They're doing it wrong. A well designed system would not 'favor' a road based on anything other than the current traffic loads. The designers were too clever and designed a system that tries to second guess by previous patterns what it should do. A much dumber sensor driven system would work a lot better.
Nothing about my post regarded high fuel efficiency vehicles of any age. I said they would target vehicles that were old AND dirtier (by which I meant bad seals leading to burning oil, etc), AND less fuel efficient. I meant all three would apply to get the maximum payment if they were serious about reducing vehicular pollution.
As for hybrids, a Toyota Prius is rated at 48 MPG in the city. The 2010 models are supposed to approach 60 MPG in the city. The 94 Civics are rated at 25 to 39 in the city, depending on model. That's not a tie, that's a clear win for the hybrids IMO. They really only tie in the highway ratings.
One thing I've alwasy thought would help a lot would be better traffic control systems. Governments don't really have a big incentive to really optimize these systems and I think that great strides could be made in improving them. I always wind up spending several minutes every time I go to work sitting at lights when there is no traffic going the other way. That should never happen. Better and more intelligent systems would mean faster commutes, less idling at red lights, and fewer cars on the road at any one time since travel times would be shorter.
Europe, Japan, and many other such countries have much higher average population densities than America does. The cost / benefit ratio, or return on investment for public transportation is directly correlated to population density.
I live in Tucson. It's a medium sized city sprawled out over many miles of area. The cost per capita to truly cover the grid that is Tucson and the surrounding areas well enough that people would not need cars would be enough to bankrupt very individual living in Tucson. Instead we make do with some bus lines that move along major routes to a few major locations and it will take you a couple of hours to get across town.
If you read to the bottom, they will over the higher dollar amounts for the 2002 and later vehicles. These will be the most modern and least polluting cars, so they are paying more to junk the least harmful cars.
If this was about reducing emissions, they would pay more to get older, dirtier, and less fuel efficient cars off the road. The worse the mpg, the more they would pay. This is about encouraging people that proved they have the money to buy a newer car to cycle into another newer car a lot sooner than they would. It's proof this is about encouraging consumerism, not ecology.
No, it's a great analogy if he meant the book. The first half of the movie was good, but the second half was a travesty that was exactly opposite of everying the book was about and how it ended. SPOLERS FOLLOW FOR THE BOOK
...
...
...
In the book you learn that many of the the 'vampires' are fully human in all ways, including emotions and intellect. Many others have had their minds destroyed, but not all. The human 'vampires' have to deal with the physical changes wrought by the virus, but they are rebuilding society from the group up. The main character is to them a creature who kills them in horrible ways during the day when they cannot move. He is a monster, and he is legend because he will go down in history as the new boogieman, the Daywalker. No cure, the guy figures out what the virus did, but he's no super-genius and a cure is neither needed or now wanted. People adapted and changed except him since he was naturally immune. The hero who is really a villain. That is the analogy and it fits.
Hmmm. I didn't think about the overlapping warranty issues. I'll have to give you that those numbers for the unscheduled maintenace costs might be bogus then. At worst however it means that the hybrids are comparable to standard vehicles in maintenance costs.
Also, what I said about the battery packs still stands. The whole bit about having to replace them is a red herring. If it happens, it'll be an exceptional event akin to blowing your engine in some catastrophic way, about as rare and about as expensive.
I couldn't find the total cost differences numbers you cite. Can you provide a specific link or description on where the numbers are at? I looked at their price calculators and those tools did not support the hybrids being dramaticaly more expensive.
Nor do those numbers make any sense. Hybrids are not that much more expensive to initially buy than ICE cars, they get better gas mileage, and are at least comparable in terms of maintenance costs. Where is this +$16K for total cost difference for a Prius coming from?
There are a lot of companies and governments trying out hybrids for taxi and fleet vehicles, and they mostly report that they are doing well with them. If you google for hybrids and taxis you find more positives than negatives, and they generally report total cost savings, not dramtic cost increases. If the numbers you cite were real, nobody other than a few rich eco-freaks would use hybrids. They would join the all electric cars in the nice try category.
Note sure where you got your numbers from, but I'm going to refute some of them.
Hybrid replacement battery pack costs within a 5 year period: $3000.00 - $5000.00 US
Battery packs for hybrids are generally warrantied for 8-10 years, and they are expected to last the lifetime of the vehicle. To date Toyota claims that they have never needed to replace a battery pack on a Prius due to it simply wearing out, and there are Priuses with over 300,000 miles on them on the road today. So if you need to replace a battery pack, it'll be because you were in a wreck (you should have insurance) or you had a defective battery pack (warranty). You're probably not going to have to pay to replace it. (Cue the exceptions to post.)
Second, maintenance costs for a hybrid are much less. As the link to the hybrid taxi cab experiment shows, while standard maintenance costs were about the same, the unscheduled maintenance costs were dramatically lower, around 19 cents per 100km of driving, vs. around $2 per 100km for the other vehicles. That's with over 60 hybrids, not one vehicle, so it should not be a statistical anomaly. That's big-time savings, and since 'unscheduled maintenance' is going to be a euphemism for stuff breaking, they're more reliable as well.
So no battery pack replacement needed and almost a 50% reduction in total real maintenance and repair costs over the life of the vehicle and a lower failure rate = you're saving thousands of dollars and have less hassle.
Add in the savings for the better gas mileage ($10,000 to $20,000 in savings over the life of the vehicle) and that hybrids are almost free in terms of their cost vs. a regular new car even with the slightly higher premium you pay for them.
One other thing. Hybrids hold their value. You don't take a 30% reduction to the value of your car the moment you drive it off the lot, and used hybrids can go for almost as much as new ones.
I mainly use my portable to browse the web, write documents, and handle email. I want it to be cheap enough that if it is lost, stolen, or broken that I won't cry over it. I want it to be lightweight enough that it's not a bother to lug around. I want it to have a good enough battery life that I can use it for a while without worrying about an outlet.
I don't need it to be powerful or have great performance to do these things. These reviewers are using the wrong scale to review these types of laptops. They might as well give an economy car bad reviews because it can't beat a Ferrari on the straight away. You review a tool on the basis of how well it does the job it is designed for, not how well it matches up against something entirely different.
I don't either. What does that have to do with the FCC banning them?
I believe that if everyday legal cell phone usage is no longer a credible hazard to the plane itself, then the FCC should not even have a say in it, any more than they should have a say in what color pants you wear on the plane. It should be outside of their jurisdiction at that point. As for dealing with rude people, that should fall to the other passengers or the airlines. That's the kind of little annoyances you have to deal with if you want freedom.
Allowing governmental agencies to regulate whatever they want just because it is popular is tyranny of the majority at best. Anyone who would support tyrannical behavior because they like the behavior being imposed is evil.
I totally agree. The NTJ people tend to become engineers, the NTP people tend to become scientists. The E/I axis isn't so important. Lots of extroverted scientists, engineers, and so forth out there.
Most of the population, about 85%, are supposed to be Sensates, or 'S' types. Personally I think that the S/N axis is the most fundamental of the four axis. I think that Sensates often find iNtuitives to be alien at a very core level. The reason IMO is that to conceptualize a fundamentally different way of understanding the world (ie, how someone with a totally different mindset than you thinks) requires building a model of that different mindset. Well that's the rub of course. Building a model of something or someone else is exactly what an S cannot do well. That makes a strong N fundamentally alien to a strong S. The S by definition lacks the tools to understand the N.
I think that is why a lot of Sensates wind up focusing on the E/I axis. iNtuitives are weird and different to Sensates but the Sensate cannot understand what or why they are so alien. In other words I think that the Sensates of the world often substitute Introverts for iNtuitives. They cannot even conceptualize what an iNtuitive is and it can be hard to spot an iNtuitive by their behavior. The same does not hold true for an Introvert, and since an Introvert is also often seen as weird, aloof, and unknown they make a good substitute for the iNtuitive. Basically the Sensates make a fundamental error IMO and substitute a more concrete thing for a less concrete thing on the basis of perceived shared similarities. That's what gives birth to this incorrect stereotype.
The Myers-Briggs personality theories predicted this congruence. Engineers tend to be NTs, or iNtuitive Thinkers. So do CEOs, generals, scientists, programmers, mathmeticians, and revolutionary leaders. Might as well say that CEOs, scientists, and generals share a lot in common with terrorists. Fact is that they do, and it's because intuitive thinkers (NTs) parse the world in terms of principles, axioms, models, and abstractions based on logic and reason as the NT understands them. They can be willing to fight, kill, and die for a principle or belief. Most people will fight to protect themselves, to protect family, or by extension their own country, but most will not fight for an abstraction. However to an NT an abstraction can be real and worthy of being defended. That is why IMO the NT mindset can be persuaded to join a revolutionary group and be effective at it and at the same time morally at peace with himself over his actions, even if those actions are seen to be high treason by the majority.
Your employer does not have a special monopoly to use lethal force against you, cannot throw you in a prison cell, take any or all of your money from you, and otherwise use force against you if you do things they or your co-workers don't like. Furthermore you can leave your employer. A lot harder and much more monumental to 'leave' your country and get new citizenship.
There is no real correlation between the power your employer has over you and the power your government has over you. The phrase 'they work for us' is mostly just supposed to be a reminder that the government and politicians are supposed to be subservient to the will of the people, not vice-versa. If you think it literally means that they have the same relationship to you as your manager/boss at your job, then you have not thought about it very hard.
Here is my pop-psychology answer. Try to not take it too seriously.
According to the Myers-Briggs personality theory, people can very roughly be defined on four points. Introverted/Extroverted, Sensing/Intuitive, Thinking/Feeling, and Perceiving/Judging. This means you can very roughly rate someone with a four letter code, such as ESTJ or INFP, with the letters corresponding to where the person leans.
The middle two parts, Sensing/Intuitive and Thinking/Feeling are the core component of how people process information. NTs are called Rationalists, NFs are called Idealists, STs are called Guardians, and SFs are called Artisans.
NT's tend to become scientists, engineers, researchers, mathmaticians, and programmers. Sounds like the group we are talking about doesn't it? The thing is that NT's are only about 5% of the population, NFs tend to be religious leaders, teachers, and social worker types. NFs are only 10% of the population. The other 85% are STs and SFs. That means that the vast majority of humanity falls into the 'S' vs. the 'N' camp.
The NT and NF combinations are rare. Focusing on NTs however, since that is the group that tends to be what the article references (engineers, scientists, medical professionals, and programmers for that matter), they are very heavily represented among generals, CEO's of corporations, and revolutionary leaders. Steve Jobs is typically labeled as an ENTJ while Bill Gates is an INTJ.
Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were NTs, as were all of our generals turned president. Abe Lincoln and Reagon were NFs. Do you see a pattern? Most of our more controversial or revolutionary presidents were almost all Intuitives. I think that might be where the correlation is really taking place.
I'll have to respectfully disagree with you. The USSR was a Totalitarian Socialist state, not Communist. The name in this case is actually somewhat accurate. The USSR did not have a stateless society. It did not have a classless society. It did not have a propertyless society. Without meeting those requirements the USSR was not Communist as Marx would have defined it.
If you disagree, then please define what made the USSR truly Communist and not Totalitarian Socialist.
It's not insider trading, just trading. If you can predict ahead of everyone else, even by the thinest of margins, what is going to happen to a stock then you can make a lot of money. Apple stock is incredibly volatile. It moves up and down so much that if you can predict one of those moves you can make 20%+ profit in a couple of days easily.
For the most part I agree. However you tend to say things in absolutes. My argument is that these different power bases are not in league with each other on this. It is not in the best interest of the judiciary to back the idea that the last several centuries of law shoudl be discarded. It is not in the best interests of many other corporations to back the idea of AT&T being able to snoop on and control all of the data in the world. Backing actions by a corporation that will directly and immediately piss consumers (ie, voters) off by messing with their entertainment is not in many politicians best interest. I am arguing that at an operational level, just because AT&T and some parts of the private and corporate sector want AT&T to have this power, most will not. It isn't voters and consumer advocacy groups that will make this hard for AT&T and the politicians. It is other large powre blocks including other politicians.
If AT&T is given permission to become a power unto itself, immune from any lawsuit and immune to any prosecution with the license to snoop and spy at whim then they literally will become THE STATE. If they do gain all of those powers then AT&T and the people running it will become the true shadow government. I don't think everyone is blind to that, and I don't think even the other major corporations or other power blocks of note have an interest in living under emperial edict with all power stripped from them.
So the Bavarian Illumaniti and the Gnomes of Zurich control everything right? I just don't subscribe to the belief that everying is controlled by one massive, all-powerful conspiracy. Money is critical to a politician, but it's not a guarantee. People usually vote the incumbant back in, but money itself does not vote. There are plenty of laws that are not corporation friendly, and the Supreme Court has not always ruled pro-corporation. Not all corporations agree and work together on things. Things are not as absolute as you say they are.
1. Because politicians like to be re-elected. Begin really messing with people's entertainment and the masses get restless for real.
2. Becuase the judiciary would get pissed about this and overturn it or use precedent and make judicial rulings that neutered it. Absolute immunity from being sued is pretty much unheard of and would be a direct attack against a good part of our judicial foundation. The common carrier laws are a sensible and limited compromise that give such immunity in a specialized manner. This kind of law (absolute immunity from all liability for a private company) would not be. It would probably be declared un-Constitutional before the ink was dry.
3. Because other companies would revolt against this. Hmmm, AT&T is killing my iTunes feed or my NetFlix feed or my YouTube feed or whatever. Think Apple, NetFlix, Google, et al are going to keep mum when their stuff gets throttled?
4. Privacy concerns. It's not just Joe Schmoe having his packets parsed if AT&T does this either. It will also be banks and all major financial transactions, politicians, even intellgence agencies themselves. It'll also include competitors to AT&T for that matter. Think everyone will be on AT&T's side?
Those are just some reasons. In short, there will be lots of forces and pressures aligned against AT&T simply gettings 'new laws' like this passed no matter how much money they spend. Truth is AT&T doesn't have enough money to do this. No one does. Even if you want to argue that we are now living under Corporatism, it's not going to happen.
Why not slow the rate to one byte per billion years then?.
I would say making changes in tramsmission based on the content is a form of selection of the material. Furthermore if AT&T tries to argue that they can slow the transfer rate to an arbitrarily low level I don't think that will fly. That will be easily seen for what it is - the power to not transmit at all. If AT&T tries to get cutsey with this law in an obvious attempt to circumvent it they will almost certainly wind up losing their legal protection. That would be beyond insanity.
If they had done this earlier then HD-DVD would have probably won. Doing this now is just throwing money away. Without content it doesn't matter how cheap the player is.
We were speaking theoretically about why borders are necessary for the protection of nation states. If understanding abstract arguments is beyond your capabilities then nothing I can say will give you the ability to understand.
As to your specific statement, yes they can become a threat in large enough numbers. You provided part of the answer in your own flippant statement. Massive numbers of uneducated 3rd world workers taking up permanent residence in a 1st world nation will change that nation. It can be for the better or for the worse, but it will bring change. If they remain uneducated then they will eventually be a drain on that country. If they are given access to welfare and other tax-payer support without paying into that system then they can bankrupt that nation. If they always send their earning outside of that country then capital drain will result. If they never become citizens and become a permanent underclass then a caste system will form that is totally at odds with American values. Such a system is counter enough to our own beliefs that it would destroy us. If they get the right to vote but never come to think of themselves as 'Americans' then that too will be a great threat to the nation. If they truly come to identify themselves as 'American' then there's no big problem. They'll change America, but it will still retain it's identity.
Just so there is no misunderstandings here - I am for very large scale immigration from Mexico. I think immigration of hungry (not necessarily physically, but mentally) and ambitious people has always been the lifeblood of America. Such immigrants will be burger flippers today, businessmen and inventers tomorrow. However they must become Americans, not migrant workers in a foreign land, or it can greatly damage us.
1. The ends can justify the means. It just cannot justify any means.
2. Self defense is not 'ends justifies the means'. If it is then Natural Law is irrelevant as well and all we are left with is force and might makes right or extreme pacifism as our only two philosophies anyway.
3. If you're going to say that my argument that maintaining borders is a requirement for survival for a group of people in today's world is wrong, then provide a comprehensive alternative that provides for the defense of everybody that is workable. Don't just say "you're wrong!". That is an admission of defeat.
4. Saying self defense is irrelevant is right back into that zealotry I talked about. You just made my point for me why libertarians are discounted by so many people. No one is interested in drinking that particular brand of Kook-Aid.
Slashdot Mirror
They're doing it wrong. A well designed system would not 'favor' a road based on anything other than the current traffic loads. The designers were too clever and designed a system that tries to second guess by previous patterns what it should do. A much dumber sensor driven system would work a lot better.
As for hybrids, a Toyota Prius is rated at 48 MPG in the city. The 2010 models are supposed to approach 60 MPG in the city. The 94 Civics are rated at 25 to 39 in the city, depending on model. That's not a tie, that's a clear win for the hybrids IMO. They really only tie in the highway ratings.
One thing I've alwasy thought would help a lot would be better traffic control systems. Governments don't really have a big incentive to really optimize these systems and I think that great strides could be made in improving them. I always wind up spending several minutes every time I go to work sitting at lights when there is no traffic going the other way. That should never happen. Better and more intelligent systems would mean faster commutes, less idling at red lights, and fewer cars on the road at any one time since travel times would be shorter.
I live in Tucson. It's a medium sized city sprawled out over many miles of area. The cost per capita to truly cover the grid that is Tucson and the surrounding areas well enough that people would not need cars would be enough to bankrupt very individual living in Tucson. Instead we make do with some bus lines that move along major routes to a few major locations and it will take you a couple of hours to get across town.
If this was about reducing emissions, they would pay more to get older, dirtier, and less fuel efficient cars off the road. The worse the mpg, the more they would pay. This is about encouraging people that proved they have the money to buy a newer car to cycle into another newer car a lot sooner than they would. It's proof this is about encouraging consumerism, not ecology.
The iTunes store.
...
...
...
In the book you learn that many of the the 'vampires' are fully human in all ways, including emotions and intellect. Many others have had their minds destroyed, but not all. The human 'vampires' have to deal with the physical changes wrought by the virus, but they are rebuilding society from the group up. The main character is to them a creature who kills them in horrible ways during the day when they cannot move. He is a monster, and he is legend because he will go down in history as the new boogieman, the Daywalker. No cure, the guy figures out what the virus did, but he's no super-genius and a cure is neither needed or now wanted. People adapted and changed except him since he was naturally immune. The hero who is really a villain. That is the analogy and it fits.
Also, what I said about the battery packs still stands. The whole bit about having to replace them is a red herring. If it happens, it'll be an exceptional event akin to blowing your engine in some catastrophic way, about as rare and about as expensive.
I couldn't find the total cost differences numbers you cite. Can you provide a specific link or description on where the numbers are at? I looked at their price calculators and those tools did not support the hybrids being dramaticaly more expensive.
Nor do those numbers make any sense. Hybrids are not that much more expensive to initially buy than ICE cars, they get better gas mileage, and are at least comparable in terms of maintenance costs. Where is this +$16K for total cost difference for a Prius coming from?
There are a lot of companies and governments trying out hybrids for taxi and fleet vehicles, and they mostly report that they are doing well with them. If you google for hybrids and taxis you find more positives than negatives, and they generally report total cost savings, not dramtic cost increases. If the numbers you cite were real, nobody other than a few rich eco-freaks would use hybrids. They would join the all electric cars in the nice try category.
Second, maintenance costs for a hybrid are much less. As the link to the hybrid taxi cab experiment shows, while standard maintenance costs were about the same, the unscheduled maintenance costs were dramatically lower, around 19 cents per 100km of driving, vs. around $2 per 100km for the other vehicles. That's with over 60 hybrids, not one vehicle, so it should not be a statistical anomaly. That's big-time savings, and since 'unscheduled maintenance' is going to be a euphemism for stuff breaking, they're more reliable as well.
So no battery pack replacement needed and almost a 50% reduction in total real maintenance and repair costs over the life of the vehicle and a lower failure rate = you're saving thousands of dollars and have less hassle.
Add in the savings for the better gas mileage ($10,000 to $20,000 in savings over the life of the vehicle) and that hybrids are almost free in terms of their cost vs. a regular new car even with the slightly higher premium you pay for them.
One other thing. Hybrids hold their value. You don't take a 30% reduction to the value of your car the moment you drive it off the lot, and used hybrids can go for almost as much as new ones.
I don't need it to be powerful or have great performance to do these things. These reviewers are using the wrong scale to review these types of laptops. They might as well give an economy car bad reviews because it can't beat a Ferrari on the straight away. You review a tool on the basis of how well it does the job it is designed for, not how well it matches up against something entirely different.
I believe that if everyday legal cell phone usage is no longer a credible hazard to the plane itself, then the FCC should not even have a say in it, any more than they should have a say in what color pants you wear on the plane. It should be outside of their jurisdiction at that point. As for dealing with rude people, that should fall to the other passengers or the airlines. That's the kind of little annoyances you have to deal with if you want freedom.
Allowing governmental agencies to regulate whatever they want just because it is popular is tyranny of the majority at best. Anyone who would support tyrannical behavior because they like the behavior being imposed is evil.
Most of the population, about 85%, are supposed to be Sensates, or 'S' types. Personally I think that the S/N axis is the most fundamental of the four axis. I think that Sensates often find iNtuitives to be alien at a very core level. The reason IMO is that to conceptualize a fundamentally different way of understanding the world (ie, how someone with a totally different mindset than you thinks) requires building a model of that different mindset. Well that's the rub of course. Building a model of something or someone else is exactly what an S cannot do well. That makes a strong N fundamentally alien to a strong S. The S by definition lacks the tools to understand the N.
I think that is why a lot of Sensates wind up focusing on the E/I axis. iNtuitives are weird and different to Sensates but the Sensate cannot understand what or why they are so alien. In other words I think that the Sensates of the world often substitute Introverts for iNtuitives. They cannot even conceptualize what an iNtuitive is and it can be hard to spot an iNtuitive by their behavior. The same does not hold true for an Introvert, and since an Introvert is also often seen as weird, aloof, and unknown they make a good substitute for the iNtuitive. Basically the Sensates make a fundamental error IMO and substitute a more concrete thing for a less concrete thing on the basis of perceived shared similarities. That's what gives birth to this incorrect stereotype.
The Myers-Briggs personality theories predicted this congruence. Engineers tend to be NTs, or iNtuitive Thinkers. So do CEOs, generals, scientists, programmers, mathmeticians, and revolutionary leaders. Might as well say that CEOs, scientists, and generals share a lot in common with terrorists. Fact is that they do, and it's because intuitive thinkers (NTs) parse the world in terms of principles, axioms, models, and abstractions based on logic and reason as the NT understands them. They can be willing to fight, kill, and die for a principle or belief. Most people will fight to protect themselves, to protect family, or by extension their own country, but most will not fight for an abstraction. However to an NT an abstraction can be real and worthy of being defended. That is why IMO the NT mindset can be persuaded to join a revolutionary group and be effective at it and at the same time morally at peace with himself over his actions, even if those actions are seen to be high treason by the majority.
There is no real correlation between the power your employer has over you and the power your government has over you. The phrase 'they work for us' is mostly just supposed to be a reminder that the government and politicians are supposed to be subservient to the will of the people, not vice-versa. If you think it literally means that they have the same relationship to you as your manager/boss at your job, then you have not thought about it very hard.
According to the Myers-Briggs personality theory, people can very roughly be defined on four points. Introverted/Extroverted, Sensing/Intuitive, Thinking/Feeling, and Perceiving/Judging. This means you can very roughly rate someone with a four letter code, such as ESTJ or INFP, with the letters corresponding to where the person leans.
The middle two parts, Sensing/Intuitive and Thinking/Feeling are the core component of how people process information. NTs are called Rationalists, NFs are called Idealists, STs are called Guardians, and SFs are called Artisans.
NT's tend to become scientists, engineers, researchers, mathmaticians, and programmers. Sounds like the group we are talking about doesn't it? The thing is that NT's are only about 5% of the population, NFs tend to be religious leaders, teachers, and social worker types. NFs are only 10% of the population. The other 85% are STs and SFs. That means that the vast majority of humanity falls into the 'S' vs. the 'N' camp.
The NT and NF combinations are rare. Focusing on NTs however, since that is the group that tends to be what the article references (engineers, scientists, medical professionals, and programmers for that matter), they are very heavily represented among generals, CEO's of corporations, and revolutionary leaders. Steve Jobs is typically labeled as an ENTJ while Bill Gates is an INTJ.
Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were NTs, as were all of our generals turned president. Abe Lincoln and Reagon were NFs. Do you see a pattern? Most of our more controversial or revolutionary presidents were almost all Intuitives. I think that might be where the correlation is really taking place.
If you disagree, then please define what made the USSR truly Communist and not Totalitarian Socialist.
It's not insider trading, just trading. If you can predict ahead of everyone else, even by the thinest of margins, what is going to happen to a stock then you can make a lot of money. Apple stock is incredibly volatile. It moves up and down so much that if you can predict one of those moves you can make 20%+ profit in a couple of days easily.
If AT&T is given permission to become a power unto itself, immune from any lawsuit and immune to any prosecution with the license to snoop and spy at whim then they literally will become THE STATE. If they do gain all of those powers then AT&T and the people running it will become the true shadow government. I don't think everyone is blind to that, and I don't think even the other major corporations or other power blocks of note have an interest in living under emperial edict with all power stripped from them.
So the Bavarian Illumaniti and the Gnomes of Zurich control everything right? I just don't subscribe to the belief that everying is controlled by one massive, all-powerful conspiracy. Money is critical to a politician, but it's not a guarantee. People usually vote the incumbant back in, but money itself does not vote. There are plenty of laws that are not corporation friendly, and the Supreme Court has not always ruled pro-corporation. Not all corporations agree and work together on things. Things are not as absolute as you say they are.
2. Becuase the judiciary would get pissed about this and overturn it or use precedent and make judicial rulings that neutered it. Absolute immunity from being sued is pretty much unheard of and would be a direct attack against a good part of our judicial foundation. The common carrier laws are a sensible and limited compromise that give such immunity in a specialized manner. This kind of law (absolute immunity from all liability for a private company) would not be. It would probably be declared un-Constitutional before the ink was dry.
3. Because other companies would revolt against this. Hmmm, AT&T is killing my iTunes feed or my NetFlix feed or my YouTube feed or whatever. Think Apple, NetFlix, Google, et al are going to keep mum when their stuff gets throttled?
4. Privacy concerns. It's not just Joe Schmoe having his packets parsed if AT&T does this either. It will also be banks and all major financial transactions, politicians, even intellgence agencies themselves. It'll also include competitors to AT&T for that matter. Think everyone will be on AT&T's side?
Those are just some reasons. In short, there will be lots of forces and pressures aligned against AT&T simply gettings 'new laws' like this passed no matter how much money they spend. Truth is AT&T doesn't have enough money to do this. No one does. Even if you want to argue that we are now living under Corporatism, it's not going to happen.
I would say making changes in tramsmission based on the content is a form of selection of the material. Furthermore if AT&T tries to argue that they can slow the transfer rate to an arbitrarily low level I don't think that will fly. That will be easily seen for what it is - the power to not transmit at all. If AT&T tries to get cutsey with this law in an obvious attempt to circumvent it they will almost certainly wind up losing their legal protection. That would be beyond insanity.
If they had done this earlier then HD-DVD would have probably won. Doing this now is just throwing money away. Without content it doesn't matter how cheap the player is.
As to your specific statement, yes they can become a threat in large enough numbers. You provided part of the answer in your own flippant statement. Massive numbers of uneducated 3rd world workers taking up permanent residence in a 1st world nation will change that nation. It can be for the better or for the worse, but it will bring change. If they remain uneducated then they will eventually be a drain on that country. If they are given access to welfare and other tax-payer support without paying into that system then they can bankrupt that nation. If they always send their earning outside of that country then capital drain will result. If they never become citizens and become a permanent underclass then a caste system will form that is totally at odds with American values. Such a system is counter enough to our own beliefs that it would destroy us. If they get the right to vote but never come to think of themselves as 'Americans' then that too will be a great threat to the nation. If they truly come to identify themselves as 'American' then there's no big problem. They'll change America, but it will still retain it's identity.
Just so there is no misunderstandings here - I am for very large scale immigration from Mexico. I think immigration of hungry (not necessarily physically, but mentally) and ambitious people has always been the lifeblood of America. Such immigrants will be burger flippers today, businessmen and inventers tomorrow. However they must become Americans, not migrant workers in a foreign land, or it can greatly damage us.
2. Self defense is not 'ends justifies the means'. If it is then Natural Law is irrelevant as well and all we are left with is force and might makes right or extreme pacifism as our only two philosophies anyway.
3. If you're going to say that my argument that maintaining borders is a requirement for survival for a group of people in today's world is wrong, then provide a comprehensive alternative that provides for the defense of everybody that is workable. Don't just say "you're wrong!". That is an admission of defeat.
4. Saying self defense is irrelevant is right back into that zealotry I talked about. You just made my point for me why libertarians are discounted by so many people. No one is interested in drinking that particular brand of Kook-Aid.