So you accept numbers on a webpage without questioning the methodology? And without questioning the numbers themselves? The line you quote shows a narrow range from $67,613 to $87,893 -- starting salaries are $67,613? Really? That didn't make you blink?
You were quoting Michael Moore (and his numbers on a webpage.) That didn't make you blink?
How about the fact that the "AVERAGE" shown is exactly halfway between the lowest and highest salary shown?
CmdrTaco, one of your editors apparently doesn't understand the concept of the "median," where the average is defined as "the value where half of the values are lower and half are higher." It is useful in reporting things such as the "average salary" in a given field. Does that make you blink?
Supported on most hosting plans? I'm pretty sure the Federal Government's hosting plan includes whatever they want. For a high enough price, they could get a TCP over Carrier Pigeon server and run a mirror off that.
Worse analogy: C# is Visual Basic. Visual Basic.NET is the language you're describing. C# (and its XNA extension for game programming, which the parent post alludes to) is basically a language along the same lines as Java. (Unlike J#, which is the old Microsoft Java, C# isn't intended to be compatible with Java or it's virtual machine.) You compile to bytecode for a virtual machine, you have a massive library of built in functions, and you don't manage your own memory.
Also, the sentence containing that analogy makes my eyes bleed. You should learn a simple and secure language for the community, because you clearly haven't mastered English.
Here in the US, cars with manual transmissions are available to buy if people want them. More people want automatics, but you can get one pretty much anywhere you could buy another car.There's a price difference usually, but it depends on which model you want. RENTAL cars tend to be "automatic is what you get."
I've been driving cars in the US for 5 years, three of which I have owned a car with a manual transmission and driven it pretty much exclusively. I agree with everything you said about how a manual transmission is superior to an automatic. But the way it works now (the people who want a manual transmission buy a car like that, everyone else buys an automatic) seems to be the most reasonable way to decide whether people drive with automatic or manual transmissions. Does it really not work like that in Europe, or did I just fall for some trolling?
If you fold down the windshield on the Jeep, it's a lot more aerodynamic. (And if you're taking the roof and doors off to air condition the car, it's good enough weather that you can fold the windshield down too.)
My only wish is the penalty for someone not disclosing he is a paid corporate shill should be de-balling.
As laughable as the rest of this post is, (very much so, FCC =/= FTC, plus have you seen what Obama wants to do with the FCC?) this part is maybe unintentionally insightful.
Back in the day, the penalty for lying used to be "they'd cut your balls off." This is why back in antiquity, women wouldn't be allowed to testify in court. It's also why "testify" and "testicle" have the same root word.
Here's an example of attempted Democratic micromanagement. Say you're thinking about health insurance. The Republican plan is "Well, you can buy it from any company within your state.Each company covers different things, so pick the one's that's right for you. And we're trying to make it so you can buy it across state lines. If you are poor enough to qualify, there's Medicaid. If you're old enough, there's Medicare. And if you don't want insurance at all, well, no problem." The Democrats are trying to push through their plan, which is "There's going to be one plan. Everyone's going to be on it. If what you need isn't covered, it sucks to be you. And if you don't want it, it also sucks to be you. You can pay for it or go to jail."
This is just one example, but there's numerous others.
This is why a tax to pay for Medicaid (healthcare for poor people) is constitutional. But forcing everyone to buy a product, any product, is not one of their powers.
The Constitution is a exhaustive list of rights held. Every right held BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT is listed in the Constitution. Anything not mentioned in the Constitution is something that the Federal Government is not allowed to do. (See 10th Amendment).
Since the Constitution doesn't allow the Federal Government to mandate health care, a health care mandate (as is being proposed) would be unconstitutional. Since the philosophy of the framers was that rights given to natural persons came from God/Nature, they also didn't grant the government the power to create "rights" for people.
Isn't this watch hardware being offered to John Q. Public? It reads GPS data directly. So do any number of in-car/plane/battle tank navigation systems. Your phone, on the other hand, most likely does not.
The one that you're just a pussy for complaining about it.
And the one that causes physical pain and is known by the speaker to do so.
Yes, it's proven nowadays, that emotional pain is no different or less real than "real" physical pain to the brain. Same chemical reaction. Same everything.
So, Martin Luther King, Jr. advocating and inciting the unlawful conduct of sit-ins, unlicensed Freedom Marches, and other demonstration actions directed at segregationist members of the U.S. South... is hate speech?
Yes. I don't see a problem with that. Much change has relied on unlawful and often-times violent revolution, but that doesn't make it any less unlawful or violent. Reference the American war of Independence. Violent and illegal? Absolutely. I wouldn't shy away from calling it such.
Except that there weren't hate speech laws that applied to King. And King is known for "non-violent resistance," which means exactly what it sounds like. Hell, "Hate Speech" isn't illegal in America today. Hate crimes, which is targeting someone for a crime THAT IS ALREADY illegal BECAUSE they are a member of an identifiable group is what is illegal in this country. There's a difference between "doesn't go with the conventional groupthink" and "hate speech." King didn't hate white people, he just wanted thought that things should be better for black people. Because of this, no reasonable person thinks what he did fits the definition of hate speech. Since your definition includes King as hate speech, there's something wrong with your definition.
RNC protesters being arrested got pretty big headlines on all the news networks when it happened. Don't think you need to cite that, assuming your audience are NEWS website goers.
There's a difference between "arrested for trespassing, and in once case illegal weapons possession and conspiracy to incite a riot" and harassed by the FBI.
Every single thing this guy said has been covered by all the national news associations, not just idiot bloggers.
Asking for citations on such hugely public events which were covered by multiple news outlets just shows your own ignorance, and is not "+3 insightful"
HEY MODS: DON'T MOD ME +3 INSIGHTFUL. OK, so now that that's not going to happen, if you can find any examples of people being harassed by the FBI (as the original parent said,) please post them. All the examples I can find are of the "law enforcement arresting people who are breaking the law" variety.
Any system, not just government-run ones, has rationing.
The current system has rationing, but not government run rationing and not single payer rationing.
Right now, the rationing is done by private entities with no accountability to anyone, and whose sole bottom line is profit. The reality is that there is nothing in the bill that gives anyone the authority to pick winners and losers.
The difference between government/single payer rationing and the current model is PRECISELY that the bottom line is profit. If you don't like insurance company A, you can go to insurance company B. A, B, and the rest of the alphabet are competing for your money, some of which turns into their profit. They can increase the amount of premiums they collect by increasing their subscribers. One way to increase their subscribers is to change their rationing scheme so it's favorable to more people.
Well, the nonpartisan CBO would dispute that. They estimate that 11 or 12 million people will move to the public option if it existed. Even the Lewin Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of United Health Care, says that only 100 million people will move to the public option.
Well, the CBO estimates 20 million by 2019, not 11 or 12 million. They were also basing this on 2000 numbers, vs. the Lewin Group's use of 2006 numbers. The Lewin group also assumed that every insurer would offer some kind of plan, and that every individual would have some coverage. (That's what the Universal in Universal Health Care means.) The CBO assumed that some companies and some people would not take part in a plan, and elect to pay fines instead. That accounts for the differences.
Using the Lewin Group's estimate, do you not see how much of a problem eliminating 1/3 of the market will be? I'll give you a hint: That WILL drive private insurers out of business and their customers into the hands of the federal government.
At the same time, how do you explain UPS and FedEx's ability to compete with the USPS, despite the fact that they are legally prohibited from sending certain types of mail?
Nice talking point, but it's too easily recognized. I'd change the companies involved around a little, though. I'd ask how to explain the success of the opposition to Obama care when it's not government funded and the support for it is. I mean, it's not like ACORN is paying me to post on Slashdot.
As far as the USPS, the Federal Government has a constitutional obligation to provide a postal system. Today the USPS is a quasi-public enterprise. If it was entirely public, it would have collapsed several times by now, or it would have innovated in a way that's the government wouldn't have allowed. But that's not the point. A government healthcare system OR an insurance company would serve as the middleman between you and a doctor. How awful the middleman is and how good/awful the doctor is are independent of each other. A bad insurance company can still hook you up with a good doctor. But since the government is directly providing the service of delivering mail poorly, and UPS and FedEx are providing the service of delivering mail correctly, no shit they're going to do b
Though the bill allows the public option to pay for abortions, it will only do so if you pay extra premiums, premiums whose funds are by law kept completely separate from the rest of its money.
Just like the Social Security "Trust" Fund? Just like the tax to increase the money available to win the Spanish American war that stuck around for 100 years? Just like Defense Appropriations are supposed to be used to by weapons and hire people to use them, but the Democrats wanted to spend them on private congressional jets? Face it, man, when the government takes your money it throws it into a big pot and then assigns and divides it based on its current ideology.
As for the difference between the parties, while Democrats can be bought for the right price, Republicans will do it for free. This health care situation is proof of that. A few Democratic senators may have been bought by the health care industry and are holding things up, but you also have Republican ex-governors and senators making shit up about death panels.
An alternative reading of the situation, and one that's just as fair, is that the majority of Democrats are in the pockets of unions. Since health care costs (imposed by the unions) are killing manufacturing, manufacturers and management want to palm healthcare off on the government. The Blue Dog Democrats, along with most Republicans, genuinely think that the plan won't work. (One ex-governor engaged in hyperbole by calling the people who decide on how the rationing will work a "death panel." Apparently, MSNBC has never heard of a politician using hyperbole before.)
This "both parties are stupid and corrupt" nonsense isn't going to help. Given a super-majority the way one party has right now (and the way the other party has had in the past) most of the ideas are going to come from the party in power.Most of what the opposition party is doing is going to be calling those ideas bad. If the ideas are good ideas, support them, and if they're bad ideas oppose them. If a specific government official is caught with their hand in the cookie jar, oppose them personally. But just saying "Both parties are equally as bad" isn't going to make it better.
Each of those arguments is arguable. Specifically:
that the health care bill creates death panels,
Sarah Palin was using hyperbole when she spoke about death panels. Her point was that the government run system would necessarily introduce rationing. The rationing would create a system of winners and losers, and she was worried that her son (who has Down Syndrome) would be one of the losers. Ezekiel Emanuel, who was appointed by President Obama to be a special advisor on Health Care (so he's not just some nut), wrote "services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia," so it's not like Palin was off base.
it includes a government takeover of medicine,
The public "option" would almost definitely drive private insurance out of business. Between new rules that would prevent insurance companies from enrolling new members to the fact that the government can just undercut the price and make up for it in tax dollars, the possibility exists. There's a good reason that many key Democrats (including Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, and even President Obama) have been on record for a single payer system at some point.
it pays for abortions
The bill will send the question of whether to pay for abortion to an unelected committee. Since Democrats are picking the committee, do you want to bet against them deciding to pay for it?
it pays for health care for illegal immigrants
According to the census, in 2000 there were about 8 million "long term uninsured" in the US, were "long term" means longer than 4 months. If you count "short term" uninsured too, i.e. people between jobs that provided healthcare, there's a little less than another 8 million. The Republican talking point number is the 8 million long term uninsured. The Democrat talking point number is 42 million people without healthcare. To get that, you need to include short term uninsured, long term uninsured, and the 26 million illegal immigrants. (By the way, under state and federal laws, not to mention the Hippocratic Oath and general human decency, illiegal immigrants DO get health care. It is against the law to demand payment for emergency medical care before providing the treatment. Hospitals are REQUIRED to treat any emergency cases REGARDLESS of any other factors. They cannot turn any emergency patient away because of either immigrant status or ability to pay.)
A stupid populace leads to stupid policy, so I'm thinking that we might need the Fairness Doctrine again.
Well, this policy seems stupid especially in light of the Republican plan. This plan is to find the people who genuinely can't get insurance (i.e. the 8 million ling term uninsured) and change the rules for medicaid so that those people qualify. And then leave everyone else alone. If Republicans were implementing the Fairness Doctrine, maybe you would have heard about it.
If it's like the current rules for protected article, then the decision on who can approve an article will purely be based on having an account for a given period of time. There's no unequal rights, no second class system, no old-boy-network.
So wait, the only accounts that get to vote on an edit are the ones literally older than a certain date, and you're saying that's not an old boy network? This is going to MAGNIFY the problem of dicks edit-guarding "their" articles, and make it at least tacitly approved, if not official Wikipedia policy.
Then file charges for stalking which, to my knowledge, is illegal in most, if not all places in the US.
She did that. She knows who the stalker is.
During the course of investigating the stalking issue, if it comes to light that the stalker _also_ posted that material,
The investigation is finished because she (and law enforcement) knows who the stalker is.
_THEN_ add additional charges for [libel].
The theory was that the fact that she and law enforcement already knew who the stalker was didn't stop him because he made this blog AFTER THE STALKING CHARGES. They were going to charge him with libel but didn't because he wasn't the person who made this blog. She didn't file charges against the blogger because she didn't care about the blog as much as she cared about getting the stalker to go away.
The "somebody close" was supposed to be a stalker, who at one point, broke a bottle across her face. The legal action that would have occurred would most likely have been criminal charges related to (continued) stalking.
Since it isn't, she didn't follow through with suing this woman. Makes sense to me.
Remember, the initial topic we were talking about is justice. If everybody had to play a reasonable set of rules, that would be just. In this case, Apple, commercial Linux distros (i.e. the ones that have assets that can be seized), and every other player in the OS market would be forced to provide the choice to ONLY have one browser installed, and it should come from the list of the top five browsers by market share for that platform. (Yes, I'm aware that by and large, Linux distros will provide you with some choices, but it's not like it's any less trivial to install a new browser in Linux than it is in Windows.)
In this case, the "They're a convicted monopoly" argument is a ton of BS. (Specifically, a metric ton.) EVERY Operating System comes with the official browser of the people who made the operating system. Apple comes with Safari by default. Debian comes with Iceweasel. A KDE 3.5 system comes with Konqueror. ChromeOS will include Chrome. People expect a browser to be there, and the logic for everyone else seems to be "If they want A browser, we'll give them OUR browser." That seems to me like it should make perfect sense for Apple, Microsoft, and everyone else.
By the way, the complaint was brought by Opera, which is a European company. They said it should be the top 5 browsers by market share SPECIFICALLY because they are number 5. If they were number 8, they'd be looking for the top 8 browsers in the menu. (By the way, after IE, the browsers go Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera. It says something about Opera that Safari for Windows (which is horrible) is beating them.) The only reason the EU took this case was to benefit a European company at the expense of an American one. Oh, and they get to tax the American company. (That's what this fine is, a tax.) AND tools on Slashdot will think "M$ bad, therefore EU good" and mod you up to +4 insightful, and maybe vote for the incumbents the next time there's EU elections.
The bottom line here is that legislating the market away is not a just thing. It's bad when you're legislating everyone else out of the market, but it's also bad when you're legislating yourself into the market. That's the ONLY thing Opera is doing here.
The European "You have to provide a choice of web browsers" decision was really just a tax on a non-European company. The point wasn't the choice of web browsers, the point was the fine that Microsoft had to pay. I'm much more comfortable that Justice will be served with this taking place in a court that actually deserves some jurisdiction over the litigants.
Slashdot Mirror
on *AVERAGE* the pay is around $70k
So you accept numbers on a webpage without questioning the methodology? And without questioning the numbers themselves? The line you quote shows a narrow range from $67,613 to $87,893 -- starting salaries are $67,613? Really? That didn't make you blink?
You were quoting Michael Moore (and his numbers on a webpage.) That didn't make you blink?
How about the fact that the "AVERAGE" shown is exactly halfway between the lowest and highest salary shown?
CmdrTaco, one of your editors apparently doesn't understand the concept of the "median," where the average is defined as "the value where half of the values are lower and half are higher." It is useful in reporting things such as the "average salary" in a given field. Does that make you blink?
When did you last meet an unfunny penis?
Probably when he met the guy that modded that comment down.
Supported on most hosting plans? I'm pretty sure the Federal Government's hosting plan includes whatever they want. For a high enough price, they could get a TCP over Carrier Pigeon server and run a mirror off that.
Also, the sentence containing that analogy makes my eyes bleed. You should learn a simple and secure language for the community, because you clearly haven't mastered English.
I've been driving cars in the US for 5 years, three of which I have owned a car with a manual transmission and driven it pretty much exclusively. I agree with everything you said about how a manual transmission is superior to an automatic. But the way it works now (the people who want a manual transmission buy a car like that, everyone else buys an automatic) seems to be the most reasonable way to decide whether people drive with automatic or manual transmissions. Does it really not work like that in Europe, or did I just fall for some trolling?
If you fold down the windshield on the Jeep, it's a lot more aerodynamic. (And if you're taking the roof and doors off to air condition the car, it's good enough weather that you can fold the windshield down too.)
Hopefully you, (by which I mean me, the taxpayer) didn't pay too much for your classes in grammar.
It's also available through MSDN and MSDN Academic Alliance, which means that they're giving it out to developers and at schools for free.
My only wish is the penalty for someone not disclosing he is a paid corporate shill should be de-balling.
As laughable as the rest of this post is, (very much so, FCC =/= FTC, plus have you seen what Obama wants to do with the FCC?) this part is maybe unintentionally insightful.
Back in the day, the penalty for lying used to be "they'd cut your balls off." This is why back in antiquity, women wouldn't be allowed to testify in court. It's also why "testify" and "testicle" have the same root word.
This is just one example, but there's numerous others.
This is why a tax to pay for Medicaid (healthcare for poor people) is constitutional. But forcing everyone to buy a product, any product, is not one of their powers.
Since the Constitution doesn't allow the Federal Government to mandate health care, a health care mandate (as is being proposed) would be unconstitutional. Since the philosophy of the framers was that rights given to natural persons came from God/Nature, they also didn't grant the government the power to create "rights" for people.
Isn't this watch hardware being offered to John Q. Public? It reads GPS data directly. So do any number of in-car/plane/battle tank navigation systems. Your phone, on the other hand, most likely does not.
So what third party is Barack Obama a member of?
The one that you're just a pussy for complaining about it. And the one that causes physical pain and is known by the speaker to do so.
Yes, it's proven nowadays, that emotional pain is no different or less real than "real" physical pain to the brain. Same chemical reaction. Same everything.
That's only true if you're a pussy.
Yes. I don't see a problem with that. Much change has relied on unlawful and often-times violent revolution, but that doesn't make it any less unlawful or violent. Reference the American war of Independence. Violent and illegal? Absolutely. I wouldn't shy away from calling it such.
Except that there weren't hate speech laws that applied to King. And King is known for "non-violent resistance," which means exactly what it sounds like. Hell, "Hate Speech" isn't illegal in America today. Hate crimes, which is targeting someone for a crime THAT IS ALREADY illegal BECAUSE they are a member of an identifiable group is what is illegal in this country. There's a difference between "doesn't go with the conventional groupthink" and "hate speech." King didn't hate white people, he just wanted thought that things should be better for black people. Because of this, no reasonable person thinks what he did fits the definition of hate speech. Since your definition includes King as hate speech, there's something wrong with your definition.
RNC protesters being arrested got pretty big headlines on all the news networks when it happened. Don't think you need to cite that, assuming your audience are NEWS website goers.
There's a difference between "arrested for trespassing, and in once case illegal weapons possession and conspiracy to incite a riot" and harassed by the FBI.
Every single thing this guy said has been covered by all the national news associations, not just idiot bloggers. Asking for citations on such hugely public events which were covered by multiple news outlets just shows your own ignorance, and is not "+3 insightful"
HEY MODS: DON'T MOD ME +3 INSIGHTFUL. OK, so now that that's not going to happen, if you can find any examples of people being harassed by the FBI (as the original parent said,) please post them. All the examples I can find are of the "law enforcement arresting people who are breaking the law" variety.
Any system, not just government-run ones, has rationing.
The current system has rationing, but not government run rationing and not single payer rationing.
Right now, the rationing is done by private entities with no accountability to anyone, and whose sole bottom line is profit. The reality is that there is nothing in the bill that gives anyone the authority to pick winners and losers.
The difference between government/single payer rationing and the current model is PRECISELY that the bottom line is profit. If you don't like insurance company A, you can go to insurance company B. A, B, and the rest of the alphabet are competing for your money, some of which turns into their profit. They can increase the amount of premiums they collect by increasing their subscribers. One way to increase their subscribers is to change their rationing scheme so it's favorable to more people.
Well, the nonpartisan CBO would dispute that. They estimate that 11 or 12 million people will move to the public option if it existed. Even the Lewin Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of United Health Care, says that only 100 million people will move to the public option.
Well, the CBO estimates 20 million by 2019, not 11 or 12 million. They were also basing this on 2000 numbers, vs. the Lewin Group's use of 2006 numbers. The Lewin group also assumed that every insurer would offer some kind of plan, and that every individual would have some coverage. (That's what the Universal in Universal Health Care means.) The CBO assumed that some companies and some people would not take part in a plan, and elect to pay fines instead. That accounts for the differences.
Using the Lewin Group's estimate, do you not see how much of a problem eliminating 1/3 of the market will be? I'll give you a hint: That WILL drive private insurers out of business and their customers into the hands of the federal government.
At the same time, how do you explain UPS and FedEx's ability to compete with the USPS, despite the fact that they are legally prohibited from sending certain types of mail?
Nice talking point, but it's too easily recognized. I'd change the companies involved around a little, though. I'd ask how to explain the success of the opposition to Obama care when it's not government funded and the support for it is. I mean, it's not like ACORN is paying me to post on Slashdot.
As far as the USPS, the Federal Government has a constitutional obligation to provide a postal system. Today the USPS is a quasi-public enterprise. If it was entirely public, it would have collapsed several times by now, or it would have innovated in a way that's the government wouldn't have allowed. But that's not the point. A government healthcare system OR an insurance company would serve as the middleman between you and a doctor. How awful the middleman is and how good/awful the doctor is are independent of each other. A bad insurance company can still hook you up with a good doctor. But since the government is directly providing the service of delivering mail poorly, and UPS and FedEx are providing the service of delivering mail correctly, no shit they're going to do b
Though the bill allows the public option to pay for abortions, it will only do so if you pay extra premiums, premiums whose funds are by law kept completely separate from the rest of its money.
Just like the Social Security "Trust" Fund? Just like the tax to increase the money available to win the Spanish American war that stuck around for 100 years? Just like Defense Appropriations are supposed to be used to by weapons and hire people to use them, but the Democrats wanted to spend them on private congressional jets? Face it, man, when the government takes your money it throws it into a big pot and then assigns and divides it based on its current ideology.
To get th
As for the difference between the parties, while Democrats can be bought for the right price, Republicans will do it for free. This health care situation is proof of that. A few Democratic senators may have been bought by the health care industry and are holding things up, but you also have Republican ex-governors and senators making shit up about death panels.
An alternative reading of the situation, and one that's just as fair, is that the majority of Democrats are in the pockets of unions. Since health care costs (imposed by the unions) are killing manufacturing, manufacturers and management want to palm healthcare off on the government. The Blue Dog Democrats, along with most Republicans, genuinely think that the plan won't work. (One ex-governor engaged in hyperbole by calling the people who decide on how the rationing will work a "death panel." Apparently, MSNBC has never heard of a politician using hyperbole before.)
This "both parties are stupid and corrupt" nonsense isn't going to help. Given a super-majority the way one party has right now (and the way the other party has had in the past) most of the ideas are going to come from the party in power.Most of what the opposition party is doing is going to be calling those ideas bad. If the ideas are good ideas, support them, and if they're bad ideas oppose them. If a specific government official is caught with their hand in the cookie jar, oppose them personally. But just saying "Both parties are equally as bad" isn't going to make it better.
that the health care bill creates death panels,
Sarah Palin was using hyperbole when she spoke about death panels. Her point was that the government run system would necessarily introduce rationing. The rationing would create a system of winners and losers, and she was worried that her son (who has Down Syndrome) would be one of the losers. Ezekiel Emanuel, who was appointed by President Obama to be a special advisor on Health Care (so he's not just some nut), wrote "services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia," so it's not like Palin was off base.
it includes a government takeover of medicine,
The public "option" would almost definitely drive private insurance out of business. Between new rules that would prevent insurance companies from enrolling new members to the fact that the government can just undercut the price and make up for it in tax dollars, the possibility exists. There's a good reason that many key Democrats (including Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, and even President Obama) have been on record for a single payer system at some point.
it pays for abortions
The bill will send the question of whether to pay for abortion to an unelected committee. Since Democrats are picking the committee, do you want to bet against them deciding to pay for it?
it pays for health care for illegal immigrants
According to the census, in 2000 there were about 8 million "long term uninsured" in the US, were "long term" means longer than 4 months. If you count "short term" uninsured too, i.e. people between jobs that provided healthcare, there's a little less than another 8 million. The Republican talking point number is the 8 million long term uninsured. The Democrat talking point number is 42 million people without healthcare. To get that, you need to include short term uninsured, long term uninsured, and the 26 million illegal immigrants. (By the way, under state and federal laws, not to mention the Hippocratic Oath and general human decency, illiegal immigrants DO get health care. It is against the law to demand payment for emergency medical care before providing the treatment. Hospitals are REQUIRED to treat any emergency cases REGARDLESS of any other factors. They cannot turn any emergency patient away because of either immigrant status or ability to pay.)
A stupid populace leads to stupid policy, so I'm thinking that we might need the Fairness Doctrine again.
Well, this policy seems stupid especially in light of the Republican plan. This plan is to find the people who genuinely can't get insurance (i.e. the 8 million ling term uninsured) and change the rules for medicaid so that those people qualify. And then leave everyone else alone. If Republicans were implementing the Fairness Doctrine, maybe you would have heard about it.
If it's like the current rules for protected article, then the decision on who can approve an article will purely be based on having an account for a given period of time. There's no unequal rights, no second class system, no old-boy-network.
So wait, the only accounts that get to vote on an edit are the ones literally older than a certain date, and you're saying that's not an old boy network? This is going to MAGNIFY the problem of dicks edit-guarding "their" articles, and make it at least tacitly approved, if not official Wikipedia policy.
Then file charges for stalking which, to my knowledge, is illegal in most, if not all places in the US.
She did that. She knows who the stalker is.
During the course of investigating the stalking issue, if it comes to light that the stalker _also_ posted that material,
The investigation is finished because she (and law enforcement) knows who the stalker is.
_THEN_ add additional charges for [libel].
The theory was that the fact that she and law enforcement already knew who the stalker was didn't stop him because he made this blog AFTER THE STALKING CHARGES. They were going to charge him with libel but didn't because he wasn't the person who made this blog. She didn't file charges against the blogger because she didn't care about the blog as much as she cared about getting the stalker to go away.
The "somebody close" was supposed to be a stalker, who at one point, broke a bottle across her face. The legal action that would have occurred would most likely have been criminal charges related to (continued) stalking.
Since it isn't, she didn't follow through with suing this woman. Makes sense to me.
In this case, the "They're a convicted monopoly" argument is a ton of BS. (Specifically, a metric ton.) EVERY Operating System comes with the official browser of the people who made the operating system. Apple comes with Safari by default. Debian comes with Iceweasel. A KDE 3.5 system comes with Konqueror. ChromeOS will include Chrome. People expect a browser to be there, and the logic for everyone else seems to be "If they want A browser, we'll give them OUR browser." That seems to me like it should make perfect sense for Apple, Microsoft, and everyone else.
By the way, the complaint was brought by Opera, which is a European company. They said it should be the top 5 browsers by market share SPECIFICALLY because they are number 5. If they were number 8, they'd be looking for the top 8 browsers in the menu. (By the way, after IE, the browsers go Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera. It says something about Opera that Safari for Windows (which is horrible) is beating them.) The only reason the EU took this case was to benefit a European company at the expense of an American one. Oh, and they get to tax the American company. (That's what this fine is, a tax.) AND tools on Slashdot will think "M$ bad, therefore EU good" and mod you up to +4 insightful, and maybe vote for the incumbents the next time there's EU elections.
The bottom line here is that legislating the market away is not a just thing. It's bad when you're legislating everyone else out of the market, but it's also bad when you're legislating yourself into the market. That's the ONLY thing Opera is doing here.
The European "You have to provide a choice of web browsers" decision was really just a tax on a non-European company. The point wasn't the choice of web browsers, the point was the fine that Microsoft had to pay. I'm much more comfortable that Justice will be served with this taking place in a court that actually deserves some jurisdiction over the litigants.