" Socialism is of course just capitalism with some additional wealth redistribution."
You sure? I always thought of socialism as the ideal, but communism is the logical implementation. What you call socialism is more like quasi-socialism, or in professional speak, it's referred to as a "mixed economy". Which is what every realworld economy is, it's just as question of the level of the mix.
Part of the problem with ebaying monitors is that they are notoriously expensive to ship, and thus aren't worth shipping unless they are worth a decent amount of money, (being they are used and only 15in, they aren't going to be worth much). You might be able to get $10-20/each at a local place, especially if you have a lot of them to sell in bulk since you don't have to worry bout shipping.
It's been my experience that you cannot make someone learn that does not want to learn and you cannot "rehabilitate" someone who does not want to be rehabilitated. Jail time ISN'T only about rehabilitation, it's about the loss of comforts and freedoms, since you violated someone else's rights you loose some of yours.
I have to agree, sort of. I think it's just fine for the convicted prisoners to live in a tent city and have to do work on chain gangs. I don't think that is unreasonable. Of course I don't think webcams should be allowed in the bathrooms and showers, etc. OTOH, being arrested in a matter of public record so I don't have a problem with the webcam's persay, just the location of some of them. I also think that the tent city treatment ought to be reserved for those actually convicted of a crime. Prison ought not be comfortable, but people being held before trial ought to be treated with a degree of deference.
They aren't preventing him from making a living. He just can't work in a very specific part of a competing firm. They aren't going to force him to work at McDonalds or anything.
That's not what he is getting at. The point is that there are usually multiple treatment options of varying effectiveness. Right now there is almost no price competition in medical care since the decision maker faces absolutely no price pressure at all. Let's say your ingrown toenail gets infected and you go to the doctor. There are many different antibiotics he might prescribe you, some more expensive than others. And you may or may not elect to have him/her remove the toe nail. All I'm saying is that there should be some benefit for the patient to choose lower cost treatments. Obviously in certain situations they will be willing to pay marginally more for the higher cost treatment if it is truly worth it. The financial "test" doesn't have to be big, just enough to get patients to consider alternatives.
I keep hearing that "twice as much on marketing" thing, and the implication is that its marketing that is driving up the cost of drugs moreso than R&D. The logical hole in that argument is that fixed marketing costs are compensated for by increased sales, so good marketing shouldn't increase the cost of drugs, what it should do is make doctors aware of new medications and increase their market share. Of course in practice it isn't quite that simple because most people with a flat drug copay aren't price sensitive when it comes to the cost of prescription drugs. Thus you situation is plausible, but only because of the nature of our third party payer system, which would be easy to fix.
I'm not going to argue the figures with you, since I can't tell you off the top of my head what they all are. But I do know that it's much worse in some states than in others. And like you said, the occupation definitely makes a difference.
I don't know what the price of travel insurance has to do with the standard of living in the country you are visiting. You seem to be implying that the US MUST have a lower standard of living due to the price of travel insurance?
I think it's telling that you compare the US to Boliva and the "third world". You ignore all the evidence about the incidence of poverty and the standard of living of the poor in the US. Poverty in the US tends to be more intense (relative to the level of overall wealth) but less frequent. A study of american poverty and it's causes (and I don't mean lack of public assistance, I mean why they are poor to begin with), might shed some light on this subject for you.
I don't pretend that there aren't people begging and sleeping in the streets in the US; saying that would be nieve. I just don't think that your comments jibe with the facts about poverty in the US. (Which is a subject that could be discussed in much more detail.)
But this isn't about facts, is it? This is about your feelings. And when you hear american's talk about how great the US is, it irritates you, as the road runner irritates the coyote. Sure not EVERYONE wants to be like the US, and I don't think that's the point. But you are so inflamed that you aren't interpreting what is being said in a reasonable light, you immediately ascribe all sorts of motivations et al. to the statement based on how you feel.
I'm not saying that there aren't legitimate reasons to disagree with US laws or policies. But a lot of people seem to go off "half-cocked" based on their emotional load rather than argue the facts. After about two minutes of reasonable debate they just get frustrated and go off the deep end. This isn't limited to you or people outside the US either. This seems to be a trend in much of civilization. Ever since the introduction of "the personal is the politcal" (it's not, and it shouldn't be) we have lost the ability to debate and disagree like civilized people. I'm not saying that politics was ever civil, it wasn't. But we've let our kneejerk emotions run roughshod over our personal behavior in an unhealthy way.
Of course they want to manufacture them. All they have to do is make a copy of the patented drug, with no FDA approval or discovery costs Of course they can afford to sell it for much less then. Now this would be fine if they waited for the patent to expire, this happens all the time, and I don't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is simply invalidating patents because someone feels entitled to the fruits of someone else's labor (the R&D and approval work). Patents are only effective for about 10-12 years in the world of drugs. It's not like copyright.
What are you suggesting in leiu of corporations and government to solve our problems?
College in the US is heavily subsidied, especially if you are poor, with grants and subsidized loans. K12 education the in the US is free if you go to a public school and US schools spend more per student for education than any other country in the world. Obvoiusly money isn't the problem. It may not be evenly distributed, but there certainly is plenty of money being spent on education in the US.
Most of the complaints I here about educational quality is regarding k12 education; where in order to get the free educaion, you have to go to the school the government tells you to go to. What I would personally love to see in US k12 education would be much more like US universities. Schools would be governed by a board elected by the parents of the attending students and run by the principal and his/her staff. Most states have a per student funding formula for k12 schools, all they would need to do is make that funding follow the student to any school they choose.
The democrat's lost their majority in 1994, two years after Clinton was elected. The gridlock prevented major new spending and the accelerating boom of the 1990s helped tax revenue catch up with spending, resulting in small surpluses.
Minds weren't going to be changed by waiting, everyone had made up their minds already, thinking otherwise is simply wishful thinking. The everyone agreed to the FACTS of Saddam's regieme, that wasn't the problem, and no weapons inspector report was going to change that (just look at the preceeding 12 years). No, the problem was that the US and some of it's allies simply didn't see eye to eye on the principles of a war in Iraq and no amount of diplomacy was going to change that fact. Diplomacy can't solve fundamental disagreements, it can only exploit whatever common ground already exists.
Fact is, an ameican living at US poverty level has a comparable lifestyle to that of an average member of the EU. Of course the welfare safety net isn't as strong in the US, but it isn't non-existant either. The University and Healthcare systems are among the best in the world, not always cheep, but good. It's only a "tad" more per head for the wealthest countries in the EU. Where a "tad" = a couple thousand dollars. Of course the US isn't perfect, with the stupid DMCA and whatnot, but just because the US doesn't want a welfare and medical system that looks just like YOURS doesn't make them inferior either.
They don't stop counting your when your unemployment benefits run out, they stop counting you when you stop looking for a job. Of course what I find funny is that employment has been going up for almost a year now. Certainly this month wasn't great, but OTOH it's all at least been positive. (Of course the payroll survey of established companies, which gives us the most cited jobs figures, is different from the household unemployment survery, which is what calculated the umemployment level. Hence you can have the umemployment rate seem to change opposite of the payroll figures. Payroll seems to be more reliable and less volatile, OTOH it tends to undercount jobs. The household survey often has more wild seasonal fluctuations, may overstate employment somewhat, but it does give us the imformation about discouraged workers and labor force participation. What George Box said about models applies to these surveys too, "All models are wrong, some models are useful".
any specific vendor, but I hear that Daktech has a 7 year warranty, with a generally good quality reputation. The downside is that they, like Dell, only seem to sell Intel stuff. No AMD. Oh well.
Fine, I agree with the AC, and I'm not AC. Your solution fails to account for second order conditions and implies that people are ENTITLED to these drugs. While I agree that it would be GOOD to give these people drugs, I don't believe they are ENTITLED to them, because even bare subsistance has to be produced, as does life saving medical care. In fact, lots of AIDS drugs are given away for free, or near marginal cost, because drug companies know that poor people simply don't have the $$ to pay for $30/day pills (or more). This is one of the few redeeming qualities of price discrimination BTW.
However, if drug companies KNOW that people are going to be able to violate their patents for AIDS or cancer drugs because "lives are more important than profits" then the incentive to create the drugs in the first place is reduced, and they are better off making a new pain killer or something that is less revolutionary and risky. So your plee to "help the sick" ends up removing the incentives to work on these drugs. Fewer incentives means fewer resources and likely fewer drugs will be produced than would otherwise be the case. (All of them many not dissappear, but it certainly will have an effect.)
It really seems like everyone is having trouble ramping up the CPU speeds now. It seems to me that in the future the focus will be moving more controler logic onto the CPU. With all the problems with die shrinks and leakage, it seems like the logical thing to do to improve system performance. (Moving more NB/SB system logic onto the CPU, rather than trying to ramp up the Ghz.) Or maybe im just full of crap?
Sure, I'm not saying that SLAPP suits aren't a problem, and that the tort system in the US doesn't have issues. My critisim of grandparent was in regard to his statement claiming that somehow there was this huge Bush cabal squelching differing opinions in a McCarthy like fashion. I don't deny that sometimes people try to do this, but grandparent's claim is just silly.
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You sure? I always thought of socialism as the ideal, but communism is the logical implementation. What you call socialism is more like quasi-socialism, or in professional speak, it's referred to as a "mixed economy". Which is what every realworld economy is, it's just as question of the level of the mix.
No, what we need to do is make sure the new patent owners has to honor the previous licences granted by the previous holder.
Part of the problem with ebaying monitors is that they are notoriously expensive to ship, and thus aren't worth shipping unless they are worth a decent amount of money, (being they are used and only 15in, they aren't going to be worth much). You might be able to get $10-20/each at a local place, especially if you have a lot of them to sell in bulk since you don't have to worry bout shipping.
How is LTSP less secure than WinTS?
It's been my experience that you cannot make someone learn that does not want to learn and you cannot "rehabilitate" someone who does not want to be rehabilitated. Jail time ISN'T only about rehabilitation, it's about the loss of comforts and freedoms, since you violated someone else's rights you loose some of yours.
I don't have a problem with the tents, as long as they get plenty of water etc, to prevent heat stroke.
I have to agree, sort of. I think it's just fine for the convicted prisoners to live in a tent city and have to do work on chain gangs. I don't think that is unreasonable. Of course I don't think webcams should be allowed in the bathrooms and showers, etc. OTOH, being arrested in a matter of public record so I don't have a problem with the webcam's persay, just the location of some of them. I also think that the tent city treatment ought to be reserved for those actually convicted of a crime. Prison ought not be comfortable, but people being held before trial ought to be treated with a degree of deference.
Slackware uses NSS but not PAM (unless you add it your self or install dropline gnome). Pat still thinks PAM is flawed.
Moving wouldn't change anything since he was employed in MN and Seagate's suit was filed in a MN court.
They aren't preventing him from making a living. He just can't work in a very specific part of a competing firm. They aren't going to force him to work at McDonalds or anything.
That's not what he is getting at. The point is that there are usually multiple treatment options of varying effectiveness. Right now there is almost no price competition in medical care since the decision maker faces absolutely no price pressure at all. Let's say your ingrown toenail gets infected and you go to the doctor. There are many different antibiotics he might prescribe you, some more expensive than others. And you may or may not elect to have him/her remove the toe nail. All I'm saying is that there should be some benefit for the patient to choose lower cost treatments. Obviously in certain situations they will be willing to pay marginally more for the higher cost treatment if it is truly worth it. The financial "test" doesn't have to be big, just enough to get patients to consider alternatives.
I keep hearing that "twice as much on marketing" thing, and the implication is that its marketing that is driving up the cost of drugs moreso than R&D. The logical hole in that argument is that fixed marketing costs are compensated for by increased sales, so good marketing shouldn't increase the cost of drugs, what it should do is make doctors aware of new medications and increase their market share. Of course in practice it isn't quite that simple because most people with a flat drug copay aren't price sensitive when it comes to the cost of prescription drugs. Thus you situation is plausible, but only because of the nature of our third party payer system, which would be easy to fix.
I'm not going to argue the figures with you, since I can't tell you off the top of my head what they all are. But I do know that it's much worse in some states than in others. And like you said, the occupation definitely makes a difference.
I think it's telling that you compare the US to Boliva and the "third world". You ignore all the evidence about the incidence of poverty and the standard of living of the poor in the US. Poverty in the US tends to be more intense (relative to the level of overall wealth) but less frequent. A study of american poverty and it's causes (and I don't mean lack of public assistance, I mean why they are poor to begin with), might shed some light on this subject for you.
I don't pretend that there aren't people begging and sleeping in the streets in the US; saying that would be nieve. I just don't think that your comments jibe with the facts about poverty in the US. (Which is a subject that could be discussed in much more detail.)
But this isn't about facts, is it? This is about your feelings. And when you hear american's talk about how great the US is, it irritates you, as the road runner irritates the coyote. Sure not EVERYONE wants to be like the US, and I don't think that's the point. But you are so inflamed that you aren't interpreting what is being said in a reasonable light, you immediately ascribe all sorts of motivations et al. to the statement based on how you feel.
I'm not saying that there aren't legitimate reasons to disagree with US laws or policies. But a lot of people seem to go off "half-cocked" based on their emotional load rather than argue the facts. After about two minutes of reasonable debate they just get frustrated and go off the deep end. This isn't limited to you or people outside the US either. This seems to be a trend in much of civilization. Ever since the introduction of "the personal is the politcal" (it's not, and it shouldn't be) we have lost the ability to debate and disagree like civilized people. I'm not saying that politics was ever civil, it wasn't. But we've let our kneejerk emotions run roughshod over our personal behavior in an unhealthy way.
What are you suggesting in leiu of corporations and government to solve our problems?
Personally, I think it's fine to use the same administrative password for the routers, etc, as long as it's not the same one as any of the servers.
Most of the complaints I here about educational quality is regarding k12 education; where in order to get the free educaion, you have to go to the school the government tells you to go to. What I would personally love to see in US k12 education would be much more like US universities. Schools would be governed by a board elected by the parents of the attending students and run by the principal and his/her staff. Most states have a per student funding formula for k12 schools, all they would need to do is make that funding follow the student to any school they choose.
The democrat's lost their majority in 1994, two years after Clinton was elected. The gridlock prevented major new spending and the accelerating boom of the 1990s helped tax revenue catch up with spending, resulting in small surpluses.
Minds weren't going to be changed by waiting, everyone had made up their minds already, thinking otherwise is simply wishful thinking. The everyone agreed to the FACTS of Saddam's regieme, that wasn't the problem, and no weapons inspector report was going to change that (just look at the preceeding 12 years). No, the problem was that the US and some of it's allies simply didn't see eye to eye on the principles of a war in Iraq and no amount of diplomacy was going to change that fact. Diplomacy can't solve fundamental disagreements, it can only exploit whatever common ground already exists.
Fact is, an ameican living at US poverty level has a comparable lifestyle to that of an average member of the EU. Of course the welfare safety net isn't as strong in the US, but it isn't non-existant either. The University and Healthcare systems are among the best in the world, not always cheep, but good. It's only a "tad" more per head for the wealthest countries in the EU. Where a "tad" = a couple thousand dollars. Of course the US isn't perfect, with the stupid DMCA and whatnot, but just because the US doesn't want a welfare and medical system that looks just like YOURS doesn't make them inferior either.
They don't stop counting your when your unemployment benefits run out, they stop counting you when you stop looking for a job. Of course what I find funny is that employment has been going up for almost a year now. Certainly this month wasn't great, but OTOH it's all at least been positive. (Of course the payroll survey of established companies, which gives us the most cited jobs figures, is different from the household unemployment survery, which is what calculated the umemployment level. Hence you can have the umemployment rate seem to change opposite of the payroll figures. Payroll seems to be more reliable and less volatile, OTOH it tends to undercount jobs. The household survey often has more wild seasonal fluctuations, may overstate employment somewhat, but it does give us the imformation about discouraged workers and labor force participation. What George Box said about models applies to these surveys too, "All models are wrong, some models are useful".
any specific vendor, but I hear that Daktech has a 7 year warranty, with a generally good quality reputation. The downside is that they, like Dell, only seem to sell Intel stuff. No AMD. Oh well.
However, if drug companies KNOW that people are going to be able to violate their patents for AIDS or cancer drugs because "lives are more important than profits" then the incentive to create the drugs in the first place is reduced, and they are better off making a new pain killer or something that is less revolutionary and risky. So your plee to "help the sick" ends up removing the incentives to work on these drugs. Fewer incentives means fewer resources and likely fewer drugs will be produced than would otherwise be the case. (All of them many not dissappear, but it certainly will have an effect.)
It really seems like everyone is having trouble ramping up the CPU speeds now. It seems to me that in the future the focus will be moving more controler logic onto the CPU. With all the problems with die shrinks and leakage, it seems like the logical thing to do to improve system performance. (Moving more NB/SB system logic onto the CPU, rather than trying to ramp up the Ghz.) Or maybe im just full of crap?
Sure, I'm not saying that SLAPP suits aren't a problem, and that the tort system in the US doesn't have issues. My critisim of grandparent was in regard to his statement claiming that somehow there was this huge Bush cabal squelching differing opinions in a McCarthy like fashion. I don't deny that sometimes people try to do this, but grandparent's claim is just silly.