Ada Lovelace Grace Hopper Marie Curie Pierre Curie George Washington Carver Benjamin Banneker Daniel Hale Williams Elizabeth Blackwell Rebecca Cole Richard Feynman Isaac Asimov Leonardo DiVinci Garrett Augustus Morgan Norbert Rillieux Thomas Edison Ming Antu
One idea: encourage people to find scientists they can "identify" with. Show diversity, and that *everyone* can indeed be a scientist. My list is somewhat more geared at minorities, because most of the big names are well-known.
But thumbs up to the teacher. Shoulders of giants and all that.
Because they're pronounced differently. In tone, at least. In my dialect, at least. I can't speak that well for the large number of other English-speakers.
By setting the bar high, the government makes an attempt to guarantee the quality of service to both residents and tourists, because only people interested in doing a serious job would lay out the initial cash.
And in the process, locks out a large segment of the population from even entering the market in the first place. It practically guarantees an oligarchy.
It would be... until the competition disappears. Then what are they competing with?
Okay, so this company is now the only widget-maker, which they achieved by having a lower-cost or higher-quality widget or whatever. If they maintain that level, then consumers continue to benefit. And if they start raising prices (as monopolies are wont to do), then, presuming a low barrier to entry into the market, another company will rise up with a cheaper widget. No, it may not happen immediately. But it will happen. Assuming, of course, that they can.
It gives them the opportunity to reroute requests and just generally control the user's experience, even exert a political voice by censoring sites which may be critical of its practices.
Not that they don't already do that to some extent now...but again, you're assuming the worst of these companies. I'm not.
Although I will concede that a bill that prevents ISPs from censoring the Internet is not a bad thing, provided it still allows them to block spammers and so on. I'm contesting the idea that we need a bill that guarantees that all Internet traffic is treated equally.
the government is incipiently really no more or less trustworthy... but it is better in this regard because WE have oversight. Do we have oversight of the company?
We have more oversight over a given company than we do over the government. Every single day, McDonalds is under public scrutiny, and has to succeed in the market. On the other hand, the shortest term for the federal government is two years. You elect a Representative, and s/he can do whatever s/he wants for the next two years. It's signing a blank check. Companies at least are accountable every day (or every month in some cases).
The government does know best about a lot of things, because the PEOPLE know best about a lot of things.
Yet, a lot of people will vote based on one issue. And, I would argue that the people do not know best about a lot of things, such as how to guarantee safety in a nuclear reactor. Congress consults experts in various fields for this sort of information.
No other structure in our society is better at largescale administration
Which is why the Red Cross was far more effective in response to Hurricane Katrina than FEMA was, of course. And why the heavy-government Soviet society had no problems with over- or under- production. I strongly contest this claim.
and it carries the force of law with which people may redress the issues concerning them to a society
I will concede this. "It's the law" carries more weight than "You should because it's good"
But you totally throw out your argument when you suggest that companies, left to their own devices, are interested in protecting the environment, passing on savings to its customers, and generally doing the right thing by people.
As you noted, companies are merely neutral entities. If consumers were concerned about these things, then companies would shift to attract consumers; however, consumers tend to be concerned solely with the bottom line.
The environment is a sticky issue. I would rather not delve into that because, honestly, I have not yet truly formed a cohesive opinion for myself on the issue.
If you need examples, I could probably produce a laundry list of companies who have ostensibly NOT done the right thing by people, either those under their employ or to their consumers, but I don't think you are the sort who would deny this.
And it would not be too hard to find a list of governments and government agencies that have done th
Fair enough, and you do make some good points. However:
Well, what happens when the barrier to entry for producing this product is rather high, and the original company is well established?
I would ask why the barrier to entry is as high as it is. Why does it cost over 300,000$ to get a taxicab liscence in New York City, for instance? The (government-set) number seems fairly arbitrary to me, given how the costs for my car get nowhere near that high.
But, if you were to break down barriers to entry into markets, then you would (I think) start to see serious competition against monopolies. Getting rid of subsidies for established companies would also help, as that's a barrier to entry.
I will concede that it is possible that there is a universe where ABC Co. has a monopoly on widgets, and no business springs up to compete. The thing is, I would wonder at why no competition appears. If ABC Co. keeps raising prices (which, admittedly, monopolies do tend to do), eventually (assuming minimal, if any, barriers to entry) the small business will be able to compete with ABC Co. So why doesn't competition show up?
I suspect the answer is barriers to entry.
The question is: what happens when a company beats its competition? Answer: the consumer loses.
I will admit that I do not follow. If a company beats its competition, then its product would have to be competitive in some form against its competitors; consumers would get the benefit from that.
Mind, there are other factors at work in the market. And you may perhaps be arguing that once competition is beaten, no more innovation occurs. At which point, I would wonder why no competition springs up with the new innovations (which the bigger company may eventually copy).
I suspect the answer is, again, barriers to entry.
You make a fair assertion that a company is a neutral thing that has the goal of making profit; I cannot argue this assertion. And I do agree that it can cause companies to become shortsighted and damaging. I am not trying to condone that activity. Though I would assert that the larger the company is, the more likely that is to occur; small businesses, from my experience, do want a profit, but tend to "play nicer" than larger companies. Bigger companies do indeed like to throw their weight around, and have the advantage of scale when purchasing.
So yes, I see your point about the telco and cable companies' lobbying, and about what they will do. If there is no Net Neutrality, I do agree that they will create a tiered access of some sort. But I'm not entirely convinced that they will slow every website to a crawl, as that would cause consternation in their customers. On the other hand, I think it's a very real concern over censorship.
On the other hand, what if an ISP wants to be built around being "family-friendly", and would automatically censor pornography and other kid-unsafe websites? They could advertise themselves to religious families as "family-friendly". I have a hard time saying that said ISP should not exist because it does not follow a net neutrality position. Though it should be upfront about its censorship.
Government control may lead to totalitarianism, but government regulation keeps us free, and not beholden to monopolistic practice.
What's the difference between government control and government regulation? As I understand how they are implemented, regulations tend to control what a business can and cannot do.
You also commit bifurcation. You assume that there are only two possibilities for a company to have, say, sanitation checking: themself, or the government. However, the ACT is an organization that performs academic testing outside of the government, and outside of the schools that rely on its scores. What if there were companies that perform the safety inspections and so on--companies that specialized in safety inspections? What real difference wo
Fair enough. Though what, again, distinguishes advertisements from commentary?
I'm also aware that at the moment it excludes the Internet. That does not preclude, however, a later expansion to the bill, or another bill specifically for the Internet. After all, if the Internet is public space (just like radio) that the government has some regulation over (just like radio), then the government should be allowed to control what happens in that public space (just like radio).
I would rather avoid that possibility altogether. I'm already not fond of how the government has decided what is acceptable for television and radio; I would rather not see it also do that with the Internet.
I will concede that on a certain level, the free market is a philosophical concept, rather than a reality. Though I will not concede that a purely free market "allows" anything at the expense of the consumer; the word choice is setting me up to put my foot in my mouth.
In a free market, yes, it is possible for a company to produce a good and charge far more than that product is worth. However, if the deal is really that bad, then another company will produce that good at a "more reasonable" price. Perhaps the original company can underprice and lose money, since it has more in its coffers. Eventually (which may, admittedly, be long off), that will be damaging to the company. The original company may also engage in various unethical practices to create a stranglehold on the market. I am not condoning these practices. I am advocating a free market, not an anarchy.
You're right, in many places, there's not cable competition. Right now. But here's the real question: why is there no competition?
I suspect if you research that, you'll find that it eventually comes back to the government. Remember, our government gave 47 billion dollars in subsidies to companies in 2005. That's a hell of a lot of money that the government gets to decide what company wins for me.
And of course, cable does compete with other companies that provide Internet service, such as DSL. True, their areas of coverage are different at the moment. But both are trying fairly aggressively to expand into the other's territory.
The thing is, you seem to be making the presumption that companies raise prices simply because they're evil. I don't buy that argument. Every company (regardless of size) prices its products based on the cost to produce that product (raw materials, labor, et c), along with an expectation of what demand will be like. Along with, admittedly, other business considerations.
I will admit that I'm not sure I know what you mean by "unfettered capitalism". I am advocating minimal government intervention in how companies conduct their business. This is because I believe that government control eventually leads to totalitarianism, which I find to be a state I would rather not live in. That and it seems to me that places the government doesn't step in tend to have more innovation and are of more benefit to people in general. So I would rather the government not get involved in anything unless necessary. And I'm not convinced this is a necessary point at all.
Fair enough. Though I think this more hilights the difference between what people philosophically desire, and what legislation actually says.
I will admit, however, to being wary of the government attempting to extend McCain-Feingold, or produce a similar piece of legislation, to the Internet and make it illegal to endorse a particular candidate within so many days prior to an election. To me, political free speech is the most important free speech, and laws such as McCain-Feingold that remove political speech are something of an anathema.
Again hilighting the different between philosophy and legislation:)
Aha, but you didn't answer the most important question: why does the company with a monopoly have the sole source of material to make widgets?
I guarantee you that in almost every case, it's because the government is preventing a free market for that material.
> That's why economists always say government regulations are good in the absence of free markets where there are barriers to entry.
You should say "some economists" or "most economists". There are always some who disagree. Still, I would rather like a citation for this.
I would also like to point out that it is tremendously difficult to parse that sentence (and I'm not sure it actually agrees with your previous point). But that's neither here nor there.
Actually, I would argue that every company that employs people has service charges. Notably, the surplus on every item that ends up going to the employees.
Although last I checked, auto mechanics had a fair amount of competition between them, but there's still service charges.
> Deny the fact your customers hate you on a per capita basis much higher
I would like to see some statistics cited for this. Then again, I wonder how you could measure hatred.
And again, you're committing the falacy of equating being hated with evil. You're also committing spelling errors, but there's no real reason for me to critique it, as I'm sure I'm doing the same.
I will concede that yes, a lot of people just follow orders in every organization, regardless of the morality of that organization. It just so happens that larger organizations have more orders. Churches? Yup, there's a lot of orders being given around. I would hesitate to straight out call churches evil.
Oh, and I wouldn't be too quick to say Google isn't evil.
Randomly, I would like to point out that you're making a tremendous number of accusations (with less than substansive proof behind them), and have yet to actually state any reasonable solutions to the problems you claim.
You are, however, missing my point.
You also seem to forget that if a company has a monopoly, and there is a free market, then competition will arise. Suppose there is a telephone company overcharging for their service. Lo and behold, an entrepreneur shows up with cheaper service. Competition drives prices down.
And last I checked, the phone system was not subsidized. Your point has even less water.
> But if you choose to stifle an important utility like the internet for a quick buck you will hurt the entire nation
What stifling? None of the opponents to net neutrality are talking about stifling, nor will they. They won't do it for the very reason you noted: because they realize that it's important. And realistically, if the companies do decide to start causing problems that consumers don't like, then the consumers will switch.
And actually, American education is worse now than it was before the Internet was invented. Bad example.
> They are called elections. They aren't perfect at the moment but believe me voters vent in anger when things get out of hand.
Oh, I know they do. That's the reason parties keep switching in the government: because people get tired of the current people in power. But guess what? It doesn't change a damned thing. Once you elect someone, they have no accountability for their actions for some time. Companies, on the other hand, have constant accountability. Every day, McDonalds has accountability to their customers. Every day, Coke has accountability to its customers. What happened when they changed the recipe for their soda? People stopped buying it. Immediately. Our government is not as responsive.
I will concede that yes, we can vote to (theoretically) change leaders in the government. I would just think it to be a far more efficient thing to work with a system that responds quicker than the government. Namely, the free market.
It appears to me that you trust governments, but not companies. Yet, both are organizations run by people who are ultimately accountable to the people. Care to explain why you trust one over the other?
> You remind me of anti-gay marriage folk who say stuff like 'wouldn't it make sense then that I could marry a goat?' You're failing to understand that net neutrality doesn't have any inherent quality that says anything about freedom of speech, just that all packets on the internet should be treated equally. It has nothing to do with the 1st amendment.
You missed my point. What I was trying to note was that once you allow the government to establish regulation and control over the Internet in the first place, there is nothing preventing it from extending its over-regulatory laws into the Internet and doing things such as restricting political speech.
Of course, you claim I'm inciting slippery slope. Which I suppose I am, though I will point out no more than those for net neutrality ("if we allow the content providers to choose,t hey will scrwe us all!"). And personally, I find that the slippery slope is much more likely to happen when a government gets involved than a company. I would merely like to cite taxes, the PATRIOT Act, and Kelo vs. New London.
> Are you seriously suggesting that the mere lack of competition will end up somehow creating competition? I absolutely hate when people make that argument, because it makes absolutely no sense. How will consumers go to competition when there isn't any?
Okay, suppose we have a fair market situation. This is the big assumption that tends to be untrue, because governments get involved. But we'll make it anyways.
Suppose that there is one widget maker, and they sell widgets at 5$ each. Because they are a monopoly, they can sell them at any price, so there are two possibilities. First, that 5$ is a fair price, or that 5$ is too much.
Suppose 5$ is a fair price. No one cares, trivial case. Suppose 5$ is too much. This means that it is possible for a company to sell them for say, 4.50$. Assuming a fair market, then some entrepreneur will stand up and start selling them for 4.50$. Lo and behold, instant competition.
(Before you note that a monopoly tends to be able to drop prices to put competitors out of business, I will agree that perhaps we should have legislation preventing predatory anti-fair-market pricing)
No, it may not be instantaneous. But it will happen, assuming there is a free market. The problem more often than not is that the market is not actually free (such as when the government gives subsidies to the reigning monopoly).
And I will concede that the world is more complicated than simple widgets these days. The thing is, there is practically no argument that the complication of the world defeats the idea that the free market produces competition.
Even when Standard Oil was at its peak, it only controlled around 90% of production. That's quite a lot of competitors. And realistically, if Standard Oil really was screwing over its customers, they could have gone to a competitor.
> You say 'socialist' like you equate it with facism or something. Socialism just means trying to make sure no one gets unfairly screwed out of something.
That's one of the supposed goals of socialism. Socialism, according to the dictionary is essentially an economic system where the government controls the means of production. I consider that totalitarian.
So just because we're hated means we're evil? That's absolutely horrific logic. You have yet to present any evidence at all that I or any of my coworkers are evil, sir. And, given the fact that we're a large number of fairly normal people who have families and so on, I would be inclined to say we are not.
You then cite three things and seem to imply that they are unique to the phone companies. From my experiences, our service is no more horrible than most government offices (such as automobile liscence renewal), or credit card companies, or computer companies or...wait, pretty much every company. Customer service is hard. I'm not trying to defend ours, I am merely pointing out that bad customer service is not unique to telcos.
Inconvient service charges and installation times also apply to government functions (yes, it costs money to get your drivers liscence) and to other industries where people visit the house (such as the guy who has to fix the furnace). There is an inherent inability to schedule effectively when it comes to home visits, and it's not just the telco. You're right, it's inconvinient. But it's not unique to telcos.
Pricing plans that do not fit your needs exactly are once again not something unique to telcos. Every company develops a set of pricing plans based on the a. the percieved needs of the users and b. the percieved ability to make money. You are right that sometimes it's fairly annoying. But it's not unique to telcos.
You can find a good number of people here angry at any company. That doesn't necessarily mean their anger was justified, or that anything should be done about it.
And actually, yes, you do have choices: you could either 1. go to a competitor, or 2. don't get any at all. Access to the Internet, Television, or the phone network are not guaranteed freedoms. You do not have a right to any of them. Instead of relying on Mother Government to get your way, you could actually excercise your freedom of a consumer. Believe it or not, most companies are willing to listen to what their customers (and potential customers) have to say, and will change as a result.
Randomly, as I've noted, many of the things you accuse the telco of also apply to the government. So what can we use to beat the government over the head until it becomes more reasonable? The government itself? Do you actually believe you can trust the government, which is not under the sway of market competition, over companies which have to constantly adapt to their customer base to survive with market competition?
Assuming, of course, that you allow the companies to compete in the first place. As noted earlier, the government doesn't exactly allow the companies to compete fairly.
In short, I must apologize, sir, but your points hold no water at all.
See, here's the thing. In the United States, we have this law called the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, colloquially known as McCain-Feingold. Part of what this law does is outlaws the use of "soft money"--that is, money that isn't given to a particular type of organization--for taking out endorsements for a candidate within 30 (or 60, depending) days prior to an election.
What this means is that I cannot take out a radio ad saying "I think we should put so-and-so in office" within the 30 days prior to an election.
So what does this have to do with net neutrality? Suppose the government has mandated net neutrality, which means that it is regulating the Internet, just like it regulates radiospace. Wouldn't it then make sense, according to McCain-Feingold, that I cannot create a banner ad endorsing a candidate?
And then, what about say, blog posts? What prevents McCain-Feingold from applying to those? In other words, I cannot endorse a political candidate in my own blog?
If we allow the government to start regulating the transmission of information over the Internet, what prevents it from applying more regulation and censoring things, such as political speech?
I understand that a common counterargument may be "But if we don't have net neutrality, what prevents the evil monopolistic telcos from getting rid of free speech?"
Firstly, I work for one of those telcos. And I will tell you that we want to give people the best service possible. We are not evil. However, day-to-day operations cost money. Networks don't just run themselves.
And secondly, the existence of competition in the market would prevent the telcos from doing that. It may be the case that right now, not everyone will be able to pick. But how long is that market condition going to last? Consumers will demand access to everything, or they will go to their competition.
Of course, the problem is far more fundamental than all of this. There are two fundamental issues at stake here: 1. how much should the government be able to regulate its citizens communications 2. how much should the government subsidize the communications industry
I strongly say "neither". But then again, I'm not a socialist.
I use foobar for my music collection now. Its interface isn't the sleekest, but it's by far the most powerful and most customizable, and with a tremendously low memory footprint.
I was anticipating seeing a whole new batch of funny Anheiser-Busch commercials...and was dissapointed
My favorite two: the E-Trade one where they say "Well, we just wasted two million dollars", and the other one (forget what.com it was) where they said something along the same lines. Etrade wiped up though..nothing else really compared, although the Monster.com one was pretty interesting.
Although, two of the movies seem interesting: Titan AE, and Mission to Mars..but still, none of them compare to the Matrix ad last(?) year..that caught everybody offguard..and the budweiser commercials of old--those were good.
Maybe next year all these companies can redeem themselves. -Axiem
Albert Einstein. This guy did a lot for much of mathematics, physics, etc. He is now the stereotypical scientist. Nuff said.
Bill Gates is also on there. Even though I despise Microsoft, I still grudgingly give him credit--if it weren't for him, a lot of people probably wouldn't have gotten into computers. So, he is an imprtant geek..but should remain out of the top 5;)
I use both AIM and ICQ. I use AIM because a lot of my friends from school either use AOL, or use AIM. I use ICQ because at times, it has some useful features that AIM doesn't (such as the fact you can send someone a message when they are not online).
I have seen it suggested several times to do an IRC-type thing, and one person even has suggested ways to tell if someone's online. This is a good idea, except would be messy in implementation, especially for people who have enough trouble with the systems as it is! (Like a lot of my friends)
So here's my idea: A client similar to AIM. It has a very user-friendly, and easy to use system. Yes, you #do# log in to a server. However, the server just knows when you're logged in, and gets your IP (although there are security worries here). You can have a "buddy" list, and the server can tell you which "buddies" are online or not. And like said, it would do this in a manner similar to AIM (minus all the stupid ads and buttons and stuff). However, if you wanted to talk to a "buddy" online, it would look like AIM does (because the HTML formatting I find really useful at times, and also the graphical smilies look cool:P), except, what happens is: your client knows someone is online. When you double-click on the name, a window opens (like AIM). You type some text in, and send. The server does not recieve the message. Since this is a "first window", your client instead requests fom the server the IP of the person you are trying to contact. The server sends your client the IP, and then your client sends the message to that IP. The only difficulty is the security with IP addresses. Which cannot be helped unless you have a central server (that would be able to store all the messages on with no problem). If someone disconnects and reconnects (with a different IP), then they would have to send an IM first (or you could have a req. for IP ever time you send a message, but that'd be to slow).
There are obviously problems. But you are never going to have a perfect IM client. Right now (though I somewhat hate to say it), AIM seems like the best to me. It's easy to use, user-friendly, has away messages (very useful), allows you to see how long someone's been on, and is all-around pretty easy to use.
And as long as we can keep Microsoft out of the race, I really don't care who uses the IM market. As long as it works, too.
But we still have a long way to go before we get an IM system that everyone likes and agrees with.
Well, this isn't extremely new. IIRC, there was a guy in like, the 80s who had a computer attached to his brain so he could see, and it worked. But now bionics might be getting even more attention, since Stevie Wonder's not the least known performer by far. Though I wish the article had been longer. Like a description of how the system works, or even just an overview of what will happen to him. Wonder if this'll hit all the news stations eventually...probably, if it works. If it doesn't work, methinks someone might end up getting sued. Be interesting to see how this turns out.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you talking about the universe, or the United States economy?
Some have already been stated.
Ada Lovelace
Grace Hopper
Marie Curie
Pierre Curie
George Washington Carver
Benjamin Banneker
Daniel Hale Williams
Elizabeth Blackwell
Rebecca Cole
Richard Feynman
Isaac Asimov
Leonardo DiVinci
Garrett Augustus Morgan
Norbert Rillieux
Thomas Edison
Ming Antu
One idea: encourage people to find scientists they can "identify" with. Show diversity, and that *everyone* can indeed be a scientist. My list is somewhat more geared at minorities, because most of the big names are well-known.
But thumbs up to the teacher. Shoulders of giants and all that.
Because they're pronounced differently. In tone, at least. In my dialect, at least. I can't speak that well for the large number of other English-speakers.
By setting the bar high, the government makes an attempt to guarantee the quality of service to both residents and tourists, because only people interested in doing a serious job would lay out the initial cash.
And in the process, locks out a large segment of the population from even entering the market in the first place. It practically guarantees an oligarchy.
It would be... until the competition disappears. Then what are they competing with?
Okay, so this company is now the only widget-maker, which they achieved by having a lower-cost or higher-quality widget or whatever. If they maintain that level, then consumers continue to benefit. And if they start raising prices (as monopolies are wont to do), then, presuming a low barrier to entry into the market, another company will rise up with a cheaper widget. No, it may not happen immediately. But it will happen. Assuming, of course, that they can.
It gives them the opportunity to reroute requests and just generally control the user's experience, even exert a political voice by censoring sites which may be critical of its practices.
Not that they don't already do that to some extent now...but again, you're assuming the worst of these companies. I'm not.
Although I will concede that a bill that prevents ISPs from censoring the Internet is not a bad thing, provided it still allows them to block spammers and so on. I'm contesting the idea that we need a bill that guarantees that all Internet traffic is treated equally.
the government is incipiently really no more or less trustworthy... but it is better in this regard because WE have oversight. Do we have oversight of the company?
We have more oversight over a given company than we do over the government. Every single day, McDonalds is under public scrutiny, and has to succeed in the market. On the other hand, the shortest term for the federal government is two years. You elect a Representative, and s/he can do whatever s/he wants for the next two years. It's signing a blank check. Companies at least are accountable every day (or every month in some cases).
The government does know best about a lot of things, because the PEOPLE know best about a lot of things.
Yet, a lot of people will vote based on one issue. And, I would argue that the people do not know best about a lot of things, such as how to guarantee safety in a nuclear reactor. Congress consults experts in various fields for this sort of information.
No other structure in our society is better at largescale administration
Which is why the Red Cross was far more effective in response to Hurricane Katrina than FEMA was, of course. And why the heavy-government Soviet society had no problems with over- or under- production. I strongly contest this claim.
and it carries the force of law with which people may redress the issues concerning them to a society
I will concede this. "It's the law" carries more weight than "You should because it's good"
But you totally throw out your argument when you suggest that companies, left to their own devices, are interested in protecting the environment, passing on savings to its customers, and generally doing the right thing by people.
As you noted, companies are merely neutral entities. If consumers were concerned about these things, then companies would shift to attract consumers; however, consumers tend to be concerned solely with the bottom line.
The environment is a sticky issue. I would rather not delve into that because, honestly, I have not yet truly formed a cohesive opinion for myself on the issue.
If you need examples, I could probably produce a laundry list of companies who have ostensibly NOT done the right thing by people, either those under their employ or to their consumers, but I don't think you are the sort who would deny this.
And it would not be too hard to find a list of governments and government agencies that have done th
Fair enough, and you do make some good points. However:
Well, what happens when the barrier to entry for producing this product is rather high, and the original company is well established?
I would ask why the barrier to entry is as high as it is. Why does it cost over 300,000$ to get a taxicab liscence in New York City, for instance? The (government-set) number seems fairly arbitrary to me, given how the costs for my car get nowhere near that high.
But, if you were to break down barriers to entry into markets, then you would (I think) start to see serious competition against monopolies. Getting rid of subsidies for established companies would also help, as that's a barrier to entry.
I will concede that it is possible that there is a universe where ABC Co. has a monopoly on widgets, and no business springs up to compete. The thing is, I would wonder at why no competition appears. If ABC Co. keeps raising prices (which, admittedly, monopolies do tend to do), eventually (assuming minimal, if any, barriers to entry) the small business will be able to compete with ABC Co. So why doesn't competition show up?
I suspect the answer is barriers to entry.
The question is: what happens when a company beats its competition? Answer: the consumer loses.
I will admit that I do not follow. If a company beats its competition, then its product would have to be competitive in some form against its competitors; consumers would get the benefit from that.
Mind, there are other factors at work in the market. And you may perhaps be arguing that once competition is beaten, no more innovation occurs. At which point, I would wonder why no competition springs up with the new innovations (which the bigger company may eventually copy).
I suspect the answer is, again, barriers to entry.
You make a fair assertion that a company is a neutral thing that has the goal of making profit; I cannot argue this assertion. And I do agree that it can cause companies to become shortsighted and damaging. I am not trying to condone that activity. Though I would assert that the larger the company is, the more likely that is to occur; small businesses, from my experience, do want a profit, but tend to "play nicer" than larger companies. Bigger companies do indeed like to throw their weight around, and have the advantage of scale when purchasing.
So yes, I see your point about the telco and cable companies' lobbying, and about what they will do. If there is no Net Neutrality, I do agree that they will create a tiered access of some sort. But I'm not entirely convinced that they will slow every website to a crawl, as that would cause consternation in their customers. On the other hand, I think it's a very real concern over censorship.
On the other hand, what if an ISP wants to be built around being "family-friendly", and would automatically censor pornography and other kid-unsafe websites? They could advertise themselves to religious families as "family-friendly". I have a hard time saying that said ISP should not exist because it does not follow a net neutrality position. Though it should be upfront about its censorship.
Government control may lead to totalitarianism, but government regulation keeps us free, and not beholden to monopolistic practice.
What's the difference between government control and government regulation? As I understand how they are implemented, regulations tend to control what a business can and cannot do.
You also commit bifurcation. You assume that there are only two possibilities for a company to have, say, sanitation checking: themself, or the government. However, the ACT is an organization that performs academic testing outside of the government, and outside of the schools that rely on its scores. What if there were companies that perform the safety inspections and so on--companies that specialized in safety inspections? What real difference wo
Fair enough. Though what, again, distinguishes advertisements from commentary?
I'm also aware that at the moment it excludes the Internet. That does not preclude, however, a later expansion to the bill, or another bill specifically for the Internet. After all, if the Internet is public space (just like radio) that the government has some regulation over (just like radio), then the government should be allowed to control what happens in that public space (just like radio).
I would rather avoid that possibility altogether. I'm already not fond of how the government has decided what is acceptable for television and radio; I would rather not see it also do that with the Internet.
Last I checked, shareholders were people.
I will concede that on a certain level, the free market is a philosophical concept, rather than a reality. Though I will not concede that a purely free market "allows" anything at the expense of the consumer; the word choice is setting me up to put my foot in my mouth.
In a free market, yes, it is possible for a company to produce a good and charge far more than that product is worth. However, if the deal is really that bad, then another company will produce that good at a "more reasonable" price. Perhaps the original company can underprice and lose money, since it has more in its coffers. Eventually (which may, admittedly, be long off), that will be damaging to the company. The original company may also engage in various unethical practices to create a stranglehold on the market. I am not condoning these practices. I am advocating a free market, not an anarchy.
You're right, in many places, there's not cable competition. Right now. But here's the real question: why is there no competition?
I suspect if you research that, you'll find that it eventually comes back to the government. Remember, our government gave 47 billion dollars in subsidies to companies in 2005. That's a hell of a lot of money that the government gets to decide what company wins for me.
And of course, cable does compete with other companies that provide Internet service, such as DSL. True, their areas of coverage are different at the moment. But both are trying fairly aggressively to expand into the other's territory.
The thing is, you seem to be making the presumption that companies raise prices simply because they're evil. I don't buy that argument. Every company (regardless of size) prices its products based on the cost to produce that product (raw materials, labor, et c), along with an expectation of what demand will be like. Along with, admittedly, other business considerations.
I will admit that I'm not sure I know what you mean by "unfettered capitalism". I am advocating minimal government intervention in how companies conduct their business. This is because I believe that government control eventually leads to totalitarianism, which I find to be a state I would rather not live in. That and it seems to me that places the government doesn't step in tend to have more innovation and are of more benefit to people in general. So I would rather the government not get involved in anything unless necessary. And I'm not convinced this is a necessary point at all.
Fair enough. Though I think this more hilights the difference between what people philosophically desire, and what legislation actually says.
:)
I will admit, however, to being wary of the government attempting to extend McCain-Feingold, or produce a similar piece of legislation, to the Internet and make it illegal to endorse a particular candidate within so many days prior to an election. To me, political free speech is the most important free speech, and laws such as McCain-Feingold that remove political speech are something of an anathema.
Again hilighting the different between philosophy and legislation
Aha, but you didn't answer the most important question: why does the company with a monopoly have the sole source of material to make widgets?
I guarantee you that in almost every case, it's because the government is preventing a free market for that material.
> That's why economists always say government regulations are good in the absence of free markets where there are barriers to entry.
You should say "some economists" or "most economists". There are always some who disagree. Still, I would rather like a citation for this.
I would also like to point out that it is tremendously difficult to parse that sentence (and I'm not sure it actually agrees with your previous point). But that's neither here nor there.
Actually, I would argue that every company that employs people has service charges. Notably, the surplus on every item that ends up going to the employees.
Although last I checked, auto mechanics had a fair amount of competition between them, but there's still service charges.
> Deny the fact your customers hate you on a per capita basis much higher
I would like to see some statistics cited for this. Then again, I wonder how you could measure hatred.
And again, you're committing the falacy of equating being hated with evil. You're also committing spelling errors, but there's no real reason for me to critique it, as I'm sure I'm doing the same.
I will concede that yes, a lot of people just follow orders in every organization, regardless of the morality of that organization. It just so happens that larger organizations have more orders. Churches? Yup, there's a lot of orders being given around. I would hesitate to straight out call churches evil.
Oh, and I wouldn't be too quick to say Google isn't evil.
Randomly, I would like to point out that you're making a tremendous number of accusations (with less than substansive proof behind them), and have yet to actually state any reasonable solutions to the problems you claim.
You are, however, missing my point.
You also seem to forget that if a company has a monopoly, and there is a free market, then competition will arise. Suppose there is a telephone company overcharging for their service. Lo and behold, an entrepreneur shows up with cheaper service. Competition drives prices down.
And last I checked, the phone system was not subsidized. Your point has even less water.
> But if you choose to stifle an important utility like the internet for a quick buck you will hurt the entire nation
What stifling? None of the opponents to net neutrality are talking about stifling, nor will they. They won't do it for the very reason you noted: because they realize that it's important. And realistically, if the companies do decide to start causing problems that consumers don't like, then the consumers will switch.
And actually, American education is worse now than it was before the Internet was invented. Bad example.
> They are called elections. They aren't perfect at the moment but believe me voters vent in anger when things get out of hand.
Oh, I know they do. That's the reason parties keep switching in the government: because people get tired of the current people in power. But guess what? It doesn't change a damned thing. Once you elect someone, they have no accountability for their actions for some time. Companies, on the other hand, have constant accountability. Every day, McDonalds has accountability to their customers. Every day, Coke has accountability to its customers. What happened when they changed the recipe for their soda? People stopped buying it. Immediately. Our government is not as responsive.
I will concede that yes, we can vote to (theoretically) change leaders in the government. I would just think it to be a far more efficient thing to work with a system that responds quicker than the government. Namely, the free market.
It appears to me that you trust governments, but not companies. Yet, both are organizations run by people who are ultimately accountable to the people. Care to explain why you trust one over the other?
> You remind me of anti-gay marriage folk who say stuff like 'wouldn't it make sense then that I could marry a goat?' You're failing to understand that net neutrality doesn't have any inherent quality that says anything about freedom of speech, just that all packets on the internet should be treated equally. It has nothing to do with the 1st amendment.
You missed my point. What I was trying to note was that once you allow the government to establish regulation and control over the Internet in the first place, there is nothing preventing it from extending its over-regulatory laws into the Internet and doing things such as restricting political speech.
Of course, you claim I'm inciting slippery slope. Which I suppose I am, though I will point out no more than those for net neutrality ("if we allow the content providers to choose,t hey will scrwe us all!"). And personally, I find that the slippery slope is much more likely to happen when a government gets involved than a company. I would merely like to cite taxes, the PATRIOT Act, and Kelo vs. New London.
> Are you seriously suggesting that the mere lack of competition will end up somehow creating competition? I absolutely hate when people make that argument, because it makes absolutely no sense. How will consumers go to competition when there isn't any?
Okay, suppose we have a fair market situation. This is the big assumption that tends to be untrue, because governments get involved. But we'll make it anyways.
Suppose that there is one widget maker, and they sell widgets at 5$ each. Because they are a monopoly, they can sell them at any price, so there are two possibilities. First, that 5$ is a fair price, or that 5$ is too much.
Suppose 5$ is a fair price. No one cares, trivial case.
Suppose 5$ is too much. This means that it is possible for a company to sell them for say, 4.50$. Assuming a fair market, then some entrepreneur will stand up and start selling them for 4.50$. Lo and behold, instant competition.
(Before you note that a monopoly tends to be able to drop prices to put competitors out of business, I will agree that perhaps we should have legislation preventing predatory anti-fair-market pricing)
No, it may not be instantaneous. But it will happen, assuming there is a free market. The problem more often than not is that the market is not actually free (such as when the government gives subsidies to the reigning monopoly).
And I will concede that the world is more complicated than simple widgets these days. The thing is, there is practically no argument that the complication of the world defeats the idea that the free market produces competition.
Even when Standard Oil was at its peak, it only controlled around 90% of production. That's quite a lot of competitors. And realistically, if Standard Oil really was screwing over its customers, they could have gone to a competitor.
> You say 'socialist' like you equate it with facism or something. Socialism just means trying to make sure no one gets unfairly screwed out of something.
That's one of the supposed goals of socialism. Socialism, according to the dictionary is essentially an economic system where the government controls the means of production. I consider that totalitarian.
So just because we're hated means we're evil? That's absolutely horrific logic. You have yet to present any evidence at all that I or any of my coworkers are evil, sir. And, given the fact that we're a large number of fairly normal people who have families and so on, I would be inclined to say we are not.
You then cite three things and seem to imply that they are unique to the phone companies. From my experiences, our service is no more horrible than most government offices (such as automobile liscence renewal), or credit card companies, or computer companies or...wait, pretty much every company. Customer service is hard. I'm not trying to defend ours, I am merely pointing out that bad customer service is not unique to telcos.
Inconvient service charges and installation times also apply to government functions (yes, it costs money to get your drivers liscence) and to other industries where people visit the house (such as the guy who has to fix the furnace). There is an inherent inability to schedule effectively when it comes to home visits, and it's not just the telco. You're right, it's inconvinient. But it's not unique to telcos.
Pricing plans that do not fit your needs exactly are once again not something unique to telcos. Every company develops a set of pricing plans based on the a. the percieved needs of the users and b. the percieved ability to make money. You are right that sometimes it's fairly annoying. But it's not unique to telcos.
You can find a good number of people here angry at any company. That doesn't necessarily mean their anger was justified, or that anything should be done about it.
And actually, yes, you do have choices: you could either 1. go to a competitor, or 2. don't get any at all. Access to the Internet, Television, or the phone network are not guaranteed freedoms. You do not have a right to any of them. Instead of relying on Mother Government to get your way, you could actually excercise your freedom of a consumer. Believe it or not, most companies are willing to listen to what their customers (and potential customers) have to say, and will change as a result.
Randomly, as I've noted, many of the things you accuse the telco of also apply to the government. So what can we use to beat the government over the head until it becomes more reasonable? The government itself? Do you actually believe you can trust the government, which is not under the sway of market competition, over companies which have to constantly adapt to their customer base to survive with market competition?
Assuming, of course, that you allow the companies to compete in the first place. As noted earlier, the government doesn't exactly allow the companies to compete fairly.
In short, I must apologize, sir, but your points hold no water at all.
See, here's the thing. In the United States, we have this law called the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, colloquially known as McCain-Feingold. Part of what this law does is outlaws the use of "soft money"--that is, money that isn't given to a particular type of organization--for taking out endorsements for a candidate within 30 (or 60, depending) days prior to an election.
What this means is that I cannot take out a radio ad saying "I think we should put so-and-so in office" within the 30 days prior to an election.
So what does this have to do with net neutrality? Suppose the government has mandated net neutrality, which means that it is regulating the Internet, just like it regulates radiospace. Wouldn't it then make sense, according to McCain-Feingold, that I cannot create a banner ad endorsing a candidate?
And then, what about say, blog posts? What prevents McCain-Feingold from applying to those? In other words, I cannot endorse a political candidate in my own blog?
If we allow the government to start regulating the transmission of information over the Internet, what prevents it from applying more regulation and censoring things, such as political speech?
I understand that a common counterargument may be "But if we don't have net neutrality, what prevents the evil monopolistic telcos from getting rid of free speech?"
Firstly, I work for one of those telcos. And I will tell you that we want to give people the best service possible. We are not evil. However, day-to-day operations cost money. Networks don't just run themselves.
And secondly, the existence of competition in the market would prevent the telcos from doing that. It may be the case that right now, not everyone will be able to pick. But how long is that market condition going to last? Consumers will demand access to everything, or they will go to their competition.
Of course, the problem is far more fundamental than all of this. There are two fundamental issues at stake here:
1. how much should the government be able to regulate its citizens communications
2. how much should the government subsidize the communications industry
I strongly say "neither". But then again, I'm not a socialist.
I use foobar for my music collection now. Its interface isn't the sleekest, but it's by far the most powerful and most customizable, and with a tremendously low memory footprint.
I'd definitely suggest at least checking it out.
My favorite two: the E-Trade one where they say "Well, we just wasted two million dollars", and the other one (forget what .com it was) where they said something along the same lines. Etrade wiped up though..nothing else really compared, although the Monster.com one was pretty interesting.
Although, two of the movies seem interesting: Titan AE, and Mission to Mars..but still, none of them compare to the Matrix ad last(?) year..that caught everybody offguard..and the budweiser commercials of old--those were good.
Maybe next year all these companies can redeem themselves. -Axiem
Bill Gates is also on there. Even though I despise Microsoft, I still grudgingly give him credit--if it weren't for him, a lot of people probably wouldn't have gotten into computers. So, he is an imprtant geek..but should remain out of the top 5 ;)
I have seen it suggested several times to do an IRC-type thing, and one person even has suggested ways to tell if someone's online. This is a good idea, except would be messy in implementation, especially for people who have enough trouble with the systems as it is! (Like a lot of my friends)
So here's my idea: A client similar to AIM. It has a very user-friendly, and easy to use system. Yes, you #do# log in to a server. However, the server just knows when you're logged in, and gets your IP (although there are security worries here). You can have a "buddy" list, and the server can tell you which "buddies" are online or not. And like said, it would do this in a manner similar to AIM (minus all the stupid ads and buttons and stuff). However, if you wanted to talk to a "buddy" online, it would look like AIM does (because the HTML formatting I find really useful at times, and also the graphical smilies look cool :P), except, what happens is: your client knows someone is online. When you double-click on the name, a window opens (like AIM). You type some text in, and send. The server does not recieve the message. Since this is a "first window", your client instead requests fom the server the IP of the person you are trying to contact. The server sends your client the IP, and then your client sends the message to that IP. The only difficulty is the security with IP addresses. Which cannot be helped unless you have a central server (that would be able to store all the messages on with no problem). If someone disconnects and reconnects (with a different IP), then they would have to send an IM first (or you could have a req. for IP ever time you send a message, but that'd be to slow).
There are obviously problems. But you are never going to have a perfect IM client. Right now (though I somewhat hate to say it), AIM seems like the best to me. It's easy to use, user-friendly, has away messages (very useful), allows you to see how long someone's been on, and is all-around pretty easy to use.
And as long as we can keep Microsoft out of the race, I really don't care who uses the IM market. As long as it works, too.
But we still have a long way to go before we get an IM system that everyone likes and agrees with.
Well, this isn't extremely new. IIRC, there was a guy in like, the 80s who had a computer attached to his brain so he could see, and it worked. But now bionics might be getting even more attention, since Stevie Wonder's not the least known performer by far. Though I wish the article had been longer. Like a description of how the system works, or even just an overview of what will happen to him. Wonder if this'll hit all the news stations eventually...probably, if it works. If it doesn't work, methinks someone might end up getting sued. Be interesting to see how this turns out.