The problem with your elementary assessment of the situation is that the electric companies are NOT free to pass on the higher costs of electricity to the consumers. There was a 10% reduction of the (formerly) regulated rates, and then those rates were frozen until 2003. Granted, the utlities did that to themselves, thinking they would be able to hold the rates high to recoup some of their 'stranded costs' which they claim are a result of switching to deregulation. The problem does not lie with the free market. The problem lies with the idiotic way in which 'deregulation' was implemented in California.
Who said the 19,000 ballots were double-punched? I heard the ballots were simply 'invalid' which could mean any number of things. Maybe 19,000 incorrect ballots is standard for that county. Do we know that for sure? I don't, but that would also be a possibility.
You can certainly theorize all you want about what happened, and maybe even justify the theories to yourself. However if you don't have all the data you aren't creating theories that have a good probability of being correct, no matter what your emotions or 'intuition' may tell you.
Perhaps you should take out your US civics book and review a few points about our form of government before you get so indignant about things. We don't have a 'democracy' in the traditional sense of the word in this country. We have what's called a 'representative democracy', which is to say we have a 'republic'. We also have a constitutional democracy, and I think we're the only such country in the world to have both.
Now I see that you keep mentioning that having a majority of the popular vote (i think you mean to say plurality, but maybe not) should be grounds for being declared president and that our electoral system therefore must be broken because the will of the people has obviously been thwarted. There's a reason that a traditional democracy is referred to as a 'tyranny of the majority'. That's because in a traditional democracy, the majority rules. This is also referred to as mob rule. What would this mean in the context of the US today? If we had a traditional democracy, the presidential candidates would only need to campaign in the most populated states: California, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc (I know I've left some out) to win the election. After all, who cares what happens in the other 40-odd states since the majority of the population lives in 10 states? Our present electoral college system turns the election into 51 separate presidential contests, and then each state in turn helps to decide who becomes president. In this way, the other less populated states have a say in how the country is run.
>Since when should you have to justify the price you want for something. You price it.. people either say "X is worth $Y" and buy it, or >people say "X is not worth $Y" and don't buy it.
>Next thing you will be complaining that some companies have too high of profit margins.
That's right. You can go out and set the price artificially high if you want. But then 20 million people find the artificially high price patently absurd and decide they are going to get the music for free from napster. Gee whiz that's an awful big black market. The music industry ignores this backlash at their own peril.
I love how folks like to compare apples and oranges on these message boards.
Regardless, it doesn't seem to just be a million people. It seems to be 20 million if you take Napster's estimates at face value. On the one hand, you can go ahead and lable all 20 million of those folks as heathens and philistines, but on the other hand you can look at those 20 million folks as a wake-up call for both the record industry, and the copyright policymakers in general. 20 million people is certainly not a majority of the population of the United States, but if that many people are engaging in 'illegal' activity, it sends a warning signal to me that something is broken in existing copyright policy, and something is particularly broken in copyright policy as it applies to the music industry.
Remember: Just because something is illegal does not imply that is morally 'wrong'. It merely implies that it is against the law.
Can't argue with your assessment of the copyright debate. I think that is a dog that's had its day. As we know this is an issue that has been done to death here on slashdot, I don't think copyright policy as it is currently enacted doesn't follow the 'true spirit' of the what its originators intended (then again, maybe it does?).
Also, I also think the government is entirely too gung-ho about the environment so I can't argue there either.
Now I realize I am proving your point about 'Libertarian logic', but you haven't addressed at all my point about government spending. Which means you missed a main theme of my original post. Or maybe you just ignored it. The money has to come from someplace to pay for all these wonderful humanitarian causes. Once they are entrenched in the bureaucracy they will *never* go away. And therein lies the problem. We keep upping our spending and never cutting anything out. And here goes both Clinton and the Republicans speaking of how 'fiscal responsibility' got us to this 'budget surplus' while in the same breath proposing dozens of new programs. Libertarians may be philosophical hypocrites, but people who look to the government for everything are feeding an already out-of-control monster.
Right. So the government comes in, and decides for me that I should help both the starving people in the third world countries, and the poor schmuck down the road. But wait a second, this isn't 'the government' we are talking about here. This is taxpayers' money. Every time some politician decides to spend government (read: my) money on some other project 'helping' people, that money has to come from someplace, and that someplace is the taxpayers. You have a different philosophy than I do. I feel that I should be allowed to make my own decisions about whom my money helps, if anyone. You feel that everyone should help anyone in need. What I don't need is the government coming along and institutionalizing your beliefs and preferences at the expense of mine. Every time the government decides to help someone new, they have to get that money from the taxpayers. I'm completely fed up with the ridiculous proportion of my income I'm currently losing to the state and federal governments. I don't feel like losing a larger percentage because 'it's the right thing to do'. The reality of the situation is that the federal government is inefficient and that more federal dollars doesn't translate to a like increase in aid. To that end, if you want to help those people, go ahead and donate to charities, but I think someone that calls forcing one person to help another person the moral high ground is someone who needs to re-examine what the moral high ground actually is.
I think that's the whole point of capitalism. Sooner or later, the employers of these "lazy sysadmins" might get the clue that their server security is being compromised a little more often than they'd like. What to do about this? Fire the lazy sysadmin and hire one that pays attention to bugtraq and actually patches the holes up.
The problem with closed source (especially as it relates to Microsoft) is that you shift the responsibility of taking bug reports and fixing the bugs from the community that actually uses the software, to a corporation that probably doesn't see fixing bugs as soon as they are reported as an activity in its best interest. They say to themselves, 'After all, what harm could this little bug do? We are closed source, no one will be able to write an exploit if they can't see our source code.' Gee whiz how come I see so many exploits for closed source products? You put yourself at the mercy of a corporation whose goal is to maximize profits. If it can maximize profits by waiting to fix those bugs until someone writes a nasty exploit for it, then they will every single time. The open source community has already proven that their method works, as long as one maintains one's awareness level (bugtraq).
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with your elementary assessment of the situation is that the electric companies are NOT free to pass on the higher costs of electricity to the consumers. There was a 10% reduction of the (formerly) regulated rates, and then those rates were frozen until 2003. Granted, the utlities did that to themselves, thinking they would be able to hold the rates high to recoup some of their 'stranded costs' which they claim are a result of switching to deregulation. The problem does not lie with the free market. The problem lies with the idiotic way in which 'deregulation' was implemented in California.
But hey you know... hindsight is 20-20
- Dave
Who said the 19,000 ballots were double-punched? I heard the ballots were simply 'invalid' which could mean any number of things. Maybe 19,000 incorrect ballots is standard for that county. Do we know that for sure? I don't, but that would also be a possibility.
You can certainly theorize all you want about what happened, and maybe even justify the theories to yourself. However if you don't have all the data you aren't creating theories that have a good probability of being correct, no matter what your emotions or 'intuition' may tell you.
Perhaps you should take out your US civics book and review a few points about our form of government before you get so indignant about things. We don't have a 'democracy' in the traditional sense of the word in this country. We have what's called a 'representative democracy', which is to say we have a 'republic'. We also have a constitutional democracy, and I think we're the only such country in the world to have both.
Now I see that you keep mentioning that having a majority of the popular vote (i think you mean to say plurality, but maybe not) should be grounds for being declared president and that our electoral system therefore must be broken because the will of the people has obviously been thwarted. There's a reason that a traditional democracy is referred to as a 'tyranny of the majority'. That's because in a traditional democracy, the majority rules. This is also referred to as mob rule. What would this mean in the context of the US today? If we had a traditional democracy, the presidential candidates would only need to campaign in the most populated states: California, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc (I know I've left some out) to win the election. After all, who cares what happens in the other 40-odd states since the majority of the population lives in 10 states? Our present electoral college system turns the election into 51 separate presidential contests, and then each state in turn helps to decide who becomes president. In this way, the other less populated states have a say in how the country is run.
- Dave
>Agreed. However, I find people who say "Something costs too much so I'm going to steal it" to be on somewhat shaky ethical grounds.
I didn't say it was ethical. I was merely pointing out that artificially high prices tend to increase the probability that a black market will arise.
- Dave
>Since when should you have to justify the price you want for something. You price it.. people either say "X is worth $Y" and buy it, or >people say "X is not worth $Y" and don't buy it.
>Next thing you will be complaining that some companies have too high of profit margins.
That's right. You can go out and set the price artificially high if you want. But then 20 million people find the artificially high price patently absurd and decide they are going to get the music for free from napster. Gee whiz that's an awful big black market. The music industry ignores this backlash at their own peril.
- Dave
I love how folks like to compare apples and oranges on these message boards.
Regardless, it doesn't seem to just be a million people. It seems to be 20 million if you take Napster's estimates at face value. On the one hand, you can go ahead and lable all 20 million of those folks as heathens and philistines, but on the other hand you can look at those 20 million folks as a wake-up call for both the record industry, and the copyright policymakers in general. 20 million people is certainly not a majority of the population of the United States, but if that many people are engaging in 'illegal' activity, it sends a warning signal to me that something is broken in existing copyright policy, and something is particularly broken in copyright policy as it applies to the music industry.
Remember: Just because something is illegal does not imply that is morally 'wrong'. It merely implies that it is against the law.
Can't argue with your assessment of the copyright debate. I think that is a dog that's had its day. As we know this is an issue that has been done to death here on slashdot, I don't think copyright policy as it is currently enacted doesn't follow the 'true spirit' of the what its originators intended (then again, maybe it does?).
Also, I also think the government is entirely too gung-ho about the environment so I can't argue there either.
Now I realize I am proving your point about 'Libertarian logic', but you haven't addressed at all my point about government spending. Which means you missed a main theme of my original post. Or maybe you just ignored it. The money has to come from someplace to pay for all these wonderful humanitarian causes. Once they are entrenched in the bureaucracy they will *never* go away. And therein lies the problem. We keep upping our spending and never cutting anything out. And here goes both Clinton and the Republicans speaking of how 'fiscal responsibility' got us to this 'budget surplus' while in the same breath proposing dozens of new programs. Libertarians may be philosophical hypocrites, but people who look to the government for everything are feeding an already out-of-control monster.
Right. So the government comes in, and decides for me that I should help both the starving people in the third world countries, and the poor schmuck down the road. But wait a second, this isn't 'the government' we are talking about here. This is taxpayers' money. Every time some politician decides to spend government (read: my) money on some other project 'helping' people, that money has to come from someplace, and that someplace is the taxpayers. You have a different philosophy than I do. I feel that I should be allowed to make my own decisions about whom my money helps, if anyone. You feel that everyone should help anyone in need. What I don't need is the government coming along and institutionalizing your beliefs and preferences at the expense of mine. Every time the government decides to help someone new, they have to get that money from the taxpayers. I'm completely fed up with the ridiculous proportion of my income I'm currently losing to the state and federal governments. I don't feel like losing a larger percentage because 'it's the right thing to do'. The reality of the situation is that the federal government is inefficient and that more federal dollars doesn't translate to a like increase in aid. To that end, if you want to help those people, go ahead and donate to charities, but I think someone that calls forcing one person to help another person the moral high ground is someone who needs to re-examine what the moral high ground actually is.
I think that's the whole point of capitalism. Sooner or later, the employers of these "lazy sysadmins" might get the clue that their server security is being compromised a little more often than they'd like. What to do about this? Fire the lazy sysadmin and hire one that pays attention to bugtraq and actually patches the holes up.
The problem with closed source (especially as it relates to Microsoft) is that you shift the responsibility of taking bug reports and fixing the bugs from the community that actually uses the software, to a corporation that probably doesn't see fixing bugs as soon as they are reported as an activity in its best interest. They say to themselves, 'After all, what harm could this little bug do? We are closed source, no one will be able to write an exploit if they can't see our source code.' Gee whiz how come I see so many exploits for closed source products? You put yourself at the mercy of a corporation whose goal is to maximize profits. If it can maximize profits by waiting to fix those bugs until someone writes a nasty exploit for it, then they will every single time. The open source community has already proven that their method works, as long as one maintains one's awareness level (bugtraq).
- Dave