My point here is that I do not see a reason why public transportation systems still rely on decades-old, non-encrypted technology. With ATC, it's a trivial matter of ordering a handheld on-line that is capable of transmitting on all ATC freqs. Agencies that continue to rely on antiquated systems deserve part of the blame.
There are three major reasons: interoperability, reliability, and expense.
Different areas have different needs, and that inevitably means that not every system will work with every other system. For a closed system like a subway this may not matter so much but in most other cases it's very important. And it's very hard to anticipate who's "allowed" to speak to who. The common denominator is unencrypted analog.
Digital systems do not degrade gracefully. A partial or garbled radio transmission may at least be of some use. A weak burst of data that no one hears is of no use at all.
Radio systems are very expensive and tricky things to get right. Not only is there the cost of replacing all that perfectly good equipment, there's the cost of transmitters, repeaters, towers, and planning. Fire and police often listen in at home or in their personal vehicles, too, so you have to factor in that cost as well.
There's also one other reason that's often forgotten or deliberately obscured by the authorities, and that's public access and accountability. Railfans and aviation enthusiasts listen in on this stuff all the time, and there have been cases where their own personal records have been useful in determining the causes of accidents. Same goes for non-transportation radio transmissions from police, fire, and more mundane stuff like construction crews and snowplows (Where are the worst icing conditions? Are they anywhere near my road yet?)
It's useful stuff for people to be able to hear and there's no good reason for all of it to be kept secret just on the off-chance someone steals a radio.
Well, let's say it's a model of how the post-Apollo NASA can construct and run a space station. Von Braun and his contemporaries had proposed multiple workable plans for constructing a space station back in the 1950's. And the American Skylab and Soviet Salyut missions had long since worked out a lot of the niggling little details.
Unfortunately, with our space program run solely by a pseudo-governmental agency, political and budget considerations inevitably meant that the station's scientific mission was heavily compromised. The original Space Station Freedom project was whittled down to the point where I remember reading space advocates sadly joke that, in the end, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." What we ended up with was the ISS.
Hmm. I've never though of Ayn Rand as a "utopian". Anyway. You say "People are not going to realize or want to use their powers as individuals."
I think you've got that wrong. Each of us make cost/benefit decisions all the time. Not surprisingly, most people have less stringent standards of privacy than full-time "privacy advocates" would prefer us to have.
No one can require people to make the same decisions or share the same priorities. When faced with this reality some people respond by feeling entitled, maybe even obligated, to step in and make those decisions on other people's behalf. Enlightened intervention for their own good, of course.
In other words, they're perfectly happy to treat people like sheep. They're just upset that they don't own the herd.
So, I suppose mining billions of gallons of oil and coal isn't raping the earth?
No, actually, it's absolutely nothing like raping anyone.
The Earth is largely a ball of lifeless matter. Oil and coal and minerals are not Gaia's ovaries. They are accidental conglomerations of elements that serve no purpose to anyone or anything unless extracted and used. Preferably used responsibly and with foresight, but used nonetheless.
Even worse, it's been turned into a really bad national ID number.
We can argue the merits and dangers of a national ID number until we both die of old age. But if we're going to have one, we should at least devise a system that can perform certain stated goals without being fragile and easily abused. The current poor implementation gives the appearance of security and consistency without real substance. And the specific flaws of SSNs derail attempts at honest debate, since they make it equally difficult for detractors to argue persuasively against a proper ID system as for supporters to argue in favor.
But did that actually cost Sprint very much? If not, who cares if you cannot pay the bill? As long as you can at least pay enough to cover Sprint's costs, it shouldn't be a big deal for them if you simply owe them a lot of money.
If you're not happy with the terms, then don't sign the contract. Presumably you're an adult, spending your own money and legally competent to handle your own affairs. Clearly you understand the service agreement, so you can't say you've been tricked. Sprint has no hold over you except that which you willingly grant them. And a valid contract asks nothing of you except to abide by the terms you willingly accepted.
Sprint is in business to make money by providing products and services. They attempt to choose appealing products and then charge what the market demonstrates it is willing to pay. You're perfectly free to disagree and vote with your wallet: Reject their offer and buy a competing product/service from another party who for these exact same reasons is just as eager to have you as a customer. But, unless you invest as stockholder, putting your own money on the line, it's really none of your concern how much profit any company "deserves" to make.
People: there is no conceivable future that doesn't include change. This pervasive change starts at the personal and extends to the climatological and geological. At some point you have to grow up and accept that it happens, adapt, and move on.
Let's review: The Old Man of the Mountain collapsed. I guess there are two ways to approach this.
1) Folks get together and say, hey, let's build a new, man-made attraction out of entirely different materials. To replace the old one. Which no longer exists. Because, even though we know it won't be the same, the state really could use the tourist revenue.
or...
2) Insist that even contemplating a replacement is juvenile, false, and inferior. Enshrine the former existence of the old monument, which no longer exists. Then exhibit your rock-ribbed pragmatism by telling potential tourists to go away, dammit. Because catering to their childish fears and their foolish desire for interesting vacation spots would be living a lie. A dirty, dirty lie.
My, what shall we do?
Yep, some people definitely have a sentimental preoccupation with paying homage to the past, one that sometimes prevents them from taking bold, constructive action in the present. I'm not sure it's who you think it is, though.
This is not a clarification. It's an expansion, and a big one. And it's so vague as to leave the enforcement and interpretation of the law almost entirely random. That's not how laws are supposed to be written, but it's how our legislatures often operate. They prefer to treat new laws as performance art and leave the hard work of figuring out what it all means to judges (who are happy to become de-facto lawmakers) and police (who enjoy authority and are easy to blame when bad publicity comes your way).
Yeah, it's almost certain that it would be struck down by the Supremes, but they can't do that until after it drags some poor person through the legal system.
Planes that are flying where they're supposed to be are not usually flanked by military fighter jets. Planes that are acting erratically or dangerously often are, as in that incident with the stolen Cessna just three weeks ago. It's really not that much of a stretch, is it?
Shouldn't people be more worried about low flying planes without them?
Why's that, exactly? Unless our fighters are now equipped with disintegrator cannons or tractor beams, there's not a lot they could do once an airliner is zooming around low over Manhattan. It's a little late by then.
Look, I understand that it's currently fashionable to laugh in the face of danger and leave cowardly details like emergency preparedness to the fascist warmongers and their bleating sheeple. But this whole incident could all have been avoided with a little communication, and I really have a hard time blaming the folks in NY for acting exactly like they did.
"The debate over whether the state or 'private' enterprise should run things is completely irrelevant because, in the UK at least, the business and political elite are in collusion, and in many cases are the exact same people."
Yes, I know. You see, despite the absence of orange jumpsuits and giant puppet heads, that's the actual definition of fascism. And sadly it's what a lot of shortsighted and greedy people on both sides of the pond have been pushing for decades. Why? Mostly because they get their jollies by seeing eeevil uppity "rich people" knocked down a peg.
The problem, as you noticed, is that when government runs all your businesses, it also means those businesses are running your government. And history shows that they do so very poorly, because the government has helpfully eliminated the competition via coercive regulation or outright seizure of property. That part is pretty easy when you're a government, because the laws designed to protect customers and shareholders from abusive trading practices, illegal influence peddling, and shady back-door deals really don't apply to the politicians who passed them. Funny how that works.
It'll likely be filtered, monitored, and throttled. More so as time goes on. And since the government operates the service, subsidizes its use, and owns the infrastructure there will be little incentive for less restrictive, privately owned providers to compete, even if they're allowed to do so.
But one thing I've learned from reading Slashdot is that when "Free as in speech" meets "Free as in beer", "speech" usually loses. Even when the government is picking your pocket to pay the bar tab.
As in, giving the government unlimited power to monitor and control our communications is a terrible policy. Unless, of course, they offer to give us cool stuff for FREE. Then it's a fantastic idea that only a drooling Luddite could possibly oppose.
No, the original poster was pretty much right. In a healthy market, the search for profit is always balanced by the evaluation of potential risk. You can make money slowly by doing cautious, safe things or make money fast by doing dangerous things.
The government used its regulatory power to pressure banks into making risky loans, and provided them incentives to do so. Less scrupulous lenders evaluated the situation and lept in with both feet. Many holdouts got a big push when they saw their colleagues dragged into hearings where they were accused of engaging in illegal discrimination. Others were caught in the undertow when the extent of the problem became clear.
Imagine giving random people root access to your system so they could go in and make sure the access permissions were "fair" to everyone. The results would be about the same.
The risk/benefit analysis dramatically changes when the government does stupid meddling like this. They reduced risk of bad corporate behavior (by distributing that risk to the rest of us) and increased the risks of responsible corporate behavior.
Most bank managers aren't evil or stupid, and the dangers were pointed out to congress many, many times over the last few years. But they didn't understand (and/or just didn't care) about the potential problems they were causing. For them, the ends justified the means. And, hey, they can always blame someone else, right?
And Great Britain, which refused to give up pints even under the withering glare of EU bureaucrats.
Most of us yokels here in the US regularly use and encounter both the metric system and traditional units. Converting is not difficult. Both systems being utterly arbitrary, we just prefer to choose whichever units are most convenient to the circumstances. Rather than, say, enforcing utterly stupid laws that seek to criminalize selling goods in unsanctioned weights and measures. We're just funny that way.
You're overlooking the opportunity costs. If the telecom structure were first built as you suggest then it would never have become as widespread or as useful as it is today. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
It's important to note that, despite raising their costs a bit, it won't matter to them so long as their competition suffers the same way.
Of course it won't matter to them. Big businesses absolutely adore strict regulations, the more complex and expensive the better. It raises the cost of entry into the market and kills off those annoying upstarts and their inconvenient new ideas. But if we want to fix these vulnerabilities then I think we need a more dynamic and decentralized infrastructure, not just the same old players consolidating their positions.
What problems? If our the world's infrastructure suddenly crashed we'd have a bunch of people dead, and many, many more dying every day from untreated disease and violence. Lots of new babies would be the last thing I'd consider a "problem".
So Ireland apparently gambled that it'd be too much trouble for a company to move after being there for 10 years. I guess they were wrong.
Perhaps they should extend the 10-year tax discount into a permanent tax reduction, since the practical alternative seems to be a larger percentage of zero.
A military space program would subvert this goal through misallocation of resources and refusal to publicly disclose publicly funded developments.
I agree with almost everything you said, right up until there. If you look at the history of technology you'll find that nearly every major new technology in the last 200 years has been advanced by military support, not hindered. Rockets, nuclear power, jets, RADAR, computers, etc. were all just curiosities at best until they became weapons. And as a bonus those weapons happened to have useful civilian and scientific applications. In practice, I think the US military, at least, is fairly pragmatic about keeping secrets, especially once they know that another major power has already figured something out. If we'd funded a real military space program back during the Cold War then I suspect most of the mass-prodced technology would long since be public knowledge.
The military also has a healthy attitude toward risk, a very important factor that is missing at a publicity-shy civilian bureaucracy like today's NASA. Any kind of manned exploration is inherently dangerous, and NASA views danger as a threat to their funding and their existence. There's no profit motive, no patriotic motive, and no national security objective to fulfill. They have every reason to avoid danger and no reason to overcome it. Their robots work fine, but where people are concerned it's mostly lip service and paperwork. That's why we're having this discussion.
Like I said, it isn't perfect, but compared to your system where its possible to have no health cover at all, its good enough.
Fair enough. The problem is that your government-run health care system is free-riding on those countries that actually invest in improving the state of health care. Your "good enough" standard of care is constantly advancing thanks to those improvements in the status-quo. Fortunately for you, these new developments will eventually drop to a price that your government thinks your health is worth. Or, if you don't feel like waiting, you can hop on a flight to the US and pay out-of-pocket using all that money you didn't need to spend on those health insurance premiums.
Simply put, private companies in the United States pay a huge chunk of the R&D costs for new drugs, new procedures, new equipment, and improved medical training. It's hard work and costs huge amounts of money, but the potential for progress and profit in open markets offsets the many risks. You enjoy the benefits of those investments even if you never set foot in a US hospital. And I help pay for it. You're welcome.
Natives in Canada are treated by far better over the course of our nation's history than they have ever been treated in the US
Well then, we've established your great-great grandparents were slightly more noble and kind than ours. You win!
Or maybe not. The histories of Canada and the US are so different as to invalidate any simplistic comparisons. But I suspect the outcome would have been very different if the Nunavut made their home in your prime farming and grazing lands, instead of Canada's least hospitable Arctic regions. (Most of which, I believe, were actually administered by the Hudson Bay Company as a corporate state until the late 19th century.)
As for complete freedom of the press...care to enlighten us as to what's lacking?
Google "Canadian Human Rights Commission". You may also try "kangaroo court" and "chilling effect" if you require additional enlightenment on that subject. Ain't nobody perfect, friend.
And thank Heaven for that. These vile owners of player pianos are stealing the bread from the mouths of our hardworking musical performers. I say to you that the player piano is to the American musician and the American public as H.H. Holmes is to the woman home alone!
Telegraphs have been dispatched, and intrepid agents of the RIAA are even now speeding cross-country in their horseless carriages! Tremble, law-breakers, for your time is now at hand.
Well, Firefox's update system is hardly perfect either. If you run with the default settings it suddenly, without notice, declares that it's installing an update (why? what's changed?). And it's likely to disable a raft of plugins in the process. Of course this behavior can be changed, but so can the automatic settings for Windows Update.
FF's approach is also not optimal if you're administering more than a handful of machines.
Slashdot Mirror
My point here is that I do not see a reason why public transportation systems still rely on decades-old, non-encrypted technology. With ATC, it's a trivial matter of ordering a handheld on-line that is capable of transmitting on all ATC freqs. Agencies that continue to rely on antiquated systems deserve part of the blame.
There are three major reasons: interoperability, reliability, and expense.
Different areas have different needs, and that inevitably means that not every system will work with every other system. For a closed system like a subway this may not matter so much but in most other cases it's very important. And it's very hard to anticipate who's "allowed" to speak to who. The common denominator is unencrypted analog.
Digital systems do not degrade gracefully. A partial or garbled radio transmission may at least be of some use. A weak burst of data that no one hears is of no use at all.
Radio systems are very expensive and tricky things to get right. Not only is there the cost of replacing all that perfectly good equipment, there's the cost of transmitters, repeaters, towers, and planning. Fire and police often listen in at home or in their personal vehicles, too, so you have to factor in that cost as well.
There's also one other reason that's often forgotten or deliberately obscured by the authorities, and that's public access and accountability. Railfans and aviation enthusiasts listen in on this stuff all the time, and there have been cases where their own personal records have been useful in determining the causes of accidents. Same goes for non-transportation radio transmissions from police, fire, and more mundane stuff like construction crews and snowplows (Where are the worst icing conditions? Are they anywhere near my road yet?)
It's useful stuff for people to be able to hear and there's no good reason for all of it to be kept secret just on the off-chance someone steals a radio.
Well, let's say it's a model of how the post-Apollo NASA can construct and run a space station. Von Braun and his contemporaries had proposed multiple workable plans for constructing a space station back in the 1950's. And the American Skylab and Soviet Salyut missions had long since worked out a lot of the niggling little details.
Unfortunately, with our space program run solely by a pseudo-governmental agency, political and budget considerations inevitably meant that the station's scientific mission was heavily compromised. The original Space Station Freedom project was whittled down to the point where I remember reading space advocates sadly joke that, in the end, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." What we ended up with was the ISS.
Hmm. I've never though of Ayn Rand as a "utopian". Anyway. You say "People are not going to realize or want to use their powers as individuals."
I think you've got that wrong. Each of us make cost/benefit decisions all the time. Not surprisingly, most people have less stringent standards of privacy than full-time "privacy advocates" would prefer us to have.
No one can require people to make the same decisions or share the same priorities. When faced with this reality some people respond by feeling entitled, maybe even obligated, to step in and make those decisions on other people's behalf. Enlightened intervention for their own good, of course.
In other words, they're perfectly happy to treat people like sheep. They're just upset that they don't own the herd.
So, I suppose mining billions of gallons of oil and coal isn't raping the earth?
No, actually, it's absolutely nothing like raping anyone.
The Earth is largely a ball of lifeless matter. Oil and coal and minerals are not Gaia's ovaries. They are accidental conglomerations of elements that serve no purpose to anyone or anything unless extracted and used. Preferably used responsibly and with foresight, but used nonetheless.
Even worse, it's been turned into a really bad national ID number.
We can argue the merits and dangers of a national ID number until we both die of old age. But if we're going to have one, we should at least devise a system that can perform certain stated goals without being fragile and easily abused. The current poor implementation gives the appearance of security and consistency without real substance. And the specific flaws of SSNs derail attempts at honest debate, since they make it equally difficult for detractors to argue persuasively against a proper ID system as for supporters to argue in favor.
But did that actually cost Sprint very much? If not, who cares if you cannot pay the bill? As long as you can at least pay enough to cover Sprint's costs, it shouldn't be a big deal for them if you simply owe them a lot of money.
If you're not happy with the terms, then don't sign the contract. Presumably you're an adult, spending your own money and legally competent to handle your own affairs. Clearly you understand the service agreement, so you can't say you've been tricked. Sprint has no hold over you except that which you willingly grant them. And a valid contract asks nothing of you except to abide by the terms you willingly accepted.
Sprint is in business to make money by providing products and services. They attempt to choose appealing products and then charge what the market demonstrates it is willing to pay. You're perfectly free to disagree and vote with your wallet: Reject their offer and buy a competing product/service from another party who for these exact same reasons is just as eager to have you as a customer. But, unless you invest as stockholder, putting your own money on the line, it's really none of your concern how much profit any company "deserves" to make.
People: there is no conceivable future that doesn't include change. This pervasive change starts at the personal and extends to the climatological and geological. At some point you have to grow up and accept that it happens, adapt, and move on.
Let's review: The Old Man of the Mountain collapsed. I guess there are two ways to approach this.
1) Folks get together and say, hey, let's build a new, man-made attraction out of entirely different materials. To replace the old one. Which no longer exists. Because, even though we know it won't be the same, the state really could use the tourist revenue.
or...
2) Insist that even contemplating a replacement is juvenile, false, and inferior. Enshrine the former existence of the old monument, which no longer exists. Then exhibit your rock-ribbed pragmatism by telling potential tourists to go away, dammit. Because catering to their childish fears and their foolish desire for interesting vacation spots would be living a lie. A dirty, dirty lie.
My, what shall we do?
Yep, some people definitely have a sentimental preoccupation with paying homage to the past, one that sometimes prevents them from taking bold, constructive action in the present. I'm not sure it's who you think it is, though.
This is not a clarification. It's an expansion, and a big one. And it's so vague as to leave the enforcement and interpretation of the law almost entirely random. That's not how laws are supposed to be written, but it's how our legislatures often operate. They prefer to treat new laws as performance art and leave the hard work of figuring out what it all means to judges (who are happy to become de-facto lawmakers) and police (who enjoy authority and are easy to blame when bad publicity comes your way).
Yeah, it's almost certain that it would be struck down by the Supremes, but they can't do that until after it drags some poor person through the legal system.
Isn't it a good thing the fighters were there?
Planes that are flying where they're supposed to be are not usually flanked by military fighter jets. Planes that are acting erratically or dangerously often are, as in that incident with the stolen Cessna just three weeks ago. It's really not that much of a stretch, is it?
Shouldn't people be more worried about low flying planes without them?
Why's that, exactly? Unless our fighters are now equipped with disintegrator cannons or tractor beams, there's not a lot they could do once an airliner is zooming around low over Manhattan. It's a little late by then.
Look, I understand that it's currently fashionable to laugh in the face of danger and leave cowardly details like emergency preparedness to the fascist warmongers and their bleating sheeple. But this whole incident could all have been avoided with a little communication, and I really have a hard time blaming the folks in NY for acting exactly like they did.
"The debate over whether the state or 'private' enterprise should run things is completely irrelevant because, in the UK at least, the business and political elite are in collusion, and in many cases are the exact same people."
Yes, I know. You see, despite the absence of orange jumpsuits and giant puppet heads, that's the actual definition of fascism. And sadly it's what a lot of shortsighted and greedy people on both sides of the pond have been pushing for decades. Why? Mostly because they get their jollies by seeing eeevil uppity "rich people" knocked down a peg.
The problem, as you noticed, is that when government runs all your businesses, it also means those businesses are running your government. And history shows that they do so very poorly, because the government has helpfully eliminated the competition via coercive regulation or outright seizure of property. That part is pretty easy when you're a government, because the laws designed to protect customers and shareholders from abusive trading practices, illegal influence peddling, and shady back-door deals really don't apply to the politicians who passed them. Funny how that works.
It'll likely be filtered, monitored, and throttled. More so as time goes on. And since the government operates the service, subsidizes its use, and owns the infrastructure there will be little incentive for less restrictive, privately owned providers to compete, even if they're allowed to do so.
But one thing I've learned from reading Slashdot is that when "Free as in speech" meets "Free as in beer", "speech" usually loses. Even when the government is picking your pocket to pay the bar tab.
As in, giving the government unlimited power to monitor and control our communications is a terrible policy. Unless, of course, they offer to give us cool stuff for FREE. Then it's a fantastic idea that only a drooling Luddite could possibly oppose.
Apr 1 seems to have turned into some kind of trial of trust of the media now, which pisses me off.
Just think of it as being good practice for the other 364 days when we aren't in on the joke.
No, the original poster was pretty much right. In a healthy market, the search for profit is always balanced by the evaluation of potential risk. You can make money slowly by doing cautious, safe things or make money fast by doing dangerous things.
The government used its regulatory power to pressure banks into making risky loans, and provided them incentives to do so. Less scrupulous lenders evaluated the situation and lept in with both feet. Many holdouts got a big push when they saw their colleagues dragged into hearings where they were accused of engaging in illegal discrimination. Others were caught in the undertow when the extent of the problem became clear.
Imagine giving random people root access to your system so they could go in and make sure the access permissions were "fair" to everyone. The results would be about the same.
The risk/benefit analysis dramatically changes when the government does stupid meddling like this. They reduced risk of bad corporate behavior (by distributing that risk to the rest of us) and increased the risks of responsible corporate behavior.
Most bank managers aren't evil or stupid, and the dangers were pointed out to congress many, many times over the last few years. But they didn't understand (and/or just didn't care) about the potential problems they were causing. For them, the ends justified the means. And, hey, they can always blame someone else, right?
Of course you can. Why not?
Not true.
And Great Britain, which refused to give up pints even under the withering glare of EU bureaucrats.
Most of us yokels here in the US regularly use and encounter both the metric system and traditional units. Converting is not difficult. Both systems being utterly arbitrary, we just prefer to choose whichever units are most convenient to the circumstances. Rather than, say, enforcing utterly stupid laws that seek to criminalize selling goods in unsanctioned weights and measures. We're just funny that way.
You're overlooking the opportunity costs. If the telecom structure were first built as you suggest then it would never have become as widespread or as useful as it is today. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
It's important to note that, despite raising their costs a bit, it won't matter to them so long as their competition suffers the same way.
Of course it won't matter to them. Big businesses absolutely adore strict regulations, the more complex and expensive the better. It raises the cost of entry into the market and kills off those annoying upstarts and their inconvenient new ideas. But if we want to fix these vulnerabilities then I think we need a more dynamic and decentralized infrastructure, not just the same old players consolidating their positions.
And don't forget to hide a bunch of science books in your septic tank.
What problems? If our the world's infrastructure suddenly crashed we'd have a bunch of people dead, and many, many more dying every day from untreated disease and violence. Lots of new babies would be the last thing I'd consider a "problem".
So Ireland apparently gambled that it'd be too much trouble for a company to move after being there for 10 years. I guess they were wrong.
Perhaps they should extend the 10-year tax discount into a permanent tax reduction, since the practical alternative seems to be a larger percentage of zero.
A military space program would subvert this goal through misallocation of resources and refusal to publicly disclose publicly funded developments.
I agree with almost everything you said, right up until there. If you look at the history of technology you'll find that nearly every major new technology in the last 200 years has been advanced by military support, not hindered. Rockets, nuclear power, jets, RADAR, computers, etc. were all just curiosities at best until they became weapons. And as a bonus those weapons happened to have useful civilian and scientific applications. In practice, I think the US military, at least, is fairly pragmatic about keeping secrets, especially once they know that another major power has already figured something out. If we'd funded a real military space program back during the Cold War then I suspect most of the mass-prodced technology would long since be public knowledge.
The military also has a healthy attitude toward risk, a very important factor that is missing at a publicity-shy civilian bureaucracy like today's NASA. Any kind of manned exploration is inherently dangerous, and NASA views danger as a threat to their funding and their existence. There's no profit motive, no patriotic motive, and no national security objective to fulfill. They have every reason to avoid danger and no reason to overcome it. Their robots work fine, but where people are concerned it's mostly lip service and paperwork. That's why we're having this discussion.
Like I said, it isn't perfect, but compared to your system where its possible to have no health cover at all, its good enough.
Fair enough. The problem is that your government-run health care system is free-riding on those countries that actually invest in improving the state of health care. Your "good enough" standard of care is constantly advancing thanks to those improvements in the status-quo. Fortunately for you, these new developments will eventually drop to a price that your government thinks your health is worth. Or, if you don't feel like waiting, you can hop on a flight to the US and pay out-of-pocket using all that money you didn't need to spend on those health insurance premiums.
Simply put, private companies in the United States pay a huge chunk of the R&D costs for new drugs, new procedures, new equipment, and improved medical training. It's hard work and costs huge amounts of money, but the potential for progress and profit in open markets offsets the many risks. You enjoy the benefits of those investments even if you never set foot in a US hospital. And I help pay for it. You're welcome.
Natives in Canada are treated by far better over the course of our nation's history than they have ever been treated in the US
Well then, we've established your great-great grandparents were slightly more noble and kind than ours. You win!
Or maybe not. The histories of Canada and the US are so different as to invalidate any simplistic comparisons. But I suspect the outcome would have been very different if the Nunavut made their home in your prime farming and grazing lands, instead of Canada's least hospitable Arctic regions. (Most of which, I believe, were actually administered by the Hudson Bay Company as a corporate state until the late 19th century.)
As for complete freedom of the press...care to enlighten us as to what's lacking?
Google "Canadian Human Rights Commission". You may also try "kangaroo court" and "chilling effect" if you require additional enlightenment on that subject. Ain't nobody perfect, friend.
And thank Heaven for that. These vile owners of player pianos are stealing the bread from the mouths of our hardworking musical performers. I say to you that the player piano is to the American musician and the American public as H.H. Holmes is to the woman home alone!
Telegraphs have been dispatched, and intrepid agents of the RIAA are even now speeding cross-country in their horseless carriages! Tremble, law-breakers, for your time is now at hand.
Well, Firefox's update system is hardly perfect either. If you run with the default settings it suddenly, without notice, declares that it's installing an update (why? what's changed?). And it's likely to disable a raft of plugins in the process. Of course this behavior can be changed, but so can the automatic settings for Windows Update.
FF's approach is also not optimal if you're administering more than a handful of machines.