So you're in favor of repealing laws against libel and slander? Those laws abridge speech. What about laws prohibiting yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater? Your rights are being TRAMPLED!!!!! [/sarcasm]
We live in a world full of shades of gray. Your black-or-white all-or-nothing approach just doesn't work and, in fact, goes against 200+ years of case law that says you're wrong. Sorry.
Do you really think that the founding fathers intended freedom of speech to apply to corporations? And do you think they really intended for virtually unlimited corporate money to overwhelm individual speech?
You really don't know much about how cable companies are granted monopoly control over individual markets, do you? Cable companies can't just show up in town and lay down a network whenever they feel like it. Most markets have very strict rules about who is allowed to put their cables up in utility easements.
And don't even bother with the "illegal" content nonsense. The FCC does not decide what is legal and illegal.
Sorry I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of US law/politics, but aren't these republican politicians actually breaking the law by representing the interests of national corps instead of what is in the best interest of their own consituency's voters? (and if not why not?)
Net Neutrality is a routing rule that has been with the Internet since the beginning. You don't "overturn" it with an act of congress.
No. But the courts overturned it which is why the FCC went back and came up with a different approach to prevent predatory practices.
How the Internet is designed is a job for engineers and no one else.
That's a nice sentiment but it's terribly naive. When content producers buy out the service providers, they make their engineers do all kinds of stuff to the design of the network to jack up profits and otherwise abuse their monopoly power. This is why the FCC ruled that the service providers must act like common carriers.
If you care to read the actual ruling, you'll see that it is all about routing packets. The rules say, in short, that all traffic is to be routed equally without regard to source, destination, or content. It prevents Comcast, who effectively has monopoly power in most of the markets it serves, from charging Netflix extra simply to route packets from their servers to their subscribers. The ruling also prevents service providers from rerouting web requests to competitors' servers. It also prevents outright denying access to competitors. In fact, the ruling states quite clearly that ISPs are to act as common carriers and no censorship of content is to take place at all. You would know this if you actually read the ruling and stopped reading propaganda coming from right wing "news" sources.
The open internet is one of the most democratizing things we have in a modern society, why is this even up for debate? What benefit would society have in enabling "Fast lanes" or "premium" connections or other nonsense? What do we get protecting commercial interests?
Calling them "fast lanes" is a misnomer. But it's shorter than calling them "paying-twice-to-get-out-of-the-technically-unnecessary-but-profit-inducing-slow-lanes".
1. Because if said drone falls and hits someone, who has to pay? The insurance company (who will simply pass it onto customers by raising rates) or the home owner whose house was being inspected (AIG: "The accident wouldn't have happened if John Smith didn't file a claim in the first place")?
The same can be said for an agent driving a company car or doing anything else while working on the clock. I'm not sure how a drone would be handled differently than anything else the agents of the company do.
2. Do customers have a right to view/context said drone footage? People don't exactly record everything they do in a post-disaster situation so if the insurance company claims, "we saw you with a chainsaw, how do we know you didn't do the damage yourself?" and you can't remember the what's and why's, you're screwed.
That's a legit concern. Finding new ways of denying coverage is probably a high priority to some people in the industry.
On the other hand, having more picture and video footage will legitimately help them reduce fraud.
Where will the equilibrium point end up? Hard to say. But this is a legitimate point.
3. How much information can they get with those drones? For obvious damage, yeah, drones are great. But for more subtle damage, like water damage, you NEED a human inspector there. (If the roof has enough water damage, it may not be legally habitable.)
I don't think they're planning on just flying a drone over to your house for a routine damage inspection in place of a human being. I think it's more along the line of an agent keeping a drone in the back of the car so they can fly it around and inspect your roof without having to climb up a ladder. Or perhaps fly around an area where storm/flooding damage has made the specific area unsafe (i.e. collapsed house, washed out bridge with a flooded stream, etc.).
But yeah, perhaps they will just zip a drone around and offer you a minimal payment rather than doing real inspection work. I could see some companies trying to pull that.
At first blush, this exemption seems reasonable. I can see how insurance companies can make use of drones in their business to speed up work and to improve safety.
I haven't thought of ways this can be abused and what not. Any reasons why this would be a bad idea?
Well, you're right. The Fed alone was not responsible for the Great Depression.
Thanks for admitting that.
You may want to look into the changes in fiscal policy (i.e. austerity vs deficit spending) over the years and their effect on the economy as your next step. It would help you make a better case than your partisan rhetoric about "illegally micro-manag[ing]" and so forth.
The point is, it's a chip company, not a supercomputer company, that got the contract. All of your examples are of computer companies (IBM, Cray, Digital, etc.) getting the contract. In this case it's a chip company (Intel) that doesn't usually build the actual computers.
Sure, Cray is involved. But the contract went to Intel from what I understand of the article.
So, I'm assuming you can articulate in great detail exactly why the creation of the Federal Reserve directly caused the great depression and why nothing else lead to it.
(aside) Any bets as to how many propaganda pieces he links in without being able to articulate anything in his own words?
Do you not remember the Great Depression and everything that lead up to it? The lack of regulation lead to huge boom and bust cycles that destroyed the economy of this country. It was only after passing a great deal of regulation that the economy recovered and we saw the greatest run of prosperity in the history of this country. But then the regulation started to be torn down in the 70's, with bits and pieces being torn down by both parties here and there since then and guess what. The boom and bust cycles are increasing in amplitude just like they were before and this country is worse off now that it was 30-40 years ago.
Sure, we don't need oppressive regulation that serves no real purpose. But an economy that has little to no regulation provides little economic freedom to most people and so it cannot really be called a "free" economy. There needs to be just enough regulation to make sure that everyone has free access to the economy in order to really see what a truly "free" economy can accomplish.
There is a true irony here. The desire for government regulation really is driven by selfish self interest. I want to not be screwed over by selfish people running businesses so I can get more for myself. My desire for government regulation against selfishness stems from my own selfishness.
Their philosophy, like so many others, completely dismisses human greed from the equation and as such, fail to work in the real world. Human greed killed Communism (why should I work hard if I never see the benefit?). Human greed killed unregulated capitalism (why shouldn't I monopolize the market at the expense of everyone else?).
Very few people are really entirely altruistic. I know I'm not one of them. Not by a long shot. And that's why, even if it's flawed sometimes, we really do need government regulation.
#3 is what mystifies me about the libertarian mindset. They believe that everything the government does will fail in one way or another (in spite of evidence that it doesn't always screw up and sometimes produces positive net outcomes) yet they think that private industry is universally benevolent and will always do what the consumer wants in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
I just don't get the disconnect from reality there.
True. It's not the first movie to come to mind. But it does express the frustrations faced by aerospace/defense engineers taken way beyond normal. When I was working at a major defense contractor and looking to get the hell out of there, I watched that movie several times.
I understand the word perfectly. Which is why I question it's usage in this context.
Given the studies I have read, I question whether "most" people who go to trial are, in fact, guilty. While I am not a conspiracy theorist and I don't believe there is some grand scheme to unfairly target specific groups, I do think most cops are human and, as such, subject to human failings. They make mistakes. Some of them, a small percentage at most, actually intentionally accuse the wrong person. Yet they are above reproach in the justice system more often than not. You have to prove beyond a doubt that they are wrong.
The juries are also woefully unprepared to do their work and, as such, make mistakes. Far too much credence is given to eyewitness testimony. There are a non trivial number of cases where people are pressured into fingering someone, anyone, just so they can wrap up the investigation. And, in a few cases, malicious people have wrongly identified someone intentionally. Then there is the fact that it's been conclusively proven that people's memory is notoriously unreliable, especially in stressful situations. As a result, they are utterly convinced that they correctly identified the right person when, in fact, they have fingered the wrong person. Throw all of this at a woefully under prepared jury of schleps off the street and you get more than a few false convictions.
The whole justice system is fundamentally broken. Not because of malicious intent so much as under funding, laziness, and incompetence.
As a result, the highest threshold I'll agree to is that "many" people who go to trial are actually guilty of committing the crime they are accused of. I don't believe that "most" are guilty.
Slashdot Mirror
Well sure. But they have our best interest at heart and should be free to run their ISP business without any government interference... ;)
So you're in favor of repealing laws against libel and slander? Those laws abridge speech. What about laws prohibiting yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater? Your rights are being TRAMPLED!!!!! [/sarcasm]
We live in a world full of shades of gray. Your black-or-white all-or-nothing approach just doesn't work and, in fact, goes against 200+ years of case law that says you're wrong. Sorry.
Do you really think that the founding fathers intended freedom of speech to apply to corporations? And do you think they really intended for virtually unlimited corporate money to overwhelm individual speech?
You really don't know much about how cable companies are granted monopoly control over individual markets, do you? Cable companies can't just show up in town and lay down a network whenever they feel like it. Most markets have very strict rules about who is allowed to put their cables up in utility easements.
And don't even bother with the "illegal" content nonsense. The FCC does not decide what is legal and illegal.
Sorry I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of US law/politics, but aren't these republican politicians actually breaking the law by representing the interests of national corps instead of what is in the best interest of their own consituency's voters? (and if not why not?)
Read all about the "Citizens United" decision here.
Corporations are people under US law and "people" can spend as much as they want on election campaigns.
Net Neutrality is a routing rule that has been with the Internet since the beginning. You don't "overturn" it with an act of congress.
No. But the courts overturned it which is why the FCC went back and came up with a different approach to prevent predatory practices.
How the Internet is designed is a job for engineers and no one else.
That's a nice sentiment but it's terribly naive. When content producers buy out the service providers, they make their engineers do all kinds of stuff to the design of the network to jack up profits and otherwise abuse their monopoly power. This is why the FCC ruled that the service providers must act like common carriers.
If you care to read the actual ruling, you'll see that it is all about routing packets. The rules say, in short, that all traffic is to be routed equally without regard to source, destination, or content. It prevents Comcast, who effectively has monopoly power in most of the markets it serves, from charging Netflix extra simply to route packets from their servers to their subscribers. The ruling also prevents service providers from rerouting web requests to competitors' servers. It also prevents outright denying access to competitors. In fact, the ruling states quite clearly that ISPs are to act as common carriers and no censorship of content is to take place at all. You would know this if you actually read the ruling and stopped reading propaganda coming from right wing "news" sources.
The open internet is one of the most democratizing things we have in a modern society, why is this even up for debate? What benefit would society have in enabling "Fast lanes" or "premium" connections or other nonsense? What do we get protecting commercial interests?
Calling them "fast lanes" is a misnomer. But it's shorter than calling them "paying-twice-to-get-out-of-the-technically-unnecessary-but-profit-inducing-slow-lanes".
They already do that having investigators following you around. Drones won't change that.
And reducing fraud is a bad thing.... why?
1. Because if said drone falls and hits someone, who has to pay? The insurance company (who will simply pass it onto customers by raising rates) or the home owner whose house was being inspected (AIG: "The accident wouldn't have happened if John Smith didn't file a claim in the first place")?
The same can be said for an agent driving a company car or doing anything else while working on the clock. I'm not sure how a drone would be handled differently than anything else the agents of the company do.
2. Do customers have a right to view/context said drone footage? People don't exactly record everything they do in a post-disaster situation so if the insurance company claims, "we saw you with a chainsaw, how do we know you didn't do the damage yourself?" and you can't remember the what's and why's, you're screwed.
That's a legit concern. Finding new ways of denying coverage is probably a high priority to some people in the industry.
On the other hand, having more picture and video footage will legitimately help them reduce fraud.
Where will the equilibrium point end up? Hard to say. But this is a legitimate point.
3. How much information can they get with those drones? For obvious damage, yeah, drones are great. But for more subtle damage, like water damage, you NEED a human inspector there. (If the roof has enough water damage, it may not be legally habitable.)
I don't think they're planning on just flying a drone over to your house for a routine damage inspection in place of a human being. I think it's more along the line of an agent keeping a drone in the back of the car so they can fly it around and inspect your roof without having to climb up a ladder. Or perhaps fly around an area where storm/flooding damage has made the specific area unsafe (i.e. collapsed house, washed out bridge with a flooded stream, etc.).
But yeah, perhaps they will just zip a drone around and offer you a minimal payment rather than doing real inspection work. I could see some companies trying to pull that.
They don't need a drone to do that.
At first blush, this exemption seems reasonable. I can see how insurance companies can make use of drones in their business to speed up work and to improve safety.
I haven't thought of ways this can be abused and what not. Any reasons why this would be a bad idea?
Well, you're right. The Fed alone was not responsible for the Great Depression.
Thanks for admitting that.
You may want to look into the changes in fiscal policy (i.e. austerity vs deficit spending) over the years and their effect on the economy as your next step. It would help you make a better case than your partisan rhetoric about "illegally micro-manag[ing]" and so forth.
The point is, it's a chip company, not a supercomputer company, that got the contract. All of your examples are of computer companies (IBM, Cray, Digital, etc.) getting the contract. In this case it's a chip company (Intel) that doesn't usually build the actual computers.
Sure, Cray is involved. But the contract went to Intel from what I understand of the article.
So, I'm assuming you can articulate in great detail exactly why the creation of the Federal Reserve directly caused the great depression and why nothing else lead to it.
(aside) Any bets as to how many propaganda pieces he links in without being able to articulate anything in his own words?
Do you not remember the Great Depression and everything that lead up to it? The lack of regulation lead to huge boom and bust cycles that destroyed the economy of this country. It was only after passing a great deal of regulation that the economy recovered and we saw the greatest run of prosperity in the history of this country. But then the regulation started to be torn down in the 70's, with bits and pieces being torn down by both parties here and there since then and guess what. The boom and bust cycles are increasing in amplitude just like they were before and this country is worse off now that it was 30-40 years ago.
Sure, we don't need oppressive regulation that serves no real purpose. But an economy that has little to no regulation provides little economic freedom to most people and so it cannot really be called a "free" economy. There needs to be just enough regulation to make sure that everyone has free access to the economy in order to really see what a truly "free" economy can accomplish.
He is a very wise man.
A follow up thought:
There is a true irony here. The desire for government regulation really is driven by selfish self interest. I want to not be screwed over by selfish people running businesses so I can get more for myself. My desire for government regulation against selfishness stems from my own selfishness.
Their philosophy, like so many others, completely dismisses human greed from the equation and as such, fail to work in the real world. Human greed killed Communism (why should I work hard if I never see the benefit?). Human greed killed unregulated capitalism (why shouldn't I monopolize the market at the expense of everyone else?).
Very few people are really entirely altruistic. I know I'm not one of them. Not by a long shot. And that's why, even if it's flawed sometimes, we really do need government regulation.
#3 is what mystifies me about the libertarian mindset. They believe that everything the government does will fail in one way or another (in spite of evidence that it doesn't always screw up and sometimes produces positive net outcomes) yet they think that private industry is universally benevolent and will always do what the consumer wants in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
I just don't get the disconnect from reality there.
True. It's not the first movie to come to mind. But it does express the frustrations faced by aerospace/defense engineers taken way beyond normal. When I was working at a major defense contractor and looking to get the hell out of there, I watched that movie several times.
Falling Down comes to mind.
I understand the word perfectly. Which is why I question it's usage in this context.
Given the studies I have read, I question whether "most" people who go to trial are, in fact, guilty. While I am not a conspiracy theorist and I don't believe there is some grand scheme to unfairly target specific groups, I do think most cops are human and, as such, subject to human failings. They make mistakes. Some of them, a small percentage at most, actually intentionally accuse the wrong person. Yet they are above reproach in the justice system more often than not. You have to prove beyond a doubt that they are wrong.
The juries are also woefully unprepared to do their work and, as such, make mistakes. Far too much credence is given to eyewitness testimony. There are a non trivial number of cases where people are pressured into fingering someone, anyone, just so they can wrap up the investigation. And, in a few cases, malicious people have wrongly identified someone intentionally. Then there is the fact that it's been conclusively proven that people's memory is notoriously unreliable, especially in stressful situations. As a result, they are utterly convinced that they correctly identified the right person when, in fact, they have fingered the wrong person. Throw all of this at a woefully under prepared jury of schleps off the street and you get more than a few false convictions.
The whole justice system is fundamentally broken. Not because of malicious intent so much as under funding, laziness, and incompetence.
As a result, the highest threshold I'll agree to is that "many" people who go to trial are actually guilty of committing the crime they are accused of. I don't believe that "most" are guilty.
A comment like this doesn't surprise me.
Reading comprehension on this site is at an all time low. Especially among people who post AC.