I used to think socialism was a good idea until I thought of *everything* being run by the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Government systems like the one you describe have a dismal record in acheiving their goals especially when those goals require innovation - not a trait often associated with governments. At best such systems work for a few years or even a decade or two while there is still a vision & the people in the system retain some passion. But the system will eventually suck that all dry because on a fundamental basis a government solution is *secure* it does NOT have to perform to survive. Without survival or even "success" (in bureaucratic terms) requiring actual achievment acheivement eventually ceases to be much of a consideration at all.
I know that everyone will reject this for ideological reasons, but consider that it solves every one of the problems you mentioned.
In much the same way that euthenasia would solve the problem of the common cold.
In the end it depends on which problem you are trying to solve. If the problem is human disease then this government solution would NOT solve the problem. If the problem is that some people are making money then it would be a very effective solution.
Look at the system we have over the long run - Even if our pharmecutical companies are absolutely raping us for massive profits (which I'll grant is somewhat true) after their 17 year patent is up we still end up with the drugs. Despite, indeed BECAUSE OF, the greed and avarice of the drug companies we are seeing an explosion of new drugs curing diseases, relieving pain, increasing life spans (& making sure old men can still "get it up") - given the long period of time it takes to make new discoveries and to turn those scientific discoveries into to a pill you can take 17 years of getting totally screwed by the pharmectucals is a SMALL price to pay.
Say you have disease X, the choice you are presenting us is that we have a competative private system that will produce a drug in 10 years but is outrageously expensive for the first 7-17 years. The alternative is to have a system that is only half or even a third as efficient - it produces a cure in 20-30 years that is cheap* the moment it is available but unavailable for ANY cost until that time. *(though the R&D cost with inflated administrative costs is also showing up in your tax bill - so the actual price of the drugs is split between the price you pay over the counter and your tax bill)
If it was truly a highly risky endevor to be a Phamecutical company they wouldn't be steadily very profitable.
True to some extent - that is why the pharmecuticals are so very large, they may get killed on one or two flops or even a big class action lawsuit but they're big enough to spread those risks out. Also the time line over which risks are spread are rather long - any problem with a drug that they didn't find out in the course of their testing is likely to be a long term one that may only generate lawsuits decades after the drug was first put on the market (though Seldane became a big liablity pretty quickly;). Though it is not a pharmacutical the risk is similar to that faced by Dow Corning - long periods of blissful ignorance & cash cow profits and then a huge liablity & bankruptcy. This is an industry where the initial investment must be huge. It is an industry where any failure is *always* a matter of life & death or severe injuries. An industry where any failure is always sympathetic and severly suffering plaintiffs versus a much demonized defendant (the evil pharmicutical company but ultimately *me* the investor) . Am I going to invest in this industry or in a software company where things really don't matter and failure is minor annoyance and is even *expected*? If there isn't a tidy profit advantage in one I think the choice is obvious.
here MUST be some way of balancing it all out. Sorta like the segway. If they made it $1000, would they sell more of them? $500? $10?
They're *drugs*. Unless they're recreational drugs;) their market is only as big as the number of people sick with whatever the drug cures. If there are one million people with disease X it doesn't matter how cheap you go, you aren't going to entice any more people to use it.
Doctors CAN prescribe drugs for "off label" uses but the Pharmacutical company gets in BIG, BIG, BIG trouble if they in ANY WAY market/encourage such unaproved uses.
Remember claritin before the FDA deemed it fine to go over the counter? It was stupifying the price drop.
I have to say I'm mostly (but not entirely) on the Pharmecuticals side on this issue. You are forgetting a few things
1) the manufacturing of these drugs *once you know how* is generally pretty cheap & easy to do.
2) Discovering these drugs in the first place is the product of some very serious, long-term, hard and *expensive* science.
3) Often finding a way to turn a discovery like this into a drug that is fit for human consumption is perhaps even more difficult and *expensive* - Penicillin was discovered in 1929 but it wasn't until 1945 that someone figured out how to use it as a drug. It usually takes several years of *very expensive* research before they figure out how to use a discovery like this as a drug.
4) Once they have a drug it takes several years of difficult and *very expensive* trials to prove it's effectiveness & safety to the FDA
5) Not all of their expensive initial research, & expensive development of drugs end up being anything.
6) The whole time they've been doing this their patent has been active and ticking down, they have a few years left in their patent to make back their enormous investment. (though they *may/may not* be able to get a patent extension that compensates them for the time it takes to get FDA approval. So, they may get at best 17 years to get a return on their investment or if they fail to get an extension they may have only a couple of years.
7) They are making drugs there is a *huge* risk even after years of *expensive* research and getting FDA approval that a drug may do nasty things to the user over the long term or to a tiny fraction of the population - the result could be lawsuits that costs BILLIONS. It is important to note that this harm doesn't have to be proven scientifically it has to be "proven" in a court of law - One scientist with a pet theory as an expert witness and a handful (out of millions) that have some unexplained syndrome and all the profits from all the drugs produced by hundreds of scientists over dozens of years may end up in the pockets of a few dozen lawyers that "worked" for at most four or five years to "earn" it.
The response to all this is that Pharmecutical companies are *very* profitable - true but they are engaged in a fairly risky investment as a matter of economics high risk has to be balanced with high rewards, otherwise the investment goes elsewhere. If they operated without any profit at all the drugs would be roughly 8-25% less (looking at last years profits vs. revenues) but that obviously woudn't take into account any risks or explain why anyone would bother to undertake the years of research outside of pure altruism - a fine sentiment but not that great as a motivator.
The other response is "if it's a life saving drug it's morally wrong to profit from it". My response to those folks is to ask them if they are willing to make such huge investments themselves without profiting from them. Would YOU be willing to go to school, get an advanced chemistry degree, spend decades of research into the slime floating around rock pools and NOT GET PAID for it.
So how do these philosophies fit into the political parties of today?
In general the Republicans are a coalition of pro-business pragmatists, conservative libertarians and social conservatives. The Democrats are a coalition of minority interest groups, labor unions & progressive socialists.
Both democrats and republicans seem happy to endorse removal of civil liberties (as anyone who reads slashdot is constantly reminded)
First off it is important to realise that/. tends to be focussed on only a few specific areas of liberty and tends to be dogmatic and prone to hyperbole. Secondly the dogmatic libertarian believes that the ONLY legitimate purpose of government is defense and law enforcement (the law is the collective exercise of the individual's right to defend his life, liberty and property). I assume the removal of civil liberties you are concerned about have to do with various expediencies taken in the "war on terror" - again libertarians believe that defense is the ONE legitimate purpose of government and those that are more conservative than libertarian are quite willing to give the government a lot of latitude in pursuing that end - especially when the powers granted are ones that have existed in the past and which were taken away in what many conservatives saw as softheaded and foolish reforms that they saw more as "soft on crime" or "soft on defense" than as expansions of liberty. Still the hardcore libertarians and far-right "paleoconservatives" are vehemently opposed to the current expansions of federal power.
but you said that most of America is pro-liberty.
No I said that it *is* a liberal democracy. Simply compare our institutions (honestly) to those of most other nations around the world to see the degree to which this is true. There are other liberal democracies in the world, particularly in Europe but even there those that would critique our society and compare it unfavorably to Europe tend to be arguing from a socialist or equality perspective rather than libertarian/personal freedom perspective. Much of what conservatives are conserving are those institutions that make the US a liberal democracy and some of what they are conserving are those elements at odds with a libertarian ideal. By the same token much of what is "progressive" in our politics is "progressing" away from liberty. The centralised state control that is inherant in socialism is diametrically at odds with individual liberty.
Did you read the press release? I doubt it. You saw "Apple" as the subject of the headline and just half-hazardly clicked the reply button and started a schpiel about how Apple really needed this, etc.
If you go and check the press release out, you'll see that only the Blade server architectures are even mentioned.
For anyone who has been paying attention to Apple and IBM and the PowerPC 970 the article didn't NEED to mention Apple. It has been an open and obvoius secret that this chip was developed by IBM specifically for Apple - The presense of Altivec (which is largely useless on a server) is proof enough of that even without the coy public statements (and a few explicit slip-ups despite the standard policy of "we never comment on unannounced products" ).
Yeah, Apple hopes to use this some day, but it'll be a long time coming.
They will be using it the moment IBM can produce them in sufficient quantites.
Someone resection this to strictly IBM rather than an Apple > IBM article.
Despite the article itself having nothing to do with Apple it IS of interest to Apple users because it reveals that the chip everyone knows will replace the G4 is reaching speeds up to 2.5 GHz when it had previously been reported to be between 1.4 - 1.8 GHz.
I have to sort of disagree with your terms. Libertarianism IS the name of a political philosophy which is being used by a political party (just as there is a conservative party in NY). What you are describing IS NOT conservatism but is in fact libertarianism (or "classical liberalism" or even "liberalism" though that term has come to mean something quite different). It is a political philosophy that elevates "liberty".
Conservatism is talking about something different, something orthogonal to liberalism (using the old meaning of that word) - it is a political philosophy of "conserving" what is good (in their view). It elevates continuity, it is a belief that the "tried and true" is preferable to the untried and possibly risky. Conservatives don't necessarily oppose change & reform but are extrememly cautious about it and are very aware of the law of unintended consequences. They are uninterested in an ideologically pure utopia (I think it was Russell Kirk that called it the negation of ideology) but believe that society is organic and that it's inconsistancies and idiosyncrocies reflect the balance of competing legitimate interests. They believe that trying to shoehorn society to fit some perfectly consistent and pure ideology will unbalance those interests and will lead to all sorts of evils. In many ways it is helpful to think of conservatism as a temperment rather than an all encompasing political philosophy.
As it happens we live in a liberal democracy - a conservative here will be generally libertarian because the society whose institutions & reigning political philosophy they seek to conserve are liberal ones. In each individual conservative/libertarian the precise mix of motives either a conservative temperment or a liberal philosophy will be mixed. Those that are more truly conservative shy away from the hardcore libertarians because they distrust such an all encompasing utopian philosophy - I remember one conservative writing that he viewed libertarians the way the British Empire viewed the Gurkhas, "You want them to fight your battles but you wouldn't want them in charge". This definition encompases both "classical liberals" and religious and social conservatives that are generally less libertarian - though to be fair to them they are not usually statists and are much more liberal in their view of government than their critics fear. (to illustrate this point: I saw a catalog from about the most strictly fundamentalist publisher I am aware of and the book on government he endorsed as his ideal understanding of political philosophy was Frederic Bastiat's "The Law" - you CAN'T get any more hyper-libertarian than that! I'm sure it's not representative of all fundamentalists but that libertarian world view is more prominant in the religious right political philosophy than people realise.)
"Liberalism" is a word that in it's popular usage has come to mean almost the opposite of it's original meaning. It originally meant political philosophy that elevates the individuals liberty against the state. The political battles of the previous couple of centuries were between progressive liberals (called liberals) and conservative authoritarians (called conservatives) and progressive or radical statists/authoritarians (called radicals or socialists) - liberalism has won the day and in America at least most of those called conservatives are now liberal conservatives (they seek to conserve our existing liberal society) they are opposed by "liberals" who are largely progressive socialists (they seek gradual change in a socialist direction - they are unaware, or in denial about the authoritarian implications).
But what happens to privacy when everything you buy can be tracked from store floor to door?
Umm... Walmart already knows you bought size 10 panties & has your credit card number to boot. I don't see how tracking those panties from the shelf to the cash register has any additional impact on your privacy - unless you are trying to sneak them out without paying.
I agree with you that they are unlikely to port the iLife applications since they are intended to drive hardware sales BUT you also said:
...and you know that iPhoto and iMovie are heavily invested in Cocoa, Quartz and other Mac-exclusive properties.
You'll remember that Cocoa is the updated OpenStep and that it used to run on Intel chips as either part of the NextStep operating system OR on top of Windows - Remember Gil Amelio's "Rhapsody for Intel" and "Rhapsody for Windows" strategy? I know Apple's Marklar project is keeping MacOS X up to date on intel chips (essentially Rhapsody for Intel) I wonder if they have continued to develop Cocoa in such a way that Cocoa for windows is still possible, or even being maintained in some secret lab somewhere. I suppose Quartz could throw a wrench in the works but it is an intrigueing possiblity. Apple is developing all this new software to drive hardware sales but having all of that software built on what is still (internally) a cross-platform environment will give them a lot of options on when, where and how to jump should the "axe fall".
Part of your argument is contradictory - you say users don't need all the speed they have and then say they won't move to a 64-bit chip because it will be slower (which I don't think is necessarily the case even when running 32-bit apps.) Also the user of the 64-bit chip won't get an error message saying that a different processor is required. It that happens to anyone it will be the user of the 32-bit chip - so that is actually an argument for getting the more capable chip.
Will this be the next big thing though?
Not necessarily, who knows what ways people might find to use this capability when it becomes more widespread? Video is one obvious application and it's appeal is broader than just the "creative types" - just about every soccer mom at the field brings the camcorder at some point to film little Tyler and/or Brianna. Apple is hoping to make it as easy for her to edit that film as it is for her to change font's in a word document (even though she isn't a professional typesetter). I'll concede that human nature being what it is she may use iMovie only two or three times when she first gets the computer and digital camcorder BUT when she purchases the computer she *thinks* she's going to be editing home movies all the time - still that is a sale that Apple or AMD is going to make at Intel's expense.
I realize you're a troll but your post gives me a chance to explain what I mean since their probably are people out there as stupid as you are pretending to be.
I'm not talking about the popular defintion of conservative vs. liberal I'm talking about a "liberal" a word from the same root as "liberty" aka a "classic liberal" or libertarian (though libertarians have a comprehensive world view and are more docrtinaire thus further to the extreme on my scale) and the oposite of a "statist". A "conservative" by contrast is someone who is trying to "conserve" what they see as positive ascpects of society and is the opposite of a "progressive" which is trying to change society to make it "better" (in their view). So in America where we already have a liberal democracy a "conservative" may be trying to conserve those aspects of society that make it liberal (aka free) thus a "liberal conservative" would be the opposite of a "progressive statist" commonly called "liberals" but often not very liberal at all by the classic definition. In that sense "liberal conservative" is not an oxymoron. In fact Russell Kirk used the term to describe one of the essayists in "The Conservative Mind" - I think I'm in pretty good company here.
"evils of the bush family"? What the hell is that? Boom motherfucker, will you liberate your mind?
My bad if I didn't put quotation marks around that phrase. I was not myself ascribing evil to the Bush family - I was talking about the identical rhetoric coming from both Paleo-conservatives on the far right and Communists on the far left. Their conspiracy theories are essentially identical and if you were to debate them on the propriety of war in Iraq or whether or not GWB was a good president or not you would be hard pressed to discern which end of the spectrum they are coming from. It is becoming increasingly difficult to tell Noam Chomsky from Pat Buchanan. I just mentioned it to point out that a simple scale from reactionary to radical isn't always helpful in making distinctions between political philosophies.
I am in no hurry to be the proud owner of a whole bunch of PCs that can no longer run apps based on a requirement of 64-bit code.
I don't understand why you should have to, there is no reason that the 64-bit computer couldn't run the old 32-bit code. I think Intel is simply trying to spin necessity into a virtue. Sure only people with specialised needs are going to need/want more than 4 GB of RAM but there are a fair amount of such people. As for the rest of us that don't *need* it - once the capability exists it is possible that someone will find a use for it that we will "need" (or just want really badly). Apple for instance is not only trying to dominate the professional film/video market they are trying, with some success, to *create* a consumer video market. Once you start editting video, even if it's just home movies, a 4 GB ceiling stops looking sky-high and starts looking like something you might bump your head against.
The problem with that scale is that it is too simplistic, or perhaps that it is only measuring one variable (change vs. preservation) out of many. (and strictly speaking the word "liberal" doesn't belong - progressive would be better) For instance you could make a similar scale of another variable (government control vs. individual autonomy) from:
1. Totalitarian
2. Authoritarian
3. Moderate
4. Liberal
5. Libertarian
As you could guess people from any point on your scale could end up on any point on my scale depending on what exactly it is that they want to change and/or preserve. For instance both stalinists and anarchists would be in the radical side of your scale but their vision for society come from the opposite sides of my scale. And the same person or political philosophy can end up on different points on either scale depending on the particular issue - look at how it's impossible to tell the difference between a Communist Party member from A.N.S.W.E.R. and a Paleo-Conservative militia member when the issue is the war on Iraq and the evils of Bush family.
Note that by it's more strict (as opposed to popular) definition "liberal" really belongs on this scale and would include many conservatives - it's not unheard of when talking about political ideas to hear the phrase "liberal conservative" i.e. someone who is trying to conserve the liberal aspects of our current system from statists (ranging the entire spectrum from reactionary to radical). It also explaines the apparent paradox that the Australian "Liberal Party" is pretty much the conservative party.
There is NO major feature that I am aware of that is present in the current version of Windows IE that is missing from the Mac version of IE. If I'm mistaken about this, please point me in the direction of something that references such a feature.
As a mac user (fanatic even) I hate to say this BUT the Mac version of IE *is* missing features that the windows version has. I haven'r really bothered to look into all the details since I design sites to be cross-platform/standards compliant but I have used some CMS tools where the back end used a lot of windows only stuff that the Mac version just didn't have. Also as a web designer it doesn't have to be missing anything - it just has to be *different* - the bugs are different, the work arounds are going to be different, it looks different. Since 95% of the users looking at the site are going to be looking at it on windows I have to be looking at it (alot) on windows as well. Thank God for VirtualPC - I can have my cake and eat it too (MacOS, Unix & Windows all in one shiny PowerBook)
As for your larger point though I agree with you. I think Apple is on the right track and now that they have a solid OS strategy they can be (and have been) a lot more flexible. They have a solid foundation and are already starting to build a lot of interesting stuff on top of it. They are in a MUCH better place than they were just a few years ago.
Just not in the sense of a scientific law. It is more like Murphy's law, Parkinson's Law (Work expands to fill the time available) Clarke's Third Law (Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic) or Beauregard's Law (When you're up to your nose, keep your mouth shut)
You have a little bit of a conflict of interest when it comes to deciding what rates are "reasonable" for you to be charged - I'm sure in your opinion you are overcharged & they are rolling in profits and it may be true but it is still problematic that they are forced to allow you to piggyback on their investment. Have you considered what it would cost you to duplicate the service they are offering? Have you approached the cable companies and asked how much they would charge for a similar service?
Also, I said they *want* a free ride - yes you are paying for it but you and your larger competitors are applying the same kind of political presure to lower the definition of "reasonable" that the telecoms are applying to raise the definition of "reasonable" or as it seems the have finally succeeded in doing - kick their competitors off the line.
In the remaining 90% of the country if you have cable service it's probably *MORE* expensive than DSL.
And why is that? Perhaps because maintaining such a network in rural areas is more costly and difficult than you are willing to either admit or pay the telecoms for the use of. I honestly don't know - but I do know that a government sponsored commission doesn't *really* know either (though there guesses will be both more educated and more tainted with self-interest). Heck the phone company probably doesn't *really* know itself since it doesn't face the discipline of competition on that particular front.
We should be seeking solutions that really are based on competition not an illusory "competition" where government sets "reasonable" prices for one company to offer its infrastructure to it's competitors. Perhaps the baby bells should be even more completely broken up and the remaining monopoly restricted to only offering the use of their infrastructure on a wholesale basis. Perhaps even that utility should face competition from a handful of other companies that can also lay their own wires with just enough regulation to avoid chaos & incompatibility.
I'm sure they would mind if my parents', who happen to have a major trunk line that runs under their property, decided to dig that up.
Which is probably on a right-of-way - just like my driveway which goes over my neighbors land - but I'm not exercising a monopoly power over my neighbor I'm just using a right-of-way that is part of his deed.
The ILECs want special rights, they can allow *competition* (That silly thing that I thought conservatives/libertarians were supposed to be *for*) as the cost of those rights.
Yes but having government set a "reasonable" price is problematic. On the other hand I would agree with you that just letting the phone companies abuse their monopoly is not a good answer either.
I'm not allowed to go digging up public land to lay my own cables,
Hmm... I'm not sure that's entirely true - I think other telecoms, not just the monopoly baby bells, can and do lay down cable - I know my cable TV company does as well. But that is not what those other telecoms are *asking* for is it? They just want to use the cables layed down and maintained by someone else. Sure the phone company is greedy and will try to squeeze as much profit as the law will allow but the competitors are just as greedy and aren't above using the law to squeeze all the profits out of the phone company.
What's more, it's a government-sponsored monopoly. That means that the Bells have, as a condition of their monopoly, certain restrictions and responsiblities that other industries don't... The Bells can stifle any sort of telecom competition simply because they DO control the wires going into your house.
Is there any reason that you couldn't have more than one line? Sure you wouldn't want dozens or hundreds of different lines but couldn't each town or county grant three or four different companies the right to lay down those wires? Then each company could provide whatever services and compete on a level playing field with none of them holding either it's control over the physical assets or it's influence with the legislature to set a "reasonable price" (which may or may not be "reasonable" and will forever be controversial) over it's competitors.
I suppose you still have the problem of who fixes the mess when a phone pole falls over and pulls down *all* the lines - perhaps they would all have to share the expense of a common maintenance & repair service on an equal basis.
Oh, and if the bells' lines are their "property" then their property is illegally tresspassing on my land. I demand rent starting now at $1000/day, or I'll dig them up.
I really don't think they would mind if you dug up the phone line going to your house.
I expect them to also begin paying rent to the government for any of their equipment that passes through public property, under streets that my tax dollars have paid for, for example.
They do, well not rent but they do pay property taxes on each telephone pole (at least in my state).
they're refusing to upgrade their networks until they can be assured that they'll be the only ones to profit.
I'm sure their argument is that they won't upgrade because they are afraid if they do they *won't* profit. Me? I don't know who to believe... Sure the phone company is greedy and wants to keep this pie all to itself, but on the other hand their competitors are just as greedy and want a free ride. Government has to step in and set a wholesale price that in the end is arbitrary and probably has a greater corelation to which company funded which campaign than to how much the line costs to install & maintain.
The problem is that the one wire to your house IS a monopoly and there aren't many good ways to get around that. The only way to have real competition is between different networks - phone line, cable TV line (maybe the power line? wireless?) anything else is still a monopoly and you are only arguing about how to regulate it.
I don't know if this is something you'd be interested but the evangelical christian group "Focus on the Family" produces some very high production value radio dramas. They are obviously coming from a conservative evangelical christian position but most of their dramatisations are of classics & childrens classics. For example:
Silas Marner Les Miserables Billy Bud by Melville
Dicken's A Christmas Carol C. S. Lewis'The Chronicles of Narnia the Secret Garden I've also heard that their dramatisation of the life of Deitrich Boenhoffer is very good.
They've probably told him a hundred times that he should alter his pronunciation.
True, but it is very hard to change your speech patterns. In the end there is probably very little a speech writer could do to avoid using the word since it is what the speech was about. As for the smirk I didn't notice but I wouldn't be suprised. He has many times professed a *desire* to be underestimated and has also professed to have as low an opinion of "intelectuals" as they have of him. I think he takes a perverse joy when his "hostile relationship with the English language" irks them.
Anyone see his State of the Union speech? He mis-pronounced "Nuclear" no less than three times. To quote Peter Griffin, "It's nu-cu-lar, dummy, the S is silent."
I recall reading column by a speechwriter (it was either Frum or Noonan) that said the repetition of nuclear was painful - like hearing a speech about sassafras from someone with a lisp.
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I used to think socialism was a good idea until I thought of *everything* being run by the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Government systems like the one you describe have a dismal record in acheiving their goals especially when those goals require innovation - not a trait often associated with governments. At best such systems work for a few years or even a decade or two while there is still a vision & the people in the system retain some passion. But the system will eventually suck that all dry because on a fundamental basis a government solution is *secure* it does NOT have to perform to survive. Without survival or even "success" (in bureaucratic terms) requiring actual achievment acheivement eventually ceases to be much of a consideration at all.
I know that everyone will reject this for ideological reasons, but consider that it solves every one of the problems you mentioned.
In much the same way that euthenasia would solve the problem of the common cold.
In the end it depends on which problem you are trying to solve. If the problem is human disease then this government solution would NOT solve the problem. If the problem is that some people are making money then it would be a very effective solution.
Look at the system we have over the long run - Even if our pharmecutical companies are absolutely raping us for massive profits (which I'll grant is somewhat true) after their 17 year patent is up we still end up with the drugs. Despite, indeed BECAUSE OF, the greed and avarice of the drug companies we are seeing an explosion of new drugs curing diseases, relieving pain, increasing life spans (& making sure old men can still "get it up") - given the long period of time it takes to make new discoveries and to turn those scientific discoveries into to a pill you can take 17 years of getting totally screwed by the pharmectucals is a SMALL price to pay.
Say you have disease X, the choice you are presenting us is that we have a competative private system that will produce a drug in 10 years but is outrageously expensive for the first 7-17 years. The alternative is to have a system that is only half or even a third as efficient - it produces a cure in 20-30 years that is cheap* the moment it is available but unavailable for ANY cost until that time. *(though the R&D cost with inflated administrative costs is also showing up in your tax bill - so the actual price of the drugs is split between the price you pay over the counter and your tax bill)
If it was truly a highly risky endevor to be a Phamecutical company they wouldn't be steadily very profitable.
;). Though it is not a pharmacutical the risk is similar to that faced by Dow Corning - long periods of blissful ignorance & cash cow profits and then a huge liablity & bankruptcy. This is an industry where the initial investment must be huge. It is an industry where any failure is *always* a matter of life & death or severe injuries. An industry where any failure is always sympathetic and severly suffering plaintiffs versus a much demonized defendant (the evil pharmicutical company but ultimately *me* the investor) . Am I going to invest in this industry or in a software company where things really don't matter and failure is minor annoyance and is even *expected*? If there isn't a tidy profit advantage in one I think the choice is obvious.
True to some extent - that is why the pharmecuticals are so very large, they may get killed on one or two flops or even a big class action lawsuit but they're big enough to spread those risks out. Also the time line over which risks are spread are rather long - any problem with a drug that they didn't find out in the course of their testing is likely to be a long term one that may only generate lawsuits decades after the drug was first put on the market (though Seldane became a big liablity pretty quickly
here MUST be some way of balancing it all out. Sorta like the segway. If they made it $1000, would they sell more of them? $500? $10?
;) their market is only as big as the number of people sick with whatever the drug cures. If there are one million people with disease X it doesn't matter how cheap you go, you aren't going to entice any more people to use it.
They're *drugs*. Unless they're recreational drugs
Doctors CAN prescribe drugs for "off label" uses but the Pharmacutical company gets in BIG, BIG, BIG trouble if they in ANY WAY market/encourage such unaproved uses.
Remember claritin before the FDA deemed it fine to go over the counter? It was stupifying the price drop.
I have to say I'm mostly (but not entirely) on the Pharmecuticals side on this issue. You are forgetting a few things
1) the manufacturing of these drugs *once you know how* is generally pretty cheap & easy to do.
2) Discovering these drugs in the first place is the product of some very serious, long-term, hard and *expensive* science.
3) Often finding a way to turn a discovery like this into a drug that is fit for human consumption is perhaps even more difficult and *expensive* - Penicillin was discovered in 1929 but it wasn't until 1945 that someone figured out how to use it as a drug. It usually takes several years of *very expensive* research before they figure out how to use a discovery like this as a drug.
4) Once they have a drug it takes several years of difficult and *very expensive* trials to prove it's effectiveness & safety to the FDA
5) Not all of their expensive initial research, & expensive development of drugs end up being anything.
6) The whole time they've been doing this their patent has been active and ticking down, they have a few years left in their patent to make back their enormous investment. (though they *may/may not* be able to get a patent extension that compensates them for the time it takes to get FDA approval. So, they may get at best 17 years to get a return on their investment or if they fail to get an extension they may have only a couple of years.
7) They are making drugs there is a *huge* risk even after years of *expensive* research and getting FDA approval that a drug may do nasty things to the user over the long term or to a tiny fraction of the population - the result could be lawsuits that costs BILLIONS. It is important to note that this harm doesn't have to be proven scientifically it has to be "proven" in a court of law - One scientist with a pet theory as an expert witness and a handful (out of millions) that have some unexplained syndrome and all the profits from all the drugs produced by hundreds of scientists over dozens of years may end up in the pockets of a few dozen lawyers that "worked" for at most four or five years to "earn" it.
The response to all this is that Pharmecutical companies are *very* profitable - true but they are engaged in a fairly risky investment as a matter of economics high risk has to be balanced with high rewards, otherwise the investment goes elsewhere. If they operated without any profit at all the drugs would be roughly 8-25% less (looking at last years profits vs. revenues) but that obviously woudn't take into account any risks or explain why anyone would bother to undertake the years of research outside of pure altruism - a fine sentiment but not that great as a motivator.
The other response is "if it's a life saving drug it's morally wrong to profit from it". My response to those folks is to ask them if they are willing to make such huge investments themselves without profiting from them. Would YOU be willing to go to school, get an advanced chemistry degree, spend decades of research into the slime floating around rock pools and NOT GET PAID for it.
So how do these philosophies fit into the political parties of today?
/. tends to be focussed on only a few specific areas of liberty and tends to be dogmatic and prone to hyperbole. Secondly the dogmatic libertarian believes that the ONLY legitimate purpose of government is defense and law enforcement (the law is the collective exercise of the individual's right to defend his life, liberty and property). I assume the removal of civil liberties you are concerned about have to do with various expediencies taken in the "war on terror" - again libertarians believe that defense is the ONE legitimate purpose of government and those that are more conservative than libertarian are quite willing to give the government a lot of latitude in pursuing that end - especially when the powers granted are ones that have existed in the past and which were taken away in what many conservatives saw as softheaded and foolish reforms that they saw more as "soft on crime" or "soft on defense" than as expansions of liberty. Still the hardcore libertarians and far-right "paleoconservatives" are vehemently opposed to the current expansions of federal power.
In general the Republicans are a coalition of pro-business pragmatists, conservative libertarians and social conservatives. The Democrats are a coalition of minority interest groups, labor unions & progressive socialists.
Both democrats and republicans seem happy to endorse removal of civil liberties (as anyone who reads slashdot is constantly reminded)
First off it is important to realise that
but you said that most of America is pro-liberty.
No I said that it *is* a liberal democracy. Simply compare our institutions (honestly) to those of most other nations around the world to see the degree to which this is true. There are other liberal democracies in the world, particularly in Europe but even there those that would critique our society and compare it unfavorably to Europe tend to be arguing from a socialist or equality perspective rather than libertarian/personal freedom perspective. Much of what conservatives are conserving are those institutions that make the US a liberal democracy and some of what they are conserving are those elements at odds with a libertarian ideal. By the same token much of what is "progressive" in our politics is "progressing" away from liberty. The centralised state control that is inherant in socialism is diametrically at odds with individual liberty.
Did you read the press release? I doubt it. You saw "Apple" as the subject of the headline and just half-hazardly clicked the reply button and started a schpiel about how Apple really needed this, etc. If you go and check the press release out, you'll see that only the Blade server architectures are even mentioned.
For anyone who has been paying attention to Apple and IBM and the PowerPC 970 the article didn't NEED to mention Apple. It has been an open and obvoius secret that this chip was developed by IBM specifically for Apple - The presense of Altivec (which is largely useless on a server) is proof enough of that even without the coy public statements (and a few explicit slip-ups despite the standard policy of "we never comment on unannounced products" ).
Yeah, Apple hopes to use this some day, but it'll be a long time coming.
They will be using it the moment IBM can produce them in sufficient quantites.
Someone resection this to strictly IBM rather than an Apple > IBM article.
Despite the article itself having nothing to do with Apple it IS of interest to Apple users because it reveals that the chip everyone knows will replace the G4 is reaching speeds up to 2.5 GHz when it had previously been reported to be between 1.4 - 1.8 GHz.
I have to sort of disagree with your terms. Libertarianism IS the name of a political philosophy which is being used by a political party (just as there is a conservative party in NY). What you are describing IS NOT conservatism but is in fact libertarianism (or "classical liberalism" or even "liberalism" though that term has come to mean something quite different). It is a political philosophy that elevates "liberty".
Conservatism is talking about something different, something orthogonal to liberalism (using the old meaning of that word) - it is a political philosophy of "conserving" what is good (in their view). It elevates continuity, it is a belief that the "tried and true" is preferable to the untried and possibly risky. Conservatives don't necessarily oppose change & reform but are extrememly cautious about it and are very aware of the law of unintended consequences. They are uninterested in an ideologically pure utopia (I think it was Russell Kirk that called it the negation of ideology) but believe that society is organic and that it's inconsistancies and idiosyncrocies reflect the balance of competing legitimate interests. They believe that trying to shoehorn society to fit some perfectly consistent and pure ideology will unbalance those interests and will lead to all sorts of evils. In many ways it is helpful to think of conservatism as a temperment rather than an all encompasing political philosophy.
As it happens we live in a liberal democracy - a conservative here will be generally libertarian because the society whose institutions & reigning political philosophy they seek to conserve are liberal ones. In each individual conservative/libertarian the precise mix of motives either a conservative temperment or a liberal philosophy will be mixed. Those that are more truly conservative shy away from the hardcore libertarians because they distrust such an all encompasing utopian philosophy - I remember one conservative writing that he viewed libertarians the way the British Empire viewed the Gurkhas, "You want them to fight your battles but you wouldn't want them in charge". This definition encompases both "classical liberals" and religious and social conservatives that are generally less libertarian - though to be fair to them they are not usually statists and are much more liberal in their view of government than their critics fear. (to illustrate this point: I saw a catalog from about the most strictly fundamentalist publisher I am aware of and the book on government he endorsed as his ideal understanding of political philosophy was Frederic Bastiat's "The Law" - you CAN'T get any more hyper-libertarian than that! I'm sure it's not representative of all fundamentalists but that libertarian world view is more prominant in the religious right political philosophy than people realise.)
"Liberalism" is a word that in it's popular usage has come to mean almost the opposite of it's original meaning. It originally meant political philosophy that elevates the individuals liberty against the state. The political battles of the previous couple of centuries were between progressive liberals (called liberals) and conservative authoritarians (called conservatives) and progressive or radical statists/authoritarians (called radicals or socialists) - liberalism has won the day and in America at least most of those called conservatives are now liberal conservatives (they seek to conserve our existing liberal society) they are opposed by "liberals" who are largely progressive socialists (they seek gradual change in a socialist direction - they are unaware, or in denial about the authoritarian implications).
But what happens to privacy when everything you buy can be tracked from store floor to door?
Umm... Walmart already knows you bought size 10 panties & has your credit card number to boot. I don't see how tracking those panties from the shelf to the cash register has any additional impact on your privacy - unless you are trying to sneak them out without paying.
I agree with you that they are unlikely to port the iLife applications since they are intended to drive hardware sales BUT you also said:
...and you know that iPhoto and iMovie are heavily invested in Cocoa, Quartz and other Mac-exclusive properties.
You'll remember that Cocoa is the updated OpenStep and that it used to run on Intel chips as either part of the NextStep operating system OR on top of Windows - Remember Gil Amelio's "Rhapsody for Intel" and "Rhapsody for Windows" strategy? I know Apple's Marklar project is keeping MacOS X up to date on intel chips (essentially Rhapsody for Intel) I wonder if they have continued to develop Cocoa in such a way that Cocoa for windows is still possible, or even being maintained in some secret lab somewhere. I suppose Quartz could throw a wrench in the works but it is an intrigueing possiblity. Apple is developing all this new software to drive hardware sales but having all of that software built on what is still (internally) a cross-platform environment will give them a lot of options on when, where and how to jump should the "axe fall".
Part of your argument is contradictory - you say users don't need all the speed they have and then say they won't move to a 64-bit chip because it will be slower (which I don't think is necessarily the case even when running 32-bit apps.) Also the user of the 64-bit chip won't get an error message saying that a different processor is required. It that happens to anyone it will be the user of the 32-bit chip - so that is actually an argument for getting the more capable chip.
Will this be the next big thing though?
Not necessarily, who knows what ways people might find to use this capability when it becomes more widespread? Video is one obvious application and it's appeal is broader than just the "creative types" - just about every soccer mom at the field brings the camcorder at some point to film little Tyler and/or Brianna. Apple is hoping to make it as easy for her to edit that film as it is for her to change font's in a word document (even though she isn't a professional typesetter). I'll concede that human nature being what it is she may use iMovie only two or three times when she first gets the computer and digital camcorder BUT when she purchases the computer she *thinks* she's going to be editing home movies all the time - still that is a sale that Apple or AMD is going to make at Intel's expense.
I realize you're a troll but your post gives me a chance to explain what I mean since their probably are people out there as stupid as you are pretending to be.
I'm not talking about the popular defintion of conservative vs. liberal I'm talking about a "liberal" a word from the same root as "liberty" aka a "classic liberal" or libertarian (though libertarians have a comprehensive world view and are more docrtinaire thus further to the extreme on my scale) and the oposite of a "statist". A "conservative" by contrast is someone who is trying to "conserve" what they see as positive ascpects of society and is the opposite of a "progressive" which is trying to change society to make it "better" (in their view). So in America where we already have a liberal democracy a "conservative" may be trying to conserve those aspects of society that make it liberal (aka free) thus a "liberal conservative" would be the opposite of a "progressive statist" commonly called "liberals" but often not very liberal at all by the classic definition. In that sense "liberal conservative" is not an oxymoron. In fact Russell Kirk used the term to describe one of the essayists in "The Conservative Mind" - I think I'm in pretty good company here.
"evils of the bush family"? What the hell is that? Boom motherfucker, will you liberate your mind?
My bad if I didn't put quotation marks around that phrase. I was not myself ascribing evil to the Bush family - I was talking about the identical rhetoric coming from both Paleo-conservatives on the far right and Communists on the far left. Their conspiracy theories are essentially identical and if you were to debate them on the propriety of war in Iraq or whether or not GWB was a good president or not you would be hard pressed to discern which end of the spectrum they are coming from. It is becoming increasingly difficult to tell Noam Chomsky from Pat Buchanan. I just mentioned it to point out that a simple scale from reactionary to radical isn't always helpful in making distinctions between political philosophies.
I am in no hurry to be the proud owner of a whole bunch of PCs that can no longer run apps based on a requirement of 64-bit code.
I don't understand why you should have to, there is no reason that the 64-bit computer couldn't run the old 32-bit code. I think Intel is simply trying to spin necessity into a virtue. Sure only people with specialised needs are going to need/want more than 4 GB of RAM but there are a fair amount of such people. As for the rest of us that don't *need* it - once the capability exists it is possible that someone will find a use for it that we will "need" (or just want really badly). Apple for instance is not only trying to dominate the professional film/video market they are trying, with some success, to *create* a consumer video market. Once you start editting video, even if it's just home movies, a 4 GB ceiling stops looking sky-high and starts looking like something you might bump your head against.
The problem with that scale is that it is too simplistic, or perhaps that it is only measuring one variable (change vs. preservation) out of many. (and strictly speaking the word "liberal" doesn't belong - progressive would be better) For instance you could make a similar scale of another variable (government control vs. individual autonomy) from:
1. Totalitarian
2. Authoritarian
3. Moderate
4. Liberal
5. Libertarian
As you could guess people from any point on your scale could end up on any point on my scale depending on what exactly it is that they want to change and/or preserve. For instance both stalinists and anarchists would be in the radical side of your scale but their vision for society come from the opposite sides of my scale. And the same person or political philosophy can end up on different points on either scale depending on the particular issue - look at how it's impossible to tell the difference between a Communist Party member from A.N.S.W.E.R. and a Paleo-Conservative militia member when the issue is the war on Iraq and the evils of Bush family.
Note that by it's more strict (as opposed to popular) definition "liberal" really belongs on this scale and would include many conservatives - it's not unheard of when talking about political ideas to hear the phrase "liberal conservative" i.e. someone who is trying to conserve the liberal aspects of our current system from statists (ranging the entire spectrum from reactionary to radical). It also explaines the apparent paradox that the Australian "Liberal Party" is pretty much the conservative party.
There is NO major feature that I am aware of that is present in the current version of Windows IE that is missing from the Mac version of IE. If I'm mistaken about this, please point me in the direction of something that references such a feature.
As a mac user (fanatic even) I hate to say this BUT the Mac version of IE *is* missing features that the windows version has. I haven'r really bothered to look into all the details since I design sites to be cross-platform/standards compliant but I have used some CMS tools where the back end used a lot of windows only stuff that the Mac version just didn't have. Also as a web designer it doesn't have to be missing anything - it just has to be *different* - the bugs are different, the work arounds are going to be different, it looks different. Since 95% of the users looking at the site are going to be looking at it on windows I have to be looking at it (alot) on windows as well. Thank God for VirtualPC - I can have my cake and eat it too (MacOS, Unix & Windows all in one shiny PowerBook)
As for your larger point though I agree with you. I think Apple is on the right track and now that they have a solid OS strategy they can be (and have been) a lot more flexible. They have a solid foundation and are already starting to build a lot of interesting stuff on top of it. They are in a MUCH better place than they were just a few years ago.
Just not in the sense of a scientific law. It is more like Murphy's law, Parkinson's Law (Work expands to fill the time available) Clarke's Third Law (Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic) or Beauregard's Law (When you're up to your nose, keep your mouth shut)
You have a little bit of a conflict of interest when it comes to deciding what rates are "reasonable" for you to be charged - I'm sure in your opinion you are overcharged & they are rolling in profits and it may be true but it is still problematic that they are forced to allow you to piggyback on their investment. Have you considered what it would cost you to duplicate the service they are offering? Have you approached the cable companies and asked how much they would charge for a similar service?
Also, I said they *want* a free ride - yes you are paying for it but you and your larger competitors are applying the same kind of political presure to lower the definition of "reasonable" that the telecoms are applying to raise the definition of "reasonable" or as it seems the have finally succeeded in doing - kick their competitors off the line.
In the remaining 90% of the country if you have cable service it's probably *MORE* expensive than DSL.
And why is that? Perhaps because maintaining such a network in rural areas is more costly and difficult than you are willing to either admit or pay the telecoms for the use of. I honestly don't know - but I do know that a government sponsored commission doesn't *really* know either (though there guesses will be both more educated and more tainted with self-interest). Heck the phone company probably doesn't *really* know itself since it doesn't face the discipline of competition on that particular front.
We should be seeking solutions that really are based on competition not an illusory "competition" where government sets "reasonable" prices for one company to offer its infrastructure to it's competitors. Perhaps the baby bells should be even more completely broken up and the remaining monopoly restricted to only offering the use of their infrastructure on a wholesale basis. Perhaps even that utility should face competition from a handful of other companies that can also lay their own wires with just enough regulation to avoid chaos & incompatibility.
I'm sure they would mind if my parents', who happen to have a major trunk line that runs under their property, decided to dig that up.
Which is probably on a right-of-way - just like my driveway which goes over my neighbors land - but I'm not exercising a monopoly power over my neighbor I'm just using a right-of-way that is part of his deed.
The ILECs want special rights, they can allow *competition* (That silly thing that I thought conservatives/libertarians were supposed to be *for*) as the cost of those rights.
Yes but having government set a "reasonable" price is problematic. On the other hand I would agree with you that just letting the phone companies abuse their monopoly is not a good answer either.
I'm not allowed to go digging up public land to lay my own cables,
Hmm... I'm not sure that's entirely true - I think other telecoms, not just the monopoly baby bells, can and do lay down cable - I know my cable TV company does as well. But that is not what those other telecoms are *asking* for is it? They just want to use the cables layed down and maintained by someone else. Sure the phone company is greedy and will try to squeeze as much profit as the law will allow but the competitors are just as greedy and aren't above using the law to squeeze all the profits out of the phone company.
What's more, it's a government-sponsored monopoly. That means that the Bells have, as a condition of their monopoly, certain restrictions and responsiblities that other industries don't... The Bells can stifle any sort of telecom competition simply because they DO control the wires going into your house.
Is there any reason that you couldn't have more than one line? Sure you wouldn't want dozens or hundreds of different lines but couldn't each town or county grant three or four different companies the right to lay down those wires? Then each company could provide whatever services and compete on a level playing field with none of them holding either it's control over the physical assets or it's influence with the legislature to set a "reasonable price" (which may or may not be "reasonable" and will forever be controversial) over it's competitors.
I suppose you still have the problem of who fixes the mess when a phone pole falls over and pulls down *all* the lines - perhaps they would all have to share the expense of a common maintenance & repair service on an equal basis.
Oh, and if the bells' lines are their "property" then their property is illegally tresspassing on my land. I demand rent starting now at $1000/day, or I'll dig them up.
I really don't think they would mind if you dug up the phone line going to your house.
I expect them to also begin paying rent to the government for any of their equipment that passes through public property, under streets that my tax dollars have paid for, for example.
They do, well not rent but they do pay property taxes on each telephone pole (at least in my state).
they're refusing to upgrade their networks until they can be assured that they'll be the only ones to profit.
I'm sure their argument is that they won't upgrade because they are afraid if they do they *won't* profit. Me? I don't know who to believe... Sure the phone company is greedy and wants to keep this pie all to itself, but on the other hand their competitors are just as greedy and want a free ride. Government has to step in and set a wholesale price that in the end is arbitrary and probably has a greater corelation to which company funded which campaign than to how much the line costs to install & maintain.
The problem is that the one wire to your house IS a monopoly and there aren't many good ways to get around that. The only way to have real competition is between different networks - phone line, cable TV line (maybe the power line? wireless?) anything else is still a monopoly and you are only arguing about how to regulate it.
LOL - and I mean that literally I really did laugh out loud when I ran across this post.
I don't know if this is something you'd be interested but the evangelical christian group "Focus on the Family" produces some very high production value radio dramas. They are obviously coming from a conservative evangelical christian position but most of their dramatisations are of classics & childrens classics. For example: Silas Marner
Les Miserables
Billy Bud by Melville
Dicken's A Christmas Carol
C. S. Lewis'The Chronicles of Narnia
the Secret Garden
I've also heard that their dramatisation of the life of Deitrich Boenhoffer is very good.
They've probably told him a hundred times that he should alter his pronunciation.
True, but it is very hard to change your speech patterns. In the end there is probably very little a speech writer could do to avoid using the word since it is what the speech was about. As for the smirk I didn't notice but I wouldn't be suprised. He has many times professed a *desire* to be underestimated and has also professed to have as low an opinion of "intelectuals" as they have of him. I think he takes a perverse joy when his "hostile relationship with the English language" irks them.
Anyone see his State of the Union speech? He mis-pronounced "Nuclear" no less than three times. To quote Peter Griffin, "It's nu-cu-lar, dummy, the S is silent."
I recall reading column by a speechwriter (it was either Frum or Noonan) that said the repetition of nuclear was painful - like hearing a speech about sassafras from someone with a lisp.
I tried to buy milk a couple of days ago and they wouldn't take my visa card - now I know why.