Shouldn't secret communications always be an option?
No, it shouldn't be. Not when a public official is acting in their official capacity. If it's not classified enough so that Yahoo mail wouldn't be a security breach, it's not so classified that the public shouldn't know about it.
And no, I don't buy into the theory that advisers give better advice if the know that the public won't know what they say.
David Brooks is many things, but he's not a neoconservative. He's generally an old-school conservative, more a disciple of Goldwater than Rove.
But he's definitely far more conservative than most of the Times columnists (with the exception of Bill Kristol). So when he criticizes the Republican Party, it would be a lot like Michael Moore going after the Democrats.
It's perfectly constitutional: Nearly all telecoms operate across state lines, and thus this falls under Interstate Commerce, specifically under the purview of the FCC.
Also, government money was spent to help build the telecom infrastructure, and telecom infrastructure frequently makes use of government right-of-way agreements, so the Feds have a certain amount of power of the purse and power of contracts at their disposal.
If I read your post correctly, your logic works something like this: McCain says one thing. Obama says another. Ergo, Obama must be lying, and really agrees with what McCain said. That conclusion is not justified by your premises.
"More government involvement" in this case would be a regulation on telecom companies that requires them to treat all traffic identically or be liable for every byte of everything shady or illegal that traverses their network. This sort of regulation has come to be known as "net neutrality", and fits nicely into Obama's governing philosophy that government regulation often helps make markets operate more fairly.
"Light regulation" usually means an overall reduction in regulations on the theory that compliance with the regulations is putting too much of a burden on the businesses affected by that regulation. This fits nicely into McCain's governing philosophy that government regulation often prevents markets from operating as efficiently as they could.
To answer your off-topic question: Lennon was definitely a leftist, and there were definitely some folks who wanted him pinned as a communist, notably Richard Nixon. The film "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" discusses in great detail his political activities.
Think about what happens if Microsoft Office is supplanted: 1. Microsoft loses 1 of its 2 big cash cows. 2. Businesses have no reason to choose Windows desktops over Apple or Linux, cutting the Windows market in half.
In other words, open protocols + open file formats + improved OpenOffice cuts Microsoft revenues by 75%. They will fight tooth and nail for that.
For the free market to work in producing the most efficient distribution of goods there are a few other conditions that need to be satisfied: 1. All externalities (e.g. environmental damage) are tracked and a cost assessed for each of them. 2. No single market participant has significant pricing-setting power. 3. All market participants have the option of refusing to participate.
For stocks, both of those conditions are reasonably close to satisfied, but there are plenty of markets (e.g. coal mining, health care, and corn distribution) where those conditions aren't met.
Weird Al parodies of Michael Jackson music: funny and still relatively popular Michael Jackson music: largely a joke now.
Weird Al also (as others have pointed out) has been known to parody stuff from a decade or 2 earlier: e.g. Grapefruit Diet (Zoot Suit Riot) or The Saga Begins (American Pie).
Ok, here's my bid: An engineer and a mathematician were trying to each fence off the largest field possible using a set amount of fence. The engineer calculated out the optimum position of the perimeter and fenced off a field. The mathematician made a tiny fence around himself and said "I'm on the outside".
It's not that you have Tech Support on your resume, it's that you don't have any sort of developer position on your resume. According to some of the recruiters I've talked to, at least in my market developers must have 3 years of experience to be considered seriously for a junior-level position because statistically most developers make their biggest mistakes in their first 3 years (myself included). Since all employers try to avoid being the victim of those sorts of mistakes, entry level developers have a very difficult time getting their foot in the door.
Some concrete suggestions: - Smaller startups may be more willing to take the risk on you than larger corporations. - If your personal projects are any good, try selling them. If you do, then you are now the sole proprietor of a software business, and may not have to worry about finding a job. - If your current company isn't giving you promotions you're qualified for, then you should be looking to switch companies. Put out your resume quietly, though. - Take any development job you can, even if it's at intern level. Your pay is going to suck for a while.
You're seeing the consequences of the modern philosophy that "every child should go to college", and the resulting dismantling of high school vocational education programs throughout the U.S.
The reasons I see for this bogus argument: 1. People with college degrees get paid more than people without them. No one disagrees with that. 2. Politicians can easily argue for policies that aim to give every child a college degree, because every parent would rather have their own kid be a doctor instead of a bricklayer (replace with any white-collar and blue-collar professions). 3. It allows that same doctor to place the blame for the bricklayer's condition on the bricklayer, because it allows the theory that if the bricklayer had done what they were supposed to, they would have gotten a college degree and become a doctor instead. 4. From point 3 above, that sort of thinking justifies paying bricklayers badly. This is something business management likes a lot, so it now becomes easy for politicians to justify the same policies to wealthy campaign donors.
Result: everyone wins, except those people who do blue-collar jobs.
Those who excel (or at least believe they do) have no incentive to give up their freedom and opportunities for advancement to protect those who don't perform as well.
Which leads immediately to an important issue: most people think they are above average. The "at least believe they do" is a critical piece of the puzzle: a lot of people who believe they have no incentive to join a union in fact would be far better off if they did.
Regarding your work on the Franken campaign, am I the only one who considers it scary that the most insightful political commentators these days are comedians (e.g. Franken, Stewart, Colbert)?
You see, any proposal vaguely resembling the New Deal nowadays is immediately called "Communist" and the person who proposes the idea is promptly dismissed as being a left-wing moonbat.
I know, because my Congresscritter has proposed just those sorts of ideas and is now mentioned mostly as a punch line.
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Shouldn't secret communications always be an option?
No, it shouldn't be. Not when a public official is acting in their official capacity. If it's not classified enough so that Yahoo mail wouldn't be a security breach, it's not so classified that the public shouldn't know about it.
And no, I don't buy into the theory that advisers give better advice if the know that the public won't know what they say.
You may be modded down as off-topic, but the official answer to your question is found at http://slashdot.org/faq/metamod.shtml.
David Brooks is many things, but he's not a neoconservative. He's generally an old-school conservative, more a disciple of Goldwater than Rove.
But he's definitely far more conservative than most of the Times columnists (with the exception of Bill Kristol). So when he criticizes the Republican Party, it would be a lot like Michael Moore going after the Democrats.
It's perfectly constitutional: Nearly all telecoms operate across state lines, and thus this falls under Interstate Commerce, specifically under the purview of the FCC.
Also, government money was spent to help build the telecom infrastructure, and telecom infrastructure frequently makes use of government right-of-way agreements, so the Feds have a certain amount of power of the purse and power of contracts at their disposal.
If I read your post correctly, your logic works something like this: McCain says one thing. Obama says another. Ergo, Obama must be lying, and really agrees with what McCain said. That conclusion is not justified by your premises.
"More government involvement" in this case would be a regulation on telecom companies that requires them to treat all traffic identically or be liable for every byte of everything shady or illegal that traverses their network. This sort of regulation has come to be known as "net neutrality", and fits nicely into Obama's governing philosophy that government regulation often helps make markets operate more fairly.
"Light regulation" usually means an overall reduction in regulations on the theory that compliance with the regulations is putting too much of a burden on the businesses affected by that regulation. This fits nicely into McCain's governing philosophy that government regulation often prevents markets from operating as efficiently as they could.
Now do you see the difference?
To answer your off-topic question: Lennon was definitely a leftist, and there were definitely some folks who wanted him pinned as a communist, notably Richard Nixon. The film "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" discusses in great detail his political activities.
If it doesn't, then you get rid of the idiot box.
That in and of itself is the best thing my parents ever did for me, although I didn't know it at the time.
It's so nice to have integrity
I'll tell you why:
'cause if you really have integrity
that means your price is very high!
-Tom Lehrer
Think about what happens if Microsoft Office is supplanted:
1. Microsoft loses 1 of its 2 big cash cows.
2. Businesses have no reason to choose Windows desktops over Apple or Linux, cutting the Windows market in half.
In other words, open protocols + open file formats + improved OpenOffice cuts Microsoft revenues by 75%. They will fight tooth and nail for that.
For the free market to work in producing the most efficient distribution of goods there are a few other conditions that need to be satisfied:
1. All externalities (e.g. environmental damage) are tracked and a cost assessed for each of them.
2. No single market participant has significant pricing-setting power.
3. All market participants have the option of refusing to participate.
For stocks, both of those conditions are reasonably close to satisfied, but there are plenty of markets (e.g. coal mining, health care, and corn distribution) where those conditions aren't met.
So that the Comedy Central news team (among others) won't tear it a new one until Monday evening.
Oblig xkcd:
http://xkcd.com/456/
Weird Al parodies of Michael Jackson music: funny and still relatively popular
Michael Jackson music: largely a joke now.
Weird Al also (as others have pointed out) has been known to parody stuff from a decade or 2 earlier: e.g. Grapefruit Diet (Zoot Suit Riot) or The Saga Begins (American Pie).
No, samzenpus said he knew her, so the special lady is obviously his mother.
Ever since that cracker got me
I found a new place to dwell.
It's down at the end of cloned street
At pwned hotel.
(chorus)
You make me so cloned baby,
I get so cloned,
I get so cloned I could die (again and again).
And although its always crowded,
You still can find some room.
Where broken hearted users
Do cry away their gloom.
(chorus)
Well, the spammer's mail keeps flowin,
And the desk clerks dressed in black.
Well they been so long on cloned street
They ain't ever gonna look back.
(chorus)
Hey now, if a cracker gets you,
And you got a tale to tell,
just take a walk down cloned street
To pwned hotel.
The best part of the naming is that with their new language F# we end up with the beginning of the following musical sequence:
C#, F#, B
But B is a totally obsolete predecessor of C, so that means that C# and F# must be even more inadequate!
Number 16: The larch.
The larch.
Ok, here's my bid: An engineer and a mathematician were trying to each fence off the largest field possible using a set amount of fence. The engineer calculated out the optimum position of the perimeter and fenced off a field. The mathematician made a tiny fence around himself and said "I'm on the outside".
If we're really lucky, they both will spend exorbitant amounts of money litigating, and then the judge will award $1 to the plaintiff.
It's not that you have Tech Support on your resume, it's that you don't have any sort of developer position on your resume. According to some of the recruiters I've talked to, at least in my market developers must have 3 years of experience to be considered seriously for a junior-level position because statistically most developers make their biggest mistakes in their first 3 years (myself included). Since all employers try to avoid being the victim of those sorts of mistakes, entry level developers have a very difficult time getting their foot in the door.
Some concrete suggestions:
- Smaller startups may be more willing to take the risk on you than larger corporations.
- If your personal projects are any good, try selling them. If you do, then you are now the sole proprietor of a software business, and may not have to worry about finding a job.
- If your current company isn't giving you promotions you're qualified for, then you should be looking to switch companies. Put out your resume quietly, though.
- Take any development job you can, even if it's at intern level. Your pay is going to suck for a while.
You're seeing the consequences of the modern philosophy that "every child should go to college", and the resulting dismantling of high school vocational education programs throughout the U.S.
The reasons I see for this bogus argument:
1. People with college degrees get paid more than people without them. No one disagrees with that.
2. Politicians can easily argue for policies that aim to give every child a college degree, because every parent would rather have their own kid be a doctor instead of a bricklayer (replace with any white-collar and blue-collar professions).
3. It allows that same doctor to place the blame for the bricklayer's condition on the bricklayer, because it allows the theory that if the bricklayer had done what they were supposed to, they would have gotten a college degree and become a doctor instead.
4. From point 3 above, that sort of thinking justifies paying bricklayers badly. This is something business management likes a lot, so it now becomes easy for politicians to justify the same policies to wealthy campaign donors.
Result: everyone wins, except those people who do blue-collar jobs.
Those who excel (or at least believe they do) have no incentive to give up their freedom and opportunities for advancement to protect those who don't perform as well.
Which leads immediately to an important issue: most people think they are above average. The "at least believe they do" is a critical piece of the puzzle: a lot of people who believe they have no incentive to join a union in fact would be far better off if they did.
Regarding your work on the Franken campaign, am I the only one who considers it scary that the most insightful political commentators these days are comedians (e.g. Franken, Stewart, Colbert)?
You see, any proposal vaguely resembling the New Deal nowadays is immediately called "Communist" and the person who proposes the idea is promptly dismissed as being a left-wing moonbat.
I know, because my Congresscritter has proposed just those sorts of ideas and is now mentioned mostly as a punch line.
Ray Beckerman's (a.k.a. NewYorkCountryLawyer) comments can be viewed here
Apparently legal efforts like his are starting to pay off.