As I explained in my post below, you have LESS recourse in the case of government, because they will claim "national security" and refuse to turn-over evidence (and the case will be dropped). At least with private airport-owned security, you can drag them to court and there's nothing they can do to stop you (they don't have the power of government to squash the case or evidence). Final thought: It's kinda silly to be afraid of terrorists. The odds that your airplane will be hijacked are LOWER than the odds of a spacerock falling from the sky & hitting you. (Point: It's silly to be afraid of nonevents that, for all practical purposes, never happen.)
>>>at least with the government, there is the pretense that they are ultimately accountable to you >>>a corporation does away with that pretense, they have to answer to nothing except the need to make more cash
Completely wrong. (1) the government serves the people who funded their biannual election campaign: The corporations and the CEOs. Not us; that's why so many times bills pass even when 70% or 80% of people oppose them. (2) Yes corporations want to make cash but who holds that cash? Us. The People. The corporations are servants and we are the masters. We vote with our dollars (like a democracy) to either keep the corporations in business and successful, or drive them out (Circuit City, Montgomery Wards, and soon Best Buy).
Interesting viewpoint but I disagree (shocking). I would rather have the choice between Mozilla, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Opera, or some other browser than the Government-run browser (which would likely collect your data & send it to the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc). Similarly I'd rather have the choice between different private airports, that do NOT share my information with the government, rather than the TSA which does send your info off to the spy agencies. Oh and yes I do live equidistant from 5 airports. One final thought: It's kinda silly to be afraid of terrorists. The odds that your airplane will be hijacked are LOWER than the odds of a spacerock falling from the sky & hitting you. (Point: It's silly to be afraid of nonevents that, for all practical purposes, never happen.)
>>>Bullshit. How many airports are there near you?
Well let's see. 5. 7 if I'm willing to drive 1.5 hours to the port. So YES privatization would give me choice to avoid the sucky airports for the better airports...... as opposed to the government monopoly called the TSA that treats customers like scum. (And hands-over our information to the DHS computer system which includes the FBI, CIA, NSA, and who knows what else.)
Nonsense. All we have is someone CLAIMING there was thermite. All that tells me is someone should be writing episodes of 24... not that there was thermite in the building.
And yes the building was designed to handle the IMPACT of an airplane. Unfortunately the engineers forgot (per usual) to account for the effect of a thousand-degree fire on the steel beams. Ooops.
>>>private screening companies where determined to be un-fixable after 9/11
By whom? George "duh" Bush? hahahahahahaahahahahahahahaha. We should just take those 8 years under Bush, admit that every decision he made was wrong, throw out those laws he signed (TSA, Patriot Act, Protect IP Act, DHS, etc) and start over.
Yeah you can sue a private screener. You can't sue the government. Well, you can, but the government won't let you win the case, as happened recently. A man was thrown to the ground and severely injured, so he sued the TSA, and the TSA refused to turn-over the videos because of "national security". The man was forced to drop the case since the evidence was being withheld.
>>> I'm certain that the only reason they're not being hijacked left, right and center is that the US security screening system is also protecting the rest of the world.
Is this like that "communal vaccination" theory? Unprotected planes/persons don't get blownup/sick because of the protection provided by the TSA/DHHS?
That may be true, but the advantage of privatization is I can choose. Using cars as example, I can choose Ford or Honda or GM or Toyota or Volkwagen or Kia or Chrysler or Hyundai (et cetera). In the case of government control, you have a monopoly. In East Germany you had Trabant. In the U.S. in trains we used to have several companies to choose from. But not anymore. Now we have the government-owned Amtrak. A monopoly. I'd rather have privatization and choice.
The TSA wouldn't bother me so much if (a) it was just the airport and (b) they operated with professionalism. BUT in reality the TSA is expanding its operations to our streets, with random stops-and-searches along interstates (border states), bus stops, train stations, and publicly-open facilities like malls, unemployment centers, hotels, post offices, and most recently: Chicago parks.
As for (b) I have close to 1000 stories about the TSA groping women's breasts, men's penises, forced strip searches of elderly women, dumping urine or feces bags on the floor, forcing a woman to demo a breastpump (else they'd steal the ~$100 device), tackling a woman like she in a football game, holding a man in St. Louis because he was carrying ~$3000 in cash (not a crime), detaining a Senator because he opted-out of being groped & wanted to be scanned, forcing a woman to stand inside a glass jail for over an hour because she had milk for her child (which was then dumped & she missed her flight), and on and on and on.
No what's "retarded logic" is saying "non-ionizing radiation never causes any harm". You can't make such blanket statements, especially since we know non-ionizing radiation can cause measureable effects (like stimulating currents in a piece of metal called an antenna).
>>>Non-ionizing radiation refers to any type of electromagnetic radiation that does not carry enough energy per quantum to remove an electron from an atom or molecule. - wikipedia.
Okay. That still doesn't mean they are safe. Who knows how the EM waves might disrupt internal cellular processes, like the duplication of DNA during cellular cloning. It is when that process goes wrong that cancer happens.
your head is probably not too smart. I don't worry about it because my phone only comes with 30 minutes a month... my expsoure is minimal. But alot of people talk, talk, talk with the phone broadcasting into their brain.
I imagine there's also some effect on your hip, as the phone is hanging there ~15 hours a day, and broadcasting.
Quoting another slashdotter: "This is just a reporter's opinion sourced from conversations with people whose names he won't reveal at times he won't reveal..... he details the exact contents of a meeting that consisted of president Obama, vice president Biden, and CIA director Leon Panetta. For him to have this conversation, it means he has interviewed either the president, the vice president, or Panetta on this. Fat fucking chance. It's probably true, but no it's no way in hell close to "offical"."
Lots of people create things that are not patented or copyrighted. And things that used to be copyrighted, but are now public domain, still get published. MGM's "As the Clouds Roll By" and Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" are still on store shelves because people see an opportunity to make a profit off these PD works.
Yeah it's pretty obvious that the MPAA is not strictly a U.S. organization. They are trying to lock-up control over movies all around the world, and kill-off fair use (or fair dealing).
No you're not the only one. I read it when it was a Hugo nominee, but was unimpressed by the novel, and thought it very depressing. Like film noire (black film) which is another genre I've never enjoyed.
>>>And you looked at them on a frigging fuzzy color TV set.
No. I looked at my C64 via a CRT monitor with 704x480 resolution. So basically no different than the original IBM PC plus monitor. (Or you could plug your IBM into an NTSC monitor or television, as some users did.)
>>>Um... If you travel to california you are obliged to pay sales taxes in california.
God you're dense. Yes if I'm within the juris diction of a foreign government, I have to obey the laws. BUT I was talking about when I'm sitting at HOME, 3000 miles away on the other side of the continent, and selling stuff on Ebay (the topic at hand). I am not under any obligation to pay the California government a dime in tax on my sales. Or file a sales tax return with them. "No taxation without representation," to quote the Founders of this union. There should be no taxation by a foreign government that lies 3000 miles away, when I have no way to make my voice heard in their legislature.
It's actually 1 billion not 1 trillion (oops). Still my point stands: The politicians let guys him & other megacorps go slide w/o consequences, but instead go after us who owe just 0.0001% as much. Why? Because the rich & corporations buy immunity.
But I didn't pick it on my voting ballot. I think I picked "Doomsday Book" instead. (Oh and also Babylon 5's "Coming of Shadows".) I was unimpressed by the novel, and thought it very depressing. Like film noire; another genre I've never enjoyed.
>>>If the world were populated with jackassery such as yourself, more people would die, not less, as technology would lag as people gave up developing it because it got looted as soon as they developed it.
Indian farmers are killing themselves in droves because they can't repay their loans to Monsanto, and the supposed "better" crops are dying instead of growing. In fact farmer suicide is now the #2 killer in India. If you consider this a "better world" then you're really F'd in the head.
I'm not opposed to the idea of patents and copyrights, but when they make things WORSE instead of better, then they are not achieving their original goals. (And 100+ years is nucking futs. They should not last any longer than one generation/20 years. That's plenty of time for the inventor or artist to earn-back money for his labor.)
Monsanto has already perfected sterile seeds. - "Just imagine the outcry if neighboring farmers are unable to use their own seeds for planting next year." - That's exactly what's happening. And farmers get sued and driven out-of-business trying to defend themselves, when they are completely innocent.
Slashdot Mirror
>>>Rand knows he needs public tax dollars to pay off his friends who funded his election. Both Pauls...
Neither Rand nor Ron excepted donations from corporations. They don't owe anything to those non-human entitites or the CEOs/managers. Nice try though.
As I explained in my post below, you have LESS recourse in the case of government, because they will claim "national security" and refuse to turn-over evidence (and the case will be dropped). At least with private airport-owned security, you can drag them to court and there's nothing they can do to stop you (they don't have the power of government to squash the case or evidence).
Final thought:
It's kinda silly to be afraid of terrorists. The odds that your airplane will be hijacked are LOWER than the odds of a spacerock falling from the sky & hitting you. (Point: It's silly to be afraid of nonevents that, for all practical purposes, never happen.)
>>>at least with the government, there is the pretense that they are ultimately accountable to you
>>>a corporation does away with that pretense, they have to answer to nothing except the need to make more cash
Completely wrong. (1) the government serves the people who funded their biannual election campaign: The corporations and the CEOs. Not us; that's why so many times bills pass even when 70% or 80% of people oppose them. (2) Yes corporations want to make cash but who holds that cash? Us. The People. The corporations are servants and we are the masters. We vote with our dollars (like a democracy) to either keep the corporations in business and successful, or drive them out (Circuit City, Montgomery Wards, and soon Best Buy).
Interesting viewpoint but I disagree (shocking). I would rather have the choice between Mozilla, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Opera, or some other browser than the Government-run browser (which would likely collect your data & send it to the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc). Similarly I'd rather have the choice between different private airports, that do NOT share my information with the government, rather than the TSA which does send your info off to the spy agencies.
Oh and yes I do live equidistant from 5 airports.
One final thought:
It's kinda silly to be afraid of terrorists. The odds that your airplane will be hijacked are LOWER than the odds of a spacerock falling from the sky & hitting you. (Point: It's silly to be afraid of nonevents that, for all practical purposes, never happen.)
>>>Bullshit. How many airports are there near you?
Well let's see. 5.
7 if I'm willing to drive 1.5 hours to the port. So YES privatization would give me choice to avoid the sucky airports for the better airports...... as opposed to the government monopoly called the TSA that treats customers like scum. (And hands-over our information to the DHS computer system which includes the FBI, CIA, NSA, and who knows what else.)
>>>bits of high-tech thermite
Nonsense. All we have is someone CLAIMING there was thermite. All that tells me is someone should be writing episodes of 24... not that there was thermite in the building.
And yes the building was designed to handle the IMPACT of an airplane. Unfortunately the engineers forgot (per usual) to account for the effect of a thousand-degree fire on the steel beams. Ooops.
>>>private screening companies where determined to be un-fixable after 9/11
By whom? George "duh" Bush?
hahahahahahaahahahahahahahaha.
We should just take those 8 years under Bush, admit that every decision he made was wrong, throw out those laws he signed (TSA, Patriot Act, Protect IP Act, DHS, etc) and start over.
Yeah you can sue a private screener. You can't sue the government. Well, you can, but the government won't let you win the case, as happened recently. A man was thrown to the ground and severely injured, so he sued the TSA, and the TSA refused to turn-over the videos because of "national security". The man was forced to drop the case since the evidence was being withheld.
>>> I'm certain that the only reason they're not being hijacked left, right and center is that the US security screening system is also protecting the rest of the world.
Is this like that "communal vaccination" theory? Unprotected planes/persons don't get blownup/sick because of the protection provided by the TSA/DHHS?
That may be true, but the advantage of privatization is I can choose. Using cars as example, I can choose Ford or Honda or GM or Toyota or Volkwagen or Kia or Chrysler or Hyundai (et cetera). In the case of government control, you have a monopoly. In East Germany you had Trabant.
In the U.S. in trains we used to have several companies to choose from. But not anymore. Now we have the government-owned Amtrak. A monopoly. I'd rather have privatization and choice.
The TSA wouldn't bother me so much if (a) it was just the airport and (b) they operated with professionalism. BUT in reality the TSA is expanding its operations to our streets, with random stops-and-searches along interstates (border states), bus stops, train stations, and publicly-open facilities like malls, unemployment centers, hotels, post offices, and most recently: Chicago parks.
As for (b) I have close to 1000 stories about the TSA groping women's breasts, men's penises, forced strip searches of elderly women, dumping urine or feces bags on the floor, forcing a woman to demo a breastpump (else they'd steal the ~$100 device), tackling a woman like she in a football game, holding a man in St. Louis because he was carrying ~$3000 in cash (not a crime), detaining a Senator because he opted-out of being groped & wanted to be scanned, forcing a woman to stand inside a glass jail for over an hour because she had milk for her child (which was then dumped & she missed her flight), and on and on and on.
No what's "retarded logic" is saying "non-ionizing radiation never causes any harm". You can't make such blanket statements, especially since we know non-ionizing radiation can cause measureable effects (like stimulating currents in a piece of metal called an antenna).
>>>Non-ionizing radiation refers to any type of electromagnetic radiation that does not carry enough energy per quantum to remove an electron from an atom or molecule. - wikipedia.
Okay.
That still doesn't mean they are safe. Who knows how the EM waves might disrupt internal cellular processes, like the duplication of DNA during cellular cloning. It is when that process goes wrong that cancer happens.
your head is probably not too smart. I don't worry about it because my phone only comes with 30 minutes a month... my expsoure is minimal. But alot of people talk, talk, talk with the phone broadcasting into their brain.
I imagine there's also some effect on your hip, as the phone is hanging there ~15 hours a day, and broadcasting.
Quoting another slashdotter: "This is just a reporter's opinion sourced from conversations with people whose names he won't reveal at times he won't reveal..... he details the exact contents of a meeting that consisted of president Obama, vice president Biden, and CIA director Leon Panetta. For him to have this conversation, it means he has interviewed either the president, the vice president, or Panetta on this. Fat fucking chance. It's probably true, but no it's no way in hell close to "offical"."
Lots of people create things that are not patented or copyrighted. And things that used to be copyrighted, but are now public domain, still get published. MGM's "As the Clouds Roll By" and Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" are still on store shelves because people see an opportunity to make a profit off these PD works.
Yeah it's pretty obvious that the MPAA is not strictly a U.S. organization. They are trying to lock-up control over movies all around the world, and kill-off fair use (or fair dealing).
>>>a more polite response
The guy was not polite to me when he put me down as stupid. Therefore I see no reason to be polite to him.
No you're not the only one. I read it when it was a Hugo nominee, but was unimpressed by the novel, and thought it very depressing. Like film noire (black film) which is another genre I've never enjoyed.
>>>And you looked at them on a frigging fuzzy color TV set.
No. I looked at my C64 via a CRT monitor with 704x480 resolution. So basically no different than the original IBM PC plus monitor. (Or you could plug your IBM into an NTSC monitor or television, as some users did.)
>>>Um... If you travel to california you are obliged to pay sales taxes in california.
God you're dense. Yes if I'm within the juris diction of a foreign government, I have to obey the laws. BUT I was talking about when I'm sitting at HOME, 3000 miles away on the other side of the continent, and selling stuff on Ebay (the topic at hand). I am not under any obligation to pay the California government a dime in tax on my sales. Or file a sales tax return with them. "No taxation without representation," to quote the Founders of this union. There should be no taxation by a foreign government that lies 3000 miles away, when I have no way to make my voice heard in their legislature.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/29/warren-buffett-taxes-berkshire-hathaway_n_941099.html
It's actually 1 billion not 1 trillion (oops). Still my point stands: The politicians let guys him & other megacorps go slide w/o consequences, but instead go after us who owe just 0.0001% as much. Why? Because the rich & corporations buy immunity.
Corporations that paid zero taxes:
http://www.alternet.org/economy/150387/2_3rds_of_us_corporations_pay_zero_federal_taxes%3A_us_uncut_movement_builds_to_make_them_pay_up
But I didn't pick it on my voting ballot. I think I picked "Doomsday Book" instead. (Oh and also Babylon 5's "Coming of Shadows".) I was unimpressed by the novel, and thought it very depressing. Like film noire; another genre I've never enjoyed.
>>>If the world were populated with jackassery such as yourself, more people would die, not less, as technology would lag as people gave up developing it because it got looted as soon as they developed it.
Indian farmers are killing themselves in droves because they can't repay their loans to Monsanto, and the supposed "better" crops are dying instead of growing. In fact farmer suicide is now the #2 killer in India. If you consider this a "better world" then you're really F'd in the head.
I'm not opposed to the idea of patents and copyrights, but when they make things WORSE instead of better, then they are not achieving their original goals. (And 100+ years is nucking futs. They should not last any longer than one generation/20 years. That's plenty of time for the inventor or artist to earn-back money for his labor.)
Monsanto has already perfected sterile seeds. - "Just imagine the outcry if neighboring farmers are unable to use their own seeds for planting next year." - That's exactly what's happening. And farmers get sued and driven out-of-business trying to defend themselves, when they are completely innocent.