No, this is a take from the moderately well off and give to the wealthy and powerful under the guise of helping the poor. Some among the current poor will find a way to become wealthy out of this, but only so far as they help the currently powerful accumulate more wealth and power.
Let me summarize the debate. One side believes there is sufficient evidence for theory X. The other side believes there is insufficient evidence. The side that believes there is sufficient evidence believes that the evidence is so overwhelming that to be skeptical of it is of the same order as being skeptical of gravity.
And this is the problem in this debate. One side thinks that the debate is primarily about whether or not humans are causing the earth to warm. The other side thinks the debate is primarily about how much power the government has to regulate economic activity. Those who support the AGW theory generally think that the problem is so bad that the government has to create new bureaucracies to regulate all types of economic activity in the minutest detail. The other side argues that the evidence is not strong enough to support such a drastic expansion of government bureaucracy. The latter would be better off arguing that even if those government bureaucracies were created it would not actually address the issue anyway.
That was why the disaster was as well handled as it was and didn't turn into New Orleans II: The Squeal.
You obviously have not paid attention since the election. Guess what, it is "New Orleans II". It has not been handled any better, the press just isn't reporting on it.
You mean, voting for a candidate who wants to reduce the size of government, by, for example, taking away the authority of the NHTSA to require every auto-manufacturer to include a black box will somehow make it more likely that auto-manufacturers will include black boxes and give you no recourse?
Your argument makes no sense in a story about the government requiring a black box in every new car.
You failed to address the main issue of the article. You know where the NHTSA is expected to pass a regulation requiring these in every car. What is troubling about this is that it is not Congress passing a law mandating these. If Congress was passing a law mandating these, you could raise up a movement to vote out of office everyone who voted for it. However, since it is a bureaucracy that is doing it it is much harder to get at those responsible. A congressman who actually supports this regulation could introduce a bill to overturn this regulation that contained "poison-pill" provisions sure to make it unpassable. Then if you try to bring this regulation up against him in an election, he can say, "Look, I introduced a bill to overturn this regulation," even though he knew that there was no chance his bill would pass and he did not desire his bill to pass. That is the problem with the place we are with government regulations. It is too easy for our elected representatives to say, "Yes, you are right. That is a bad regulation, but my hands are tied. The bureaucrats were given the authority to make that regulation and I cannot muster enough of my colleagues support to change the law." When in fact, they have no interest whatsoever in changing the law.
No, but if the knife was, by law, required to keep a record of everything it was used to cut and the police were allowed to come into my kitchen and check its records, then yes.
I'm pretty sure that spying on users and disrespecting their privacy is not for the greater good,
Of course it is, doesn't the government always tell you that it is for the greater good when they do it? Part of the problem here is that not everyone defines "the greater good" the same way.
Making the aluminum cases in the U.S. makes very little sense, since the U.S. has very small reserves of aluminum ore. It makes more sense to manufacture the aluminum parts close to where the aluminum is mined than it does to ship the ore somewhere else to refine it and manufacture the parts. I do not know enough about the process after the aluminum is refined to know whether it makes sense (cost, energy usage, quality of workmanship in the finished product, and probably a few other factors into that equation) to refine the aluminum at one place and ship ingots to a location closer to other manufacturing for forming.
Ever heard of "Oil for Food"? My understanding is that while it is harder to lobby European politicians, it is trivially easy to outright bribe them with the only risk to the politician being if they fall out of favor with the powers that be and/or the establishment needs a scapegoat when some scandal blows up big enough to require the government "do something" to "address rampant corruption".
Did you look at the definition given for MOOC? According to Wikipedia, "Open access. MOOC participants do not need to be a registered student in a school to "take" a MOOC, and are not required to pay a fee."
I was unfamiliar with the acronym "MOOC". From the summary I concluded it was some kind of online course, but was unable to discern what the rest of the acronym stood for. However, Google is your friend (well, not really but I will save that for a rant another day) and I was able to discover that MOOC stands for "Massive Open Online Course". From what I can see that makes "Free MOOCs" a redundant phrase that belongs in the same bin with "ATM Machines" and "PIN Numbers".
I partly wrote my response the way I did and where I did because of a previous response to your post that complained that your proposal would force companies to continue to support software after they considered it obsolete. My response is the answer to that, somewhat legitimate, objection to your original proposal.
Perhaps a good solution would be to implement yours, but give companies the option of just releasing old versions to public domain if they wish to avoid any support issues that they were afraid would accompany giving people downgrade rights.
I would go a different route. When you stop selling the software, it goes public domain. Of course if copyright still only extended for a reasonable length of time, Windows XP would be public domain.
One of the big issues surrounding WCIT and the ITU has been the lack of transparency — or even understanding what real transparency might be.
I am confused. Why would you say that the WCIT and the ITU have lacked transparency? Something that is transparent can be seen through. I don't know about you, but I saw right through them when they said they were doing this to "enhance freedom".
I did not first use the term "non-secular" I was merely interpreting the term used by someone else. In the context of the OP's post, what else would "non-secular" mean other than being another word for religious?
I believe that he meant either "secular" or "non-religious" but got the term wrong. When combined with his usage of "Dixie line" it suggests that the OP is as poorly educated as he intends to imply all religious people are.
Maryland has never been part of Dixie*. According to the Wikipedia entry on Dixie: "As a definite geographic location within the United States, "Dixie" is usually defined as the 11 Southern states that seceded to form the Confederate States of America."
*The Mason-Dixon Line is the border between Delaware and Pennsylvania on one side and Maryland and (West) Virginia on the other. The parenthesis around West in West Virginia is used because West Virginia was part of Virginia at the time the line was surveyed..
Well, OK, but you said you wanted the uneducated religious people to move south of the Mason-Dixon line (I assume that is what you meant by "the Dixie line") and educated religious (non-secular) religious people to go north. What I wanted to know was whether your intention was for the non-religious people to divide along the same lines (in which case I suggest that you should prepare to move south, since you apparently are unfamiliar with the what the Mason-Dixon line is and the fact that it bears no connection with Dixie--except that the part of the country known as Dixie is south of the Mason-Dixon line, although not all of the U.S. south of the Mason-Dixon line is "Dixie".).
OK, now that you have separated the religious people into geographical regions according to whether or not they are educated (non-secular is another way of saying religious), what is your plan for the secular (non-religious) people?
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No, this is a take from the moderately well off and give to the wealthy and powerful under the guise of helping the poor. Some among the current poor will find a way to become wealthy out of this, but only so far as they help the currently powerful accumulate more wealth and power.
Let me summarize the debate. One side believes there is sufficient evidence for theory X. The other side believes there is insufficient evidence. The side that believes there is sufficient evidence believes that the evidence is so overwhelming that to be skeptical of it is of the same order as being skeptical of gravity.
And this is the problem in this debate. One side thinks that the debate is primarily about whether or not humans are causing the earth to warm. The other side thinks the debate is primarily about how much power the government has to regulate economic activity. Those who support the AGW theory generally think that the problem is so bad that the government has to create new bureaucracies to regulate all types of economic activity in the minutest detail. The other side argues that the evidence is not strong enough to support such a drastic expansion of government bureaucracy. The latter would be better off arguing that even if those government bureaucracies were created it would not actually address the issue anyway.
That was why the disaster was as well handled as it was and didn't turn into New Orleans II: The Squeal.
You obviously have not paid attention since the election. Guess what, it is "New Orleans II". It has not been handled any better, the press just isn't reporting on it.
The Lion King is a rewrite of Hamlet.
You mean, voting for a candidate who wants to reduce the size of government, by, for example, taking away the authority of the NHTSA to require every auto-manufacturer to include a black box will somehow make it more likely that auto-manufacturers will include black boxes and give you no recourse?
Your argument makes no sense in a story about the government requiring a black box in every new car.
You failed to address the main issue of the article. You know where the NHTSA is expected to pass a regulation requiring these in every car. What is troubling about this is that it is not Congress passing a law mandating these. If Congress was passing a law mandating these, you could raise up a movement to vote out of office everyone who voted for it. However, since it is a bureaucracy that is doing it it is much harder to get at those responsible. A congressman who actually supports this regulation could introduce a bill to overturn this regulation that contained "poison-pill" provisions sure to make it unpassable. Then if you try to bring this regulation up against him in an election, he can say, "Look, I introduced a bill to overturn this regulation," even though he knew that there was no chance his bill would pass and he did not desire his bill to pass. That is the problem with the place we are with government regulations. It is too easy for our elected representatives to say, "Yes, you are right. That is a bad regulation, but my hands are tied. The bureaucrats were given the authority to make that regulation and I cannot muster enough of my colleagues support to change the law." When in fact, they have no interest whatsoever in changing the law.
No, but if the knife was, by law, required to keep a record of everything it was used to cut and the police were allowed to come into my kitchen and check its records, then yes.
I'm pretty sure that spying on users and disrespecting their privacy is not for the greater good,
Of course it is, doesn't the government always tell you that it is for the greater good when they do it? Part of the problem here is that not everyone defines "the greater good" the same way.
According Wikipedia the U.S. produced 30,000 tonnes of bauxite in 2010 compared with Australia which produced 68,400,000 tonnes.
Australia has the largest reserves of bauxite.
Making the aluminum cases in the U.S. makes very little sense, since the U.S. has very small reserves of aluminum ore. It makes more sense to manufacture the aluminum parts close to where the aluminum is mined than it does to ship the ore somewhere else to refine it and manufacture the parts. I do not know enough about the process after the aluminum is refined to know whether it makes sense (cost, energy usage, quality of workmanship in the finished product, and probably a few other factors into that equation) to refine the aluminum at one place and ship ingots to a location closer to other manufacturing for forming.
Ever heard of "Oil for Food"? My understanding is that while it is harder to lobby European politicians, it is trivially easy to outright bribe them with the only risk to the politician being if they fall out of favor with the powers that be and/or the establishment needs a scapegoat when some scandal blows up big enough to require the government "do something" to "address rampant corruption".
I always figured it was a name he took because he was a pompous twit (and his family was embarrassed to be associated with him).
Did you look at the definition given for MOOC? According to Wikipedia, "Open access. MOOC participants do not need to be a registered student in a school to "take" a MOOC, and are not required to pay a fee."
I was unfamiliar with the acronym "MOOC". From the summary I concluded it was some kind of online course, but was unable to discern what the rest of the acronym stood for. However, Google is your friend (well, not really but I will save that for a rant another day) and I was able to discover that MOOC stands for "Massive Open Online Course". From what I can see that makes "Free MOOCs" a redundant phrase that belongs in the same bin with "ATM Machines" and "PIN Numbers".
I partly wrote my response the way I did and where I did because of a previous response to your post that complained that your proposal would force companies to continue to support software after they considered it obsolete. My response is the answer to that, somewhat legitimate, objection to your original proposal.
Perhaps a good solution would be to implement yours, but give companies the option of just releasing old versions to public domain if they wish to avoid any support issues that they were afraid would accompany giving people downgrade rights.
I would go a different route. When you stop selling the software, it goes public domain. Of course if copyright still only extended for a reasonable length of time, Windows XP would be public domain.
One of the big issues surrounding WCIT and the ITU has been the lack of transparency — or even understanding what real transparency might be.
I am confused. Why would you say that the WCIT and the ITU have lacked transparency? Something that is transparent can be seen through. I don't know about you, but I saw right through them when they said they were doing this to "enhance freedom".
I did not first use the term "non-secular" I was merely interpreting the term used by someone else. In the context of the OP's post, what else would "non-secular" mean other than being another word for religious?
I believe that he meant either "secular" or "non-religious" but got the term wrong. When combined with his usage of "Dixie line" it suggests that the OP is as poorly educated as he intends to imply all religious people are.
And that would be a bad thing? If your number (50%) is correct, I believe we would be living in a safer world.
Maryland has never been part of Dixie*. According to the Wikipedia entry on Dixie: "As a definite geographic location within the United States, "Dixie" is usually defined as the 11 Southern states that seceded to form the Confederate States of America."
*The Mason-Dixon Line is the border between Delaware and Pennsylvania on one side and Maryland and (West) Virginia on the other. The parenthesis around West in West Virginia is used because West Virginia was part of Virginia at the time the line was surveyed..
This is taken from answers.com and is the best definition of non-secular I was able to find (there were several other good answers elsewhere, but they took longer to say the same thing. The word "secular" generally refers to non-religious things. Period. The word "non-secular" generally refers to religious things. Period.
If you disagree with this definition, how would you define "non-secular", in particular in this context?
Well, OK, but you said you wanted the uneducated religious people to move south of the Mason-Dixon line (I assume that is what you meant by "the Dixie line") and educated religious (non-secular) religious people to go north. What I wanted to know was whether your intention was for the non-religious people to divide along the same lines (in which case I suggest that you should prepare to move south, since you apparently are unfamiliar with the what the Mason-Dixon line is and the fact that it bears no connection with Dixie--except that the part of the country known as Dixie is south of the Mason-Dixon line, although not all of the U.S. south of the Mason-Dixon line is "Dixie".).
If we are going to use printers to make weapons why aren't we making non-lethal weapons at least?
Because there are no non-lethal weapons. There are only less lethal weapons.
OK, now that you have separated the religious people into geographical regions according to whether or not they are educated (non-secular is another way of saying religious), what is your plan for the secular (non-religious) people?