If manufacturers had been allowed to own their own dealerships, then there wouldn't be any non-manufacturer dealerships for the manufacturers to compete with.
Liquor distribution "laws" are actually an amendment to the United States Constitution, and it's from the 1930s, when prohibition (another United States Constitutional Amendment) was repealed.
It was a compromise between keeping alcohol entirely illegal to distribute, as it was previously, and the obvious ineffectiveness of its prohibition.
If manufacturers could sell through dealerships they owned, they would own every dealership. The franchise law is supposed to enable locals to own local, small business dealerships and still have an "in" with the major manufacturers. Without it, the major manufacturers would all just be the 800-lb gorillas they are, leveraging their giant corporate size for the benefits of more control.
It'd be nice if you could spend a moment to actually consider why it might be before complaining, since your argument about political quid pro quo with corporations is actually working against itself here.
NEW YORK Penal Law 240.35 (4): Being masked or in any manner disguised by unusual or unnatural attire or facial alteration, loiters, remains or congregates in a public place with other persons so masked or disguised, or knowingly permits or aids persons so masked or disguised to congregate in a public place; blah blah blah other exceptions
CA Penal Code Section 185. It shall be unlawful for any person to wear any mask, false whiskers, or any personal disguise (whether complete or partial) for the purpose of:
One--Evading or escaping discovery, recognition, or identification in the commission of any public offense.
Two--Concealment, flight, or escape, when charged with, arrested for, or convicted of, any public offense.
Any person violating any of the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor.
I know legalese can be hard to read through, but the sentences are long because the latter parts of the sentences are fucking important. The NY sounds pretty dated and the CA law is actually what amounts to explicitly stating that wearing a mask or covering your face is perfectly lawful behavior.
I don't understand why anyone would try to spread the idea that it's not.
Why risk the temptation? The FAA and NTSB investigate a lot of crashes that end up being caused by pilot error. Lots of people in the world are reluctant to place the blame on a well-trained pilot acting in good faith by saying that his actions were the cause of what might be hundreds of deaths.
Compare this to the French investigation of the Air France crash from Brazil a couple of years ago where efforts were made both to protect the pilots' good names and to shift blame away from Airbus. In this case, the FAA and NTSB are investigating events involving people who might have been friends, bosses, or co-workers. There is an undeniable risk of losing impartiality here, no matter how incorruptibly good people might have been investigating it. Why take the risk, even if it's small? Why even place that burden on them to begin with?
The whole essence of these investigations is to impartially find the factual causes of these accidents. To investigate them with any kind of doubt placed on the shoulders of the investigators would do everyone, from the people killed, the agencies, and the citizens who employ them, a great disservice.
You shouldn't get all worked up about Obama being "flexible" after the elections. The Russians are upset about the missile shield (not really, they're just using it as leverage as a bargaining chip) and are trying to pressure the USA about it. Obama deflected this by saying "I agree, but these crazy republicans! I need their votes! It will be different after I get their votes."
ie, he was using the Republicans pressuring him as leverage to pressure the Russians. He's not actually flexible on the idea, and if he were, he wouldn't tell the Russians he was.
The Korean war was certainly on a smaller scale than WW2, but it wasn't just a drop in the bucket. The North and its supplemental Chinese used all kinds of human wave tactics, literally just marching people off to their death and hoping that it would eventually overcome the other side. The UN and US forces were still in the WW2 era of technology -- there were almost 40,000 US deaths, compared to the almost 60,000 US deaths in Vietnam despite lasting for only three years. As an ideological, civil war, there were mass slaughters of the native Korean soldiers and civilians on both sides, with thousands being killed at a time. The bare minimum for civilian deaths is something like 2 million, and upwards of 3 million.
This doesn't include the aftermath, when the country was severed in two and completely impoverished on both sides. South Korea has some glitz and glamour today, but it centers in a few cities, and there are still millions of people living in complete poverty. North Korea is like the post-Roman Dark Ages, except for the complete dictatorship that rules over the population armed with modern weapons. Today the population is much higher than in the 1950s, with one-third or one-fourth of the population of the USA living on a peninsula that's about half the size of California. Almost 1/3 the population of the South, about 20 million people, lives in the greater Seoul area, which is basically inside artillery range which could level huge sections of the city, and the people living there, in a very short amount of time.
Nobody really knows what the North Koreans would do in a war, either. Many of them could fight to the bitter end regardless of what was actually going on. Some of them might believe the propaganda about the South and US being ruthless killers ready to slaughter them all and commit suicide like Japanese civilians and soldiers did even in the waning days of war in the Pacific in WW2. They might try to take as many people with them into death. Even in a quick war where the majority of North Korean soldiers surrendered, the leadership probably would not and would find all of the hardliners they could willing to fight.
Even in the best case scenarios of a short, one-sided war, it would be a total bloodbath. North Koreans wishing to escape the fighting or just wishing to escape the area would pour over the borders both North and South, flooding into areas not able to support that many people so suddenly. There's even a potential of the Chinese invading along the north in order to capture territory, to prevent such a huge refugee crisis, and to guarantee the continued existence of a buffer zone not dominated by American interests so close to their territory. It would be an absolute humanitarian disaster no matter the outcome and would almost certainly be accompanied by millions of deaths even in the best-case scenarios.
it absolutely is, and it's ridiculous for people to think otherwise or argue about, or that it's somehow not government sanctioned. Same goes for the gigantic flags that are on display on either side of the border. The North Koreans are obsessive about not being shown up by the "imperialists", and have even showfully walked out of meetings in the DMZ because there was a disparity in the size of flags, or their soldiers were not tall enough, or there was some other very arbitrary breach of protocol. Only to come back with taller soldiers, bigger flags, and more attitude.
Of course, it takes two to tango, and the Americans and ROK Koreans are more than happy to play the game of flag waving, most notably in what ended up as Operation Paul Bunyan, when the simple desire to clear some trees from blocking a Southern outpost ended up with a group of North Koreans starting an axe-fight in the DMZ and killing an American. None of the Americans or ROK wanted to go to war over the death of one soldier, but goddamn were they were going to finish cutting down that goddamn tree, so the natural response was to launch what was at the time the largest military operation since D-Day. Aircraft carrier groups were brought in range and on standby, B-52s were in the air, helicopters were waiting in the air just beyond the hills all in support of a couple of trucks of Koreans and Americans and their chainsaw. There's a first-hand report linked to in the references section on wikipedia from this describing how weapons were smuggled in the back of the trucks and, in an attempt to provide cover while minimizing the potential for gunfire, some of the Koreans had strapped claymore land mines to their chests and stood on the bridge taunting and screaming like lunatics while the whole tree, and not just the offending branches, was cut down. All this for a damn tree branch!
The trees in this article, while much less dramatic, are no different. It even says as much and doesn't just hint at it -- they are not actually trees but 30 meters-tall metal structures in the general conical shape of a tree, built on top of a hill just 3 km from the DMZ. It's tall enough, on top of a hill enough, and bright enough to be visible across the border from a city which cannot be supplied with electricity all the time, and in a lull of the posturing about a decade ago, it was barred from being lit. How could that be anything but psychological warfare or propaganda?
That doesn't make it bad, either. It's part of a propaganda war which is continually exacerbated by the North. They don't have much to bring to the negotiating table, so they create it with these kinds of complaints, which are numerous and ridiculous, hoping to bargain it away for the crops they've stolen from their people and destroyed through terrible central management. Sometimes it's pretty meaningless, sometimes it involves the sinking of a ROK ship or shelling of a Southern island. Sometimes they have to complain about nothing just so that they don't lose face and look like they are too scared to complain. Often enough they can't even accept a good deal because they've painted themselves into a corner and always need to demand more or need to appear to be stronger or in better shape than they already appear.
I think your outrage on this is mostly unfounded. If you had to drive from NYC to New Jersey, would you be upset about being told to take Holland Tunnel?
how about being told to take the Holland tunnel?
how about being told to take the tunnel?
would you get similarly upset if someone were to remove the actual object description from, say, the Tappan Zee Bridge, by referring to it only as "the Tappan Zee"?
He was agreeing with you, retard. If 5% of Americans knew what this was and were up in arms about it, it would be one of the biggest movements in American history. Since it's not one of the biggest movements in American history...
It's very easy to overlook how many people are involved in large-scale movements like this, both contemporary and historical. The overwhelming satisfaction with the outcome of the American revolution, for example, completely overshadows any doubt which actually occurred at the time. Not only were there many loyalists who wished to remain British, but there were many colonists who were sympathetic but did not wish to start or fight in a war.
If the results of the battles had turned out differently, we would all be looking back at it as if a rowdy minority had started a rebellion.
if it's so easy, I'd like to see you do it. I'd especially like to hear you ascertain the difference between "a fucking company that is in control of other people's money" and, say, the owner of, or an employee of "a fucking company...", or, say, the home computer of one of these people, or maybe their smartphone with address books of "personal information".
The fact is "that distinction" which you think is so blaringly obvious is actually not at all obvious or easy to differentiate, so I'll be waiting a long time for your response!
Creating your own tools for technical reasons contains the implication that you are using them because of the aforementioned technical reasons. ie, it must be "dogfooding". The rest of his post even explains why a lot of these tech shops must create their own tools -- because they are pushing innovation, so existing systems will never meet their requirements.
I think you should learn how to read before complaining about people's usages of phrases!
The abbreviation is from Confederation Helvetia, which is the name of Switzerland, hence the name of the helvetica font.
I'm not entirely sure how you can call those services parasites as if they provide nothing. There are definitely plenty of institutions which are more than willing to soak up fractions of your payments, but you seem to have gone out of your way to find some of the worst of them. You also don't seem to have a firm grasp on some of the concepts. What the hell is currency conversion loss? There are different costs of living, which affect the costs of production, etc., in an area like Europe, but the actual number value of something you purchase doesn't have much meaning. The only "currency conversion loss" is the transaction cost a bank or moneychanger charges for selling you euros, which you already mentioned.
If you had spent time learning it or figuring it out, you probably could have just traded dollars for Swiss francs and sent them directly. Or just sent them money in a physical form like check or money order. Or even sent them dollars, including all the extra ones you spent on fees, and one of them could have exchanged it taking the extra as payment or as a donation. What kind of payments were they even accepting?
As you can see, many of the "parasitic fees" you mention are actually people who perform a service for you, like sending money across the world conveniently. I mean, really, think about the work you might have to do to get money to these people in Switzerland if not for these parasites, and then think about how much it costs to do that, not just flying the actual money out there, but then finding a random Swiss person who would want your dollars for francs, or finding someone else first who would want your dollars for euros.
Many money servicing institutions are more than willing to soak up as much in fees as they can, but your limited experience told here shouldn't be taken as prima facie evidence of them being parasites who provide nothing of value. There's a cost involved with moving money around the world like that, including others I haven't mentioned. Do you realize how much money and effort it takes to keep an entire institution around constantly at the ready to trade you Swiss francs? They can't just immediately spring up from nothing out of thin air just to sell vlm Swiss francs. That there is even a group of people both willing and constantly looking to sell you other currencies is beneficial to you in a way that you acknowledge by paying them fees, even if you are unwilling or unable to consciously acknowledge it.
The time investment of building and maintaining computers, as with any simialr project, is easy to overlook. But spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on computer equipment is basically indebting your future self to doing more work. Since you can stockpile money, the money you spend on it is money which could have been saved or invested or used to pay for actual needs like food and shelter. This is also easy to overlook.
This isn't a judgment in one way or the other, since I think both paths are good choices for certain lifestyles. I also think it's important to do both, because building and maintaining things saves you from having to work for pay later, diversifies your interests, and provides a sense of accomplishment and intimacy with whatever it is which might otherwise be missing.
ie, it can easily make you more happy and satisfied. This is also true for spending time on other various projects like home improvements, maintaining your form of transportation like automobiles or bicycles, other hobbies like exercise, or sailing, or art, or whatever. It also applies for building and maintaining your social relationships, whether it's basic friends or charities, local politics, and nonprofits.
In other words, yes, it can and does eat up a lot of time. But your time is a sunk cost as you go along, and it's not like spending time working on computers has zero return. I don't think anyone should be discouraged from doing it, and I don't think anyone should be discouraged from saving time by spending money on it if they wish to spend their time on something else they enjoy more of find more important.
There's no way this should be marked insightful. An EAS style system for the internet is so unnecessary it's almost comical to think about.
do you really have a hard time being the recipient of information on your up-to-date information technologies? Why would you want to receive a test message for an antiquated system on an antiquated medium you have no desire to use?
in the event of a real emergency, do you think nobody who does rely on antiquated broadcast media receiving the information would be of any use to you?
It works becasue it's push media, but the "issue" I was referring to is not technical feasibility, it is whether or not it is useful and worth having.
There is basically zero need for an internet-based EAS because of the extraordinary abilities of the internet to disperse information. With government-hosted websites, news websites, the blog world, social media like facebook and twitter, and direct personal communication like games, instant messengers, and IRC, and the proliferation of links between all of these, any large-scale news is spread so quickly and so thoroughly that anything resembling the EAS is just not necessary. Not to mention e-mail!
The issues with an EAS-like system for the internet are cultural and legal, not technical, in nature. It would be practically trivial to redirect internet traffic to breaking news portals from a central location like an ISP by side-jacking DNS requests or serving something like a pop-up ad or rider on any request processed. It's just unwanted and unnecessary.
Surely you don't think TV and radio are more effective at disseminating information than the internet is? With TV and radio, there was very large medium for transmitting information which was largely societally-owned and was largely being completely wasted in times of an emergency. Major news would often have "breaking updates" cut into an unrelated television or radio program, but what if they didn't, or what if people were watching channels which didn't, or what if...
There were thousands of reasons holding back TV and radio as a centralized distributor of emergency information, and systems like the EAS were put in place to work around those. There's no real issues like that with internet dissemination of information, because you can barely take two steps without getting info from the internet personally or knowing someone who is.
if this is really your concern, then you should not be worried about the FCC, which is decently well-regulated and has visible ties to Congress, or Emergency Alert System, which is a program of cooperation between major media providers in TV and radio and the government.
What you should worry about is all of the extra-judicial cooperation between corporations and the government, with many of them not even questioning government requests even when the government requests have essentially zero legal standing. Ask a cop you know how easy it is for him to get location information from a cell phone provider, for example, without much hassle.
Many of these types of corporations lay down and roll over at the thought of any law enforcement request, partly because they are making major profits off of the cronyism tendencies of present day America, and partly because they were bullied into giving up information without question by government administrations over the last 10 years.
if the official, regulated agency administering very little control over media and the airwaves scare you, then you'll be shocked to find out what the unofficial, unregulated relationships are like.
Slashdot Mirror
Then pay full price.
If manufacturers had been allowed to own their own dealerships, then there wouldn't be any non-manufacturer dealerships for the manufacturers to compete with.
Liquor distribution "laws" are actually an amendment to the United States Constitution, and it's from the 1930s, when prohibition (another United States Constitutional Amendment) was repealed.
It was a compromise between keeping alcohol entirely illegal to distribute, as it was previously, and the obvious ineffectiveness of its prohibition.
are you serious? It's the complete opposite.
If manufacturers could sell through dealerships they owned, they would own every dealership. The franchise law is supposed to enable locals to own local, small business dealerships and still have an "in" with the major manufacturers. Without it, the major manufacturers would all just be the 800-lb gorillas they are, leveraging their giant corporate size for the benefits of more control.
It'd be nice if you could spend a moment to actually consider why it might be before complaining, since your argument about political quid pro quo with corporations is actually working against itself here.
why do people spend so much money convincing people that they need to exercise, for that matter? or buy washing machines?
what the hell are you even talking about?
what?
I know legalese can be hard to read through, but the sentences are long because the latter parts of the sentences are fucking important. The NY sounds pretty dated and the CA law is actually what amounts to explicitly stating that wearing a mask or covering your face is perfectly lawful behavior.
I don't understand why anyone would try to spread the idea that it's not.
Why risk the temptation? The FAA and NTSB investigate a lot of crashes that end up being caused by pilot error. Lots of people in the world are reluctant to place the blame on a well-trained pilot acting in good faith by saying that his actions were the cause of what might be hundreds of deaths.
Compare this to the French investigation of the Air France crash from Brazil a couple of years ago where efforts were made both to protect the pilots' good names and to shift blame away from Airbus. In this case, the FAA and NTSB are investigating events involving people who might have been friends, bosses, or co-workers. There is an undeniable risk of losing impartiality here, no matter how incorruptibly good people might have been investigating it. Why take the risk, even if it's small? Why even place that burden on them to begin with?
The whole essence of these investigations is to impartially find the factual causes of these accidents. To investigate them with any kind of doubt placed on the shoulders of the investigators would do everyone, from the people killed, the agencies, and the citizens who employ them, a great disservice.
You shouldn't get all worked up about Obama being "flexible" after the elections. The Russians are upset about the missile shield (not really, they're just using it as leverage as a bargaining chip) and are trying to pressure the USA about it. Obama deflected this by saying "I agree, but these crazy republicans! I need their votes! It will be different after I get their votes."
ie, he was using the Republicans pressuring him as leverage to pressure the Russians. He's not actually flexible on the idea, and if he were, he wouldn't tell the Russians he was.
welcome to fucking politics 101.
just how high are their revolutions, mein fuhrer? I was taught to consider six feet under relatively low.
p.s. "Feds Shut Down Tor-based Narcotics Store"
yeah, stuff like this isn't all that uncommon in China, either.
The Korean war was certainly on a smaller scale than WW2, but it wasn't just a drop in the bucket. The North and its supplemental Chinese used all kinds of human wave tactics, literally just marching people off to their death and hoping that it would eventually overcome the other side. The UN and US forces were still in the WW2 era of technology -- there were almost 40,000 US deaths, compared to the almost 60,000 US deaths in Vietnam despite lasting for only three years. As an ideological, civil war, there were mass slaughters of the native Korean soldiers and civilians on both sides, with thousands being killed at a time. The bare minimum for civilian deaths is something like 2 million, and upwards of 3 million.
This doesn't include the aftermath, when the country was severed in two and completely impoverished on both sides. South Korea has some glitz and glamour today, but it centers in a few cities, and there are still millions of people living in complete poverty. North Korea is like the post-Roman Dark Ages, except for the complete dictatorship that rules over the population armed with modern weapons. Today the population is much higher than in the 1950s, with one-third or one-fourth of the population of the USA living on a peninsula that's about half the size of California. Almost 1/3 the population of the South, about 20 million people, lives in the greater Seoul area, which is basically inside artillery range which could level huge sections of the city, and the people living there, in a very short amount of time.
Nobody really knows what the North Koreans would do in a war, either. Many of them could fight to the bitter end regardless of what was actually going on. Some of them might believe the propaganda about the South and US being ruthless killers ready to slaughter them all and commit suicide like Japanese civilians and soldiers did even in the waning days of war in the Pacific in WW2. They might try to take as many people with them into death. Even in a quick war where the majority of North Korean soldiers surrendered, the leadership probably would not and would find all of the hardliners they could willing to fight.
Even in the best case scenarios of a short, one-sided war, it would be a total bloodbath. North Koreans wishing to escape the fighting or just wishing to escape the area would pour over the borders both North and South, flooding into areas not able to support that many people so suddenly. There's even a potential of the Chinese invading along the north in order to capture territory, to prevent such a huge refugee crisis, and to guarantee the continued existence of a buffer zone not dominated by American interests so close to their territory. It would be an absolute humanitarian disaster no matter the outcome and would almost certainly be accompanied by millions of deaths even in the best-case scenarios.
it absolutely is, and it's ridiculous for people to think otherwise or argue about, or that it's somehow not government sanctioned. Same goes for the gigantic flags that are on display on either side of the border. The North Koreans are obsessive about not being shown up by the "imperialists", and have even showfully walked out of meetings in the DMZ because there was a disparity in the size of flags, or their soldiers were not tall enough, or there was some other very arbitrary breach of protocol. Only to come back with taller soldiers, bigger flags, and more attitude.
Of course, it takes two to tango, and the Americans and ROK Koreans are more than happy to play the game of flag waving, most notably in what ended up as Operation Paul Bunyan, when the simple desire to clear some trees from blocking a Southern outpost ended up with a group of North Koreans starting an axe-fight in the DMZ and killing an American. None of the Americans or ROK wanted to go to war over the death of one soldier, but goddamn were they were going to finish cutting down that goddamn tree, so the natural response was to launch what was at the time the largest military operation since D-Day. Aircraft carrier groups were brought in range and on standby, B-52s were in the air, helicopters were waiting in the air just beyond the hills all in support of a couple of trucks of Koreans and Americans and their chainsaw. There's a first-hand report linked to in the references section on wikipedia from this describing how weapons were smuggled in the back of the trucks and, in an attempt to provide cover while minimizing the potential for gunfire, some of the Koreans had strapped claymore land mines to their chests and stood on the bridge taunting and screaming like lunatics while the whole tree, and not just the offending branches, was cut down. All this for a damn tree branch!
The trees in this article, while much less dramatic, are no different. It even says as much and doesn't just hint at it -- they are not actually trees but 30 meters-tall metal structures in the general conical shape of a tree, built on top of a hill just 3 km from the DMZ. It's tall enough, on top of a hill enough, and bright enough to be visible across the border from a city which cannot be supplied with electricity all the time, and in a lull of the posturing about a decade ago, it was barred from being lit. How could that be anything but psychological warfare or propaganda?
That doesn't make it bad, either. It's part of a propaganda war which is continually exacerbated by the North. They don't have much to bring to the negotiating table, so they create it with these kinds of complaints, which are numerous and ridiculous, hoping to bargain it away for the crops they've stolen from their people and destroyed through terrible central management. Sometimes it's pretty meaningless, sometimes it involves the sinking of a ROK ship or shelling of a Southern island. Sometimes they have to complain about nothing just so that they don't lose face and look like they are too scared to complain. Often enough they can't even accept a good deal because they've painted themselves into a corner and always need to demand more or need to appear to be stronger or in better shape than they already appear.
I think your outrage on this is mostly unfounded. If you had to drive from NYC to New Jersey, would you be upset about being told to take Holland Tunnel?
how about being told to take the Holland tunnel?
how about being told to take the tunnel?
would you get similarly upset if someone were to remove the actual object description from, say, the Tappan Zee Bridge, by referring to it only as "the Tappan Zee"?
This man has a point -- these government-sponsored dumbification programs have obviously already worked on him. You could be next.
He was agreeing with you, retard. If 5% of Americans knew what this was and were up in arms about it, it would be one of the biggest movements in American history. Since it's not one of the biggest movements in American history...
It's very easy to overlook how many people are involved in large-scale movements like this, both contemporary and historical. The overwhelming satisfaction with the outcome of the American revolution, for example, completely overshadows any doubt which actually occurred at the time. Not only were there many loyalists who wished to remain British, but there were many colonists who were sympathetic but did not wish to start or fight in a war.
If the results of the battles had turned out differently, we would all be looking back at it as if a rowdy minority had started a rebellion.
if it's so easy, I'd like to see you do it. I'd especially like to hear you ascertain the difference between "a fucking company that is in control of other people's money" and, say, the owner of, or an employee of "a fucking company ...", or, say, the home computer of one of these people, or maybe their smartphone with address books of "personal information".
The fact is "that distinction" which you think is so blaringly obvious is actually not at all obvious or easy to differentiate, so I'll be waiting a long time for your response!
thanks in advance,
Do you want to know how to make a small fortune in the restaurant business?
ok!
first, start off with a large fortune...
Creating your own tools for technical reasons contains the implication that you are using them because of the aforementioned technical reasons. ie, it must be "dogfooding". The rest of his post even explains why a lot of these tech shops must create their own tools -- because they are pushing innovation, so existing systems will never meet their requirements.
I think you should learn how to read before complaining about people's usages of phrases!
It's abstraction layers all the way down.
start? Nuclear weapons have been detonated underground for half a century now.
also, as someone else pointed out, this is not nuclear.
The abbreviation is from Confederation Helvetia, which is the name of Switzerland, hence the name of the helvetica font.
I'm not entirely sure how you can call those services parasites as if they provide nothing. There are definitely plenty of institutions which are more than willing to soak up fractions of your payments, but you seem to have gone out of your way to find some of the worst of them. You also don't seem to have a firm grasp on some of the concepts. What the hell is currency conversion loss? There are different costs of living, which affect the costs of production, etc., in an area like Europe, but the actual number value of something you purchase doesn't have much meaning. The only "currency conversion loss" is the transaction cost a bank or moneychanger charges for selling you euros, which you already mentioned.
If you had spent time learning it or figuring it out, you probably could have just traded dollars for Swiss francs and sent them directly. Or just sent them money in a physical form like check or money order. Or even sent them dollars, including all the extra ones you spent on fees, and one of them could have exchanged it taking the extra as payment or as a donation. What kind of payments were they even accepting?
As you can see, many of the "parasitic fees" you mention are actually people who perform a service for you, like sending money across the world conveniently. I mean, really, think about the work you might have to do to get money to these people in Switzerland if not for these parasites, and then think about how much it costs to do that, not just flying the actual money out there, but then finding a random Swiss person who would want your dollars for francs, or finding someone else first who would want your dollars for euros.
Many money servicing institutions are more than willing to soak up as much in fees as they can, but your limited experience told here shouldn't be taken as prima facie evidence of them being parasites who provide nothing of value. There's a cost involved with moving money around the world like that, including others I haven't mentioned. Do you realize how much money and effort it takes to keep an entire institution around constantly at the ready to trade you Swiss francs? They can't just immediately spring up from nothing out of thin air just to sell vlm Swiss francs. That there is even a group of people both willing and constantly looking to sell you other currencies is beneficial to you in a way that you acknowledge by paying them fees, even if you are unwilling or unable to consciously acknowledge it.
you can't stockpile time.
The time investment of building and maintaining computers, as with any simialr project, is easy to overlook. But spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on computer equipment is basically indebting your future self to doing more work. Since you can stockpile money, the money you spend on it is money which could have been saved or invested or used to pay for actual needs like food and shelter. This is also easy to overlook.
This isn't a judgment in one way or the other, since I think both paths are good choices for certain lifestyles. I also think it's important to do both, because building and maintaining things saves you from having to work for pay later, diversifies your interests, and provides a sense of accomplishment and intimacy with whatever it is which might otherwise be missing.
ie, it can easily make you more happy and satisfied. This is also true for spending time on other various projects like home improvements, maintaining your form of transportation like automobiles or bicycles, other hobbies like exercise, or sailing, or art, or whatever. It also applies for building and maintaining your social relationships, whether it's basic friends or charities, local politics, and nonprofits.
In other words, yes, it can and does eat up a lot of time. But your time is a sunk cost as you go along, and it's not like spending time working on computers has zero return. I don't think anyone should be discouraged from doing it, and I don't think anyone should be discouraged from saving time by spending money on it if they wish to spend their time on something else they enjoy more of find more important.
There's no way this should be marked insightful. An EAS style system for the internet is so unnecessary it's almost comical to think about.
do you really have a hard time being the recipient of information on your up-to-date information technologies? Why would you want to receive a test message for an antiquated system on an antiquated medium you have no desire to use?
in the event of a real emergency, do you think nobody who does rely on antiquated broadcast media receiving the information would be of any use to you?
It works becasue it's push media, but the "issue" I was referring to is not technical feasibility, it is whether or not it is useful and worth having.
There is basically zero need for an internet-based EAS because of the extraordinary abilities of the internet to disperse information. With government-hosted websites, news websites, the blog world, social media like facebook and twitter, and direct personal communication like games, instant messengers, and IRC, and the proliferation of links between all of these, any large-scale news is spread so quickly and so thoroughly that anything resembling the EAS is just not necessary. Not to mention e-mail!
The issues with an EAS-like system for the internet are cultural and legal, not technical, in nature. It would be practically trivial to redirect internet traffic to breaking news portals from a central location like an ISP by side-jacking DNS requests or serving something like a pop-up ad or rider on any request processed. It's just unwanted and unnecessary.
Surely you don't think TV and radio are more effective at disseminating information than the internet is? With TV and radio, there was very large medium for transmitting information which was largely societally-owned and was largely being completely wasted in times of an emergency. Major news would often have "breaking updates" cut into an unrelated television or radio program, but what if they didn't, or what if people were watching channels which didn't, or what if...
There were thousands of reasons holding back TV and radio as a centralized distributor of emergency information, and systems like the EAS were put in place to work around those. There's no real issues like that with internet dissemination of information, because you can barely take two steps without getting info from the internet personally or knowing someone who is.
if this is really your concern, then you should not be worried about the FCC, which is decently well-regulated and has visible ties to Congress, or Emergency Alert System, which is a program of cooperation between major media providers in TV and radio and the government.
What you should worry about is all of the extra-judicial cooperation between corporations and the government, with many of them not even questioning government requests even when the government requests have essentially zero legal standing. Ask a cop you know how easy it is for him to get location information from a cell phone provider, for example, without much hassle.
Many of these types of corporations lay down and roll over at the thought of any law enforcement request, partly because they are making major profits off of the cronyism tendencies of present day America, and partly because they were bullied into giving up information without question by government administrations over the last 10 years.
if the official, regulated agency administering very little control over media and the airwaves scare you, then you'll be shocked to find out what the unofficial, unregulated relationships are like.