Does anyone really think nationalized health care will give us a BETTER system?
The term "nationalized health care" essentially conjures images of an entirely nationalized industry of health care providers. That indeed is quite unlikely to work. A single-payer system -- nationalized *insurance*, if you will -- on the other hand leaves market forces in play, since providers still compete for health care dollars, and not only quite possibly would work well here but has been demonstrated to work well elsewhere. Shortfalls in providers (in Canada at least) appear to be more readily attributable to decisions from medical associations and education institutions to reduce the number of new practitioners trained than from dictation of supply from the insurance system.
Do you REALLY want Hiliary calling the shots here?
"Hiliary" didn't propose either single-payer care or a nationalized health care industry. The Clinton Health Care plan essentially would have helped subsidize private HMOs while requiring employers to provide insurance to employees. Public requirements, private providers -- certainly something that's been proposed for all kinds of potential solutions to problems, from Republicans as well as Democrats. The plan was very different than some of its most vocal opponents painted it as. That said, it likely would have been a mitigated success at best and a disaster at worse, and there are plenty of other options which appear to be more sensible and less complex. High-access health care != Hiliary.
(1) Some of these "plans" are *not* insurance. They are essentially negotiated prices for certain services. This is not altogether unhelpful
(2) Some of the plans offered through associations are insurance, but (a) the associations may not independent associations.. some (particularly NASE and AAS) actually so closely tied with insurance underwriter UICI that they may as well be marketing vehicles for the company and (b) the insurance plans have woeful gaps, including poor first dollar coverage and what amounts to no practical out of pocket limits.
You are probably better pursuing membership in a well-known genuine professional association like the ACM or IEEE and seeing what they offer rather than generic business associations.
What if you don't like you're health care? I can go to another insurer.
If you're still insurable. If you don't like your health plan, you'd better find out about it before you really *need* your health plan, because once you do, it's what you've got or nothing. As an individual, once you've been diagnosed, unless your condition is largely remediable and you've completed full treatment, there's no way you're going to get on another insurer's plan as an individual, and even when it comes to groups, you'll be lucky if the plans you're moving between are subject to COBRA and if the new group doesn't decide to write out coverage relating to specifics. In short, "choice" doesn't exist in the insurance field in the same way it does for restaurants or consumer electronics. If the time ever comes that you *really* need it, you're stuck with what you've got.
I can go to another doctor.
This is also a choice under single-payer plans.
I never have to wait for anything. You're at the mercy of what your government provides, including the infamous "waiting list".
As I've pointed out elsewhere in this thread, waiting lists aren't at all unheard of even for the well-insured when it comes to seeing specialists. More especially so if your insurance and income are limited. And of course, for those completely uninsured, the wait-time is essentially until you can find someone willing to make you a charity case or until you need to go to the emergency room. After which you may still have to bear a not only substantial but *ridiculous* costs above and beyond what insurers can negotiate.
Not to mention that waiting lists in some countries (specifically Canada) seem to have less to do specifically with a national insurance system and more to do with an attempt on the part of Medical Associations to manage the supply of practitioners.
I agree with what you say, but the big difference here is that there are no waiting lists.
It depends on where you live, what kind of service you need, and what kind of insurance you have. Waits of 4-8 weeks to see specialists aren't necessarily uncommon anywhere, though more common some places than others. Inferior insurance has the consequence that some practitioners/suppliers are less willing to treat you or supply state of the art care, even if you can negotiate cash discounts and save up the payment -- which obviously results in a wait -- or work out a payment plan. If you *do* experience any difficulty with payment, you can be sure you'll wait in other ways, specifically while you have to clean up your credit record in order to make any purchase regarding financing.... or, alternatively, accept the higher rates and wait longer to pay off your purchases.
There is also free medical for low income and freeloader types. Most places will not turn you away either.
Emergency facilities are required not to. Physicians offices aren't, but will sometimes negotiate with you, but they're almost always quite limited as to what they can actually do for you there in-office in terms of testing and treatment. To get those things, you usually have to go to a larger facility, some of whom will indeed turn you away if you can't make payment at time of service, and almost all of the rest will bill the hell out of you at rates up to double what they'd charge the insurance company. Medicaid is a crapshoot unless you're a child or willing to actually voluntarily reduce your income to qualifying poverty levels.
None of this is speculation. It's personal experience, mine and others. It also shows up in statistics relating bankruptcy to medical expenses and the growing number of uninsured.
I understand single-payer and state-subsidized care isn't all kittens and pretty flowers. But my experience without employer-sponsored care leads me to believe there are quite likely as many problems with our vaunted mess here.
At Microsoft we undertook our own analysis of our patent portfolio and concluded that it was necessary and important to create a patent covenant for customers of these products.
"So we signed a deal that provides that coventant, and we just didn't want you to worry your pretty little heads about it SO MUCH that we won't even tell you what those patents were. That way, you don't even have to think about it!"
Aside from the difficulties with terraforming Mars mentioned in other comments, I sometimes wonder why there isn't a little more effort put into doing terraforming experiments where land and resources are a little more accessible: earth.
There's plenty of pretty hostile environments here we could start to practice on, but I rarely see anything indicating we're doing much beyond putting good air conditioning units in new houses in Lancaster so we can build layer 60 of suburbia around LA....
Have we become so cynical that we believe the absolute worst of everyone?
In politics? It's not hard. This has nothing to do with political philosophy, and everything to do with actions that look shady, both circumstantially and concretely. Perhaps you've heard about the recent campaign letter in Orange County discouraging immigrants? Perhaps you've heard about the groups threatening individuals with arrest if they show up at the pools, or telling that 'Democrats vote on Wednesday'? Blackwell's management of voter registration in Ohio 2004?
I'm not about to argue the Democrats have a clean history in this regard. Evidence of machines making it difficult to vote for Republicans is equally worthy of investigation. However, there's ample evidence there are people in both parties -- *Republicans Included* -- who are willing to cheat. The motive's there. The means and opportunity are documented. That makes it nearly inevitable, so when some voting trouble comes up that looks and quacks like a duck....
The Democrats offer no real solutions than to say they would do "better" than the Republicans
First of all, even *assuming* all the Democrats have to offer over the Republicans is that they're not the current crop of Republicans, that's still a virtue. Expressing disapproval is a real form of feedback. Turning over ineffective officials may not get you who you want immediately, but it's absolutely necessary if you want change, and it tells politicians who NOT to be.
Second of all, while the statement 'Democrats offer no real solutions' may be true of a given candidate, and while it's more largely true in terms of campaign tactics (which value rhetoric over substance), I'd say that phrase far more commonly means "I'm unfamiliar with the Democratic candidate's policy positions." I can't count the number of times that people said that about Kerry during 2004, but when I'd follow up with something like "So, you don't like Kerry's plan for shaping tax incentives to hire domestically?", 90% of them had no idea what I was talking about.
And the Democratic candidate for Senate I'm supporting this election (Pete Ashdown) has been genuinely expressive about many of his positions and views.
It's also true, of course, that not every Democrat is a good candidate, nor does every Republican need to be turned out. I simply find that phrases like "the Democrats are just as bad" or "the Democrats have no ideas" to be false.
Why can't we just focus on the problems with electronic voting rather than turning it into a political debate?
It's an excellent idea, but for whatever reason, talking ourselves blue on the technical merits of the issue seems to have done nothing to get the population up in arms and our elected officials to do anything.
I think in the end, the problem isn't that there's partisan accusations of cheating. It's that we seem to have no significant social equipment for investigating the issues without invoking partisan ire.
There's absolutely no reason to pick on one side or the other
I take your point about the Democrats being far from clean. But the basic reality right now is that the Republicans are in power, and have been, solidly so, for the last four years. It's therefore to be expected that their actions would receive closer scrutiny and criticism.
He believes we will see the first computers as smart as people by 2015.
That's bolder than a lot of strong AI proponents. Traditionally, it's 20-30 years down the road.
As to smart yogurt -- linkable electronics in bacteria such as E. Coli -- he figures that means the end of security. "So how do you manage security in that sort of a world? I would say that there will not be any security from 2025 onwards."
Unless you've got equally effective opposing nanotech, which I suspect there will be some research in.
'Don't be confused by these spurious complaints about Net neutrality,' Tim Regan, a vice president with fiber optic cable manufacturer Corning Inc., said. 'Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem.'"
Translation: don't be confused by trivial things like facts and details regarding the case. Instead, please be confused by our utterly content-free, shaded, and spun vague assertions!
I think it's interesting that most of the anti-net-neutrality statements don't contain any substance. Those that do certainly don't rebut concerns brought up by net-neutrality advocates. They've clearly chosen to try to win over the public and the senate via obfuscation rather than argument. That *alone* should tell you something.
Imagine Dell or Creative Labs having a similar impact.
If Dell could lead in making products that are as appealing in this space, then perhaps they might. But they don't. They make stolid, sensible commodity stuff and push the price downward on it. It's good business, and the world can obviously use that, but they don't particularly innovate otherwise, and they generally don't lead.
Apple, on the other hand, makes stuff that looks cool, they add new features that aren't widespread, and sometimes they invent new stuff outright. They make it easy to use and set up. They care about aesthetics. They don't just introduce stuff, they introduce a *vision*, and people know they're going to deliver, and that's why they get excited.
Creative is a different case. They obviously hit the mp3 market sooner, and really, if they'd been able to capture aesthetics and had the muscle to create and integrated delivery platform and moxie to project vision, they, among others, could have owned the space before Apple took it in.
There should be an ultimatum: if there is another terrorist attack or attacks causing major loss of life, any country found to be harboring and/or funding Islamic terrorists will be attacked. Not invaded. Attacked. Their cities will be summarily carpet-bombed...
It's a reasonably good strategic response to a rational state-like entity whose strength is in their infrastructure, especially in a situation like, say, Afghanistan, where there's close cooperation between the state and the terroists. It loses a considerable amount of its strategic value against non-state actors whose life depends on in the appeal of their ideology, and where the state and the terrorists may have at best an uneasy state of coexistence.
In many cases, what we want from states which are in the uneasy-coexistence state (or better) is greater cooperation in pursuing and apprehending terrorists, and in suppressing radical Islamist elements. That greater cooperation has to come both from the authorities and population. Carpet-bombing a city is unlikely to produce the cooperation. Nor is it particularly improbable it could create sympathy for radical Islamist claims.
But I damn well expect if Verizon is charging the sites I go to, that they're not charging me.
Oh, they probably won't list it directly in your bill. In fact, it probably won't get charged to you at all. So where will it show up?
Well, specifically, it's obvious Google could raise their ad rates a bit to pay for it, so the cost of acquisition gets passed on to advertisers, who in turn raise their product prices a bit, so you'd likely pay more there.
But that's not the really insidious part. The really crappy part is that it will result in a higher barrier to entry for businesses that provide products and services over the net. That is, the charges will show up for you in the resulting lowered competition, the resulting less efficient market. Everywhere the telcos touch with their new arbitrary fees.
And the best part about it is that most suckers won't even realize that it's connected with the new and improved non-neutral net.
"Yes. If you completely ignore consumers acting to maximize their self-interest, the idea of a free market seems messed up. Of course if you do that, you're ignoring the entire point of having a market."
Hardly. It's one thing to talk about an idealized market, where perfect competition exists and consumers are empowered and informed. The problem is that working with this assumption as if it were a reflection of reality is approximately as accurate as the high-school physics abstractions that ignore friction.
Of course, if one works towards policy that triest to bring that about, that's quite a different thing. The naive assumption isn't that society can help bring such things about -- it can -- but rather, that such a state is the most natural one for markets.
The free market is not about charging a fair price based on supply and demand; It's about charging the maximum price that the market will bare. Fairness never enters into the equation.
Free markets don't require this condition, though they generally should allow it. The problem is that if enough actors get caught up in the philosophy that maximized self-interest is the ultimate good, it will inevitably reach such a condition.
And this is a strong reason why markets can't be trusted as the sole arbiting type of social institution, or even, probably, the most ascendant one.
"The internet is a collection of networks. "It" doesn't exist, per se. We only see it as a system because it behaves as one - but it's not like it's some natural resource that copper providers are keeping us from."
You're right that it's not a naturally occuring resource, but I don't think you're right that it doesn't exist. It is, to borrow a phrase from the Searls/Weinberger piece World of Ends, "the Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement..." or, perhaps more precisely, a lot of agreements.
This isn't too different from a lot of other things that don't really exist except as shared agreements. Any state entity, or democracy, or rule-of-law in general fall in this category. Money falls in this category. The concept of property rides a thin line between roots in human psychology and this category.
And this leads to one other thing you said that's not correct. All the things I mentioned above can simply cease to exist if enough people -- or sometimes a few key people or organizations -- renege on the agreement. Most of them continue because it's of high value to everyone to do so, but periodically, you find people breaking the agreements. And in most cases, the rest of us respond vigorously by martialing the resources and forces of those who believe in these agreements and are willing to play by the rules, because the loss of those things would be a huge cost.
The telcos are key. They could in fact be key enough that their reneging on the agreement that's constituted the net for the last 5, 10, 20, and 30 years could possibly damage the agreement, for no clear benefit other than additional profit taking beyond what's already a profitable business.
And while their resources make up an essnetial portion of the net, it's not the only one, nor in some sense should anyone get the idea the internet belongs to them. Even "their" pipes aren't even strictly theirs -- they've received millions in tax breaks, special easements and rights to operate, and in some cases outright grants from the various levels of the government to build those pipes -- but beyond that there are thousands if not millions of other participants in the agreement that constitutes the net who've create the software, hardware, protocols, and other inventions that made it possible. There's really no question that they've no inherent right to make changes to the agreement on their own, and absolutely no right to make changes protected by law or other means of avoiding backlash or consequences. And there's little question that the benefits of the current agreement are proven, while the benefits of their proposal seem to have little forseeable consequence beyond further personal profit at the expense of other participants.
The only question is whether we should respond as vigorously as we would when other valuable agreements are threatened.
Seriously. It's, what, 80-90% of technically conversant people who believe that net neutrality is good, and that allowing telecom companies to arbitrarily extract extra fees by packet tpye is bad. So, why is it that our reps don't listen? Are they simply swayed only by money? Blinded by ideological generalizations? Incapable of understanding the issue?
If there are particular oft-repeated poor arguments employed on the side of net neutrality, by all means, feel free to point them out. It would be a service.
On the other hand, it wouldn't change the fact that it's simply untrue that under the current state of net neutrality, we have "one low price, eat all you want at the buffet." It's true most arrangements include a certain amount of traffic/bandwidth at no additional charge, but whether a single burger has an 2 oz patty or features a half-pound of beef, it ain't a buffet. If there's a package out there with no cap ond bandwidth -- an arrangement that allows unlimited traffic without paying additional fees -- I'm unfamiliar with it.
And yet, the telcos and their talking heads seem to not only speak as if there are such arrangements, but even continue to imply that the bandwidth isn't being payed for at all.
This isn't "appeal to emotion" or "leap of logic." This is called *lying*.
And again, if you can find similar tactics at work in defense of net neutrality, by all means, enlighten us.
Within two paragraphs, we already encounter this particular misunderstanding:
"Everyone should be allowed to hang out in the town square and use it as they please, one low price, eat all you want at the buffet."
The rest of the article isn't worth reading. That level of grasp on the problem tells me the writer already thinks in glittering generalities and doesn't understand the issue. "One low price" hardly begins to describe the current state of net neutrality.
Not too surprising, however. I've yet to see an opponent to net neutrality who can make their case without misunderstanding or misrepresenting this particular point, if they examine specific points at all.
I've heard that a number of the Minis -- I'm not sure which -- have chips which don't have the virtualization support, or have it crippled by firmware troubles. There's some info in the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_mini
The real question: why does the person who submitted the story think the Mini question is answered in the review? The word "mini" doesn't even appear in the blog post anywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
Does anyone really think nationalized health care will give us a BETTER system?
The term "nationalized health care" essentially conjures images of an entirely nationalized industry of health care providers. That indeed is quite unlikely to work. A single-payer system -- nationalized *insurance*, if you will -- on the other hand leaves market forces in play, since providers still compete for health care dollars, and not only quite possibly would work well here but has been demonstrated to work well elsewhere. Shortfalls in providers (in Canada at least) appear to be more readily attributable to decisions from medical associations and education institutions to reduce the number of new practitioners trained than from dictation of supply from the insurance system.
Do you REALLY want Hiliary calling the shots here?
"Hiliary" didn't propose either single-payer care or a nationalized health care industry. The Clinton Health Care plan essentially would have helped subsidize private HMOs while requiring employers to provide insurance to employees. Public requirements, private providers -- certainly something that's been proposed for all kinds of potential solutions to problems, from Republicans as well as Democrats. The plan was very different than some of its most vocal opponents painted it as. That said, it likely would have been a mitigated success at best and a disaster at worse, and there are plenty of other options which appear to be more sensible and less complex. High-access health care != Hiliary.
Things to beware of:
(1) Some of these "plans" are *not* insurance. They are essentially negotiated prices for certain services. This is not altogether unhelpful
(2) Some of the plans offered through associations are insurance, but (a) the associations may not independent associations.. some (particularly NASE and AAS) actually so closely tied with insurance underwriter UICI that they may as well be marketing vehicles for the company and (b) the insurance plans have woeful gaps, including poor first dollar coverage and what amounts to no practical out of pocket limits.
You are probably better pursuing membership in a well-known genuine professional association like the ACM or IEEE and seeing what they offer rather than generic business associations.
What if you don't like you're health care? I can go to another insurer.
If you're still insurable. If you don't like your health plan, you'd better find out about it before you really *need* your health plan, because once you do, it's what you've got or nothing. As an individual, once you've been diagnosed, unless your condition is largely remediable and you've completed full treatment, there's no way you're going to get on another insurer's plan as an individual, and even when it comes to groups, you'll be lucky if the plans you're moving between are subject to COBRA and if the new group doesn't decide to write out coverage relating to specifics. In short, "choice" doesn't exist in the insurance field in the same way it does for restaurants or consumer electronics. If the time ever comes that you *really* need it, you're stuck with what you've got.
I can go to another doctor.
This is also a choice under single-payer plans.
I never have to wait for anything.
You're at the mercy of what your government provides, including the infamous "waiting list".
As I've pointed out elsewhere in this thread, waiting lists aren't at all unheard of even for the well-insured when it comes to seeing specialists. More especially so if your insurance and income are limited. And of course, for those completely uninsured, the wait-time is essentially until you can find someone willing to make you a charity case or until you need to go to the emergency room. After which you may still have to bear a not only substantial but *ridiculous* costs above and beyond what insurers can negotiate.
Not to mention that waiting lists in some countries (specifically Canada) seem to have less to do specifically with a national insurance system and more to do with an attempt on the part of Medical Associations to manage the supply of practitioners.
I agree with what you say, but the big difference here is that there are no waiting lists.
It depends on where you live, what kind of service you need, and what kind of insurance you have. Waits of 4-8 weeks to see specialists aren't necessarily uncommon anywhere, though more common some places than others. Inferior insurance has the consequence that some practitioners/suppliers are less willing to treat you or supply state of the art care, even if you can negotiate cash discounts and save up the payment -- which obviously results in a wait -- or work out a payment plan. If you *do* experience any difficulty with payment, you can be sure you'll wait in other ways, specifically while you have to clean up your credit record in order to make any purchase regarding financing.... or, alternatively, accept the higher rates and wait longer to pay off your purchases.
There is also free medical for low income and freeloader types. Most places will not turn you away either.
Emergency facilities are required not to. Physicians offices aren't, but will sometimes negotiate with you, but they're almost always quite limited as to what they can actually do for you there in-office in terms of testing and treatment. To get those things, you usually have to go to a larger facility, some of whom will indeed turn you away if you can't make payment at time of service, and almost all of the rest will bill the hell out of you at rates up to double what they'd charge the insurance company. Medicaid is a crapshoot unless you're a child or willing to actually voluntarily reduce your income to qualifying poverty levels.
None of this is speculation. It's personal experience, mine and others. It also shows up in statistics relating bankruptcy to medical expenses and the growing number of uninsured.
I understand single-payer and state-subsidized care isn't all kittens and pretty flowers. But my experience without employer-sponsored care leads me to believe there are quite likely as many problems with our vaunted mess here.
At Microsoft we undertook our own analysis of our patent portfolio and concluded that it was necessary and important to create a patent covenant for customers of these products.
"So we signed a deal that provides that coventant, and we just didn't want you to worry your pretty little heads about it SO MUCH that we won't even tell you what those patents were. That way, you don't even have to think about it!"
Aside from the difficulties with terraforming Mars mentioned in other comments, I sometimes wonder why there isn't a little more effort put into doing terraforming experiments where land and resources are a little more accessible: earth.
There's plenty of pretty hostile environments here we could start to practice on, but I rarely see anything indicating we're doing much beyond putting good air conditioning units in new houses in Lancaster so we can build layer 60 of suburbia around LA....
... it's best to be alert for it.
Have we become so cynical that we believe the absolute worst of everyone?
In politics? It's not hard. This has nothing to do with political philosophy, and everything to do with actions that look shady, both circumstantially and concretely. Perhaps you've heard about the recent campaign letter in Orange County discouraging immigrants? Perhaps you've heard about the groups threatening individuals with arrest if they show up at the pools, or telling that 'Democrats vote on Wednesday'? Blackwell's management of voter registration in Ohio 2004?
I'm not about to argue the Democrats have a clean history in this regard. Evidence of machines making it difficult to vote for Republicans is equally worthy of investigation. However, there's ample evidence there are people in both parties -- *Republicans Included* -- who are willing to cheat. The motive's there. The means and opportunity are documented. That makes it nearly inevitable, so when some voting trouble comes up that looks and quacks like a duck....
The Democrats offer no real solutions than to say they would do "better" than the Republicans
First of all, even *assuming* all the Democrats have to offer over the Republicans is that they're not the current crop of Republicans, that's still a virtue. Expressing disapproval is a real form of feedback. Turning over ineffective officials may not get you who you want immediately, but it's absolutely necessary if you want change, and it tells politicians who NOT to be.
Second of all, while the statement 'Democrats offer no real solutions' may be true of a given candidate, and while it's more largely true in terms of campaign tactics (which value rhetoric over substance), I'd say that phrase far more commonly means "I'm unfamiliar with the Democratic candidate's policy positions." I can't count the number of times that people said that about Kerry during 2004, but when I'd follow up with something like "So, you don't like Kerry's plan for shaping tax incentives to hire domestically?", 90% of them had no idea what I was talking about.
And the Democratic candidate for Senate I'm supporting this election (Pete Ashdown) has been genuinely expressive about many of his positions and views.
It's also true, of course, that not every Democrat is a good candidate, nor does every Republican need to be turned out. I simply find that phrases like "the Democrats are just as bad" or "the Democrats have no ideas" to be false.
Why can't we just focus on the problems with electronic voting rather than turning it into a political debate?
It's an excellent idea, but for whatever reason, talking ourselves blue on the technical merits of the issue seems to have done nothing to get the population up in arms and our elected officials to do anything.
I think in the end, the problem isn't that there's partisan accusations of cheating. It's that we seem to have no significant social equipment for investigating the issues without invoking partisan ire.
... then the terrorists will have already have won.
There's absolutely no reason to pick on one side or the other
I take your point about the Democrats being far from clean. But the basic reality right now is that the Republicans are in power, and have been, solidly so, for the last four years. It's therefore to be expected that their actions would receive closer scrutiny and criticism.
Assuming a world where people record themselves all day became a reality....
I think it's naive to assume that it would simply be people recording themselves.
http://www.whiteshoe.org/archive/000920blockcopy.
He believes we will see the first computers as smart as people by 2015.
That's bolder than a lot of strong AI proponents. Traditionally, it's 20-30 years down the road.
As to smart yogurt -- linkable electronics in bacteria such as E. Coli -- he figures that means the end of security. "So how do you manage security in that sort of a world? I would say that there will not be any security from 2025 onwards."
Unless you've got equally effective opposing nanotech, which I suspect there will be some research in.
'Don't be confused by these spurious complaints about Net neutrality,' Tim Regan, a vice president with fiber optic cable manufacturer Corning Inc., said. 'Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem.'"
Translation: don't be confused by trivial things like facts and details regarding the case. Instead, please be confused by our utterly content-free, shaded, and spun vague assertions!
I think it's interesting that most of the anti-net-neutrality statements don't contain any substance. Those that do certainly don't rebut concerns brought up by net-neutrality advocates. They've clearly chosen to try to win over the public and the senate via obfuscation rather than argument. That *alone* should tell you something.
Imagine Dell or Creative Labs having a similar impact.
If Dell could lead in making products that are as appealing in this space, then perhaps they might. But they don't. They make stolid, sensible commodity stuff and push the price downward on it. It's good business, and the world can obviously use that, but they don't particularly innovate otherwise, and they generally don't lead.
Apple, on the other hand, makes stuff that looks cool, they add new features that aren't widespread, and sometimes they invent new stuff outright. They make it easy to use and set up. They care about aesthetics. They don't just introduce stuff, they introduce a *vision*, and people know they're going to deliver, and that's why they get excited.
Creative is a different case. They obviously hit the mp3 market sooner, and really, if they'd been able to capture aesthetics and had the muscle to create and integrated delivery platform and moxie to project vision, they, among others, could have owned the space before Apple took it in.
The power in the average desktop PC is starting to rise, rendering them less effective as a "switch" option....
There should be an ultimatum: if there is another terrorist attack or attacks causing major loss of life, any country found to be harboring and/or funding Islamic terrorists will be attacked. Not invaded. Attacked. Their cities will be summarily carpet-bombed...
It's a reasonably good strategic response to a rational state-like entity whose strength is in their infrastructure, especially in a situation like, say, Afghanistan, where there's close cooperation between the state and the terroists. It loses a considerable amount of its strategic value against non-state actors whose life depends on in the appeal of their ideology, and where the state and the terrorists may have at best an uneasy state of coexistence.
In many cases, what we want from states which are in the uneasy-coexistence state (or better) is greater cooperation in pursuing and apprehending terrorists, and in suppressing radical Islamist elements. That greater cooperation has to come both from the authorities and population. Carpet-bombing a city is unlikely to produce the cooperation. Nor is it particularly improbable it could create sympathy for radical Islamist claims.
Do the Chickens have Large Talons?
But I damn well expect if Verizon is charging the sites I go to, that they're not charging me.
Oh, they probably won't list it directly in your bill. In fact, it probably won't get charged to you at all. So where will it show up?
Well, specifically, it's obvious Google could raise their ad rates a bit to pay for it, so the cost of acquisition gets passed on to advertisers, who in turn raise their product prices a bit, so you'd likely pay more there.
But that's not the really insidious part. The really crappy part is that it will result in a higher barrier to entry for businesses that provide products and services over the net. That is, the charges will show up for you in the resulting lowered competition, the resulting less efficient market. Everywhere the telcos touch with their new arbitrary fees.
And the best part about it is that most suckers won't even realize that it's connected with the new and improved non-neutral net.
"Yes. If you completely ignore consumers acting to maximize their self-interest, the idea of a free market seems messed up.
Of course if you do that, you're ignoring the entire point of having a market."
Hardly. It's one thing to talk about an idealized market, where perfect competition exists and consumers are empowered and informed. The problem is that working with this assumption as if it were a reflection of reality is approximately as accurate as the high-school physics abstractions that ignore friction.
Of course, if one works towards policy that triest to bring that about, that's quite a different thing. The naive assumption isn't that society can help bring such things about -- it can -- but rather, that such a state is the most natural one for markets.
The free market is not about charging a fair price based on supply and demand; It's about charging the maximum price that the market will bare. Fairness never enters into the equation.
Free markets don't require this condition, though they generally should allow it. The problem is that if enough actors get caught up in the philosophy that maximized self-interest is the ultimate good, it will inevitably reach such a condition.
And this is a strong reason why markets can't be trusted as the sole arbiting type of social institution, or even, probably, the most ascendant one.
"The internet is a collection of networks. "It" doesn't exist, per se. We only see it as a system because it behaves as one - but it's not like it's some natural resource that copper providers are keeping us from."
You're right that it's not a naturally occuring resource, but I don't think you're right that it doesn't exist. It is, to borrow a phrase from the Searls/Weinberger piece World of Ends, "the Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement..." or, perhaps more precisely, a lot of agreements.
This isn't too different from a lot of other things that don't really exist except as shared agreements. Any state entity, or democracy, or rule-of-law in general fall in this category. Money falls in this category. The concept of property rides a thin line between roots in human psychology and this category.
And this leads to one other thing you said that's not correct. All the things I mentioned above can simply cease to exist if enough people -- or sometimes a few key people or organizations -- renege on the agreement. Most of them continue because it's of high value to everyone to do so, but periodically, you find people breaking the agreements. And in most cases, the rest of us respond vigorously by martialing the resources and forces of those who believe in these agreements and are willing to play by the rules, because the loss of those things would be a huge cost.
The telcos are key. They could in fact be key enough that their reneging on the agreement that's constituted the net for the last 5, 10, 20, and 30 years could possibly damage the agreement, for no clear benefit other than additional profit taking beyond what's already a profitable business.
And while their resources make up an essnetial portion of the net, it's not the only one, nor in some sense should anyone get the idea the internet belongs to them. Even "their" pipes aren't even strictly theirs -- they've received millions in tax breaks, special easements and rights to operate, and in some cases outright grants from the various levels of the government to build those pipes -- but beyond that there are thousands if not millions of other participants in the agreement that constitutes the net who've create the software, hardware, protocols, and other inventions that made it possible. There's really no question that they've no inherent right to make changes to the agreement on their own, and absolutely no right to make changes protected by law or other means of avoiding backlash or consequences. And there's little question that the benefits of the current agreement are proven, while the benefits of their proposal seem to have little forseeable consequence beyond further personal profit at the expense of other participants.
The only question is whether we should respond as vigorously as we would when other valuable agreements are threatened.
Brain cells are one of the places we know become feeling and even conscious beings. So... is it ethical for us to set them in products?
I'm aware that we already do all kinds of unholy things to animals for research, but this seems different.
Also, there's the always the chance of these things becoming a self-aware SkyRatNet. Who wants to risk that?
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=189331&cid =15590580
Seriously. It's, what, 80-90% of technically conversant people who believe that net neutrality is good, and that allowing telecom companies to arbitrarily extract extra fees by packet tpye is bad. So, why is it that our reps don't listen? Are they simply swayed only by money? Blinded by ideological generalizations? Incapable of understanding the issue?
If there are particular oft-repeated poor arguments employed on the side of net neutrality, by all means, feel free to point them out. It would be a service.
On the other hand, it wouldn't change the fact that it's simply untrue that under the current state of net neutrality, we have "one low price, eat all you want at the buffet." It's true most arrangements include a certain amount of traffic/bandwidth at no additional charge, but whether a single burger has an 2 oz patty or features a half-pound of beef, it ain't a buffet. If there's a package out there with no cap ond bandwidth -- an arrangement that allows unlimited traffic without paying additional fees -- I'm unfamiliar with it.
And yet, the telcos and their talking heads seem to not only speak as if there are such arrangements, but even continue to imply that the bandwidth isn't being payed for at all.
This isn't "appeal to emotion" or "leap of logic." This is called *lying*.
And again, if you can find similar tactics at work in defense of net neutrality, by all means, enlighten us.
Within two paragraphs, we already encounter this particular misunderstanding:
"Everyone should be allowed to hang out in the town square and use it as they please, one low price, eat all you want at the buffet."
The rest of the article isn't worth reading. That level of grasp on the problem tells me the writer already thinks in glittering generalities and doesn't understand the issue. "One low price" hardly begins to describe the current state of net neutrality.
Not too surprising, however. I've yet to see an opponent to net neutrality who can make their case without misunderstanding or misrepresenting this particular point, if they examine specific points at all.
I've heard that a number of the Minis -- I'm not sure which -- have chips which don't have the virtualization support, or have it crippled by firmware troubles. There's some info in the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_mini
The real question: why does the person who submitted the story think the Mini question is answered in the review? The word "mini" doesn't even appear in the blog post anywhere.