
        to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

AND FOR THESE ENDS

        to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and
        to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and
        to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and
        to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,

HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS

Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations.

http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/preamble.shtml

Four-color high quality lithographic reproductions of all that art, with the proofs, the layout, the press-checks, sign-offs, specialty inks, and on and on would have cost $800 dollars.
But what a book!
My father took art history as an art-teaching major in the 50s and his professor swore by this one book. I think it was $200. My dad bought it. Full color reproductions of 50 master works. He still has it and used it every year in his teaching. Done right, this is an investment.

I write stories and have a book coming out next year so I have a dog in this one.

What I have seen and what I have been told by Tor is that ebooks will split the market. You will have a flood of cheaply produced, low-cost titles and you will have a small boutique market of high-end interactive books that cost a fortune and will be updated from year to year.

Every house wants their boutique titles. In the early 2000s those would have been the Harry Potter series. Tie-ins and marketing galore. That was a publisher's wet-dream. The boutique titles, as seen right now, will be a mixture of interactive magazine, tv show, and music video. Sort of like a subscription to a super-version of your favorite cable channel. Words will make up some of the content but a lot of it will be pictures and music. Like mystery novels? Think what you could do if you had four or five top writers pumping out a dozen titles, all tied together, and with it's own episodic tv show. Science fiction is a no-brainer, as are fantasy and spy 'novels'.

By the way, we already have all of this, only the stuff is spread out across a dozen studios and publishers. What will happen is a single house making all things. Okay, maybe a little cooperation.

On the other end of the scale are the books I will be writing. Text edited by a professional and thrown into an ebook template. IF my book sells and IF there is a little interest by Barnes & Nobel and IF I can pull together a tour, Tor *might* do an actual print run - paperback - very limited. Tor said they will help with some local tour dates in the midwest but all travel and hotel costs are mine to cover.

Nearly everyone can be published now. The downside is there isn't any more money to o around.

Welcome to the new publishing.

Once you weed out the people who can't handle it or have a life outside the company, or are just unwilling to place the well-being of a money-making enterprise before their own. The people left after the culling are enormously productive.

I think the question here isn't "is it productive", but "at what cost?"

We need a Bill of Digital Rights, one that underlies all of our national and international laws and keeps rights for citizens. Unless we have that the corporations will just write laws to keep the rights for themselves and citizens will be left with nothing.

And yes, 'corporations are people, my friend', 'Live free (as in beer) or die' and all that. ;-)

It's where NASA films all their best stuff.

There will come a time, friend, when you will cringe upon looking back at this statement. Sometime in the near future we will see the Internet blocked and an unblocked address will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and only be available to corporations with very deep pockets. Right now we are on the cusp where individual sites are being blocked, but soon it will be more efficient simply to block everything and unblock "safe" sites.

Then we will all be safe, citizen.

Sleep tight.

Eve from Apple Geeks
Ping from Mega Tokyo
Alice from Comedity

Most people who call themselves 'sailor' don't own or operate a ship. I mean, I know what he thinks he's saying, but my gawd does this come off as arrogant and elitist. Do these guys eve listen to themselves?

Nope. Most countries don't bother telling their citizens anything about their status in the world. The US just has a permanent inferiority complex from living in Europe's shadow for so long. Same with the UK and Russia.

I post serial fiction on my blog at Wordpress which gets cross-posted to Facebook. You just gave me the text for my next story.

Thanks, Slashdot!

Do you mean 'tentative'?

Can I have your job, Mr. Editor?

Wow! Apple has a two year lead in the... talking... cell-phone ... market.
YAWN!

Wake me when they start treating it as if it were a real computer rather than a toy.