Umm... theres nothing wrong with the original post.
"Definitely a few names that probably don't deserve to be on the list" != "There are a few names that definitely probably don't deserve to be on the list"
In my experience the Better Business Bureau is a paper tiger, it doesn't have any ability to back up its supposed powers of protecting the consumer
That's because the Better Business Bureau is not a consumer protection group (despite their claims to the contrary). In my experience the Better Business Bureau exists to help business owners conduct "better" (i.e. more) business.
I guess that's what happens when a group that is supposed to regulate business is funded entirely by donations from those businesses.
It's not vigilantism at all as nobody was really attempting to enforce the law here. The RIAA people simply had the vendor sign a document that gave them permission to confiscate the property. This paper was voluntarily signed by the vendor so that they wouldn't be sued by the RIAA. Sounds ok to me.
If the RIAA people told the vendors that they were law enforcement officials -well that is a problem. It's very difficult to prove though.
If you look at Aragorn in the books it is apparent that he leads his life with the certainty that he will fufill his destiny. This focus lends his character a quiet, almost restrained power. The power and dignity in his Numenorian blood is readily discernable. The fact that in the book he reflects on his destiny and worries makes him a greater, not a lesser, character
Now look at Aragorn in the movies. His actions are uncertain, he demonstrates none of the dignity and power that he is supposed to have. He just doesn't exude the sense of greatness. Of course you can't really expect an actor to portray that kind of vibe so it isn't really PJ's fault....
I'm pretty sure that he actually held it in the book version. I seem to remember it being "cool to the touch", although maybe it was Bilbo who held it.
Indeed Gandalf would eventually be corrupted by the ring but I assuem that he would have the strength of will to resist for some time..
If I recall only Sam held the ring for any amount of time while remaining uncorrupted..
And I'm not sure why I'm responding to an AC but here we go.
Actually Gandalf can and did touch the ring in the beginning of FOTR. In order to determine that Bilbo's ring was the one, Gandalf cast it into a fire. He then retreived the ring and read the famous inscription in the mordor language...
Your facile argument concerning the democratic nature of the American political system caused me to group you with those idiots. So, logically I assumed that you were taking the stupidist possible course of action (that is, impersonating an American to reinforce your point).
Not necessarily true. To use the 2000 election as an example, a lot more people might have voted for Nader if they could have put Gore second to prevent Bush from winning. Not enough to get him elected, but maybe enough to get the 5% he needed to be eligible for matching funds the next go-round. Incidentally, the real shame in that situation is that basically the two current parties control the political process to the point that no third party can even get their views heard by the majority of voters.
But the end result is still the same. The President would still be GWB. So let's just say that Nader gets his 5% and can get matching funds. We might also argue that Perot (or someone similar) gets 5% of the extreme right's vote. Even with greater funding these candidates are not likely to actually win the presidency as most people will rank the center parties #1.
The ranking system is more likely to work when electing upper and lower house members. In this way some of the far left/far right politicians may actually get seats (this is still unlikely). The overall effect on the system, however, is minimal at best.
If 5% of the population are supporters of the marxist-lenninst party and would pick the green party second and the marajuana party third; they are going to be just as marginalized by a ranking system as they are currently. It is very unlikely that people will give even a third or fourth place to any parties that are even slightly to the left or right of center. The end result is a system that elects the same parties that have always gotten in.
So you don't see a problem with putting a president in office that is not supported by 79% of the population? Because I think most people will.
The American public were not upset that GWB got less than 1/n th of the votes, they were mad because he got less than 1/2 (specifically) ofe the votes.
That's because our voting system sucks for anything but a two-party system, mathematically. If voters could rank the candidates, rather than just pick one then you wouldn't have the whole 30% winner thing.
But then you would marginalize the more radical views- the tendency with a ranked voting system is towards the center. This would defeat the purpose of having the ranking system to start with..
You see a system bogged down by having to cater to different groups, I see a system which is a truer erpersentative democracy. Imagine if there were more representatives of the technology sector when the DMCA was passed. (Industry lobyists don't count as representatives)
The problem is that this system could never accomplish much of anything. In countries where this has been attempted the results have not been pretty.
Your apparent hatred of Dalton McGuinty suggests that you are actually from Ontario and consequently are not talking about "our" Canadian system but "their" American system.
The American system is a representative democracy in that politicians are elected by the people to represent them in government, thus the democratic part is fufilled. As for effective, while you may not like American policy you must agree that they have no problem with its implementation.
The system of governeance isn't the problem. The problem is that corporations have too much influence over the parties; corruption is rampant. To solve this the Americans need to work towards electing more principled candidates...
The problem with runoff voting is that those who support the more radical candidates are forced to pick increasingly more moderate candidates. The end results of this style of election don't look much different from the results of a two party election.
Why? A multi-party democracy can still produce strong governments.
Multi-Party systems can produce strong goverments - but quite frequently they do not. There a several reasons for this.
First, there is the possibility of minority government where the party who has elected the greatest number of candidates does not have the majority of seats in the legislature. The result of this is a government that is forced to broker deals with weaker (and sometimes extremist) parties in order to survive. This type of government generally collapses within months of being formed.
Secondly, when there are more than two parties it is likely that representatives will be elected with less than 50% of their constituents supporting them. It is not unusual for candidates to win seats with only 30-35% support.
Finally, some multi-party systems allocate a percentage of the popular vote to a percentage of seats in the house of representatives. So, if a party can muster 2-3% of the popular vote they get 2-3% of the seats. The result of this is that there can be 20-30 parties elected to office. The deal-making that needs to be conducted before any decisions can be made can go on for many, many months.
So, if you want to have government that is democratic while remaining stable and effective, the two party system is really the way to go.
People who die of obesity do have it coming - I'm not syaing I have any sympathy for those fatasses. What I am saying is that you laid it on pretty thick about those poor, poor people who got killed in the WTC.
Many of those bastards deserved the firey death that they received. My initial reaction to the "disaster" was, "Hey, its about time someone did something like that..sweet." Then I spent the rest of the day laughing at the frequency of the use of the word "horrific" on all the news channels.
>Do they have her signature on this contract? Seems like without that they don't ave anything but a nice small claims lawsuit.
Probably not, but it is likely that they have a recording of her entering into a verbal contract (contract extention). She was probably offered a few months of promotional minutes or a few bucks off the phone and jumped at the chance...
This is probably not entirely true, as industry lobbyists have too much influence over that regulation. Any appearance of competition is not true competition--it's only that which the industry and the regulators allowed for their short-term benefit. The telephone industry needs to be deregulated almost entirely (and gradually) to let it recover from prior government mistakes. The same is true of the health industry, where government regulation and loopholes created our current miserable healthcare system.
I agree that lobbyists have far too much influence over regulation. In fact the incumbent carriers actually prefer to have the facade of competition so that they can maintain 99.5% market share while arguing that the existence of this "competition" means that rules need to be relaxed. Eventual deregulation of some of the industry is the goal, however, the path to deregulation lies with real, sustainable competition which can only be fostered through careful policy-making.
Your assertion that the market will be driven away by "Government mandated monopolies" and "excessive regulation" shows that you have no understanding of the modern regulatory environment. I think you will find that competition is one of the highest priorities of the federal (and state) telecom regulators in both the US and Canada.
Rather than trying to enforce a company's "right to be the sole provider", regulatory bodies are implementing complicated pricing regimes, unbundling local copper loops and facilitating the interconnection of competitors specifically to maintain competition which could not survive on its own in the current environment.
I dumped my wired phone service because of these fees, and I am about to dump my cell phone service for the same reason. I have enough IP connectivity wherever I am that that I will happily switch to a VoIP company that allows me to transport my Wi-Fi based phone to any network and immediately get connectivity. But when they start getting taxed heavily, I'll move on to the next format.
You do realize that VoIP companies like Vonage still interconnect with the ("over regulated") PSTN in order to terminate calls right?
I find that most people don't have a clear understanding of how VoIP is being implemented. While it is possible to interconnect IP phones without accessing the PSTN this is not currently practical for most people. In fact, bypassing the PSTN completely would not be feasible until broadband is installed in most people's homes. Given the current levels of broadband deployment and the growth rate for that industry, it can be argued that it will be a good 10 years before there would be enough broadband connections out there to bypass the copper based PSTN. Of course we have to keep in mind that the PSTN is constantly being upgraded such that the option of bypassing the copper will probably not arise. In fact within the next 20 years we can expect to see the implementation of last mile fiber (Fiber in every home.)
The current benefit of VoIP is that it can replace circuit based switches (DMS-10, DMS-100) in favor of packet based switching over the fiber backbone. This solution is of course temporary. As more fiber is deployed, we will see the widespread use of telephony based on various protocols provided on different wavelengths within the fiber itself.
Honestly, 80% of my communications have moved to instant messaging of some kind. Its loggable, it takes thought to write messages, and I can communicate with 5 seperate conversations at once. I used to use almost 3000 minutes a month on my cell phone, now I am down to 1000 minutes, but I send probably 10,000 text messages to various people.
When you are sending text messages you are doing so over the regulated telephone network. You can't escape regulation, its going to be there.
As people's needs change the telecommunications indusrty will make efforts to meet those needs. As technology changes, so will regulation. Prices will drop and some services (like long distance) will become obsolete. You will find that telcos will be acting more and more as content providers rather than network providers as the cost of communications approaches zero. However, there will always be regulation (and taxation), you can count on it.
Sorry, I might not be all that caught up on my solar flare monitoring, but how long have we been doing that exactly?
Richard Christopher Carrington published his Observation of the Spots of the Sun in 1863. He was observing a group of sun spots when, "...two patches of intensely bright and white light broke out."
His description:
"I saw I was an unprepared witness of a very different affair. I therefore noted down the time by the chronometer, and seeing the outburst to be very rapidly on the increase, and being somewhat flurried by the surprise, I hastily ran to call some one to witness the exhibition with me, and on returning within 60 seconds, was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled. Very shortly afterwards the last trace was gone. In this lapse of 5 minutes, the two patches of light traversed a space of about 35,000 miles."
So I guess we've been monitoring solar flares for some 140 years...
Nope. That graph demonstrates the cost of the Canadian dollar in US dollars (ie. the relative value) as that relationship changes over time. (Which I guess you could argue is an indicator of the dollar's "strength" although it is sort of misleading.)
The value of a country's money can be altered by changing the interest rate at the national bank or by changing altering the money supply itself. Governments do this regularly for a variety of reasons. If for example, the Canadian Government wants to encourage foreign investment or perhaps to help its exporters, they may set the interest rates such that the value of the Canadian dollar goes down.
If the canadian dollar is currently "gaining strength" it does not mean that the Canadian economy is getting stronger. It does not mean that Canda is suddenly becoming more powerful or prosperous. In fact it is not a good thing for many candians (people looking for foreign investment, anyone who exports goods).
I've always hated how stupid people relate the value of their country's currency to the value they place on that country's citizens. They then argue that one country is better than another on those grounds. This is idiotic. The value of a country's dollar is not a reflection of that country's worth. If anything it is an indicator of a country's current fiscal policy and that is nothing to get excited about.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm... theres nothing wrong with the original post.
"Definitely a few names that probably don't deserve to be on the list" != "There are a few names that definitely probably don't deserve to be on the list"
/learn the language
You know, I've always cringed at the use of the term "universes". Isn't the term universe supposed to encompass all that exists?
So if "stuff" exists in other dimensions then wouldn't that "stuff" just be a part of the one universe?
I could be wrong though - I'm no astronomer/cosmologist....
I absolutely agree about the portrayal of Lothlorien in the movie. Freaky and cold...
If Galadriel's ring kept Lothlorien pure, why didn't Elrond's ring protect Rivendell?
In my experience the Better Business Bureau is a paper tiger, it doesn't have any ability to back up its supposed powers of protecting the consumer
That's because the Better Business Bureau is not a consumer protection group (despite their claims to the contrary). In my experience the Better Business Bureau exists to help business owners conduct "better" (i.e. more) business.
I guess that's what happens when a group that is supposed to regulate business is funded entirely by donations from those businesses.
It's not vigilantism at all as nobody was really attempting to enforce the law here. The RIAA people simply had the vendor sign a document that gave them permission to confiscate the property. This paper was voluntarily signed by the vendor so that they wouldn't be sued by the RIAA. Sounds ok to me.
If the RIAA people told the vendors that they were law enforcement officials -well that is a problem. It's very difficult to prove though.
emulate != emulator Cheers!
umm.. Wine = Wine Is Not an Emulator
Consequently, WINE does not emulate the Windows OS is any way. Rather, it is an implementation of the Windows API on top of X.
I'm sorry, but that's a load of crap.
If you look at Aragorn in the books it is apparent that he leads his life with the certainty that he will fufill his destiny. This focus lends his character a quiet, almost restrained power. The power and dignity in his Numenorian blood is readily discernable. The fact that in the book he reflects on his destiny and worries makes him a greater, not a lesser, character
Now look at Aragorn in the movies. His actions are uncertain, he demonstrates none of the dignity and power that he is supposed to have. He just doesn't exude the sense of greatness. Of course you can't really expect an actor to portray that kind of vibe so it isn't really PJ's fault....
Yeah - I forgot about Tom Bombadil. He actually put the ring on his finger, laughed and then gave it back to Frodo....
I'm pretty sure that he actually held it in the book version. I seem to remember it being "cool to the touch", although maybe it was Bilbo who held it.
Indeed Gandalf would eventually be corrupted by the ring but I assuem that he would have the strength of will to resist for some time..
If I recall only Sam held the ring for any amount of time while remaining uncorrupted..
And I'm not sure why I'm responding to an AC but here we go.
Actually Gandalf can and did touch the ring in the beginning of FOTR. In order to determine that Bilbo's ring was the one, Gandalf cast it into a fire. He then retreived the ring and read the famous inscription in the mordor language...
The problem is that generally people are idiots.
Your facile argument concerning the democratic nature of the American political system caused me to group you with those idiots. So, logically I assumed that you were taking the stupidist possible course of action (that is, impersonating an American to reinforce your point).
Not necessarily true. To use the 2000 election as an example, a lot more people might have voted for Nader if they could have put Gore second to prevent Bush from winning. Not enough to get him elected, but maybe enough to get the 5% he needed to be eligible for matching funds the next go-round. Incidentally, the real shame in that situation is that basically the two current parties control the political process to the point that no third party can even get their views heard by the majority of voters.
But the end result is still the same. The President would still be GWB. So let's just say that Nader gets his 5% and can get matching funds. We might also argue that Perot (or someone similar) gets 5% of the extreme right's vote. Even with greater funding these candidates are not likely to actually win the presidency as most people will rank the center parties #1.
The ranking system is more likely to work when electing upper and lower house members. In this way some of the far left/far right politicians may actually get seats (this is still unlikely). The overall effect on the system, however, is minimal at best.
Wow. Thats a pretty violent reaction there sparky. What I said was that your mentioning Daulton McGuinty suggests that you are from Ontario.
If you can't figure out why I would infer that then perhaps it is you who is the moron. Maybe its time to refill the meds???
If 5% of the population are supporters of the marxist-lenninst party and would pick the green party second and the marajuana party third; they are going to be just as marginalized by a ranking system as they are currently. It is very unlikely that people will give even a third or fourth place to any parties that are even slightly to the left or right of center. The end result is a system that elects the same parties that have always gotten in.
So you don't see a problem with putting a president in office that is not supported by 79% of the population? Because I think most people will.
The American public were not upset that GWB got less than 1/n th of the votes, they were mad because he got less than 1/2 (specifically) ofe the votes.
That's because our voting system sucks for anything but a two-party system, mathematically. If voters could rank the candidates, rather than just pick one then you wouldn't have the whole 30% winner thing.
But then you would marginalize the more radical views- the tendency with a ranked voting system is towards the center. This would defeat the purpose of having the ranking system to start with..
You see a system bogged down by having to cater to different groups, I see a system which is a truer erpersentative democracy. Imagine if there were more representatives of the technology sector when the DMCA was passed. (Industry lobyists don't count as representatives)
The problem is that this system could never accomplish much of anything. In countries where this has been attempted the results have not been pretty.
Your apparent hatred of Dalton McGuinty suggests that you are actually from Ontario and consequently are not talking about "our" Canadian system but "their" American system.
The American system is a representative democracy in that politicians are elected by the people to represent them in government, thus the democratic part is fufilled. As for effective, while you may not like American policy you must agree that they have no problem with its implementation.
The system of governeance isn't the problem. The problem is that corporations have too much influence over the parties; corruption is rampant. To solve this the Americans need to work towards electing more principled candidates...
The problem with runoff voting is that those who support the more radical candidates are forced to pick increasingly more moderate candidates. The end results of this style of election don't look much different from the results of a two party election.
Why? A multi-party democracy can still produce strong governments.
Multi-Party systems can produce strong goverments - but quite frequently they do not. There a several reasons for this.
First, there is the possibility of minority government where the party who has elected the greatest number of candidates does not have the majority of seats in the legislature. The result of this is a government that is forced to broker deals with weaker (and sometimes extremist) parties in order to survive. This type of government generally collapses within months of being formed.
Secondly, when there are more than two parties it is likely that representatives will be elected with less than 50% of their constituents supporting them. It is not unusual for candidates to win seats with only 30-35% support.
Finally, some multi-party systems allocate a percentage of the popular vote to a percentage of seats in the house of representatives. So, if a party can muster 2-3% of the popular vote they get 2-3% of the seats. The result of this is that there can be 20-30 parties elected to office. The deal-making that needs to be conducted before any decisions can be made can go on for many, many months.
So, if you want to have government that is democratic while remaining stable and effective, the two party system is really the way to go.
People who die of obesity do have it coming - I'm not syaing I have any sympathy for those fatasses. What I am saying is that you laid it on pretty thick about those poor, poor people who got killed in the WTC.
Many of those bastards deserved the firey death that they received. My initial reaction to the "disaster" was, "Hey, its about time someone did something like that..sweet." Then I spent the rest of the day laughing at the frequency of the use of the word "horrific" on all the news channels.
>Do they have her signature on this contract? Seems like without that they don't ave anything but a nice small claims lawsuit.
Probably not, but it is likely that they have a recording of her entering into a verbal contract (contract extention). She was probably offered a few months of promotional minutes or a few bucks off the phone and jumped at the chance...
This is probably not entirely true, as industry lobbyists have too much influence over that regulation. Any appearance of competition is not true competition--it's only that which the industry and the regulators allowed for their short-term benefit. The telephone industry needs to be deregulated almost entirely (and gradually) to let it recover from prior government mistakes. The same is true of the health industry, where government regulation and loopholes created our current miserable healthcare system.
I agree that lobbyists have far too much influence over regulation. In fact the incumbent carriers actually prefer to have the facade of competition so that they can maintain 99.5% market share while arguing that the existence of this "competition" means that rules need to be relaxed. Eventual deregulation of some of the industry is the goal, however, the path to deregulation lies with real, sustainable competition which can only be fostered through careful policy-making.
Your assertion that the market will be driven away by "Government mandated monopolies" and "excessive regulation" shows that you have no understanding of the modern regulatory environment. I think you will find that competition is one of the highest priorities of the federal (and state) telecom regulators in both the US and Canada.
Rather than trying to enforce a company's "right to be the sole provider", regulatory bodies are implementing complicated pricing regimes, unbundling local copper loops and facilitating the interconnection of competitors specifically to maintain competition which could not survive on its own in the current environment.
I dumped my wired phone service because of these fees, and I am about to dump my cell phone service for the same reason. I have enough IP connectivity wherever I am that that I will happily switch to a VoIP company that allows me to transport my Wi-Fi based phone to any network and immediately get connectivity. But when they start getting taxed heavily, I'll move on to the next format.
You do realize that VoIP companies like Vonage still interconnect with the ("over regulated") PSTN in order to terminate calls right?
I find that most people don't have a clear understanding of how VoIP is being implemented. While it is possible to interconnect IP phones without accessing the PSTN this is not currently practical for most people. In fact, bypassing the PSTN completely would not be feasible until broadband is installed in most people's homes. Given the current levels of broadband deployment and the growth rate for that industry, it can be argued that it will be a good 10 years before there would be enough broadband connections out there to bypass the copper based PSTN. Of course we have to keep in mind that the PSTN is constantly being upgraded such that the option of bypassing the copper will probably not arise. In fact within the next 20 years we can expect to see the implementation of last mile fiber (Fiber in every home.)
The current benefit of VoIP is that it can replace circuit based switches (DMS-10, DMS-100) in favor of packet based switching over the fiber backbone. This solution is of course temporary. As more fiber is deployed, we will see the widespread use of telephony based on various protocols provided on different wavelengths within the fiber itself.
Honestly, 80% of my communications have moved to instant messaging of some kind. Its loggable, it takes thought to write messages, and I can communicate with 5 seperate conversations at once. I used to use almost 3000 minutes a month on my cell phone, now I am down to 1000 minutes, but I send probably 10,000 text messages to various people.
When you are sending text messages you are doing so over the regulated telephone network. You can't escape regulation, its going to be there.
As people's needs change the telecommunications indusrty will make efforts to meet those needs. As technology changes, so will regulation. Prices will drop and some services (like long distance) will become obsolete. You will find that telcos will be acting more and more as content providers rather than network providers as the cost of communications approaches zero. However, there will always be regulation (and taxation), you can count on it.
Sorry, I might not be all that caught up on my solar flare monitoring, but how long have we been doing that exactly?
Richard Christopher Carrington published his Observation of the Spots of the Sun in 1863. He was observing a group of sun spots when, "...two patches of intensely bright and white light broke out."
His description:
"I saw I was an unprepared witness of a very different affair. I therefore noted down the time by the chronometer, and seeing the outburst to be very rapidly on the increase, and being somewhat flurried by the surprise, I hastily ran to call some one to witness the exhibition with me, and on returning within 60 seconds, was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled. Very shortly afterwards the last trace was gone. In this lapse of 5 minutes, the two patches of light traversed a space of about 35,000 miles."
So I guess we've been monitoring solar flares for some 140 years...
Nope. That graph demonstrates the cost of the Canadian dollar in US dollars (ie. the relative value) as that relationship changes over time. (Which I guess you could argue is an indicator of the dollar's "strength" although it is sort of misleading.)
The value of a country's money can be altered by changing the interest rate at the national bank or by changing altering the money supply itself. Governments do this regularly for a variety of reasons. If for example, the Canadian Government wants to encourage foreign investment or perhaps to help its exporters, they may set the interest rates such that the value of the Canadian dollar goes down.
If the canadian dollar is currently "gaining strength" it does not mean that the Canadian economy is getting stronger. It does not mean that Canda is suddenly becoming more powerful or prosperous. In fact it is not a good thing for many candians (people looking for foreign investment, anyone who exports goods).
I've always hated how stupid people relate the value of their country's currency to the value they place on that country's citizens. They then argue that one country is better than another on those grounds. This is idiotic. The value of a country's dollar is not a reflection of that country's worth. If anything it is an indicator of a country's current fiscal policy and that is nothing to get excited about.