for the past decades, we've had the beancounters in HMO's and like dictating what tx the physicians, clinics and hospitals can give.
The current evil incarnation of HMOs et al were the result of a misguided and illiberal government policy: let's insure people through their employers. No employer meant either you are too rich for the government to care, or poor enough to be eligible for Medicaid. Self-employed? Sho-sho-shoo, we don't like these people — they are harder to corral.
Losing a job meant losing health-insurance, and switching employer often meant having to switch an insurer, along with the "network" of doctors. Why exactly the two completely unrelated things (job and health insurance) had to be bundled together by government regulation (employers were given a tax-credit for insuring the employees) remains unclear.
Last fall, however, during the elections, two alternatives were put forth. One of them, from Mr. Change, was the old and tried (elsewhere) "single-payer". He said, it is his top choice, but promised not to push for it, although health-related parts of the "stimulus" bill suggest the opposite.
The other proposal came from McCain, who wanted to eliminate the employer's tax-credit (the part Obama emphasized during debates) in favor of giving each individual a tax-credit (the part Obama never acknowledged) to be spent on their own health care. This would've created the same kind of market for health insurance as exists for, say, auto, term-life, house, and other insurances. The decoupling of health care from employment would've been much more fare, and the prices would've come down because of genuine competition.
The benefit would've been enormous, because the exelsior ("ever upwards" lat.) health care costs (and the associated evilness of health-insurers) are primarily explained by the fact, that consumers of care aren't the ones paying neither for the care itself, nor even for the insurance. This creates a lot of waste, and leads to — inefficient, but alienating — attempts to control it. Nobody is happy and we may end up with something worse (like government-provided health care), just because it will be different ("Change" is good, right?).
In closing I'd like to offer a real-life example... A doctor gave us a prescription recently for our newborn's acid reflux with the words: "try this, see if it helps her". The prescription was for 30 tablets (30 days). When I got to the pharmacy, I learned, that the 30 tablets cost $190, and that insurance will only cover $120 (for some reason or the other). Here is the point, where different people would think different things:
Crap, this is an outrage! When are we going to have free health care — and free medicines? Maybe, Obama will deliver on this.
Khm, doctor said: "try it", so let's buy 15 instead of 30 (for half the price) and come for more only if it actually helps.
Must be some drug — if prices for medicines were regulated and capped, no one would bother investing into making it.
As you could guess, my thoughts were 2 and 3. But you, likely, know quite a few people, who would think 1 — and, maybe, 2 as well, but angrily.
telecoms companies, computer manufacturers etc, make more money every day than the entire music industry makes in a whole year.
True or not, this is completely irrelevant, because neither telecoms companies, nor computer manufacturers have anything to do with theft of intellectual property. Not any more so, than, say, bakers, whose bread the thieves eat...
If the RIAA starts suing well-heeled investors, then these investors will stop investing money in American companies, and take their money elsewhere.
There are still plenty of American companies, that have nothing to do with theft of Intellectual Property and copyright violation — the two activities, that account for 99.99999% of the P2P traffic.
Truly, there are far more reasons to harass these software makers, than the gun manufacturers and retailers.
There is a serious discussion to be had about privacy rights and Google's objective to picture, reference and catalog everything. Some inside Google take the "do no evil" to heart. Street View blurs faces and license plates.
One would expect them to worry at least as much and blur the military bases of their own and friendly nations... You know, the gals and guys, who ensure that Google (and its, supposedly, privacy-minded insiders) can continue to exist...
I'm a little annoyed that nobody has made a similar box to transport a phone line over Ethernet. Yes, there are VoIP solutions, but they're way too expensive and over-engineered for what I want. Just two boxes that talk to each other with raw Ethernet frames to move a phone line from here to there oughtn't to be too much to ask, but apparently is.
Ethernet cable consists of 8 wires (4 of them unused, unless you use GB). A phone line needs 2 wires. With the right splitter, you can run 4 phone lines over a single Ethernet cable in the straightforward analog mode — without needing to know, what "raw Ethernet frame" is.
This is, likely, why the solution you describe didn't catch on — most people having the Ethernet cable would just use that to run phone-lines. That the Ethernet is itself run through power-cables is rather unusual, and thus not a big enough market.
The Security Update brings (old) IO.bundle with version 1.22 but your IO.pm has been updated to the latest 1.23 on CPAN shell. (But hey, 1.23 was released in 2006...Why do you bring that ancient version back, Apple!?)'."
The real question is (or ought to be), why is the 1-digit difference in the minor version number break things? If the 1.22 -> 1.23 change was important (as in interface-changing or something), shouldn't the new version have been named 1.3 or even 2.0?
even though we signed up for Verizon Business, they limit the amount of email I can send a week to 500 messages. I rarely approach 200 messages and the newsletter is a monthly. Verizon told me I couldnâ(TM)t even send the newsletter in one blast; I had to limit it to 100 subscribers an hour!
I'm in the same situation — I run a mailing list with about 60 subscribers. Normally, things are just fine, but when a discussion springs up, the 100/hour limit is easily hit. The particularly dumb bug on Verizon's part is that their rate-limiting begins rejecting the over-quota e-mails with final 5xx messages, instead of the temporary-failure 4xx something.
I wouldn't be minding the rate-limit as much, had the messages just sat in the queue waiting for the next hour. But, as Verizon has implemented this, the messages get rejected instead.
I really do despise these idiots, but they are the only company willing to provide DSL (however low-speed) at this particular neck of the hills...
According to this theory Fannie Mae should be the only financial institution that got into trouble.
And it was the first one to be taken over by the taxpayer, yes.
The real root of the problem was the 2004 SEC change that allowed investment banks to double their amount of leverage
This and other things may have contributed, but were not "the root". The root was, no doubt, planted in the Clinton era by the events I bring up. There were, to be sure, other mistakes made by participants of the free market, but they all stemmed from the same now-misconception: that somebody somewhere lending their own money was checking the people's credit-worthiness and inspecting the properties mortgaged. This was a perfectly fine assumption up until the discussed change in Fannie Mae's mission. The free market just didn't realize, how bad the government's meddling can be with banks happily issuing mortgages, they knew, the would be able to sell to FM for profit. This led to seemingly-unending rise in the housing prices, which affected even the mortgages not sold to the taxpayer — as credit-worthy applicants found themselves competing with government-sponsored "a notch below" people.
This giant national nightmare is clearly the fault of a Republican administration that allowed this change in regulations.
A more partisan statement is hard to imagine. Let's ignore the 1990-ies folly of the Democrats and their uber-Left cohorts, and blame the subsequent Republican administration instead.
We'll never finish the debate over whether the folly was "the root" — as, I'm sure, you'll keep finding little subsequent bits to blame — so let's just agree, that it was indeed a folly. To give mortgages to people, hitherto unqualified to receive them, for political (and/or charity) reasons was stupid. They did not suddenly become able to repay them — they moved into the houses, and ended up unable to pay. The agony was extended for a few years, as the prices kept rising and they were able to refinance over and over (the most popular subject of spam-emails for a while), but ended up "underwater" anyway. So, the "charity" hurt them at the end, and the only people benefiting are the said Democrats, who are now busy blaming the disaster on the Republicans...
Uhm, I take it back. There were more losses due to these. But the rest of my argument still stands. The French helped (as they were supposed to), but hardly saved anybody's "ass".
Argentina had these missiles and were using them successfully against British ships.
Britain would've prevailed anyway. Argentina had no chance — their gamble was on the UK giving up. But Thatcher didn't "blink" and that was it. Even if Britain didn't have the intelligence you claim they had, and sustained twice the losses it did as a result, it would've prevailed anyway (and still lost fewer people, than Argentina).
And it wouldn't have been. The sole ship sunk by the missile (Argentine only had five of them, and used up two that day) suffered due to a number of mistakes and unfortunate coincidences. After losing one ship, Royal Navy, no doubt, would've wised up... The other ship targeted that day had fired off a chaff and avoided getting hit.
Not to mention, that France was obligated to assist Britain as a fellow NATO-member — whatever value their actual assistance had.
The bullet's not flying even close to straight except when observed over short distances - it's flying in a parabolic arc vertically, and then you have wind effects and whatnot to consider on top of that.
That's why I said "nearly straight". Yes, everything is flying over a parabola, including bullets, but their parabolas are very close to straight line. For example, M40's effective range is 1000m. With muzzle velocity of 777m/s, it would take the bullet about 2 seconds to reach that range. Within two seconds, it will "fall" only about 20 meters (g*t^2/2). 20 over 1000 is 1/50th...
That said, the main application for these would, probably, be civilian (providing security) and thus much shorter ranges — there are few places in urban locales, where a sniper can be 1000 meters away from the VIP and still have a line-of-sight...
if your sensors are acoustic in nature
I'm pretty sure, the plan is to use radars — much like the anti-missile and anti-shell systems are doing. I don't think, detecting the bullet will be the hardest part here. Reacting to it is tricky. The missile-shields bet on either powerful lasers or "kinetic" pieces to destroy the projectile. Quickly moving the target instead is the novel idea here, perhaps, worthy of a patent, indeed.
The Internet only increases transparency if citizens are vigilant and pay attention to what's going on in Washington and in their state legislatures.
Stop blaming citizens and hoping for the Internet. Nobody in Congress has, apparently, even read the humongous bill (bigger than the cost of the Iraq war, for example). All of the Congressmen and women have perfectly fine Internet connections, I assure you...
If you don't know at least that velocity, you can't know where the bullet is at the time of measurement, and thus can't predict the path.
Actually, I don't need the velocity to predict the path, because I know, the bullet is flying straight (or nearly so). Knowing, where the bullet was at 2 different times is enough to know, whether it is going to hit my VIP and where to move him to avoid it. Getting a few more points, if possible, would allow to correct for wind and otherwise increase accuracy.
Now, if I know the exact times the bullet flew through those points would give me the velocity too, but I don't really need it...
They are indeed not very effective, they are often angled in such a manner that a simple baseball cap and hoodie will conceal a persons identity. If you were to improve them, or change their angles so that they were effective, then you would further increase the amount by which they invade your privacy.
You've just repeated both viewpoints, but didn't explain, why they co-exist peacefully. The devices are exactly as "intrusive" as they are effective. If the efficacy is low, then why are privacy advocates so worked up about them, when, for example, automatic toll-payment devices like EZ-pass present a far greater threat to one's privacy (a quazi-government organization keeps gratuitously detailed and accurate records of your travels and bridge-crossings)?
And if they are invading privacy (just how exactly remains unclear, though) then they must be just as effective in identifying criminals and/or providing alibi to innocents (the video may be grainy, but you could still determine the perpetrator's race, for example).
When it is examined, it's very common for the viewers not to identify suspects.
Why is it, that the people, who criticize the cameras from two opposing angles:
They aren't effective for identifying people.
They invade privacy (by letting cops identify people).
are never seen arguing with one another?
I mean, if the video is as bad as you describe, why is People's Republic of Cambridge extending all this effort at removing them? They aren't citing the cost of maintenance as the reason — so they don't consider the devices useless — but instead give a (decidedly bogus) reason of "civil liberties".
Given that -IME- states universally use Federally minted currency -or credit backed by the same- to settle debts, their behaviour is well within the spirit and letter of the law.
Of course, not! The text is unequivocal: "[can not] make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts". The Federal government can, yes, but the State ones can not — it has to be gold or silver, even if the Fed switched to sea shells.
Because there've been a number of Supreme Court cases on that exact issue, and they've determined that what the clause means is that states can't insist on paying with a bank draft if a debtor insists on gold or silver, but there's nothing that says that a debtor can't *choose* to accept a bank draft instead.
This explanation is insincere to the extreme. You know quite well, that if anybody were to demand the monies they are due from a State in gold or silver coin, they would've gotten nothing and had to fight for it to the Supreme Court. It is not a "choice" if the options aren't equal.
but rather when the government started printing money during the Civil War.
Gold Standard provided an explicit equivalence between paper dollar and gold — until 1971... So it was, arguably, still Ok to use the paper dollar until then. But not for the last 38 years.
that the federal Government's act of making paper money legal tender is unconstitutional when states use that money.
No, the federal Government can still call any Thing "money". But it seriously screws the States, when it chooses to use anything other than gold or silver (or, perhaps, an equivalent), because it makes their use of that Thing unconstitutional...
Yes, exactly, no State can issue currency unless its backed by Silver or Gold. The clause in no way limits the Federal Government from issuing fiat currency.
Yes, of course. This is why the payments I listed as unconstitutional are those of States. While it is Ok for the IRS to mail you tax refund in something called paper dollars, the States must use gold or silver. Up until 1971 using paper dollar was Ok, because the paper had explicit gold equivalent. Not any more...
Since changing the US constitution is too much work
Fortunately, ignoring the Constitution is very easy — as long as you have "bipartisan support". And no, I don't mean the Guantanamo and the like, which are, actually, arguably legal (however distasteful).
A lot more profound example is the requirement, that all the government can only use "gold or silver coin" as means of payment (Article 1 Section 10):
"No State shall make any Thing but Gold and Silver Coin a tender in Payment of Debts"
When the US abolished gold standard in 1971 and the dollar became "fiat money", all State tax-refunds, welfare payments, salaries of the State-employees, etc. became unarguably unconstitutional.
And yet, chances are very good, dear reader, you read about the issue here for the first time in your life... Now, I don't claim the economic acumen to argue whether or not Gold Standard was (or would be?) a good idea. But I have that "ideological rigidity" to be disturbed by a violation of the Constitution, that is so blatant and yet so ignored...
Why is it that corporations are expected, even encouraged, to act amorally, but we expect morality to be enforced by our government?
Because corporations have to compete. The one with the least ethics will win, unless the government enforces the minimum ethics standards for all — this, BTW, is the only legitimate reason for government regulation, but I digress.
What's needed is some kind of FCPA-2.0, that would expand the definition of "corrupt practices" to include cooperation with oppressive governments. This should be done sooner, rather than later — while the said governments don't have good alternatives registered in less scrupulous locales. In particular, it may be too late for cell-phones. Whatever business Vodafone may lose because of higher ethics standards, may be picked up by Thuraya, for example.
Unfortunately, our new administration may view such things as silly "ideological rigidity". In fact, all, that a rogue regime needs to do to get our "hand of friendship", may be to "unclench their fist" (directed at us). That their other fist — one directed towards their own subjects — will remain just as (or even more) suffocating is not important, as long as "America's prestige is restored".
Let me see...Because this is a kdawson article? He MUST have his daily hate dose.
Indeed... KDawson being the source, the implication may well be, that it ought to be the government that should drive "innovation". Except, uh-oh, Bill Gates is already advising politicians too. Nobel Prize can't be far away...
Slashdot Mirror
The current evil incarnation of HMOs et al were the result of a misguided and illiberal government policy: let's insure people through their employers. No employer meant either you are too rich for the government to care, or poor enough to be eligible for Medicaid. Self-employed? Sho-sho-shoo, we don't like these people — they are harder to corral.
Losing a job meant losing health-insurance, and switching employer often meant having to switch an insurer, along with the "network" of doctors. Why exactly the two completely unrelated things (job and health insurance) had to be bundled together by government regulation (employers were given a tax-credit for insuring the employees) remains unclear.
Last fall, however, during the elections, two alternatives were put forth. One of them, from Mr. Change, was the old and tried (elsewhere) "single-payer". He said, it is his top choice, but promised not to push for it, although health-related parts of the "stimulus" bill suggest the opposite.
The other proposal came from McCain, who wanted to eliminate the employer's tax-credit (the part Obama emphasized during debates) in favor of giving each individual a tax-credit (the part Obama never acknowledged) to be spent on their own health care. This would've created the same kind of market for health insurance as exists for, say, auto, term-life, house, and other insurances. The decoupling of health care from employment would've been much more fare, and the prices would've come down because of genuine competition.
The benefit would've been enormous, because the exelsior ("ever upwards" lat.) health care costs (and the associated evilness of health-insurers) are primarily explained by the fact, that consumers of care aren't the ones paying neither for the care itself, nor even for the insurance. This creates a lot of waste, and leads to — inefficient, but alienating — attempts to control it. Nobody is happy and we may end up with something worse (like government-provided health care), just because it will be different ("Change" is good, right?).
In closing I'd like to offer a real-life example... A doctor gave us a prescription recently for our newborn's acid reflux with the words: "try this, see if it helps her". The prescription was for 30 tablets (30 days). When I got to the pharmacy, I learned, that the 30 tablets cost $190, and that insurance will only cover $120 (for some reason or the other). Here is the point, where different people would think different things:
As you could guess, my thoughts were 2 and 3. But you, likely, know quite a few people, who would think 1 — and, maybe, 2 as well, but angrily.
True or not, this is completely irrelevant, because neither telecoms companies, nor computer manufacturers have anything to do with theft of intellectual property. Not any more so, than, say, bakers, whose bread the thieves eat...
You are wrong on both of these counts too.
There are still plenty of American companies, that have nothing to do with theft of Intellectual Property and copyright violation — the two activities, that account for 99.99999% of the P2P traffic.
Truly, there are far more reasons to harass these software makers, than the gun manufacturers and retailers.
What do you mean? If any room requires bandwidth, it is the Master Bedroom, of course!
One would expect them to worry at least as much and blur the military bases of their own and friendly nations... You know, the gals and guys, who ensure that Google (and its, supposedly, privacy-minded insiders) can continue to exist...
Ethernet cable consists of 8 wires (4 of them unused, unless you use GB). A phone line needs 2 wires. With the right splitter, you can run 4 phone lines over a single Ethernet cable in the straightforward analog mode — without needing to know, what "raw Ethernet frame" is.
This is, likely, why the solution you describe didn't catch on — most people having the Ethernet cable would just use that to run phone-lines. That the Ethernet is itself run through power-cables is rather unusual, and thus not a big enough market.
So, why did things break suddenly — as the the article claims they did?
The real question is (or ought to be), why is the 1-digit difference in the minor version number break things? If the 1.22 -> 1.23 change was important (as in interface-changing or something), shouldn't the new version have been named 1.3 or even 2.0?
I'm in the same situation — I run a mailing list with about 60 subscribers. Normally, things are just fine, but when a discussion springs up, the 100/hour limit is easily hit. The particularly dumb bug on Verizon's part is that their rate-limiting begins rejecting the over-quota e-mails with final 5xx messages, instead of the temporary-failure 4xx something.
I wouldn't be minding the rate-limit as much, had the messages just sat in the queue waiting for the next hour. But, as Verizon has implemented this, the messages get rejected instead.
I really do despise these idiots, but they are the only company willing to provide DSL (however low-speed) at this particular neck of the hills...
And it was the first one to be taken over by the taxpayer, yes.
This and other things may have contributed, but were not "the root". The root was, no doubt, planted in the Clinton era by the events I bring up. There were, to be sure, other mistakes made by participants of the free market, but they all stemmed from the same now-misconception: that somebody somewhere lending their own money was checking the people's credit-worthiness and inspecting the properties mortgaged. This was a perfectly fine assumption up until the discussed change in Fannie Mae's mission. The free market just didn't realize, how bad the government's meddling can be with banks happily issuing mortgages, they knew, the would be able to sell to FM for profit. This led to seemingly-unending rise in the housing prices, which affected even the mortgages not sold to the taxpayer — as credit-worthy applicants found themselves competing with government-sponsored "a notch below" people.
A more partisan statement is hard to imagine. Let's ignore the 1990-ies folly of the Democrats and their uber-Left cohorts, and blame the subsequent Republican administration instead.
We'll never finish the debate over whether the folly was "the root" — as, I'm sure, you'll keep finding little subsequent bits to blame — so let's just agree, that it was indeed a folly. To give mortgages to people, hitherto unqualified to receive them, for political (and/or charity) reasons was stupid. They did not suddenly become able to repay them — they moved into the houses, and ended up unable to pay. The agony was extended for a few years, as the prices kept rising and they were able to refinance over and over (the most popular subject of spam-emails for a while), but ended up "underwater" anyway. So, the "charity" hurt them at the end, and the only people benefiting are the said Democrats, who are now busy blaming the disaster on the Republicans...
Uhm, I take it back. There were more losses due to these. But the rest of my argument still stands. The French helped (as they were supposed to), but hardly saved anybody's "ass".
Britain would've prevailed anyway. Argentina had no chance — their gamble was on the UK giving up. But Thatcher didn't "blink" and that was it. Even if Britain didn't have the intelligence you claim they had, and sustained twice the losses it did as a result, it would've prevailed anyway (and still lost fewer people, than Argentina).
And it wouldn't have been. The sole ship sunk by the missile (Argentine only had five of them, and used up two that day) suffered due to a number of mistakes and unfortunate coincidences. After losing one ship, Royal Navy, no doubt, would've wised up... The other ship targeted that day had fired off a chaff and avoided getting hit.
Not to mention, that France was obligated to assist Britain as a fellow NATO-member — whatever value their actual assistance had.
That's why I said "nearly straight". Yes, everything is flying over a parabola, including bullets, but their parabolas are very close to straight line. For example, M40's effective range is 1000m. With muzzle velocity of 777m/s, it would take the bullet about 2 seconds to reach that range. Within two seconds, it will "fall" only about 20 meters (g*t^2/2). 20 over 1000 is 1/50th...
That said, the main application for these would, probably, be civilian (providing security) and thus much shorter ranges — there are few places in urban locales, where a sniper can be 1000 meters away from the VIP and still have a line-of-sight...
I'm pretty sure, the plan is to use radars — much like the anti-missile and anti-shell systems are doing. I don't think, detecting the bullet will be the hardest part here. Reacting to it is tricky. The missile-shields bet on either powerful lasers or "kinetic" pieces to destroy the projectile. Quickly moving the target instead is the novel idea here, perhaps, worthy of a patent, indeed.
Stop blaming citizens and hoping for the Internet. Nobody in Congress has, apparently, even read the humongous bill (bigger than the cost of the Iraq war, for example). All of the Congressmen and women have perfectly fine Internet connections, I assure you...
Actually, I don't need the velocity to predict the path, because I know, the bullet is flying straight (or nearly so). Knowing, where the bullet was at 2 different times is enough to know, whether it is going to hit my VIP and where to move him to avoid it. Getting a few more points, if possible, would allow to correct for wind and otherwise increase accuracy.
Now, if I know the exact times the bullet flew through those points would give me the velocity too, but I don't really need it...
You've just repeated both viewpoints, but didn't explain, why they co-exist peacefully. The devices are exactly as "intrusive" as they are effective. If the efficacy is low, then why are privacy advocates so worked up about them, when, for example, automatic toll-payment devices like EZ-pass present a far greater threat to one's privacy (a quazi-government organization keeps gratuitously detailed and accurate records of your travels and bridge-crossings)?
And if they are invading privacy (just how exactly remains unclear, though) then they must be just as effective in identifying criminals and/or providing alibi to innocents (the video may be grainy, but you could still determine the perpetrator's race, for example).
Why is it, that the people, who criticize the cameras from two opposing angles:
are never seen arguing with one another?
I mean, if the video is as bad as you describe, why is People's Republic of Cambridge extending all this effort at removing them? They aren't citing the cost of maintenance as the reason — so they don't consider the devices useless — but instead give a (decidedly bogus) reason of "civil liberties".
Both the first and the second "it" refer to "Federal Government".
Of course, not! The text is unequivocal: "[can not] make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts". The Federal government can, yes, but the State ones can not — it has to be gold or silver, even if the Fed switched to sea shells.
This explanation is insincere to the extreme. You know quite well, that if anybody were to demand the monies they are due from a State in gold or silver coin, they would've gotten nothing and had to fight for it to the Supreme Court. It is not a "choice" if the options aren't equal.
Gold Standard provided an explicit equivalence between paper dollar and gold — until 1971... So it was, arguably, still Ok to use the paper dollar until then. But not for the last 38 years.
No, the federal Government can still call any Thing "money". But it seriously screws the States, when it chooses to use anything other than gold or silver (or, perhaps, an equivalent), because it makes their use of that Thing unconstitutional...
Yes, of course. This is why the payments I listed as unconstitutional are those of States. While it is Ok for the IRS to mail you tax refund in something called paper dollars, the States must use gold or silver. Up until 1971 using paper dollar was Ok, because the paper had explicit gold equivalent. Not any more...
Fortunately, ignoring the Constitution is very easy — as long as you have "bipartisan support". And no, I don't mean the Guantanamo and the like, which are, actually, arguably legal (however distasteful).
A lot more profound example is the requirement, that all the government can only use "gold or silver coin" as means of payment (Article 1 Section 10):
When the US abolished gold standard in 1971 and the dollar became "fiat money", all State tax-refunds, welfare payments, salaries of the State-employees, etc. became unarguably unconstitutional.
And yet, chances are very good, dear reader, you read about the issue here for the first time in your life... Now, I don't claim the economic acumen to argue whether or not Gold Standard was (or would be?) a good idea. But I have that "ideological rigidity" to be disturbed by a violation of the Constitution, that is so blatant and yet so ignored...
Because corporations have to compete. The one with the least ethics will win, unless the government enforces the minimum ethics standards for all — this, BTW, is the only legitimate reason for government regulation, but I digress.
The US has very strong anti-bribery law (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act), which prohibits and severely punishes bribery of foreign officials by corporations.
What's needed is some kind of FCPA-2.0, that would expand the definition of "corrupt practices" to include cooperation with oppressive governments. This should be done sooner, rather than later — while the said governments don't have good alternatives registered in less scrupulous locales. In particular, it may be too late for cell-phones. Whatever business Vodafone may lose because of higher ethics standards, may be picked up by Thuraya, for example.
Unfortunately, our new administration may view such things as silly "ideological rigidity". In fact, all, that a rogue regime needs to do to get our "hand of friendship", may be to "unclench their fist" (directed at us). That their other fist — one directed towards their own subjects — will remain just as (or even more) suffocating is not important, as long as "America's prestige is restored".
Indeed... KDawson being the source, the implication may well be, that it ought to be the government that should drive "innovation". Except, uh-oh, Bill Gates is already advising politicians too. Nobel Prize can't be far away...