I don't often search out and read/watch far right conservative media. About my only exposure to it is from Jon Stewart or from progressive talk show hosts (air america types). So perhaps I have a slanted opinion, however, I sure haven't seen inflammatory speech coming from the left.
To me, the far right appears to me to be filled with hateful, bigoted, crazy people. While the far left is filled with people, who, while having a strong ideology that is the polar opposite to many right-wing views, is expressed passionately, but without resorting to flat out hatred or name calling.
"Ann Coulter also advocated that Muslims ride flying carpets instead of airplanes. There's a pretty strong current of entertainment in her work"
That might be entertaining to some, but it reeks of racism, and any news organization that lets words like that be spoken, even in jest, needs to be harshly criticized, and perhaps even taken to court for hate speech.
I think the most far to the left well known TV personality is probably Keith Oberman. And the most inflammatory thing I heard him say was calling for Bush to resign. He doesn't, to mimick Ann Coulter's words, say "I think all Christian Fundamentalists should be horded into camps".
Sorry, kinda off topic post overall. But with all recent violence (bricks thrown through congressional office windows, spitting on congressman, calling them the N-word, cutting some congressman's brother's gas pipe, Sarah Palin releasing a map that has democratic congressional districts with frigging gun crosshairs on them, etc...) I think its time to re-examine what we consider entertainment.
It is actually larger difference than even your example gives. Estimates I've heard are in the 10% to 13% range. That is, your health insurance cost is 10-13% higher directly because of emergency room costs caring for illegal or otherwise not insured patients.
Temporary worker visa's (generates tax dollars) + temporary worker health care coverage (cheapest way to provide care rather than ER) is the most economical solution.
We need to start making policy based on the real world, not some fabricated ideologically based fantasy land.
But look at -what- the Chinese government are censoring. Terms like the Tienanmen Square massacre where people died, that can certainly spark protests. Religion is censored, and as we know from history even small differences can lead to large problems.
People would and have risked their lives in the name of religion. People have and would risk their lives in support of those who they believe died for a worthy cause.
If it stayed like this, I doubt it would inspire revolutions. But with all of the talk about it, it is going to make people wonder -what- they are censoring. When they figure out what, they won't understand why. When they finally understand why they will see that the Chinese government is corrupt.
Think about it this way, if you don't know about curse words, there is no need to look them up. But how many of us once our parents told us that one word was a "bad word" tried to look it up in the dictionary? None of us would look it up otherwise, but once we know that it is "forbidden" knowledge we will look it up. The Chinese government and Google are effectively telling us that there -are- "curse words" tempting some of the citizens to look it up.
I forget where I saw/read this, but someone was able to interview quite a few young to middle aged Chinese people, and asked them questions like, "do you know what happened in T. Square", etc...
Very few of them knew, and most importantly, very few of them cared. I think you overestimate the desire of the average person to truly dig deep and find the truth beyond what is fed to them.
Heck, even in our "open information" society in the USA, look at how much misinformation was slung about and still believed to this day about health care reform? The vast majority of Americans who actually even bother to watch the news, watch Fox and do no further research.
We need to raise our tariffs again. Its not the only solution, but all our import tariffs with mexico, china, etc.. are 0.5-2%, while for China, US goods face heavy tariffs. 65% for agriculture, ~20% for other goods.
So not only are they payed less, have no environmental concerns, no rights, etc.. but the US artificially stacks the market against local manufacturing by not matching other countries ridiculously high tariffs against us.
I don't know the economic theories used to justify basically 0% tariffs, but it sure seems like an intentional guaranteed wealth transfer from the US to other countries. Its like our government woke up one day and said, "you know, we are so damn rich, and the rest of the world has so little, we might as well attempt to make the rest of the world more stable by sharing the wealth".
As any Slashdot Libertarian will tell you, corporations are more efficient than governments(and this is often true, though neither so often nor so dramatically as the Slashdot Libertarians would have it).
It's true pretty much all of the time. The problem that the libertarians miss is that the interests of the corporation align with those of the population very rarely. Somehow, it's not particularly reassuring when you are being exploited to know that the exploitation is happening very efficiently. Someone working inefficiently on your behalf is usually better than someone working efficiently against you.
pfexec mod +10
I can't seem to make conservative friends/relatives see that very simple point. It is most strikingly true when looking at health care insurance.
Unless your patching together something custom, like cheap commodity x86 hardware + solaris + a bunch of open source apps (tomcat/apache/whatever), in an enterprise setting, there would be zero chance of not having a support contract.
Sun hardware + Sun OS + most likely some enterprise sun software (ldap, email, identity management) = support contract required. Not required by Sun, but required by any system administrator who has experience and is responsible.
Sun has never marketed to the guy who buys a bunch of x86 dells and tries to setup his own web/app cluster. The market is large institutions, with tons of servers, professional sys admins, and a need for highly responsive enterprise support. And in environments like that, you most likely have many layers of security, with the OS just being one of them.
So what incentive does Sun/Oracle have for maintaining the status quo of having a support contract for the latest patches? Well most likely to reinforce that image that Sun Server+Sun Software = Enterprise Solution. I imagine they'd rather not have tens of thousands of amateur solaris installs diluting the Sun/Solaris image, as they fail, get hacked, or don't perform well.
For the hordes that want to try Solaris, there's Open Solaris. All the patches and open source code you want. Personally, I think they are better than other OS makers, like say MS, in that you can download Enterprise Solaris free, install it, use it, whatever. In fact, you can download almost all Sun Enterprise Software for free and play with it. But if you are going to roll it out to the public, and want support+patches+on site help, etc... you need to pay.
This would be like Microsoft allowing the download of any of their OS or other products for free, unlimited, no time trial, but just charging for patches. It basically would allow college students, hobbyists, and the curious to use, for as long as they want, all MS products. But the day that user decides to open a business supported by Microsoft servers, he knows he needs to pay to have support.
I wouldn't mind seeing Oracle/Sun becoming more open source over time, in that more and more software, including patches, are completely free. But the current model isn't draconian by any means. It is a balance between allowing a wide audience to explore your software, while retaining a guaranteed revenue stream from serious businesses.
Its been my experience that Netflix only gets a movie after it has been out a long time, after rentals, after dvd, etc...and their streaming does not stream their entire collection. Some of the biggest titles are not available to stream.
Hulu, in terms of the most popular shows, sometimes has the last few episodes, but no way to start at episode one. And many popular shows are not on Hulu. It is actually pretty limited. Not to mention the absence of British shows like Torchwood hehe.
And then there is the entire sets of some of the most popular/highest rated shows of all time on the "premium" channels like HBO. True Blood, The Wire, etc.. None of that is streamed as far as I know. Maybe much later on Netflix, I'm not sure.
Streaming is the redheaded step child of entertainment still. It might get better, but it is no where near ready to be a primary source.
And don't get me started on "too many people want to do that and not pay for it. " Thats bullshit. There is no option to pay "for it", because "it" does not exist.
The model of pay your cable bill for shows 1,2 and 3, pay your Tivo bill to record 1,2,3 and be able to pause TV, pay HBO to watch 1 show, sign up for netflix to watch movie 4,5,6, etc...
It is just too scattered, too inconvenient, and did you notice all the PAYING that is going on, and I still can't, say, find a single source to start watching Burn Notice season 1 episode 1 anywhere. Hulu, nope. Netflix, nope, etc...Or anything on discovery.
I'd gladly pay 150 bucks a month for basically the "all service". HBO/Showtime/Cable/Movies, all modern, no delays, all episodes available at all times.
The days of having to buy DVD's are (well should be) over. And the artificial scarcity model will eventually fail. Region limits too. The first big streaming company to arm wrestle content providers into giving up their content in a timely fashion, and ALL of it, not just a few episodes, is going to make major bucks.
Who knows, maybe Hulu can someday offer a 100 bucks a month service, that has all shows, including HBO/premium content/Movies.
If something is impossible to stop, or even minimize to the point of tolerance, you need to change your plan. We should allow migratory labor via temporary worker permits. At least we would get some taxes out of the situation.
Thats the crux of the matter. We aren't fighting a state. How do the terrorists ever surrender? If I were trained as a terrorist, spotted on surveillance at some point, but decided it was wrong to pursue that path, and were later spotted in a village, targeted, and killed, is that right?
You mention the Eiffel Tower. Why aren't we flying drones over France to get these terrorists? http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2008/12/paris-terrorist-arrests-continue.html Oh right... because those "collaterals" are people we actually care about? Or is it that they have a bigger voice in the world?
There are a bunch of other issues I'd like to bring up about your post, but it all sort of boils down to the question: Is it possible to wage a war against an ideology, not a state, while maintaining our laws and morals?
A war with no boundaries, no way to 'win', no way for the enemy to surrender, an enemy without uniforms, and who we apparently selectively execute death sentences for, based on location, not intent or for actually committing a crime. Crazy bomber in NYC = cops. Crazy bomber in Pakistan=missile strike.
"what the hell does the ACLU want? The FBI to paradrop into Afghanistan, slap the cuffs on them and read them their Miranda rights? What the hell?"
Exactly. Like, if I left the USA because I hated it and decided I believed some foreigner's ideology that the west is Evil, and I choose to fly into Paris and plan and attack an embassy, we should certainly use F16s or drones with hellfire missiles to strike my Paris apartment building.........
Now you might say, well of course we wouldn't do that in Paris. Too many collateral casualties, some of the people in the apartment might be pro-western/friendly, etc...
At what point would the ratio of unfriendly to friendly become favorable to dropping a laser guided bomb in Paris?
It is certainly easier to drop a missile than it is to arrest someone, it doesn't make it right. The only way we are getting away with drones in the first place, is because the villages and countries that they are landing on have very little voice in the world.
The main problem is that this is not a war. These are not soldiers we are fighting. They are mixed in with friendly targets nearly all the time. They do not have a central figure or state that can ever surrender. There are no battlefield boundaries, and no where for the general populace to retreat to.
Of course, I'm pretty sure that the military is very careful about minimizing collateral damages, but are any collateral damages acceptable when this isn't a war, these aren't soldiers, they can (as a ideological group) never surrender? For that matter, is planning or thoughts/speeches criminal? What if I, as a US citizen, go to some western hating village and train and train and train but never do anything? Is just hanging out in a village criminal and deserving of death?
There are way too many grey areas for this to be as simple as "bomb" or "don't bomb". The ACLU is right to examine the policies behind drones, especially when it concerns US citizens. I wish someone was examining it for non-US citizens also. Like for instance, these Pakistanis. http://news.antiwar.com/2010/03/10/civilians-among-17-killed-in-latest-us-drone-strikes/
Prior to 9/11, if I, as a US citizen, had walked into a US embassy somewhere in Africa and started shooting everyone, would I have been called a terrorist and taken to a secret CIA prison, or brought back to the US and charged as a criminal?
We both know I would have been charged as a criminal in the US, with a lawyer at my side. Post 9/11.. its hard to say.
The civil war was an officially declared war, with uniforms. This new "war on terror" makes no sense. You can't declare a war on an ideology. You can't have a perpetual war who's members are unknown and replenished with each generation raised on hating xyz about the US or its allies.
How will we know when we've "won" this war on terror? We can't. There is no end. And if there is no end, no victory condition, it can't be a war. And if it is not a war, attacks against us are of a criminal nature, not military nature. And criminals, by the USA's laws and morals, deserve their day in court.
"prevention is more expensive than repair/recovery/treatment"
I don't think you can proclaim that as universally true. Especially if you start talking about medicine/social services. And I'm pretty sure there are many computer related situations where that statement would not be true. For instance, military computer networks.
From http://swpc.ou.edu/doucments/publications/ResearchSummary10.04.pdf :
"Primary Findings
Return on investment of prevention programs range from $2-$20. That is for every dollar spent on prevention programs, from $2 to $20 is returned in benefits. Benefits are estimates of savings over a period of time resulting from reduced demand for health and social services. "
The more I read, the more I"m beginning to believe that "they" are already here. Just finished reading The Intelligent Universe (http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Universe-Emerging-Mind-Cosmos/dp/1564149196). If the universe had 1 intelligent species a couple billion years ago, that would have been more than sufficient time to colonize every single piece of matter several times over. That is just using slower than light generational travel, and basic exponential population growth.
It really boils down to two choices: 1) We are the only intelligent life in the entire universe, or 2) intelligent life is all around us, but who's technology is so far advanced, it is basically magic. Completely beyond our ability to comprehend.
When SETI searches, what they are actually searching for, is a civilization that is +/- 100 years from our current technological state. And that, given the age of the universe, is a very very small subset.
Compared with agricultural work, I'm assuming that construction is a pretty small slice of the illegal population. Agricultural jobs are temporary, seasonal, and low paying. No person living in the US legally, paying US prices on goods and services, paying US prices on homes, etc.. is going to want 3 months of harvest work.
And I agree with the person who replied to you:
"You know what? When some people find that their job doesn't pay enough for their lifestyle they look for a new, better paid job. Sometimes they go back to school to learn new skills, sometimes other people in the household start working so that they whole family isn't supported by one person (which is increasingly impossible)."
And I'd also like to add one thing. If your friend the tile setter doesn't want to go back to school or learn a different trade, why isn't he by now the one hiring teams of tile setters? Form his own business and just manage a bunch of low payed workers....I'd assume by age 48 his back would start complaining a bit, and in a career of tile setting he'd have gained enough contacts and knowledge to manage 5-6 minimum wage folks....
I googled, and found the fine to be up to 10,000 and 5 years in prison for employing, knowingly, illegal workers. 5 years in prison isn't insignificant. The problem is more likely that the employer didn't know (or claim to not know), and/or the illegal employee gave him counterfeit papers.
As an employer, how can you be certain? If the person hands you a W2 from an old job, a valid looking ssn, what more should you do? And if the employer can't be certain without going to extreme lengths and background checks, should they really be thrown in jail for 5 years?
I can understand the intent behind wanting a form of 100% accurate identification, so that employers can be sure their employees are legal... but I think that it is missing the point entirely. I would assume that a very large percent of the migrant work force is payed under the table, without any paper work at all. Where there is demand, supply will come.
I'd much rather see some sort of temporary worker visa made available. Having grown up around agriculture for the first half of my life, I can tell you that there are very few US citizens that would want to work in the fields. I've done it (college summer job), and it is very hard minimum wage work.
But the hard work isn't even the primary issue. The single biggest thing that people miss in this discussion is that agricultural work is entirely temporary. When the harvest is ready, thousands upon thousands of migratory workers flood into central Washington State. When the harvest is done, most of them move to another State with a different growing season, or head back home with their earnings.
How could you run a business if you needed 500 workers for 3 months each year without migratory labor? The only temporary work that pays off if you want to be stationary, with a home, as a US citizen is something like Crab fishing in Alaska. Big money, short time. Minimum wage short time jobs do not pay off, and no US citizen with better options is going to travel around to get those temp harvest jobs.
If we successfully removed all illegal labor tomorrow, where would the workers come from? Well I suppose you could point out that places like Detroit have 40% unemployment among inner city males, mostly black males (I think thats the right figure, might be lower, but you get the point). Why aren't all those unemployed people traveling across the country each growing season and taking the harvest jobs? Because when they return home to Detroit with their summer earnings, that money doesn't buy much in America. A Mexican worker returning home on the other hand...
It boils down to 2 choices: 1. Temporary worker visas, and being able to tax those workers to pay for the social services they might use during their temporary stay, or 2. Build a big wall, aggressively enforce laws, greatly increase business inspection, attempt to remove all illegal workers in other words. The result would be that farmers would need to pay more to entice people to take the job, and our food costs would go up.
Either plan is basically sound in terms of the cause/effect. Except that like the war on drugs shows, where there is demand, supply finds a way of creeping in. Number 2 would be a losing battle imo.
"An ID card is little more than security theater. You'll have the same things that happen today with SSNs and identity theft, where illegals buy paperwork from dishonest people to become (sarcasm quotes) "documented""
The article quotes the senator as saying that this ID card's main advantage is that it would not be able to be counterfeited, as it is tied to the biology of a person. Whether that is possible or not, and whether it is a good idea in terms of privacy rights, are entirely different questions.
But the stated goal is to make it very difficult or impossible to get fake papers.
And sadly, I agree with you. I don't have very high hopes for a sound decision on energy, for two reasons:
1. Our media is already filled with misinformation, and the recent scotus decision on citizens united, is only going to make things worse. Without an informed electorate, we won't get the politicians and policies we need. And the process to reversing misinformation in media is going to be a long fight. See http://www.movetoamend.org/
2. Energy policy change is going to require a long term effort. Way longer than the 8 years of a Presidency. If the government switches its stance on energy from "drill baby drill" to "clean energy now" every 8 years, not much is going to happen.
In the end, I just try to read as much as possible, convince friends and family, and hope for the best.
If the status quo (oil,gas,coal) is the most cost effective solution, what incentive would the market ever have of moving to cleaner energy sources, without some tax/incentive system?
Exxon/some big energy company is just going to, out of the kindness of its heart, use its 30 billion in profits to lay down new lines and setup wind farms across America?
"What is the average output for one of the large turbines used on a wind farm? About 4 million kWh per year for a machine with a 1.5 MW capacity at a good wind site, or enough energy for about 330 typical households in Oregon.
How much does one of those large turbines cost? About $2 million installed (less when installed in larger wind farms)"
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni
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Gas Wants To Kill the Wind
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I don't think that the OP you responded to necessarily meant the public when he/she said "America's...problem". It might very well be American businesses problem, and the free(ish) market might very well drive the change.
But they are going to need incentive to change, and some guidance during the process. The cheapest solution to power generation right now is the status quo. And it most likely will stay that way for 50 years with oil, and hundreds of years with coal. There has to be an economic motive to change, and that can most easily be created by taxing what we don't like (coal/oil) and giving subs to what we do like (nuclear, wind, sun, etc..).
And as the OP pointed out, this is going to take multiple states, multi power companies, and significant investment in new infrastructure, that is much larger than any one company can handle. It will almost certainly require a 'smarter' grid, and a heck of a lot more power sharing between companies.
How do you think that the Federal Highway system would have turned out without central planning on a National level? We don't need a ton of new regulators or new federal jobs created. We need the existing regulatory agencies to step up and start mandating change, helping to plan it and negotiate the overall system between companies and states, and financial incentives to get the ball rolling.
Cap and Trade, by slowly ratcheting down the allowed carbon in the country, will squeeze companies into action, but I have a feeling that is only going to be passed directly on to customers for as long as humanely possible, until customers are screaming and electric companies are literally forced to start changing.
I'd rather not let pure profit motives drive the change. Lets get some laws in place with timelines and start getting the infrastructure built.
Slashdot Mirror
Occasionally asking a 'silly' question yields important results:)
http://www.emaxhealth.com/1020/44/34149/doctors-not-washing-hands-enough-hospitals.html
I don't often search out and read/watch far right conservative media. About my only exposure to it is from Jon Stewart or from progressive talk show hosts (air america types). So perhaps I have a slanted opinion, however, I sure haven't seen inflammatory speech coming from the left.
To me, the far right appears to me to be filled with hateful, bigoted, crazy people. While the far left is filled with people, who, while having a strong ideology that is the polar opposite to many right-wing views, is expressed passionately, but without resorting to flat out hatred or name calling.
"Ann Coulter also advocated that Muslims ride flying carpets instead of airplanes. There's a pretty strong current of entertainment in her work"
That might be entertaining to some, but it reeks of racism, and any news organization that lets words like that be spoken, even in jest, needs to be harshly criticized, and perhaps even taken to court for hate speech.
I think the most far to the left well known TV personality is probably Keith Oberman. And the most inflammatory thing I heard him say was calling for Bush to resign. He doesn't, to mimick Ann Coulter's words, say "I think all Christian Fundamentalists should be horded into camps".
Sorry, kinda off topic post overall. But with all recent violence (bricks thrown through congressional office windows, spitting on congressman, calling them the N-word, cutting some congressman's brother's gas pipe, Sarah Palin releasing a map that has democratic congressional districts with frigging gun crosshairs on them, etc...) I think its time to re-examine what we consider entertainment.
differential does not necessarily mean preferential.
I lost a job when a hospital I worked for went under due to uninsured folks costing us in the emergency room.
It is actually larger difference than even your example gives. Estimates I've heard are in the 10% to 13% range. That is, your health insurance cost is 10-13% higher directly because of emergency room costs caring for illegal or otherwise not insured patients.
Temporary worker visa's (generates tax dollars) + temporary worker health care coverage (cheapest way to provide care rather than ER) is the most economical solution.
We need to start making policy based on the real world, not some fabricated ideologically based fantasy land.
But look at -what- the Chinese government are censoring. Terms like the Tienanmen Square massacre where people died, that can certainly spark protests. Religion is censored, and as we know from history even small differences can lead to large problems.
People would and have risked their lives in the name of religion. People have and would risk their lives in support of those who they believe died for a worthy cause.
If it stayed like this, I doubt it would inspire revolutions. But with all of the talk about it, it is going to make people wonder -what- they are censoring. When they figure out what, they won't understand why. When they finally understand why they will see that the Chinese government is corrupt.
Think about it this way, if you don't know about curse words, there is no need to look them up. But how many of us once our parents told us that one word was a "bad word" tried to look it up in the dictionary? None of us would look it up otherwise, but once we know that it is "forbidden" knowledge we will look it up. The Chinese government and Google are effectively telling us that there -are- "curse words" tempting some of the citizens to look it up.
I forget where I saw/read this, but someone was able to interview quite a few young to middle aged Chinese people, and asked them questions like, "do you know what happened in T. Square", etc...
Very few of them knew, and most importantly, very few of them cared. I think you overestimate the desire of the average person to truly dig deep and find the truth beyond what is fed to them.
Heck, even in our "open information" society in the USA, look at how much misinformation was slung about and still believed to this day about health care reform? The vast majority of Americans who actually even bother to watch the news, watch Fox and do no further research.
Well, and it doesn't help that our tariff on chinese goods is basically zero percent while their tariff on our goods range from 60% to 10%.
We need to raise our tariffs again. Its not the only solution, but all our import tariffs with mexico, china, etc.. are 0.5-2%, while for China, US goods face heavy tariffs. 65% for agriculture, ~20% for other goods.
So not only are they payed less, have no environmental concerns, no rights, etc.. but the US artificially stacks the market against local manufacturing by not matching other countries ridiculously high tariffs against us.
I don't know the economic theories used to justify basically 0% tariffs, but it sure seems like an intentional guaranteed wealth transfer from the US to other countries. Its like our government woke up one day and said, "you know, we are so damn rich, and the rest of the world has so little, we might as well attempt to make the rest of the world more stable by sharing the wealth".
As any Slashdot Libertarian will tell you, corporations are more efficient than governments(and this is often true, though neither so often nor so dramatically as the Slashdot Libertarians would have it).
It's true pretty much all of the time. The problem that the libertarians miss is that the interests of the corporation align with those of the population very rarely. Somehow, it's not particularly reassuring when you are being exploited to know that the exploitation is happening very efficiently. Someone working inefficiently on your behalf is usually better than someone working efficiently against you.
pfexec mod +10
I can't seem to make conservative friends/relatives see that very simple point. It is most strikingly true when looking at health care insurance.
Unless your patching together something custom, like cheap commodity x86 hardware + solaris + a bunch of open source apps (tomcat/apache/whatever), in an enterprise setting, there would be zero chance of not having a support contract.
Sun hardware + Sun OS + most likely some enterprise sun software (ldap, email, identity management) = support contract required. Not required by Sun, but required by any system administrator who has experience and is responsible.
Sun has never marketed to the guy who buys a bunch of x86 dells and tries to setup his own web/app cluster. The market is large institutions, with tons of servers, professional sys admins, and a need for highly responsive enterprise support. And in environments like that, you most likely have many layers of security, with the OS just being one of them.
So what incentive does Sun/Oracle have for maintaining the status quo of having a support contract for the latest patches? Well most likely to reinforce that image that Sun Server+Sun Software = Enterprise Solution. I imagine they'd rather not have tens of thousands of amateur solaris installs diluting the Sun/Solaris image, as they fail, get hacked, or don't perform well.
For the hordes that want to try Solaris, there's Open Solaris. All the patches and open source code you want. Personally, I think they are better than other OS makers, like say MS, in that you can download Enterprise Solaris free, install it, use it, whatever. In fact, you can download almost all Sun Enterprise Software for free and play with it. But if you are going to roll it out to the public, and want support+patches+on site help, etc... you need to pay.
This would be like Microsoft allowing the download of any of their OS or other products for free, unlimited, no time trial, but just charging for patches. It basically would allow college students, hobbyists, and the curious to use, for as long as they want, all MS products. But the day that user decides to open a business supported by Microsoft servers, he knows he needs to pay to have support.
I wouldn't mind seeing Oracle/Sun becoming more open source over time, in that more and more software, including patches, are completely free. But the current model isn't draconian by any means. It is a balance between allowing a wide audience to explore your software, while retaining a guaranteed revenue stream from serious businesses.
Its been my experience that Netflix only gets a movie after it has been out a long time, after rentals, after dvd, etc...and their streaming does not stream their entire collection. Some of the biggest titles are not available to stream.
Hulu, in terms of the most popular shows, sometimes has the last few episodes, but no way to start at episode one. And many popular shows are not on Hulu. It is actually pretty limited. Not to mention the absence of British shows like Torchwood hehe.
And then there is the entire sets of some of the most popular/highest rated shows of all time on the "premium" channels like HBO. True Blood, The Wire, etc.. None of that is streamed as far as I know. Maybe much later on Netflix, I'm not sure.
Streaming is the redheaded step child of entertainment still. It might get better, but it is no where near ready to be a primary source.
And don't get me started on "too many people want to do that and not pay for it. " Thats bullshit. There is no option to pay "for it", because "it" does not exist.
The model of pay your cable bill for shows 1,2 and 3, pay your Tivo bill to record 1,2,3 and be able to pause TV, pay HBO to watch 1 show, sign up for netflix to watch movie 4,5,6, etc...
It is just too scattered, too inconvenient, and did you notice all the PAYING that is going on, and I still can't, say, find a single source to start watching Burn Notice season 1 episode 1 anywhere. Hulu, nope. Netflix, nope, etc...Or anything on discovery.
I'd gladly pay 150 bucks a month for basically the "all service". HBO/Showtime/Cable/Movies, all modern, no delays, all episodes available at all times.
The days of having to buy DVD's are (well should be) over. And the artificial scarcity model will eventually fail. Region limits too. The first big streaming company to arm wrestle content providers into giving up their content in a timely fashion, and ALL of it, not just a few episodes, is going to make major bucks.
Who knows, maybe Hulu can someday offer a 100 bucks a month service, that has all shows, including HBO/premium content/Movies.
Well said.
If something is impossible to stop, or even minimize to the point of tolerance, you need to change your plan. We should allow migratory labor via temporary worker permits. At least we would get some taxes out of the situation.
"If we were fighting Germany"
Thats the crux of the matter. We aren't fighting a state. How do the terrorists ever surrender? If I were trained as a terrorist, spotted on surveillance at some point, but decided it was wrong to pursue that path, and were later spotted in a village, targeted, and killed, is that right?
You mention the Eiffel Tower. Why aren't we flying drones over France to get these terrorists? http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2008/12/paris-terrorist-arrests-continue.html Oh right... because those "collaterals" are people we actually care about? Or is it that they have a bigger voice in the world?
There are a bunch of other issues I'd like to bring up about your post, but it all sort of boils down to the question:
Is it possible to wage a war against an ideology, not a state, while maintaining our laws and morals?
A war with no boundaries, no way to 'win', no way for the enemy to surrender, an enemy without uniforms, and who we apparently selectively execute death sentences for, based on location, not intent or for actually committing a crime. Crazy bomber in NYC = cops. Crazy bomber in Pakistan=missile strike.
"what the hell does the ACLU want? The FBI to paradrop into Afghanistan, slap the cuffs on them and read them their Miranda rights? What the hell?"
Exactly. Like, if I left the USA because I hated it and decided I believed some foreigner's ideology that the west is Evil, and I choose to fly into Paris and plan and attack an embassy, we should certainly use F16s or drones with hellfire missiles to strike my Paris apartment building.........
Now you might say, well of course we wouldn't do that in Paris. Too many collateral casualties, some of the people in the apartment might be pro-western/friendly, etc...
At what point would the ratio of unfriendly to friendly become favorable to dropping a laser guided bomb in Paris?
It is certainly easier to drop a missile than it is to arrest someone, it doesn't make it right. The only way we are getting away with drones in the first place, is because the villages and countries that they are landing on have very little voice in the world.
The main problem is that this is not a war. These are not soldiers we are fighting. They are mixed in with friendly targets nearly all the time. They do not have a central figure or state that can ever surrender. There are no battlefield boundaries, and no where for the general populace to retreat to.
Of course, I'm pretty sure that the military is very careful about minimizing collateral damages, but are any collateral damages acceptable when this isn't a war, these aren't soldiers, they can (as a ideological group) never surrender? For that matter, is planning or thoughts/speeches criminal? What if I, as a US citizen, go to some western hating village and train and train and train but never do anything? Is just hanging out in a village criminal and deserving of death?
There are way too many grey areas for this to be as simple as "bomb" or "don't bomb". The ACLU is right to examine the policies behind drones, especially when it concerns US citizens. I wish someone was examining it for non-US citizens also. Like for instance, these Pakistanis. http://news.antiwar.com/2010/03/10/civilians-among-17-killed-in-latest-us-drone-strikes/
Prior to 9/11, if I, as a US citizen, had walked into a US embassy somewhere in Africa and started shooting everyone, would I have been called a terrorist and taken to a secret CIA prison, or brought back to the US and charged as a criminal?
We both know I would have been charged as a criminal in the US, with a lawyer at my side. Post 9/11.. its hard to say.
The civil war was an officially declared war, with uniforms. This new "war on terror" makes no sense. You can't declare a war on an ideology. You can't have a perpetual war who's members are unknown and replenished with each generation raised on hating xyz about the US or its allies.
How will we know when we've "won" this war on terror? We can't. There is no end. And if there is no end, no victory condition, it can't be a war. And if it is not a war, attacks against us are of a criminal nature, not military nature. And criminals, by the USA's laws and morals, deserve their day in court.
"prevention is more expensive than repair/recovery/treatment"
I don't think you can proclaim that as universally true. Especially if you start talking about medicine/social services. And I'm pretty sure there are many computer related situations where that statement would not be true. For instance, military computer networks.
From http://swpc.ou.edu/doucments/publications/ResearchSummary10.04.pdf :
"Primary Findings
Return on investment of prevention programs range from $2-$20. That is for every
dollar spent on prevention programs, from $2 to $20 is returned in benefits. Benefits are
estimates of savings over a period of time resulting from reduced demand for health and
social services.
"
The more I read, the more I"m beginning to believe that "they" are already here. Just finished reading The Intelligent Universe (http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Universe-Emerging-Mind-Cosmos/dp/1564149196). If the universe had 1 intelligent species a couple billion years ago, that would have been more than sufficient time to colonize every single piece of matter several times over. That is just using slower than light generational travel, and basic exponential population growth.
It really boils down to two choices: 1) We are the only intelligent life in the entire universe, or 2) intelligent life is all around us, but who's technology is so far advanced, it is basically magic. Completely beyond our ability to comprehend.
When SETI searches, what they are actually searching for, is a civilization that is +/- 100 years from our current technological state. And that, given the age of the universe, is a very very small subset.
Compared with agricultural work, I'm assuming that construction is a pretty small slice of the illegal population. Agricultural jobs are temporary, seasonal, and low paying. No person living in the US legally, paying US prices on goods and services, paying US prices on homes, etc.. is going to want 3 months of harvest work.
And I agree with the person who replied to you:
"You know what? When some people find that their job doesn't pay enough for their lifestyle they look for a new, better paid job. Sometimes they go back to school to learn new skills, sometimes other people in the household start working so that they whole family isn't supported by one person (which is increasingly impossible)."
And I'd also like to add one thing. If your friend the tile setter doesn't want to go back to school or learn a different trade, why isn't he by now the one hiring teams of tile setters? Form his own business and just manage a bunch of low payed workers....I'd assume by age 48 his back would start complaining a bit, and in a career of tile setting he'd have gained enough contacts and knowledge to manage 5-6 minimum wage folks....
I googled, and found the fine to be up to 10,000 and 5 years in prison for employing, knowingly, illegal workers. 5 years in prison isn't insignificant. The problem is more likely that the employer didn't know (or claim to not know), and/or the illegal employee gave him counterfeit papers.
As an employer, how can you be certain? If the person hands you a W2 from an old job, a valid looking ssn, what more should you do? And if the employer can't be certain without going to extreme lengths and background checks, should they really be thrown in jail for 5 years?
I can understand the intent behind wanting a form of 100% accurate identification, so that employers can be sure their employees are legal... but I think that it is missing the point entirely. I would assume that a very large percent of the migrant work force is payed under the table, without any paper work at all. Where there is demand, supply will come.
I'd much rather see some sort of temporary worker visa made available. Having grown up around agriculture for the first half of my life, I can tell you that there are very few US citizens that would want to work in the fields. I've done it (college summer job), and it is very hard minimum wage work.
But the hard work isn't even the primary issue. The single biggest thing that people miss in this discussion is that agricultural work is entirely temporary. When the harvest is ready, thousands upon thousands of migratory workers flood into central Washington State. When the harvest is done, most of them move to another State with a different growing season, or head back home with their earnings.
How could you run a business if you needed 500 workers for 3 months each year without migratory labor? The only temporary work that pays off if you want to be stationary, with a home, as a US citizen is something like Crab fishing in Alaska. Big money, short time. Minimum wage short time jobs do not pay off, and no US citizen with better options is going to travel around to get those temp harvest jobs.
If we successfully removed all illegal labor tomorrow, where would the workers come from? Well I suppose you could point out that places like Detroit have 40% unemployment among inner city males, mostly black males (I think thats the right figure, might be lower, but you get the point). Why aren't all those unemployed people traveling across the country each growing season and taking the harvest jobs? Because when they return home to Detroit with their summer earnings, that money doesn't buy much in America. A Mexican worker returning home on the other hand...
It boils down to 2 choices:
1. Temporary worker visas, and being able to tax those workers to pay for the social services they might use during their temporary stay, or
2. Build a big wall, aggressively enforce laws, greatly increase business inspection, attempt to remove all illegal workers in other words. The result would be that farmers would need to pay more to entice people to take the job, and our food costs would go up.
Either plan is basically sound in terms of the cause/effect. Except that like the war on drugs shows, where there is demand, supply finds a way of creeping in. Number 2 would be a losing battle imo.
"An ID card is little more than security theater. You'll have the same things that happen today with SSNs and identity theft, where illegals buy paperwork from dishonest people to become (sarcasm quotes) "documented""
The article quotes the senator as saying that this ID card's main advantage is that it would not be able to be counterfeited, as it is tied to the biology of a person. Whether that is possible or not, and whether it is a good idea in terms of privacy rights, are entirely different questions.
But the stated goal is to make it very difficult or impossible to get fake papers.
And sadly, I agree with you. I don't have very high hopes for a sound decision on energy, for two reasons:
1. Our media is already filled with misinformation, and the recent scotus decision on citizens united, is only going to make things worse. Without an informed electorate, we won't get the politicians and policies we need. And the process to reversing misinformation in media is going to be a long fight. See http://www.movetoamend.org/
2. Energy policy change is going to require a long term effort. Way longer than the 8 years of a Presidency. If the government switches its stance on energy from "drill baby drill" to "clean energy now" every 8 years, not much is going to happen.
In the end, I just try to read as much as possible, convince friends and family, and hope for the best.
If the status quo (oil,gas,coal) is the most cost effective solution, what incentive would the market ever have of moving to cleaner energy sources, without some tax/incentive system?
Exxon/some big energy company is just going to, out of the kindness of its heart, use its 30 billion in profits to lay down new lines and setup wind farms across America?
Wind power efficiency greatly scales up with size.
http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/RENEW/Wind/FAQ_Wind.shtml
"What is the average output for one of the large turbines used on a wind farm?
About 4 million kWh per year for a machine with a 1.5 MW capacity at a good wind site, or enough energy for about 330 typical households in Oregon.
How much does one of those large turbines cost?
About $2 million installed (less when installed in larger wind farms)"
I don't think that the OP you responded to necessarily meant the public when he/she said "America's ...problem". It might very well be American businesses problem, and the free(ish) market might very well drive the change.
But they are going to need incentive to change, and some guidance during the process. The cheapest solution to power generation right now is the status quo. And it most likely will stay that way for 50 years with oil, and hundreds of years with coal. There has to be an economic motive to change, and that can most easily be created by taxing what we don't like (coal/oil) and giving subs to what we do like (nuclear, wind, sun, etc..).
And as the OP pointed out, this is going to take multiple states, multi power companies, and significant investment in new infrastructure, that is much larger than any one company can handle. It will almost certainly require a 'smarter' grid, and a heck of a lot more power sharing between companies.
How do you think that the Federal Highway system would have turned out without central planning on a National level? We don't need a ton of new regulators or new federal jobs created. We need the existing regulatory agencies to step up and start mandating change, helping to plan it and negotiate the overall system between companies and states, and financial incentives to get the ball rolling.
Cap and Trade, by slowly ratcheting down the allowed carbon in the country, will squeeze companies into action, but I have a feeling that is only going to be passed directly on to customers for as long as humanely possible, until customers are screaming and electric companies are literally forced to start changing.
I'd rather not let pure profit motives drive the change. Lets get some laws in place with timelines and start getting the infrastructure built.
I suppose you need evaluate the evidence and decide how big of an impact (economic, political, social, etc..) you think that global warming will have.
That can radically alter your definition of "economically viable" depending on what conclusions you come to about AGW.