in the slashdot world, there's only one 'monopoly law' and it says 'companies are not allowed to do anything i don't like'.
Glad to see someone else has finally said that.
Companies do stupid things. And they screw alot of people. But they're not charities - they're out there to make money; some of which goes in YOUR pocket if you work for them, are a supplier to them, have a 401(k) or some other investment device that has stock in them, etc.
Comcast, for one, added 599,000 video, high-speed internet, and voice subscribers in the first quarter of 2010 AND beat all of the analyst's predictions on profit. If this study were true, that wouldn't be the case.
I used to like the Consumerist, now I can't stand them.
And it's a fairly simple reason - they have taken the approach that customers have an entitlement. You know what - the customer is NOT always right. Business are in business to make money - yes, they should treat their customer's fairly, and I will agree (though I haven't experienced it myself) that Comcast hasn't always done such a great job. But as I've said before, if they treated everyone horribly, even without competition, people would drop the service.
For their fight against Net Neutrality alone they deserve the worst company in America award. Anyone that fights against a principal freedom, and takes that freedom away from the public deserves to be held in contempt. No amount of customer service friendliness can ever undo that damage, and that's what Comcast just doesn't get.
Right, because the FCC should be allowed to enforce a "guideline" as a rule, when they aren't empowered by Congress to do so...
Really, that's what Comcast's suit was about. Making the FCC understand that they cannot enforce something that hasn't gone through the rule-making process. If the FCC goes back to the table, and goes through the legitimate process, I'm sure Comcast will piss and moan and try to fight it - they have to, they have shareholders - but in the end, if it's upheld, they will obey.
In the gaming community, I've noticed a trend where people will drop offline, then reappear, explaining that they'd been "Comcast'd". Take that as you will.
And yet I find that most of the people I know who say that either: A) Don't actually have Comcast - they just think they do (wireless, dorm, whatever). B) Their PC or Network is shoddy.
Gamers are the worse (I am one, for the record). The first reaction is to blame the ISP when something goes wrong. After working in tech support for a gaming pc manufacturer, I saw this first hand. No one wants to believe that the issue is really because they screwed something up on their system. Yet 90% of the time, that's exactly what the issue would be when I would get the call about "Yeah, I can't get online and F-in Comcast says it's not their issue... stupid F-Ks!". Then come to find out that they hadn't kept their system up to date, and as a result the latest what-have-you nailed them and killed their TCP/IP stack. Then they go "But Comcast should've stopped that!". Can't win for loosing.
Anyhow, 10 Years at this point - and I've not had a single issue with my service. Even when all the BitTorrent crap was going down, I didn't have any problems - neither did anyone I know. All of which leads me to believe that for every "bad" story I hear, there must be far more to it than we know - and there must be far more good stories that we just don't hear about.
- kick off users for exceeding undefined GB download limits
- sell 25 Mbit/s lines that are actually only 5 Mbit/s - no better than DSL but twice as costly.
- force users to switch to Digital Cable which is incompatible with VCRs or DVRs
- And even if said boxes were compatible, the Digital boxes don't allow the user to tape one show while watching another live.
- Hold a Monopoly and bribe politicians to keep out competitors
- Bought out NBC Universal, so Comcast can censor any anti-comcast dissent from NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, USA, Bravo, Syfy, Telemundo, and so on.
Worst.
Company.
Ever.
Err, no. It's quite well publicized that the download cap is 250GB per month - larger than any other ISP in the US with a cap. I have a 16Mbps line - I average 14Mbps. No, you are not forced to switch to Digital Cable - they are changing their signal in order to put more channels in the same bandwidth - something that customers have been asking for for ages - and to stop people from stealing service. You can put something like 16 SD digital signals in the same bandwidth taken up by one Analog channel. The first two DTA's are free (some areas it's 3), each one after that is $1.99 - and this is National pricing. In my area there are 2 direct competitors to Comcast - including AT&T U-Verse (want to talk about crappy service - AT&T has NEVER been known for it's service, and they're even worse now). And finally Comcast didn't "buy out" NBC - they bought a 51% stake. Yes, that means a voting majority, but that doesn't mean they've "bought them out".
Try getting your facts straight. I've had Comcast for almost 10 years - they've been FAR better than their predecessor in my area (Viacom). They're not perfect, but I've yet to meet a company that is - and I've had far worse experiences with others (here's looking at you, AT&T). Let's face the truth folks - if all, or even the vast majority of Comcast customer's had such horrible experience, they would be hemorrhaging subscribers - but they're not. The fact is, that most customers are happy - they're just not as loud as others.
I hope firewalls (well, specifically, NAT routers, DMZs, port forwarding, etc- which all seem to get grouped in 'firewalls') in general will become much LESS of an issue in the future thanks to IPv6. In that world, everything's got a unique address so there's really no need for NAT, private subnets, or the routing issues associated with those.
IMHO, the task of firewalling has been (somewhat incorrectly) pushed on the device doing the routing, when it should be handled on the device itself. Hosts, actual end points, should be able to decided what they will do with the traffic that gets to them, not something in the middle. It's been placed on the router because in our current IPv4 / NAT world, it has to be put there, so the traffic can even *make it to* said end point host.
No. It was not moved to a router because of the current IPv4/NAT - after all, there is a thing called a software firewall. The problem is that unless NIC manufacturers place hardware firewalls on their NICs, software is inadequate, and subject to being compromised - and yes, I know hardware firewalls can be as well. But I'm looking at a certain OS in this instance.
Even with IPv6, network overhead will continue to be an issue - and if I'm not mistaken, IPv6 uses larger headers, and thus more overhead, than IPv4. On older networks, if you remove the routers that intelligently direct traffic, because "they're no longer necessary" you are almost guaranteed to run into a situation where the available bandwidth is now entirely saturated - thanks to broadcast traffic.
Personally, I don't care if I have a world-wide unique IP address - I want a device that sits on peering point of my network and goes "Oh hell no!" and drops packets for me - without placing that overhead on each individual machine downstream, and hoping/praying that some rogue user/software/etc. hasn't decided to open a port it/they think is necessary.
In a press conference on April 5, 2010 at the National Press Club (USA), Wikileaks released a video "showing murder of Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists".[106] The 38 min video shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site reveals that US military mistook the journalists' cameras for AK-47s and a Rocket-propelled grenade, and opened fire, resulting in the violent death of several people, including the two Reuters news staff Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen.
While I haven't had the opportunity to watch the video or see the accompanying material, I just have to say this - I take anything and everything Reuters says with a grain of salt - a big one - after they published photo's they knew to be doctored, and later admitted it. Not only that, but even after admitting it they continued to publish photos that they knew to be doctored.
if you are paying money for a piece of hardware, you should be able to do with the hardware anything you wish.
Including a cable TV decoder box?
Your argument is flawed - if you get your cable box from an MSO, you're not purchasing - you're renting. However, you are buying an iPad/Phone/Touch/Pod/whatever and thus own the Hardware (hence a warranty) and thus should be able to do whatever you want with it.
I purchase a new PC, I'm not told that I can't play a particular game or use a particular piece of software on it, just because the manufacturer or distributor of said hardware doesn't wish me to. I'd actually like someone to try this sometime, because I'm pretty sure it would come up against Restraint of Trade, which is a nasty thing to get in the way of.
That just goes to show you that without some numbers to back it up life is so ambiguous. In MY impression there is a preponderance of Apple-hating commenters here on Slashdot. Presumable those same Apple haters are not also running Windows, which is just as closed as anything Apple puts out, but consistency of thougt--even among so-called geeks--is not a major human trait.
I have to strongly disagree here. You cannot compare a DRM restricted hardware platform like the iPhone and iPad (and PS3, XBOX, PSP, etc.) and an OPERATING SYSTEM.
Microsoft may not be open source, or play well with standards, but you are still running an operating system (licensed right?) on hardware that you get to actually own. Of course you don't own the operating system. If you want a more open operating system choose Linux instead. Open source with hardware you really own feels really quite nice.
If I purchased an iPhone or an iPad I would feel justifiably pissed off that I don't have complete root access from second one. Preventing me from doing that is completely retarded, unethical, and downright shitty. I can feel the arguments starting, so I will just say this: If you don't want me to have root access on the hardware... then RENT THE BASTARD TO ME. Don't SELL it.
The same goes with any other piece of electronics. I feel perfectly justified and ethically correct to run custom firmware on the PSP, mod my XBOX whatever, and ultimately enjoy a completely 'cracked' and 'hacked' PS3.
Which is, btw, why you can't ever hack a piece of hardware to run a different operating sytem that you own. You own it. You did not do anything but enjoy your PROPERTY.
So consistency of thought? I think most of/. is remarkably consistent in this regard. 1) DRM sucks and is Defective by Design, and 2) You should be able to do anything you want with your property.
This issue is pervasive in our culture right now. The powers that be are fighting as hard as they can to prevent our effective ownership of anything. They don't want us to resell our books, our music, our movies, our games. They don't want us to do what WE want with our hardware, but what THEY want with *their* hardware. They want laws to punish us severely when get around the draconian restrictions they put into place on us.
Their ideal world is one in which we own nothing, lease everything, and pay by the minute to do so. That dog won't hunt will it? Yet they continue to try to make it happen. So let's not distract from the real argument here..... the fact the iPad which you purchased is not wholly owned by you when the expectations are that you really do.
*clap clap clap*
Are you available for speeches and/or lectures? I'm serious.
The greater good can fuck itself up the ass sideways. The greater good has, through one evolution or another, given us every truly despotic regime on this planet. It has justified more bloodshed and evil than any other phrase in existence.
If you beat someone up with a bat, wouldnt it be silly if a court ordered you to stay away from baseball games, sporting good stores, and ban you from every owning a bat again?
Unlike receiving a DUI conviction and losing your license, while you are at the helm of your computer you do not risk careening into the other lane and killing a bus full of people. The computer is just a utility, not the vector.
The computer doesn't do the molesting, molester's do the molesting. The computer is one utility of many. If we start piecemeal restricting people from the things that could be used to aid in causing harm, what will we have left? Typical America, treating the symptoms, not the problems.
Props to the appeals court for finally realizing this stupidity.
Agreed.
Though the real props are that the court said that restricting use of a computer totally was unjustified - not that he should be allowed to be online. The proper thing is for the lower court to modify the sentence and say that he can't have access to the internet via a computer.
Of course, that still leaves open the definition of what constitutes a computer that others have mentioned.
My biggest problem with this (and most) legislation at the federal level is that The Constitution doesn't allow it. These matters were meant to be left up to the states.
If each and every one of the 50 states passed this separately, I would have considerably less issue with it.
I suppose you're talking about the 10th Amendment, again?
A little war fought between 1861 and 1865 in many ways set the limits on the 10th Amendment. Case law since then backs up that idea. Seeing as healthcare affects all Americans, regardless of state, that would make it a Federal, not a State, issue.
My biggest problem with this (and most) legislation at the federal level is that The Constitution doesn't allow it. These matters were meant to be left up to the states.
If each and every one of the 50 states passed this separately, I would have considerably less issue with it.
You're wrong: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
And for those who say the Preamble doesn't have any legal authority, wrong again:
Ellis v. City of Grand Rapids
"Substantively, the case was about eminent domain. The City of Grand Rapids wanted to use eminent domain to force landowners to sell property in the city identified as "blighted", and convey the property to owners that would develop it in ostensibly beneficial ways: in this case, to St. Mary's Hospital, a Catholic organization. This area of substantive constitutional law is governed by the Fifth Amendment, which is understood to require that property acquired via eminent domain must be put to a "public use". In interpreting whether the proposed project constituted a "public use", the court pointed to the Preamble's reference to "promot[ing] the general Welfare" as evidence that "[t]he health of the people was in the minds of our forefathers". "[T]he concerted effort for renewal and expansion of hospital and medical care centers, as a part of our nation's system of hospitals, is as a public service and use within the highest meaning of such terms. Surely this is in accord with an objective of the United States Constitution: '* * * promote the general Welfare.'"
From the U.S. population point of view - there are very few people that seem to be against reform.
Almost everybody thinks reform is needed. Almost nobody thinks that Congress is competent enough to make good reforms.
Indeed, but if there comes a time when an industry that affects 99% of a countries population refuses to reform voluntarily, then the government of the people must step in. After all, this country was formed "...to promote the general welfare" of it's citizenry.
The one thing that I find highly entertaining, yet sad, is that 95% of those claiming this bill is Unconstitutional don't realize that A) it's not; and B) there is already established case law that supports the goals of this bill. I don't agreed with all the provisions - but something HAD to be done, and now it has.
Well, I can choose not to own/drive a car, and escape that mandate. What do I have to do to escape this one?
You can choose to not have health... that is, you can commit suicide. Then you won't be required to get health insurance.
For the record I think that the mandate is a bit on the extreme side - but I can see how it serves a purpose, though I don't necessarily agree with that purpose.
It's a fact that without a public option, the only way to control premium costs is to have a very large pool of users - and the only way to do that is to require that people carry insurance.
However, I think the mandate is going to hurt the very people that this bill is supposed to be helping.
Re:Need a little more research on Article 10
on
Health Care Reform
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· Score: 2, Informative
That states the reason for drafting the constitution. It's not explicitly granting the power to do that (as is required by the text of the 10th amendment). Sure, it will be argued that health care falls within that, but it won't be the first time that an invalid argument was made in an attempt to prove a point...
Except that that exact section of the Preamble has already been used to argue successfully for government power for the greater Welfare of the people - and in a healthcare case, no less!
See: Ellis v. City of Grand Rapids.
I quote "Substantively, the case was about eminent domain. The City of Grand Rapids wanted to use eminent domain to force landowners to sell property in the city identified as "blighted", and convey the property to owners that would develop it in ostensibly beneficial ways: in this case, to St. Mary's Hospital, a Catholic organization. This area of substantive constitutional law is governed by the Fifth Amendment, which is understood to require that property acquired via eminent domain must be put to a "public use". In interpreting whether the proposed project constituted a "public use", the court pointed to the Preamble's reference to "promot[ing] the general Welfare" as evidence that "[t]he health of the people was in the minds of our forefathers". "[T]he concerted effort for renewal and expansion of hospital and medical care centers, as a part of our nation's system of hospitals, is as a public service and use within the highest meaning of such terms. Surely this is in accord with an objective of the United States Constitution: '* * * promote the general Welfare.'"
I don't know how mandating citizens to purchase health insurance is going to pass Constitutional muster.
The same question can be asked about states that require that drivers must have car insurance - yet none of those laws have ever been successfully challenged.
Re:Need a little more research on Article 10
on
Health Care Reform
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· Score: 1
If I take what you're stating correctly, then Article 10 would also be able to shoot down Medicare, Fannie/Freddie, the NEA, the DOL.... NASA.
In other words, it sounds right, but ever since the Civil War, I don't think it's been enforced in the manner you describe. There are specific exceptions in case law when dealing with commerce, and with health care spending in the top 5, it's a pretty easy out for the SC.
I think you need look no further than the DEA's position on medical marijuana laws to realize that the 10th isn't that powerful.
I'm not arguing that the 10th shouldn't be the law of the land, just that it plainly isn't, and a court challenge on strict 10th amendment grounds would cause an upheaval to the federal government.
There's a bigger out than that right in the preamble to the Constitution:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
It can and will, I assure you, be argued that the "promote the general Welfare" allows the Government to take actions that, in general, benefit all citizens. It cannot be argued that reforming Healthcare won't have a positive impact on citizens of the United States. Some may not like it, but it comes down to whether a tangible benefit can be shown for the majority of those affected - and I think that will be fairly easy to do.
Slashdot Mirror
in the slashdot world, there's only one 'monopoly law' and it says 'companies are not allowed to do anything i don't like'.
Glad to see someone else has finally said that.
Companies do stupid things. And they screw alot of people. But they're not charities - they're out there to make money; some of which goes in YOUR pocket if you work for them, are a supplier to them, have a 401(k) or some other investment device that has stock in them, etc.
Yeah, I'm just not buying this.
Comcast, for one, added 599,000 video, high-speed internet, and voice subscribers in the first quarter of 2010 AND beat all of the analyst's predictions on profit. If this study were true, that wouldn't be the case.
Sources:
Comcast’s 1Q beats last year and analysts’ estimates
Highlights From CMCSA's Q1 Conference Call
I used to like the Consumerist, now I can't stand them. And it's a fairly simple reason - they have taken the approach that customers have an entitlement. You know what - the customer is NOT always right. Business are in business to make money - yes, they should treat their customer's fairly, and I will agree (though I haven't experienced it myself) that Comcast hasn't always done such a great job. But as I've said before, if they treated everyone horribly, even without competition, people would drop the service.
For their fight against Net Neutrality alone they deserve the worst company in America award. Anyone that fights against a principal freedom, and takes that freedom away from the public deserves to be held in contempt. No amount of customer service friendliness can ever undo that damage, and that's what Comcast just doesn't get.
Right, because the FCC should be allowed to enforce a "guideline" as a rule, when they aren't empowered by Congress to do so...
Really, that's what Comcast's suit was about. Making the FCC understand that they cannot enforce something that hasn't gone through the rule-making process. If the FCC goes back to the table, and goes through the legitimate process, I'm sure Comcast will piss and moan and try to fight it - they have to, they have shareholders - but in the end, if it's upheld, they will obey.
In the gaming community, I've noticed a trend where people will drop offline, then reappear, explaining that they'd been "Comcast'd". Take that as you will.
And yet I find that most of the people I know who say that either: A) Don't actually have Comcast - they just think they do (wireless, dorm, whatever). B) Their PC or Network is shoddy.
Gamers are the worse (I am one, for the record). The first reaction is to blame the ISP when something goes wrong. After working in tech support for a gaming pc manufacturer, I saw this first hand. No one wants to believe that the issue is really because they screwed something up on their system. Yet 90% of the time, that's exactly what the issue would be when I would get the call about "Yeah, I can't get online and F-in Comcast says it's not their issue... stupid F-Ks!". Then come to find out that they hadn't kept their system up to date, and as a result the latest what-have-you nailed them and killed their TCP/IP stack. Then they go "But Comcast should've stopped that!". Can't win for loosing.
Anyhow, 10 Years at this point - and I've not had a single issue with my service. Even when all the BitTorrent crap was going down, I didn't have any problems - neither did anyone I know. All of which leads me to believe that for every "bad" story I hear, there must be far more to it than we know - and there must be far more good stories that we just don't hear about.
Yep. Comcast is the worst. They also:
- kick off users for exceeding undefined GB download limits
- sell 25 Mbit/s lines that are actually only 5 Mbit/s - no better than DSL but twice as costly.
- force users to switch to Digital Cable which is incompatible with VCRs or DVRs
- And even if said boxes were compatible, the Digital boxes don't allow the user to tape one show while watching another live.
- Hold a Monopoly and bribe politicians to keep out competitors
- Bought out NBC Universal, so Comcast can censor any anti-comcast dissent from NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, USA, Bravo, Syfy, Telemundo, and so on.
Worst. Company. Ever.
Err, no. It's quite well publicized that the download cap is 250GB per month - larger than any other ISP in the US with a cap. I have a 16Mbps line - I average 14Mbps. No, you are not forced to switch to Digital Cable - they are changing their signal in order to put more channels in the same bandwidth - something that customers have been asking for for ages - and to stop people from stealing service. You can put something like 16 SD digital signals in the same bandwidth taken up by one Analog channel. The first two DTA's are free (some areas it's 3), each one after that is $1.99 - and this is National pricing. In my area there are 2 direct competitors to Comcast - including AT&T U-Verse (want to talk about crappy service - AT&T has NEVER been known for it's service, and they're even worse now). And finally Comcast didn't "buy out" NBC - they bought a 51% stake. Yes, that means a voting majority, but that doesn't mean they've "bought them out".
Try getting your facts straight. I've had Comcast for almost 10 years - they've been FAR better than their predecessor in my area (Viacom). They're not perfect, but I've yet to meet a company that is - and I've had far worse experiences with others (here's looking at you, AT&T). Let's face the truth folks - if all, or even the vast majority of Comcast customer's had such horrible experience, they would be hemorrhaging subscribers - but they're not. The fact is, that most customers are happy - they're just not as loud as others.
I hope firewalls (well, specifically, NAT routers, DMZs, port forwarding, etc- which all seem to get grouped in 'firewalls') in general will become much LESS of an issue in the future thanks to IPv6. In that world, everything's got a unique address so there's really no need for NAT, private subnets, or the routing issues associated with those.
IMHO, the task of firewalling has been (somewhat incorrectly) pushed on the device doing the routing, when it should be handled on the device itself. Hosts, actual end points, should be able to decided what they will do with the traffic that gets to them, not something in the middle. It's been placed on the router because in our current IPv4 / NAT world, it has to be put there, so the traffic can even *make it to* said end point host.
No. It was not moved to a router because of the current IPv4/NAT - after all, there is a thing called a software firewall. The problem is that unless NIC manufacturers place hardware firewalls on their NICs, software is inadequate, and subject to being compromised - and yes, I know hardware firewalls can be as well. But I'm looking at a certain OS in this instance.
Even with IPv6, network overhead will continue to be an issue - and if I'm not mistaken, IPv6 uses larger headers, and thus more overhead, than IPv4. On older networks, if you remove the routers that intelligently direct traffic, because "they're no longer necessary" you are almost guaranteed to run into a situation where the available bandwidth is now entirely saturated - thanks to broadcast traffic.
Personally, I don't care if I have a world-wide unique IP address - I want a device that sits on peering point of my network and goes "Oh hell no!" and drops packets for me - without placing that overhead on each individual machine downstream, and hoping/praying that some rogue user/software/etc. hasn't decided to open a port it/they think is necessary.
In a press conference on April 5, 2010 at the National Press Club (USA), Wikileaks released a video "showing murder of Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists".[106] The 38 min video shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site reveals that US military mistook the journalists' cameras for AK-47s and a Rocket-propelled grenade, and opened fire, resulting in the violent death of several people, including the two Reuters news staff Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikileaks#Airstrike_Video_Release
Reuters article: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1617459520070716
While I haven't had the opportunity to watch the video or see the accompanying material, I just have to say this - I take anything and everything Reuters says with a grain of salt - a big one - after they published photo's they knew to be doctored, and later admitted it. Not only that, but even after admitting it they continued to publish photos that they knew to be doctored.
if you are paying money for a piece of hardware, you should be able to do with the hardware anything you wish.
Including a cable TV decoder box?
Your argument is flawed - if you get your cable box from an MSO, you're not purchasing - you're renting. However, you are buying an iPad/Phone/Touch/Pod/whatever and thus own the Hardware (hence a warranty) and thus should be able to do whatever you want with it.
I purchase a new PC, I'm not told that I can't play a particular game or use a particular piece of software on it, just because the manufacturer or distributor of said hardware doesn't wish me to. I'd actually like someone to try this sometime, because I'm pretty sure it would come up against Restraint of Trade, which is a nasty thing to get in the way of.
I have to strongly disagree here. You cannot compare a DRM restricted hardware platform like the iPhone and iPad (and PS3, XBOX, PSP, etc.) and an OPERATING SYSTEM.
Microsoft may not be open source, or play well with standards, but you are still running an operating system (licensed right?) on hardware that you get to actually own. Of course you don't own the operating system. If you want a more open operating system choose Linux instead. Open source with hardware you really own feels really quite nice.
If I purchased an iPhone or an iPad I would feel justifiably pissed off that I don't have complete root access from second one. Preventing me from doing that is completely retarded, unethical, and downright shitty. I can feel the arguments starting, so I will just say this: If you don't want me to have root access on the hardware... then RENT THE BASTARD TO ME. Don't SELL it.
The same goes with any other piece of electronics. I feel perfectly justified and ethically correct to run custom firmware on the PSP, mod my XBOX whatever, and ultimately enjoy a completely 'cracked' and 'hacked' PS3.
Which is, btw, why you can't ever hack a piece of hardware to run a different operating sytem that you own. You own it. You did not do anything but enjoy your PROPERTY.
So consistency of thought? I think most of /. is remarkably consistent in this regard. 1) DRM sucks and is Defective by Design, and 2) You should be able to do anything you want with your property.
This issue is pervasive in our culture right now. The powers that be are fighting as hard as they can to prevent our effective ownership of anything. They don't want us to resell our books, our music, our movies, our games. They don't want us to do what WE want with our hardware, but what THEY want with *their* hardware. They want laws to punish us severely when get around the draconian restrictions they put into place on us.
Their ideal world is one in which we own nothing, lease everything, and pay by the minute to do so. That dog won't hunt will it? Yet they continue to try to make it happen. So let's not distract from the real argument here..... the fact the iPad which you purchased is not wholly owned by you when the expectations are that you really do.
*clap clap clap* Are you available for speeches and/or lectures? I'm serious.
The greater good can fuck itself up the ass sideways. The greater good has, through one evolution or another, given us every truly despotic regime on this planet. It has justified more bloodshed and evil than any other phrase in existence.
You're thinking of Religion, actually.
If you beat someone up with a bat, wouldnt it be silly if a court ordered you to stay away from baseball games, sporting good stores, and ban you from every owning a bat again?
In America? Yes!
Unlike receiving a DUI conviction and losing your license, while you are at the helm of your computer you do not risk careening into the other lane and killing a bus full of people. The computer is just a utility, not the vector. The computer doesn't do the molesting, molester's do the molesting. The computer is one utility of many. If we start piecemeal restricting people from the things that could be used to aid in causing harm, what will we have left? Typical America, treating the symptoms, not the problems. Props to the appeals court for finally realizing this stupidity.
Agreed. Though the real props are that the court said that restricting use of a computer totally was unjustified - not that he should be allowed to be online. The proper thing is for the lower court to modify the sentence and say that he can't have access to the internet via a computer. Of course, that still leaves open the definition of what constitutes a computer that others have mentioned.
My biggest problem with this (and most) legislation at the federal level is that The Constitution doesn't allow it. These matters were meant to be left up to the states. If each and every one of the 50 states passed this separately, I would have considerably less issue with it.
I suppose you're talking about the 10th Amendment, again? A little war fought between 1861 and 1865 in many ways set the limits on the 10th Amendment. Case law since then backs up that idea. Seeing as healthcare affects all Americans, regardless of state, that would make it a Federal, not a State, issue.
My biggest problem with this (and most) legislation at the federal level is that The Constitution doesn't allow it. These matters were meant to be left up to the states. If each and every one of the 50 states passed this separately, I would have considerably less issue with it.
You're wrong: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
And for those who say the Preamble doesn't have any legal authority, wrong again:
Ellis v. City of Grand Rapids
"Substantively, the case was about eminent domain. The City of Grand Rapids wanted to use eminent domain to force landowners to sell property in the city identified as "blighted", and convey the property to owners that would develop it in ostensibly beneficial ways: in this case, to St. Mary's Hospital, a Catholic organization. This area of substantive constitutional law is governed by the Fifth Amendment, which is understood to require that property acquired via eminent domain must be put to a "public use". In interpreting whether the proposed project constituted a "public use", the court pointed to the Preamble's reference to "promot[ing] the general Welfare" as evidence that "[t]he health of the people was in the minds of our forefathers". "[T]he concerted effort for renewal and expansion of hospital and medical care centers, as a part of our nation's system of hospitals, is as a public service and use within the highest meaning of such terms. Surely this is in accord with an objective of the United States Constitution: '* * * promote the general Welfare.'"
Almost everybody thinks reform is needed. Almost nobody thinks that Congress is competent enough to make good reforms.
Indeed, but if there comes a time when an industry that affects 99% of a countries population refuses to reform voluntarily, then the government of the people must step in. After all, this country was formed "...to promote the general welfare" of it's citizenry.
The one thing that I find highly entertaining, yet sad, is that 95% of those claiming this bill is Unconstitutional don't realize that A) it's not; and B) there is already established case law that supports the goals of this bill. I don't agreed with all the provisions - but something HAD to be done, and now it has.
You can choose to not have health... that is, you can commit suicide. Then you won't be required to get health insurance.
For the record I think that the mandate is a bit on the extreme side - but I can see how it serves a purpose, though I don't necessarily agree with that purpose. It's a fact that without a public option, the only way to control premium costs is to have a very large pool of users - and the only way to do that is to require that people carry insurance. However, I think the mandate is going to hurt the very people that this bill is supposed to be helping.
That states the reason for drafting the constitution. It's not explicitly granting the power to do that (as is required by the text of the 10th amendment). Sure, it will be argued that health care falls within that, but it won't be the first time that an invalid argument was made in an attempt to prove a point...
Except that that exact section of the Preamble has already been used to argue successfully for government power for the greater Welfare of the people - and in a healthcare case, no less!
See: Ellis v. City of Grand Rapids.
I quote "Substantively, the case was about eminent domain. The City of Grand Rapids wanted to use eminent domain to force landowners to sell property in the city identified as "blighted", and convey the property to owners that would develop it in ostensibly beneficial ways: in this case, to St. Mary's Hospital, a Catholic organization. This area of substantive constitutional law is governed by the Fifth Amendment, which is understood to require that property acquired via eminent domain must be put to a "public use". In interpreting whether the proposed project constituted a "public use", the court pointed to the Preamble's reference to "promot[ing] the general Welfare" as evidence that "[t]he health of the people was in the minds of our forefathers". "[T]he concerted effort for renewal and expansion of hospital and medical care centers, as a part of our nation's system of hospitals, is as a public service and use within the highest meaning of such terms. Surely this is in accord with an objective of the United States Constitution: '* * * promote the general Welfare.'"
I don't know how mandating citizens to purchase health insurance is going to pass Constitutional muster.
The same question can be asked about states that require that drivers must have car insurance - yet none of those laws have ever been successfully challenged.
If I take what you're stating correctly, then Article 10 would also be able to shoot down Medicare, Fannie/Freddie, the NEA, the DOL.... NASA. In other words, it sounds right, but ever since the Civil War, I don't think it's been enforced in the manner you describe. There are specific exceptions in case law when dealing with commerce, and with health care spending in the top 5, it's a pretty easy out for the SC. I think you need look no further than the DEA's position on medical marijuana laws to realize that the 10th isn't that powerful. I'm not arguing that the 10th shouldn't be the law of the land, just that it plainly isn't, and a court challenge on strict 10th amendment grounds would cause an upheaval to the federal government.
There's a bigger out than that right in the preamble to the Constitution:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
It can and will, I assure you, be argued that the "promote the general Welfare" allows the Government to take actions that, in general, benefit all citizens. It cannot be argued that reforming Healthcare won't have a positive impact on citizens of the United States. Some may not like it, but it comes down to whether a tangible benefit can be shown for the majority of those affected - and I think that will be fairly easy to do.