Also, some people can be hypnotized, others can't. Difference: strength of mind.
Conviction of belief is a certain kind of mental strength. People who are religious can often have stronger "strength of mind" because their convictions give them strength. Particularly devout people are capable of great willpower (getting up at 5AM every day to pray, not eating certain foods, fasting, etc.)
This is precisely what atheists don't understand and why they get frustrated - devoutly religious people are simply not susceptible even to obvious, foolproof logic challenging what they believe. Call that stubbornness what you will, but I wouldn't call it "weakness of the mind".
No publication has any obligation to put their content online for free, is my point. Why shouldn't they control their own content? They're the ones investing in it. And charging for your product isn't greed. Something has to pay the reporters' salaries. Twenty years ago, almost no newspaper or magazine was free. So "from the start" is relative.
I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to paywalled content. They don't have to give anything to you for free, and you don't have to pay for it. Anything that's given away is because the market supports it being given away, not because the content provider is holding to any higher standard.
At this point, you're probably right about tracking, because most people don't care, so companies feel free to track no matter what. But my point is that the whole tracking nonsense was accelerated by "omg how are we going to make money if we give our product away for free?"
I really don't understand this attitude. Why are you assuming that everything on the web must be free? This is why your every move is tracked online, because users decided they weren't going to pay squat, so companies found other ways to make money on the net. i.e. selling your information to the highest bidder.
Exactly. What's the cutoff between "responsible" and "irresponsible" exactly? This proposal would make a lot more sense if you said that you should lose your benefits if you took out a $500K mortgage you couldn't afford (or approved one). Even that's a little rich, since a lot of people who got mortgages they couldn't afford were swindled and didn't realize their interest rates would shoot up the way they did.
If they were smart they would give you just enough actual copyrighted content that they could still get you in court. i.e. a trojan, not completely fake. I like that idea though:-)
I see a parallel to sexual consent. Saying "No" does two things - it communicates to the other party that their behavior is undesired and wrong, and with the proper legislative context, creates the legal case that harm was done. At least with this system I have a simple way of saying "No"! It's not sufficient, but it's an important start, at least in terms of educating users.
Has it occurred to you that the real estate is expensive because people actually want to live here? And that cityfolk are willing to give up certain luxuries (living space) for others (interesting people and cultures, good restaurants/bars within walking distance, excellent public transportation)? Also, if you live in an outer borough or NJ, you can do just fine on a lot less than $250K.
Side point - I think it's Panorama, not Pandora. I was getting nervous that they would be so tightly integrated with a third-party music service, but Panorama is their own thing. Doesn't negate your point, but people reading this might get confused:-)
Do you have any other examples besides the status bar? Yes, I agree they shouldn't have taken it out - it was a bad decision. It's still in Beta, of course, so there hasn't been a final decision either way. But it seems to be that you're hung up on this one decision and throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
(I also agree with you about Pandora - that appears to be a business decision, not based on what users actually want)
The US pays vastly more per capita than any other developed country, with generally worse results (measured in life expectancy, infant mortality, obesity rates, teen pregnancies, etc). So the data appears to be on the side of single payer.
The cost savings comes from reduction of bureaucracy and overhead, not actual medical expenses. I don't know about you, but I'd rather my health-related money go to R&D and treatment, not some bean-counter trying figure out how to deny me coverage.
Another way to reduce health care costs would be to end certain kinds of marketing. The US is one of the very few countries where direct-to-patient marketing ("ask your doctor") is actually legal.
The fact that doctors have to spend tens of thousands a year on malpractice insurance is driving up the cost of healthcare, and reducing the quality to boot (since doctors have to cram in more patients to make up for the lost money). Tort reform is one way to deal with that. If you have a better solution to lower malpractice insurance rates please do share (preferably without the name-calling). Keeping in mind that medicine is sufficiently complicated that we don't always know if it was in fact the doctor who was at fault.
A truly progressive health bill would have been simple - single-payer. No more health insurance companies. Everyone gets coverage. Just like they have in every other developed country (and several developing countries as well).
What actually got passed was an overly complex monstrosity meant to implement some basic consumer protections (mainly pre-existing conditions, which is a non-issue with single-payer) that tried to please too many people (particularly health insurance companies and Republicans) who still fought it tooth and nail.
p.s. Public option != single-payer
p.p.s. I'm fine with tort reform as well. Doctors/hospitals should be penalized to some degree for obvious mistakes, but a doctor's screw-up shouldn't mean you just won the lottery. Particularly since health care is such an inexact science, and doctors are humans (under pressure) who make mistakes.
We should definitely "leave them to their business", but we don't. That's the whole point of granting them rights - ensuring that we leave them alone, and making it illegal to abduct them and torture them.
In contrast the government holds the monopoly on the power to jail, take, or kill.
Would you prefer that the government didn't have that "monopoly"? Maybe my local mall should have the right to detain shoplifters indefinitely, or publicly execute them. That's what lifting the monopoly would open the door to. Thankfully, we have common law, and shoplifters have equal opportunity to present their case in a trial under the law as the mall does (in theory, at least). The alternative is taking most of the power of law enforcement away from the the government altogether, which also seems like a bad idea.
Those are your two choices to government monopoly, I'm not sure what you're complaining about.
I'm sure you can find many, many examples of US-based corporations doing horrible things to people, mostly to factory workers in third world countries.
Since you're only thinking about what corporations do in the US (which has a strong government with laws to protect its citizens from corporations), you come to the incorrect conclusion that governments are violent and corporations are not.
Have corporations ever mass-exterminated that many people?
Could governments have committed the violence they did (and continue to do) without help from private industry? Weapons are manufactured by the private sector.
But my point -- that corporations are not free to do anything they want in so-called "free" markets -- remains.
Of course they are. Corporations are free to offer whatever products and services they like. If they offer something that nobody wants* (or at a price that no one is willing to pay), then they will go out of business. That has nothing to do with their "freedom" to offer it in the first place.
As long as there's competition, in the long term, only companies that offer valuable services at a reasonable price will be left. Which is mostly what we see today in competitive markets. When it comes to essential infrastructure controlled by regional monopolies, it's a different story.
Slashdot Mirror
who oppose net neutrality as "government intervention" on the internet? Just sayin...
Seems to me, the biggest threat would be doing EXACTLY what Mubarak is doing now in Egypt.
Seriously - could the timing of this be any more ironic? The US is copying from Mubarak's playbook, now?
Also, some people can be hypnotized, others can't. Difference: strength of mind.
Conviction of belief is a certain kind of mental strength. People who are religious can often have stronger "strength of mind" because their convictions give them strength. Particularly devout people are capable of great willpower (getting up at 5AM every day to pray, not eating certain foods, fasting, etc.)
This is precisely what atheists don't understand and why they get frustrated - devoutly religious people are simply not susceptible even to obvious, foolproof logic challenging what they believe. Call that stubbornness what you will, but I wouldn't call it "weakness of the mind".
No publication has any obligation to put their content online for free, is my point. Why shouldn't they control their own content? They're the ones investing in it. And charging for your product isn't greed. Something has to pay the reporters' salaries. Twenty years ago, almost no newspaper or magazine was free. So "from the start" is relative.
I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to paywalled content. They don't have to give anything to you for free, and you don't have to pay for it. Anything that's given away is because the market supports it being given away, not because the content provider is holding to any higher standard.
At this point, you're probably right about tracking, because most people don't care, so companies feel free to track no matter what. But my point is that the whole tracking nonsense was accelerated by "omg how are we going to make money if we give our product away for free?"
I really don't understand this attitude. Why are you assuming that everything on the web must be free? This is why your every move is tracked online, because users decided they weren't going to pay squat, so companies found other ways to make money on the net. i.e. selling your information to the highest bidder.
Exactly. What's the cutoff between "responsible" and "irresponsible" exactly? This proposal would make a lot more sense if you said that you should lose your benefits if you took out a $500K mortgage you couldn't afford (or approved one). Even that's a little rich, since a lot of people who got mortgages they couldn't afford were swindled and didn't realize their interest rates would shoot up the way they did.
There was also this: http://jeremiahgrossman.blogspot.com/2006/08/i-know-where-youve-been.html
I would actually pay to see this, except there's no Jack Black...
If they were smart they would give you just enough actual copyrighted content that they could still get you in court. i.e. a trojan, not completely fake. I like that idea though :-)
I see a parallel to sexual consent. Saying "No" does two things - it communicates to the other party that their behavior is undesired and wrong, and with the proper legislative context, creates the legal case that harm was done. At least with this system I have a simple way of saying "No"! It's not sufficient, but it's an important start, at least in terms of educating users.
"sudo do not track"
Has it occurred to you that the real estate is expensive because people actually want to live here? And that cityfolk are willing to give up certain luxuries (living space) for others (interesting people and cultures, good restaurants/bars within walking distance, excellent public transportation)? Also, if you live in an outer borough or NJ, you can do just fine on a lot less than $250K.
And THAT will be yet another nail in the coffin of the downfall of America.
Fixed that for ya.
Side point - I think it's Panorama, not Pandora. I was getting nervous that they would be so tightly integrated with a third-party music service, but Panorama is their own thing. Doesn't negate your point, but people reading this might get confused :-)
(I also agree with you about Pandora - that appears to be a business decision, not based on what users actually want)
The US pays vastly more per capita than any other developed country, with generally worse results (measured in life expectancy, infant mortality, obesity rates, teen pregnancies, etc). So the data appears to be on the side of single payer.
We actually have fewer of certain resources per capita: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hos_bed-health-hospital-beds
The cost savings comes from reduction of bureaucracy and overhead, not actual medical expenses. I don't know about you, but I'd rather my health-related money go to R&D and treatment, not some bean-counter trying figure out how to deny me coverage.
Another way to reduce health care costs would be to end certain kinds of marketing. The US is one of the very few countries where direct-to-patient marketing ("ask your doctor") is actually legal.
The fact that doctors have to spend tens of thousands a year on malpractice insurance is driving up the cost of healthcare, and reducing the quality to boot (since doctors have to cram in more patients to make up for the lost money). Tort reform is one way to deal with that. If you have a better solution to lower malpractice insurance rates please do share (preferably without the name-calling). Keeping in mind that medicine is sufficiently complicated that we don't always know if it was in fact the doctor who was at fault.
What actually got passed was an overly complex monstrosity meant to implement some basic consumer protections (mainly pre-existing conditions, which is a non-issue with single-payer) that tried to please too many people (particularly health insurance companies and Republicans) who still fought it tooth and nail.
p.s. Public option != single-payer
p.p.s. I'm fine with tort reform as well. Doctors/hospitals should be penalized to some degree for obvious mistakes, but a doctor's screw-up shouldn't mean you just won the lottery. Particularly since health care is such an inexact science, and doctors are humans (under pressure) who make mistakes.
We should definitely "leave them to their business", but we don't. That's the whole point of granting them rights - ensuring that we leave them alone, and making it illegal to abduct them and torture them.
In contrast the government holds the monopoly on the power to jail, take, or kill.
Would you prefer that the government didn't have that "monopoly"? Maybe my local mall should have the right to detain shoplifters indefinitely, or publicly execute them. That's what lifting the monopoly would open the door to. Thankfully, we have common law, and shoplifters have equal opportunity to present their case in a trial under the law as the mall does (in theory, at least). The alternative is taking most of the power of law enforcement away from the the government altogether, which also seems like a bad idea.
Those are your two choices to government monopoly, I'm not sure what you're complaining about.
The .jp country code was all the NSFW warning I needed...
Okay. Please cite an example of this where a corporation committed murder & was not punished by the law.
Here you go: http://killercoke.org/
I'm sure you can find many, many examples of US-based corporations doing horrible things to people, mostly to factory workers in third world countries.
Since you're only thinking about what corporations do in the US (which has a strong government with laws to protect its citizens from corporations), you come to the incorrect conclusion that governments are violent and corporations are not.
Have corporations ever mass-exterminated that many people?
Could governments have committed the violence they did (and continue to do) without help from private industry? Weapons are manufactured by the private sector.
But my point -- that corporations are not free to do anything they want in so-called "free" markets -- remains.
Of course they are. Corporations are free to offer whatever products and services they like. If they offer something that nobody wants* (or at a price that no one is willing to pay), then they will go out of business. That has nothing to do with their "freedom" to offer it in the first place.
As long as there's competition, in the long term, only companies that offer valuable services at a reasonable price will be left. Which is mostly what we see today in competitive markets. When it comes to essential infrastructure controlled by regional monopolies, it's a different story.
if Google takes down this "game" hosted on its servers.
Idealism is long term pragmatism.
Thanks for the new sig :-)