201–210 of 217 posts
http://topstartup.com/2007/04/30/the-homeless-problem-at-the...
It was later picked up by the Boston Globe http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008...
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They may or may not, but I would put money on a majority of them not paying income tax due to the large number of homeless and vagrants. But that is beside the point. Paying taxes does not give you the right to a) break the rules (surfing porn IS against the rules) and b) causes an environment that is not conducive to the intended use (i.e. a filthy environment that drives away legitimate users)
Homeless folks still have to pay sales taxes in most places. People breaking the rules is certainly a valid complaint. However, I'm not aware of libraries banning YouTube (if people are using headphones), Facebook, or whatnot.
And a lot of cigarette taxes and booze excise taxes. Really poor people pay a much larger proportion of their incomes in taxes.
In my (biased, but well-founded) experience, it comes down to a question of whether I'd rather be distracted by a cute girl or an old man getting reprimanded for looking at dirty pictures. [bg: I really like libraries - worked at one in the suburbs in high school and have since moved to the city, which exaggerated the weird bits] One thing that's worth noting: if you're on a college campus, a great place to find some…
A couple years back, I decided to pay a visit to the campus library during the FISL (international free-software forum) that happens every year in Porto Alegre, Brazil on the PUC (pontifical catholic university) campus. I needed to grab some articles from CACM and their library has full access to the ACM online library, as well as decent wireless, something no tech event quite manages to have. Porto Alegre is notorio…
Maybe we're lucky in Pittsburgh, but we have the best of both worlds at the main branch of the Carnegie Library. You can take a tour of where I work 2 or 3 days per week: http://www.clpgh.org/locations/main/tours/virtualtour/ It's fantastic. It was built by Andrew Carnegie in 1895 and most of it is original. I get inspiration from the 20 foot ceilings and hand made ornamentation everywhere you look. They simply don't…
The British library also has a coffee shop within. Not a bad building, plenty of reading rooms, fairly attractive, too.
That's ok provided that you have a local library. In the UK at present there is a concerted campaign on behalf of the government and local councils to shut libraries down.
Boston public is a fantastic place to be productive. Beautiful structure. People are very respectful of the 'this is a library, stfu' rule, free wifi, and in the summer they host live music in the courtyard. One of the most laid back and under-estimated places in the entire city.
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For some reason I can't reply to alexophile and steveklabnik here, so I'll just leave this: alexophile: you may be correct about this- I'm too young to remember. But I heard it used by people who had no other signs of misogyny that I ever noticed, which is why I had that impression. Carlin was one of those people to the best of my knowledge. steveklabnik: But there are terms that you "can't use" now that were never p…
> For some reason I can't reply to alexophile and steveklabnik here, so I'll just leave this: If too many replies happen too fast, HN hides the reply link to try and slow down conversation. You can always get around this by clicking the 'link' link, but the idea is to encourage in-depth replies over chatty conversation, so use it wisely! That said, while some people may have been running around saying "Negro" in a sc…
But I understand your point, and I think you understand mine, and there's lots of other important stuff to discuss- so, good thread.
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I'd pay a small tax increase of .1 cents to abolish internet pornography in libraries. Call me a party pooper, but there's a time and place, and the place for pornography is definitely not public spaces. I don't care if there's a nude painting on display, but I do care if there's some hard core humping on a computer monito in a public place where my child can see it... I mean he was just born, give him at least a few…
You make it sound so easy. Leaving aside the complicated legal question for determining what is and isn't considered pornography* , how would you go about actually doing it ? Is internet filtering perfectly reliable? Would hiring several extra library employees specifically to watch the internet stations suffice? Library staff are already trying to prevent people from viewing pornography on the public computers, work…
When I said .1 cents I actually meant a small amount but not a trivial amount per paycheck multiplied by the tax paying population. So around 7 million per year. Not sure if that's significant enough, but it was just a figure off the top of my head meant to demonstrate that by paying a small amount individually we could help the issue.
Anyways, I've over-explained it now... but I felt like a douche when I checked my threads this morning.