Absolutely. We should force people to go through years of endless suffering only to die anyway rather than let them make their own choice to keep their dignity./sarcasm
The funny (tragic) part is that the kind of people who tend to be strongly pro-gun, also tend to be strong against social programs that could prevent a great deal of the violence typically associated with guns.
I'm not sure what they're really trying to accomplish. They're shoving their political opinion in everyone's face. Quite often, however, people like this end up generating a fair amount of animosity towards their cause and bring together opponents trying to stop them who otherwise wouldn't have enough ambition to do so. Their actions end up being counterproductive. I'm not sure why they insist on hurting their own cause but they're hell bent on doing it.
Many of us who enjoy responsible recreational and sport shooting really wish these idiots would shut up and go away because they bring unwanted attention to the subject and end up making it more difficult for the rest of us.
In all likelihood, yes. Setting up something to scour for email addresses and sending bulk mail costs pennies. If they get even a 0.01% return on their emails (i.e. 1 out of 10,000 people falling for it) they still pull in tons of money.
That's the trouble with very successful attacks that end up having unanticipated consequences. They leave behind enough evidence that the attack vector is now known and steps are taken to reduce vulnerability (to varying degrees of success). It works the first time but often not ever again, or at least not until people forget about it and get sloppy again.
Well, they fully expected to follow their traditional approach to the evolving marketplace and have it work. That is, fart around with a bunch of crap no one wants for a while until the market takes off. Then buy out one of the competitors. After that, leverage their monopoly power to force everyone to use their product. Trouble is, the market got away from them and they have no real monopoly power to leverage against in this market and what they did has backfired against them in a big way. This has left them floundering without direction and trying to catch up as a 3rd contestant in a 2 person race. But they have deep pockets still so they'll keep flogging away at it for quite some time. Who knows. Maybe they'll stumble on something that works out for them. They certainly won't be lead to success. If it comes, it will be entirely accidental.
To take that a step further, attacking the people who have direct access to the network is harder. Instead, targeting the companies that supply the equipment is an easier vector. I may be wrong (and please correct me if I am) but wasn't Stuxnet infiltrated at the supplier of the computer equipment rather than by a successful compromising of an individual working directly on the system?
And you can guarantee that that fiber can't be tapped between the end points? Just because a network is isolated from the Internet doesn't mean it's completely secure.
Hardly. The only thing they fear is that they're going to lose their very lucrative revenue streams since they can't overcharge for prioritizing traffic any more.
That's why you set it up as a utility, complete with utility regulations. There's no profit running telephone and electricity out to far flung areas. But the utilities manage to do it without having to charge everyone thousands of dollars a month each. The model does work. Everyone gets access to the grid at a reasonable and consistent rate. The benefit the utility company receives is that everyone wanting the pays them. They don't have to provide universal access AND compete for customers among multiple providers so all that financial pressure is non existent.
You can also regulate that they have to reinvest in capital improvements so the technology keeps up. Realistically though, the only thing they have to spend money on is maintenance and upgrades so it's not hard to force a utility to keep up with technology. The utility's business model is geared towards and perfectly suited to providing a commodity service like internet access, despite the hyperbole and propaganda that's flowing non stop from the right wing talking heads.
It doesn't go far enough. What we really need is to separate content creators from the network providers. Have a separate utility company that only provides your internet connection and nothing else. That way, every company that wants to sell you product is on 100% equal footing. Make the market truly free for everyone to participate on a level playing field. After all, isn't that what's most fair to everyone? Distributing your cable TV service over your now independent internet link will open it up so you can get your TV service from anyone you want. Think of what the competition will do to the industry and how much better it will be for the consumer.
Oh wait. I forgot that the cable companies will bribe everyone in congress they can in order to keep their municipal monopolies firmly entrenched. So much for real free markets and competition. Rats.
We should uncover funding sources of people and organizations that are using that money to lie to us. It is a good thing to uncover the fact that big oil is funding the climate change deniers. But why stop there? Let's start calling upon our representatives to disclose who is funding their campaigns when they draft and vote for legislation that's only in a corporation's benefit. Since they seem interested in uncovering the money trail that leads to lies, perhaps Grijalva, Markey, Boxer, and Whitehouse can lead by example and disclose who funded their campaigns.
And Intel would still be forcing the Itanium on us had AMD not come out with the Athlon and the x86_64 instruction set, stealing Inel's lunch for a few years until they caught up.
Sure, AMD dropped the ball and Intel stole the lead back from them years ago. But without the competition, Intel wouldn't have any incentive to have processors as good as they do now. The market needs companies like AMD to keep companies like Intel competitive.
Read the whole sentence in context. I mean, you quoted it so it's right there in front of you. I didn't say "the Bush administration started all of the domestic spying" and then stop. I qualified that by continuing with "that the Obama administration decided to continue". Sure, I should have worded it differently and said "domestic surveillance" instead of "domestic spying". That's my fault. But taking half of my sentence out of context and completely disregarding the important half is a poor way to make an argument.
Actually, with partisan politics these days, the fact that the other party is no longer in the White House means that legions of their followers give them a pass. And if you attack their "side", they assume that you are defending the other "side". And then they throw up the "oh, stop blaming our guy" bullshit.
The fact that Bush is no longer in office has no relevance at all. He still shares blame for his part of this mess. Yes, Obama shares blame because he did nothing to stop it. But no candidate from either party will in the future. They aren't going to lose votes because of it (at least, not enough to matter) so there is no incentive for either party to change the status quo. Blaming only Obama simply because he's the one in the office right now is dishonest. Blame needs to be assigned to those responsible whether they're currently in office or not.
Talk about a strawman. I never said domestic spying in general. I'm talking about the NSA surveillance program that was started under Bush that the Obama administration chose to continue. GP threw in the non sequitur about all kinds of things that happened long before Congress passed the Patriot Act (which overrode Reagan's EO BTW) that Bush used to start the whole domestic surveillance program.
I also find it interesting that you take his quote out of context and completely ignore the fact that he said "The issues you bring up did not first appear under Bush". In fact, the Patriot Act was pushed through by Bush. It opened the floodgates for domestic spying and was the justification for the NSA's surveillance program. So the issues I brought up were initiated under specific direction by Bush. Not just under his watch. By his direct order. It's pretty obvious that GP is entirely wrong in his defense of Bush.
I'm taking both parties to task. Why are people trying to defend one or the other? I guess people are hung up on the "if you're attacking the side I like you must be defending the side I don't like" strawman. When in reality, I'm attacking BOTH sides for being equally complicit.
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Absolutely. We should force people to go through years of endless suffering only to die anyway rather than let them make their own choice to keep their dignity. /sarcasm
The funny (tragic) part is that the kind of people who tend to be strongly pro-gun, also tend to be strong against social programs that could prevent a great deal of the violence typically associated with guns.
Ain't that the truth...
That would be relevant to me if I wasn't living over 1000 miles from any coast.
I'm not sure what they're really trying to accomplish. They're shoving their political opinion in everyone's face. Quite often, however, people like this end up generating a fair amount of animosity towards their cause and bring together opponents trying to stop them who otherwise wouldn't have enough ambition to do so. Their actions end up being counterproductive. I'm not sure why they insist on hurting their own cause but they're hell bent on doing it.
Many of us who enjoy responsible recreational and sport shooting really wish these idiots would shut up and go away because they bring unwanted attention to the subject and end up making it more difficult for the rest of us.
In all likelihood, yes. Setting up something to scour for email addresses and sending bulk mail costs pennies. If they get even a 0.01% return on their emails (i.e. 1 out of 10,000 people falling for it) they still pull in tons of money.
That's the trouble with very successful attacks that end up having unanticipated consequences. They leave behind enough evidence that the attack vector is now known and steps are taken to reduce vulnerability (to varying degrees of success). It works the first time but often not ever again, or at least not until people forget about it and get sloppy again.
Well, they fully expected to follow their traditional approach to the evolving marketplace and have it work. That is, fart around with a bunch of crap no one wants for a while until the market takes off. Then buy out one of the competitors. After that, leverage their monopoly power to force everyone to use their product. Trouble is, the market got away from them and they have no real monopoly power to leverage against in this market and what they did has backfired against them in a big way. This has left them floundering without direction and trying to catch up as a 3rd contestant in a 2 person race. But they have deep pockets still so they'll keep flogging away at it for quite some time. Who knows. Maybe they'll stumble on something that works out for them. They certainly won't be lead to success. If it comes, it will be entirely accidental.
I know that I'm holding out on getting a smartphone until I get one that lets me work on my documents and spreadsheets... /sarcasm
To take that a step further, attacking the people who have direct access to the network is harder. Instead, targeting the companies that supply the equipment is an easier vector. I may be wrong (and please correct me if I am) but wasn't Stuxnet infiltrated at the supplier of the computer equipment rather than by a successful compromising of an individual working directly on the system?
And you can guarantee that that fiber can't be tapped between the end points? Just because a network is isolated from the Internet doesn't mean it's completely secure.
They were good in the early years but haven't put out a good album since 1984.
Putting in artificial delays is prioritizing. If you don't pay more your priority goes to the end of the line.
Hardly. The only thing they fear is that they're going to lose their very lucrative revenue streams since they can't overcharge for prioritizing traffic any more.
That's why you set it up as a utility, complete with utility regulations. There's no profit running telephone and electricity out to far flung areas. But the utilities manage to do it without having to charge everyone thousands of dollars a month each. The model does work. Everyone gets access to the grid at a reasonable and consistent rate. The benefit the utility company receives is that everyone wanting the pays them. They don't have to provide universal access AND compete for customers among multiple providers so all that financial pressure is non existent.
You can also regulate that they have to reinvest in capital improvements so the technology keeps up. Realistically though, the only thing they have to spend money on is maintenance and upgrades so it's not hard to force a utility to keep up with technology. The utility's business model is geared towards and perfectly suited to providing a commodity service like internet access, despite the hyperbole and propaganda that's flowing non stop from the right wing talking heads.
It doesn't go far enough. What we really need is to separate content creators from the network providers. Have a separate utility company that only provides your internet connection and nothing else. That way, every company that wants to sell you product is on 100% equal footing. Make the market truly free for everyone to participate on a level playing field. After all, isn't that what's most fair to everyone? Distributing your cable TV service over your now independent internet link will open it up so you can get your TV service from anyone you want. Think of what the competition will do to the industry and how much better it will be for the consumer.
Oh wait. I forgot that the cable companies will bribe everyone in congress they can in order to keep their municipal monopolies firmly entrenched. So much for real free markets and competition. Rats.
I disagree. Congress is getting their funding from corporations donating through 501(c)(3) corporations.
We should uncover funding sources of people and organizations that are using that money to lie to us. It is a good thing to uncover the fact that big oil is funding the climate change deniers. But why stop there? Let's start calling upon our representatives to disclose who is funding their campaigns when they draft and vote for legislation that's only in a corporation's benefit. Since they seem interested in uncovering the money trail that leads to lies, perhaps Grijalva, Markey, Boxer, and Whitehouse can lead by example and disclose who funded their campaigns.
And Intel would still be forcing the Itanium on us had AMD not come out with the Athlon and the x86_64 instruction set, stealing Inel's lunch for a few years until they caught up.
Sure, AMD dropped the ball and Intel stole the lead back from them years ago. But without the competition, Intel wouldn't have any incentive to have processors as good as they do now. The market needs companies like AMD to keep companies like Intel competitive.
I find this ironic coming from the person who said that Obama expanded the patriot act. *snerk*
Read the whole sentence in context. I mean, you quoted it so it's right there in front of you. I didn't say "the Bush administration started all of the domestic spying" and then stop. I qualified that by continuing with "that the Obama administration decided to continue". Sure, I should have worded it differently and said "domestic surveillance" instead of "domestic spying". That's my fault. But taking half of my sentence out of context and completely disregarding the important half is a poor way to make an argument.
I'm talking about the NSA programs that started under Bush in response to someone else's post. Do please try and keep up with the conversation.
Blame does not go away when you leave office.
All the research I've done says Obama only extended existing provisions. I don't see anywhere that shows him expanding it.
Actually, with partisan politics these days, the fact that the other party is no longer in the White House means that legions of their followers give them a pass. And if you attack their "side", they assume that you are defending the other "side". And then they throw up the "oh, stop blaming our guy" bullshit.
The fact that Bush is no longer in office has no relevance at all. He still shares blame for his part of this mess. Yes, Obama shares blame because he did nothing to stop it. But no candidate from either party will in the future. They aren't going to lose votes because of it (at least, not enough to matter) so there is no incentive for either party to change the status quo. Blaming only Obama simply because he's the one in the office right now is dishonest. Blame needs to be assigned to those responsible whether they're currently in office or not.
Talk about a strawman. I never said domestic spying in general. I'm talking about the NSA surveillance program that was started under Bush that the Obama administration chose to continue. GP threw in the non sequitur about all kinds of things that happened long before Congress passed the Patriot Act (which overrode Reagan's EO BTW) that Bush used to start the whole domestic surveillance program.
I also find it interesting that you take his quote out of context and completely ignore the fact that he said "The issues you bring up did not first appear under Bush". In fact, the Patriot Act was pushed through by Bush. It opened the floodgates for domestic spying and was the justification for the NSA's surveillance program. So the issues I brought up were initiated under specific direction by Bush. Not just under his watch. By his direct order. It's pretty obvious that GP is entirely wrong in his defense of Bush.
I'm taking both parties to task. Why are people trying to defend one or the other? I guess people are hung up on the "if you're attacking the side I like you must be defending the side I don't like" strawman. When in reality, I'm attacking BOTH sides for being equally complicit.