We bought my wife a brand new computer with a faster processer, twice the RAM, and Vista rather than XP that it replaced (the laptop had to be replaced because we lost the screen). The Vista computer is SLOW. I'm sure there's a point where you get a fast enough computer to make it not matter, but it makes computers that could fly with XP look like you're trying to run it on a 486.
And I can only assume you've turned off the security prompts if you like the OS. It drives me bananas to click on something, have the computer lock up for a second, redraw the screen shaded, and then pop up with a security warning. Just a warning. No prompt for a password. Nothing. I feel so much more secure for losing that 5 seconds of my life every time I want to look at that control panel.
It's a POS. I'm sure you could make it work as well (or possibly better) than XP, but who has that kind of time? It's broken as shipped. And fixing it makes Linux's foibles seem easy to deal with. I'm a Linux fanboy, but I at least recognize Windows 2000 and XP as being perfectly decent operating systems. Vista is not. I'd prefer to use Windows Me over Vista. It crashes about the same amount and is quicker.
Aside from President George W. Bush, who are you quoting when you say that he "cut taxes and the tax revenues went up"? Again that's a statement that's been said so much that people believe it's true. George W. Bush came to power at the nadir of a business cycle. Tax revenues almost always go up. Our economy's been expanding for quite a while now. The question is have tax revenues increased more than they would have without the tax cuts. Looking at previous presidents, federal revenues increased more under Clinton then they did under Bush or Reagan.
Since then we've had cheap money from the Fed that has fueled a real estate boom as well as a boom for conventional businesses able to expand with the low rates. Of course that would raise revenues somewhat. The problem is that revenues haven't come up even remotely enough to pay for the tax cuts in the first place, so exactly what have we gained? Of course lowering taxes stimulates the economy a little bit in the short run, but in the long run it's not sustainable. It increases our debt load which is leading to a weaker dollar and countries thinking about backing away from our government bonds.
"Can't blame tax cuts for the deficits, its the spending that is the problem." That's interesting rhetoric, but not strictly true. If you buy a million dollar house and only make 30k a year then your ability to afford your house is not a problem of spending. You never could afford that house in the first place. The federal government is in much the same boat. As just one example, we've spent half a trillion dollars on the war in Iraq. Currently we don't have the income to afford that kind of "house", and the economy is not expanding fast enough to keep pace with our spending. We also have our outstanding social security promises, general debt, etc. We could raise taxes now, and try to get our spending back in control. Or we could test out how much of a drag millions of baby boomers are to the economy when they retire. It's not like they're going to care about income tax rates once they're no longer working, and are the largest voting block in the country...
I agree that if the President puts a check for $300 in the hands of every American there will be a positive effect to the economy. A ridiculously artificial effect, but an effect nonetheless. But how much impact did the president's tax cuts really have on the economy? Are you sure that they didn't just happen to coincide with historically low interest rates that let the economy boom on cheap money? The economy's contracting right now and Bush's tax cuts are still in place.
If cutting taxes really made that big of a difference shouldn't be be living in the same sort of economy that we had under Bill Clinton? After all, taxes were higher then. Things should be even better now, shouldn't they?
Then what does the first-year economics text reveal is the reason that people would hire an expensive Maryland programmer, rather than a cheap Indian one?
What a lot of anti-tax doom and gloom. Most of our anti-tax rhetoric is just conservative theories trumpeted into facts. Many don't hold up when applied to the lens of history. We've had plenty of periods of enormous economic expansion with taxes that would seem ludicrous by today's standards.
My guess is that most businesses will just pay the tax. They're buying a service they need. If they don't feel like paying the tax to outsource their IT, then they'll have to hire an IT department. If they don't feel like paying the tax to hire custom programmers, they'll have to hire a Development Department. The tax might actually increase jobs in the state.
My guess is that people who were buying IT and programming services in Maryland were doing so because they thought they got better value from local, intelligent, native English speakers. If they wanted to just buy cheap and stupid their are a myriad of services offered outside of Maryland and outside the United states. Obviously these businesses are those who realize that they're buying more than just a low price tag.
When you say we understand the cause(s) of depression - are you saying that we know that it's somehow related to the brain? Psychopharmacology is basically black magic. Psychiatrists prescribe some drugs. See if they work well. Change the dosage. See if it works. And eventually hopefully get you on a cocktail that makes you seem better. It's basically live experimentation.
I'd hardly say they know the cause of depression. They just have a lot of drugs that can monkey with your brain. Which is unfortunately what a lot of medicine has become. Drugs to monkey with your body. Everything comes down to drugs.
"Of course, it seems unlikely that any judge would give them the maximum sentence, but even hearing that it's possible just for changing your grades seems ridiculous."
Why is that ridiculous? We routinely give people longer sentences than that for simply possessing drugs. We give 3 times the sentence for possessing crack that we do cocaine. So why would you be surprised that breaking and entering a school's computer gets you a longer potential sentence than breaking and entering a school?
This is what happens when you try to make your criminal justice system a deterrent to crime, rather than just punishing crimes. The current crime strawman is going to get disproportionally long sentences. This has nothing to do with justice. It has to do with appeasing voters.
Oh, you're right. Because there are things we can do nothing about in the world, we should just give up. We will never live in a perfect society so why even bother trying to make it good, or even mediocre? This is a technology created problem that can be solved with technology. You've made an apples to oranges comparison.
Parent was talking about live events without digital surround sound. In case you haven't noticed the movie producers have been pretty much building the obnoxiousness of their audience into the soundtrack of their movies. A Michael Bay movie allows you to take phone calls secure in knowing that no one will be disturbed in the least.
It's a different thing entirely if a cell phone rings in a concert hall or a performing arts theatre. You're not just disturbing the other patrons, you're disturbing the performers. That can throw off a performance and can even be dangerous (dancers, fight choreography, etc.)
So I think we definitely should have laws that allow businesses to block cell phone signals on their premises. If they have a big sign that lets you know they're blocking cellphones before you step in the door, and allow you to use their phone for emergency calls, then I don't see what the issue is. You have the option to stay connected 24/7 by not patronizing their business. This sounds like people taking personal responsibility for their actions and letting the free market work.
If you have a problem with this you should perhaps take stock of the role that technology plays in your life.
It's been this way since I've been alive. When there were tapes there were always the friends who bought the tapes, and the friends who bought the blank tapes. There will always be freeloaders. It's pointless trying to convert them into paying customers.
Yes, and you're missing the bigger point. The download only copies are essentially "marketing costs". It's what people have asked for for ages. Give me the ability to listen the music first. In this case they can optionally make money from you with the download only copies. What they're really hoping is that you'll hear the album and NEED to have the art and lp and cd. Cause Radiohead CDs are cool to touch, and look at, and read. Look at the number of EPs and books and other stuff you can buy on Amazon by Radiohead. They have a fanatical fanbase. They're giving the fans what they want and making money off of them, and they're offering a low cost way to get new fans. Seems like win-win.
I have an Intel chipset. When I try to use miro (or any accelerated video player) or webcam software they crash. I just turn off Compiz temporarily with Gutsy's nice control panel it works great. I'd say this is fine to ship, just put big disclaimers in the installer or something explaining how to turn it off temporarily. Alternatively modify the X server code so that the crashes suggest turning off Compiz.
As people have said, you just need to be a good programmer who loves their job. I have a BA in Theater and yet am a Senior Software Engineer. A lot of people got into this field because they saw dollar signs, or because they like to play video games. Most of those of us who are still here are the sort of people who go home and code at night. In my free time I've build an MTA, POP3 server, webmail client, CMS, weblog, and more. If that doesn't sound like you, you're probably what they refer to as a "programmer" in the article and you're going to have a hard time finding a job. Otherwise you'll be fine. It's very easy when interviewing to figure out who the good junior developers are. Even if you don't know every answer you'll be able to come up with some sort of working solution. And that level of thinking is really what makes the difference in hiring.
I just bought a laptop with an Intel motherboard and built in wireless. Worked flawlessly out of the box with Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon with WPA. There's a reason Dell ships with Intel chips. I'd rather support a smaller company, but I have to balance that with my need to have a working (secure) internet connection.
"Similarly, salaries of IT professionals world-wide are projected to stagnate or possibly fall due to the large pool of qualified applicants in the market today."
Everywhere I look there are tons of IT jobs. I think this might be wishful thinking. "Maybe if we say that wages are falling they'll accept less pay!"
I can only guess that this was written by a telecom lobbyist. Since I was under the impression that the Justice department didn't currently have any employees left. At least any good ones.
To go even further, free markets never lead to the cheapest price. They actually always lead to the highest price the market can bear. In other words, I want to find the best combination of selling my product for an obscene profit without causing a price war between my competitor and me. Best case, we both set similar really high prices, the market takes it and we pocket the bucks. It's pretty simple really. The only place the free market works is in theory where you're comparing apples with apples (and even then organic apples sell at a premium). Free market = low prices is a religious movement, not an actuality.
Teaching people to learn to think is a worthwhile endeavor. Especially in the age of Wikipedia teaching people facts is somewhat useless. I can lookup almost anything I want to know on the Internet, but I can't necessarily interpret what I've read or tell if there's any value to it.
Teaching a vocational education sounds good in theory, but what happens when your job gets moved over to a cheaper country? You have been left with no skills to learn a new trade.
Not to mention the fact that I use a large amount of what I learned in high school. When my wife got pregnant my Biology came in handy, as it does when planting a garden and deciding the best types of plants and where to plant them. I needed my Geometry and calculus to build a non-rectangular deck behind my house. I use English when writing programming documentation and to communicate with other people. I use German and Latin in deciphering words I come across as well as some low-level communication. I use Chemistry in cooking. I use History, Government, and Economics to analyze the world I live in and truly understand the news. I use theater with my theater company. I use musical concepts I learned in band to understand my musician friends. I'll be honest, I haven't really used by health education much, but I think that was probably just because it was covered better in my two years of biology. Frankly, I've found my high school education immensely helpful.
There are people who don't seem to have needed their high school education, but is it the fault of the education that the recipient doesn't want to use it?
Or perhaps where he came from they didn't provide schooling for anyone except the privileged top 1%. Children of intellectuals and the wealthy. It's a very good way to appear to have a fantastic school system. Shuffling your non-over achievers into vocational schools after junior high is another popular method.
Apparently this is lie with statistics day. Neither you, nor the parent are completely right, you're both overgeneralizing. There are two reasons a decision could be heard before the Supreme Court:
1) Because a decision was completely wrong. 2) Because the decision was complex and the supreme court wanted to weigh in on it.
You have both inferred either:
1) The 9th circuit makes a lot of bad decisions 2) The 9th circuit tries a lot of difficult cases that the Supremes want to review.
The truth is probably a a combo of the two, leaning towards number 2 since the west has some of the most interesting laws that are being written. The western US and California in particular are constantly challenging issues of state vs. federal rights. So it's no surprise that an enormous number of cases would end up at the supreme court. It's also no surprise that an enormous percentage would be overturned, since the Western US represents the majority of Americans views, while the Supreme Court is a little more in tune with the electoral college view of America (albeit leaning a bit right at this point), so the supremes are going to lean towards representing a more conservative small-state agenda far more frequently than would the ninth court.
I didn't get 0wned. I didn't post the original question. I was asking a serious question, not asking for one more example. You might have replied that President Bush had asked Congress for an increase in technology funding. Or that he's proposed providing extra money to the states to get more math and science teachers into the schools. Then we could have discussed whether that was enough, and if it wasn't negated by his unmoving views on stem cell research and climate change.
But my guess is that you didn't know these things. It's really sad if your idea of political debate ends in someone getting "0wned". But the Republican party is a party that seems to revere intellegence in a select few demagogues and denegrate it in the public at large. I guess I shouldn't be suprised that your rhetorical skills are lacking.
The monopoly just happens to resemble two or three big companies. We've allowed the baby bells to re-merge and we're wondering why it appears that we have one monolithic phone company again with no competition. Huh. How'd that happen?
Here's an idea. Let's get some trust busters in there, and start calling companies on their "need to be big to compete in a global marketplace" bullshit. They need to be big to maximize profits for shareholders, that is all. There's no free market. The Supreme Court in fact just ruled that we could have minimum prices on products. So we can actually expect less innovation and higher prices from cell phone manufactures and providers.
There are only two ways to fix the markets:
1) Break up the monopolies again. Cingular and AT&T were just fine as 2 companies. They'd be even better as 10 companies. 2) Alternatively, create open spectrum and rule that all cell phone devices must be able to switch between networks.
It's simple. Unlikely to happen since the telephone lobby is VERY old and VERY powerful, but very simple to fix.
And you are good at oversimplifying arguments. Remember, this is not an issue of someone deciding the direction of science, or how money should be spent (which is politics as usual, and a normal function of government). This is someone dictating how the results of the science will be interpreted, regardless of the actual science. There's a big difference there.
Yes, but the problem is that there is no law to overturn. We have supreme court judges who have just decided that they will define what our free market looks like. Congress can pass a law, but the supreme court can then overturn it again. Your only hope is for some supreme court judges to die (of natural causes of course), while a somewhat sane congress and president are in office. Until then we're stuck with our supreme court and their decisions. Of course there's something poetic about having our supreme court at the turn of this century working to try to make our country like the turn of last century.
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We bought my wife a brand new computer with a faster processer, twice the RAM, and Vista rather than XP that it replaced (the laptop had to be replaced because we lost the screen). The Vista computer is SLOW. I'm sure there's a point where you get a fast enough computer to make it not matter, but it makes computers that could fly with XP look like you're trying to run it on a 486.
And I can only assume you've turned off the security prompts if you like the OS. It drives me bananas to click on something, have the computer lock up for a second, redraw the screen shaded, and then pop up with a security warning. Just a warning. No prompt for a password. Nothing. I feel so much more secure for losing that 5 seconds of my life every time I want to look at that control panel.
It's a POS. I'm sure you could make it work as well (or possibly better) than XP, but who has that kind of time? It's broken as shipped. And fixing it makes Linux's foibles seem easy to deal with. I'm a Linux fanboy, but I at least recognize Windows 2000 and XP as being perfectly decent operating systems. Vista is not. I'd prefer to use Windows Me over Vista. It crashes about the same amount and is quicker.
Aside from President George W. Bush, who are you quoting when you say that he "cut taxes and the tax revenues went up"? Again that's a statement that's been said so much that people believe it's true. George W. Bush came to power at the nadir of a business cycle. Tax revenues almost always go up. Our economy's been expanding for quite a while now. The question is have tax revenues increased more than they would have without the tax cuts. Looking at previous presidents, federal revenues increased more under Clinton then they did under Bush or Reagan.
Since then we've had cheap money from the Fed that has fueled a real estate boom as well as a boom for conventional businesses able to expand with the low rates. Of course that would raise revenues somewhat. The problem is that revenues haven't come up even remotely enough to pay for the tax cuts in the first place, so exactly what have we gained? Of course lowering taxes stimulates the economy a little bit in the short run, but in the long run it's not sustainable. It increases our debt load which is leading to a weaker dollar and countries thinking about backing away from our government bonds.
"Can't blame tax cuts for the deficits, its the spending that is the problem."
That's interesting rhetoric, but not strictly true. If you buy a million dollar house and only make 30k a year then your ability to afford your house is not a problem of spending. You never could afford that house in the first place. The federal government is in much the same boat. As just one example, we've spent half a trillion dollars on the war in Iraq. Currently we don't have the income to afford that kind of "house", and the economy is not expanding fast enough to keep pace with our spending. We also have our outstanding social security promises, general debt, etc. We could raise taxes now, and try to get our spending back in control. Or we could test out how much of a drag millions of baby boomers are to the economy when they retire. It's not like they're going to care about income tax rates once they're no longer working, and are the largest voting block in the country...
I agree that if the President puts a check for $300 in the hands of every American there will be a positive effect to the economy. A ridiculously artificial effect, but an effect nonetheless. But how much impact did the president's tax cuts really have on the economy? Are you sure that they didn't just happen to coincide with historically low interest rates that let the economy boom on cheap money? The economy's contracting right now and Bush's tax cuts are still in place.
If cutting taxes really made that big of a difference shouldn't be be living in the same sort of economy that we had under Bill Clinton? After all, taxes were higher then. Things should be even better now, shouldn't they?
Then what does the first-year economics text reveal is the reason that people would hire an expensive Maryland programmer, rather than a cheap Indian one?
What a lot of anti-tax doom and gloom. Most of our anti-tax rhetoric is just conservative theories trumpeted into facts. Many don't hold up when applied to the lens of history. We've had plenty of periods of enormous economic expansion with taxes that would seem ludicrous by today's standards.
My guess is that most businesses will just pay the tax. They're buying a service they need. If they don't feel like paying the tax to outsource their IT, then they'll have to hire an IT department. If they don't feel like paying the tax to hire custom programmers, they'll have to hire a Development Department. The tax might actually increase jobs in the state.
My guess is that people who were buying IT and programming services in Maryland were doing so because they thought they got better value from local, intelligent, native English speakers. If they wanted to just buy cheap and stupid their are a myriad of services offered outside of Maryland and outside the United states. Obviously these businesses are those who realize that they're buying more than just a low price tag.
When you say we understand the cause(s) of depression - are you saying that we know that it's somehow related to the brain? Psychopharmacology is basically black magic. Psychiatrists prescribe some drugs. See if they work well. Change the dosage. See if it works. And eventually hopefully get you on a cocktail that makes you seem better. It's basically live experimentation.
I'd hardly say they know the cause of depression. They just have a lot of drugs that can monkey with your brain. Which is unfortunately what a lot of medicine has become. Drugs to monkey with your body. Everything comes down to drugs.
"Of course, it seems unlikely that any judge would give them the maximum sentence, but even hearing that it's possible just for changing your grades seems ridiculous."
Why is that ridiculous? We routinely give people longer sentences than that for simply possessing drugs. We give 3 times the sentence for possessing crack that we do cocaine. So why would you be surprised that breaking and entering a school's computer gets you a longer potential sentence than breaking and entering a school?
This is what happens when you try to make your criminal justice system a deterrent to crime, rather than just punishing crimes. The current crime strawman is going to get disproportionally long sentences. This has nothing to do with justice. It has to do with appeasing voters.
Oh, you're right. Because there are things we can do nothing about in the world, we should just give up. We will never live in a perfect society so why even bother trying to make it good, or even mediocre?
This is a technology created problem that can be solved with technology. You've made an apples to oranges comparison.
Parent was talking about live events without digital surround sound. In case you haven't noticed the movie producers have been pretty much building the obnoxiousness of their audience into the soundtrack of their movies. A Michael Bay movie allows you to take phone calls secure in knowing that no one will be disturbed in the least.
It's a different thing entirely if a cell phone rings in a concert hall or a performing arts theatre. You're not just disturbing the other patrons, you're disturbing the performers. That can throw off a performance and can even be dangerous (dancers, fight choreography, etc.)
So I think we definitely should have laws that allow businesses to block cell phone signals on their premises. If they have a big sign that lets you know they're blocking cellphones before you step in the door, and allow you to use their phone for emergency calls, then I don't see what the issue is. You have the option to stay connected 24/7 by not patronizing their business. This sounds like people taking personal responsibility for their actions and letting the free market work.
If you have a problem with this you should perhaps take stock of the role that technology plays in your life.
It's been this way since I've been alive. When there were tapes there were always the friends who bought the tapes, and the friends who bought the blank tapes. There will always be freeloaders. It's pointless trying to convert them into paying customers.
Yes, and you're missing the bigger point. The download only copies are essentially "marketing costs". It's what people have asked for for ages. Give me the ability to listen the music first. In this case they can optionally make money from you with the download only copies. What they're really hoping is that you'll hear the album and NEED to have the art and lp and cd. Cause Radiohead CDs are cool to touch, and look at, and read. Look at the number of EPs and books and other stuff you can buy on Amazon by Radiohead. They have a fanatical fanbase. They're giving the fans what they want and making money off of them, and they're offering a low cost way to get new fans. Seems like win-win.
GM has not declared bankruptcy. They are doing a good job of pretending to be bankrupt to win concessions from the Unions though.
I have an Intel chipset. When I try to use miro (or any accelerated video player) or webcam software they crash. I just turn off Compiz temporarily with Gutsy's nice control panel it works great. I'd say this is fine to ship, just put big disclaimers in the installer or something explaining how to turn it off temporarily. Alternatively modify the X server code so that the crashes suggest turning off Compiz.
As people have said, you just need to be a good programmer who loves their job. I have a BA in Theater and yet am a Senior Software Engineer. A lot of people got into this field because they saw dollar signs, or because they like to play video games. Most of those of us who are still here are the sort of people who go home and code at night. In my free time I've build an MTA, POP3 server, webmail client, CMS, weblog, and more. If that doesn't sound like you, you're probably what they refer to as a "programmer" in the article and you're going to have a hard time finding a job. Otherwise you'll be fine. It's very easy when interviewing to figure out who the good junior developers are. Even if you don't know every answer you'll be able to come up with some sort of working solution. And that level of thinking is really what makes the difference in hiring.
I just bought a laptop with an Intel motherboard and built in wireless. Worked flawlessly out of the box with Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon with WPA. There's a reason Dell ships with Intel chips. I'd rather support a smaller company, but I have to balance that with my need to have a working (secure) internet connection.
"Similarly, salaries of IT professionals world-wide are projected to stagnate or possibly fall due to the large pool of qualified applicants in the market today."
Everywhere I look there are tons of IT jobs. I think this might be wishful thinking. "Maybe if we say that wages are falling they'll accept less pay!"
I can only guess that this was written by a telecom lobbyist. Since I was under the impression that the Justice department didn't currently have any employees left. At least any good ones.
To go even further, free markets never lead to the cheapest price. They actually always lead to the highest price the market can bear. In other words, I want to find the best combination of selling my product for an obscene profit without causing a price war between my competitor and me. Best case, we both set similar really high prices, the market takes it and we pocket the bucks. It's pretty simple really. The only place the free market works is in theory where you're comparing apples with apples (and even then organic apples sell at a premium). Free market = low prices is a religious movement, not an actuality.
Teaching people to learn to think is a worthwhile endeavor. Especially in the age of Wikipedia teaching people facts is somewhat useless. I can lookup almost anything I want to know on the Internet, but I can't necessarily interpret what I've read or tell if there's any value to it.
Teaching a vocational education sounds good in theory, but what happens when your job gets moved over to a cheaper country? You have been left with no skills to learn a new trade.
Not to mention the fact that I use a large amount of what I learned in high school. When my wife got pregnant my Biology came in handy, as it does when planting a garden and deciding the best types of plants and where to plant them. I needed my Geometry and calculus to build a non-rectangular deck behind my house. I use English when writing programming documentation and to communicate with other people. I use German and Latin in deciphering words I come across as well as some low-level communication. I use Chemistry in cooking. I use History, Government, and Economics to analyze the world I live in and truly understand the news. I use theater with my theater company. I use musical concepts I learned in band to understand my musician friends. I'll be honest, I haven't really used by health education much, but I think that was probably just because it was covered better in my two years of biology. Frankly, I've found my high school education immensely helpful.
There are people who don't seem to have needed their high school education, but is it the fault of the education that the recipient doesn't want to use it?
Or perhaps where he came from they didn't provide schooling for anyone except the privileged top 1%. Children of intellectuals and the wealthy. It's a very good way to appear to have a fantastic school system. Shuffling your non-over achievers into vocational schools after junior high is another popular method.
Apparently this is lie with statistics day. Neither you, nor the parent are completely right, you're both overgeneralizing. There are two reasons a decision could be heard before the Supreme Court:
1) Because a decision was completely wrong.
2) Because the decision was complex and the supreme court wanted to weigh in on it.
You have both inferred either:
1) The 9th circuit makes a lot of bad decisions
2) The 9th circuit tries a lot of difficult cases that the Supremes want to review.
The truth is probably a a combo of the two, leaning towards number 2 since the west has some of the most interesting laws that are being written. The western US and California in particular are constantly challenging issues of state vs. federal rights. So it's no surprise that an enormous number of cases would end up at the supreme court. It's also no surprise that an enormous percentage would be overturned, since the Western US represents the majority of Americans views, while the Supreme Court is a little more in tune with the electoral college view of America (albeit leaning a bit right at this point), so the supremes are going to lean towards representing a more conservative small-state agenda far more frequently than would the ninth court.
I didn't get 0wned. I didn't post the original question. I was asking a serious question, not asking for one more example. You might have replied that President Bush had asked Congress for an increase in technology funding. Or that he's proposed providing extra money to the states to get more math and science teachers into the schools. Then we could have discussed whether that was enough, and if it wasn't negated by his unmoving views on stem cell research and climate change.
But my guess is that you didn't know these things. It's really sad if your idea of political debate ends in someone getting "0wned". But the Republican party is a party that seems to revere intellegence in a select few demagogues and denegrate it in the public at large. I guess I shouldn't be suprised that your rhetorical skills are lacking.
The monopoly just happens to resemble two or three big companies. We've allowed the baby bells to re-merge and we're wondering why it appears that we have one monolithic phone company again with no competition. Huh. How'd that happen?
Here's an idea. Let's get some trust busters in there, and start calling companies on their "need to be big to compete in a global marketplace" bullshit. They need to be big to maximize profits for shareholders, that is all. There's no free market. The Supreme Court in fact just ruled that we could have minimum prices on products. So we can actually expect less innovation and higher prices from cell phone manufactures and providers.
There are only two ways to fix the markets:
1) Break up the monopolies again. Cingular and AT&T were just fine as 2 companies. They'd be even better as 10 companies.
2) Alternatively, create open spectrum and rule that all cell phone devices must be able to switch between networks.
It's simple. Unlikely to happen since the telephone lobby is VERY old and VERY powerful, but very simple to fix.
And you are good at oversimplifying arguments. Remember, this is not an issue of someone deciding the direction of science, or how money should be spent (which is politics as usual, and a normal function of government). This is someone dictating how the results of the science will be interpreted, regardless of the actual science. There's a big difference there.
Any more? +5 points if you can come up with one that doesn't revolve around padding the pockets of an energy baron.
Yes, but the problem is that there is no law to overturn. We have supreme court judges who have just decided that they will define what our free market looks like. Congress can pass a law, but the supreme court can then overturn it again. Your only hope is for some supreme court judges to die (of natural causes of course), while a somewhat sane congress and president are in office. Until then we're stuck with our supreme court and their decisions. Of course there's something poetic about having our supreme court at the turn of this century working to try to make our country like the turn of last century.