What id dont get is why if someone hacked my email, there is no way theyd get a penalty like that. the judge would look at me and say "tough love".
This case is getting special attention because of the attempt to influence the election. The same was true of the case in Milwaukee a few years ago when a bunch of tires got slashed for political reasons (they were on vans that were going to bring voters to the polls on election day).
Then I guess we differ in opinion of what mans' obligation is to the rest of the world.
I was hoping this topic would come up. What do you believe is mankind's obligation to the rest of the world, and what is the source of this obligation?
That sounds great, but to be able to vote for a third party candidate, you have to have a third party and a third party candidate that aren't complete extremist wackos.
I disagree. The fact that a third party candidate won't be elected gives one a lot more leeway. You don't have to worry at all, for example, about a particular candidate's actual ability to fill the office in question. To take your example, there's no danger of the government selling off the national parks. If the Libertarians get enough of the vote, though, then Republicans and/or Democrats will attempt to add some of the less extreme libertarian ideas to their platforms.
It sounded like you were endorsing "the candidate who has spoken for and stood for change and integrity from before his political career started, and the candidate who has resorted to making bald faced, demonstrably false and misleading lies that in a non-political context would be grounds for a successful slander/libel suit." Oh, I see: you're pretending that the first describes one candidate and the second describes the other. You do realize that both statements are true of each major party candidate, right?
We're looking at the candidate who has spoken for and stood for change and integrity from before his political career started, and the candidate who has resorted to making bald faced, demonstrably false and misleading lies that in a non-political context would be grounds for a successful slander/libel suit.
Sounds to me like you should vote for a different candidate.
Basically, the banks were given far more freedom to do as they wished (such as creating complex mortgage-backed derivatives), and the result is a financial meltdown.
Creating complex mortgage-backed derivatives is fine; it's erroneously valuing them that caused the problems. If the loan risk had been accurately assessed, fewer bad loans would have been issued (because high risk loans wouldn't be able to be sold as low risk), the housing bubble wouldn't have been as big and banks wouldn't have liquidity problems when their "assets" turn out to be less valuable than they thought.
Ooooh, I see, you're changing the definition of "deregulated" to mean something other than what everyone else in the world means, gotcha.
I realize that "deregulated" is an idiom. (When you de[verb] something, it means that you no longer [verb] it.) However, using the idiomatic definition of "deregulated" doesn't support your argument that these economic problems are due to an "unfettered free market", because changing some regulations didn't create one.
Simple. These problems were enabled by a *de*regulation of the mortgage market, allowing companies to "innovate" and create complex derivative securities based on mortgages. The result was an obfuscation and misjudgment of risk, so investors looked at these MBSs as low-risk, high-return AAA-rated securities and pumped massive amounts of credit into the market. The banks then took this glut of cheap credit and issued shitty mortgages, again building them up into complex investment vehicles, and so the cycle continued.
You've essentially restated my post using more correct terminology and reaching the opposite conclusion. The mortgage market was not "deregulated" it was "regulated differently", with unintended consequences galore. The US government monitored things closely, tweaking interest rates etc. and choosing to allow the market to continue, valuing economic growth over other factors. The US economy is not an unfettered free market.
I'm saying that an awful lot of people will not benefit from being forced into an educational track that leads to a bachelors degree, when they are not capable of achieving at that level.
I agree, but...
We must recognize that 50% of students are below average
This oversimplifies. Most of the population is clustered around the average (in a normal distribution bell curve), and there's little functional difference between the 25th percentile and the 75th percentile.
A case can certainly be made that there's no need to force "average" people (within one standard deviation of the mean?) into college. We need smart (functional) people in the skilled trades too.
Unfettered free market economics created this problem.
To what problem do you refer? Banks failing, low housing values, too much credit, too much inflation, something else?
I think the problem is that perverse incentives created by law led to inappropriate lending, packaging of loans into financial instruments that were bought and sold, and overrated trustworthiness of those packages. The inappropriate lending contributed to a housing bubble which, when it popped, caused those financial packages to drop in value so much that over-exposed banks fail. Some hedged against that risk by insuring themselves with companies like AIG. (Oops.)
It's an incredibly complex situation that nobody understands fully, governed by a spaghetti code of laws and regulations worldwide. How does "unfettered free market economics" describe things at all? Or by "unfettered free market economics" did you mean "the desire of bankers to make money"?
I hope so too. Interestingly, a poster in another discussion pointed out that the Chrome privacy policy does explicitly mention such a fingerprinting scheme.
I don't see how they'll be able to track you beyond what they're doing now.
Isn't their tracking currently based on cookies? A browser that calls home (or implements some sort of fingerprinting technology) could link cookies from one session to the next.
When I see comments like this (often), it makes me wonder what it was like in the past when we made the switch from plain text to HTML. Were a lot of people complaining about HTML then?
Yes, and you can still see it today: post HTML to usenet, or send HTML email (or a Word doc with nothing but plain text in it) to your local UNIX longbeard.
That's sort of a silly comparison. If California were a rust-belt state then it would receive more in federal spending than it pays and there would be no problem. California pays the federal government $50 billion per year more than the benefits it receives.
That's a silly comparison too. California doesn't pay the federal government, rich people who live in California do. Do you endorse lowering taxes on rich people to even out this apparent imbalance?
Some governments are passing laws saying that documents must be stored in a format that is a documented standard.
This is just MS's way of checking that box without actually making their format open.
What I don't understand is this: how can they check that box without supporting the format? My understanding is that it's an unimplementable hodgepodge that's not fully supported by any version of MS Office to date.
This is a potential disaster. Millions, or even billions, of cyber warfare dollars are at stake that cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of the Army or Navy.
You are assuming that medical care/drugs follow normal supply demand curves. They don't because you cannot choose to live without your "health".
If there is a limited supply of health care providers in an area, that's true, but that's the exception not the rule. 99% of health care doesn't require a hospital and 99% of people live in an area with multiple providers. Even in the US there aren't very many remote towns left.
Even then, in many ways you can choose to live without your "health". Drugs from the 80s are patent expired. The absolute newest treatments will always be expensive, as they are now, but they won't be so expensive that providers can't make money from them. Since expensive life or death treatments are rare, they are candidates for catastrophic insurance, which is cheaper because it doesn't have to cover maintenance activities like regular checkups (though it would probably require them, or give a discount for customers who get regular checkups).
There's nothing magic about a "free market". What I would like to try is a market that doesn't have artificially inflated prices.
Most libertarians will say that people working in sweatshops should be free to work there, and that their lives are better. This is correct. The problem is that libertarians don't seem to criticize the practices that keep these sweatshop workers in these conditions.
So the problem is the perception of libertarians, not that sweatshop workers are taken advantage of?
The evidence points to price increases under your model. If you have a chronic illness, why should i charge less that the maximum you can possibly afford. Its not like you can go elsewhere. There is no market force to make my drugs cheaper.
By charging less you gain more customers and make more money. There's an old cartoon that illustrates this: a kid is selling lemonade for $1,000,000 a cup on the theory that he only needs to sell one cup and then he'll be set for life. If prescription drug coverage went away, only a handful of people would be able to afford (new, still patented) prescription drugs, so to maximize their income the drug companies would lower prices. Some claim that this would slow down future drug research, but I'm skeptical.
Costs of procedures and visits would decrease, as they've done in the area of cosmetic surgery (which is typically not covered by health insurance).
And by they way, what do the poor and unemployed do? Just lay down and die?
No, the social welfare system I mentioned in my previous post would cover them. It could afford to do so because there would be fewer of them, because lowered health care costs would make it easier for people to afford to pay for their own health care directly.
The question I don't know the answer to is this: what about people who make foolish health-related decisions, like going to McDonald's instead of taking their kids to the doctor? There are, and will, always be people who choose to live large at the cost of their health. Should society allow people to make bad decisions? In theory yes, but in practice it's awfully difficult.
Personally, I'd like to try free market health care before I write it off.
I would like to how you think it could work.
I'm certainly no expert, but I'd start by excluding employer- and government-sponsored health insurance from the default case, and take health care providers out of the communications loop between patient and insurance. Health care providers then have much less overhead and can compete on the basis of cost and services without artificial prices set by group negotiations or Medicare. Health maintenance activities (like regular checkups) then become inexpensive enough to pay out of pocket, and would probably be required by insurance policies that cover catastrophic medical events. Without prescription drug coverage, drug prices would decrease (so that the drug manufacturers could make more money).
There are lots of corner cases that would need to be explored though. What about people with chronic conditions, such as myself? I can afford my regular treatment but others might not be able to. Possibly, if prices dropped in the above scenario, it would then be cost effective for the government to provide a safety net for (the smaller number of) people who can't afford to treat their conditions.
Slashdot Mirror
This case is getting special attention because of the attempt to influence the election. The same was true of the case in Milwaukee a few years ago when a bunch of tires got slashed for political reasons (they were on vans that were going to bring voters to the polls on election day).
I was hoping this topic would come up. What do you believe is mankind's obligation to the rest of the world, and what is the source of this obligation?
I disagree. The fact that a third party candidate won't be elected gives one a lot more leeway. You don't have to worry at all, for example, about a particular candidate's actual ability to fill the office in question. To take your example, there's no danger of the government selling off the national parks. If the Libertarians get enough of the vote, though, then Republicans and/or Democrats will attempt to add some of the less extreme libertarian ideas to their platforms.
A good place to start is factcheck.org. If you only see the lies of one side, then you don't have an accurate view of reality.
It sounded like you were endorsing "the candidate who has spoken for and stood for change and integrity from before his political career started, and the candidate who has resorted to making bald faced, demonstrably false and misleading lies that in a non-political context would be grounds for a successful slander/libel suit." Oh, I see: you're pretending that the first describes one candidate and the second describes the other. You do realize that both statements are true of each major party candidate, right?
Sounds to me like you should vote for a different candidate.
Next time you check, look in the Pacific Northwest.
Have you thought about hiring a P.R. agency?
Creating complex mortgage-backed derivatives is fine; it's erroneously valuing them that caused the problems. If the loan risk had been accurately assessed, fewer bad loans would have been issued (because high risk loans wouldn't be able to be sold as low risk), the housing bubble wouldn't have been as big and banks wouldn't have liquidity problems when their "assets" turn out to be less valuable than they thought.
I realize that "deregulated" is an idiom. (When you de[verb] something, it means that you no longer [verb] it.) However, using the idiomatic definition of "deregulated" doesn't support your argument that these economic problems are due to an "unfettered free market", because changing some regulations didn't create one.
You've essentially restated my post using more correct terminology and reaching the opposite conclusion. The mortgage market was not "deregulated" it was "regulated differently", with unintended consequences galore. The US government monitored things closely, tweaking interest rates etc. and choosing to allow the market to continue, valuing economic growth over other factors. The US economy is not an unfettered free market.
I agree, but...
This oversimplifies. Most of the population is clustered around the average (in a normal distribution bell curve), and there's little functional difference between the 25th percentile and the 75th percentile.
A case can certainly be made that there's no need to force "average" people (within one standard deviation of the mean?) into college. We need smart (functional) people in the skilled trades too.
To what problem do you refer? Banks failing, low housing values, too much credit, too much inflation, something else?
I think the problem is that perverse incentives created by law led to inappropriate lending, packaging of loans into financial instruments that were bought and sold, and overrated trustworthiness of those packages. The inappropriate lending contributed to a housing bubble which, when it popped, caused those financial packages to drop in value so much that over-exposed banks fail. Some hedged against that risk by insuring themselves with companies like AIG. (Oops.)
It's an incredibly complex situation that nobody understands fully, governed by a spaghetti code of laws and regulations worldwide. How does "unfettered free market economics" describe things at all? Or by "unfettered free market economics" did you mean "the desire of bankers to make money"?
In an unfettered free market, failing businesses are not bailed out by the government.
I hope so too. Interestingly, a poster in another discussion pointed out that the Chrome privacy policy does explicitly mention such a fingerprinting scheme.
Isn't their tracking currently based on cookies? A browser that calls home (or implements some sort of fingerprinting technology) could link cookies from one session to the next.
Yes, and you can still see it today: post HTML to usenet, or send HTML email (or a Word doc with nothing but plain text in it) to your local UNIX longbeard.
That's a silly comparison too. California doesn't pay the federal government, rich people who live in California do. Do you endorse lowering taxes on rich people to even out this apparent imbalance?
What I don't understand is this: how can they check that box without supporting the format? My understanding is that it's an unimplementable hodgepodge that's not fully supported by any version of MS Office to date.
This is a potential disaster. Millions, or even billions, of cyber warfare dollars are at stake that cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of the Army or Navy.
If there is a limited supply of health care providers in an area, that's true, but that's the exception not the rule. 99% of health care doesn't require a hospital and 99% of people live in an area with multiple providers. Even in the US there aren't very many remote towns left.
Even then, in many ways you can choose to live without your "health". Drugs from the 80s are patent expired. The absolute newest treatments will always be expensive, as they are now, but they won't be so expensive that providers can't make money from them. Since expensive life or death treatments are rare, they are candidates for catastrophic insurance, which is cheaper because it doesn't have to cover maintenance activities like regular checkups (though it would probably require them, or give a discount for customers who get regular checkups).
There's nothing magic about a "free market". What I would like to try is a market that doesn't have artificially inflated prices.
So the problem is the perception of libertarians, not that sweatshop workers are taken advantage of?
By charging less you gain more customers and make more money. There's an old cartoon that illustrates this: a kid is selling lemonade for $1,000,000 a cup on the theory that he only needs to sell one cup and then he'll be set for life. If prescription drug coverage went away, only a handful of people would be able to afford (new, still patented) prescription drugs, so to maximize their income the drug companies would lower prices. Some claim that this would slow down future drug research, but I'm skeptical.
Costs of procedures and visits would decrease, as they've done in the area of cosmetic surgery (which is typically not covered by health insurance).
No, the social welfare system I mentioned in my previous post would cover them. It could afford to do so because there would be fewer of them, because lowered health care costs would make it easier for people to afford to pay for their own health care directly.
The question I don't know the answer to is this: what about people who make foolish health-related decisions, like going to McDonald's instead of taking their kids to the doctor? There are, and will, always be people who choose to live large at the cost of their health. Should society allow people to make bad decisions? In theory yes, but in practice it's awfully difficult.
I'm certainly no expert, but I'd start by excluding employer- and government-sponsored health insurance from the default case, and take health care providers out of the communications loop between patient and insurance. Health care providers then have much less overhead and can compete on the basis of cost and services without artificial prices set by group negotiations or Medicare. Health maintenance activities (like regular checkups) then become inexpensive enough to pay out of pocket, and would probably be required by insurance policies that cover catastrophic medical events. Without prescription drug coverage, drug prices would decrease (so that the drug manufacturers could make more money).
There are lots of corner cases that would need to be explored though. What about people with chronic conditions, such as myself? I can afford my regular treatment but others might not be able to. Possibly, if prices dropped in the above scenario, it would then be cost effective for the government to provide a safety net for (the smaller number of) people who can't afford to treat their conditions.
I'm already there. On my last trip I arrived 14 hours late because of airline problems. It would have been faster to drive.