I don't think this is necessarily fair. Laws inherently need to be complex, as they address complex issues. While you may find a person that can fully understand ONE area of law, it would be impossible to find a single congressperson (or any person) who could understand fully ALL the laws that cover all areas of government. Take an environmental protection law for example... to fully understand the consequences of a carbon tax, for example, you would need to be an expert in climate science, economics, etc... you will never find anyone that is an expert in all of the things required.
What you hope, is that a congressperson surrounds himself with the necessary experts, who brief him/her as well as they can on the things they have to know to come to a sound decision. Anyone who thinks they can understand all of the consequences of a law all by themselves is delusional.
First of all, I wasn't talking about understanding the consequences. I was talking about actually understanding what the law calls for. If legislators can't understand what the law actually says, how can they expect people to obey the law? For that matter, how can they know if people are obeying the law?
However, I would also argue that if a legislator cannot be expected to understand the consequences of a law, then the government has no business passing a law on that topic...or it should break the law down into smaller pieces that the legislator can understand the consequences of. Take that carbon tax example, if you can't understand the consequences, how can you be sure that the consequences won't be worse than the problem you are trying to fix? I would say that many of our problems today are the result of laws that the legislators didn't understand the consequences of that they chose to pass anyway
Earmarks are not in and of themselves evil. The problem with earmarks is that they are often obscure and hidden. So your congressman can vote for an earmark that gets one part of his constituency to donate heavily to his campaign, while keeping it hidden from the rest who would be after him with pitchforks if they knew about it.
And that is the key to cleaning up government, making sure that his constituents know about the "little favors" he has done for people they would not approve of receiving government money. You can't (and shouldn't try) do anything about a legislator getting favorable treatment for his district--when all is said and done, that is an essential part of his job. The key is stopping him from putting in things that his constituents would oppose if they knew about it.
The current leaders in Congress have been saying for the last couple of weeks that it is unreasonable to expect Congressional Representatives to read the bills before they vote on them because they don't have the time and even if they did have the time, they couldn't understand them.
Well.... it is unreasonable to expect that.
Then they need to craft laws that they can understand, or resign and leave the job to someone who will (or who can comprehend the laws being proposed). If a legislator cannot understand a law that is put before him/her, that legislator should vote against it. If the bill is too big to read through before voting on it, the legislator should vote against it. If there isn't enough time to keep up with the legislation being put forward, then too much legislation is being put forward.
It is not in the interest of the legislators to pass such a law, so if by some chance they were to create one, it would be written in such a way as to make the information APPEAR to be useful, but actually be incomprehensible.
The current leaders in Congress have been saying for the last couple of weeks that it is unreasonable to expect Congressional Representatives to read the bills before they vote on them because they don't have the time and even if they did have the time, they couldn't understand them.
A cheerleader is still a cheerleader, even at Harvard.
On the other hand we have no idea what kind of grades Obama got, or for that matter anything about his undergraduate days, except that he went to Occidental.
Doesn't America have anything like the Consumer Guarantees Act? If something like this happened in New Zealand, Apple would be legally liable and have to fix the device or refund the money with no strings attached. If there had been consequent damage to other property they would have to pay for that too.
Since this happened in the UK, it doesn't really matter if the U.S. has such a law. A U.S. Consumer Protection Law would not apply in the UK.
Additionally, such a law would not stop a company from trying to get people to sign such a settlement. It would just mean that they have to make good even if the consumer refuses.
He didn't say they were customer centric, but that they had a "customer centric Aura". The first requires a corporate culture that cares about the customer, the second requires a marketing department that works very hard to make the customer think you care about them. Amazingly a lot of companies work very hard at the second even though the first is much easier to accomplish (and harder to lose).
Apart from being insanely expensive you can't ride it legally in most places, neither on the sidewalk nor on the street. And, oh - did I mention expensive? Nah, it's not that, it's how it makes you look...
Oh yeah, don't forget the incredible hype before the thing even came out. You know, how It was going to change the way cities were designed and It was the most revolutionary thing since the invention of the wheel. Yeah, it must be how it makes the rider look./s
People hate the Segway because of the over the top, ridiculous pre-release marketing. The Segway is an interesting device, but it is a niche market. It is not a "world changing" device.
And CentOS relying on one person for as much as seemingly their very existence (by their own tone over this issue) has absolutely guaranteed that I will never use CentOS for anything important.
This entire thing should never have been news in the first place for two reasons:
1. If the health of the company and their product is absolutely dependent on the well being of Lance, then they should have done everything they could to keep this story quiet, as it is embarrassing.
2. A cranky engineer screwing off for a few days is common enough that it was a non-story to begin with.
Ok, I'm not real familiar with everything that is going on. However, it appears that this happened as a result of the rest of the CentOS development team pushing Lance to work with them in setting things up so that they weren't absolutely dependent on him. He appears to have been resisting this step.
Rather than saying, "Too bad, CentOS is my baby and I'm not giving up control" he appears to have said, "Yeah, you're right. We need to have backups and I'll get you an accounting of the money we've raised." Then he never took any of the steps that would have allowed that to actually happen. When the phone calls and emails from the rest of the development team got insistent, he just stopped answering the phone or his emails.
Amazon didn't know that it was still under copyright in the US, and didn't have the rights to sell it. When they discovered their mistake, they took it back -- removing the books and refunding the buyers' money. Damages paid to rights-holders are given to compensate for the fact that the violator can't remove every copy of the infringing product they sold; but in this case, they were able to. If this was anything except 1984, this wouldn't have been news at all.
Perhaps it would not have been news, but it should be. The problem with e-books is that they can be edited after the fact with no reliable way to know which version is the original. This makes practical the kind of altering of history talked about in "1984".
Yes, because the parts of the world where the Catholic Church had no influence whatsoever (China, India, Africa, the Middle East) are (and were) so much more advanced scientifically than Western Europe. I mean imagine what the world would be like if only Europe had had the open and free attitude toward science that the rest of the world had had./s
Think about it a little bit, where did the philosophy of science develop? Why did Europeans develop this concept of experimental science?
The Chinese were technologically more advanced than Europe in the Middle Ages, but how much of that is a result of political stability not a superior attitude toward technology? The Arabs had several advances that they gave to Europe, but there is evidence that those things either came from elsewhere (Arab numerals actually came from India) or was leftover from before the rise of Islam (this latter is controversial, but there is good reason to give this theory some credence pending further consideration).
He is absolutely, unconditionally correct. They are only obligated to provide consumers access until the copyright expires, not in perpetuity. Of course if the term of copyright was shortened, it would reduce their expense.
When I was young good nutrition was taught as balancing the four basic food groups: Fruits, Vegetables, Dairy, and Meat. Since then there have been many fads of what constituted good nutrition (some of them supported by the American Dietitians Association), but ultimately the fads fade away and come back to what I was taught: "Eat a diet balanced between the food groups." The only thing that has changed is that it has been recognized that there should be a fifth food group: Grains.
If you eat a balanced diet, it doesn't matter if the carbs are "good" carbs or "bad" carbs unless you fall into one of a relatively small group of people with special health issues (such as someone with diabetes).
I don't have the references currently available, but several studies have shown that with about 50% of crops "organically" grown crops have more harmful toxins than those that use modern pesticides. Certain crops are subject to insect pests that leave behind toxins inside the food as opposed to on the outside (the way pesticides are applied).
Additionally, the crop yield per acre of organically grown food is significantly less than using chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Several people have combined the idea of buying "organically" grown food with locally grown food. One of the reasons this happens is that in areas where IT jobs are plentiful, land prices (and real estate taxes) are high enough that the only way one can make money from growing crops is by being able to charge the premium price that people will pay for "organically" grown crops.
I often say that Capitalism sucks despite we have nothing better. Understanding why a system is bad is the first step to develop a new one. I hope the US of A will understand that Capitalism sucks. Because they have some of the best economist in the world. And we need them to build something better.
We will only have a system better than Capitalism when we have better people than we have today. Of course, if we had perfect people, Capitalism would be perfect. The problem with Capitalism isn't the system, it's the people in the system. Capitalism is the best economic system man has yet developed because it attempts to harness mankind's flaws.
Yes, many manufacturers fall into this trap. Walmart demands a particular price point for "Brandname A Model X". The company that makes that product can't make a profit on "Brandname A Model X' at that price point, so, in order to get it into Walmart, they create a version of Model X that is not up to the normal quality standard of Model X that they sell only to Walmart. The consumer has heard good things about Model X. They see it at Walmart for significantly less than anywhere else, so they buy it there. The Model X they bought wears out/fails sooner then they think it should. This consumer decides that Brandname A is overrated and won't buy it ever again.
I worked for a company that made the correct decision when put into that situation. The company I worked for (let's call it A & Sons) was a small local manufacturer of a food product in high regional demand. A large regional distributor to restaurants asked A & Sons to sell them the equivalent of their then total production at a 15% discount over what they then sold it for. A & Sons was in a position to ramp up their production to meet this additional demand. But when they ran the numbers, they realized that they could not meet the proposed price point without reducing the quality of their ingredients. They told the distributor that they could provide that quantity for slight discount over the price they normally charged but not 15%.
The distributor went with one of their competitors. A & Sons is still going strong, the competitor is out of business.
I'm pretty sure that if one goes by where the majority of the population lives, then yes Verizon is more reliable than Roger's. I don't think I could ever get a call through on the Roger's network where I live, but I have no problem with Verizon. As a matter of fact, the areas where I have received reliable Verizon service have a population that exceeds Roger's entire service area. This doesn't even count the large areas that I have never been to where there is Verizon service.
Or what about people who fail to get over when a sign says "Right lane ends 1/4 mile" Rather than get over now so traffic can move along smoothly (Because if you notice, once the lane ends, things pick up) they wait till the last damn second and hold everyone else up. Yeah sure that may not be against the law, but it still increases traffic (And road rage for that matter)
Actually, people merging over before the lane ends are the ones who cause the traffic slow down. How far before the end of the lane are you supposed to merge over?
I see the sign "Lane ends in 1/4 mile" so I merge over immediately, the car behind me (Car A)doesn't see the sign until he passes me, he then merges over IN FRONT OF ME, slowing everyone behind me down. The next car (Car B), can't merge over when he sees the sign because traffic in the other lane slowed down as a result of Car A, so he moves forward and merges IN FRONT OF CAR A. Three cars have now merged into the lane in front of the car that I merged in front of.
If instead I and the cars behind me had waited until the lane ended to merge and then merged every other car traffic would move much more rapidly. Oh yeah in my example above there will also be a couple of assholes who will use the now empty lane to rapidly move to the front of the line and merge where the lane ends, making the problem even worse.
The problem of cars "clumping" is due to the "rule abiding" drivers following each other too closely. This is in fact not rule abiding.
And in fact that behavior is largely caused by the people who break the rules as defined by this study. So, the 40% who break the rules to make traffic flow better cause the other people to drive in such a manner so as to make the traffic problem worse in such a way as that behavior by the 40% fixes.
My issue with texting while driving is that not for the concern of the individual who is texting but of the innocent bystandard who faces the consequences of said texters actions. Unlike wearing a seatbelt while driving, you're not endangering the your life as much as that of another.
Freedom should never be granted at the expense of anothers.
That is the problem with all forms of reckless driving, they put uninvolved bystanders at risk. Why should text messaging be separated out as a special case of reckless driving?
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I don't think this is necessarily fair. Laws inherently need to be complex, as they address complex issues. While you may find a person that can fully understand ONE area of law, it would be impossible to find a single congressperson (or any person) who could understand fully ALL the laws that cover all areas of government. Take an environmental protection law for example... to fully understand the consequences of a carbon tax, for example, you would need to be an expert in climate science, economics, etc... you will never find anyone that is an expert in all of the things required.
What you hope, is that a congressperson surrounds himself with the necessary experts, who brief him/her as well as they can on the things they have to know to come to a sound decision. Anyone who thinks they can understand all of the consequences of a law all by themselves is delusional.
First of all, I wasn't talking about understanding the consequences. I was talking about actually understanding what the law calls for. If legislators can't understand what the law actually says, how can they expect people to obey the law? For that matter, how can they know if people are obeying the law?
However, I would also argue that if a legislator cannot be expected to understand the consequences of a law, then the government has no business passing a law on that topic...or it should break the law down into smaller pieces that the legislator can understand the consequences of.
Take that carbon tax example, if you can't understand the consequences, how can you be sure that the consequences won't be worse than the problem you are trying to fix? I would say that many of our problems today are the result of laws that the legislators didn't understand the consequences of that they chose to pass anyway
Earmarks are not in and of themselves evil. The problem with earmarks is that they are often obscure and hidden. So your congressman can vote for an earmark that gets one part of his constituency to donate heavily to his campaign, while keeping it hidden from the rest who would be after him with pitchforks if they knew about it.
And that is the key to cleaning up government, making sure that his constituents know about the "little favors" he has done for people they would not approve of receiving government money. You can't (and shouldn't try) do anything about a legislator getting favorable treatment for his district--when all is said and done, that is an essential part of his job. The key is stopping him from putting in things that his constituents would oppose if they knew about it.
The current leaders in Congress have been saying for the last couple of weeks that it is unreasonable to expect Congressional Representatives to read the bills before they vote on them because they don't have the time and even if they did have the time, they couldn't understand them.
Well.... it is unreasonable to expect that.
Then they need to craft laws that they can understand, or resign and leave the job to someone who will (or who can comprehend the laws being proposed).
If a legislator cannot understand a law that is put before him/her, that legislator should vote against it. If the bill is too big to read through before voting on it, the legislator should vote against it. If there isn't enough time to keep up with the legislation being put forward, then too much legislation is being put forward.
It is not in the interest of the legislators to pass such a law, so if by some chance they were to create one, it would be written in such a way as to make the information APPEAR to be useful, but actually be incomprehensible.
The current leaders in Congress have been saying for the last couple of weeks that it is unreasonable to expect Congressional Representatives to read the bills before they vote on them because they don't have the time and even if they did have the time, they couldn't understand them.
Wasn't Bush a C-average student & a cheerleader?
A cheerleader is still a cheerleader, even at Harvard.
On the other hand we have no idea what kind of grades Obama got, or for that matter anything about his undergraduate days, except that he went to Occidental.
How about traveling to 57 states during the campaign?
This seems to be the Exterminate phase of standard microsoft policy of 'Embrace extend exterminate'.
No, this is the "Extend" phase. If they can get people to accept patent encumbered software as "open", then they can move into the Exterminate phase.
Actually, I believe the first successful reality TV shows were European shows that were imitated by American TV(Survivor).
Doesn't America have anything like the Consumer Guarantees Act? If something like this happened in New Zealand, Apple would be legally liable and have to fix the device or refund the money with no strings attached. If there had been consequent damage to other property they would have to pay for that too.
Since this happened in the UK, it doesn't really matter if the U.S. has such a law. A U.S. Consumer Protection Law would not apply in the UK.
Additionally, such a law would not stop a company from trying to get people to sign such a settlement. It would just mean that they have to make good even if the consumer refuses.
He didn't say they were customer centric, but that they had a "customer centric Aura". The first requires a corporate culture that cares about the customer, the second requires a marketing department that works very hard to make the customer think you care about them. Amazingly a lot of companies work very hard at the second even though the first is much easier to accomplish (and harder to lose).
It's always the africans.
That's not true, SARS was the Chinese.
Apart from being insanely expensive you can't ride it legally in most places, neither on the sidewalk nor on the street. And, oh - did I mention expensive? Nah, it's not that, it's how it makes you look...
Oh yeah, don't forget the incredible hype before the thing even came out. You know, how It was going to change the way cities were designed and It was the most revolutionary thing since the invention of the wheel. Yeah, it must be how it makes the rider look. /s
People hate the Segway because of the over the top, ridiculous pre-release marketing. The Segway is an interesting device, but it is a niche market. It is not a "world changing" device.
And CentOS relying on one person for as much as seemingly their very existence (by their own tone over this issue) has absolutely guaranteed that I will never use CentOS for anything important. This entire thing should never have been news in the first place for two reasons: 1. If the health of the company and their product is absolutely dependent on the well being of Lance, then they should have done everything they could to keep this story quiet, as it is embarrassing. 2. A cranky engineer screwing off for a few days is common enough that it was a non-story to begin with.
Ok, I'm not real familiar with everything that is going on. However, it appears that this happened as a result of the rest of the CentOS development team pushing Lance to work with them in setting things up so that they weren't absolutely dependent on him. He appears to have been resisting this step.
Rather than saying, "Too bad, CentOS is my baby and I'm not giving up control" he appears to have said, "Yeah, you're right. We need to have backups and I'll get you an accounting of the money we've raised." Then he never took any of the steps that would have allowed that to actually happen. When the phone calls and emails from the rest of the development team got insistent, he just stopped answering the phone or his emails.
Amazon didn't know that it was still under copyright in the US, and didn't have the rights to sell it. When they discovered their mistake, they took it back -- removing the books and refunding the buyers' money. Damages paid to rights-holders are given to compensate for the fact that the violator can't remove every copy of the infringing product they sold; but in this case, they were able to. If this was anything except 1984, this wouldn't have been news at all.
Perhaps it would not have been news, but it should be. The problem with e-books is that they can be edited after the fact with no reliable way to know which version is the original. This makes practical the kind of altering of history talked about in "1984".
Yes, because the parts of the world where the Catholic Church had no influence whatsoever (China, India, Africa, the Middle East) are (and were) so much more advanced scientifically than Western Europe. I mean imagine what the world would be like if only Europe had had the open and free attitude toward science that the rest of the world had had. /s
Think about it a little bit, where did the philosophy of science develop? Why did Europeans develop this concept of experimental science?
The Chinese were technologically more advanced than Europe in the Middle Ages, but how much of that is a result of political stability not a superior attitude toward technology? The Arabs had several advances that they gave to Europe, but there is evidence that those things either came from elsewhere (Arab numerals actually came from India) or was leftover from before the rise of Islam (this latter is controversial, but there is good reason to give this theory some credence pending further consideration).
He is absolutely, unconditionally correct. They are only obligated to provide consumers access until the copyright expires, not in perpetuity. Of course if the term of copyright was shortened, it would reduce their expense.
The worst of it was when he used 3 months of petty cash and donated it to McCain/Palin 2008.
Yeah, the loss of the money was bad enough, but now that Obama is President you lost all your government contracts too.
When I was young good nutrition was taught as balancing the four basic food groups: Fruits, Vegetables, Dairy, and Meat. Since then there have been many fads of what constituted good nutrition (some of them supported by the American Dietitians Association), but ultimately the fads fade away and come back to what I was taught: "Eat a diet balanced between the food groups." The only thing that has changed is that it has been recognized that there should be a fifth food group: Grains.
If you eat a balanced diet, it doesn't matter if the carbs are "good" carbs or "bad" carbs unless you fall into one of a relatively small group of people with special health issues (such as someone with diabetes).
I don't have the references currently available, but several studies have shown that with about 50% of crops "organically" grown crops have more harmful toxins than those that use modern pesticides. Certain crops are subject to insect pests that leave behind toxins inside the food as opposed to on the outside (the way pesticides are applied).
Additionally, the crop yield per acre of organically grown food is significantly less than using chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Several people have combined the idea of buying "organically" grown food with locally grown food. One of the reasons this happens is that in areas where IT jobs are plentiful, land prices (and real estate taxes) are high enough that the only way one can make money from growing crops is by being able to charge the premium price that people will pay for "organically" grown crops.
I often say that Capitalism sucks despite we have nothing better. Understanding why a system is bad is the first step to develop a new one. I hope the US of A will understand that Capitalism sucks. Because they have some of the best economist in the world. And we need them to build something better.
We will only have a system better than Capitalism when we have better people than we have today. Of course, if we had perfect people, Capitalism would be perfect. The problem with Capitalism isn't the system, it's the people in the system. Capitalism is the best economic system man has yet developed because it attempts to harness mankind's flaws.
Yes, many manufacturers fall into this trap. Walmart demands a particular price point for "Brandname A Model X". The company that makes that product can't make a profit on "Brandname A Model X' at that price point, so, in order to get it into Walmart, they create a version of Model X that is not up to the normal quality standard of Model X that they sell only to Walmart. The consumer has heard good things about Model X. They see it at Walmart for significantly less than anywhere else, so they buy it there. The Model X they bought wears out/fails sooner then they think it should. This consumer decides that Brandname A is overrated and won't buy it ever again.
I worked for a company that made the correct decision when put into that situation. The company I worked for (let's call it A & Sons) was a small local manufacturer of a food product in high regional demand. A large regional distributor to restaurants asked A & Sons to sell them the equivalent of their then total production at a 15% discount over what they then sold it for. A & Sons was in a position to ramp up their production to meet this additional demand. But when they ran the numbers, they realized that they could not meet the proposed price point without reducing the quality of their ingredients. They told the distributor that they could provide that quantity for slight discount over the price they normally charged but not 15%.
The distributor went with one of their competitors. A & Sons is still going strong, the competitor is out of business.
I'm pretty sure that if one goes by where the majority of the population lives, then yes Verizon is more reliable than Roger's. I don't think I could ever get a call through on the Roger's network where I live, but I have no problem with Verizon. As a matter of fact, the areas where I have received reliable Verizon service have a population that exceeds Roger's entire service area. This doesn't even count the large areas that I have never been to where there is Verizon service.
Or what about people who fail to get over when a sign says "Right lane ends 1/4 mile" Rather than get over now so traffic can move along smoothly (Because if you notice, once the lane ends, things pick up) they wait till the last damn second and hold everyone else up. Yeah sure that may not be against the law, but it still increases traffic (And road rage for that matter)
Actually, people merging over before the lane ends are the ones who cause the traffic slow down. How far before the end of the lane are you supposed to merge over?
I see the sign "Lane ends in 1/4 mile" so I merge over immediately, the car behind me (Car A)doesn't see the sign until he passes me, he then merges over IN FRONT OF ME, slowing everyone behind me down. The next car (Car B), can't merge over when he sees the sign because traffic in the other lane slowed down as a result of Car A, so he moves forward and merges IN FRONT OF CAR A. Three cars have now merged into the lane in front of the car that I merged in front of.
If instead I and the cars behind me had waited until the lane ended to merge and then merged every other car traffic would move much more rapidly. Oh yeah in my example above there will also be a couple of assholes who will use the now empty lane to rapidly move to the front of the line and merge where the lane ends, making the problem even worse.
The problem of cars "clumping" is due to the "rule abiding" drivers following each other too closely. This is in fact not rule abiding.
And in fact that behavior is largely caused by the people who break the rules as defined by this study. So, the 40% who break the rules to make traffic flow better cause the other people to drive in such a manner so as to make the traffic problem worse in such a way as that behavior by the 40% fixes.
My issue with texting while driving is that not for the concern of the individual who is texting but of the innocent bystandard who faces the consequences of said texters actions. Unlike wearing a seatbelt while driving, you're not endangering the your life as much as that of another. Freedom should never be granted at the expense of anothers.
That is the problem with all forms of reckless driving, they put uninvolved bystanders at risk. Why should text messaging be separated out as a special case of reckless driving?