I think that your maximum annual acceptable U.S. terrorism deaths number is too high. While that may be what you find acceptable, it is higher than what the American people would find acceptable. I believe that a study of the reactions of the American people to various traumatic events indicates that the number is somewhat less than 3,000. The fact that acts of terrorism which result in deaths tend to be high profile, lowers the acceptable annual death toll. That being said, I agree with your conclusion that we are spending too much. Especially when you consider the fact that the episode which triggered our current security theater regime would not be repeatable even if security procedures had not changed.
There is nothing wrong with this approach. Except that the game publishers should stop pretending that they are selling me the game. If they sold me the game, I would be able to sell the game to someone else. What the game publishers are selling is a "lifetime" subscription to the game (lifetime is in quotes because there is probably a limited, if any, ability to transfer the game to another device).
Here is the definition of fair use from the Copyright Act of 1976:
the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Well, it seems to me that it would be an easy argument to make that a political ad is for "nonprofit educational purposes". It, also, seems to me that this ad would be unlikely to negatively effect the potential market or value of this copyrighted work. I do not see how you can say that this does not fall under fair use from that definition. No where does the statute say that educational use only counts formal education.
historically Hollywood gives more to the Dems. Mostly because Hollywood doesn't want future repeat of McCarthyism,
Which is funny because while McCarthy was a Republican, the people who committed the actual abuses (as opposed to just demagoguing about them) were Democrats. The House UnAmerican Activities Committee was established and controlled by Democrats.
"Oh no, we did not deny XYZ Corporation's application because they sued us. We have not denied it at all. It is just that they have not completed all of the necessary paperwork. They filed a form 1337. They need to file a form 1337a for this type of device."
"Yes, they have all of their paperwork in, but now they need to complete an environmental impact statement as to what impact deployment of this device will have."
"Oh yes, they completed the environmental impact statement, but it fails to take into account how this device will affect the Blightsworth Bee, which has been shown (in this study we commissioned two months after they started the application process) to be sensitive to radio waves at that frequency."
It would not be a matter of denying the product. It would be a matter of interpreting the regulations in the manner most disadvantageous to the company. There are lots of subtle ways that a bureaucracy can make a companies business difficult without doing anything that would be actionable.
So, does your livelihood rely on decisions made by the ISC on matters only peripherally related to the matter you are fighting them over (I am completely unfamiliar with the ISC)? Will decisions the ISC makes on matters unrelated to what you are fighting them about effect your ability to make your living? That is not to say that the battle you are fighting is not an admirable one, just that if the answers to those questions are not "yes", then the situation you are in is not comparable to that of these companies.
Also, I am not sure if the FCC can be sued over this. Sovereign immunity may apply (and it may not, I do not know).
I'm sorry, but our baseline for polar bear population is just not long enough to reach very good conclusions as to population trends. In addition, even if we could do so, there is still quite a bit of studying necessary to reach a conclusion as to causes. According to the link you gave, we have only been doing significant population tracking since the mid-1980s. In addition, when one follows the links in the footnotes about polar bear population changes, one discovers that the most significant factor in the population decreases among those populations known to be declining is over hunting. This means that there is currently no data supporting the idea that global warming will cause a reduction in the population of polar bears (none contradicting it either), except possibly by making them more readily accessible to hunters.
While it is all well and good to say that they should stand up to the government, this is not just about standing up to the government (which has more resources than the company) this is about standing up to the department of the government that can make your business very difficult day in and day out by interpreting every rule in the way most disadvantageous to your company.
As others have pointed out 4% is extremely high concentration when compared to the concentration in the atmosphere that is supposed to scare us into turning all of our economic decisions over to some bureaucrat.
Well when looks for information on polar bear and seal populations one finds a lot of information that says that those populations will decline as a result of global warming, but very little information that those populations have declined. When the Alaska Pipeline was being proposed, there was a similar amount of discussion about how it would lead to the decline in Caribou populations. Except that it didn't. The Caribou populations actually increased.
No, the purpose of the news-media was always to align us with their goals. However, at some point some of them realized that if they convinced us that all they were doing was telling us what was going on in the world it would be easier to align us with their goals. For a period of time, the overwhelming majority of the media shared common goals so they were able to pull this off. In the 1980s, people started to notice a discrepancy between their understanding of the world and what was being reported by the majority of the news-media. I remember coming across a story where I knew people who had been there. The story as reported in local paper left out a critical fact that completely changed the significance of the story. I came across another source that included that fact and left out another fact in order to make the story come out exactly the opposite of the first story on a particular issue.
Except that the organization that coined the term "Super WiFi" is the FCC. If you don't see the problem for the Wi-Fi Alliance with suing them over this, you might want to think about what makes the "Wi" in Wi-Fi and who regulates who gets to sell such devices.
The problem is that the organization that coined the term "Super WiFi" is the FCC. I hope you can see the problems a company (or organization of companies) that sells devices using radio waves might have with suing the FCC.
Customer: "I was told my new ***** has the latest WiFi in it, but its not working"
Poor helpdesk worker: "That's because Super Wi-Fi isn't WiFi and is not compatible with WiFi"
Customer: "Whose stupid idea was it to call it Super Wi-Fi then?"
Poor helpdesk worker: "Someone with the government"
Customer: "Oh, no wonder it doesn't make any sense"
My personal take on that.
One of the confusions here is that "Super Wi-Fi" is the colloquial name for the 802.22 WRAN standard, while "Wi-Fi" is the slightly-less colloquial name for the 802.11 WLAN standard. People see 802 and think Wi-Fi.
"Super Wi-Fi" is not colloquial at all. It is a term coined by the FCC to refer to a specific implementation of the 802.22 WRAN standard (although it appears that the FCC would not mind it being applied to all such implementations). A colloquial term is one that has arisen in general usage to apply to something. This is a term that the FCC is attempting to push into general usage and it is likely to generate significant confusion. To make matters worse, while "WiFi" has become a colloquial term for 802.11 WLAN connectivity, it is a trademark for that devices that use that standard. If any organization other than a branch of the U.S. government had introduced the term "Super WiFi" for the type of usage the FCC is proposing, they would have faced a very serious lawsuit. It is very problematical to sue the FCC for infringing on your wireless communication trademark, since you need FCC approval for the devices that you build.
The various members of Monty Python have starred in movies since their days in Monty Python and, as far as I know, no one has accused them of looking dated. It is not as if these guys left the entertainment business when Graham Chapman died and they decided to discontinue Monty Python. It is also not as if there are no other comedic actors from the 70s still acting successfully. If you look at what they actually say about this movie you will discover that they have no intention of attempting to make it a "Monty Python" movie. I have seen all of these guys in other productions since the Monty Python days and they all seem to still have their comedic timing.
My personal experience is that comedic actors who stop being funny are generally the ones who start out doing other people's ideas and when they become successful start producing movies based on their own ideas. Most times these are guys who started out doing stand-up comedy, so one would think they have a sense of what is funny, but stand up is different from movies. Monty Python was their ideas from the beginning so they should not have that problem.
OK, were corporations more or less powerful in the 1880s than they are today? Were there more or fewer government regulations of businesses in the 1880s than there are today? I believe that in both cases the answer is more today.
So, are you saying that when you look at a specific school district, when there was an increase in funding, there was a marked and lasting improvement in the performance of the students? Or are you saying that wealthier school districts have better student performance than poorer school districts? The latter argument does not decisively make the case that better funding will make the poorer district perform similarly to the wealthier one. Generally, there are significant cultural differences between wealthy school districts and poor school districts. Many of these differences have been shown to have a significant impact on students' rate of learning.
Perhaps I fail to buy into the typical interpretation of the gilded age as an age when big business ran everyone's lives. I have found that when one actually examines most historical time periods that are used to justify expansive government power, one generally finds that they do not actually support the argument being made.
You seem to miss my basic point. My basic point is that the 1st Amendment has nothing to do with journalism. The 1st Amendment lists "freedom of the press" as an adjunct to "freedom of speech". Not only does everyone have the right to speak their thoughts and opinions, they have the right to publish those thoughts and opnions without the interference of government.
Have you looked into the history of that definition of "press"? You might be interested to learn that that definition of press did not exist when the First Amendment was written. The phrase "freedom of the press" derives primarily from the 1st Amendment of the U.S Constitution. If one looks at the writings and court rulings from around the time of the framing of the Constitution, one clearly sees that this phrase applies to everyone. That is, everyone has the right to freely publish their thoughts and opinions. The 1st Amendment does not use the term "press" to refer to those in the news business. Instead it uses it as an adjunct to freedom of speech. Not only does everyone have the right to speak their thoughts and opinions, they have the right to publish them without government interference.
OH, so the problem is not that the poorly performing school districts don't have enough money. The problem is that they are spending it poorly. HMMMM, that seems to be the point I made at the beginning of this thread. "Sorry, the problem with education in the U.S. has nothing to do with lack of funding."
Your point being? The original poster expressed the opinion that we pay our teachers today like crap and that is why education is so poor. Yet, if we look at history, at a time when we genuinely did pay teachers like crap, education was much better than it is today. This suggests that it is time to look somewhere else for the decline in the quality of education in this country (you suggest several of those places). Where is the evidence that throwing money at education addresses any of the problems? The problems with education in this country cannot be fixed by throwing money at them. Until we as a country recognize that we have been throwing money at the people who created the problem, we will not be able to fix the problem. The education establishment has been saying for my entire life, "We don't have enough money to do a good job educating the children, give us more money and we will do a better job." The American people have consistently given them more money, yet the education establishment has overseen a declining rate of education. Maybe it is time to tell the education establishment that we are on to the game and until they start delivering a better product we are going to reduce the amount of money we give to them.
I take it that you do not see the connection between increased government power and increased corporate power. Let me ask you a question, do corporations have greater power today than they did in the 1950s? Second question, are there more or less government regulations of business today than there were in the 1950s?
Slashdot Mirror
I think that your maximum annual acceptable U.S. terrorism deaths number is too high. While that may be what you find acceptable, it is higher than what the American people would find acceptable. I believe that a study of the reactions of the American people to various traumatic events indicates that the number is somewhat less than 3,000. The fact that acts of terrorism which result in deaths tend to be high profile, lowers the acceptable annual death toll.
That being said, I agree with your conclusion that we are spending too much. Especially when you consider the fact that the episode which triggered our current security theater regime would not be repeatable even if security procedures had not changed.
There is nothing wrong with this approach. Except that the game publishers should stop pretending that they are selling me the game. If they sold me the game, I would be able to sell the game to someone else. What the game publishers are selling is a "lifetime" subscription to the game (lifetime is in quotes because there is probably a limited, if any, ability to transfer the game to another device).
the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include: 1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; 2. the nature of the copyrighted work; 3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and 4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Well, it seems to me that it would be an easy argument to make that a political ad is for "nonprofit educational purposes". It, also, seems to me that this ad would be unlikely to negatively effect the potential market or value of this copyrighted work. I do not see how you can say that this does not fall under fair use from that definition. No where does the statute say that educational use only counts formal education.
historically Hollywood gives more to the Dems. Mostly because Hollywood doesn't want future repeat of McCarthyism,
Which is funny because while McCarthy was a Republican, the people who committed the actual abuses (as opposed to just demagoguing about them) were Democrats. The House UnAmerican Activities Committee was established and controlled by Democrats.
"Oh no, we did not deny XYZ Corporation's application because they sued us. We have not denied it at all. It is just that they have not completed all of the necessary paperwork. They filed a form 1337. They need to file a form 1337a for this type of device."
"Yes, they have all of their paperwork in, but now they need to complete an environmental impact statement as to what impact deployment of this device will have."
"Oh yes, they completed the environmental impact statement, but it fails to take into account how this device will affect the Blightsworth Bee, which has been shown (in this study we commissioned two months after they started the application process) to be sensitive to radio waves at that frequency."
It would not be a matter of denying the product. It would be a matter of interpreting the regulations in the manner most disadvantageous to the company. There are lots of subtle ways that a bureaucracy can make a companies business difficult without doing anything that would be actionable.
So, does your livelihood rely on decisions made by the ISC on matters only peripherally related to the matter you are fighting them over (I am completely unfamiliar with the ISC)? Will decisions the ISC makes on matters unrelated to what you are fighting them about effect your ability to make your living? That is not to say that the battle you are fighting is not an admirable one, just that if the answers to those questions are not "yes", then the situation you are in is not comparable to that of these companies.
Also, I am not sure if the FCC can be sued over this. Sovereign immunity may apply (and it may not, I do not know).
I'm sorry, but our baseline for polar bear population is just not long enough to reach very good conclusions as to population trends. In addition, even if we could do so, there is still quite a bit of studying necessary to reach a conclusion as to causes. According to the link you gave, we have only been doing significant population tracking since the mid-1980s. In addition, when one follows the links in the footnotes about polar bear population changes, one discovers that the most significant factor in the population decreases among those populations known to be declining is over hunting. This means that there is currently no data supporting the idea that global warming will cause a reduction in the population of polar bears (none contradicting it either), except possibly by making them more readily accessible to hunters.
While it is all well and good to say that they should stand up to the government, this is not just about standing up to the government (which has more resources than the company) this is about standing up to the department of the government that can make your business very difficult day in and day out by interpreting every rule in the way most disadvantageous to your company.
Well, yes, we knew that. Governments have been doing that for Global Warming Alarmists for years.
since when is 4% high concentration ?
As others have pointed out 4% is extremely high concentration when compared to the concentration in the atmosphere that is supposed to scare us into turning all of our economic decisions over to some bureaucrat.
Well when looks for information on polar bear and seal populations one finds a lot of information that says that those populations will decline as a result of global warming, but very little information that those populations have declined. When the Alaska Pipeline was being proposed, there was a similar amount of discussion about how it would lead to the decline in Caribou populations. Except that it didn't. The Caribou populations actually increased.
No, the purpose of the news-media was always to align us with their goals. However, at some point some of them realized that if they convinced us that all they were doing was telling us what was going on in the world it would be easier to align us with their goals. For a period of time, the overwhelming majority of the media shared common goals so they were able to pull this off. In the 1980s, people started to notice a discrepancy between their understanding of the world and what was being reported by the majority of the news-media. I remember coming across a story where I knew people who had been there. The story as reported in local paper left out a critical fact that completely changed the significance of the story. I came across another source that included that fact and left out another fact in order to make the story come out exactly the opposite of the first story on a particular issue.
Except that the organization that coined the term "Super WiFi" is the FCC. If you don't see the problem for the Wi-Fi Alliance with suing them over this, you might want to think about what makes the "Wi" in Wi-Fi and who regulates who gets to sell such devices.
The problem is that the organization that coined the term "Super WiFi" is the FCC. I hope you can see the problems a company (or organization of companies) that sells devices using radio waves might have with suing the FCC.
Customer: "I was told my new ***** has the latest WiFi in it, but its not working" Poor helpdesk worker: "That's because Super Wi-Fi isn't WiFi and is not compatible with WiFi" Customer: "Whose stupid idea was it to call it Super Wi-Fi then?" Poor helpdesk worker: "Someone with the government" Customer: "Oh, no wonder it doesn't make any sense" My personal take on that.
One of the confusions here is that "Super Wi-Fi" is the colloquial name for the 802.22 WRAN standard, while "Wi-Fi" is the slightly-less colloquial name for the 802.11 WLAN standard. People see 802 and think Wi-Fi.
"Super Wi-Fi" is not colloquial at all. It is a term coined by the FCC to refer to a specific implementation of the 802.22 WRAN standard (although it appears that the FCC would not mind it being applied to all such implementations). A colloquial term is one that has arisen in general usage to apply to something. This is a term that the FCC is attempting to push into general usage and it is likely to generate significant confusion. To make matters worse, while "WiFi" has become a colloquial term for 802.11 WLAN connectivity, it is a trademark for that devices that use that standard. If any organization other than a branch of the U.S. government had introduced the term "Super WiFi" for the type of usage the FCC is proposing, they would have faced a very serious lawsuit. It is very problematical to sue the FCC for infringing on your wireless communication trademark, since you need FCC approval for the devices that you build.
The various members of Monty Python have starred in movies since their days in Monty Python and, as far as I know, no one has accused them of looking dated. It is not as if these guys left the entertainment business when Graham Chapman died and they decided to discontinue Monty Python. It is also not as if there are no other comedic actors from the 70s still acting successfully. If you look at what they actually say about this movie you will discover that they have no intention of attempting to make it a "Monty Python" movie. I have seen all of these guys in other productions since the Monty Python days and they all seem to still have their comedic timing.
My personal experience is that comedic actors who stop being funny are generally the ones who start out doing other people's ideas and when they become successful start producing movies based on their own ideas. Most times these are guys who started out doing stand-up comedy, so one would think they have a sense of what is funny, but stand up is different from movies. Monty Python was their ideas from the beginning so they should not have that problem.
OK, were corporations more or less powerful in the 1880s than they are today? Were there more or fewer government regulations of businesses in the 1880s than there are today? I believe that in both cases the answer is more today.
So, are you saying that when you look at a specific school district, when there was an increase in funding, there was a marked and lasting improvement in the performance of the students? Or are you saying that wealthier school districts have better student performance than poorer school districts? The latter argument does not decisively make the case that better funding will make the poorer district perform similarly to the wealthier one. Generally, there are significant cultural differences between wealthy school districts and poor school districts. Many of these differences have been shown to have a significant impact on students' rate of learning.
Perhaps I fail to buy into the typical interpretation of the gilded age as an age when big business ran everyone's lives. I have found that when one actually examines most historical time periods that are used to justify expansive government power, one generally finds that they do not actually support the argument being made.
You seem to miss my basic point. My basic point is that the 1st Amendment has nothing to do with journalism. The 1st Amendment lists "freedom of the press" as an adjunct to "freedom of speech". Not only does everyone have the right to speak their thoughts and opinions, they have the right to publish those thoughts and opnions without the interference of government.
Have you looked into the history of that definition of "press"? You might be interested to learn that that definition of press did not exist when the First Amendment was written. The phrase "freedom of the press" derives primarily from the 1st Amendment of the U.S Constitution. If one looks at the writings and court rulings from around the time of the framing of the Constitution, one clearly sees that this phrase applies to everyone. That is, everyone has the right to freely publish their thoughts and opinions. The 1st Amendment does not use the term "press" to refer to those in the news business. Instead it uses it as an adjunct to freedom of speech. Not only does everyone have the right to speak their thoughts and opinions, they have the right to publish them without government interference.
OH, so the problem is not that the poorly performing school districts don't have enough money. The problem is that they are spending it poorly. HMMMM, that seems to be the point I made at the beginning of this thread. "Sorry, the problem with education in the U.S. has nothing to do with lack of funding."
Your point being? The original poster expressed the opinion that we pay our teachers today like crap and that is why education is so poor. Yet, if we look at history, at a time when we genuinely did pay teachers like crap, education was much better than it is today. This suggests that it is time to look somewhere else for the decline in the quality of education in this country (you suggest several of those places). Where is the evidence that throwing money at education addresses any of the problems? The problems with education in this country cannot be fixed by throwing money at them. Until we as a country recognize that we have been throwing money at the people who created the problem, we will not be able to fix the problem. The education establishment has been saying for my entire life, "We don't have enough money to do a good job educating the children, give us more money and we will do a better job." The American people have consistently given them more money, yet the education establishment has overseen a declining rate of education. Maybe it is time to tell the education establishment that we are on to the game and until they start delivering a better product we are going to reduce the amount of money we give to them.
I take it that you do not see the connection between increased government power and increased corporate power. Let me ask you a question, do corporations have greater power today than they did in the 1950s? Second question, are there more or less government regulations of business today than there were in the 1950s?