Government enforces contracts; right? Isn't this what every libertarian believes?
So the government enforces the contracts that the ISPs signed when they were granted right-of-way to public land. In those contracts there were (hopefully) clauses about benefit-of-the-public-good (otherwise, why on Earth would the government get involved with something like this?) If they are abusing the public trust, their contract should be revoked, they should lose their investment in their infrastructure, and it should be sold off to someone that won't abuse the public trust.
Kind of like "mom says you can lay your cables, but you have to abide by our rules and be nice to everyone." Do you understand the analogy now? The contract between the kid and the mom is like the contract between the government and the ISPs?
Your irrational fear of the "nanny state" is what concerns me.
How is the information dystopia you just described *any* different than what we have now, in regards to getting information from anyone other than mega-corporations?
organizes the economic activity more (ideally completely, right?)
When did anyone say that? Seriously, have you talked to *anyone* that thinks that we should turn over all control of the economy to the government?
Maybe some of us recognize that it's potentially a 'curve' -- maybe you've heard of it -- like a very complex mathematical construct called a 'parabola', where there's some optimal amount of government intervention? Like, too little and the economy is inefficient, and also too much and the economy is inefficient?
Is this really so difficult to grasp for you free market types? Did your math classes never involve any more complex equation than y = mx + b?
Now you young folks idolize this organization that is against the very thing that you are fighting for. Its fucking crazy.
Idolize? Who the fuck is idolizing the FCC? I think at best, most people feel that the FCC is the least of two evils, and potentially THE ONLY TOOL WE HAVE to keep the corporate oligopoly from bending us over and having their way with us.
Oh wait, yeah, that's right -- I can vote with my dollars. I dropped my Comcast connection about a year ago; it's been kind of a tense standoff between me and them, but I think they're *almost* ready to crack and stop sucking. They just can't afford the massive hit to their bottom line any more.
Voters like you scare me, because you think it's better to let the nation plunge into unemployment and poverty and let things sort themselves out through the private sector and free market.
You know how things are going to sort themselves out if it comes down to that? That dude that lost his job, house, and family might just take that gun that the conservative base convinced him that he needed to buy and use it to rob you at gunpoint. At best you'll get the police (apparently the only thing that *should* be publicly funded) to show up in time and hopefully not lose your shit or your life.
Actually, in a similar study done several years ago, the Daily Show and Colbert were amongst the top. I don't remember if they were just ahead or just behind the O'Reilly Factor, but their viewers were some of the best informed.
The only fact is that ALL news organizations are going to be biased.
And this is what most people who shackle themselves to Fox news believe, but it's only half the story.
If there's a bias of +100L on one side and a bias of -100000L (L being the standard unit of measurement for Liberalness; with 1L being equal to one Hillary Clinton) on the other side, you can't equivocate the two. And I don't think you can seriously suggest that all the other news sources combined display anywhere near as much bias as Fox.
So it's disingenuous to state that all sources are biased, and therefore Fox News is just a different kind of bias. You have to take a grain of salt with every "liberal" news outlet; with Fox you need more like a tablespoon.
Because I generally follow the news fairly closely, and I haven't heard *anything* about a $40B NBC bailout. A quick Google search doesn't yield much either, except for SNL skits about bailouts.
Yeah, it's a good thing you're employing critical thinking here and not taking Moore at his word that he paid Assange's bail. It would suck to just believe what you read with no consideration whatsoever.
Oh wait, no, you're instead just blindly believing what the Slashdot *story submitter* wrote. In fact, Moore never claimed to post Assange's bail. So really, you're falling into the exact same trap you're trying to expose by pointing out Heston's tie color changes.
As usual though, you'll believe what you want to believe, as long as it reinforces what you already believe. Just like everyone else.
While I'm not one to go badgering low level employees, as I realize they're just doing their job and have no impact on policies like this...
What, honestly, would you expect him to do? It's not like anyone with any authority at ShopKo (Actually, I think it was K-Mart) would ever agree to an interview with him. The only way to get anything on film and effect change is to go in and harass some minimum wage employee who will just cite company policy. Eventually the movie comes out, the employee and the store look bad, and the faceless decision makers who make company policy respond with a PR piece about how they're no longer selling ammo. Mission accomplished.
But the absolute nadir was when the Bush administration took a slaughter house to court to try to stop them from testing each cow for Mad Cow disease and use the negative results for marketing. They did this on behalf of the rest of the cattle industry, which was afraid they'd have to follow suit and a bunch of positives would turn up.
I'd be interested in seeing a source for this -- have a link to a news article by any chance?
Oh fuck you. The nation is trying to find a way to find reasonable health care for all of our citizens, and you bring out the 1984 references?
The whole reason we're even having this discussion is because a single-payer is teh eeevil socializm, and we can't have that here in 'Murika! So instead we're saddled with this piss-poor "compromise," that sadly is *still* better than what we had before.
See? I can cast my debate opponents in a negative light too. Does it do much to further the discussion? Not really.
Except that developing cures for diseases isn't like buying a jacket. It's not like there's some cure that they're "saving up for" $50 million at a time, bit by bit, rather than just buying it off the shelf for $5 billion.
And even if they did give the billions of dollars directly to a charity, what would you expect the charity to do? Hire enough people to blow through it in a year? Spend it all on a huge facility with all the absolute best equipment, then run out of money to fund it in a couple of years? I suspect that they might, instead, just hire enough people to effectively work on the problem, in a reasonably sized facility, then save the rest to pay their expenses and salaries for the next X years. But if the rest is saved, what are you going to do? Just stick it in a bank account? No, with that kind of money, it would really make sense to invest it and hire some smart people to take care of it and hopefully earn more money for you.
In the end, it ends up being the same thing. So really, what's your point? The way it works now, the research institutions don't have to also worry about being investment experts; they just get their money and do their thing. They foundation gets to do its thing and not have to worry about also running a research institution. Personally, I think that's a good solution and maybe helps to eliminate some conflicts of interest.
Pretty easy for me. I don't type "properly"; when I need to use the shift key, I always use left-shift, and position my left hand one key to the left. Makes it so my left index finger has to do a bit more work while typing all caps, but it's not difficult at all. I also type at about 100WPM. It's really not all that tough.
I can see how someone would have trouble with NATO doing things "properly", by going lshift+N, rshift+A, lshift+TO.
So, need capslock? Fine, map something to it. For the vast majority of us, it's a useless key.
Again, I'm completely stumped as to when I would need to do this, but maybe you have a far more exciting life than me that involves USB transfers at highway speeds.;-)
My car stereo has a USB input; I have a 16GB USB stick loaded up with music for it to shuffle through. There's a use for USB sticks in a vehicle.
But really, you're missing the point. There's no reason that the iPad shouldn't have a USB port; USB is universal, it's cheap, and it's extremely useful. The only reason to not have these things is to sell gullible fools $30 accessories that cost $0.50 to manufacture that enable them to do things that should have been standard. These gullible fools will then turn around and tell you how great the product is, and how it only cost them $30 to add each of these features that could have been standard out of the box for free.
So, basically, as long as you get your 47 days off per year, everyone else can get bent? You don't see a problem, because obviously, everyone could just get a job like yours if they wanted the time off?
And one wonders why government employees get a bad name...
By that logic, the market would be "working" if there were a large market for replacement windows because vandals drive around and randomly break them.
I do not want to have to needlessly spend money on a technology that sort-of fixes the problem when we can just agree, as a society, like we have agreed that breaking windows is bad, that playing commercials too damn loud is also bad.
Ok, so your point is that we shouldn't bother working on fixing *any* small problems until *all* of the big problems (that may or may not be fixable) are fixed?
That's just as stupid as saying that "if it hasn't been fixed yet it must not be a problem."
Slashdot Mirror
And yet, this is the situation we have today in respect to javascript with every major browser on every platform.
--Jeremy
Government enforces contracts; right? Isn't this what every libertarian believes?
So the government enforces the contracts that the ISPs signed when they were granted right-of-way to public land. In those contracts there were (hopefully) clauses about benefit-of-the-public-good (otherwise, why on Earth would the government get involved with something like this?) If they are abusing the public trust, their contract should be revoked, they should lose their investment in their infrastructure, and it should be sold off to someone that won't abuse the public trust.
Kind of like "mom says you can lay your cables, but you have to abide by our rules and be nice to everyone." Do you understand the analogy now? The contract between the kid and the mom is like the contract between the government and the ISPs?
Your irrational fear of the "nanny state" is what concerns me.
--Jeremy
Apart from your slippery slope argument...
How is the information dystopia you just described *any* different than what we have now, in regards to getting information from anyone other than mega-corporations?
--Jeremy
Reread the GP post, then reread yours. Then, savor the delicious way you completely missed the point.
--Jeremy
When did anyone say that? Seriously, have you talked to *anyone* that thinks that we should turn over all control of the economy to the government?
Maybe some of us recognize that it's potentially a 'curve' -- maybe you've heard of it -- like a very complex mathematical construct called a 'parabola', where there's some optimal amount of government intervention? Like, too little and the economy is inefficient, and also too much and the economy is inefficient?
Is this really so difficult to grasp for you free market types? Did your math classes never involve any more complex equation than y = mx + b?
--Jeremy
Idolize? Who the fuck is idolizing the FCC? I think at best, most people feel that the FCC is the least of two evils, and potentially THE ONLY TOOL WE HAVE to keep the corporate oligopoly from bending us over and having their way with us.
Oh wait, yeah, that's right -- I can vote with my dollars. I dropped my Comcast connection about a year ago; it's been kind of a tense standoff between me and them, but I think they're *almost* ready to crack and stop sucking. They just can't afford the massive hit to their bottom line any more.
--Jeremy
Voters like you scare me, because you think it's better to let the nation plunge into unemployment and poverty and let things sort themselves out through the private sector and free market.
You know how things are going to sort themselves out if it comes down to that? That dude that lost his job, house, and family might just take that gun that the conservative base convinced him that he needed to buy and use it to rob you at gunpoint. At best you'll get the police (apparently the only thing that *should* be publicly funded) to show up in time and hopefully not lose your shit or your life.
--Jeremy
Actually, in a similar study done several years ago, the Daily Show and Colbert were amongst the top. I don't remember if they were just ahead or just behind the O'Reilly Factor, but their viewers were some of the best informed.
--Jeremy
And this is what most people who shackle themselves to Fox news believe, but it's only half the story.
If there's a bias of +100L on one side and a bias of -100000L (L being the standard unit of measurement for Liberalness; with 1L being equal to one Hillary Clinton) on the other side, you can't equivocate the two. And I don't think you can seriously suggest that all the other news sources combined display anywhere near as much bias as Fox.
So it's disingenuous to state that all sources are biased, and therefore Fox News is just a different kind of bias. You have to take a grain of salt with every "liberal" news outlet; with Fox you need more like a tablespoon.
--Jeremy
It's in there, just like the right to own guns is in there. You just have to be intentionally dense to not see either one.
--Jeremy
Are you referring to this Aprl Fool's joke?
Or are you confusing NBC with GM?
Because I generally follow the news fairly closely, and I haven't heard *anything* about a $40B NBC bailout. A quick Google search doesn't yield much either, except for SNL skits about bailouts.
--Jeremy
Yeah, it's a good thing you're employing critical thinking here and not taking Moore at his word that he paid Assange's bail. It would suck to just believe what you read with no consideration whatsoever.
Oh wait, no, you're instead just blindly believing what the Slashdot *story submitter* wrote. In fact, Moore never claimed to post Assange's bail. So really, you're falling into the exact same trap you're trying to expose by pointing out Heston's tie color changes.
As usual though, you'll believe what you want to believe, as long as it reinforces what you already believe. Just like everyone else.
--Jeremy
While I'm not one to go badgering low level employees, as I realize they're just doing their job and have no impact on policies like this...
What, honestly, would you expect him to do? It's not like anyone with any authority at ShopKo (Actually, I think it was K-Mart) would ever agree to an interview with him. The only way to get anything on film and effect change is to go in and harass some minimum wage employee who will just cite company policy. Eventually the movie comes out, the employee and the store look bad, and the faceless decision makers who make company policy respond with a PR piece about how they're no longer selling ammo. Mission accomplished.
--Jeremy
I'd be interested in seeing a source for this -- have a link to a news article by any chance?
--Jeremy
Lack of bias in the direction you like does not imply a bias in the other direction.
--Jeremy
Oh fuck you. The nation is trying to find a way to find reasonable health care for all of our citizens, and you bring out the 1984 references?
The whole reason we're even having this discussion is because a single-payer is teh eeevil socializm, and we can't have that here in 'Murika! So instead we're saddled with this piss-poor "compromise," that sadly is *still* better than what we had before.
See? I can cast my debate opponents in a negative light too. Does it do much to further the discussion? Not really.
--Jeremy
You mean like how the term "Broadband" was redefined the first time to mean a high bitrate, rather than the type of signal that the wire carries?
Would you feel better if they had called it "high speed" and defined it as 256k, and 10 years later redefined "high speed" to mean 4Mbps?
--Jeremy
Except that developing cures for diseases isn't like buying a jacket. It's not like there's some cure that they're "saving up for" $50 million at a time, bit by bit, rather than just buying it off the shelf for $5 billion.
And even if they did give the billions of dollars directly to a charity, what would you expect the charity to do? Hire enough people to blow through it in a year? Spend it all on a huge facility with all the absolute best equipment, then run out of money to fund it in a couple of years? I suspect that they might, instead, just hire enough people to effectively work on the problem, in a reasonably sized facility, then save the rest to pay their expenses and salaries for the next X years. But if the rest is saved, what are you going to do? Just stick it in a bank account? No, with that kind of money, it would really make sense to invest it and hire some smart people to take care of it and hopefully earn more money for you.
In the end, it ends up being the same thing. So really, what's your point? The way it works now, the research institutions don't have to also worry about being investment experts; they just get their money and do their thing. They foundation gets to do its thing and not have to worry about also running a research institution. Personally, I think that's a good solution and maybe helps to eliminate some conflicts of interest.
--Jeremy
Holding down any (control?) key will bring up the accessibility dialog, but not if you type other keys while holding down the first.
--Jeremy
Pretty easy for me. I don't type "properly"; when I need to use the shift key, I always use left-shift, and position my left hand one key to the left. Makes it so my left index finger has to do a bit more work while typing all caps, but it's not difficult at all. I also type at about 100WPM. It's really not all that tough.
I can see how someone would have trouble with NATO doing things "properly", by going lshift+N, rshift+A, lshift+TO.
So, need capslock? Fine, map something to it. For the vast majority of us, it's a useless key.
--Jeremy
My car stereo has a USB input; I have a 16GB USB stick loaded up with music for it to shuffle through. There's a use for USB sticks in a vehicle.
But really, you're missing the point. There's no reason that the iPad shouldn't have a USB port; USB is universal, it's cheap, and it's extremely useful. The only reason to not have these things is to sell gullible fools $30 accessories that cost $0.50 to manufacture that enable them to do things that should have been standard. These gullible fools will then turn around and tell you how great the product is, and how it only cost them $30 to add each of these features that could have been standard out of the box for free.
--Jeremy
So, basically, as long as you get your 47 days off per year, everyone else can get bent? You don't see a problem, because obviously, everyone could just get a job like yours if they wanted the time off?
And one wonders why government employees get a bad name...
--Jeremy
While I agree with the rest of what you had to say,
Bullshit. Show a single case where something even remotely comparable to this happened.
--Jeremy
By that logic, the market would be "working" if there were a large market for replacement windows because vandals drive around and randomly break them.
I do not want to have to needlessly spend money on a technology that sort-of fixes the problem when we can just agree, as a society, like we have agreed that breaking windows is bad, that playing commercials too damn loud is also bad.
--Jeremy
Ok, so your point is that we shouldn't bother working on fixing *any* small problems until *all* of the big problems (that may or may not be fixable) are fixed?
That's just as stupid as saying that "if it hasn't been fixed yet it must not be a problem."
--Jeremy