I did actually read your post. I was replying only to the part I quoted. If I had been replying to the other parts, I would have quoted them.
I know how "the system" you describe works.
"Anyhow, it's already illegal to give money directly to elected officials, and limiting donation to election campaigns in the way you describe pretty much destroys the first amendment."
It's not illegal to contribute to campaigns and party coffers. Those are the kinds of contributions I was referring to. And limiting the allowed amounts does not destroy the First Amendment. You are still allowed to contribute to any candidate(s) you want. And it's been done before. What's bizarre and destructive is this notion of "corporate free speech" put forth by the Supreme Court. Corporations are not citizens, and they do not have rights. The people in them do, but that is a very different thing. The Court essentially contradicted itself, because if corporations actually had constitutional rights, much of the regulation currently applied to them would be unconstitutional.
"Would you limit the ability of those who own a newspaper press from editorializing in favor of their favorite official/candidate? The NYT would be 4 pages long!"
Of course not. But while political contributions might be considered "speech", they are not the same kind of speech as an editorial in the newspaper. But even free speech is not absolute. Lines are drawn. You cannot, for example, editorialize about assassinating the President without breaking Federal law. Other limits to speech are recognized by the courts. My suggestion would just be acknowledging that allowing unlimited campaign contributions actually does societal harm. Because, after all, it does. You have acknowledged that yourself.
"Would you limit the ability of someone who doesn't own newspaper press from buying ads rather than buying the entire company? Is freedom of the press only for the very wealthy?"
Again, of course not. This is a ridiculous argument has has somewhere between very little and zero to do with what I was suggesting.
"Would you limit the freedom of people to peacefully assemble and jointly contribute money to buy ads in a newspaper? Is the freedom of the press only for those well off enough to buy a full page ad?"
No, as long as that group and the ads they buy are actually representing people who voluntarily contributed. That part is very important.
"Would you limit the ability of this peaceful assembly of people to ask the candidate for ad copy to run, rather than just making stuff up that accidently harms the guy they're trying to help?"
See the previous paragraph.
"Do you see there's no where you can draw the line without destroying first amendment rights? This hatred of "Ebil Corporations Scary Scary" is misplaced and frankly reflects not having thought deeply about this stuff."
I see nothing of the sort.
Corporations do not REPRESENT the people who make up the corporation. Therefore, contributions made by corporations, which are ultimately derived from the joint efforts of the employees of that corporation, are not making contributions made voluntarily by citizens, nor are the views of the corporations necessarily the views of the individuals in that corporation. It is not representative of the individuals. It is corporate power-mongering, plain and simple.
I do not claim that corporations in general are evil. On the other hand, some of them definitely are. Your attempt to equate corporations with voluntary organizations of people who are of like mind on an issue is a straw-man argument. It's simply not valid. They are two very different things.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that it appears to me that OP is being deliberately obtuse. His questions have been answered thoroughly and repeatedly, yet he continues to ask them.
"The British shot people too. The reason we have a protection against self incrimination is the history of American colonists being forced by the British to confess to crimes they didn't commit. Many law enforcement personnel attempt to do this constantly. To them it is a game and they win if you confess. Truth plays no role."
I made this point when OP posted his first question, an again when he asked it (a bit differently) the second time. In his third diatribe on this, he seems to have completely ignored the point. I have no idea why.
It is pretty clear that society benefits from a criminal system that cannot coerce confessions. Why OP refuses to see this benefit is a bit of a mystery.
Bystanders can be compelled to testify because they aren't being witnesses against themselves. The specter of forced confessions is lessened in several different ways. Note, however, that a bystander still can't be forced to be a witness in court if it would incriminate them, for a crime, whether the same one or a different one.
"I'd love to send some of these small government fetishists back to the start of the 19th century to see what it really felt like for the average man (or, worse, woman)."
Reducing the size of government isn't "turning back the clock". It isn't the 19th Century, and I didn't say anything about reversing laws. My comment was on the size of government, period.
Objective data show a strong correlation between the size of the Federal government and amount of regulation, with an increasingly weakened economy.
Mainly what it means to me is an excellent illustration of how Federal government has gotten WAY too big.
Generally speaking, considering the way our Union was designed, except for foreign trade and defense the Federal government should be able to pretty much shut down for a year, and I would barely even notice.
The fact that it's NOT that way is the whole problem.
Nirvana ASSUMPTION. You read more into it than what I actually wrote.
My point wasn't whether it was useful or not. I was criticizing GP for confusing "designed" with "intended".
The fact is that biometrics is a woefully flawed science. As someone else pointed out here, no matter how well "designed", biometrics is actually a "username", not a "password". So no matter how well intended, OR how well designed, the concept is fundamentally flawed and can never work completely as intended.
"WTF? That's the problem biometrics were designed to solve."
Just NO. This is quite wrong.
That is the problem biometrics were INTENDED to solve. But all wishful thinking aside, so far nobody has been able to DESIGN a biometrics system that actually solves it.
"Bittorrents screw all of this up. Frequent reads lead to more and more programs being displaced. If I leave bittorrent running over night, it takes a day or two for the flash to repopulate with the OS and programs."
This is an excellent ILLUSTRATION of how Seagate's design decisions were pretty obviously bonehead.
Their Flash research division convinces the bigwigs to put all their money behind the technology... but it's not really quite ready for prime time. Meanwhile, their HD operations -- which USED TO be just fine -- have shut down anything over 5,400 rpm.
"So Seagate decides to take the biggest pitfall and hated feature and put it into a hybrid drive. All data written to the gigantic drive is passed through that 8GB buffer first. Flash memory that can put up with that amount of writes over the long term doesn't exist. These drives would maybe last a year or two if you're lucky."
That's only half the problem. Seagate made a SECOND really poor decision, when it decided to dump the manufacture of spinning platters over 5400 RPM. They were TOLD that was a bad idea, yet they did it anyway, and look at the results: their very FiRST generation of new drives can't keep up. And what about the future?
Come on, Seagate. That's TWO MAJOR dumbass moves in a row.
"I'm most interested in a pay level that generates the best response for the public, which would logically be high."
Yes, of course. I didn't state that their pay should be the median. My point was that it should be tied to the median. So if the median income goes up, so does theirs, and vice versa.
Of course, this is somewhat predicated upon the idea that they aren't getting outrageous amounts of lobbying money, which would destroy the whole concept.
"You can't do much to change the total compensation of elected officials - what you can change is the share that doesn't have to come from corruption."
Yes, you can do something, *IF* you can get the legislation passed. Granted, that is sometimes a rather large hurdle. But in principle, it's actually very simple.
First off -- and related to both the former and latter parts of your sentence -- you can limit contributions from ANY entity other than a voting-eligible citizen, to ZERO. Both campaign and other contributions. Half the problem is solved right there. Make it a crime for both parties involved, and give it teeth.
Second, limit the TOTAL political contributions from any of those individual voters, annually, to a reasonable percentage -- say, maybe 10% or even much less -- of the MEDIAN U.S. annual income. That solves most of the problem of rich people having more influence. Poor people can easily outgun them with a little bit of effort and sacrifice. It may not be ideal, but it's WORLDS better, and far more FAIR, than what we have now.
"You guys have got to be kidding or you've got to be really disconnected from reality.
almost *every single* member of congress is already *at least* a millionaire. No shit:"
I think you have misunderstood.
The idea is, they get paid that much and THAT'S ALL.
They can still profit from their own private business, true. But how did they get that business in the first place? Brown-nosing politicians?
If you take the big money out of politics, and keep it out, you will soon see people who are actually there to do some good, rather than a great big circle-jerk.
"So make it a trimmed mean. Drop the top and bottom 2.5% and calculate from there."
Nah. Wouldn't work. The next year they'd amend it to 1.5%. then 1%. Then 0.5%...
Can't give 'em the opportunity. Stick it to the median and keep it there.
Having said that, I don't think they should be PAID the median. But a rigidly-fixed multiple of the median. Say, 2 x the median. I like that figure because it would keep everybody perpetually pissed off.
"I honestly don't care about the pay stuff. The more they get paid, the harder they are to bribe. That's fine."
Well, first off I agree with the other poster who said it makes them not care. But I will go further: pay that is too high (and cannot be revoked) makes them also not care what other people make.
The salaries of Senators and Representatives should be tied to the median incomes of everybody in the United States. Note that is the median income, not the mean, because a relatively few, very rich people skew the mean by a long way. (The other common method of averaging, the mode, is ridiculous in this context and need not be considered.)
That will give them an actual incentive to see that the income of everyday Americans stays at a decent level. And it should also be in dollars adjusted for REAL (not the current, bogus, weasel method of calculating inflation that the government currently uses). That would remove much of the incentive to fudge the figures by inflating the dollar... as they now do.
"The whole damn point of the USA is that we don't have a ruling class who gets to live by a different set of rules than the peons."
Agreed. They should be bound by ALL the same laws as other citizens. No special privileges. The latter, yet again, just gives them motive to not care much about everybody else.
Slashdot Mirror
"I see you didn't actually read my post."
I did actually read your post. I was replying only to the part I quoted. If I had been replying to the other parts, I would have quoted them.
I know how "the system" you describe works.
"Anyhow, it's already illegal to give money directly to elected officials, and limiting donation to election campaigns in the way you describe pretty much destroys the first amendment."
It's not illegal to contribute to campaigns and party coffers. Those are the kinds of contributions I was referring to. And limiting the allowed amounts does not destroy the First Amendment. You are still allowed to contribute to any candidate(s) you want. And it's been done before. What's bizarre and destructive is this notion of "corporate free speech" put forth by the Supreme Court. Corporations are not citizens, and they do not have rights. The people in them do, but that is a very different thing. The Court essentially contradicted itself, because if corporations actually had constitutional rights, much of the regulation currently applied to them would be unconstitutional.
"Would you limit the ability of those who own a newspaper press from editorializing in favor of their favorite official/candidate? The NYT would be 4 pages long!"
Of course not. But while political contributions might be considered "speech", they are not the same kind of speech as an editorial in the newspaper. But even free speech is not absolute. Lines are drawn. You cannot, for example, editorialize about assassinating the President without breaking Federal law. Other limits to speech are recognized by the courts. My suggestion would just be acknowledging that allowing unlimited campaign contributions actually does societal harm. Because, after all, it does. You have acknowledged that yourself.
"Would you limit the ability of someone who doesn't own newspaper press from buying ads rather than buying the entire company? Is freedom of the press only for the very wealthy?"
Again, of course not. This is a ridiculous argument has has somewhere between very little and zero to do with what I was suggesting.
"Would you limit the freedom of people to peacefully assemble and jointly contribute money to buy ads in a newspaper? Is the freedom of the press only for those well off enough to buy a full page ad?"
No, as long as that group and the ads they buy are actually representing people who voluntarily contributed. That part is very important.
"Would you limit the ability of this peaceful assembly of people to ask the candidate for ad copy to run, rather than just making stuff up that accidently harms the guy they're trying to help?"
See the previous paragraph.
"Do you see there's no where you can draw the line without destroying first amendment rights? This hatred of "Ebil Corporations Scary Scary" is misplaced and frankly reflects not having thought deeply about this stuff."
I see nothing of the sort.
Corporations do not REPRESENT the people who make up the corporation. Therefore, contributions made by corporations, which are ultimately derived from the joint efforts of the employees of that corporation, are not making contributions made voluntarily by citizens, nor are the views of the corporations necessarily the views of the individuals in that corporation. It is not representative of the individuals. It is corporate power-mongering, plain and simple.
I do not claim that corporations in general are evil. On the other hand, some of them definitely are. Your attempt to equate corporations with voluntary organizations of people who are of like mind on an issue is a straw-man argument. It's simply not valid. They are two very different things.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that it appears to me that OP is being deliberately obtuse. His questions have been answered thoroughly and repeatedly, yet he continues to ask them.
Thank you. This was essentially my point.
With the possible exception of the post office, I probably wouldn't notice very much if the Federal government stayed shut down for a year or more.
This is an excellent demonstration that government is just too damned big for our own good.
"The British shot people too. The reason we have a protection against self incrimination is the history of American colonists being forced by the British to confess to crimes they didn't commit. Many law enforcement personnel attempt to do this constantly. To them it is a game and they win if you confess. Truth plays no role."
I made this point when OP posted his first question, an again when he asked it (a bit differently) the second time. In his third diatribe on this, he seems to have completely ignored the point. I have no idea why.
It is pretty clear that society benefits from a criminal system that cannot coerce confessions. Why OP refuses to see this benefit is a bit of a mystery.
Bystanders can be compelled to testify because they aren't being witnesses against themselves. The specter of forced confessions is lessened in several different ways. Note, however, that a bystander still can't be forced to be a witness in court if it would incriminate them, for a crime, whether the same one or a different one.
Despite rumors of "peak oil", there are still huge reserves of oil around the globe. Still in the ground, that is.
We won't have come anywhere near to running out by the time our automobiles are powered by something other than oil.
"I'd love to send some of these small government fetishists back to the start of the 19th century to see what it really felt like for the average man (or, worse, woman)."
Reducing the size of government isn't "turning back the clock". It isn't the 19th Century, and I didn't say anything about reversing laws. My comment was on the size of government, period.
Objective data show a strong correlation between the size of the Federal government and amount of regulation, with an increasingly weakened economy.
Mainly what it means to me is an excellent illustration of how Federal government has gotten WAY too big.
Generally speaking, considering the way our Union was designed, except for foreign trade and defense the Federal government should be able to pretty much shut down for a year, and I would barely even notice.
The fact that it's NOT that way is the whole problem.
Well, I meant it wouldn't be an improvement, so why bother? :)
More than half not kidding.
"Yes, we are very interested in the forum you decide to use to discuss each and every angle on every piece of news you encounter on the internet."
They key word in my post above was "just".
"You're saying it like this is the biggest social and political issue that the Indians face."
No, I wasn't saying it "like" that at all. I was just saying that it is AN issue.
"Nirvana fallacy"
Nirvana ASSUMPTION. You read more into it than what I actually wrote.
My point wasn't whether it was useful or not. I was criticizing GP for confusing "designed" with "intended".
The fact is that biometrics is a woefully flawed science. As someone else pointed out here, no matter how well "designed", biometrics is actually a "username", not a "password". So no matter how well intended, OR how well designed, the concept is fundamentally flawed and can never work completely as intended.
"note: "more write cycles" not "faster""
Doesn't matter. MLC only reduced the # of write cycles by a few times, not "orders of magnitude". That's still an exaggeration.
But that was my point... it's slower.
"This is SLC flash, like all hybrid drives, which has orders of magnitude more write cycles (but is a lot more expensive per GB)."
Um... NO. 3 times, maybe 5 times faster. Orders of magnitude? Pretty much NO.
Also, it is not "a lot more expensive" these days. A bit more, sure.
Agree. Insightful indeed.
"WTF? That's the problem biometrics were designed to solve."
Just NO. This is quite wrong.
That is the problem biometrics were INTENDED to solve. But all wishful thinking aside, so far nobody has been able to DESIGN a biometrics system that actually solves it.
This is SERIOUSLY being discussed as just an IT issue, without any of the MASSIVE social and political issues involved?
I'll pass.
"Bittorrents screw all of this up. Frequent reads lead to more and more programs being displaced. If I leave bittorrent running over night, it takes a day or two for the flash to repopulate with the OS and programs."
This is an excellent ILLUSTRATION of how Seagate's design decisions were pretty obviously bonehead.
Their Flash research division convinces the bigwigs to put all their money behind the technology... but it's not really quite ready for prime time. Meanwhile, their HD operations -- which USED TO be just fine -- have shut down anything over 5,400 rpm.
"So Seagate decides to take the biggest pitfall and hated feature and put it into a hybrid drive. All data written to the gigantic drive is passed through that 8GB buffer first. Flash memory that can put up with that amount of writes over the long term doesn't exist. These drives would maybe last a year or two if you're lucky."
That's only half the problem. Seagate made a SECOND really poor decision, when it decided to dump the manufacture of spinning platters over 5400 RPM. They were TOLD that was a bad idea, yet they did it anyway, and look at the results: their very FiRST generation of new drives can't keep up. And what about the future?
Come on, Seagate. That's TWO MAJOR dumbass moves in a row.
"I'm most interested in a pay level that generates the best response for the public, which would logically be high."
Yes, of course. I didn't state that their pay should be the median. My point was that it should be tied to the median. So if the median income goes up, so does theirs, and vice versa.
Of course, this is somewhat predicated upon the idea that they aren't getting outrageous amounts of lobbying money, which would destroy the whole concept.
I therefore propose that lobbying be abolished.
"You can't do much to change the total compensation of elected officials - what you can change is the share that doesn't have to come from corruption."
Yes, you can do something, *IF* you can get the legislation passed. Granted, that is sometimes a rather large hurdle. But in principle, it's actually very simple.
First off -- and related to both the former and latter parts of your sentence -- you can limit contributions from ANY entity other than a voting-eligible citizen, to ZERO. Both campaign and other contributions. Half the problem is solved right there. Make it a crime for both parties involved, and give it teeth.
Second, limit the TOTAL political contributions from any of those individual voters, annually, to a reasonable percentage -- say, maybe 10% or even much less -- of the MEDIAN U.S. annual income. That solves most of the problem of rich people having more influence. Poor people can easily outgun them with a little bit of effort and sacrifice. It may not be ideal, but it's WORLDS better, and far more FAIR, than what we have now.
"Au contraire -- the mode (most common value) is EXACTLY what we should use: because it'd be minimum wage! :-)"
Well, what I meant was that it should be a FIXED -- i.e., not easily increased -- MULTIPLE of the median.
Start paying them like peons and most of the candidates will be whackos. You have to be realistic.
"You guys have got to be kidding or you've got to be really disconnected from reality. almost *every single* member of congress is already *at least* a millionaire. No shit:"
I think you have misunderstood.
The idea is, they get paid that much and THAT'S ALL.
They can still profit from their own private business, true. But how did they get that business in the first place? Brown-nosing politicians?
If you take the big money out of politics, and keep it out, you will soon see people who are actually there to do some good, rather than a great big circle-jerk.
"So make it a trimmed mean. Drop the top and bottom 2.5% and calculate from there."
Nah. Wouldn't work. The next year they'd amend it to 1.5%. then 1%. Then 0.5%...
Can't give 'em the opportunity. Stick it to the median and keep it there.
Having said that, I don't think they should be PAID the median. But a rigidly-fixed multiple of the median. Say, 2 x the median. I like that figure because it would keep everybody perpetually pissed off.
"I honestly don't care about the pay stuff. The more they get paid, the harder they are to bribe. That's fine."
Well, first off I agree with the other poster who said it makes them not care. But I will go further: pay that is too high (and cannot be revoked) makes them also not care what other people make.
The salaries of Senators and Representatives should be tied to the median incomes of everybody in the United States. Note that is the median income, not the mean, because a relatively few, very rich people skew the mean by a long way. (The other common method of averaging, the mode, is ridiculous in this context and need not be considered.)
That will give them an actual incentive to see that the income of everyday Americans stays at a decent level. And it should also be in dollars adjusted for REAL (not the current, bogus, weasel method of calculating inflation that the government currently uses). That would remove much of the incentive to fudge the figures by inflating the dollar... as they now do.
"The whole damn point of the USA is that we don't have a ruling class who gets to live by a different set of rules than the peons."
Agreed. They should be bound by ALL the same laws as other citizens. No special privileges. The latter, yet again, just gives them motive to not care much about everybody else.