Aside from whether or not I think the law is absurd or not, being totally ignorant of the FCCs reasoning for it in the first place, I'm pretty sure the whole reason behind this suit is that Echostar still hasn't gotten their shit together to broadcast the local channels. At directv (where I work) we have a reasonably new spot beam satellite so we can re use our frequencies in different markets, to increase the amount of locals we can carry. Even if the law changed so we could give all locals to everyone, we couldn't actually broadcast that many channels to everyone so it would be useless. Echostar is just banking on the merger with us to get their local channels going, but this lawsuit looks like an ace in the hole if they can't get everything together yet still are forced to broadcast locals for everyone, since they'd then get an advantage by being able to let everyone see all those locals, and they'd make the Directv spot beam semi-worthless, and probably own cable as well.
Well, what about people living in, say, North Dakota? You tell them they are making the world hotter and making oceans rise, and what do they care? Their land will just be more valuable, more of it will be arable. Or tell people in Palmdale, California that the oceans are rising. Just means they'll eventually own beachfront property. I don't think they care about bangladesh. They are all going to just run outside and start spraying aerosol in siberia if it means its gonna get hotter. The global warming problem isn't just a problem of the world getting hotter, or a problem of people not agreeing on facts, but a problem on what the facts mean and who they affect. The world does not work together happily, and probably never will. Kyoto is totally biased towards already developed countrys. Europe says they love it but only Romania has signed it. China can just sit there pumping out people and burning dirty coal and we're supposed to put more MBTE in our gas or something? Please. If it's actually a problem, I'm all for fixing it, but we're not anywhere near that now. Stunting the economic growth of the US, Europe and Japan isn't going to save the world from global warming, especially when China passes all three economically and still kills its people by the truckload and steals their organs. It's everyone or no one, and my guess it will be no one.
Yes its bad that poor intel is losing power, but remember, they AGREED to this. The places losing power pay less for power in exchange for being the first people shut off in case of "emergency"
I keept waking up to a freshly rebooted computer before I found out about the power problems, so now I get to turn off my computer (and everything it serves) every night. cry for ME not intel!:)
If anything is disurbing is that you would use a commercial to decide anything related to product purchasing. Heck, even more disturbing is your hatred of something on the television, to the point of murderous thoughts.
I think we've pretty much beaten to death the idea that this is just superstring theory reproduced yet again. Personally I don't buy it, and one reason for this was something I saw on slashdot a while back. If you go here: http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw100.html you can read a competing version of general relativity that implys that there are no such thing as black holes, a theory I'd have to say I support at this point. This would be important in this discussion since all of the recent progress in superstring thoery is based on a supposed duality between perhaps nonexistant black holes and these strings.
You missed something. Utility is not only related to "stuff" in terms of TV's and beds and pet rocks and golf clubs, but also to clean air, clean water, sandy beaches, weather, not having to worry about being drafted, and about a jillion other things. And it can't be measured. Basically, there are plenty of people who would be happiest consuming clean water, breathing clean air camping in the sequoias. So utility can very well move into natural capitlisim, depending on what people gain the most personal utility from.
Well, if you doubt the ability of the government to make and enforce environmental laws, you didn't live in los angeles in 1950 and today. Companies do things in the most profitable and expedient way, assuming they have any idea what the actual most profitable and expedient way is. One of the points of the book is that if companies weren't so nearsighted they'd find it is more profitable to "care" about the environment. Companies destroy things because they don't own them or because they don't have the slightest idea how to conserve them - and if they can't conserve them they stretch them to the max. Companies aren't thinking "Well, the board of directors will be dead in about 47 yeas, so lets make sure we've cleared out our oil field by then". Ownership begets responsibility. Can someone own the oceans? the atmosphere? I don't know. but since it is unowned, people treat it much worse than they would normally. Creating taxes on the damage caused, etc, is one way to instill a kind of "ownership", or at least accountability for damages, and the US government has been marginally successful in this. However, they can't controll foriegn lands, and this is where the shit really hits the fan.
This is completely untrue. Capitalisim has nothing to do with using up things, just in using things. Things get used up when you do not know how to make it last, or you do not own it. If you own the forest, you don't chop it all down; if you own the fishery, you don't fish it out; if you own the land, you don't leech out all the minerals. Destruction in capitalism stems from destruction of things people don't (or can't) own, in an attempt to get the most out of it before the next guy gets it. this is evidnced in the economies of ocean fisheries and in the atmosphere itself, where a little pollution affects everyone a little but affects you very little, allowing you to pollute much more than if you owned the atmosphere itself and had a larger stake in keeping it healthy. Now I am not advocating that everything should be owned by everyone - just pointing out what makes capitalism destructive
In this article they state Record companies make their money almost exclusively from the sale of records -- whether physical records in the form of CDs or virtual records in the form of digitally downloaded music. But they also say that copying music onto a computer hard drive is not permitted. How can anyone buy mp3's on the internet with this? Do you have to download them directly to something other than a computer? I need to use a computer to get to the web page to buy them! Color me confused. Also, if they found a way around this, would they say you couldn't copy an mp3 you bought from one computer to another?
Slashdot Mirror
The merger is far from complete, and truthfully I'd say most people here don't think it will go through.
Aside from whether or not I think the law is absurd or not, being totally ignorant of the FCCs reasoning for it in the first place, I'm pretty sure the whole reason behind this suit is that Echostar still hasn't gotten their shit together to broadcast the local channels. At directv (where I work) we have a reasonably new spot beam satellite so we can re use our frequencies in different markets, to increase the amount of locals we can carry. Even if the law changed so we could give all locals to everyone, we couldn't actually broadcast that many channels to everyone so it would be useless. Echostar is just banking on the merger with us to get their local channels going, but this lawsuit looks like an ace in the hole if they can't get everything together yet still are forced to broadcast locals for everyone, since they'd then get an advantage by being able to let everyone see all those locals, and they'd make the Directv spot beam semi-worthless, and probably own cable as well.
Well, what about people living in, say, North Dakota? You tell them they are making the world hotter and making oceans rise, and what do they care? Their land will just be more valuable, more of it will be arable. Or tell people in Palmdale, California that the oceans are rising. Just means they'll eventually own beachfront property. I don't think they care about bangladesh. They are all going to just run outside and start spraying aerosol in siberia if it means its gonna get hotter. The global warming problem isn't just a problem of the world getting hotter, or a problem of people not agreeing on facts, but a problem on what the facts mean and who they affect. The world does not work together happily, and probably never will. Kyoto is totally biased towards already developed countrys. Europe says they love it but only Romania has signed it. China can just sit there pumping out people and burning dirty coal and we're supposed to put more MBTE in our gas or something? Please. If it's actually a problem, I'm all for fixing it, but we're not anywhere near that now. Stunting the economic growth of the US, Europe and Japan isn't going to save the world from global warming, especially when China passes all three economically and still kills its people by the truckload and steals their organs. It's everyone or no one, and my guess it will be no one.
Yes its bad that poor intel is losing power, but remember, they AGREED to this. The places losing power pay less for power in exchange for being the first people shut off in case of "emergency" I keept waking up to a freshly rebooted computer before I found out about the power problems, so now I get to turn off my computer (and everything it serves) every night. cry for ME not intel! :)
If anything is disurbing is that you would use a commercial to decide anything related to product purchasing. Heck, even more disturbing is your hatred of something on the television, to the point of murderous thoughts.
I think we've pretty much beaten to death the idea that this is just superstring theory reproduced yet again. Personally I don't buy it, and one reason for this was something I saw on slashdot a while back. If you go here: http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw100.html you can read a competing version of general relativity that implys that there are no such thing as black holes, a theory I'd have to say I support at this point. This would be important in this discussion since all of the recent progress in superstring thoery is based on a supposed duality between perhaps nonexistant black holes and these strings.
You missed something. Utility is not only related to "stuff" in terms of TV's and beds and pet rocks and golf clubs, but also to clean air, clean water, sandy beaches, weather, not having to worry about being drafted, and about a jillion other things. And it can't be measured. Basically, there are plenty of people who would be happiest consuming clean water, breathing clean air camping in the sequoias. So utility can very well move into natural capitlisim, depending on what people gain the most personal utility from.
Well, if you doubt the ability of the government to make and enforce environmental laws, you didn't live in los angeles in 1950 and today. Companies do things in the most profitable and expedient way, assuming they have any idea what the actual most profitable and expedient way is. One of the points of the book is that if companies weren't so nearsighted they'd find it is more profitable to "care" about the environment. Companies destroy things because they don't own them or because they don't have the slightest idea how to conserve them - and if they can't conserve them they stretch them to the max. Companies aren't thinking "Well, the board of directors will be dead in about 47 yeas, so lets make sure we've cleared out our oil field by then". Ownership begets responsibility. Can someone own the oceans? the atmosphere? I don't know. but since it is unowned, people treat it much worse than they would normally. Creating taxes on the damage caused, etc, is one way to instill a kind of "ownership", or at least accountability for damages, and the US government has been marginally successful in this. However, they can't controll foriegn lands, and this is where the shit really hits the fan.
This is completely untrue. Capitalisim has nothing to do with using up things, just in using things. Things get used up when you do not know how to make it last, or you do not own it. If you own the forest, you don't chop it all down; if you own the fishery, you don't fish it out; if you own the land, you don't leech out all the minerals. Destruction in capitalism stems from destruction of things people don't (or can't) own, in an attempt to get the most out of it before the next guy gets it. this is evidnced in the economies of ocean fisheries and in the atmosphere itself, where a little pollution affects everyone a little but affects you very little, allowing you to pollute much more than if you owned the atmosphere itself and had a larger stake in keeping it healthy. Now I am not advocating that everything should be owned by everyone - just pointing out what makes capitalism destructive
In this article they state Record companies make their money almost exclusively from the sale of records -- whether physical records in the form of CDs or virtual records in the form of digitally downloaded music. But they also say that copying music onto a computer hard drive is not permitted. How can anyone buy mp3's on the internet with this? Do you have to download them directly to something other than a computer? I need to use a computer to get to the web page to buy them! Color me confused. Also, if they found a way around this, would they say you couldn't copy an mp3 you bought from one computer to another?