You have no clue what an expensive trip to the hospital is. My wife's bill for breast cancer came to about a quarter million dollars, how the hell are you supposed to negotiate when your opponent literally holds your life in their hands? I suppose we could have sold the house and lived in our car for the decades it took pay off the med bills. If that's what you mean by "change what we have to do", I'll pass, thanks.
My wife's a cancer survivor. There's an exam she can have that will very accurately predict not only the chance of a recurrence but also the chances that her sisters will also get cancer. And the catch:
If she "fails" the exam, there's a good chance her sisters won't be able to get insurance, no one wants to cover someone who's a high cancer risk. So my wife may forgo testing and preventative treatment so that her sisters won't be disqualified from getting insurance. How F'd up is that? Under single payer this wouldn't be an issue. Applying "free market" ideology to health care only makes sense if you never get sick.
Good point. I'd like to know exactly what question they asked that led them to this conclusion. I wouldn't be surprised if the methodology for this study was pretty sloppy. Not sure how reputable Pew is, and even if most of their studies are good that's no guaranty that this one was.
That said, there's plenty of older folks who find computers intimidating and frustrating and want as little to do with them as possible. No surprise that they don't care about broadband. My mom has a Mailstation, a tiny text-only email reader that connects over dial up. She loves that thing because it's stupid easy to use. The nice laptop we bought her drives her nuts, there's too many choices and too many points of failure for her to deal with when it doesn't just work. So blame Vista(yet again!!) for the fact that dial-up users don't want to upgrade.
Actually, it's getting worse. I'm trying to copy all the files from one USB drive to another. Under XP, it hits a file it doesn't like, tells me what file it is, and quits gracefully.
Same two drives on a Vista box, no error message, it just keeps trying to copy until I give up and hit cancel, which crashes Windows Explorer, making the machine useless until I force a reboot.
Un-fricken-believable. Maybe they fixed that in Mojave, people love it so much.
Yeah, that's a wise assessment if you trust your government completely, which you shouldn't. If you're a journalist trying to break a big story about government corruption, this allows the bad guys in our government to spy on you. Grass roots activist trying fight some corporation? They chat with some congressman they own and your phone is tapped. Rival political party? Tap their HQ.
There's so many ways this can be abused, and if you think that will never happen you're incredibly naive. Domestic spying without oversight is an invitation to totalitarianism.
Well done. Considering the author asks "Is it really worth it?" in the article, would have been nice of him to do the math for us.
Maybe it was a rhetorical question.
Considering he originally claimed "It is estimated to pay for itself within 10 years", would it be asking too much for him to address that issue in his six month follow up? He barely mentions finances at all, except that his bill for 6 months with solar was less than his January bill last year.
That's impressive, sure, but doesn't give me a clue as to whether he's on track to a 10-year pay back.
While I agree the teacher's requirements were ridiculous, doesn't seem like it would be very hard to write the document at home, save as plain text, then open it at school and spend 5 minutes formatting it.
OK, say you're right. The government stops spending billions of dollars to catch and incarcerate drug users and dealers, but doesn't lower taxes. So where does the money go? Pay down the deficit? Better schools? Health care? Infrastructure? Still sounds like a win to me.
"No amount of taxation (limited to) DRUGS will be enought to make up to the massive loss of productivity of drug addicts."
Perhaps not, but when you take into account the billions of dollars we waste to catch and imprison users and dealers, I believe society will come out ahead.
Hawaii has extremely high electric rates and almost constant sunshine, it's probably the best candidate on the planet for solar. If I owned a house there I'd put panels on it yesterday.
You don't need acres of desert to house solar panels, put 'em on rooftops.
" A few people on maui have an infatuation with giant mud tires and huge lift kits."
Fixed that for you. It is a head scratcher. I was there a couple months ago, talking to a friend who's lived there his whole life. He says there's no place you can actually take those off road, unless you happen to own a ranch.
Cool link. I'd like to see the Rambo rear with the Arnold front. Might photoshop it some time.
Re:Agree... internet access should be infrastructu
on
Houses With Tails
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· Score: 1
"I'm not sure I see the advantage in having the government deliver internet access, when not just one, but multiple methods (telcos and cablecos) of connection exist in most places through private industry"
That's called a duopoly, and it's pretty much as bad as a monopoly.
"what we have is already working decently."
If by decently you mean it's slow and overpriced, then I agree.
"If the government wanted to do it, it'd either have to buy out some company's infrastructure, or pay billions to lay their own fiber to everyone's house."
I'd settle for gig-over-copper, which would be light years ahead of the speeds currently available. Hell, hundred meg would have me dancing on the ceiling.
"we also don't live nearly as densely as people do in places like Europe and Korea, so naturally it's more expensive to install infrastructure here."
And yet in cities like New York, which are densely populated, internet access is still expensive and slow. But at the university I work at, 100 miles from a big city, a one gig internet connection costs 5 bucks a month, and our telecom department still turns a profit. Hmmmm...
"the government is generally much more corrupt here than in industrialized countries"
"The government" covers a lot of territory. It's true that many states have passed legislation making it illegal for municipalities to provide internet to their citizens. I trust my local government a lot more than the cable and telcos, too bad our state reps are for sale. But if you think corporate executives are so smart and trustworthy, have you watched the news--or your 401(k) statement--in the last couple months?
Please read a book or two about the Vietnam conflict. "The only ethics needed or desired on the battlefield is to win the day."
We did that, from 1965-1973. US forces never lost a battle of any significance. Didn't matter. The VC and NVA kept coming, we got tired of dying. I guess we could have tried dropping tons of bombs on their cities to get them to back off. Oh yeah, we tried that. And invading North Vietnam wasn't an option, the Soviets or Chinese would have stepped in. Study the Korean War to see how that works out.
Our only option was to continue to send troops to die to prop up the South Vietnamese government, and the American people were sick of that. I suppose if we had killer robots they could have done the job, but is a government that can't rally the support of it's own population worth defending?
Feel free to argue any of my points, but don't trot out the John Rambo "the politicians wouldn't let us win" crap. You're talking about Nixon and Kissinger, do you seriously think they hampered the military because they gave a damn about the Vietnamese (North or South)?
You do have a point about the Iraq situation, but I'm not sure Bush could have sold the creation of a 5th branch of the armed forces designed to police and occupy countries that the US has invaded. Although considering the state of our media 5 years ago, I could be wrong.
We don't need killer robots, we need to quit invading other countries.
"After Columbine nerds were being kicked out of school for days because of gaming and such, slashdot especially was jam packed with people telling their stories."
Steve, Columbine was 9 years ago. You're telling us you were reading Slashdot when you were in kindergarten? Man, you are an uber-geek!
The free market may be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but free market theories fall apart when you're talking about a duopoly with huge hurdles for any third-party competitor to overcome. I can't figure out if these libertarian types are being deliberately dishonest or if they're just so in love with their theory that they're blind to the realities of the situation.
Organizations have no self-interest, but the people running them do, and those interests aren't always the same as the organizations' stock holders, employees, or customers. The fact that Greenspan couldn't figure this out even after the Enron debacle indicates that he was grossly blinded by ideology. Of course, the fact that our legal system supports the fiction that corporations are people helps perpetuate such nonsense.
" Ballmer, in turn, blamed another Microsoft executive"
When I first read the summary, I read that as "Ballmer blamed another Microsoft intern". And my reaction was, "Well, that explains so much about Vista!"
Interesting that you do agree that there are public venues where speech can be restricted, but you don't feel that the publicly licensed airwaves which permeate everybody's residences should be one of them.
Obviously, the post above stating how we occupied their country wouldn't be the provoking reason, and that was AFTER the 9/11...
Assuming that by "their country" you mean Iraq, you are correct that the US did not occupy it prior to 9/11. However, none of the hijackers were Iraqi, so the fact that we weren't occupying Iraq at the time is irrelevant. Most of them were Saudis, and we did in fact have troops and bases in Saudi Arabia prior to 9/11. In fact, that was one of the reasons bin Laden cited for his attack, although the US President and media have ignored that fact.
http://www.representativepress.org/whylie.html
Like the parent poster, I'm not saying the attack on WTC was in any way justified.
Personally, I think we should close about 90 percent of our hundreds of overseas bases, they're a huge drain on our economy and aren't winning us any love. Let's let the world take care of itself.
Slashdot Mirror
You have no clue what an expensive trip to the hospital is. My wife's bill for breast cancer came to about a quarter million dollars, how the hell are you supposed to negotiate when your opponent literally holds your life in their hands? I suppose we could have sold the house and lived in our car for the decades it took pay off the med bills. If that's what you mean by "change what we have to do", I'll pass, thanks.
My wife's a cancer survivor. There's an exam she can have that will very accurately predict not only the chance of a recurrence but also the chances that her sisters will also get cancer. And the catch:
If she "fails" the exam, there's a good chance her sisters won't be able to get insurance, no one wants to cover someone who's a high cancer risk. So my wife may forgo testing and preventative treatment so that her sisters won't be disqualified from getting insurance. How F'd up is that? Under single payer this wouldn't be an issue. Applying "free market" ideology to health care only makes sense if you never get sick.
Good point. I'd like to know exactly what question they asked that led them to this conclusion. I wouldn't be surprised if the methodology for this study was pretty sloppy. Not sure how reputable Pew is, and even if most of their studies are good that's no guaranty that this one was.
That said, there's plenty of older folks who find computers intimidating and frustrating and want as little to do with them as possible. No surprise that they don't care about broadband. My mom has a Mailstation, a tiny text-only email reader that connects over dial up. She loves that thing because it's stupid easy to use. The nice laptop we bought her drives her nuts, there's too many choices and too many points of failure for her to deal with when it doesn't just work. So blame Vista(yet again!!) for the fact that dial-up users don't want to upgrade.
Actually, it's getting worse. I'm trying to copy all the files from one USB drive to another. Under XP, it hits a file it doesn't like, tells me what file it is, and quits gracefully.
Same two drives on a Vista box, no error message, it just keeps trying to copy until I give up and hit cancel, which crashes Windows Explorer, making the machine useless until I force a reboot.
Un-fricken-believable. Maybe they fixed that in Mojave, people love it so much.
Yeah, that's a wise assessment if you trust your government completely, which you shouldn't. If you're a journalist trying to break a big story about government corruption, this allows the bad guys in our government to spy on you. Grass roots activist trying fight some corporation? They chat with some congressman they own and your phone is tapped. Rival political party? Tap their HQ.
There's so many ways this can be abused, and if you think that will never happen you're incredibly naive. Domestic spying without oversight is an invitation to totalitarianism.
Well done. Considering the author asks "Is it really worth it?" in the article, would have been nice of him to do the math for us. Maybe it was a rhetorical question.
The kid plotted this weeks ahead of time. Even if he was delusional "at the time he hatched this plot", he had plenty of time to come to his senses.
Considering he originally claimed "It is estimated to pay for itself within 10 years", would it be asking too much for him to address that issue in his six month follow up? He barely mentions finances at all, except that his bill for 6 months with solar was less than his January bill last year.
That's impressive, sure, but doesn't give me a clue as to whether he's on track to a 10-year pay back.
While I agree the teacher's requirements were ridiculous, doesn't seem like it would be very hard to write the document at home, save as plain text, then open it at school and spend 5 minutes formatting it.
You might be right about the illegal bit, but watering a pot plant is a lot easier than brewing beer or distilling liquor. Um, so I've heard.
OK, say you're right. The government stops spending billions of dollars to catch and incarcerate drug users and dealers, but doesn't lower taxes. So where does the money go? Pay down the deficit? Better schools? Health care? Infrastructure? Still sounds like a win to me.
"No amount of taxation (limited to) DRUGS will be enought to make up to the massive loss of productivity of drug addicts."
Perhaps not, but when you take into account the billions of dollars we waste to catch and imprison users and dealers, I believe society will come out ahead.
Hawaii has extremely high electric rates and almost constant sunshine, it's probably the best candidate on the planet for solar. If I owned a house there I'd put panels on it yesterday. You don't need acres of desert to house solar panels, put 'em on rooftops.
" A few people on maui have an infatuation with giant mud tires and huge lift kits."
Fixed that for you. It is a head scratcher. I was there a couple months ago, talking to a friend who's lived there his whole life. He says there's no place you can actually take those off road, unless you happen to own a ranch.
...welcome our incarcerated...crap, that doesn't really work, does it?
Cool link. I'd like to see the Rambo rear with the Arnold front. Might photoshop it some time.
"I'm not sure I see the advantage in having the government deliver internet access, when not just one, but multiple methods (telcos and cablecos) of connection exist in most places through private industry"
That's called a duopoly, and it's pretty much as bad as a monopoly.
"what we have is already working decently."
If by decently you mean it's slow and overpriced, then I agree.
"If the government wanted to do it, it'd either have to buy out some company's infrastructure, or pay billions to lay their own fiber to everyone's house."
I'd settle for gig-over-copper, which would be light years ahead of the speeds currently available. Hell, hundred meg would have me dancing on the ceiling.
"we also don't live nearly as densely as people do in places like Europe and Korea, so naturally it's more expensive to install infrastructure here."
And yet in cities like New York, which are densely populated, internet access is still expensive and slow. But at the university I work at, 100 miles from a big city, a one gig internet connection costs 5 bucks a month, and our telecom department still turns a profit. Hmmmm...
"the government is generally much more corrupt here than in industrialized countries"
"The government" covers a lot of territory. It's true that many states have passed legislation making it illegal for municipalities to provide internet to their citizens. I trust my local government a lot more than the cable and telcos, too bad our state reps are for sale. But if you think corporate executives are so smart and trustworthy, have you watched the news--or your 401(k) statement--in the last couple months?
Please read a book or two about the Vietnam conflict.
"The only ethics needed or desired on the battlefield is to win the day." We did that, from 1965-1973. US forces never lost a battle of any significance. Didn't matter. The VC and NVA kept coming, we got tired of dying. I guess we could have tried dropping tons of bombs on their cities to get them to back off. Oh yeah, we tried that. And invading North Vietnam wasn't an option, the Soviets or Chinese would have stepped in. Study the Korean War to see how that works out.
Our only option was to continue to send troops to die to prop up the South Vietnamese government, and the American people were sick of that. I suppose if we had killer robots they could have done the job, but is a government that can't rally the support of it's own population worth defending?
Feel free to argue any of my points, but don't trot out the John Rambo "the politicians wouldn't let us win" crap. You're talking about Nixon and Kissinger, do you seriously think they hampered the military because they gave a damn about the Vietnamese (North or South)?
You do have a point about the Iraq situation, but I'm not sure Bush could have sold the creation of a 5th branch of the armed forces designed to police and occupy countries that the US has invaded. Although considering the state of our media 5 years ago, I could be wrong. We don't need killer robots, we need to quit invading other countries.
"After Columbine nerds were being kicked out of school for days because of gaming and such, slashdot especially was jam packed with people telling their stories."
Steve, Columbine was 9 years ago. You're telling us you were reading Slashdot when you were in kindergarten? Man, you are an uber-geek!
The free market may be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but free market theories fall apart when you're talking about a duopoly with huge hurdles for any third-party competitor to overcome. I can't figure out if these libertarian types are being deliberately dishonest or if they're just so in love with their theory that they're blind to the realities of the situation.
Organizations have no self-interest, but the people running them do, and those interests aren't always the same as the organizations' stock holders, employees, or customers. The fact that Greenspan couldn't figure this out even after the Enron debacle indicates that he was grossly blinded by ideology. Of course, the fact that our legal system supports the fiction that corporations are people helps perpetuate such nonsense.
" Ballmer, in turn, blamed another Microsoft executive"
When I first read the summary, I read that as "Ballmer blamed another Microsoft intern". And my reaction was, "Well, that explains so much about Vista!"
Interesting that you do agree that there are public venues where speech can be restricted, but you don't feel that the publicly licensed airwaves which permeate everybody's residences should be one of them.
Republicans AND Democrats are happy about this? We are so screwed.
Obviously, the post above stating how we occupied their country wouldn't be the provoking reason, and that was AFTER the 9/11...
Assuming that by "their country" you mean Iraq, you are correct that the US did not occupy it prior to 9/11. However, none of the hijackers were Iraqi, so the fact that we weren't occupying Iraq at the time is irrelevant. Most of them were Saudis, and we did in fact have troops and bases in Saudi Arabia prior to 9/11. In fact, that was one of the reasons bin Laden cited for his attack, although the US President and media have ignored that fact. http://www.representativepress.org/whylie.html Like the parent poster, I'm not saying the attack on WTC was in any way justified.
Personally, I think we should close about 90 percent of our hundreds of overseas bases, they're a huge drain on our economy and aren't winning us any love. Let's let the world take care of itself.