It sounds to me like someone at the USADA has a personal vendetta and that the USADA is just another corrupt government agency out of control.
The USADA is not a governmental agency, nor is it part of one. It does get some funding from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, but is not answerable to them or any government bureaucrat.
I'm posting for one purpose only, to bring attention of the parent post to moderators. Mods, people mod the parent up. It's an AC so it's not terribly visible, but does a fantastic job dispelling a few myths.
"The 2008 economic decline was from......the housing bust." - and the housing bust was caused by the Housing Boom caused by the securitization of mortgages on GWB's watch while the Glass-Siegel act was gutted into uselessness
And while the Republicans share a huge amount of blame for the housing bust, Clinton does too for signing the repeal of Glass-Siegel.
The power and water companies do just fine providing equal service to everyone. Neither the government nor the water suppliers tell people what they can and cannot do with their water. Internet bandwidth is no different from a utility. It should get the same treatment.
What really needs to happen, and what stands no chance in hell of happening, is for the communications lines and the ISPs to be disassociated with each other. Right now, the major ISPs own most of the lines, so they control access, policies, and so forth. It leads to monopoly situations, ISP abuses, loss of net neutrality, and all sorts of undesirable circumstances. Instead, the government should install the lines, then lease them to ISPs on an end-user basis. That's how my perfect world would be.
I suspect that the availability of water in your area is a harder constraint than the availability of bandwidth.
I wouldn't take that bet. In many rural areas (which can be close to big cities), it's very easy to transport water to a house, or even dig a well to have your own access to groundwater. Not so much for Internet access. You can have pipes going to your house that are 30+ years old and they're still fine, but telecom lines are obsoleted much faster, unless you're just fine with 14.4kbps speeds.
trying to tell Churches who their employees will be and who can be married on their property
I'd like a cite for that. The gay marriage argument has never been about who will be wedded at a church, it's about what marriages, church or not, the government will recognize as valid.
It doesn't work on a good number of iPhones either. The 3G, for instance, seems incapable of taking a photo high enough quality to satisfy the app, despite that it allows you to install the app on that model.
Obama triangulated to center the moment he secured the Democratic Party nomination
Of course. EVERY major candidate shifts to center when they have defeated the challengers in their own party and are on the ballot for the general election in November. They don't get that far by being political idiots.
You'll see it over and over again -- be a bit extremist until the primaries/convention to secure the fringe support, then abandon them because you need moderates and swing votes more than the loonies. You don't actually have to do anything moderate, but you have to the say the right things to get votes.
Where are they supposed to come up with that money? How are they supposed to make it back? Do you think they could just charge every single person $2000-$12000?
There is the problem with those assets being in the hands of the government in the first place
Well who else is it supposed to be owned by? It can't be owned by individuals. It can't be owned by companies. This sort of commons is pretty much the reason the US government was set up in the first place. You can't get any more clear case of a "government function."
The people at the bottom can't afford that extra 5% that you're proposing. They have nothing left after the basic necessities of life. An additional income tax could literally kill them.
They'd have to actually get a salary increase to offset this new cost, and the people who propose flat taxes tend to be the same people who howl in outrage if an increase to the minimum wage is proposed.
Who needs malware when the parent company will happily factory reset / wipe all your devices in one shot, without any user intervention?
Do you think the average user has any reason to worry about that all? Do you think the average user worries about whether Apple will pull some dirty trick? The average user knows better than you: he knows that Apple has no plans to do that on a mass scale; they'd be incredibly stupid to do so and it would serve no purpose.
You're coming from an ownership point of view: "I own my device, I want to do whatever I want with it, and prevent anyone, including the parent company." That's fine, I feel the same way about my devices, and I've felt stifled enough in the iphone environment to give Android a try. But most users don't care about that. They don't need to. You're making it sound like they're some poor, oppressed masses, but the truth is that they don't care as much about their devices, or specifically, about software freedom as you do. If their iphones do what they want, they don't particularly care about factory resets or whatever scare stories come out that have little chance of ever affecting them. They have different priorities, and they don't want to spend their time on things like malware, device security, and all this other bullshit that is a waste of time. The device works, it's simple, and that's what they want.
People don't care as much about owning. They care about using. The user experience is king. So the average user can't mod it, but they don't see any point in doing so.
If they want to squeeze some money out of big multinational corporations in Europe, the first thing to do is banning unfair fiscal tricks such as the infamous "Dutch sandwich".
I'll admit, I didn't want to click the link because I'd never heard the phrase before, but just the title sounds vaguely like some sort of perverted sexual practice.
Because the world wide web cannot operate as an opt-in service, and opting-out is not something you have to register with the operators. IE, a website owner doesn't have to go to some page on Google, Bing, Altavista, Wolfram, Yahoo, and whatever to opt out, a setting which would be conveniently 'forgotten' when those sites revised their ToSes, or terminated your account because you didn't log in, or anything along those lines. Those sites instead, are asking you what your preferences are, each time. You are the one who controls how long that setting lasts.
I'm fine with opt-out if it's something I have control of setting myself.
For many of these opt-out situations, the average user of the service doesn't have the education to even know the option exists, or know what will be done with information gathered if they don't opt-out. That's not the case with a website operator, you have to know that Google indexes your web server, and that you can stop that if you wish. If you don't want Google to index the site and don't use robots.txt, then I don't have any pity at that point. I don't feel the same about consumer-level services.
You betcha. Alcoholic/drug using father and the whole bit. You can always change your circumstance. Democrats only want you to change it by owning you. I didn't improve my life by being jealous of others and busting my ass to take their money. Neither should you.
Oooh, I see now. Poor people are poor because they deserve to be poor. They all made terrible life choices that made them poor. Of course, even if you clean up your act, it's unbelievably difficult to escape the poverty cycle, as opposed to someone who was born into wealth.
It's not very easy drawing meaningful conclusions though. If a large number of users already have iPhones, and Samsung Android phones haven't been out nearly as long, then it's not surprising that the product that has been out for a long time has laggier sales. Shouldn't already-installed userbase factor into this as well? Most of these charts seem like they could only be valid if Samsung and Apple's phones were released at the same time, otherwise it's comparing Apples to Oranges.
Yup, that's right kids, basing purchasing decisions in part on corporate ethics is "douchebaggish". Just keep consuming mindlessly and it'll all turn out for the best!
Fucking moron.
There were really two Steve Jobs. There was the good Steve, and there was the bad Steve. The smart Steve, and the incompetent Steve. The good/smart Steve was focused on products. He'd look at what people tried to deliver and failed with (or underperformed with) and tried to figure out how to do it right, using his insight into what people wanted, and what people would come to like. He's certainly one of the greatest businessmen we've ever seen in this regard.
The bad/incompetent Steve fretted over whether people were imitating Apple or copying or improving the way he copied and improved. The bad Steve got angry if others played by the same rules he did. The bad Steve threw emotional fits and wasted Apple's time and money with BS like this and other "look and feel" lawsuits. But hey, I guess no one's perfect. His arrogance, normally just a negative trait, was a very positive thing at times too.
Erm, don't forget the Microsoft tax MS is getting by shaking down Android device makers over their mythical "Linux patents".
So what you're saying is that Samsung are happy to go up against Apple (who are much bigger and richer than Microsoft) but will pay anything to Microsoft for any patents it even claims that Samsung is infringing, valid or not.
Microsoft just wants a bit of money (and/or patent exchanges). Apple wants to kill Android.
If you're talking about the US anti-trust suit, it was dropped after a shake-up in the Justice Department.
Ooops, I meant to add more here. The real penalties came from Europe, and they're the ones who demanded real concessions. But it was still nowhere close to the break-up that Microsoft deserved and, IMO, needed. It would have been good for Microsoft. I think the individual companies of a broken-up Microsoft today would be much stronger than the slow mammoth that finds itself mired in the tar pits now.
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It sounds to me like someone at the USADA has a personal vendetta and that the USADA is just another corrupt government agency out of control.
The USADA is not a governmental agency, nor is it part of one. It does get some funding from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, but is not answerable to them or any government bureaucrat.
I'm posting for one purpose only, to bring attention of the parent post to moderators. Mods, people mod the parent up. It's an AC so it's not terribly visible, but does a fantastic job dispelling a few myths.
"The 2008 economic decline was from......the housing bust." - and the housing bust was caused by the Housing Boom caused by the securitization of mortgages on GWB's watch while the Glass-Siegel act was gutted into uselessness
And while the Republicans share a huge amount of blame for the housing bust, Clinton does too for signing the repeal of Glass-Siegel.
The power and water companies do just fine providing equal service to everyone. Neither the government nor the water suppliers tell people what they can and cannot do with their water. Internet bandwidth is no different from a utility. It should get the same treatment.
What really needs to happen, and what stands no chance in hell of happening, is for the communications lines and the ISPs to be disassociated with each other. Right now, the major ISPs own most of the lines, so they control access, policies, and so forth. It leads to monopoly situations, ISP abuses, loss of net neutrality, and all sorts of undesirable circumstances. Instead, the government should install the lines, then lease them to ISPs on an end-user basis. That's how my perfect world would be.
I suspect that the availability of water in your area is a harder constraint than the availability of bandwidth.
I wouldn't take that bet. In many rural areas (which can be close to big cities), it's very easy to transport water to a house, or even dig a well to have your own access to groundwater. Not so much for Internet access. You can have pipes going to your house that are 30+ years old and they're still fine, but telecom lines are obsoleted much faster, unless you're just fine with 14.4kbps speeds.
The boyscout are not required to give gays that really badly want to be around children jobs in their organization
I see what you did there. Classy.
trying to tell Churches who their employees will be and who can be married on their property
I'd like a cite for that. The gay marriage argument has never been about who will be wedded at a church, it's about what marriages, church or not, the government will recognize as valid.
the banking industry is heavily regulated? gimme a break.
It's heavily regulated, just not in ways that really matter and help prevent abuse.
It doesn't work on a good number of iPhones either. The 3G, for instance, seems incapable of taking a photo high enough quality to satisfy the app, despite that it allows you to install the app on that model.
Obama triangulated to center the moment he secured the Democratic Party nomination
Of course. EVERY major candidate shifts to center when they have defeated the challengers in their own party and are on the ballot for the general election in November. They don't get that far by being political idiots.
You'll see it over and over again -- be a bit extremist until the primaries/convention to secure the fringe support, then abandon them because you need moderates and swing votes more than the loonies. You don't actually have to do anything moderate, but you have to the say the right things to get votes.
Where are they supposed to come up with that money? How are they supposed to make it back? Do you think they could just charge every single person $2000-$12000?
There is the problem with those assets being in the hands of the government in the first place
Well who else is it supposed to be owned by? It can't be owned by individuals. It can't be owned by companies. This sort of commons is pretty much the reason the US government was set up in the first place. You can't get any more clear case of a "government function."
Israel has ONE International airport. It's the size of New Jersey.
... Given New Jersey is slightly larger than the Nation of Israel, this seems unlikely. Did you mean it's the size of Newark?
The people at the bottom can't afford that extra 5% that you're proposing. They have nothing left after the basic necessities of life. An additional income tax could literally kill them.
They'd have to actually get a salary increase to offset this new cost, and the people who propose flat taxes tend to be the same people who howl in outrage if an increase to the minimum wage is proposed.
Who needs malware when the parent company will happily factory reset / wipe all your devices in one shot, without any user intervention?
Do you think the average user has any reason to worry about that all? Do you think the average user worries about whether Apple will pull some dirty trick? The average user knows better than you: he knows that Apple has no plans to do that on a mass scale; they'd be incredibly stupid to do so and it would serve no purpose.
You're coming from an ownership point of view: "I own my device, I want to do whatever I want with it, and prevent anyone, including the parent company." That's fine, I feel the same way about my devices, and I've felt stifled enough in the iphone environment to give Android a try. But most users don't care about that. They don't need to. You're making it sound like they're some poor, oppressed masses, but the truth is that they don't care as much about their devices, or specifically, about software freedom as you do. If their iphones do what they want, they don't particularly care about factory resets or whatever scare stories come out that have little chance of ever affecting them. They have different priorities, and they don't want to spend their time on things like malware, device security, and all this other bullshit that is a waste of time. The device works, it's simple, and that's what they want.
People don't care as much about owning. They care about using. The user experience is king. So the average user can't mod it, but they don't see any point in doing so.
The Chinese have mastered the art of counterfeiting goods (and, apparently, entire companies).
And entire towns.
If they want to squeeze some money out of big multinational corporations in Europe, the first thing to do is banning unfair fiscal tricks such as the infamous "Dutch sandwich".
I'll admit, I didn't want to click the link because I'd never heard the phrase before, but just the title sounds vaguely like some sort of perverted sexual practice.
Because the world wide web cannot operate as an opt-in service, and opting-out is not something you have to register with the operators. IE, a website owner doesn't have to go to some page on Google, Bing, Altavista, Wolfram, Yahoo, and whatever to opt out, a setting which would be conveniently 'forgotten' when those sites revised their ToSes, or terminated your account because you didn't log in, or anything along those lines. Those sites instead, are asking you what your preferences are, each time. You are the one who controls how long that setting lasts.
I'm fine with opt-out if it's something I have control of setting myself.
For many of these opt-out situations, the average user of the service doesn't have the education to even know the option exists, or know what will be done with information gathered if they don't opt-out. That's not the case with a website operator, you have to know that Google indexes your web server, and that you can stop that if you wish. If you don't want Google to index the site and don't use robots.txt, then I don't have any pity at that point. I don't feel the same about consumer-level services.
You betcha. Alcoholic/drug using father and the whole bit. You can always change your circumstance. Democrats only want you to change it by owning you. I didn't improve my life by being jealous of others and busting my ass to take their money. Neither should you.
Oooh, I see now. Poor people are poor because they deserve to be poor. They all made terrible life choices that made them poor.
Of course, even if you clean up your act, it's unbelievably difficult to escape the poverty cycle, as opposed to someone who was born into wealth.
When is this special treatment going to stop?
When ICANN stops making money by coming up with a bunch of useless gTLDs that they can extort companies with.
I'm not sure you can prey the gay away.
But that probably works as well as praying.
It's not very easy drawing meaningful conclusions though. If a large number of users already have iPhones, and Samsung Android phones haven't been out nearly as long, then it's not surprising that the product that has been out for a long time has laggier sales. Shouldn't already-installed userbase factor into this as well? Most of these charts seem like they could only be valid if Samsung and Apple's phones were released at the same time, otherwise it's comparing Apples to Oranges.
Yup, that's right kids, basing purchasing decisions in part on corporate ethics is "douchebaggish". Just keep consuming mindlessly and it'll all turn out for the best!
Fucking moron.
There were really two Steve Jobs. There was the good Steve, and there was the bad Steve. The smart Steve, and the incompetent Steve.
The good/smart Steve was focused on products. He'd look at what people tried to deliver and failed with (or underperformed with) and tried to figure out how to do it right, using his insight into what people wanted, and what people would come to like. He's certainly one of the greatest businessmen we've ever seen in this regard.
The bad/incompetent Steve fretted over whether people were imitating Apple or copying or improving the way he copied and improved. The bad Steve got angry if others played by the same rules he did. The bad Steve threw emotional fits and wasted Apple's time and money with BS like this and other "look and feel" lawsuits. But hey, I guess no one's perfect. His arrogance, normally just a negative trait, was a very positive thing at times too.
Erm, don't forget the Microsoft tax MS is getting by shaking down Android device makers over their mythical "Linux patents".
So what you're saying is that Samsung are happy to go up against Apple (who are much bigger and richer than Microsoft) but will pay anything to Microsoft for any patents it even claims that Samsung is infringing, valid or not.
Microsoft just wants a bit of money (and/or patent exchanges).
Apple wants to kill Android.
If you're talking about the US anti-trust suit, it was dropped after a shake-up in the Justice Department.
Ooops, I meant to add more here. The real penalties came from Europe, and they're the ones who demanded real concessions. But it was still nowhere close to the break-up that Microsoft deserved and, IMO, needed. It would have been good for Microsoft. I think the individual companies of a broken-up Microsoft today would be much stronger than the slow mammoth that finds itself mired in the tar pits now.