Great, if that's the way you feel, tell me your social security number, credit card numbers, and the details about your last sexual encounter and I'll use my freedom of speech to broadcast that information all over the world. Oh yes, you have to throw in your name, you stupid and anonymous troll.
There are different kinds of information.
Now I'll reveal the only reason I replied: To make the request that you designate me as your "foe" and we can mutually ignore each other forever and ever.
I have rather better uses for my time than pretending to have serious discussions with nameless fools.
The strong evidence of your new Subject: (which I returned to the original Subject:) is that you're just a troll. If so, please mark me as foe and we'll gladly ignore each other.
If you are sincere, then I ask you to explain what you mean. What is the legal distinction between a bank asking you to complete a loan application that reveals some information about your financial history, and the bank's computer asking your PODS to reveal certain information in support of your request for a loan? (There are various other provisions that are also equal in the two situations. For example, you will still need to provide proof of your identity in both cases, and the bank will still need to check the accuracy of any data you provide, either directly or via your PODS.)
Providing a link to a news article about the passage of a law with a short summary is not a sufficient answer.
I already covered your second point, but I'll expand upon it. When they store the information on your machine, they can add a checksum that will prevent you from tampering with it. If that is not sufficient, they could include a condition of the loan that you allow them to encrypt the file before storing it on your machine. They would retain the decryption key, and would still need to ask you for the file and explain why they wanted it at any future time. (In general, most of these information requests could be handled and enforced automatically by your personal privacy policy, which you would also create on your PODS. I'm also taking a bit of liberty in assuming that the backup issue has been resolved, but that's a separate issue with many possible solutions. Another aspect I don't want to go farther into right now is how broadcast requests can simulate the data centralization issue--since there are always at least two parties to each commercial transaction. However the answers to those queries do not need to persist beyond the completion of a new transaction.)
Your first point is at the heart of my comment. Of course the people who have your information will not voluntarily give it up. Knowledge is power, and ceteris paribus, of course they (the corporations and the governments) will prefer to maximize their own power over we, the peasants. (Okay, grammatically it should be "us" there, but you surely know why I want the "we" form.) The laws to require them not to keep the information would be new, but the legal principle is not. This is actually the natural extension of the Bill of Rights protections against illegal search and seizure, and the requirements that the police show good cause to an impartial judge before they intrude upon your person and your property.
What is happening now is that technology is changing in ways that are making those protections meaningless. We need to establish borders for personal privacy, or these important rights will become meaningless. Or are you ready to live in a world where everything about you is public knowledge? From birth, considering this new Dutch system...
I know you're playing a word game on PODS (personally owned data storage) versus Apple's iPod, but actually this is a good example of potentially significant information that you currently have pretty good control over, since most of it is in your control. You might be willing to share information about your musical tastes, for example to look for new friends with similar interests, or you might not want to. However, that decision should be YOURS, not Apple's. I don't yet know if Apple is making any sales pitches based on your musical preferences, but do you want them to?
Try thinking of it in terms of the Fifth Amendment. I admit that this is an aspect which I haven't specifically researched, but I've never heard of a child trying to take the Fifth. While in general parents do have strong legal rights over their own children, I don't think they could interfere with the police searching for evidence of child abuse, and in this case, the police would (and with good reason) be able to get a warrant to open the child's PODS if it seemed likely to contain evidence relevant to such an investigation.
What is happening now is that more and more of your personal information is being stored "out there" somewhere, by companies that turn around and buy and sell us.
Another trivial example, but I never knowingly agreed that my credit information should be collected and become part of the database of a very profitable credit information company. However, according to existing laws (if I understand American law correctly), they now own that information and there is nothing I can do about it. (There is a slight loophole now insofar as recent legal interventions now give us some access to that personal information, and even limited rights to challenge the validity of some of it.)
This is just the natural extension of what's been going on over the last few decades, and the movement to the governmental level is just the natural limit. The potential for abuse is enormous--and you can basically rest assured such power over individuals will be abused. Perhaps not so much by the Dutch, who are basically reasonable people (IMO), but there are lots of much less reasonable governments out there.
The operative legal principle should be that our personal information belongs to the individual, and if someone (even someone who works for the government and who "wants to help you") wants to store data about you, they should be required to store that information on YOUR PODS (personally owned data storage). Easy enough to use a checksum to prevent you from modifying the information, but if they want to see it again, they should be required to say why, and you should have the right to agree or disagree to their proposed use of your personal information.
Trivial example, if you want to borrow money from a bank, then the bank would have good reason to query your PODS for information about your financial history. If you don't agree to provide enough information, then the bank is not going to agree to the loan. However, once they've made the decision to loan you the money, they should store the records on your own PODS, and erase most of the personal information at their end. Once you've finished paying off the loan, they'd have no reason to keep any of your personal information (though the records would still be stored on your computer if you want them again, as for another loan).
Boy, I'm actually glad I don't have any mod points. That one post would eat three of them: insightful, funny, and redundant. Actually it would probably need two redundants, one for content of the Microsoft motto, and one for all the other 'Microsoft opposed to "Don't be evil"' posts.
Now if I could just tie it to Dubya, it would be a perfect/. comment?
Do I need to be more explicit? I am quite aware of the differences between the original Roman Empire and the various later governments that wanted to use the title. My point was precisely that the neo-cons are just as deluded as the "Holy Romans", and equally foolish in pursuit of their idealized fantasy of a legendary Rome. In particular, they like to imagine that the Romans were able to impose peace through their overwhelming force, though the reality there is that Rome was almost always at war with someone, though most of the wars were relatively minor and far from Rome itself.
There's nothing new in that part of it. It's called self defense. However, "self defense" has no relation to this new idea that "I imagine you are thinking about attacking me, so that means I can kill you first."
The fundamental problem here is that BushCo is too stupid to understand reality when it doesn't match what they want to believe. Iraq is the obvious case in point. Containment was working quite well enough, and there was nothing pre-emptive or self-defensive about the anti-Saddam war. Not to say that containment was perfect, but it was a pretty good bet that Saddam was going to die by blinking before he could get loose, and a very good bet he could not have inflicted $200 billion worth of damage in the very worst cases imaginable. Hey, Dubya lost an entire major city and they've only budgeted $50 billion (so far) for the recovery. In terms of loss of life, bad management is evening things out again...
I think the real beneficiaries of this crazy policy will probably be the smaller nuclear powers like Pakistan, Israel, or Taiwan, who will be sorely tempted to do Joe jobs on their enemies. In such situations, such countries are much too weak--but if they can use this "doctrine" in a "proper" judo fashion, America will do the heavy work for them.
It only takes one nuclear bomb to ruin your entire day. If you happen to live in the targeted city, it will be quite mutual enough for you and all of your neighbors.
This is actually a kind of complicated intersection of several forms of insanity. For example, Dubya's flavor is that he buys into religious forms of Armageddon, so he thinks America needs lots of nuclear bombs to join the party "properly". The neo-cons have delusions of recreating a new Holy Roman Empire, with nuclear bombs replacing the legions. Cheney is the best example of the most toys faction, as in "He who dies with the most toys wins."
In reality, might does NOT make right, and trying to sustain modern civilization with the law of the jungle is going to produce a whole lot of dead Tarzans. The more nuclear weapons one side plays with, the more weapons the other sides will want to play with, and it's the richest players who wind up with the most to lose, and the poorest players who can roll for broke. No blinking allowed.
I'm not a pacifist, by the way. I know that the nuclear genie is not going to go back into the bottle, and the only way to have real peace is if you are ready to use sufficient force against anyone who wants to become violent. However, "sufficient" does not mean "absolute and overwhelming", because there is no such thing. What the world really needs is enough good nations that are capable of working together to face down the threats--which is almost exactly the situation that existed in Iraq in the '90s.
However, I also think that the "just use of force" has an even more important aspect than keeping it to the sufficient level. That's a matter of personal attitude. The just use of force should be done with the proverbial heavy heart and in the face of true necessity. It shouldn't be imagined as a real-life version of a video game or some kind of cowboy romp, which is how most of the Rusheviks and Busheviks see it. You can actually map this all the way down to your local policeman: Of course you want your local policeman to know how to quickly and efficiently apply enough force for each situation, but I do not want a policeman who enjoys the use of force, or even one who has become indifferent to the use of it.
Well, I think you're trying to get to an important theme there, but you don't present it very well. That's as much of a problem as in the original article's fuzzy presentation of its hypothesis. Trying to struggle through his turbid mumbling, I think he's saying it's a problem with process. Kind of a lowest common denominator during the publication process where the articles get dumbed down to the speed of the slowest horse. (Like the cavalry, get it?)
Anyway, I basically reject his fuzzy hypothesis in favor of a clarifed version of what you may have been trying to say. To whit:
There are reasons for dumbing things down in "free" advertiser-sponsored media, and that is the root of the problem for science reporting, too. While there were some tendencies earlier, I think it really started developing in the radio days, reached new heights in the days of television, and (very sadly) is the direction that most of the Internet is going.
These publishers are NOT interested in created better informed and more selective thinkers. Remember who is paying the bill: the ADVERTISERS. What do advertisers want? The best educated customers? Nope. Only one advertiser (for a given product category) wants that, the one who makes the product offering the best value. If all of the potential customers were equally well educated, there would be slight variation for individual needs, but by and large all of them would select the same product, and all of the other makers would go down the tubes.
Except for the actual maker of the product with the best value, all of the other advertisers want to lie to you, and they've become VERY good at it. Lousy science reporting is just one of the minor symptoms of this social affliction. The current crops of miserable failures in political offices is much more serious.
Well, I'm surprised, almost fascinated, that you mentioned the 17th Amendment, since I agree that it is one of the ones that has the highest return of damage with the least recognition of damage done. However, I think that this is a case where real change was needed, and the problem was in an unclear understanding of the problems resulting in a sideways response that actually increased the concentration of powers. It would have made much more sense and been in closer accord with the intentions of the founders to make the Senate a more money-centered institution. The natural way to do that would have been to have Senatorial districts that were allocated on the basis of federal taxes paid. However, the necessary wrinkle that never could have been accepted would have been for the votes for Senators to also reflect actual taxes paid... That reform would have clearly strengthened the division within the legislative branch, where the Founders had intended the Senate to represent higher-level interests.
As far as the parties being equivalent, I think you are quite wrong. Yes, within an open two-party system there is a strong pressure for both parties to adopt the same successful strategies and abandon the same flawed strategies. However, there are differences in priorities and in the kinds of politicians who tend to join the two parties. Those differences tend to be stable over long periods of time. For example, for many years the racists tended to be Southern Democrats, but now almost all of them have become Reagan Republicans. (However, it's only a complicated accident that so many of them finally converted during Reagan's time.)
By way of clarification, I do not regard myself as a "Democrat". The primary designation right now would probably be "very disillusioned and embittered American". It really hurts to watch my nation being destroyed--but it seems to be the natural evolution of things.
The system the Founders devised was the best they could come up with to balance powers, but it has evolved into a winner-take-all oligarchy. Therefore, there are only two stable scenarios. One scenario is two roughly balanced parties that slug it out in a battle for the middle, and the voters of America have favored that scenario much of the time. The other scenario is a single party of overwhelming power, which is where we seem to have arrived at now.
Yes, there are many legitimate positions on many issues, but in this system it is rarely advantageous even to separate your position from the other party, and there's no room for third parties to play any role apart from spoiler.
Even though I regard you as a fool, you asked politely enough and with your handle attached, so:
Example of faith-based fanatic: Dubya Bush his very self.
Example of short-term profiteer: Dick Cheney.
Example of deluded and power-crazed neo-con: Karl Rove.
According to your comment, you're probably in the same boat of suckers as Dubya, and you're being cruelly used, too. Note that the actual policy decisions are not made in Dubya's category, though some of the decisions are made for the sake of pandering to that crowd.
I do thank you for designating me as a foe. Based on what I think of you, I'm basically satisifed. It would be even better if you had other undesirable characteristics, like working for the mafia.
There must be more to this story than appears in the cited article or in the link that claims to have all of the email involved. This entire thing sounds like another urban legend. You expect us to believe that real people lost their real jobs for this bit of sniping?
Or maybe the point of the joke is that law firms really are lousy places to work? I'd heard rumors to that effect, though my own brief experiences weren't so bad (in days of yore when I sometimes worked as a temporary word processor specialist).
Gosh, even for an anonymous coward that's an obtuse and stupid remark.
Should we thank you for yet another example of/. abuse of anonymity? Admitedly, the specific abuse of saying really stupid things in public is a relatively minor abuse, but I'd bet a dollar to your donut you wouldn't do it with your name attached.
The problems in New Orleans and NASA have nothing to do with a shortage of private investment. The problems are irrational worship of a fantasized memory of what the less worshipful people call the "Robber Baron Era". In a rational and balanced reality, you should be considering which tasks need to be performed by government, and which should be performed outside of government, which need to be regulated, and which can be left to the old "invisible hand". (Private investments are naturally rational, and irrational investors go bankrupt.)
In the case of New Orleans, the required investments in levees have consistently returned large benefits to the society. Because of the excellent location of the city, it was an efficient hub for shipping that benefited not just the Mississippi River basin, but the entire nation, and even the world. Sure, other ports exist and competed with New Orleans, but the city's ongoing prosperity was proof of how it contributed to the prosperity of all the other communities that helped pay the taxes that maintained the levees.
In the case of NASA, the people who talk about privatization are consistently clueless about the real numbers involved. Actually, this is also complicated by the fact that most of the return on space exploration is in the form of knowledge that has no short-term market value that could attract investors.
However, both New Orleans and NASA are suffering from the side effects of incompetent leadership at higher levels. Some of them are faith-based fanatics who can't deal with the complexities of the real world. Others are short-term profiteers whose only real mission is to steal as much money from the government as possible. A few of them even have delusions of recreating the Holy Roman Empire.
Whatever. For all of them the same response is appropriate. As Rocky said to Bullwinkle, "That trick never works."
You seem to think we have something to discuss. My only request is that you mark me as a foe for the convenience of not having to look at your tripe. Perhaps even a mutual convenience if you are able to figure out how to use the/. settings appropriately.
Do you need a detailed explanation of how the "foe" setting works? Or just more practice? I'm volunteering, and I assure you I won't be too sad never to see any of your comments again.
The facts are widely available. If you are interested, go study them and cure your ignorance. There are many points in your posts which contradict the facts, so you have plenty of places to start. However, many points in your reply also suggest you have some problems with reading comprehension.
If you are just lying, then you already know it, and I'm not going to waste my time beyond asking you to designate me as a foe. If I had my druthers, all liars would mark me a foe and I'd be able to greatly reduce the amount of time required to filter out their garbage. (Interesting that since I switched to this "truth-based" sig, far more people have been marking me one way or the other.)
Well, well, well. Not doing so well once you get beyond the scope of your talking point memo, are you?
I'm going to be polite about it and pretend you're just ignorant and deluded, not a malicious liar (though I think there is more evidence for the latter than the former). Therefore I'm going to put the response in the form of the famous real estate joke:
Q: What three things determine the value of a piece of property?
A: Location, location, and location.
New Orleans is at a unique location, and that is why it has been so valuable for hundreds of years. Value that extended far beyond the state of Louisiana, but especially for the entire Mississippi River basin. Given a small and reasonable investment, it would have and should have continued to generate substantial profit.
Except for Dubya's extraordinary incompetence and string of miserable failures, this was a crisis that the city could have avoided. The economic and human losses are stupdendous, but merchandise will continue to be shipped. (Worth noting that those added shipping costs will now have negative impact.)
However, I think the cultural aspects may be least replaceable. "Old" New Orleans was one of the most unique and original American "melting pot" creations. That need not have been lost, but I think many aspects are probably gone forever.
But meanwhile, he's decided to invade Grenada again! After all, it was good enough for his idol Ronald Reagan when the terrorists killed all those marines in Lebanon, and there are also proven links between Grenada and terrorist hurricanes!
Yeah, I'm also unable to decide if that's funny or serious. However, my guess is that most soldiers would prefer to invade Grenada over Iraq.
Okay, so we know you're on the mailing list for the latest BushCo talking points to spin off this latest disaster on Dubya's watch. So sorry to kick you in the reality shinbone.
The Mississippi River extends through a number of states, and controlling the flood plain is NOT a local problem. New Orleans is on land that was deposited by the river, and is part of a much larger system that extends well beyond Louisiana. It obviously calls for coordinated regional flood management, and the federal government accepted the responsibility, which was assigned to the Army Corps of Engineers. In general, ACE performed the job well, and in exchange, New Orleans has been a major economic asset for the entire nation, acting as a natural transshipment point for much of the nation's shipping.
BushCo had other political priorities, such as diverting infrastructure funding to support an unnecessary invasion of Iraq. One of the honchos of the ACE (#2?) resigned partly because of the defunding of crucial work in New Orleans. Before 2000, in the previous series of projects, over $400 million had been spent for work related to New Orleans, and the plans had scheduled about $250 million for the last few years--though BushCo had cut it drastically. In exchange for those prior investments, New Orleans had provided billions of dollars of real value to the national economy.
BushCo's plan for next year was to continue cutting the funding, even though this is the kind of funding where the need accumulates. Cutting the money in previous years has only increased the need for more spending--and BushCo responded with even less. The inevitable result was a disaster like this one. Now we get to spend billions of dollars for repairs. However, the human costs are the largest.
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
This disaster is a perfect example of high tech irrelevance. (Most of this entire/. discussion, too.) The technology of building levees is really old, and quite mature. The engineers (mostly the responsibility of the Army Corps of Engineers for many years) knew New Orleans was vulnerable, and they knew the levees needed more work all the time. Dubya had other priorities, and after a couple of years of neglect, this is the result.
Here are some simple facts. Over the last few years before 2000, they spent over $400 million on flood control for that area. They (the engineers) recommended spending about $250 million over the last 5 years, but that was reduced to a much smaller amount, and was going to be cut again next year. The levees were never going to "heal themselves". The trend line of deteriorating levees, reduced maintenance, and periodic hurricanes could only end exactly where it did--in a major disaster.
The direct costs of cleaning up the mess will be in the billions of dollars. The indirect costs of "losing" an entire major city are surely going to be enormous, but we don't have any basis to really estimate those, since America has never had to shut down an entire major city before. I can't even imagine what costs we should attribute for all those dead people.
Now for the punchline. In 2004, the voters of Louisiana voted in favor of continuing the policies that led them to this disaster. Accurate voting is another low-tech technology.
Right now the technologies they need are called food, clothing, and shelter.
Slashdot Mirror
There are different kinds of information.
Now I'll reveal the only reason I replied: To make the request that you designate me as your "foe" and we can mutually ignore each other forever and ever.
I have rather better uses for my time than pretending to have serious discussions with nameless fools.
If you are sincere, then I ask you to explain what you mean. What is the legal distinction between a bank asking you to complete a loan application that reveals some information about your financial history, and the bank's computer asking your PODS to reveal certain information in support of your request for a loan? (There are various other provisions that are also equal in the two situations. For example, you will still need to provide proof of your identity in both cases, and the bank will still need to check the accuracy of any data you provide, either directly or via your PODS.)
Providing a link to a news article about the passage of a law with a short summary is not a sufficient answer.
Your first point is at the heart of my comment. Of course the people who have your information will not voluntarily give it up. Knowledge is power, and ceteris paribus, of course they (the corporations and the governments) will prefer to maximize their own power over we, the peasants. (Okay, grammatically it should be "us" there, but you surely know why I want the "we" form.) The laws to require them not to keep the information would be new, but the legal principle is not. This is actually the natural extension of the Bill of Rights protections against illegal search and seizure, and the requirements that the police show good cause to an impartial judge before they intrude upon your person and your property.
What is happening now is that technology is changing in ways that are making those protections meaningless. We need to establish borders for personal privacy, or these important rights will become meaningless. Or are you ready to live in a world where everything about you is public knowledge? From birth, considering this new Dutch system...
I know you're playing a word game on PODS (personally owned data storage) versus Apple's iPod, but actually this is a good example of potentially significant information that you currently have pretty good control over, since most of it is in your control. You might be willing to share information about your musical tastes, for example to look for new friends with similar interests, or you might not want to. However, that decision should be YOURS, not Apple's. I don't yet know if Apple is making any sales pitches based on your musical preferences, but do you want them to?
What is happening now is that more and more of your personal information is being stored "out there" somewhere, by companies that turn around and buy and sell us.
Another trivial example, but I never knowingly agreed that my credit information should be collected and become part of the database of a very profitable credit information company. However, according to existing laws (if I understand American law correctly), they now own that information and there is nothing I can do about it. (There is a slight loophole now insofar as recent legal interventions now give us some access to that personal information, and even limited rights to challenge the validity of some of it.)
The operative legal principle should be that our personal information belongs to the individual, and if someone (even someone who works for the government and who "wants to help you") wants to store data about you, they should be required to store that information on YOUR PODS (personally owned data storage). Easy enough to use a checksum to prevent you from modifying the information, but if they want to see it again, they should be required to say why, and you should have the right to agree or disagree to their proposed use of your personal information.
Trivial example, if you want to borrow money from a bank, then the bank would have good reason to query your PODS for information about your financial history. If you don't agree to provide enough information, then the bank is not going to agree to the loan. However, once they've made the decision to loan you the money, they should store the records on your own PODS, and erase most of the personal information at their end. Once you've finished paying off the loan, they'd have no reason to keep any of your personal information (though the records would still be stored on your computer if you want them again, as for another loan).
Now if I could just tie it to Dubya, it would be a perfect /. comment?
Do I need to be more explicit? I am quite aware of the differences between the original Roman Empire and the various later governments that wanted to use the title. My point was precisely that the neo-cons are just as deluded as the "Holy Romans", and equally foolish in pursuit of their idealized fantasy of a legendary Rome. In particular, they like to imagine that the Romans were able to impose peace through their overwhelming force, though the reality there is that Rome was almost always at war with someone, though most of the wars were relatively minor and far from Rome itself.
The fundamental problem here is that BushCo is too stupid to understand reality when it doesn't match what they want to believe. Iraq is the obvious case in point. Containment was working quite well enough, and there was nothing pre-emptive or self-defensive about the anti-Saddam war. Not to say that containment was perfect, but it was a pretty good bet that Saddam was going to die by blinking before he could get loose, and a very good bet he could not have inflicted $200 billion worth of damage in the very worst cases imaginable. Hey, Dubya lost an entire major city and they've only budgeted $50 billion (so far) for the recovery. In terms of loss of life, bad management is evening things out again...
I think the real beneficiaries of this crazy policy will probably be the smaller nuclear powers like Pakistan, Israel, or Taiwan, who will be sorely tempted to do Joe jobs on their enemies. In such situations, such countries are much too weak--but if they can use this "doctrine" in a "proper" judo fashion, America will do the heavy work for them.
This is actually a kind of complicated intersection of several forms of insanity. For example, Dubya's flavor is that he buys into religious forms of Armageddon, so he thinks America needs lots of nuclear bombs to join the party "properly". The neo-cons have delusions of recreating a new Holy Roman Empire, with nuclear bombs replacing the legions. Cheney is the best example of the most toys faction, as in "He who dies with the most toys wins."
In reality, might does NOT make right, and trying to sustain modern civilization with the law of the jungle is going to produce a whole lot of dead Tarzans. The more nuclear weapons one side plays with, the more weapons the other sides will want to play with, and it's the richest players who wind up with the most to lose, and the poorest players who can roll for broke. No blinking allowed.
I'm not a pacifist, by the way. I know that the nuclear genie is not going to go back into the bottle, and the only way to have real peace is if you are ready to use sufficient force against anyone who wants to become violent. However, "sufficient" does not mean "absolute and overwhelming", because there is no such thing. What the world really needs is enough good nations that are capable of working together to face down the threats--which is almost exactly the situation that existed in Iraq in the '90s.
However, I also think that the "just use of force" has an even more important aspect than keeping it to the sufficient level. That's a matter of personal attitude. The just use of force should be done with the proverbial heavy heart and in the face of true necessity. It shouldn't be imagined as a real-life version of a video game or some kind of cowboy romp, which is how most of the Rusheviks and Busheviks see it. You can actually map this all the way down to your local policeman: Of course you want your local policeman to know how to quickly and efficiently apply enough force for each situation, but I do not want a policeman who enjoys the use of force, or even one who has become indifferent to the use of it.
Anyway, I basically reject his fuzzy hypothesis in favor of a clarifed version of what you may have been trying to say. To whit:
There are reasons for dumbing things down in "free" advertiser-sponsored media, and that is the root of the problem for science reporting, too. While there were some tendencies earlier, I think it really started developing in the radio days, reached new heights in the days of television, and (very sadly) is the direction that most of the Internet is going.
These publishers are NOT interested in created better informed and more selective thinkers. Remember who is paying the bill: the ADVERTISERS. What do advertisers want? The best educated customers? Nope. Only one advertiser (for a given product category) wants that, the one who makes the product offering the best value. If all of the potential customers were equally well educated, there would be slight variation for individual needs, but by and large all of them would select the same product, and all of the other makers would go down the tubes.
Except for the actual maker of the product with the best value, all of the other advertisers want to lie to you, and they've become VERY good at it. Lousy science reporting is just one of the minor symptoms of this social affliction. The current crops of miserable failures in political offices is much more serious.
As far as the parties being equivalent, I think you are quite wrong. Yes, within an open two-party system there is a strong pressure for both parties to adopt the same successful strategies and abandon the same flawed strategies. However, there are differences in priorities and in the kinds of politicians who tend to join the two parties. Those differences tend to be stable over long periods of time. For example, for many years the racists tended to be Southern Democrats, but now almost all of them have become Reagan Republicans. (However, it's only a complicated accident that so many of them finally converted during Reagan's time.)
The system the Founders devised was the best they could come up with to balance powers, but it has evolved into a winner-take-all oligarchy. Therefore, there are only two stable scenarios. One scenario is two roughly balanced parties that slug it out in a battle for the middle, and the voters of America have favored that scenario much of the time. The other scenario is a single party of overwhelming power, which is where we seem to have arrived at now.
Yes, there are many legitimate positions on many issues, but in this system it is rarely advantageous even to separate your position from the other party, and there's no room for third parties to play any role apart from spoiler.
Example of faith-based fanatic: Dubya Bush his very self.
Example of short-term profiteer: Dick Cheney.
Example of deluded and power-crazed neo-con: Karl Rove.
According to your comment, you're probably in the same boat of suckers as Dubya, and you're being cruelly used, too. Note that the actual policy decisions are not made in Dubya's category, though some of the decisions are made for the sake of pandering to that crowd.
I do thank you for designating me as a foe. Based on what I think of you, I'm basically satisifed. It would be even better if you had other undesirable characteristics, like working for the mafia.
Or maybe the point of the joke is that law firms really are lousy places to work? I'd heard rumors to that effect, though my own brief experiences weren't so bad (in days of yore when I sometimes worked as a temporary word processor specialist).
Should we thank you for yet another example of /. abuse of anonymity? Admitedly, the specific abuse of saying really stupid things in public is a relatively minor abuse, but I'd bet a dollar to your donut you wouldn't do it with your name attached.
In the case of New Orleans, the required investments in levees have consistently returned large benefits to the society. Because of the excellent location of the city, it was an efficient hub for shipping that benefited not just the Mississippi River basin, but the entire nation, and even the world. Sure, other ports exist and competed with New Orleans, but the city's ongoing prosperity was proof of how it contributed to the prosperity of all the other communities that helped pay the taxes that maintained the levees.
In the case of NASA, the people who talk about privatization are consistently clueless about the real numbers involved. Actually, this is also complicated by the fact that most of the return on space exploration is in the form of knowledge that has no short-term market value that could attract investors.
However, both New Orleans and NASA are suffering from the side effects of incompetent leadership at higher levels. Some of them are faith-based fanatics who can't deal with the complexities of the real world. Others are short-term profiteers whose only real mission is to steal as much money from the government as possible. A few of them even have delusions of recreating the Holy Roman Empire.
Whatever. For all of them the same response is appropriate. As Rocky said to Bullwinkle, "That trick never works."
You seem to think we have something to discuss. My only request is that you mark me as a foe for the convenience of not having to look at your tripe. Perhaps even a mutual convenience if you are able to figure out how to use the /. settings appropriately.
Do you need a detailed explanation of how the "foe" setting works? Or just more practice? I'm volunteering, and I assure you I won't be too sad never to see any of your comments again.
If you are just lying, then you already know it, and I'm not going to waste my time beyond asking you to designate me as a foe. If I had my druthers, all liars would mark me a foe and I'd be able to greatly reduce the amount of time required to filter out their garbage. (Interesting that since I switched to this "truth-based" sig, far more people have been marking me one way or the other.)
All I'm asking is that you add me to your foe list so that I won't see any of your tripe in the future.
I'm going to be polite about it and pretend you're just ignorant and deluded, not a malicious liar (though I think there is more evidence for the latter than the former). Therefore I'm going to put the response in the form of the famous real estate joke:
Q: What three things determine the value of a piece of property?
A: Location, location, and location.
New Orleans is at a unique location, and that is why it has been so valuable for hundreds of years. Value that extended far beyond the state of Louisiana, but especially for the entire Mississippi River basin. Given a small and reasonable investment, it would have and should have continued to generate substantial profit.
Except for Dubya's extraordinary incompetence and string of miserable failures, this was a crisis that the city could have avoided. The economic and human losses are stupdendous, but merchandise will continue to be shipped. (Worth noting that those added shipping costs will now have negative impact.)
However, I think the cultural aspects may be least replaceable. "Old" New Orleans was one of the most unique and original American "melting pot" creations. That need not have been lost, but I think many aspects are probably gone forever.
Yeah, I'm also unable to decide if that's funny or serious. However, my guess is that most soldiers would prefer to invade Grenada over Iraq.
The Mississippi River extends through a number of states, and controlling the flood plain is NOT a local problem. New Orleans is on land that was deposited by the river, and is part of a much larger system that extends well beyond Louisiana. It obviously calls for coordinated regional flood management, and the federal government accepted the responsibility, which was assigned to the Army Corps of Engineers. In general, ACE performed the job well, and in exchange, New Orleans has been a major economic asset for the entire nation, acting as a natural transshipment point for much of the nation's shipping.
BushCo had other political priorities, such as diverting infrastructure funding to support an unnecessary invasion of Iraq. One of the honchos of the ACE (#2?) resigned partly because of the defunding of crucial work in New Orleans. Before 2000, in the previous series of projects, over $400 million had been spent for work related to New Orleans, and the plans had scheduled about $250 million for the last few years--though BushCo had cut it drastically. In exchange for those prior investments, New Orleans had provided billions of dollars of real value to the national economy.
BushCo's plan for next year was to continue cutting the funding, even though this is the kind of funding where the need accumulates. Cutting the money in previous years has only increased the need for more spending--and BushCo responded with even less. The inevitable result was a disaster like this one. Now we get to spend billions of dollars for repairs. However, the human costs are the largest.
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
Here are some simple facts. Over the last few years before 2000, they spent over $400 million on flood control for that area. They (the engineers) recommended spending about $250 million over the last 5 years, but that was reduced to a much smaller amount, and was going to be cut again next year. The levees were never going to "heal themselves". The trend line of deteriorating levees, reduced maintenance, and periodic hurricanes could only end exactly where it did--in a major disaster.
The direct costs of cleaning up the mess will be in the billions of dollars. The indirect costs of "losing" an entire major city are surely going to be enormous, but we don't have any basis to really estimate those, since America has never had to shut down an entire major city before. I can't even imagine what costs we should attribute for all those dead people.
Now for the punchline. In 2004, the voters of Louisiana voted in favor of continuing the policies that led them to this disaster. Accurate voting is another low-tech technology.
Right now the technologies they need are called food, clothing, and shelter.