"Hello. It's me. Death. I'll be seeing you real soon, OK? Listen, I know you can't hear me, but try to feel what I'm saying, deep down in your soul. Don't. Eat. The Gazpacho.
What is the difference between this and a keylogger?
They wouldn't be tracking your mouse movements anywhere other than when you are on their page.
It's one thing to record commands I have sent to their computers by clicking. It's another thing entirely to track things I do on MY computer.
They can already collect this data. It's called a "mouseover" event. It's what makes those fancy little boxes with further details appear when you hover over some links. If it's not intercepted by HTML code, it shows the ALT text of any image you encounter and shows the URL you would follow on any link in the notification area.
This has been around, well, I'm not sure how long. I remember using it at least as far back as Windows 95.
This does not mean ALL of your mouse movements can be tracked this way. Only mouse movements over their web page.
Google Wave (and several others) use Javascript keyboard intercepts - meaning every keypress is sent directly to the host rather than text boxes being simple text boxes. This is how other people can see what you are typing while you type it in Google Wave. This does not, however, mean that any keypresses made outside the browser window or tab Google Wave is running on can somehow be intercepted.
I'm not saying this kind of tracking is good, only that it's not as bad as your questions seem to imply you think it is.
If you hover your mouse cursor over links in a lot of browsers, you'll see the URL displayed in the notification area (lower-left in Firefox by default, your location may vary). In addition, story summaries and other things might "pop up" if you encounter a rollover event.
Now, why they couldn't just load a small tracking image in the popup instead of going to all that Javascript trouble... but whatever. Maybe I shouldn't give them any ideas.
Don't be silly! Google is simply going to found its own Church where "evil" means whatever Google says it means!
They'll call it the "Googlican Church".
Google is my shepherd,
I shall find what I want. Thy maps and thy search, they direct me. Thy ads, they causeth me to buy magnificent things. And, yea, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of privacy violations, I shall fear no evil Thou shall adjusteth the term's meaning for my protection,
in thy mercy. Amen.
Actually, it failed because they were firing a heat ray at a bunch of desert-dwellers. It's not like these guys are going to go, "oh, ow, it burns!" They live in the goddamned DESERT. Burning isn't a sensation, it's a lifestyle.
It's kinda like using pepper spray on a true spice lover. They're just gonna smile and ask you for the recipe before they kill you.
I bought Half Life, Half Life 2, Counterstrike, MOHAA, several versions of Unreal Tournament, and a couple of others, and played all of them for several years at LAN parties without even knowing there was an "offline" mode with a story.
I sat down once and tried a couple of the "single player" modes, and quickly went back to playing against other humans. It's not that it wasn't challenging, it was just not challenging in the right ways for me. I'd rather think strategically.
Plus, the LAN parties had pizza, beer, and personal insults. I didn't win often, but I had more fun.
No offense, but you didn't address the original point terribly well.
GP said "creationism answers why?", your response was to ask if creationism really does explain why.
There's a huge gap between "answers" and "explains".
Explanations are generally the antithesis of religion. "We Will Never Be Able To Explain It Because A God or Gods Did It, And It's Too Complex For Mortal Man To Ever Comprehend" is the only actual answer you'll find deep, deep down in the core of Creationism.
If something needs an explanation or has one available, it's not religion, it's science. Explanations are not answers.
Religion only needs belief. Explanation is useless to religion. It is, in fact, harmful to religion. Seeking explanations might expose you to something that conflicts with belief, thereby putting that belief in doubt. Accept your answers and be happy that God loves you.
Science only needs explanation. Belief is useless to science. It is, in fact, harmful to science. Ceasing your search for explanations might fail to expose you to something that conflicts with what you think you know, and you'll never learn anything about the Universe around you if you fail to try to destroy your beliefs at every opportunity.
Religion is a crucible in which we try to burn everything that is not part of the doctrine. The doctrine is not submitted to the flames, and its survival is interpreted as Truth. Anything else that survives the flames is considered tarnished - it's got ash all over it.
Science is a crucible in which, ideally, we try to burn everything, trying different fuels. Anything that has survived a few burnings is brushed off and accepted as "meh, seems good enough for now" until we find better fuel.
But, this point is often missed, science and religion are not incompatible.
Science attempts to explain what we want to know, and might someday know. Religion does not operate in that realm. Religion deals strictly with the inexplicable.
Religion answers what we want to know, and can never know, so we are forced to accept a non-disprovable answer because it's the only answer available to us. Science does not operate in that realm.
If you have your answer, accept it for the gift it is, and find comfort in your certain knowledge that you will be well-cared for when you cease the mortal coil. But don't seek explanations for it. Explanations can lead to losing your belief in your answer. Just accept it.
Science deals with things that can never be proven. Religion deals with things that can never be disproven. There's a very wide gap between the areas that the two things can be applied. Don't try to apply science to religious dogma, and don't try to apply religious dogma to science. It's like matter and antimatter. You'll get a lot of heat and light, but in the end it produces nothing but energy.
It's also important to properly wash the hand, and remove the fingernails and bone unless your customer asks for "chunky".
Often forgotten is the use of a GOOD blender, and freezing the bowl beforehand to maintain proper temperature throughout the process.
Missing these steps makes the handshake weak and clammy rather than the firm, decisive, bold statement it is supposed to make.
If you really need your handshake to stand out, add some cayenne pepper and bing cherries. People love a bold handshake that promises a fruitful relationship, with just a hint of sweetness.
Oh, and you need dozens of choices to make sure you have real competition, eh?
For any product, if you want to talk about "free market" competition, you need to have sufficient numbers of competitors to have a meaningful choice. One company is no choice at all. Two may offer some choice, but it may or may not be meaningful.
Once you have enough companies, the regulations can surround making sure that the competition exists and remains meaningful, and that the competitors are not in collusion (in other words, your competitors are actually competing with each other, not meeting over coffee to set inflated prices).
But I think you're missing the point. True competition for high-speed Internet access is, by and large, nonexistent in most of America.
Please to inform us as to what market your in where you DO have "dozens" of choices? Cell phones? Gas stations? Car companies? Brands of Tea?
To a varying degree, each of the markets you've listed offer meaningful choices, and regulation tends to be inversely proportional to the number of meaningful choices.
Cell phones have significant regulation, because there are relatively few major cell phone companies. The regulations exist to make sure that they don't collude on price, and that they represent meaningful competition with each other.
The regulations surrounding gas stations (as opposed to gas and oil companies) have more to do with ensuring honesty. Testing pumps to make sure that a measured gallon is really a gallon, and that the fuel is up to quality standards. There's less regulation and enforcement of actual anti-competitive behavior because there's more competition.
Tea companies round out the mix nicely. There are dozens of brands of tea, and therefore the only meaningful regulations today have more to do with product safety than anti-competitive behavior.
Particularly given the expense of setting up your own lines, the fact that you think you should have dozens of choices is kind of nuts.
Actually, you're rather making GP's point for him. It's completely impractical to offer meaningful choice in Internet service, because it's damned expensive to connect wires to all the houses.
Since it's not practical to have meaningful choice, most people are forced into a monopoly (or duopoly), and the companies running those services know that their customers lack a choice.
So we allow the natural monopoly to occur, since fixing the monopoly is (as you accurately stated) impractical.
In return for that monopoly, the people demand that the companies not abuse their monopoly position. So the monopolies are heavily regulated, and have to follow rules that protect the rights of their customers - basically regulations are meant to replace competition with an attempt to enforce rights and prices to the consumer which (admittedly imperfectly) represent what the consumer would be receiving had true competition been available. It doesn't work terribly well, but it does work OK, and the alternative is true competition (impractical, as you pointed out yourself) or deregulation (which means the company will simply start to abuse its monopoly position, since the consumer does not have a free market to choose from).
High-speed Internet access is one of those areas where we do not have, and have never had, a meaningful free market. Natural gas, electricity, small-letter delivery, and (up until recently) telephone are others (and the free market choice in telephone is dependent upon a neutral Internet, as evidenced by Comcast intentionally mucking with my packets going to my Vonage telephone line a couple of years ago).
The instant someone comes up with a way to provide multiple meaningful choices in Internet service, we can drop back to preventing a monopoly from forming like we do with most other industries where competition is available.
Without "Net Neutrality" enforcement against Comcast, I would not
Last night i was told by my ISP that they would charge extra to get fast access to hulu.com
You can thank your local regulatory body for preventing that from happening. Right now, discrimination against specific sites is against the rules. Don't think for a second that the "free market" is defending that for you. Regulations are.
I smell government wanting to get their grubby hands on my Internet.
They are already there. In fact, if they weren't, you probably wouldn't have an Internet to have their grubby hands on. Well, you might, but it might not be recognizable as the free medium of communication you enjoy today.
OH and BTW that "free market" theory has been working pretty well so far.... ya might not want to kick dirt into the face of the system that puts food in your noise hole.
Actually, it's the LACK of "free market" as currently being bandied about that ALLOWS you to have (safe) food in your noise hole. Next time you eat some beef and don't catch Creutzfeldt–Jakob, you can blame the FDA for its pesky interference with the free market's efforts to saving money by feeding sheep intestines to cows. In a free market, everyone would have to do that in order to compete, and everyone could claim not to and no one would stop them.
Without regulatory bodies like the FDA, EPA, and others, we'd go back to companies having the freedom to dump their shit wherever they want, take whatever measures they want to save money, destroy their competition, and you'd be looking at going back to the same market that caused environmental disasters we've spent decades and billions cleaning up.
I'm not going to engage in ad hominem attacks against members of one side of the aisle or another. Both sides have their cronies that they serve, and both sides have tweaked regulations to favor those they serve.
The simple fact is that, while you want to encourage innovation in an economy, you do not want a full-on laissez-faire economy that is currently being used as a rallying cry of "free market". Regulations are often misguided and frequently make companies less profitable or stifle innovation, but you don't want a world without them. If you're old enough to remember one, you'll understand why.
There are, in fact, areas where our economy is over-regulated, or the regulations work against the better interests of the economy, or have the opposite of their intended effects. Those regulations need to be reviewed and reformed, and in some cases eliminated.
But many of us are old enough to remember the results of lack of regulation, under-regulation, or unenforced self-regulation. Love Canal is a well-known example, but there are several lakes and rivers very near where I live that have levels of mercury and other toxics that still make fish and other wildlife in some areas inedible even today.
This is all decades after regulation started, and after the government has poured a lot of money ("Superfund") into mitigation and cleanup, and a lot of work into slowing the damage.
If you're too young to remember any of that, how about, oh, I dunno, the current financial crisis? Brought on by allowing banks to overconsolidate, and not regulating their activities enough after allowing them to become "too big to fail" (brought to you by the concerted effort of both sides of the aisle).
Still too far back in the history books? Hmm, seems to me that self-regulation of a certain oil company might have caused some sort of pesky problem somewhere... hmm, where could that be? Something about not requiring a $500,000 backup system to their blowout preventer, and having their primary blowout preventer offline?
After a while, economies of scale ensured that only the "big boys" could afford enough modems to keep their subscribers happy, because they got big enough to just buy trunk lines. The small ISP was pretty much shoved out of business or bought out.
At the peak of the dial-up ISP, you could see this happening at an increasing pace. It's just the advent of high-speed Internet that made the entire issue largely irrelevant.
In an unregulated (freedom for the business) market, competition will ensure a race to the bottom and the one who offers service the most cheaply or makes the highest profits can then destroy or buy the competition. Then that one business can set the price to their liking, buy out competitors, and has no reason to add anything new except zeros to the amount it charges. You tend to get fast innovation followed by consolidation followed by monopoly, cash-cow mentality, and stagnation.
In a regulated (freedom for the consumer) market, competition will be regulated so it continues to exist. You'll tend to get lower levels of sustained innovation, no consolidation, and it takes longer to reach the stagnation point, because there's room for new entries into the market. Companies that own expensive or unique resources are forced to share those resources to lower the cost of entry for a newcomer (or, in some cases, unique resources become a public resource).
What we generally have now in most cases is a "regulated monopoly". You get great efficiencies of scale - one company, but you lose innovation because the company (a) has little reason to innovate since it's ensured monopoly status, and (b) has to run any changes by the Government or its regulatory body.
But the regulation does, by and large, allow a company to install HUGE infrastructures and mitigates their risk, and forces the company to operate at a "reasonable" (as defined by the regulatory agency) profit while meeting minimums of service. Obviously not the hotbed of innovation you really want, but the phones work.
So, which "free market" do you want to go to? If you own a decent-sized business who will either become the bear that eats everyone else or make a profit by being "eaten by the bear", or if you're sick and tired of the assholes in Washington DC telling you what you can and cannot do with all that pesky mercury you have when there's a perfectly good river next to your factory that flows "away" quite nicely, obviously your idea of a "free market" is one that any company can do anything they damned well please.
If you are a general consumer, a smaller business, or a person downstream from that plant, you might want some level of regulation.
The US is currently involved in a "you broke it, you bought it" issue with Afghanistan.
After the attacks on September 11, 2001, the US was looking for the person responsible for coordinating the attacks. The prime suspect (Osama Bin Laden) was strongly suspected of hanging out in the hills in Afghanistan.
The US, with wide UN support, requested permission of the then-present Afghan government, the Taliban, to enter the country and apprehend Bin Laden. Said permission was refused.
The US government asked for, and received, both permission and support of the UN to enter Afghanistan and seek Bin Laden (though it took long enough that Bin Laden had probably left the country and hidden in Pakistan or another country by then). The Taliban put up significant resistance, so the UN force removed the government from power.
The resulting vacuum of power fractured the somewhat tenuous hold the Taliban had previously held over the fractured regions, and opened the door for external forces to try to exert their own influence over the now-chaotic region.
The ideal at this point would be to restore some form of centralized government to Afghanistan. A democracy is, at this point, somewhat overly idealistic. Successful democracies are established from within, and Afghanistan has little history of trying - only to resisting whatever current outside force is invading them at the time, which may be the only thing that brings the country into any form of unity - a common enemy.
To quote Pogo, "We have seen the enemy, and he is us."
But if we just pull out, chaos will take back over. The country is destabilized. It took a strong force to keep it in any semblance of order (note that I didn't say "happy" or "prosperous", just "any semblance of order"). We removed that force.
In large part, you can replace "Afghanistan" with "Iraq" by removing all references to UN support, and replacing the clear reasoning for the invasion with far more tenuous reasons. Oh, and Afghanistan probably would have gone better if we had not distracted ourselves with Iraq and squandered lots of international goodwill and resources, of course.
So use US dollars to buy US goods and food, and make the "peace handout" in the form of goods and food. The citizen fills out a form, passes the "didn't shoot at nothin'" test, and gets his/her money in the form of vouchers which can be redeemed for:
1. Food 2. Lumber and building supplies 3. Labor/equipment rental for larger projects (Corps of Engineers) 4. Luxuries (US movies, TV sets, etc)
As people start out, they'll get mostly food and maybe a little lumber to do home repairs. Eventually, you have people form organizations that pool their resources to ask for labor and equipment to build a school or community center or whatnot. Some people get some luxury items here and there.
The only problem, of course, is weaning people off this assistance once they have a fairly decent lifestyle. Without some careful planning it could all fall apart once the money dries up. One country cannot support another country forever, but we can give them a start.
Something like lowering the allotment every month, but spending a higher percentage of it on local products as the country's economy starts to formulate, so you encourage local businesses to take over the day-to-day stuff.
Idealistic? Sure. Might not work. But what we've done so far has cost us even more money, more lives, and has had somewhat limited results without any real signs of emerging long-term stability.
Yes, it is really bad. But, fortunately, the Linux maintenance group isn't all THAT bad. Torvalds is certainly "front and center" but he's not the only one aware of what is going on, and there's an "inner circle" that is comprised of people who are very aware of the model that has been established and would probably work cooperatively to keep the core Linux kernel working largely as it does today.
Yes, there are going to be people who will opportunistically fork off their own version and try to make Mikenix, Joenix, Franknix, etc. If a sufficient number of the core developers follow that fork, then that fork will be where most people will want to get their code.
Assuming the entire "inner circle" all walked into a dark corridor and were all simultaneously eaten by grues, there would probably be some chaos. Development might get a little stuttery for a while. But in a pretty short time someone (or some group) will step in and fill the gap.
But, don't forget, the code is out there. It's not going away. There's no shortage of people who just want the chance to contribute to it. In general, FOSS development is an (admittedly imperfect) meritocracy.
Someone will prove that he or she is "The One" and after a little shuffling and snuffling the majority will align, because most people understand that the most efficient Linux is where everyone contributes to one central effort. You'll have some forks (hell, there are plenty of them out there today!), but none will be fatal to the future of Linux. It's too useful to too many.
"If I fall, another will take my place. And another, and another..."
- Delenn, "Comes the Inquisitor"
Lobster is too chewy for me. And yes, I have tried it about 20 times.
No offense, but at the prices they get for lobster, I'd have stopped at trying it once. It's a luxury food at the prices they get for it nowadays. There are plenty of really good foods out there that cost a hell of a lot less.:)
Having said that, I've never found Maine lobster to be chewy unless it was horribly, terribly overcooked and rubbery.
But I honestly don't know Florida lobster that well, so it may be a more chewy meat. I've only tried it once, and I don't remember the texture. I didn't like it well enough to bother trying it again (not when I have access to the good stuff here in Maine - LOL!)
OK, fair enough, but (assuming you use Safari), this issue goes a little deeper...
What information have you filled into web forms? Is Safari set up so it remembers that information?
Sure, your name and address may be safe from the address book, but have you ever entered your name and address on a site and had it remembered?
If you use Safari and you wish to continue using it, it's a very, very good idea to read the first article and turn off the "remember stuff in web forms" immediately, and keep it off until a fix is available.
The vulnerability is in closed-source software, because Safari is closed-source. The vulnerability does not exist in Webkit (the open source component of Safari), so no one but Apple can fix this issue.
The issue was discovered almost by accident. Safari allows Javascript to emulate keypresses (which is almost inconceivably stupid).
If any respectable open source team member had seen Javascript events being passed to the keyboard buffer, he or she would have screamed blue bloody murder and it would have become a priority one bug faster than you can say "the developer who wrote that shit has just lost code submission privileges on this project".
Slashdot Mirror
... or potential lack thereof when you need it.
"Hello. It's me. Death. I'll be seeing you real soon, OK? Listen, I know you can't hear me, but try to feel what I'm saying, deep down in your soul. Don't. Eat. The Gazpacho.
What is the difference between this and a keylogger?
They wouldn't be tracking your mouse movements anywhere other than when you are on their page.
It's one thing to record commands I have sent to their computers by clicking. It's another thing entirely to track things I do on MY computer.
They can already collect this data. It's called a "mouseover" event. It's what makes those fancy little boxes with further details appear when you hover over some links. If it's not intercepted by HTML code, it shows the ALT text of any image you encounter and shows the URL you would follow on any link in the notification area.
This has been around, well, I'm not sure how long. I remember using it at least as far back as Windows 95.
This does not mean ALL of your mouse movements can be tracked this way. Only mouse movements over their web page.
Google Wave (and several others) use Javascript keyboard intercepts - meaning every keypress is sent directly to the host rather than text boxes being simple text boxes. This is how other people can see what you are typing while you type it in Google Wave. This does not, however, mean that any keypresses made outside the browser window or tab Google Wave is running on can somehow be intercepted.
I'm not saying this kind of tracking is good, only that it's not as bad as your questions seem to imply you think it is.
If you hover your mouse cursor over links in a lot of browsers, you'll see the URL displayed in the notification area (lower-left in Firefox by default, your location may vary). In addition, story summaries and other things might "pop up" if you encounter a rollover event.
Now, why they couldn't just load a small tracking image in the popup instead of going to all that Javascript trouble... but whatever. Maybe I shouldn't give them any ideas.
Don't be silly! Google is simply going to found its own Church where "evil" means whatever Google says it means!
They'll call it the "Googlican Church".
Google is my shepherd,
I shall find what I want.
Thy maps and thy search, they direct me.
Thy ads, they causeth me to buy magnificent things.
And, yea, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of privacy violations,
I shall fear no evil
Thou shall adjusteth the term's meaning for my protection,
in thy mercy.
Amen.
I love the smell of Jiffy Pop in the morning. Smells like VICTORY!
Actually, it failed because they were firing a heat ray at a bunch of desert-dwellers. It's not like these guys are going to go, "oh, ow, it burns!" They live in the goddamned DESERT. Burning isn't a sensation, it's a lifestyle.
It's kinda like using pepper spray on a true spice lover. They're just gonna smile and ask you for the recipe before they kill you.
Don't forget signal fires. Just about as effective, but makes effective use of that most plentiful of resources when down deep - oxygen!
I bought Half Life, Half Life 2, Counterstrike, MOHAA, several versions of Unreal Tournament, and a couple of others, and played all of them for several years at LAN parties without even knowing there was an "offline" mode with a story.
I sat down once and tried a couple of the "single player" modes, and quickly went back to playing against other humans. It's not that it wasn't challenging, it was just not challenging in the right ways for me. I'd rather think strategically.
Plus, the LAN parties had pizza, beer, and personal insults. I didn't win often, but I had more fun.
No offense, but you didn't address the original point terribly well.
GP said "creationism answers why?", your response was to ask if creationism really does explain why.
There's a huge gap between "answers" and "explains".
Explanations are generally the antithesis of religion. "We Will Never Be Able To Explain It Because A God or Gods Did It, And It's Too Complex For Mortal Man To Ever Comprehend" is the only actual answer you'll find deep, deep down in the core of Creationism.
If something needs an explanation or has one available, it's not religion, it's science. Explanations are not answers.
Religion only needs belief. Explanation is useless to religion. It is, in fact, harmful to religion. Seeking explanations might expose you to something that conflicts with belief, thereby putting that belief in doubt. Accept your answers and be happy that God loves you.
Science only needs explanation. Belief is useless to science. It is, in fact, harmful to science. Ceasing your search for explanations might fail to expose you to something that conflicts with what you think you know, and you'll never learn anything about the Universe around you if you fail to try to destroy your beliefs at every opportunity.
Religion is a crucible in which we try to burn everything that is not part of the doctrine. The doctrine is not submitted to the flames, and its survival is interpreted as Truth. Anything else that survives the flames is considered tarnished - it's got ash all over it.
Science is a crucible in which, ideally, we try to burn everything, trying different fuels. Anything that has survived a few burnings is brushed off and accepted as "meh, seems good enough for now" until we find better fuel.
But, this point is often missed, science and religion are not incompatible.
Science attempts to explain what we want to know, and might someday know. Religion does not operate in that realm. Religion deals strictly with the inexplicable.
Religion answers what we want to know, and can never know, so we are forced to accept a non-disprovable answer because it's the only answer available to us. Science does not operate in that realm.
If you have your answer, accept it for the gift it is, and find comfort in your certain knowledge that you will be well-cared for when you cease the mortal coil. But don't seek explanations for it. Explanations can lead to losing your belief in your answer. Just accept it.
Science deals with things that can never be proven. Religion deals with things that can never be disproven. There's a very wide gap between the areas that the two things can be applied. Don't try to apply science to religious dogma, and don't try to apply religious dogma to science. It's like matter and antimatter. You'll get a lot of heat and light, but in the end it produces nothing but energy.
It's also important to properly wash the hand, and remove the fingernails and bone unless your customer asks for "chunky".
Often forgotten is the use of a GOOD blender, and freezing the bowl beforehand to maintain proper temperature throughout the process.
Missing these steps makes the handshake weak and clammy rather than the firm, decisive, bold statement it is supposed to make.
If you really need your handshake to stand out, add some cayenne pepper and bing cherries. People love a bold handshake that promises a fruitful relationship, with just a hint of sweetness.
Oh, and you need dozens of choices to make sure you have real competition, eh?
For any product, if you want to talk about "free market" competition, you need to have sufficient numbers of competitors to have a meaningful choice. One company is no choice at all. Two may offer some choice, but it may or may not be meaningful.
Once you have enough companies, the regulations can surround making sure that the competition exists and remains meaningful, and that the competitors are not in collusion (in other words, your competitors are actually competing with each other, not meeting over coffee to set inflated prices).
But I think you're missing the point. True competition for high-speed Internet access is, by and large, nonexistent in most of America.
Please to inform us as to what market your in where you DO have "dozens" of choices? Cell phones? Gas stations? Car companies? Brands of Tea?
To a varying degree, each of the markets you've listed offer meaningful choices, and regulation tends to be inversely proportional to the number of meaningful choices.
Cell phones have significant regulation, because there are relatively few major cell phone companies. The regulations exist to make sure that they don't collude on price, and that they represent meaningful competition with each other.
The regulations surrounding gas stations (as opposed to gas and oil companies) have more to do with ensuring honesty. Testing pumps to make sure that a measured gallon is really a gallon, and that the fuel is up to quality standards. There's less regulation and enforcement of actual anti-competitive behavior because there's more competition.
Tea companies round out the mix nicely. There are dozens of brands of tea, and therefore the only meaningful regulations today have more to do with product safety than anti-competitive behavior.
Particularly given the expense of setting up your own lines, the fact that you think you should have dozens of choices is kind of nuts.
Actually, you're rather making GP's point for him. It's completely impractical to offer meaningful choice in Internet service, because it's damned expensive to connect wires to all the houses.
Since it's not practical to have meaningful choice, most people are forced into a monopoly (or duopoly), and the companies running those services know that their customers lack a choice.
So we allow the natural monopoly to occur, since fixing the monopoly is (as you accurately stated) impractical.
In return for that monopoly, the people demand that the companies not abuse their monopoly position. So the monopolies are heavily regulated, and have to follow rules that protect the rights of their customers - basically regulations are meant to replace competition with an attempt to enforce rights and prices to the consumer which (admittedly imperfectly) represent what the consumer would be receiving had true competition been available. It doesn't work terribly well, but it does work OK, and the alternative is true competition (impractical, as you pointed out yourself) or deregulation (which means the company will simply start to abuse its monopoly position, since the consumer does not have a free market to choose from).
High-speed Internet access is one of those areas where we do not have, and have never had, a meaningful free market. Natural gas, electricity, small-letter delivery, and (up until recently) telephone are others (and the free market choice in telephone is dependent upon a neutral Internet, as evidenced by Comcast intentionally mucking with my packets going to my Vonage telephone line a couple of years ago).
The instant someone comes up with a way to provide multiple meaningful choices in Internet service, we can drop back to preventing a monopoly from forming like we do with most other industries where competition is available.
Without "Net Neutrality" enforcement against Comcast, I would not
Last night i was told by my ISP that they would charge extra to get fast access to hulu.com
You can thank your local regulatory body for preventing that from happening. Right now, discrimination against specific sites is against the rules. Don't think for a second that the "free market" is defending that for you. Regulations are.
I smell government wanting to get their grubby hands on my Internet.
They are already there. In fact, if they weren't, you probably wouldn't have an Internet to have their grubby hands on. Well, you might, but it might not be recognizable as the free medium of communication you enjoy today.
OH and BTW that "free market" theory has been working pretty well so far .... ya might not want to kick dirt into the face of the system that puts food in your noise hole.
Actually, it's the LACK of "free market" as currently being bandied about that ALLOWS you to have (safe) food in your noise hole. Next time you eat some beef and don't catch Creutzfeldt–Jakob, you can blame the FDA for its pesky interference with the free market's efforts to saving money by feeding sheep intestines to cows. In a free market, everyone would have to do that in order to compete, and everyone could claim not to and no one would stop them.
Without regulatory bodies like the FDA, EPA, and others, we'd go back to companies having the freedom to dump their shit wherever they want, take whatever measures they want to save money, destroy their competition, and you'd be looking at going back to the same market that caused environmental disasters we've spent decades and billions cleaning up.
I'm not going to engage in ad hominem attacks against members of one side of the aisle or another. Both sides have their cronies that they serve, and both sides have tweaked regulations to favor those they serve.
The simple fact is that, while you want to encourage innovation in an economy, you do not want a full-on laissez-faire economy that is currently being used as a rallying cry of "free market". Regulations are often misguided and frequently make companies less profitable or stifle innovation, but you don't want a world without them. If you're old enough to remember one, you'll understand why.
There are, in fact, areas where our economy is over-regulated, or the regulations work against the better interests of the economy, or have the opposite of their intended effects. Those regulations need to be reviewed and reformed, and in some cases eliminated.
But many of us are old enough to remember the results of lack of regulation, under-regulation, or unenforced self-regulation. Love Canal is a well-known example, but there are several lakes and rivers very near where I live that have levels of mercury and other toxics that still make fish and other wildlife in some areas inedible even today.
This is all decades after regulation started, and after the government has poured a lot of money ("Superfund") into mitigation and cleanup, and a lot of work into slowing the damage.
If you're too young to remember any of that, how about, oh, I dunno, the current financial crisis? Brought on by allowing banks to overconsolidate, and not regulating their activities enough after allowing them to become "too big to fail" (brought to you by the concerted effort of both sides of the aisle).
Still too far back in the history books? Hmm, seems to me that self-regulation of a certain oil company might have caused some sort of pesky problem somewhere... hmm, where could that be? Something about not requiring a $500,000 backup system to their blowout preventer, and having their primary blowout preventer offline?
RE: Dial-up... Only in the beginning.
After a while, economies of scale ensured that only the "big boys" could afford enough modems to keep their subscribers happy, because they got big enough to just buy trunk lines. The small ISP was pretty much shoved out of business or bought out.
At the peak of the dial-up ISP, you could see this happening at an increasing pace. It's just the advent of high-speed Internet that made the entire issue largely irrelevant.
In an unregulated (freedom for the business) market, competition will ensure a race to the bottom and the one who offers service the most cheaply or makes the highest profits can then destroy or buy the competition. Then that one business can set the price to their liking, buy out competitors, and has no reason to add anything new except zeros to the amount it charges. You tend to get fast innovation followed by consolidation followed by monopoly, cash-cow mentality, and stagnation.
In a regulated (freedom for the consumer) market, competition will be regulated so it continues to exist. You'll tend to get lower levels of sustained innovation, no consolidation, and it takes longer to reach the stagnation point, because there's room for new entries into the market. Companies that own expensive or unique resources are forced to share those resources to lower the cost of entry for a newcomer (or, in some cases, unique resources become a public resource).
What we generally have now in most cases is a "regulated monopoly". You get great efficiencies of scale - one company, but you lose innovation because the company (a) has little reason to innovate since it's ensured monopoly status, and (b) has to run any changes by the Government or its regulatory body.
But the regulation does, by and large, allow a company to install HUGE infrastructures and mitigates their risk, and forces the company to operate at a "reasonable" (as defined by the regulatory agency) profit while meeting minimums of service. Obviously not the hotbed of innovation you really want, but the phones work.
So, which "free market" do you want to go to? If you own a decent-sized business who will either become the bear that eats everyone else or make a profit by being "eaten by the bear", or if you're sick and tired of the assholes in Washington DC telling you what you can and cannot do with all that pesky mercury you have when there's a perfectly good river next to your factory that flows "away" quite nicely, obviously your idea of a "free market" is one that any company can do anything they damned well please.
If you are a general consumer, a smaller business, or a person downstream from that plant, you might want some level of regulation.
I'm thinking BP and MS just need to swap CEOs one-for-one.
Hayward is already receiving a significant pension PLUS a golden parachute, and I'm sure Ballmer would be as well.
Both companies could save a lot of money by simply giving their current CEO a guaranteed cushy job with another company instead.
The US is currently involved in a "you broke it, you bought it" issue with Afghanistan.
After the attacks on September 11, 2001, the US was looking for the person responsible for coordinating the attacks. The prime suspect (Osama Bin Laden) was strongly suspected of hanging out in the hills in Afghanistan.
The US, with wide UN support, requested permission of the then-present Afghan government, the Taliban, to enter the country and apprehend Bin Laden. Said permission was refused.
The US government asked for, and received, both permission and support of the UN to enter Afghanistan and seek Bin Laden (though it took long enough that Bin Laden had probably left the country and hidden in Pakistan or another country by then). The Taliban put up significant resistance, so the UN force removed the government from power.
The resulting vacuum of power fractured the somewhat tenuous hold the Taliban had previously held over the fractured regions, and opened the door for external forces to try to exert their own influence over the now-chaotic region.
The ideal at this point would be to restore some form of centralized government to Afghanistan. A democracy is, at this point, somewhat overly idealistic. Successful democracies are established from within, and Afghanistan has little history of trying - only to resisting whatever current outside force is invading them at the time, which may be the only thing that brings the country into any form of unity - a common enemy.
To quote Pogo, "We have seen the enemy, and he is us."
But if we just pull out, chaos will take back over. The country is destabilized. It took a strong force to keep it in any semblance of order (note that I didn't say "happy" or "prosperous", just "any semblance of order"). We removed that force.
In large part, you can replace "Afghanistan" with "Iraq" by removing all references to UN support, and replacing the clear reasoning for the invasion with far more tenuous reasons. Oh, and Afghanistan probably would have gone better if we had not distracted ourselves with Iraq and squandered lots of international goodwill and resources, of course.
So use US dollars to buy US goods and food, and make the "peace handout" in the form of goods and food. The citizen fills out a form, passes the "didn't shoot at nothin'" test, and gets his/her money in the form of vouchers which can be redeemed for:
1. Food
2. Lumber and building supplies
3. Labor/equipment rental for larger projects (Corps of Engineers)
4. Luxuries (US movies, TV sets, etc)
As people start out, they'll get mostly food and maybe a little lumber to do home repairs. Eventually, you have people form organizations that pool their resources to ask for labor and equipment to build a school or community center or whatnot. Some people get some luxury items here and there.
The only problem, of course, is weaning people off this assistance once they have a fairly decent lifestyle. Without some careful planning it could all fall apart once the money dries up. One country cannot support another country forever, but we can give them a start.
Something like lowering the allotment every month, but spending a higher percentage of it on local products as the country's economy starts to formulate, so you encourage local businesses to take over the day-to-day stuff.
Idealistic? Sure. Might not work. But what we've done so far has cost us even more money, more lives, and has had somewhat limited results without any real signs of emerging long-term stability.
Maybe we need to take some different risks.
embedded python for shits and giggles
I know what you mean, but out of context it sounds so horribly wrong.
"GOVERNMENT R BAD, CORPORATIONS R GOOD"
I'm confused. Make this simpler for me. Which group has four legs, again?
Yes, it is really bad. But, fortunately, the Linux maintenance group isn't all THAT bad. Torvalds is certainly "front and center" but he's not the only one aware of what is going on, and there's an "inner circle" that is comprised of people who are very aware of the model that has been established and would probably work cooperatively to keep the core Linux kernel working largely as it does today.
Yes, there are going to be people who will opportunistically fork off their own version and try to make Mikenix, Joenix, Franknix, etc. If a sufficient number of the core developers follow that fork, then that fork will be where most people will want to get their code.
Assuming the entire "inner circle" all walked into a dark corridor and were all simultaneously eaten by grues, there would probably be some chaos. Development might get a little stuttery for a while. But in a pretty short time someone (or some group) will step in and fill the gap.
But, don't forget, the code is out there. It's not going away. There's no shortage of people who just want the chance to contribute to it. In general, FOSS development is an (admittedly imperfect) meritocracy.
Someone will prove that he or she is "The One" and after a little shuffling and snuffling the majority will align, because most people understand that the most efficient Linux is where everyone contributes to one central effort. You'll have some forks (hell, there are plenty of them out there today!), but none will be fatal to the future of Linux. It's too useful to too many.
"If I fall, another will take my place. And another, and another..."
- Delenn, "Comes the Inquisitor"
"Say CHEESE!"
Not mad, just making a point. ;)
Lobster is too chewy for me. And yes, I have tried it about 20 times.
No offense, but at the prices they get for lobster, I'd have stopped at trying it once. It's a luxury food at the prices they get for it nowadays. There are plenty of really good foods out there that cost a hell of a lot less. :)
Having said that, I've never found Maine lobster to be chewy unless it was horribly, terribly overcooked and rubbery.
But I honestly don't know Florida lobster that well, so it may be a more chewy meat. I've only tried it once, and I don't remember the texture. I didn't like it well enough to bother trying it again (not when I have access to the good stuff here in Maine - LOL!)
OK, fair enough, but (assuming you use Safari), this issue goes a little deeper...
What information have you filled into web forms? Is Safari set up so it remembers that information?
Sure, your name and address may be safe from the address book, but have you ever entered your name and address on a site and had it remembered?
If you use Safari and you wish to continue using it, it's a very, very good idea to read the first article and turn off the "remember stuff in web forms" immediately, and keep it off until a fix is available.
Actually, this is a perfect example of it.
The vulnerability is in closed-source software, because Safari is closed-source. The vulnerability does not exist in Webkit (the open source component of Safari), so no one but Apple can fix this issue.
The issue was discovered almost by accident. Safari allows Javascript to emulate keypresses (which is almost inconceivably stupid).
If any respectable open source team member had seen Javascript events being passed to the keyboard buffer, he or she would have screamed blue bloody murder and it would have become a priority one bug faster than you can say "the developer who wrote that shit has just lost code submission privileges on this project".