You do know that the people who run Iran are members of a religious group that teaches that it is their religious obligation to bring about Armageddon if the opportunity presents itself. The same is true of America. Different religion, same Armageddon fetish. There is a key difference. In Christianity, Armageddon is started by the bad guys. So, for a Christian, if you start Armageddon, you are by definition one of the bad guys. In Shiite Islam, Armageddon is started by the good guys. So, for the people ruling Iran starting Armageddon is a goal.
What a crock of shit. Iran may be run by religious nuts, but they aren't suicidal. What do you base that assertion on? Many of their co-religionists are suicidal, what makes you think that the people running Iran are not suicidal, when they have expressed sentiments that can be taken as being willing to die to accomplish their goals?
"Do we wait until they have nuclear tipped rockets that can reach the US?"
Yeesh... How old is the guy who wrote this, anyway? Ever hear of a time in history called the "cold war"? Let me skip to the relevant point: The USSR had hundreds or thousands of nukes pointed at the US, and it wasn't the end of the world.
If Iran wanted to hurt the US, they know very well they can't take them in a head-to-head fight, so they'd close the strait of Hormuz, and collapse the economy of most of the world, US included. You do know that the people who run Iran are members of a religious group that teaches that it is their religious obligation to bring about Armageddon if the opportunity presents itself. They are the disciples of a man who used children to clear minefields by having them walk out into them and setting off the mines. Some co-religionists of the current rulers of Iran have blown themselves up in order to produce casualties among the civilian populace of those they considered their enemies. The rulers of the USSR on the other hand believed that when they died they ceased to exist. While it is possible that the fear of Iran getting nuclear weapons is exaggerated, the comparison with the USSR doesn't hold up to careful examination.
I'll take my chances on being thin, thanks. One study that appears to contradict all scientific knowledge we've accumulated to this point isn't going to change my mind. Every study I have ever seen which compares being too thin to being too fat indicates that your overall health risks are massively higher if you are 5% below recommended weight than if you are 5% over. As a general rule, they all indicate that you are better being overweight (but not obese) than underweight.
The reason they chose to give it to the iPhone wasn't based upon a checklist of features, but because of how well it was designed and the impact it has had. Apple knows how to make products that people enjoy using. That is a difficult thing to do.
If the article was "best products" of 2007, then that justification would put the iPhone there (even though, I personally don't get it, it's a cellphone, whoopy!!). However, it isn't an invention. As has been pointed out in previous discussions of the Apple phone, other cell phones do what it does (maybe not as well, since I have no interest in that functionality, I have never bothered to research what the best "smart" phones are).
The idea that American cars "perfom" is non sense, American cars have huge engines that doesn't mean they preform. For example in the program I mentioned in my post they pitted a Atom against an American car which was in the same class(I forget which) the Atom won even though on paper the American car should have won, they pitted a American muscle car against a BMW, the BMW wins, they pitted a Land Rover discovery (the worst land rover off road in my opinion) against 3 other American 4x4's and the Disco beat the rest driving up a hill.
In 2004, the Dodge Neon SRT beat the quickest BMW from that year in 0 to 60 mph. I just looked up the Atom, there are no American cars in the same class as the Atom, the Atom is not street legal in the US. The Land Rover is a Ford.
Having that money, and having a chance to buy a car or a house, are highly dependent on those people living in a community. So it's not far-fetched at all to expect members to benefit the community that will, as an entity, take care of itself. Even the worse parts, because it makes sense to keep the aid recipients away from crime and in a condition that might allow them to still get a job later on.
what is your evidence that poverty is the cause of crime? Or that government aid programs reduce crime? My experience indicates that the causes of crime are social, not economic.
Prince John or the sheriff wouldn't be rich unless there were many many peasants around too. That's where the riches come from. It's not self-evident it really should be *their money*. That's the point of Robin Hood, I think.
You seem to be making two contradictory points. The first is that the money doesn't really belong the individual but to the "community" (which for all intents and purposes means the government). Then, second, that the government (Prince John and the sheriff) didn't have a legitimate right to the money. So which is it? Does wealth belong to the person who produces it or to the government (Prince John and the sheriff)?
From my understanding that is only so if the server or communications relay in the US is routing (relaying) traffic that does not originate from or is destined to the US. For example, if a person was calling from London to Mexico and it happened to go through a relay in the US its fair game. This is not the case (as I understand it) when one or other of the party communicating is in the US (and is a citizen?). For example, if I (a US citizen living in the US) call my finance who is Japanese (and lives in Japan) our call can NOT be wiretapped with out a court order as they (the government) would be violating my constitutional right to privacy. Thus our calls are off limits with out a warrant, even though she is not a US citizen or residing within the US.
That is what the debate is about. It is not clear from any laws, or from court precedent that your understanding is correct. What little research I have done on the subject seems to indicate that before George W. Bush's political opponents brought this to the attention of the general populace, it was generally accepted that if one of the parties was identified as a security threat and one of the parties was outside the US it was ok to monitor the communication.
It would have been nice to have the discussion over the appropriateness before 9/11, rather than in the politically charged atmosphere that was present when people who had known about this practice for years decided to make the general populace aware of it.
Does it mean that if I use an US mail server, like gmail, from a foreign country, these mails can be wiretap too? In that case they don't even need this ruling, communications between individuals outside of the US may be legally intercepted by the US Government at any time the Federal Government believes there is national interest at stake and has the ability to do so. The whole NSA wiretapping scandal arose from the Bush Administration's interpretation that this legal authority extended to communications between individuals outside the US and individuals inside the US. I have not looked at this closely, but some of the articles I have seen suggest that the Bush Administration interpretation was also the Clinton Administration interpretation as well (and possibly going further back).
Also, the USA didn't sign up to Kyoto. My last remark in that comment was based on my immediate perception of the USA from Europe, sorry. Right, not signing up for Kyoto is so much worse than signing up and then not even coming close to meeting the standards that were agreed upon. The last report I have seen was that the largest European countries not only weren't going to meet their Kyoto mandated reductions in carbon emissions, but were actually going to have increased carbon emissions.
Nonetheless, a job it does much more efficiently than the private sector. The total health care expense in Denmark per citizen is half of the amount in USA. Maybe that's because the US subsidizes its R&D for new medical treatments, in particular new drugs.
So you would like to use your money to donate to others, that's laudable but one example doesn't make an argument. What about the person who wants his tax money back to buy a bigger house or a new car? The benefit of government aid is that people get the help they need whether or not their fellow citizens care to help them. No, they get the help the government decides to give them whether it is the help they need or not. And more importantly, you can feel warm and fuzzy because you have gotten the government to take someone else's money and helped the "poor", so you don't have to actually sacrifice to help them yourself.
As for the person who uses his money to buy a bigger house or a new car, IT'S HIS/HER MONEY, what right do you have to tell them how to spend it? You want to be Robin Hood and steal from the rich and give to the poor. Except you don't want to take the risks of actually doing it yourself (getting wounded/killed, or arrested and thrown in jail), so you are going to have the government do it. You want to take one person's money against their consent, and give it to someone you consider more deserving. Except of course, you don't know either person. The person you are taking the money from might be someone who has worked extremely hard all his/her life, who donates 25% of all they earn to helping those less fortunate, while the person you are giving it to might be someone who has never been able to hold a steady job because some mornings he just doesn't feel like going to work, so he doesn't and he spends his money on drugs or entertainment instead of providing for his family's needs. You don't know and you don't care. I have personally known individuals who have fit both of those classifications; a wealthy person who gave at least 25% of their income to carefully investigated charities, and a government aid recipient who had trouble holding a job because of his own behaviors and spent much of his income on drugs, cable tv and other entertainment.
A.) If you don't know them, how do you know they are homeless and not con artists? There are people who make a good living as beggars (as in fancy homes and fancy cars).
B.) If they are truly homeless, since you don't know them, how can you possibly know what kind of help would make their situation better?
Back to the point if you don't know anyone who has problems obtaining health care, how can you possibly know if it is a problem that the government should be spending money on? Maybe they don't have health insurance because they decided that they would rather spend that money on getting all the movie channels and the sports packages on their cable? My point is that you don't know, but you want to take my money and use it to pay for the health care of a person who may be perfectly capable of paying for their own health insurance but chooses not to. If you were just talking about spending money that people voluntarily gave for that purpose, I would applaud you as someone who genuinely cares about your fellow man. But that is not what you want, you to forcibly take one person's money (tax) and give it to some stranger, who may or may not be deserving, you don't know because you don't know anything about them except that they don't have health insurance (either by choice or not).
And this has what to do with my original point? My pint had nothing to do with what the job of doctors is, it had to do with what the job of government is.
Personally, I would rather have that tax money so that I can give it to charities that do a much better job of helping those in need then the government. I believe that helping people in need is something that should be done voluntarily. I agree that it is the job of the strong to take care of the weak, but it is not the job of the strong to take from the less strong to give to the very weak (which seems to be what you propose.
I genuinely do believe we would be far far better off with universal health care (covering everything, including dentistry). I'm just seriously worried that our government is entirely incapable of managing such a task. Every government is entirely incapable of managing such a task. You believe that some people are unable to take care of their health needs, do you personally know someone who has had a problem obtaining necessary health care? I do not know anyone who has had this problem.
I'd argue that a government has the obligation to protect the liberty and the lives of its citizens. A national health service is one way to fulfill that obligation. You could argue that, but you would be wrong. The police do not keep people safe from crime, the police rarely get involved until after the crime has occurred. The police are part of the system to arrest and punish those who violate the public order. The difference is significant and important. Likewise, the fire department doesn't keep people safe from fire. The fire department arrives and puts out the fire (btw, where I live the fire company is a private organization, not a government department. that survives on donations and volunteers). In both cases, the justification of the existence of a government department is the maintenance of public order.
Neither protecting liberty or lives is part of the job of government. I will repeat, the job of government is: provide for the common defense (military), maintain order, regulate commerce (this last might actually be part of the previous).
Also I don't see how the government is reducing my freedom by using some of my tax money to provide free health care.
If you're a real asshole you can look on it as an investment; healthy people work better, safe people may feel like they don't need a safety net and will spend more perhaps.
It is not reducing freedom by providing free health care. It is the laws it will pass limiting your freedom based on the fact that it is providing free health care.
Perhaps I phrased it poorly, however, roads and industrial regulation fall under what I meant by regulating commerce. I am not sure about parks. At this point I can't think of any harm that comes from government parks (I know of some related to government parks, but those are all from laws above and beyond those creating the parks), but I can't at the moment think of how they fit into my perception of the legitimate purpose of government.
My objection to government provided healthcare is not the cost. What countries have successful government provided health care? Canada's is coming apart, same for England. A couple of years ago France killed off a significant part of its elderly population during a heatwave.
None of the programs that I have seen proposed in the US involves people taking care of their healthcare costs. They have all involved it being paid out of tax dollars. Since in the US, something on the order of 75% of tax revenues come from something less than 25% of the population, that is not taking care of health care through the government (unless they are one of the less than 25%, who will still probably have some kind of privately paid health care--see Canada).
as opposed to the republican health care program in which the richest country in the world can't take care of its citizens' basic needs. It's the richest country in the world because its citizens can and do take care of their basic needs themselves. What you don't seem to understand is that the taking care of its citizens is not one of the government's jobs. The government has at most three jobs: providing for the common defense, maintaining order, and regulating commerce. That last one is arguable, but I generally believe that some minimal amount of that is necessary (such as outlawing false advertising, regulating how food products are handled to prevent the spread of disease, etc). Whenever the government starts expanding beyond these three jobs it begins to reduce the freedom of its citizens, especially when the expansion involves "taking care" of said citizens.
They aren't wrong. The problem is that the people who are opposed to illegal P2P file sharing of copyrighted music don't care what happens in bulk. They care whether or not an artist is getting paid when you receive that artist's music. The fact that you download, three CDs worth of music and purchase five CDs, for example, doesn't matter to them unless three of those five purchased CDs are the ones you've downloaded.
The problem with that is that they want the downloader to pay for the three they downloaded, when they only listen to one of them. They listened to all three, didn't like two of the three, liked the third and went out and bought all five CDs that artist had out.
The various music anti-piracy groups claim that illegal downloading music costs them sales. Studies such as this one demonstrate that,in fact, the evidence better supports the argument that illegal downloading supports their sales.
I would argue that the reason that the RIAA companies see a decline in music sales is that instead of producing music that meets customer demand, they try to shape customer demand to call for the music they think people want to hear.
I will make two arguments to support that last point.
First, everyone knows that the record labels reward radio stations for playing certain songs (using certain shell games to get around the anti-payola laws in the US). Every time one of the radio stations I listen to has a "listener request" weekend where they play only songs that listeners call in for, the play list for the next couple of weeks includes a bunch of songs that they almost never play ordinarily. After a couple of weeks these songs stop getting air time and it is back to the tired old play list, until the next listener request weekend when many of the same songs get requested again. This makes it seem obvious to me that these songs are well liked by the listening audience, but are not as well compensated for by the record companies.
Second, a couple of years ago Lenny Kravitz came out with a new CD. On the CD was a cover of "American Woman", the only song to get airplay. I really like the original, I didn't care for the cover. I have never heard any other song off that CD on the radio. However, a friend of mine who has similar musical tastes to mine downloaded the CD (illegally). He played it for me. I like every other song on the CD. If not for illegal downloading, I would never have heard those songs because the record company thought that the "American Woman" cover was the hit song. Based on the other songs on the CD and the fact that I am a fan of the original "American Woman", I am pretty sure that my musical tastes represent the target audience for the CD, yet the record company is not marketing the CD to people with my musical tastes, why not?
And thus why the debate is really useless. Those people are not going to be swayed by any of these reports, whether they are truly concerned about the artists or using them as distractions for their own financial gain.
The debate worth having, as always, is how "we" get the people who download music and don't pay for it to become paying customers. You'll never get everybody, of course--at least not without giving it away free--but various approaches have their own benefits. The lower the price point, the higher the demand is a fairly obvious one. That site that just popped up with prices that fluctuate based on demand is an interesting experiment, though I think it goes the wrong way (prices increase as demand increases). I think the best experiment was the group that allowed you to name your own price for the CD.
All of these ideas likely need to be refined, but that is the direction we should be focusing our intellectual efforts in. As a nice side effect for the Slashdot crowd, the likelihood is that as systems such as those become more and more successful, the RIAA dies a little more and more. Artists and consumers both stand to win.
Primaries only exist for 1 party or the other. You still wind up with only 2 choices when it counts. No more, no matter how much "3rd party" crap supposedly exists. Except that from what you just said, the primaries count. Pick a party, vote in its primaries, get involved in other ways, or shut up and live with it. You're right, 3rd party is a waste of time.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeesh... How old is the guy who wrote this, anyway? Ever hear of a time in history called the "cold war"? Let me skip to the relevant point: The USSR had hundreds or thousands of nukes pointed at the US, and it wasn't the end of the world.
If Iran wanted to hurt the US, they know very well they can't take them in a head-to-head fight, so they'd close the strait of Hormuz, and collapse the economy of most of the world, US included. You do know that the people who run Iran are members of a religious group that teaches that it is their religious obligation to bring about Armageddon if the opportunity presents itself. They are the disciples of a man who used children to clear minefields by having them walk out into them and setting off the mines. Some co-religionists of the current rulers of Iran have blown themselves up in order to produce casualties among the civilian populace of those they considered their enemies. The rulers of the USSR on the other hand believed that when they died they ceased to exist. While it is possible that the fear of Iran getting nuclear weapons is exaggerated, the comparison with the USSR doesn't hold up to careful examination.
Every study I have ever seen which compares being too thin to being too fat indicates that your overall health risks are massively higher if you are 5% below recommended weight than if you are 5% over. As a general rule, they all indicate that you are better being overweight (but not obese) than underweight.
The reason they chose to give it to the iPhone wasn't based upon a checklist of features, but because of how well it was designed and the impact it has had. Apple knows how to make products that people enjoy using. That is a difficult thing to do.
If the article was "best products" of 2007, then that justification would put the iPhone there (even though, I personally don't get it, it's a cellphone, whoopy!!). However, it isn't an invention. As has been pointed out in previous discussions of the Apple phone, other cell phones do what it does (maybe not as well, since I have no interest in that functionality, I have never bothered to research what the best "smart" phones are).In 2004, the Dodge Neon SRT beat the quickest BMW from that year in 0 to 60 mph. I just looked up the Atom, there are no American cars in the same class as the Atom, the Atom is not street legal in the US. The Land Rover is a Ford.
Crime prevention is part of maintaining order. Crime prevention is not the same as keeping people safe from crime.
Having that money, and having a chance to buy a car or a house, are highly dependent on those people living in a community. So it's not far-fetched at all to expect members to benefit the community that will, as an entity, take care of itself. Even the worse parts, because it makes sense to keep the aid recipients away from crime and in a condition that might allow them to still get a job later on.
what is your evidence that poverty is the cause of crime? Or that government aid programs reduce crime? My experience indicates that the causes of crime are social, not economic.Prince John or the sheriff wouldn't be rich unless there were many many peasants around too. That's where the riches come from. It's not self-evident it really should be *their money*. That's the point of Robin Hood, I think.
You seem to be making two contradictory points. The first is that the money doesn't really belong the individual but to the "community" (which for all intents and purposes means the government). Then, second, that the government (Prince John and the sheriff) didn't have a legitimate right to the money. So which is it? Does wealth belong to the person who produces it or to the government (Prince John and the sheriff)?That is what the debate is about. It is not clear from any laws, or from court precedent that your understanding is correct. What little research I have done on the subject seems to indicate that before George W. Bush's political opponents brought this to the attention of the general populace, it was generally accepted that if one of the parties was identified as a security threat and one of the parties was outside the US it was ok to monitor the communication.
It would have been nice to have the discussion over the appropriateness before 9/11, rather than in the politically charged atmosphere that was present when people who had known about this practice for years decided to make the general populace aware of it.
I am confused, how did NOT receiving sufficient health care force them to lose their homes or into bankruptcy?
As for the person who uses his money to buy a bigger house or a new car, IT'S HIS/HER MONEY, what right do you have to tell them how to spend it? You want to be Robin Hood and steal from the rich and give to the poor. Except you don't want to take the risks of actually doing it yourself (getting wounded/killed, or arrested and thrown in jail), so you are going to have the government do it. You want to take one person's money against their consent, and give it to someone you consider more deserving. Except of course, you don't know either person. The person you are taking the money from might be someone who has worked extremely hard all his/her life, who donates 25% of all they earn to helping those less fortunate, while the person you are giving it to might be someone who has never been able to hold a steady job because some mornings he just doesn't feel like going to work, so he doesn't and he spends his money on drugs or entertainment instead of providing for his family's needs. You don't know and you don't care. I have personally known individuals who have fit both of those classifications; a wealthy person who gave at least 25% of their income to carefully investigated charities, and a government aid recipient who had trouble holding a job because of his own behaviors and spent much of his income on drugs, cable tv and other entertainment.
A.) If you don't know them, how do you know they are homeless and not con artists? There are people who make a good living as beggars (as in fancy homes and fancy cars). B.) If they are truly homeless, since you don't know them, how can you possibly know what kind of help would make their situation better?
Back to the point if you don't know anyone who has problems obtaining health care, how can you possibly know if it is a problem that the government should be spending money on? Maybe they don't have health insurance because they decided that they would rather spend that money on getting all the movie channels and the sports packages on their cable? My point is that you don't know, but you want to take my money and use it to pay for the health care of a person who may be perfectly capable of paying for their own health insurance but chooses not to. If you were just talking about spending money that people voluntarily gave for that purpose, I would applaud you as someone who genuinely cares about your fellow man. But that is not what you want, you to forcibly take one person's money (tax) and give it to some stranger, who may or may not be deserving, you don't know because you don't know anything about them except that they don't have health insurance (either by choice or not).
And this has what to do with my original point? My pint had nothing to do with what the job of doctors is, it had to do with what the job of government is.
What, you never heard of grapes?
When you ask the government to do these extra things, which it is very inefficient at, you need to stop complaining about loss of freedom.
Personally, I would rather have that tax money so that I can give it to charities that do a much better job of helping those in need then the government. I believe that helping people in need is something that should be done voluntarily. I agree that it is the job of the strong to take care of the weak, but it is not the job of the strong to take from the less strong to give to the very weak (which seems to be what you propose.
I'd argue that a government has the obligation to protect the liberty and the lives of its citizens. A national health service is one way to fulfill that obligation. You could argue that, but you would be wrong. The police do not keep people safe from crime, the police rarely get involved until after the crime has occurred. The police are part of the system to arrest and punish those who violate the public order. The difference is significant and important. Likewise, the fire department doesn't keep people safe from fire. The fire department arrives and puts out the fire (btw, where I live the fire company is a private organization, not a government department. that survives on donations and volunteers). In both cases, the justification of the existence of a government department is the maintenance of public order.
Neither protecting liberty or lives is part of the job of government. I will repeat, the job of government is: provide for the common defense (military), maintain order, regulate commerce (this last might actually be part of the previous).
If you're a real asshole you can look on it as an investment; healthy people work better, safe people may feel like they don't need a safety net and will spend more perhaps.
It is not reducing freedom by providing free health care. It is the laws it will pass limiting your freedom based on the fact that it is providing free health care.
Perhaps I phrased it poorly, however, roads and industrial regulation fall under what I meant by regulating commerce. I am not sure about parks. At this point I can't think of any harm that comes from government parks (I know of some related to government parks, but those are all from laws above and beyond those creating the parks), but I can't at the moment think of how they fit into my perception of the legitimate purpose of government.
My objection to government provided healthcare is not the cost. What countries have successful government provided health care? Canada's is coming apart, same for England. A couple of years ago France killed off a significant part of its elderly population during a heatwave. None of the programs that I have seen proposed in the US involves people taking care of their healthcare costs. They have all involved it being paid out of tax dollars. Since in the US, something on the order of 75% of tax revenues come from something less than 25% of the population, that is not taking care of health care through the government (unless they are one of the less than 25%, who will still probably have some kind of privately paid health care--see Canada).
They aren't wrong. The problem is that the people who are opposed to illegal P2P file sharing of copyrighted music don't care what happens in bulk. They care whether or not an artist is getting paid when you receive that artist's music. The fact that you download, three CDs worth of music and purchase five CDs, for example, doesn't matter to them unless three of those five purchased CDs are the ones you've downloaded. The problem with that is that they want the downloader to pay for the three they downloaded, when they only listen to one of them. They listened to all three, didn't like two of the three, liked the third and went out and bought all five CDs that artist had out.
The various music anti-piracy groups claim that illegal downloading music costs them sales. Studies such as this one demonstrate that,in fact, the evidence better supports the argument that illegal downloading supports their sales.
I would argue that the reason that the RIAA companies see a decline in music sales is that instead of producing music that meets customer demand, they try to shape customer demand to call for the music they think people want to hear.
I will make two arguments to support that last point.
First, everyone knows that the record labels reward radio stations for playing certain songs (using certain shell games to get around the anti-payola laws in the US). Every time one of the radio stations I listen to has a "listener request" weekend where they play only songs that listeners call in for, the play list for the next couple of weeks includes a bunch of songs that they almost never play ordinarily. After a couple of weeks these songs stop getting air time and it is back to the tired old play list, until the next listener request weekend when many of the same songs get requested again. This makes it seem obvious to me that these songs are well liked by the listening audience, but are not as well compensated for by the record companies.
Second, a couple of years ago Lenny Kravitz came out with a new CD. On the CD was a cover of "American Woman", the only song to get airplay. I really like the original, I didn't care for the cover. I have never heard any other song off that CD on the radio. However, a friend of mine who has similar musical tastes to mine downloaded the CD (illegally). He played it for me. I like every other song on the CD. If not for illegal downloading, I would never have heard those songs because the record company thought that the "American Woman" cover was the hit song. Based on the other songs on the CD and the fact that I am a fan of the original "American Woman", I am pretty sure that my musical tastes represent the target audience for the CD, yet the record company is not marketing the CD to people with my musical tastes, why not?
And thus why the debate is really useless. Those people are not going to be swayed by any of these reports, whether they are truly concerned about the artists or using them as distractions for their own financial gain.
The debate worth having, as always, is how "we" get the people who download music and don't pay for it to become paying customers. You'll never get everybody, of course--at least not without giving it away free--but various approaches have their own benefits. The lower the price point, the higher the demand is a fairly obvious one. That site that just popped up with prices that fluctuate based on demand is an interesting experiment, though I think it goes the wrong way (prices increase as demand increases). I think the best experiment was the group that allowed you to name your own price for the CD.
All of these ideas likely need to be refined, but that is the direction we should be focusing our intellectual efforts in. As a nice side effect for the Slashdot crowd, the likelihood is that as systems such as those become more and more successful, the RIAA dies a little more and more. Artists and consumers both stand to win.
I don't think it will be long now.