To be fair, what you're talking about is American "chocolate", which lacks regulation, and as such is mostly just oil with a tiny amount of chocolate flavouring. In Europe, the amount of cocoa content of a chocolate bar is regulated, and isn't dropping.
Yeah, in Europe, you get a bunch of highly regulated, boring European consumer brands that are somewhat better than the American consumer brands. And that's pretty much where the experience and expertise of people like you ends.
Good chocolate is actually hard to find in Europe. Supermarkets largely carry the big European consumer brands, dedicated chocolatiers are not that common, and European tastes in chocolate tend towards sweet and boring.
In the US, you get everything from cheap consumer brands to walls full of artisanal chocolate at your local supermarket to dedicated chocolatiers in most cities. There are regular chocolate tastings in many places in the US, similar to wine tastings.
Oh, and chocolate content isn't "dropping" in the US either; in fact, it's strongly increasing, as people increasingly prefer darker, less sweet chocolates.
Yeah, if you get your "chocolate bar" from a bus terminal vending machine.
Otherwise, "these days", you can get more high quality chocolate than ever before, at supermarkets, chocolatiers, coffee shops, and tons of other places.
If these people had created anything resembling an artificial mind with free will, there might be a question here. But they haven't. All they have created is a mechanical device that randomly pushes buttons; the creators of mechanical devices are responsible for what their creations do.
you really should not make ignorant assertions like this.
Let me say that again, since you don't seem to be getting it: you are proving my point. The fact that you pay so little for very high speed Internet shows that other people are subsidizing you, because most people don't need or use 100 Mbps connections.
As for your conduit/pole renting scheme - that might work. But I suspect what would happen is that the existing monopolist would make clear that they'd be selling their deployed lines at more than the cost to deploy all new lines, severely disincentivizing any competing bids
No, obviously that's not how it should work. The way it should work is that if someone gets outbid, they are responsible for removing their wires unless someone takes them on.
Private easements through people's back yards are probably a non-starter, especially for power - one of the reasons lines run down streets is because of ease of maintenance and relative safety in case of damage - a power line downed in the street is far less likely to start neighborhood threatening fires than one in your back yard. Underground conduit would be less of an issue though.
I have power running through my backyard. Easements for underground cables are common.
Nothing you said contradicts what I said: you are a privileged, educated elite who wants his 100 Mbps Internet subsidized by the masses. My parents don't need 100 Mbps. Heck, I don't need 100 Mbps. Yet, we all are supposed to pay taxes and/or higher Internet fees so you get your cheap high speed Internet. That's the way it works in China, that's the way it works in Europe, and it's increasingly the way it works in the US. And it's wrong. You want 100 Mbps? Pay for it yourself.
No, I'm just following ACs lead - if we should fire newscasters for burying a story
Who is this "we" you are talking about? You don't get to "fire newscasters" (unless you own the TV station) nor do I. You get to choose not to watch them, that's all.
then what should we do to "news" stations that knowingly lie to their viewers on a regular basis,
Same thing: you can choose not to watch it, that's all you, I, or "we" get to do.
and have even successfully argued in court that FCC policies against intentionally lying in the news are only non-binding "guidelines"
Good! The government has no business determining what constitutes a lie and what constitutes truth in the media.
And when deploying and maintaining such infrastructure requires digging up streets or hanging stuff on utility poles, the local populace (by way of government) has a vested interest in minimizing redundant infrastructure and the associated risks and inconveniences of maintenance.... That wouldn't totally fix the problem
It wouldn't fix the problem because you are not correctly diagnosing the problem. The problem is not some weird tie between service and wires. The problem is that the people deciding about who can dig up the road in my neighborhood are, in fact, not the people actually affected by digging up the road in my neighborhood or who have to bear the monopoly pricing their artificial monopolies create. The real problem is that government isn't local enough, even at the city level, given the size modern cities have.
People are increasingly dealing with this nonsense and failure of local government by simply moving to gated communities and/or using technology to circumvent dysfunctional monopolies. Of course, local governments then often impose mandatory purchasing of services residents don't need and want.
As for the technical issues, there is little reason to impose one "___line" requirements, nor for government or holding companies to worry about what wires to put in. A more rational choice would be simply to manage space. Conduits and space on poles can simply be leased, and the leases are auctioned off every four years (if the lines are still good when a lease ends, companies can sell them to each other). Furthermore, if access through someone's backyard is easier, private property owners can sell easements.
My bad for assuming, however, the point still stands that none of these things are guaranteed in capitalism.
Capitalism guarantees you nothing; only totalitarian systems give you any guarantees. What I stated is what a capitalist society requires: free markets, equality before the law, and freedom from physical violence. It's the job of government to provide those things.
Arguably, in the case of America, it's quite the opposite.
Neither the US nor Europe guarantee free markets or equality before the law (both are doing OK on the freedom from physical violence part). That's why both the US and Europe are fairly far from capitalist societies. The US used to be better in these areas, but it has deteriorated to European levels.
OK, let me add the word "recently" to that.
Recently, too. Sorry, you really don't have better knowledge of this.
Fair comment, but keeping within the context of the conversation...
Within the context conversation, what European government support of Internet means is that a lot of people who don't need high speed Internet pay more so that a smaller group of people who really use "100/100" get subsidized because a bunch of government technocrats thought that that would allow them to compete with Silicon Valley. And they don't just subsidize those users, they subsidize them inefficiently, as European governments are in bed with domestic equipment producers, pay off unions, and pay off "copyright holders".
In any case, having never lived as an American expatriate anywhere in the world
For the purposes of this discussion, you are in the same category as an American expatriate.
while Europe wasn't all fun and games and certainly isn't perfect in many aspects, the Internet access was/is far superior in many places
Yes, the places educated, cosmopolitan folks like you and your friends happen to frequent, providing the high speeds that you like for your movies, downloads, video chats, and all that. Ditto with the nice tree-lined boulevards you stroll down, the rail system you enjoy, etc. Somebody pays for that, and it's people you never get to meet and it's people who benefit very little from all that stuff. In fact, not having grown up in Europe and not retiring there, you basically get all the benefits and almost none of the sacrifices.
Mind you, there is plenty wrong with the way Internet access and telecoms are handled in the US: it's a corrupt system of corporate cronyism. But adding even more European-style corporate cronyism on top of that doesn't make it better.
Somehow I don't think we're living in the same Capitalist America,
DId I mention America anywhere?
It also appears you have never lived in Europe
I grew up in Europe and lived half my life there (in different countries).
I had 100/100 way back in late 2005/early 2006 in Helsinki (after an upgrade from 10/10) and internet was and is even easier to find than in the states
Helsinki is about as representative of Europe as Loudoun County, VA is of the US.
Plus, there most certainly is *not* any of the things you state as far as I've observed over the time I've been here.
Living as an American expatriate in Europe is a very positive experience. It isn't representative of what normal Europeans experience.
Papers that were accepted outright by one of the three elite journals tended to garner more citations than papers that were rejected and then published elsewhere
Maybe they got cause and effect reversed even for those papers...
Apparently physics and chemistry now have a liberal bias. You heard it here first folks.
"Physics and chemistry" are communities of scientists, and indeed they have political biases.
Natural laws, of course, don't have political biases, but they do have political implications, in the sense that some policies are likely to be successful given natural laws, and others are likely to fail. US liberalism generally fails in the face of natural laws.
Specifically, I deny bad science, and there is a lot of that around. When it comes to climate change, I agree that the climate has been changing, but I deny the science that claims to tell us what we can or should do about it.
While we are at it, feel free to call me a "racist" for insisting that government treat people equally independent of their race, a "misogynist" for opposing modern feminism, and a "corporate shill" (a Slashdot favorite) because I think government should stop subsidizing corporations and should stop creating monopolies.
Yet there is nothing small that can prevent corporations suck you dry.
Sure there is: you don't give them your money.
The only corporations that actively "suck you dry" are the corporations that the government gives artificial monopolies to.
State on the other hand is the only force that helps capitalism kind of work. Without state there is only tribal warfare like in Somalia.
Somalia: anarchy.
Capitalism: state guarantees free markets, equality before the law, and freedom from physical violence, and the rest is up to you.
Your/EU vision: state forces people to do things and buy things "for the good of the people" and for the good of corporations in bed with the state.
I think however if not EU our arses would be as painful as they are now.
Without the EU, Europeans would be killing each other again by the millions. That makes the EU a tremendous advance over what Europe used to be like historically. It doesn't make the EU a good steward of democracy or the economy.
Yes, I know. It's "News for Nerds". People here hate the MIT engineers advocating fiscal prudence and social liberalism, and love the sociopathic Hungarian Nazi collaborators and manipulator of the global financial system.
So, you got lucky, and other people apparently got unlucky.
Even if we look at your individual situation, the question is: what's your salary relative to what you would be making in the US, what taxes do you pay, what other fees do you pay (e.g., TV licensing fees), etc.? And is the UK really an example of a highly regulated system, or is it more like the US and your service is due to competition?
Um, "Rick in China" you are a privileged Westerner living the life of the urban elite in a third world country. Your Internet is effectively subsidized on the backs of a few hundred million Chinese peasants.
Of course, that's what you want for the US too: you want to be a member of an educated, well connected urban elite, and screw the rest of the country. I'd call you a "communist shill", but I doubt you're even smart enough for that. You're just greedy, privileged, and ignorant.
The only European countries with higher median household incomes than the US are Luxembourg, Norway, and Switzerland. And taken as a whole, Europe or the EU are dismal. You can reach similar conclusions by looking at individual disposable incomes, or GDP per capita, or any number of other measures.
and they have a higher purchasing power parity.
That statement doesn't even make basic economic sense.
the liar and fool is you, as nothing you just stated is factual.
As you just demonstrated again: you live in a fact-free fantasy world and are economically illiterate.
prices 2-3 times as high as the other side of the atlantic, service an order of magnitude slower than the other side of the atlantic, and double charging both the sender and receiver for data...
Bullshit. That's not even true to the already shoddy analysis of the New American Foundation. And it neglects the PPP and lower incomes of Europeans. And to the degree that prices seem lower, people are simply paying higher taxes, which then go on to subsidize big European corporations that are buddies with European governments and provide those services. If you think the Comcast/Time Warner "monopoly" is bad, you haven't been screwed over by European telecoms, which is far worse. But liars and idiots like you will manage to bring us even more of that European crony capitalism than we already have.
What they are saying is that a lot of letters sent in to comment on net neutrality have been derived from a small set of sample letters. That doesn't mean they represent astroturfing, it merely means that a lot of people who sent in letters founds those sample letters to be a good starting point and in agreement with their views.
Similarly, we should not be free to endanger public health with disease. If you want to remain unvaccinated, do so in your own backwoods shack, away from us. Thanks.
But that is exactly what vaccination requirements don't to: they say "even if you live in your own backwoods shack, you still must get vaccinated".
I think it's fine for schools, communities, even shopping malls to say that you can only enter if you are vaccinated. That's freedom of association. It is not OK for a country or state to say that as a matter of citizenship, you must inject stuff into your body, no matter what.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, in Europe, you get a bunch of highly regulated, boring European consumer brands that are somewhat better than the American consumer brands. And that's pretty much where the experience and expertise of people like you ends.
Good chocolate is actually hard to find in Europe. Supermarkets largely carry the big European consumer brands, dedicated chocolatiers are not that common, and European tastes in chocolate tend towards sweet and boring.
In the US, you get everything from cheap consumer brands to walls full of artisanal chocolate at your local supermarket to dedicated chocolatiers in most cities. There are regular chocolate tastings in many places in the US, similar to wine tastings.
Oh, and chocolate content isn't "dropping" in the US either; in fact, it's strongly increasing, as people increasingly prefer darker, less sweet chocolates.
Yeah, if you get your "chocolate bar" from a bus terminal vending machine.
Otherwise, "these days", you can get more high quality chocolate than ever before, at supermarkets, chocolatiers, coffee shops, and tons of other places.
If these people had created anything resembling an artificial mind with free will, there might be a question here. But they haven't. All they have created is a mechanical device that randomly pushes buttons; the creators of mechanical devices are responsible for what their creations do.
Let me say that again, since you don't seem to be getting it: you are proving my point. The fact that you pay so little for very high speed Internet shows that other people are subsidizing you, because most people don't need or use 100 Mbps connections.
No, obviously that's not how it should work. The way it should work is that if someone gets outbid, they are responsible for removing their wires unless someone takes them on.
I have power running through my backyard. Easements for underground cables are common.
Nothing you said contradicts what I said: you are a privileged, educated elite who wants his 100 Mbps Internet subsidized by the masses. My parents don't need 100 Mbps. Heck, I don't need 100 Mbps. Yet, we all are supposed to pay taxes and/or higher Internet fees so you get your cheap high speed Internet. That's the way it works in China, that's the way it works in Europe, and it's increasingly the way it works in the US. And it's wrong. You want 100 Mbps? Pay for it yourself.
Who is this "we" you are talking about? You don't get to "fire newscasters" (unless you own the TV station) nor do I. You get to choose not to watch them, that's all.
Same thing: you can choose not to watch it, that's all you, I, or "we" get to do.
Good! The government has no business determining what constitutes a lie and what constitutes truth in the media.
Your inner fascist is showing: you don't like it, it needs "to be taken off the air".
It wouldn't fix the problem because you are not correctly diagnosing the problem. The problem is not some weird tie between service and wires. The problem is that the people deciding about who can dig up the road in my neighborhood are, in fact, not the people actually affected by digging up the road in my neighborhood or who have to bear the monopoly pricing their artificial monopolies create. The real problem is that government isn't local enough, even at the city level, given the size modern cities have.
People are increasingly dealing with this nonsense and failure of local government by simply moving to gated communities and/or using technology to circumvent dysfunctional monopolies. Of course, local governments then often impose mandatory purchasing of services residents don't need and want.
As for the technical issues, there is little reason to impose one "___line" requirements, nor for government or holding companies to worry about what wires to put in. A more rational choice would be simply to manage space. Conduits and space on poles can simply be leased, and the leases are auctioned off every four years (if the lines are still good when a lease ends, companies can sell them to each other). Furthermore, if access through someone's backyard is easier, private property owners can sell easements.
Capitalism guarantees you nothing; only totalitarian systems give you any guarantees. What I stated is what a capitalist society requires: free markets, equality before the law, and freedom from physical violence. It's the job of government to provide those things.
Neither the US nor Europe guarantee free markets or equality before the law (both are doing OK on the freedom from physical violence part). That's why both the US and Europe are fairly far from capitalist societies. The US used to be better in these areas, but it has deteriorated to European levels.
Recently, too. Sorry, you really don't have better knowledge of this.
Within the context conversation, what European government support of Internet means is that a lot of people who don't need high speed Internet pay more so that a smaller group of people who really use "100/100" get subsidized because a bunch of government technocrats thought that that would allow them to compete with Silicon Valley. And they don't just subsidize those users, they subsidize them inefficiently, as European governments are in bed with domestic equipment producers, pay off unions, and pay off "copyright holders".
For the purposes of this discussion, you are in the same category as an American expatriate.
Yes, the places educated, cosmopolitan folks like you and your friends happen to frequent, providing the high speeds that you like for your movies, downloads, video chats, and all that. Ditto with the nice tree-lined boulevards you stroll down, the rail system you enjoy, etc. Somebody pays for that, and it's people you never get to meet and it's people who benefit very little from all that stuff. In fact, not having grown up in Europe and not retiring there, you basically get all the benefits and almost none of the sacrifices.
Mind you, there is plenty wrong with the way Internet access and telecoms are handled in the US: it's a corrupt system of corporate cronyism. But adding even more European-style corporate cronyism on top of that doesn't make it better.
DId I mention America anywhere?
I grew up in Europe and lived half my life there (in different countries).
Helsinki is about as representative of Europe as Loudoun County, VA is of the US.
Living as an American expatriate in Europe is a very positive experience. It isn't representative of what normal Europeans experience.
Maybe they got cause and effect reversed even for those papers...
"Physics and chemistry" are communities of scientists, and indeed they have political biases.
Natural laws, of course, don't have political biases, but they do have political implications, in the sense that some policies are likely to be successful given natural laws, and others are likely to fail. US liberalism generally fails in the face of natural laws.
Specifically, I deny bad science, and there is a lot of that around. When it comes to climate change, I agree that the climate has been changing, but I deny the science that claims to tell us what we can or should do about it.
While we are at it, feel free to call me a "racist" for insisting that government treat people equally independent of their race, a "misogynist" for opposing modern feminism, and a "corporate shill" (a Slashdot favorite) because I think government should stop subsidizing corporations and should stop creating monopolies.
Sure there is: you don't give them your money.
The only corporations that actively "suck you dry" are the corporations that the government gives artificial monopolies to.
Somalia: anarchy.
Capitalism: state guarantees free markets, equality before the law, and freedom from physical violence, and the rest is up to you.
Your/EU vision: state forces people to do things and buy things "for the good of the people" and for the good of corporations in bed with the state.
Without the EU, Europeans would be killing each other again by the millions. That makes the EU a tremendous advance over what Europe used to be like historically. It doesn't make the EU a good steward of democracy or the economy.
Yes, I know. It's "News for Nerds". People here hate the MIT engineers advocating fiscal prudence and social liberalism, and love the sociopathic Hungarian Nazi collaborators and manipulator of the global financial system.
I've paid $60/month for 60 Mbps in Silicon Valley, and $30/month for 50 Mbps in a smaller town, and I always take Internet-only.
Perhaps you need to do a bit more shopping. Because "capitalism free markets MURICA".
Yet, the UK generally ranks slightly below the US in average connection speeds.
http://www.netindex.com/downlo...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
So, you got lucky, and other people apparently got unlucky.
Even if we look at your individual situation, the question is: what's your salary relative to what you would be making in the US, what taxes do you pay, what other fees do you pay (e.g., TV licensing fees), etc.? And is the UK really an example of a highly regulated system, or is it more like the US and your service is due to competition?
Um, "Rick in China" you are a privileged Westerner living the life of the urban elite in a third world country. Your Internet is effectively subsidized on the backs of a few hundred million Chinese peasants.
Of course, that's what you want for the US too: you want to be a member of an educated, well connected urban elite, and screw the rest of the country. I'd call you a "communist shill", but I doubt you're even smart enough for that. You're just greedy, privileged, and ignorant.
You can't even be bothered to do minimal fact checking:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
The only European countries with higher median household incomes than the US are Luxembourg, Norway, and Switzerland. And taken as a whole, Europe or the EU are dismal. You can reach similar conclusions by looking at individual disposable incomes, or GDP per capita, or any number of other measures.
That statement doesn't even make basic economic sense.
As you just demonstrated again: you live in a fact-free fantasy world and are economically illiterate.
There is no evidence they "spammed" anything. All the analysis found is that a large number of submissions used some common language.
Bullshit. That's not even true to the already shoddy analysis of the New American Foundation. And it neglects the PPP and lower incomes of Europeans. And to the degree that prices seem lower, people are simply paying higher taxes, which then go on to subsidize big European corporations that are buddies with European governments and provide those services. If you think the Comcast/Time Warner "monopoly" is bad, you haven't been screwed over by European telecoms, which is far worse. But liars and idiots like you will manage to bring us even more of that European crony capitalism than we already have.
What they are saying is that a lot of letters sent in to comment on net neutrality have been derived from a small set of sample letters. That doesn't mean they represent astroturfing, it merely means that a lot of people who sent in letters founds those sample letters to be a good starting point and in agreement with their views.
No, I don't believe that, I know it. How? Because I have lived in a totalitarian superstate, and it's entirely different.
But that is exactly what vaccination requirements don't to: they say "even if you live in your own backwoods shack, you still must get vaccinated".
I think it's fine for schools, communities, even shopping malls to say that you can only enter if you are vaccinated. That's freedom of association. It is not OK for a country or state to say that as a matter of citizenship, you must inject stuff into your body, no matter what.