... but government regulating fluorinated water is a serious issue. It is an abuse of democracy for 51% of the voters to force certain choices upon the remainder, at least when they are innocent of any crime. Fluoride has a scientifically proven benefit, but ingestion is not necessary for that benefit. In fact, ingestion is questionably harmful. In other words, not everyone agrees when it comes to costs versus benefits analysis.
The question here is whether we need government to protect us from something that isn't actually happening, and that could just as easily be handled by informed consumers fleeing any ISP who alters content negatively.
Personally, I wouldn't mind BitTorrent traffic being discriminated based on protocol content rather than volume, at least not for lost-cost, shared internet services where BitTorrent (and similar) traffic takes away from the available bandwidth. It should be consumer choice, not one-size-fits-all regulation, that decides which ISP uses particular rules.
Tim Berners-Lee talks about the internet as if everyone gets to enjoy 100% of the bandwidth "volume" that they purchase. That was true when T1 lines and phone modems were the only choices. Now that we have more options, including shared bandwidth technologies such as DSL and Cable, it makes sense that some providers will shape traffic to favor one type of protocol versus another - i.e. based on content instead of volume - because you have to pay a lot more to get exclusive access to bandwidth.
This seems like a tragedy of the commons, because as internet becomes cheaper, people start to believe that it is a right or that the internet can be taken over by a central authority. Legislation could end up raising costs for everyone, or lowering performance - and the ISPs may never censor anyway.
My view is this: With all of the real problems we have, can't we just agree to keep an eye on the internet and solve the problems that are killing people for now?
Part two: All older forms of media are highly regulated by the government, and they're almost completely corrupt. Does nobody see the problem with jumping the gun to regulate the internet? Government rules will just accelerate the corruption of the internet, which is certainly the hidden agenda here.
Very good point. However, I would say that there is a difference between just "looking" at code versus doing a thorough review. Thorough reviews are expensive and rare, but when done properly they would reveal the purpose of every line of code. The trouble is that you can't really guarantee a good code review unless you do it yourself, or really trust the person or people doing the review.
OpenBSD seems to be one of the groups where they focus on this sort of thing, specifically.
In other words, I agree with the statement in the subject - "Could be hard" - but I would say that the sole distinguishing feature of OpenBSD is that they have always focused on exactly this kind of difficult code review / audit. If anyone is going to do it right, it's probably OpenBSD.
Why does anyone think the government will do a good job of making our choices for us?
If large social networking sites are really a problem because they wall off data, then why are people on those sites? People should be able to recognize the problem for themselves and join other sites, ask that existing sites be changed, or develop new sites. If the government interferes, then everyone will be stuck with one kind of site. Democracy is not supposed to force everyone to use a site without walls just because 51% of the people don't want walls.
If wireless ISPs are selectively slowing traffic, then why aren't consumers savvy enough to complain, cancel their service, and move to another ISP? Are we really saying that consumers should be able to simultaneously choose the cheapest ISP *and* get the best service? If the government requires full speed for all data types and all possible connections, then everyone will have to pay for more capacity than they might otherwise. What about people who don't care about speed and had rather get cut-rate services? If 51% of the people want to force their definition of "service" on everyone else, is that really why we have a democracy?
I talked to my independent ISP about the back haul, and the word is that it has always been neutral with no threat of becoming non-neutral. My ISP actually has fiber optic links to at least three different back haul companies, and that competition is generally what keeps them honest. At that level, the service is expensive but professional.
It's only when you get to the really cheap internet for grandma that you find shaping, and there you get what you pay for. When you say AT&T is your only choice, are you really sure that you looked everywhere? There was once a time when internet cost $100/mo or much more, and only businesses had it. At that level, the traffic is not shaped or capped. But you have to pay for it. Prices will have to go up if the government starts messing with the cheap internet.
Except that such a limitation on donations means that third-party candidates cannot raise enough money to be heard over the incumbents. The Canadian system already has countless established parties, at least 4 of which are currently in federal offices, so C-24 would have a different outcome in a different country with a different party system.
A real improvement would be to stop Federal matching on campaign funds for the two major parties (where the Federal government donates $1 for every $1 raised by the party, and the money comes ultimately from the people whether they support the candidate or not), and also to stop the legal system from treating corporations as if they had individual rights. That might mean capping corporate donations at $0, but it should come with other reforms as well (such as holding board members and executives responsible individually for the consequences of their decisions).
Considering the economic climate, why can't we find Senators who will simply eliminate US export dollars, foreign-direct investment funds and trade assistance grants categorically? Why should our government be sending our tax dollars outside the country anyway?
After re-reading your comments, I realize that we're actually talking about slightly different things, and neither of us is being specific.
Professional graphics software is designed to work with data that is linear. This requires professional operators who maintain a carefully calibrated set of input devices and output devices. All image files that come from film or digital sources must be converted to pure linear, and only processed in linear, then converted with the gamma of the output device. In this world, 2.2 is only used when sending linear data to a CRT. A different gamma would be used for printing, but again the assumption is that everything starts with linear data in the files.
The professional world used to be the end of the story. With the explosion of the web, more non-professionals were creating image content. More importantly, the vast majority of viewers were looking at the web on monitors that were never calibrated, using an operating system (Windows) which did not have professional color management abilities. Unfortunately, the result of this is that the standard practice became to author image files with the gamma of the monitor built in, thus minimizing the errors.
So, you actually have two standards. Linear data is expected by professional software, and is used by professionals at all stages of their work flow for source images. Non-linear data is used for image files that are intended for web distribution. Thus, we're both right, because there are really two standards.
The problem is that you cannot expect to grab an image file off the web and be able to scale it in professional imaging software without accounting for the built-in gamma used for web distribution.
One happy advancement in the industry is that now images can carry around a description of their linear or non-linear status. What should happen in these cases is that image editing software should use the supplied color management tags to convert the image to linear format before any scaling is done. Theoretically, this should solve the problem of not knowing whether the image file is a professional source image (linear) or one intended for web distribution (non-linear).
I fully understand the science that you're trying to explain, as I developed commercial monitor calibration software for NEXTSTEP, the precursor to Mac OS X. The only place we disagree is whether the file "should" be linear. The answer is that it depends upon whether you're talking about files for editing or files for distribution. As I explained above, the graphics software that is being criticized is not designed to edit files authored for distribution - at least not unless they're tagged properly with their embedded gamma.
I think you're wrong. The data in the pictures is "supposed" to be linear, but with amateurs creating content on non-compliant systems the reality is that it rarely is.
Our eyes are certainly non-linear, and so is a CRT, but the whole point of having the gamma curve is so that all processing (math) can be done on linear data. If the data in the picture is not linear, then why bother with gamma conversion at all? Another part of the problem is that different systems have different gamma, from 0.0 to 1.4 to 2.2, and that means you can't assume the image data was properly captured to a linear curve. I think that the biggest culprit here is Windows, which had no color management, and so users just adjusted colors to look right on their CRT, and eventually the web standard became this non-professional workflow.
In other words, the assumption of 2.2 gamma that you refer to is only valid when the output device has a gamma of 2.2, while another gamma would need to be assumed when a different output device is used. The only constant is that the data should be linear, but we all know that you can't rely on data to follow standards when every grandma has a camera or scanner.
Easy solution: The government can just sign new legislation requiring all automobile firmware to run on Microsoft WINCE or something equivalent, then there will be one standard. Should be plenty of out-of-work Windows developers out there.
Point taken. I stand corrected regarding that one sentence.
However, I still think it's invalid to compare a country of 300 million to countries around 50 million (plus or minus) each. Your suggestion that Europe is bigger than the US is promising, but I've not seen any aggregate health care statistics for all of Europe. It would possibly be rather difficult, considering that all of Europe doesn't even belong to the EU (CH, etc).
I don't see your point, at least not completely. We don't have the statistics for California or the EU, so what does it matter that the UK is larger than CA, or the EU is bigger than the US?
Show me health statistics for another country with 300 million people, and I might agree we're comparing apples to apples. Or, show me the health statistics for the entire continent of Europe, and again it would be a more informative comparison.
I'll just repeat that I'd like to see the results broken down by state, particularly if we could have them in database form where they could be combined based upon different attributes to see what really affects health care in the US. I find it hard to believe that the health care realities are exactly the same for every US citizen in every part of the country. I would expect more variance between Americans than between some of the countries you listed.
Of course I would feel bad if I lost a thumb - or a leg - but we can't afford to make everybody feel good at no cost to them.
A fundamental fact of economics is that if something is expensive, then it's because there is a limited supply. Thumb-reattachment surgery is $20k to $30k precisely because there are few surgeons skilled enough to do the job. Even if it were free, there would still be people turned away due to lack of time slots with the available surgeons. You cannot solve this problem of limited resources by making it free for everyone, because people would still be turned away.
A corollary of this is that if surgeons are sitting around with nothing to do because nobody can afford to have their thumb sewn back on, then they're going to lower the price to keep busy. Sure, they might take some time off, but if they can truly charge a full years salary for work that takes less than a day, then eventually more people would study to be surgeons.
As for people needing insulin or other drugs, if you feel bad for them, then you should donate your time or money towards helping them. If you don't have the resources, then encourage others to donate. But what is not humane is to force others (taxpayers) to foot the bill involuntarily, because involuntary payments encourage price increases.
In other words, socialist schemes simply show a lack of understanding of human economics.
In the health care industry, though, we have several mitigating facts: The litigious nature of Americans, our chronic lack of self responsibility, our reliance upon employer-funded insurance premiums, etc. It's not a free market, and it's not simple, so the solution is not going to be easy.
I believe that the answer to your closing question is twofold:
First, scientists are nearly all educated in government-run schools, where the political nature of the organization affects who gets hired to teach, and therefore affects the political leanings of those who graduate. As government focus moves away from science, so too do the educational institutions and their product - the students.
Second, massive government funding of so-called "scientific" research has had a massive effect by attracting politicized "scientists" to the field rather than true scientists. I worry that real science will be dwarfed by politically infused pseudo-science due to the sheer amount of money being allocated by non-scientists (i.e. politicians). Within the range of possible answers, politicians get the results that they want to hear because they're paying.
Would all of these health statistics be the same if broken down by state? Remember that all of the countries you listed are smaller than many of our states. Even if over half of the states were worse, it seems likely to me that many parts of our country are doing way better. I'd prefer to see the results over smaller geographical areas, so that the size of foreign nations and the size of the populations served were more in proportion.
If i cut my hand badly I go: oh fuck I have to go to the hospital. In the states I go, oh fuck, is this covered? How much will my premiums rise? Is it worth the cost? I could probably be ok if i just kept it under pressure. Fuck, I shouldn't have quit my job last month. Do I think we'll come out of the recession fast enough or could I lose my house over this, maybe I can risk a thumb.
Things you shouldn't be thinking as your blood drains out of you and you risk your fingers going necrotic.
Are you really that helpless? I got in a skiing accident and sliced my knee down to the bone. I didn't worry about coverage, premiums, or cost, because I don't have insurance anyway. I just drove myself to the emergency room after calling ahead, and got sewn up. The cost was about the same as ski equipment or having my car worked on, and I paid 100%. Only in America would someone be so incapable of self-responsibility that they would worry about whether to take care of their own hand professionally or risk the loss of a digit. If you're telling us that you can't afford to bring your car in for service, then maybe you shouldn't be handling knives.
It seems to me that health care costs are only frightening to people who aren't actually paying the full costs of taking care of themselves. It's not that hard. It's not that expensive. Granted, if I'd needed brain surgery, then it would have been a different story, but you weren't describing that situation either.
Nice theory, but a 3rd party candidate cannot get on the ballot in all 50 states. Thus, it's impossible for a 3rd party to win, and I really don't see corporate interests investing in that kind of situation without due diligence. 4th and 9th parties are completely out of the question.
You've basically made my point for me. If everything has a different cost in Jamaica as compared to NJ, then why do you expect any correlation between the cost of internet in each place? Just because most things cost more doesn't mean there is some economic law that everything should cost more. Obviously, enough people are willing to pay more for internet in NJ that the ISPs can stay in business. Until significant numbers of people are willing to do without internet, the prices will stay inflated - unless there is already government regulation that is artificially hiking the prices, directly or indirectly.
P.S. If you looked specifically into the costs of providing cellular service, particularly towers, you might find that property laws and property costs are so much lower in Jamaica that this alone explains why cell phone service is so "unexpectedly" lower there.
a central authority cannot possibly have all of the information necessary to make the correct decisions when manipulating the economy.
While that is true, do not monopolies constitute a central authority in the market in which they have a monopoly?
The only monopoly that has any real authority, has it only because government has granted that authority to the monopoly.
Even Standard Oil, the ultimate example cited as a "monopoly," was collapsing under its own weight, and dropped from its height of 91% of the market down to 64% by the time the government took action. Putting aside the argument that 91% is not really a true monopoly (only 100% market share is a monopoly), there really was no reason "break up" a monopoly that was already losing.
But to look at this from another angle: Yes, to the degree that a company is a monopoly, they do suffer the same failings that any central authority would have, and this is why a monopoly must eventually fall from its own weight. As soon as those incorrect decisions are made, they begin to lose market share until competition comes in to correct the situation.
Maslow would say that "the internet" is not high enough in the hierarchy of needs to justify the use of government force. Smith inspired Marx, but both fell far short of a complete understanding of economics. Without discounting Maslow as an important consultant, I'd say we should ask Carl Menger how best to reach the goal. i.e. We each decide as individuals, and thus the market as a whole presents the solution, not some centralized authority with undeserved power - not corporate or government.
It appears that you grossly misunderstand both the bedrock of our country and the principles of economics. There is nothing in the original Constitution which says that the federal government should try to intervene in economics. More importantly, the principles of Austrian Economics show that a central authority cannot possibly have all of the information necessary to make the correct decisions when manipulating the economy. Finally, we don't have monopolies because of economics, we have them because of legislation. The cure for that is not MORE legislation, but LESS.
Your experience highlights the premise that the only monopolies which can exist are those supported by government regulation. Your county did not anoint a single operator, so it did not create a monopoly. People should examine all of the existing regulations that apply to their area before commenting. Even a brief conversation with a telco worker can be educational, when you hear about all of the regulations they have already which impede progress in the name of consensus decision-making.
I don't understand your point. You say that you have to pay more for internet in NJ than in Jamaica, but don't you pay more for EVERYTHING in NJ than in Jamaica? I bet your living expenses in Jamaica are a smaller fraction of what they are in NJ compared to the ratio of internet costs.
OTA HDTV uses 8VSB (Eight Vestigial Side Band) modulation, which is more complex than QAM. Its not the modulation that makes Digital Cable hard to crack, but likely some kind of encryption, or perhaps merely obscurity. There are probably standard chips available to decode QAM, just like there are chips for receiving HDTV.
QAM has 4 codes, not 4 bits, which equates to only 2 bits. 8VSB has 8 codes, which equates to 3 bits. You've got the right idea in general, but you're a long way from cracking the technology.
It seems to me that, by specifying language features, your boss has violated a major tenet of OO design.
The power of Object Oriented design comes from the fact that you do not need to know how things are implemented in order to hook them together into a more complicated system. What good does it do for your boss to specify particular OO language features if this first step in the development process goes against basic OO principles?
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... but government regulating fluorinated water is a serious issue. It is an abuse of democracy for 51% of the voters to force certain choices upon the remainder, at least when they are innocent of any crime. Fluoride has a scientifically proven benefit, but ingestion is not necessary for that benefit. In fact, ingestion is questionably harmful. In other words, not everyone agrees when it comes to costs versus benefits analysis.
The question here is whether we need government to protect us from something that isn't actually happening, and that could just as easily be handled by informed consumers fleeing any ISP who alters content negatively.
Personally, I wouldn't mind BitTorrent traffic being discriminated based on protocol content rather than volume, at least not for lost-cost, shared internet services where BitTorrent (and similar) traffic takes away from the available bandwidth. It should be consumer choice, not one-size-fits-all regulation, that decides which ISP uses particular rules.
Tim Berners-Lee talks about the internet as if everyone gets to enjoy 100% of the bandwidth "volume" that they purchase. That was true when T1 lines and phone modems were the only choices. Now that we have more options, including shared bandwidth technologies such as DSL and Cable, it makes sense that some providers will shape traffic to favor one type of protocol versus another - i.e. based on content instead of volume - because you have to pay a lot more to get exclusive access to bandwidth.
This seems like a tragedy of the commons, because as internet becomes cheaper, people start to believe that it is a right or that the internet can be taken over by a central authority. Legislation could end up raising costs for everyone, or lowering performance - and the ISPs may never censor anyway.
Agreed, SuperKendall.
My view is this: With all of the real problems we have, can't we just agree to keep an eye on the internet and solve the problems that are killing people for now?
Part two: All older forms of media are highly regulated by the government, and they're almost completely corrupt. Does nobody see the problem with jumping the gun to regulate the internet? Government rules will just accelerate the corruption of the internet, which is certainly the hidden agenda here.
Very good point. However, I would say that there is a difference between just "looking" at code versus doing a thorough review. Thorough reviews are expensive and rare, but when done properly they would reveal the purpose of every line of code. The trouble is that you can't really guarantee a good code review unless you do it yourself, or really trust the person or people doing the review.
OpenBSD seems to be one of the groups where they focus on this sort of thing, specifically.
In other words, I agree with the statement in the subject - "Could be hard" - but I would say that the sole distinguishing feature of OpenBSD is that they have always focused on exactly this kind of difficult code review / audit. If anyone is going to do it right, it's probably OpenBSD.
Why does anyone think the government will do a good job of making our choices for us?
If large social networking sites are really a problem because they wall off data, then why are people on those sites? People should be able to recognize the problem for themselves and join other sites, ask that existing sites be changed, or develop new sites. If the government interferes, then everyone will be stuck with one kind of site. Democracy is not supposed to force everyone to use a site without walls just because 51% of the people don't want walls.
If wireless ISPs are selectively slowing traffic, then why aren't consumers savvy enough to complain, cancel their service, and move to another ISP? Are we really saying that consumers should be able to simultaneously choose the cheapest ISP *and* get the best service? If the government requires full speed for all data types and all possible connections, then everyone will have to pay for more capacity than they might otherwise. What about people who don't care about speed and had rather get cut-rate services? If 51% of the people want to force their definition of "service" on everyone else, is that really why we have a democracy?
I talked to my independent ISP about the back haul, and the word is that it has always been neutral with no threat of becoming non-neutral. My ISP actually has fiber optic links to at least three different back haul companies, and that competition is generally what keeps them honest. At that level, the service is expensive but professional.
It's only when you get to the really cheap internet for grandma that you find shaping, and there you get what you pay for. When you say AT&T is your only choice, are you really sure that you looked everywhere? There was once a time when internet cost $100/mo or much more, and only businesses had it. At that level, the traffic is not shaped or capped. But you have to pay for it. Prices will have to go up if the government starts messing with the cheap internet.
Except that such a limitation on donations means that third-party candidates cannot raise enough money to be heard over the incumbents. The Canadian system already has countless established parties, at least 4 of which are currently in federal offices, so C-24 would have a different outcome in a different country with a different party system.
A real improvement would be to stop Federal matching on campaign funds for the two major parties (where the Federal government donates $1 for every $1 raised by the party, and the money comes ultimately from the people whether they support the candidate or not), and also to stop the legal system from treating corporations as if they had individual rights. That might mean capping corporate donations at $0, but it should come with other reforms as well (such as holding board members and executives responsible individually for the consequences of their decisions).
Considering the economic climate, why can't we find Senators who will simply eliminate US export dollars, foreign-direct investment funds and trade assistance grants categorically? Why should our government be sending our tax dollars outside the country anyway?
After re-reading your comments, I realize that we're actually talking about slightly different things, and neither of us is being specific.
Professional graphics software is designed to work with data that is linear. This requires professional operators who maintain a carefully calibrated set of input devices and output devices. All image files that come from film or digital sources must be converted to pure linear, and only processed in linear, then converted with the gamma of the output device. In this world, 2.2 is only used when sending linear data to a CRT. A different gamma would be used for printing, but again the assumption is that everything starts with linear data in the files.
The professional world used to be the end of the story. With the explosion of the web, more non-professionals were creating image content. More importantly, the vast majority of viewers were looking at the web on monitors that were never calibrated, using an operating system (Windows) which did not have professional color management abilities. Unfortunately, the result of this is that the standard practice became to author image files with the gamma of the monitor built in, thus minimizing the errors.
So, you actually have two standards. Linear data is expected by professional software, and is used by professionals at all stages of their work flow for source images. Non-linear data is used for image files that are intended for web distribution. Thus, we're both right, because there are really two standards.
The problem is that you cannot expect to grab an image file off the web and be able to scale it in professional imaging software without accounting for the built-in gamma used for web distribution.
One happy advancement in the industry is that now images can carry around a description of their linear or non-linear status. What should happen in these cases is that image editing software should use the supplied color management tags to convert the image to linear format before any scaling is done. Theoretically, this should solve the problem of not knowing whether the image file is a professional source image (linear) or one intended for web distribution (non-linear).
I fully understand the science that you're trying to explain, as I developed commercial monitor calibration software for NEXTSTEP, the precursor to Mac OS X. The only place we disagree is whether the file "should" be linear. The answer is that it depends upon whether you're talking about files for editing or files for distribution. As I explained above, the graphics software that is being criticized is not designed to edit files authored for distribution - at least not unless they're tagged properly with their embedded gamma.
I think you're wrong. The data in the pictures is "supposed" to be linear, but with amateurs creating content on non-compliant systems the reality is that it rarely is.
Our eyes are certainly non-linear, and so is a CRT, but the whole point of having the gamma curve is so that all processing (math) can be done on linear data. If the data in the picture is not linear, then why bother with gamma conversion at all? Another part of the problem is that different systems have different gamma, from 0.0 to 1.4 to 2.2, and that means you can't assume the image data was properly captured to a linear curve. I think that the biggest culprit here is Windows, which had no color management, and so users just adjusted colors to look right on their CRT, and eventually the web standard became this non-professional workflow.
In other words, the assumption of 2.2 gamma that you refer to is only valid when the output device has a gamma of 2.2, while another gamma would need to be assumed when a different output device is used. The only constant is that the data should be linear, but we all know that you can't rely on data to follow standards when every grandma has a camera or scanner.
Easy solution: The government can just sign new legislation requiring all automobile firmware to run on Microsoft WINCE or something equivalent, then there will be one standard. Should be plenty of out-of-work Windows developers out there.
Point taken. I stand corrected regarding that one sentence.
However, I still think it's invalid to compare a country of 300 million to countries around 50 million (plus or minus) each. Your suggestion that Europe is bigger than the US is promising, but I've not seen any aggregate health care statistics for all of Europe. It would possibly be rather difficult, considering that all of Europe doesn't even belong to the EU (CH, etc).
I don't see your point, at least not completely. We don't have the statistics for California or the EU, so what does it matter that the UK is larger than CA, or the EU is bigger than the US?
Show me health statistics for another country with 300 million people, and I might agree we're comparing apples to apples. Or, show me the health statistics for the entire continent of Europe, and again it would be a more informative comparison.
I'll just repeat that I'd like to see the results broken down by state, particularly if we could have them in database form where they could be combined based upon different attributes to see what really affects health care in the US. I find it hard to believe that the health care realities are exactly the same for every US citizen in every part of the country. I would expect more variance between Americans than between some of the countries you listed.
Of course I would feel bad if I lost a thumb - or a leg - but we can't afford to make everybody feel good at no cost to them.
A fundamental fact of economics is that if something is expensive, then it's because there is a limited supply. Thumb-reattachment surgery is $20k to $30k precisely because there are few surgeons skilled enough to do the job. Even if it were free, there would still be people turned away due to lack of time slots with the available surgeons. You cannot solve this problem of limited resources by making it free for everyone, because people would still be turned away.
A corollary of this is that if surgeons are sitting around with nothing to do because nobody can afford to have their thumb sewn back on, then they're going to lower the price to keep busy. Sure, they might take some time off, but if they can truly charge a full years salary for work that takes less than a day, then eventually more people would study to be surgeons.
As for people needing insulin or other drugs, if you feel bad for them, then you should donate your time or money towards helping them. If you don't have the resources, then encourage others to donate. But what is not humane is to force others (taxpayers) to foot the bill involuntarily, because involuntary payments encourage price increases.
In other words, socialist schemes simply show a lack of understanding of human economics.
In the health care industry, though, we have several mitigating facts: The litigious nature of Americans, our chronic lack of self responsibility, our reliance upon employer-funded insurance premiums, etc. It's not a free market, and it's not simple, so the solution is not going to be easy.
I believe that the answer to your closing question is twofold:
First, scientists are nearly all educated in government-run schools, where the political nature of the organization affects who gets hired to teach, and therefore affects the political leanings of those who graduate. As government focus moves away from science, so too do the educational institutions and their product - the students.
Second, massive government funding of so-called "scientific" research has had a massive effect by attracting politicized "scientists" to the field rather than true scientists. I worry that real science will be dwarfed by politically infused pseudo-science due to the sheer amount of money being allocated by non-scientists (i.e. politicians). Within the range of possible answers, politicians get the results that they want to hear because they're paying.
Would all of these health statistics be the same if broken down by state? Remember that all of the countries you listed are smaller than many of our states. Even if over half of the states were worse, it seems likely to me that many parts of our country are doing way better. I'd prefer to see the results over smaller geographical areas, so that the size of foreign nations and the size of the populations served were more in proportion.
If i cut my hand badly I go: oh fuck I have to go to the hospital. In the states I go, oh fuck, is this covered? How much will my premiums rise? Is it worth the cost? I could probably be ok if i just kept it under pressure. Fuck, I shouldn't have quit my job last month. Do I think we'll come out of the recession fast enough or could I lose my house over this, maybe I can risk a thumb.
Things you shouldn't be thinking as your blood drains out of you and you risk your fingers going necrotic.
Are you really that helpless? I got in a skiing accident and sliced my knee down to the bone. I didn't worry about coverage, premiums, or cost, because I don't have insurance anyway. I just drove myself to the emergency room after calling ahead, and got sewn up. The cost was about the same as ski equipment or having my car worked on, and I paid 100%. Only in America would someone be so incapable of self-responsibility that they would worry about whether to take care of their own hand professionally or risk the loss of a digit. If you're telling us that you can't afford to bring your car in for service, then maybe you shouldn't be handling knives.
It seems to me that health care costs are only frightening to people who aren't actually paying the full costs of taking care of themselves. It's not that hard. It's not that expensive. Granted, if I'd needed brain surgery, then it would have been a different story, but you weren't describing that situation either.
Nice theory, but a 3rd party candidate cannot get on the ballot in all 50 states. Thus, it's impossible for a 3rd party to win, and I really don't see corporate interests investing in that kind of situation without due diligence. 4th and 9th parties are completely out of the question.
You've basically made my point for me. If everything has a different cost in Jamaica as compared to NJ, then why do you expect any correlation between the cost of internet in each place? Just because most things cost more doesn't mean there is some economic law that everything should cost more. Obviously, enough people are willing to pay more for internet in NJ that the ISPs can stay in business. Until significant numbers of people are willing to do without internet, the prices will stay inflated - unless there is already government regulation that is artificially hiking the prices, directly or indirectly.
P.S. If you looked specifically into the costs of providing cellular service, particularly towers, you might find that property laws and property costs are so much lower in Jamaica that this alone explains why cell phone service is so "unexpectedly" lower there.
a central authority cannot possibly have all of the information necessary to make the correct decisions when manipulating the economy.
While that is true, do not monopolies constitute a central authority in the market in which they have a monopoly?
The only monopoly that has any real authority, has it only because government has granted that authority to the monopoly.
Even Standard Oil, the ultimate example cited as a "monopoly," was collapsing under its own weight, and dropped from its height of 91% of the market down to 64% by the time the government took action. Putting aside the argument that 91% is not really a true monopoly (only 100% market share is a monopoly), there really was no reason "break up" a monopoly that was already losing.
But to look at this from another angle: Yes, to the degree that a company is a monopoly, they do suffer the same failings that any central authority would have, and this is why a monopoly must eventually fall from its own weight. As soon as those incorrect decisions are made, they begin to lose market share until competition comes in to correct the situation.
Maslow would say that "the internet" is not high enough in the hierarchy of needs to justify the use of government force. Smith inspired Marx, but both fell far short of a complete understanding of economics. Without discounting Maslow as an important consultant, I'd say we should ask Carl Menger how best to reach the goal. i.e. We each decide as individuals, and thus the market as a whole presents the solution, not some centralized authority with undeserved power - not corporate or government.
It appears that you grossly misunderstand both the bedrock of our country and the principles of economics. There is nothing in the original Constitution which says that the federal government should try to intervene in economics. More importantly, the principles of Austrian Economics show that a central authority cannot possibly have all of the information necessary to make the correct decisions when manipulating the economy. Finally, we don't have monopolies because of economics, we have them because of legislation. The cure for that is not MORE legislation, but LESS.
Your experience highlights the premise that the only monopolies which can exist are those supported by government regulation. Your county did not anoint a single operator, so it did not create a monopoly. People should examine all of the existing regulations that apply to their area before commenting. Even a brief conversation with a telco worker can be educational, when you hear about all of the regulations they have already which impede progress in the name of consensus decision-making.
I don't understand your point. You say that you have to pay more for internet in NJ than in Jamaica, but don't you pay more for EVERYTHING in NJ than in Jamaica? I bet your living expenses in Jamaica are a smaller fraction of what they are in NJ compared to the ratio of internet costs.
OTA HDTV uses 8VSB (Eight Vestigial Side Band) modulation, which is more complex than QAM. Its not the modulation that makes Digital Cable hard to crack, but likely some kind of encryption, or perhaps merely obscurity. There are probably standard chips available to decode QAM, just like there are chips for receiving HDTV.
QAM has 4 codes, not 4 bits, which equates to only 2 bits. 8VSB has 8 codes, which equates to 3 bits. You've got the right idea in general, but you're a long way from cracking the technology.
It seems to me that, by specifying language features, your boss has violated a major tenet of OO design.
The power of Object Oriented design comes from the fact that you do not need to know how things are implemented in order to hook them together into a more complicated system. What good does it do for your boss to specify particular OO language features if this first step in the development process goes against basic OO principles?