The lists, which each have tens of thousands of addresses, are generally created by a process called e-mail appending, taking voter registration files from a member's district. The next step is to cross match them with large databases of names and e-mail addresses assembled by consumer data companies like Equifax, which has a database of more than 75 million e-mail addresses. E-mail addresses can usually be found for 10 percent to 20 percent of the voter file.
...
The new policy says that lawmakers can freely send messages to voters who have agreed to subscribe to their e-mail lists. To build such lists, House members are sending huge amounts of bulk e-mail messages to their districts in the hope that some voters will subscribe.
...
The unsolicited messages go out from Congressional offices as often as twice a month. The unsolicited messages, which have to stop 90 days before an election or a primary, are still subject to approval from the franking commission.
So...
- politicians are targetting their constituents only.
- the unsolicited messages are still subject to the 90-day rule, and only contain an invitation to subscribe to a mailing list.
- politicians are free to send whatever they please to people on the mailing list.
That all sounds fine to me... Congress isn't really placing themselves above the law, and the fact that they can spam those on their subscriber mailing list at the taxpayer's expense, doesn't bother me that much. In truth, they should just get rid of the entire 'franking privilege', not just this minor part of it.
But when all's said and done... if you spam me, I don't vote for you. It is that simple:)
any one of you know of someone who fills in these criteria.
The closest you're likely to get is good testimonials from companies using Linux. IBM, SUN etc. all have a stake in Linux, and the 'independant' research outfits are probably funded by them, or by Microsoft (in case Linux needs a good bashing).
My client is a big megacorp. Their strategy for the coming years is to migrate all Unix systems to Windows/.Net (client side), and to Linux or NT (server side, depending on which OS fits best). This isn't the kind of corporation that makes such a decision after reading a sales brochure or a Gartner article. They research their options, thoroughly. Apparently the conclusion was that Linux is reliable enough to be entrusted with mission-critical stuff.
The sad thing is that they will (probably) keep the results of this research confidential. Why help the competition with this knowledge?
It's even stranger that we are allowed to bring explosives like LiIon batteries... Bypass the fuse, short it, and you have a nice little bomb (as the owners of many a Nokia phone can attest to).
Even stranger: a while back I took a dive light in my cabin luggage. The guy at the X-ray wanted to have a closer look at it. It's a 25cm long cilinder of aluminium, about as thick as your arm, with a heavy battery in it. Perfect for cramming full of Semtex and a detonator, or even just for whacking people over the head with.
The security officer aked me to turn it on, but nothing happened since I had removed the light bulb. You're supposed to do that: if the light comes on accidentally in your suitcase, it can cause a nice fire since it'll overheat when not used under water. When I told him that, he just waved me through...
Apparently one of the common methods is to use a shill to slip in before you so your laptop is sitting at the other end of the x-ray machine while you are still waiting to clear. Thief then takes off with it.
There is an urban legend about this method of theft being an urban legend:) It isn't.
It's not that common though: most people send their coats with wallets and cell-phone in it through the X-ray as well, and generally keep a close eye on them while they clear the metal detector. If someone grabs their belongings and they cry 'thief' immediately, the thief isn't going to get very far, with all the security guys around.
"[T]he DCSD has not documented where [Dr Lomborg] has allegedly been biased in his choice of data and in his argumentation, and...the ruling is completely void of argumentation for why the DCSD find that the complainants are right in their criticisms of [his] working methods. It is not sufficient that the criticisms of a researcher's working methods exist; the DCSD must consider the criticisms and take a position on whether or not the criticisms are justified, and why."
I am actually impressed. Whether or not Lomborg is right or wrong, has acted unscientific, or is completely off his rocker, the Ministry is right to take an interest in this case, and to demand a better argumentation.
The very same thing has happened in Holland, not just once but a number of times: scientists have been fired from the governmental Environmental Agency, apparently just for holding an unorthodox view. The responsible minister has not questioned this decision or even taken a passing interest in these cases, and the event passed largely unnoticed by the media as well. And the country sleeps on, undisturbed by those annoying opposing voices, and all was well...
That a book primarily about cost-benefit analyses and socioeconomic impacts of environmental regulation parading as science be declared scientifically honest? Look, it's a fine book for policy wonks, but it ain't science, and it shouldn't be presented as such. So what do you want?
I don't know Lomborg or his book, but I want what the Danish Ministry of Science wants: that Lomborg not be fired from his position for his views. If they want to fire him for being unscientific, that's another thing, but they will have to make a better case, as the Ministry pointed out.
Re:Quick review.
on
Systemantics
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The deepest insight, very subtle indeed, is Orwell's Inversion: the confusion of input and output:
Hardly subtle...
This book is about as useful as 'The art of war', which is to say: not that useful to me. It is an insightful summary of the Blindingly Obvious, though it does serve a purpose to educate the 'systems-people'... the Conquer Cancer example is particularly useful.
I'd think that the cynical Slashdot crowd will not learn a great deal from this book... except perhaps gain some ammunition to educate others.
Here's a question I always wish I could ask managers, whenever the topic of 'outsourcing' comes up: if dealing with programmers overseas is more appealing to the bottom line, why not let your programmers work from home for 50-80% of their current in-office pay?
My answer would be (even though I'm not a manager): "People working from home are working unsupervised and individually. An outsourced team is still a team, working together, and with a local team leader present. We manage the team through that team leader."
I'm not saying that working from home is bad, or that outsourcing is good. But they're two very different things, even when only looking from the company's point of view.
My opinion is that this "gedoogbeleid" happens in other countries too. But then why do we Dutch think we are the only ones having it?
Recently there have been some incidents (fireworks explosion in Enschede, fire at new-years party in Volendam) where poor law-enforcement has been part of the discussion.
The difference between 'gedoogbeleid' and what you describe as happening in other countries (and Holland as well), is that 'gedoogbeleid' is just that: an official policy. I'll illustrate with some examples:
- You run a red light but there's no cop around to fine you: this is a failure of law enforcement; ideally, all instances of lawbreaking are punished. This is not an official policy
- Disasters happen: This is a failure on the part of city government: either they issued permits that they shouldn't have issued (Volendam), or they failed to enforce those permits (Enschede). Not enforcing those permits or issuing the wrong permits wasn't official policy; it was sheer incompetence or negligence. In the Volendam case, one could argue that the officials turned a blind eye to the situation, but again, this was not an official policy.
- A copper catches you riding a bike without a light, but decides not to fine you. This happens from time to time, but in other cases he might fine you. It's up to the cop (however there are rules governing which offenses he can decide to let go unpunished).
- Selling soft-drugs in a place of business. This is a criminal act, but it is not prosecuted. Not because it is accepted or because it's only a minor crime (it isn't), but because of an official policy issued by the minister..
There are more examples of gedoogbeleid: A doctor is by law not allowed to assist with a suicide, period. Yet, such cases are not prosecuted if (very strict) requirements of due care and such have been met. Holland is indeed one of the few countries where such serious matters are not governed by law, but by whim. If you don't think that's a bad way of doing things, read Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand): "... create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt". (Yes, taken slightly out of context, yet it does apply to my argument).
Anyways... File trading is not covered by the gedoogbeleid, nor will it ever be. It is not enforced because so far it has not been proven practical to go after individual file traders. The record companies' representatives might change their tactics after this ruling though...
Most stuff that Holland is famed for is indeed illegal: they adopted a stance of decriminalising which is, quite frankly, the best way to go. You still can't deal massive quantities of dope or run prostitution scams involving pimping and extortion. The laws are just relaxed at a small time level and for people who pay their taxes on products and services that they buy.
Decriminalising is exactly what they did not do! Holland is famous for our "gedoogbeleid", which means "the policy of turning a blind eye". most of the stuff we are famous for is still illegal; these law are simply not enforced. While I think taking small-time dealing and usage of soft drugs out of the arena of criminals is a good thing, I do not think that not enforcing the laws is the way to do it. Either something is illegal or it isn't. Make the laws accordingly.
Why? Because many of these issues are fundamental questions that should be answered by parliament. As things stand now, these issues are handled on a local level ie. by municipal governments, since they simply can choose to enforce (or not enforce) these laws. The "gedoogbeleid" gives them that power.
What they've always really wanted is to get a license fee from each copy of Linux in any commercial use. That's why they've resisted explaining exactly which code they consider infringing, because they were afraid Linus would order it replaced right away (which of course he would, if there was any.)
Isn't that a rather faulty premise, really? It might work if every company with commercial Linux installations were foolish enough to pay the license fee, but I cannot imagine that any court would allow SCO to collect royalties on a product that is mostly other people's work, with a just few (alledged) lines of SCO's code in it. Not without at least disclosing which lines actually belong to SCO, which would then allow the core team to replace those lines.
Maybe at first the executives had some strange idea about collecting royalties, but when they threw a stone at the sleeping dragon (IBM), it was clear that they just wanted someone to buy SCO, making them rich. Now that this plan fell through, they're trying pump-and-dump. Wilder and wilder claims follow hard on one another, and with each surge in the share price, SCO's leadership sell off a bunch of shares (as others have pointed out here before). The fact that they are offering their lawyers a big chunk of cash if someone buys SCO indicates that they're still in hopes that this will happen.
Bah, go to the MediaMarkt (branches in most major cities) and shop for the cheap-ass Daytek players. Region-free goodness can be yours for 50 Euros and a few keystrokes on the remote control. No voiding of warranty, which doesn't matter that much anyway on a 50 Euro appliance. The thing plays DVD+Rs as well.
Better yet, copying and keeping rented or borrowed DVDs is legal in Holland, if you have the copy strictly for personal use.
What's frustrating about it is we all know that it's possible to do this simply, and well, but Diebold chose to do a crappy job and lie about it, rather then doing it right the first time.
Diebold doing a crappy job is not the issue, and I wonder why Cringeley looked at this from an IT project perspective...
If Diebold does a sterling job and builds a system that exactly meets the system requirements, bug-free and with the source code made available to the public, then from an IT viewpoint they will have a 'successful' project. Even then, their voting machines are still flawed! The real issue (and the one that Cringeley does mention later in his article) is that the specifications have a fatal flaw in them. Or you might say: the requirements given to Diebold is incomplete, perhaps for rather sinister reasons. Not requiring due consideration for security, audit trails, and tampering, when ordering the development of electronic voting machines, is like asking a company to develop an ATM and specifying its functionality as 'The machine should dispense money when someone feeds it a bank card';
And no, being a team lead of a subproject doesn't count. In that case you'll just be managing and tracking the developers in your team... if they are reasonably professional, this is an easy task and you'll probably be programming as well most of the time.
Managing a project means a bit more than just assigning tasks, bookkeeping, and planning stuff. Managing your staff and their work packages is just the easy part (and it's boring as hell too). The hard part is where there is the potential for conflict, or conflicting interest. Is the project still making money? How do you renegotiate a release date? How do you cope with setbacks like an office move. What if the essential hardware you ordered arrives a month late? How will you roll out the software in the client organisation? Are they ready for it? Etc. etc. These are the hard questions and issues that your team will not solve for you, no matter how good they are. This is your job, and your team expects you to solve issuesl like this.
Someone once described being a manager as primarily being a problem owner. On complex projects this is by no means an easy job, and it requires very different skills than the job of team lead or developer requires. If your project manager is a bad one (and I don't mean that he's a PHB-like inconsiderate git; I mean one that just isn't good at managing issues), then you yourself will probably not have an easy time either... problems and obstacles that the PM is meant to catch will trickle down to the team and affect your daily routine. On the other hand, if your project manager is good at managing crises, client expectations and budgets, then you'll probably wonder what he does all day... but somehow, you will not encounter many issues in your own work (except maybe technical ones, which are your own domain after all).
I do agree that the profession of project managers (or managers in general) is vastly overrated, both in prestige and in monetary rewards. Or perhaps it's more like technical expertise is underrated... the main problem I encounter when managers have to appraise technical staff, is that most of them have no clue how to separate the really good ones from the average techies. That's kind of ironic, since the difference between good and average programmers is larger than it is in most other professions... but rarely is that difference reflected in pay or appreciation, since managers cannot tell the difference.
Re:The greatest threat...
on
Real Security?
·
· Score: 1
At a certain point security measures will be so advanced that human nature is the most likely bottleneck.
Very true, but the point of the article was that too much security will increase the likelihood of human nature becoming a weak link. If you have to remember 5 passwords that expire every 5 days, and are required to consist of at least 10 characters that have to be alternating letters and numbers, most users will only be able to cope by writing it down. By strengthening the technical side of security, you have weakened overall security.
A few jobs ago I worked in a high-security environment (military). We had three guys dedicated to security matters, and these guys really knew their business. One of their policies was to forbid system administrators from enabling password expiry. Password expiration in their opinion did not add to security, but added a lot to hassle for users which would encourage them to do insecure stuff (like writing passwords down).
I therefore think that guns should be regulated in much the same way that we don't allow any idiot to drive around with an 18 wheeler.
The original point was that there is no strong evidence to support either pro gun control or anti gun control laws. However there is a lot of semi-rational argumentation on both sides of the issue.
The Dutch Ministry of Justice published some interesting figures a while back: crime statistics for 14 countries, split by category and making sure that the categories were the same across different countries (Finding the link to the data is left as an exercise for the reader, I can't be arsed to dig for it at 2am. The data's available in English). It was interesting to compare the crime statistics of Holland and the US. In Holland, we have strict gun control. In the US, guns are easy to come by in most places. Yet almost all crime (violent crime, burglary, robbery etc.) was about the same in both countries. The exception was bicycle theft, which amounts for 33% of Holland's theft crimes, and should be considered a national pastime rather than an actual crime.
It seems plausible that easy access to guns would mean that there'd be more armed nutcases and therefor more shootings, but the data doesn't support that line of reasoning. By the same token, it seems plausible that people would commit less burglary if there was a good chance that the homeowners would have firearms, but again, the data does not support that line of reasoning.
Incidentally, I do support the argument that "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns". Holland has strict gun control, but if you don't mind breaking the law, getting your hands on a gun isn't that hard.
the channels have occasionally very good programming though and no ads is a _major_ plus(and they don't always care just for viewer ratings so there's occasionally good niche programs as well).
We in Holland do not have a TV license scheme. We did away with it a few years ago, now money for public broadcasts comes from general taxation.
Sound like your public stations are okay. Let me tell you what ours are like, just to prove that a blanket tax scheme does not guarantee good quality.
Commercial TV stations have ads. Our public TV stations on the other hand, have... ads! We have niche programming as well... niche meaning bizarre programming that only a few of the 'artistic' intelligentia enjoy. As for the rest, public TV feels it has to compete with the commercials, so the remainder of the programming is intellectualy devoid tripe.
I remember when commercial television was introduced here. The public broadcasting in-crowd poured scorn on the whole thing, and in particular the little logo that these stations display in the corner of the screen. Well guess what? Within our public broadcasting system there are several 'companies' that make programs, each with their own logo. Worse: some well paid consultant decided thaty not only do these companies need an 'identity', the TV channels themselves need one as well. So now there's two logo's, one for the company and one for the channel.
If you want an example of how not to provide culture from the public treasury, look at Holland. We have managed to combine the disadvantages of socialism and commercialism... and the result isn't pretty.
The problem with many so-called 'ecologists' is that they frame everything in terms of 'saving the Planet'.
No, the problem with many so-called ecologists is that they frame everything in terms of threats to 'our comfortable existence'. They wrongly believe that it 'has to hurt if it's to heal', and translate every ecological problem, not just global warming but local small scale problems as well, into something that can, will and should have an enormous impact on our everyday lives. They do not believe in simple and painless solutions.
In Europe, people pay a small yearly fee for media already. They pay a fee for access to public service television. I see a parallel here...
There are two key questions that need to be answered to determine the fairness of a blanket scheme, and that is where the similarity between the proposed scheme and public broadcasts ends.
Who consumes?. In case of television, this answer would be 'pretty much everyone'; that's why we in Holland abolished TV licenses and raised taxes slighty to compensate. It sucked for the 2 persons without a TV, but the savings on having to collect the license fees and go door to door and check if people paid their fees, was so huge to make it worth it. With music, this question is harder to answer... but you can be sure that not 'almost anyone' consumes music, and certainly not in the same amounts. Taxing blank media or Internet traffic is unfair to people that do not download music, and this is a significant group.
Who provides the goods?. Again, in the case of public broadcasting, the anser is simple: it's the public TV channels. In the case of music it is much harder. How do you determine which artist gets what? We already have a levy on blank media and on broadcasts of music, and it is clear that the bulk of the money goes to Dutch artists, even though most of the music played is foreign.
The second question is the one that I have the most problems with. I, as a regular consumer of music, am very happy with the levy on blank CDs, which in Holland does indeed grant me the right to copy music for my own personal use, from whatever source (rented or borrowed CDs included).
However, if I were a mucisian I would hate this scheme. It gives people the right to download and copy my music, and I will probably never see any of the money raised by these special taxes.
Slashdot Mirror
So...
- politicians are targetting their constituents only.
- the unsolicited messages are still subject to the 90-day rule, and only contain an invitation to subscribe to a mailing list.
- politicians are free to send whatever they please to people on the mailing list.
That all sounds fine to me... Congress isn't really placing themselves above the law, and the fact that they can spam those on their subscriber mailing list at the taxpayer's expense, doesn't bother me that much. In truth, they should just get rid of the entire 'franking privilege', not just this minor part of it.
But when all's said and done... if you spam me, I don't vote for you. It is that simple
My client is a big megacorp. Their strategy for the coming years is to migrate all Unix systems to Windows/.Net (client side), and to Linux or NT (server side, depending on which OS fits best). This isn't the kind of corporation that makes such a decision after reading a sales brochure or a Gartner article. They research their options, thoroughly. Apparently the conclusion was that Linux is reliable enough to be entrusted with mission-critical stuff.
The sad thing is that they will (probably) keep the results of this research confidential. Why help the competition with this knowledge?
The security officer aked me to turn it on, but nothing happened since I had removed the light bulb. You're supposed to do that: if the light comes on accidentally in your suitcase, it can cause a nice fire since it'll overheat when not used under water. When I told him that, he just waved me through...
I've send my PDA and digital camera w/ memory sticks through X-ray many times, without any apparent data loss.
I've also noticed that in some airports, they've put up stickers on the X-ray equipment stating that they are safe for such devices.
The very same thing has happened in Holland, not just once but a number of times: scientists have been fired from the governmental Environmental Agency, apparently just for holding an unorthodox view. The responsible minister has not questioned this decision or even taken a passing interest in these cases, and the event passed largely unnoticed by the media as well. And the country sleeps on, undisturbed by those annoying opposing voices, and all was well...
This book is about as useful as 'The art of war', which is to say: not that useful to me. It is an insightful summary of the Blindingly Obvious, though it does serve a purpose to educate the 'systems-people'... the Conquer Cancer example is particularly useful.
I'd think that the cynical Slashdot crowd will not learn a great deal from this book... except perhaps gain some ammunition to educate others.
I'm not saying that working from home is bad, or that outsourcing is good. But they're two very different things, even when only looking from the company's point of view.
- You run a red light but there's no cop around to fine you: this is a failure of law enforcement; ideally, all instances of lawbreaking are punished. This is not an official policy
- Disasters happen: This is a failure on the part of city government: either they issued permits that they shouldn't have issued (Volendam), or they failed to enforce those permits (Enschede). Not enforcing those permits or issuing the wrong permits wasn't official policy; it was sheer incompetence or negligence. In the Volendam case, one could argue that the officials turned a blind eye to the situation, but again, this was not an official policy.
- A copper catches you riding a bike without a light, but decides not to fine you. This happens from time to time, but in other cases he might fine you. It's up to the cop (however there are rules governing which offenses he can decide to let go unpunished).
- Selling soft-drugs in a place of business. This is a criminal act, but it is not prosecuted. Not because it is accepted or because it's only a minor crime (it isn't), but because of an official policy issued by the minister..
There are more examples of gedoogbeleid: A doctor is by law not allowed to assist with a suicide, period. Yet, such cases are not prosecuted if (very strict) requirements of due care and such have been met. Holland is indeed one of the few countries where such serious matters are not governed by law, but by whim. If you don't think that's a bad way of doing things, read Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand): "... create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt". (Yes, taken slightly out of context, yet it does apply to my argument).
Anyways... File trading is not covered by the gedoogbeleid, nor will it ever be. It is not enforced because so far it has not been proven practical to go after individual file traders. The record companies' representatives might change their tactics after this ruling though...
They cannot even shut you down... what they can (and will) do is revoke the license you usually need to host a market such as this.
Decriminalising is exactly what they did not do! Holland is famous for our "gedoogbeleid", which means "the policy of turning a blind eye". most of the stuff we are famous for is still illegal; these law are simply not enforced. While I think taking small-time dealing and usage of soft drugs out of the arena of criminals is a good thing, I do not think that not enforcing the laws is the way to do it. Either something is illegal or it isn't. Make the laws accordingly.
Why? Because many of these issues are fundamental questions that should be answered by parliament. As things stand now, these issues are handled on a local level ie. by municipal governments, since they simply can choose to enforce (or not enforce) these laws. The "gedoogbeleid" gives them that power.
Maybe at first the executives had some strange idea about collecting royalties, but when they threw a stone at the sleeping dragon (IBM), it was clear that they just wanted someone to buy SCO, making them rich. Now that this plan fell through, they're trying pump-and-dump. Wilder and wilder claims follow hard on one another, and with each surge in the share price, SCO's leadership sell off a bunch of shares (as others have pointed out here before). The fact that they are offering their lawyers a big chunk of cash if someone buys SCO indicates that they're still in hopes that this will happen.
Here is a reference (Dutch only)
Bah, go to the MediaMarkt (branches in most major cities) and shop for the cheap-ass Daytek players. Region-free goodness can be yours for 50 Euros and a few keystrokes on the remote control. No voiding of warranty, which doesn't matter that much anyway on a 50 Euro appliance. The thing plays DVD+Rs as well.
Better yet, copying and keeping rented or borrowed DVDs is legal in Holland, if you have the copy strictly for personal use.
Diebold doing a crappy job is not the issue, and I wonder why Cringeley looked at this from an IT project perspective...
If Diebold does a sterling job and builds a system that exactly meets the system requirements, bug-free and with the source code made available to the public, then from an IT viewpoint they will have a 'successful' project. Even then, their voting machines are still flawed! The real issue (and the one that Cringeley does mention later in his article) is that the specifications have a fatal flaw in them. Or you might say: the requirements given to Diebold is incomplete, perhaps for rather sinister reasons. Not requiring due consideration for security, audit trails, and tampering, when ordering the development of electronic voting machines, is like asking a company to develop an ATM and specifying its functionality as 'The machine should dispense money when someone feeds it a bank card';
Ever managed an IT project?
And no, being a team lead of a subproject doesn't count. In that case you'll just be managing and tracking the developers in your team... if they are reasonably professional, this is an easy task and you'll probably be programming as well most of the time.
Managing a project means a bit more than just assigning tasks, bookkeeping, and planning stuff. Managing your staff and their work packages is just the easy part (and it's boring as hell too). The hard part is where there is the potential for conflict, or conflicting interest. Is the project still making money? How do you renegotiate a release date? How do you cope with setbacks like an office move. What if the essential hardware you ordered arrives a month late? How will you roll out the software in the client organisation? Are they ready for it? Etc. etc. These are the hard questions and issues that your team will not solve for you, no matter how good they are. This is your job, and your team expects you to solve issuesl like this.
Someone once described being a manager as primarily being a problem owner. On complex projects this is by no means an easy job, and it requires very different skills than the job of team lead or developer requires. If your project manager is a bad one (and I don't mean that he's a PHB-like inconsiderate git; I mean one that just isn't good at managing issues), then you yourself will probably not have an easy time either... problems and obstacles that the PM is meant to catch will trickle down to the team and affect your daily routine. On the other hand, if your project manager is good at managing crises, client expectations and budgets, then you'll probably wonder what he does all day... but somehow, you will not encounter many issues in your own work (except maybe technical ones, which are your own domain after all).
I do agree that the profession of project managers (or managers in general) is vastly overrated, both in prestige and in monetary rewards. Or perhaps it's more like technical expertise is underrated... the main problem I encounter when managers have to appraise technical staff, is that most of them have no clue how to separate the really good ones from the average techies. That's kind of ironic, since the difference between good and average programmers is larger than it is in most other professions... but rarely is that difference reflected in pay or appreciation, since managers cannot tell the difference.
A few jobs ago I worked in a high-security environment (military). We had three guys dedicated to security matters, and these guys really knew their business. One of their policies was to forbid system administrators from enabling password expiry. Password expiration in their opinion did not add to security, but added a lot to hassle for users which would encourage them to do insecure stuff (like writing passwords down).
The Dutch Ministry of Justice published some interesting figures a while back: crime statistics for 14 countries, split by category and making sure that the categories were the same across different countries (Finding the link to the data is left as an exercise for the reader, I can't be arsed to dig for it at 2am. The data's available in English). It was interesting to compare the crime statistics of Holland and the US. In Holland, we have strict gun control. In the US, guns are easy to come by in most places. Yet almost all crime (violent crime, burglary, robbery etc.) was about the same in both countries. The exception was bicycle theft, which amounts for 33% of Holland's theft crimes, and should be considered a national pastime rather than an actual crime.
It seems plausible that easy access to guns would mean that there'd be more armed nutcases and therefor more shootings, but the data doesn't support that line of reasoning. By the same token, it seems plausible that people would commit less burglary if there was a good chance that the homeowners would have firearms, but again, the data does not support that line of reasoning.
Incidentally, I do support the argument that "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns". Holland has strict gun control, but if you don't mind breaking the law, getting your hands on a gun isn't that hard.
Sound like your public stations are okay. Let me tell you what ours are like, just to prove that a blanket tax scheme does not guarantee good quality.
Commercial TV stations have ads. Our public TV stations on the other hand, have... ads! We have niche programming as well... niche meaning bizarre programming that only a few of the 'artistic' intelligentia enjoy. As for the rest, public TV feels it has to compete with the commercials, so the remainder of the programming is intellectualy devoid tripe.
I remember when commercial television was introduced here. The public broadcasting in-crowd poured scorn on the whole thing, and in particular the little logo that these stations display in the corner of the screen. Well guess what? Within our public broadcasting system there are several 'companies' that make programs, each with their own logo. Worse: some well paid consultant decided thaty not only do these companies need an 'identity', the TV channels themselves need one as well. So now there's two logo's, one for the company and one for the channel.
If you want an example of how not to provide culture from the public treasury, look at Holland. We have managed to combine the disadvantages of socialism and commercialism... and the result isn't pretty.
Who consumes?. In case of television, this answer would be 'pretty much everyone'; that's why we in Holland abolished TV licenses and raised taxes slighty to compensate. It sucked for the 2 persons without a TV, but the savings on having to collect the license fees and go door to door and check if people paid their fees, was so huge to make it worth it.
With music, this question is harder to answer... but you can be sure that not 'almost anyone' consumes music, and certainly not in the same amounts. Taxing blank media or Internet traffic is unfair to people that do not download music, and this is a significant group.
Who provides the goods?. Again, in the case of public broadcasting, the anser is simple: it's the public TV channels. In the case of music it is much harder. How do you determine which artist gets what? We already have a levy on blank media and on broadcasts of music, and it is clear that the bulk of the money goes to Dutch artists, even though most of the music played is foreign.
The second question is the one that I have the most problems with. I, as a regular consumer of music, am very happy with the levy on blank CDs, which in Holland does indeed grant me the right to copy music for my own personal use, from whatever source (rented or borrowed CDs included).
However, if I were a mucisian I would hate this scheme. It gives people the right to download and copy my music, and I will probably never see any of the money raised by these special taxes.
You jest, but if you want to convince managers, I have one word for you: Powerpoint!
Managers understand 2 things. Short lists of bullet points, and diagrams. Anything over 2 pages is too much info for them.
And no, they're not too dumb to absorb any more information than that, they simply don't have the time.