That's either pure politics again or it's politics creating bad science.
What? A scientific study that tells us that ice cream is bad for these specific reasons is POLITICS? No, it's a scientific study. I didn't say it was a biased or faulty scientific study.
Science may tell us that something is bad for us.
That's what I just said.
An enlightened policy will make sure people know of the result and how well proven (or not) it is and urge us to do the right thing.
And that "enlightened policy" is exactly what I'm talking about being necessary instead of just "science". The "enlightened policy" looks at more than just the scientific study, it looks at all the other issues involved.
I understand your skepticism though,
No, clearly you do not, because I am not talking about taking a skeptical view of science, I'm talking about considering more than science when it comes to dealing with social and societal issues. I don't care if the science is unimpeachable and proven beyond any reasonable doubt, there are other things to consider when making laws.
Newton's laws of motion are pretty well defined and accepted. Momentum increases as the square of the velocity. You'd have to be really outside the norm to think otherwise. So, applying that science to automotive policy, speed limits should be as low as possible. Five MPH at most. Double that limit to ten and you've multiplied the momentum by 4 and the amount of damage by the same. Maybe even 5MPH is too much!
But wait -- people need to get from point A to point B in a reasonable time. Rules can be put into place to lessen the likelyhood of colissions. People will naturally go at a speed they feel is safe, all else being equal, so putting a 5MPH limit on major roads is not going to be effective anyway. These are things that fall outside Newton's laws that still need to be considered.
It's all because those salty bags of water don't feel compelled to limit themselves to what is "safer" or "safest" according to science. It's only a wonderful side-effect that some of the science that tells us what is "safer" isn't really very good science, or is simply wrong, that makes not blindly obeying the scientists an even better thing.
For the commenter that asked me how I think the FDA determines drug laws, well, they already do that. I was responding specifically to a comment that said "more is better" when it comes to having science determine laws. But even there, too, drugs are approved that have known side effects. The benefits of the drug to people's lives is still a consideration, over and above the science. That's a good thing.
You don't have to enforce scientific results; they have a tendency to do that by themselves.
No, they don't. There is nothing coming out of a scientific study of the effects of, say, tobacco, that prevents anyone from smoking. If that were true, nobody would be smoking today. They'd all have been prevented from doing so by the scientific studies that tell them it is bad for them.
To get the enforcement, you need laws and someone who comes arrest you if you break them. Laws come from politicians.
It would be a BAD thing if scientific studies resulted in laws without any concern for anything else, like this "emotional" economy or freedom or rights or any of the other human considerations. Not only when the scientific studies are wrong, but when they are right, too.
For Yucca, let's suppose that every study says "this is a safe place to bury wastes". Should you ignore every other concern and forge blithely ahead building a nuclear waste dump there? Suppose there was a study that said that your back yard was a safe place to bury nuclear wastes, and a backhoe will be around tomorrow at 8AM to start digging. Would you be happy?
Did you realise that scientific studies have shown that eating ice-cream...
Did you realize that that was only one small example of the bigger picture, and that by poking holes in ice cream you've not actually dealt with the bigger issues involved?
Luckily we already have that to some extent in the field of medicine, but we could do with more.
Do you mean like a full study of the effectiveness of specific medical treatments and the probabilities of success and such, so that each member of society will have only the most likely to succeed and best rate-of-return procedures paid for?
Or like as soon as a scientific study shows that something is bad for people (like eating too much ice cream) it is made illegal?
Politics and government shouldn't be about enforcing scientific results, it needs to take into account people and their odd quirks, like a desire to be able to make their own choices about things and exhibit some level of freedom.
As I said elsewhere, do you really think they weighed every moon rock they collected?
I can see the mistake now.
"You guys weighed all those rocks before we took off, right"?
"Yeah, well within allowance."
"Well, you remembered that the gravitational field is less on the moon, so something that weighs 1 pound on the moon is actually a lot more massive than something that weighs 1 pound on the earth, right? And that propulsion systems deal with mass, not weight, right?"
Sound of hatch opening and 80% of the rock payload being jetisoned.
I just tried unlinking my bank account from PayPal... My account is now unverified and has a spending limit unless I either re-link an account, or sign up for a PayPal credit card (my Confirmed MasterCard is not enough).
See, you don't have to have a bank account linked to PayPal. You can sign up for their credit card. It's obvious!
I have been an eBay user paying through PayPal for a very long time. Seven years, ten years, something like that. Same credit card (with renewals, of course) for all that time. I eventually hit my $10,000 spending limit.
The nice people at PayPal told me that I MUST give them a direct pathway into my bank account or use their credit card AS A FRAUD PREVENTION METHOD. Many many years of using the same credit card, spending $10,000, and they are telling me that the real owner of the card (me) wouldn't have noticed fraudlent charges long ago and reported it? That's insane.
Fortunately I had an old credit union account with just $5 in it that I could devote to these shysters so if they decide to drain my account for some reason it will fail. They wanted the password so they could see the account online themselves; I had to get the CU to reactivate it just for PayPal. The "small amount" they were going to deposit? Hmmm, someday, maybe.
I'm stuck having to go through the long process of changing the payment method each and every time I use PayPal to buy something; there is no way to set it, even though it is my money and my accounts they want access to. PayPal, you've verified my identity and authenticity, there is no reason you need further access to my bank account and no reason you shouldn't allow me to go back to paying with my credit card by default. Since you keep demanding this, it's clear that you lied about the reason you wanted it in the first place. Ethical company, my ass.
The sales tax rate would be based on the average sales tax rate for the state.
Do you really imagine that the people who live in the countryside would be happy to pay extra sales tax because the morons in the biggest city in the state cannot manage their money efficiently and have implemented a local sales tax?
The state would then take the revenue under this special code and divide it amongst the locales based on a fairness algorithm.
Oh goody. A "fairness" algorithm. Make the people in the country pay more sales tax and get less benefit from it. Peachy.
That may not work out to be true, but let's just start from that stipulation. Let's assume, in addition,...
It is most certainly not going to be true, since radio is unlikely to ever go away. The fiasco that has been digital television will force such a backlash against any suggestion that radio follow suit that any politician who suggests it will be tarred and feathered.
But if we are going to assume silly things, I'd rather assume that the moon is made of green cheese and we can feed all the homeless and poor by sending them to live there on rocket ships made of unicorn horn powered by fairy wings.
Then let's look at the costs and the downsides.
Planning without consideration of costs and "downsides" is what gives us projects like OWIN -- the Oregon Wideband Information Network (I think that's what it stands for). A broadband microwave backbone covering the I5 corridor providing unified public safety communications services to every municipality within the region.
At least, that's what it was supposed to be. It has turned into a 700MHz trunked system for the Portland area. Maybe extending into Salem, the state capitol. I don't know. But certainly not the grand glorious "robust, fast, ubiquitous, reliable, and something that you can thoroughly take for granted" system that was promised when it was started and money was allocated.
It's about time there was a government subsidy to supply me with a backyard, a fishing stream, and a corn field for the kid to walk through.
Shhhhh. Don't give them ideas. If your city hasn't gotten bit by the "open space" bug, where owners of private land are denied the privilege of building a house because some of the people in the city want that land to stay as "open space", they eventually will.
We've got, essentially, a full-up rental market and ridiculous rents for what is available, because developers in this city are required to keep from using 2/3 of the property they own just to keep the "open space" nutcases from taking them to court to stop all development. The land belongs to the developer, it's the people who are used to having open space next to their apartment complex that demand that the land never be used for anything. They don't scrape the money together to buy it, but they will hire lawyers to sue.
That applies not only to land that actually has open space and trees and stuff, but to a miserable little parcel of land next to the railroad yard. It's been a decade of argument about what can't be built there and why, all with the result that the view of the railroad yard isn't obstructed for the neighbors.
Banking online doesn't work reliably on dialup any more.
Banking online is not a necessity of life. Many banks have these things they call "offices". It isn't as convenient to go to the "office", but "less convenient" doesn't turn something into a necessity worth public subsidy.
Really, a broadband subsidy / mandated rollout now makes just as much sense as the mandated telephone rollout did in the 20th century.
Really? Seriously? You are comparing "online banking because you don't want to drive into town to the bank's office" with "being able to call a doctor or fire department when you cut your arm off in the threshing machine or the house is on fire"?
The ability to get help in a life-threatening situation justifies the telephone subsidy. Whether that subsidy takes the form of a POTS wireline or giving people refurbished cell phones doesn't matter.
The ability to check your bank balance without having to leave home doesn't justify squat. If you think you are going to die because you cannot determine how much money you have in the bank right this second, then you shouldn't have bet on the Packers to win by 7, or maybe you need a more forgiving bookie.
I wonder what affect this would have on that area if me and my friends in the same boat had the opportunity to live around the people we grew up with.
Apparently none, since you already have the opportunity to live there and have chosen to live elsewhere. You made that choice based on things you value, which you are free to do. You apparently didn't value what the effect of your presence would be enough to live there, but want us to subsidize you so you can.
... and I think those areas would get a real boost in opportunity if businesses where able to operate in these lower income areas of the country.
Many years ago, HP in this area understood the value of having their IT people online at home and paid for network lines there. They didn't do it out of the goodness of their heart, it was a business decision based on costs and benefits.
If the company you work for doesn't think it is a cost effective thing to pay for your network connection, then I'm sure that it isn't a cost effective thing for ME to pay for it, either.
High speed internet is not a necessity. People live full and complete lives without it. More important, nobody dies because they don't have it. Yes, it's cool, and yes it can make life easier, but so too does owning a refridgerator make life easier. Yet, nobody calls for taxes on anything so that people who cannot afford refridgerators can buy them. There is no "rural refridgeration program".
Since landline telephone service is no longer as important, it makes sense to shift the priority from giving those people landline phone service to broadband internet access.
Telephone service is more important than broadband. Telephone service is how you call 911.
It costs more for broadband than for a simple copper pair for POTS. There is no justification for the extra expense.
Subsidies are not universally a bad thing. This is a service that would not otherwise be provided because of the high cost.
By "this", you mean broadband. It's a shame that people won't get broadband, but hardly earth shattering or life threatening. POTS, OTOH, is important. And, as you admit, lower cost.
There are some folks who will never get broadband service of any kind unless we spread the costs of providing it across society.
And? So what? There will be lots of things that people won't be able to afford if nobody buys it for them. Should "I can't afford" become the sole justification for government handouts to everyone? I'd like a Ferrari, please. I can't afford one. A Cessna 182, also. Glass cockpit. I can't afford that, either. If you buy me an airplane, I promise to use it to search for lost people -- which will have a direct and measurable impact on saving lives, compared to the nebulous "gee isn't it cool" factor of having broadband.
If the fee for subsidizing rural and remote phone service is no longer needed for that purpose, it should be retired. What will happen, though, is that a fee, once created, will never go away. Government will simply find another use for the money and keep the fee.
Example? Our city added a tax to our water bill to fix one specific major street in town. It was built incorrectly, but instead of getting the contractor out to fix it, the city decided they would do it. They started collecting the fee and then... waited. In the meantime, a local developer screwed up his support wall for the hillside the road was on and damaged the road. He got to pay for fixing a large part of the road that the water tax was intended to fix. After a few years, the city finally fixed the rest of the road. Did the tax go away? Of course not. They had a list of other roads that they could use the money for, so the tax stuck around (without any chance of public comment or debate) and we're still being taxed on our water to fix a road that was fixed three years ago.
Now that everyone is used to paying that tax, they added more taxes on the water supply to pay for tree maintenance and sidewalk repairs, and to make the pitiful excuse for bus service in this town free for everyone.
I expect the next tax on the water supply will be to support the 911 center, since the proposed tax on cell phone bills to do that got shot down when it came up for a public vote.
You don't even know what little town you are blowing through let alone who actually has jurisdiction in that area,
If you knew how often the automatic distribution of 911 calls from cell calls fails in just that kind of situation, you'd not be so smug about this. Fortunately, those places where it fails are able to forward your call to the right jurisdiction and the response is only slightly delayed.
Just for example, if you are on the interstate outside the city limits, the response needs to come from the state police. If you are inside the city limits, the city may or may not have jurisdiction. Fire and ambulance are the same thing. You're using the same cell tower, and if you are using GSM (I think it is, it may be the other way around) that doesn't have E911 GPS, dispatch has nothing other than your description of where you are to work with. Even with E911 GPS, that data may take a minute or more to be delivered (the GPS has to turn on and get a location, and then that has to be delivered to the 911 center, which they may actually have to ask for an update to get.)
It doesn't matter if you have the local number for dispatch. If you have the right one, well, that was lucky. If you have the wrong one, they'll do the same transfer to the right PSAP (911 center) that they'd do if 911 misdelivered the call. It's not a big deal. It's dealt with.
Fine. Now you have to clean up shit from your front lawn every day,
Interesting. I live where we pay for the service, and I don't have to clean up anything from my lawn every day. An occasional McD wrapper is about it, other than the repeated crap from the local newspaper that they deliver every week despite being told to stop. Neither would be different with city pickup -- the former is from cretins who are walking back home from the McD on the corner and are too lazy to carry the crap with them, and the latter is an explicit dump and run operation from someone who doesn't think what they are dumping is shit.
People who dump crap on other people's lawns aren't doing it because they don't want to pay for service at home, they are doing it because they have something in their hands that they want to get rid of and don't want to carry it anymore. It doesn't matter if they do or don't have trash pickup at home.
I don't need a 911 operator at all times, I can call the police dispatch or fire department directly (just like before 911).
Ummm, just who do you think does the police and fire dispatch these days? Right, the 911 center. It doesn't matter if you use the 911 emergency number or the direct regular phone number, it goes the same place to the same people.
The only advantage to calling on a direct line is if you know the non-emergency number, and then the advantage is that they know it isn't an emergency and can ignore the call if they are busy.
I don't need things like trash pickup,
Then don't pay for the service. Oh, you get taxed so everyone pays for the trash pickup even if they don't want it?
The list goes on and on, but I want a smaller scope of government and correspondingly lower taxes.
There are many things that can and should be cut from government, but the 911 dispatch system is not one of them. If you're forced to pay for a trash service that you don't want, that is one of them. There is no inherent reason a government should be taxing you for that service.
If the industry can't survive in a world with the technology where copies are made essentially for free, then that industry should die.
Then what would you have to make copies of?
There is a significant difference between the music industry and the scribe/printing press analogy you use. The scribes were not responsible for creating content, only copying it. The printing press did nothing to replace the content creators.
The "music industry" includes those that create the content that you want to copy for free. You can't replace the entire industry with a CD burner and a net connection, since the CD burner and net connection cannot create the content, only copy it.
Maybe you should try getting more of your news from the Daily Show as well.
When comedy programs are presented as the best source of news, something is wrong. But how can people not be tricked into thinking The Daily Show is "news" when it is carried on CNN International and presented to the entire world as "news"?
The comment about learning all about England from Benny Hill is spot on. Duels of honor are conducted in England by slapping each other with fish (Monty Python), and all young children are obvious liars (Outnumbered). B&B's in that country are all run by people like Basil Fawlty, too.
It has been shown that Daily Show viewers are more informed than others.
Given the name of the website, I suspect that what you meant to say was that viewers of the humor of Jon Stewart agree with more progressive concepts than those who don't. Yes, I think that is an obvious conclusion. And yes, "Think Progress" pretty much sums it up.
At best, it's a case of "people who are more informed might watch more topical programming than those who aren't, and that might include 'The Daily Show', a humor program based on current events." Causal link? Unproven.
Of course you would already know this if you watched the Daily Show.
There are many things you would "know" if you watched "The Daily Show", and one of them should be that comedy is, for the most part, based on deliberate and often biased distortions of the truth. The latter is often overlooked by Daily Show viewers.
You agreed to an implicit contract that while on someone else's property (the Movie Theater's) you don't have the right to cause panic or disrupt the general public.
Umm, no I didn't.
And I suspect that the owner of the theater would be in just as much trouble with the law over yelling "fire" when there's a crowd in his house and there is no fire as anyone else would be.
Probably more, since he'll be the one liable for deaths due to insufficient exits.
They turn end of life consoling into death panels.
And who turns review boards that will determine if certain treatments are worth the cost for specific patients into "end of life consoling"? You really believe that those boards were there to make the people who were denied treatment feel better about their life ending?
Where are the factual inaccuracies believed by the left?
A budget that doesn't have as large an increase in spending as liberals want is a budget cut.
Dumping billions of dollars on "shovel ready projects" will keep the unemployment rate below 9%.
That Obama will close Gitmo "on day one".
That Obama will pull us out of Iraq "on day one".
I'd say "every word of the Obamacare bill", but very few on the left even read it before they voted for it. They simply didn't have time to do so.
...like lowering taxes on the rich helps anyone but the rich.
You are aware, I assume, that Mr. Obama admitted that lowering taxes on the rich would result in higher tax revenues, which one would assume can be considered a benefit for all. He admitted this during a democratic candidate debate upon questioning by Mr. Blitzer. He said, rather clearly, that he understood that lower tax rates result in higher revenues, but that higher rates for the rich is "fair" -- despite them already paying the majority of the income tax revenue.
No 6th grader is going to grok the scientific method.
Ummm, do you have proof of this? I had a pretty good handle on it back then. I don't think I was alone.
The entire point of the scientific method is that the human mind is not designed to work that way. It takes years of training to think that way.
No, it takes exposure to it, and some experience, but "years of training"? Certainly not.
It's a shame we still have to train such thinking in college.
It is a shame that we still have to train basic math and english to people in college, but that's a problem with the current educational system and not proof that nobody can understand such things until they have "years of training". People, as a whole, have a wide range of abilities and talents, and pretending that, because some need remedial math or science education to make it through college, everyone needs it is lunacy.
Why do you think the North West passage opened up for the first time in memory?
The cap on the North Pole has never been as small as it was this August.
In the first sentence you admit that the data you have is "in memory". In the latter, you make a sweeping statement about all time. How do you know it has never been as small as you claim it is?
"Within human memory" is a very very tiny part of the geological time scale. Unless, of course, you wish to argue that the earth really is only 6000 years old and humans were created on day two. Or was it three? Then you can almost equate "never" and "in memory".
Prediction: It will be smaller yet next August. This claim is falsifiable, at it was made last year, but you can wait until next year if you want to call it science.
What do you think either verifying or falsifying this prediction proves? What is the hypothesis that you are trying to support?
Look at the currently popular notion in the US that to run government, we need someone with experience running a private corporation.
Huh? You mean the US, where the current president has had zero experience running anything but a campaign? Where the democrat president before him ran nothing but a governor's office? I don't think this notion is quite as popular as you pretend.
On the other hand, why shouldn't it be a qualification? Running something other than a political machine seems like a desirable thing. Having run a successful business, and demonstrating a basic understanding of economics and how money works and how to meet a payroll seems to me to be a good thing.
If that were the true measure, then a general would make the best president
Logical fallacy. The military is not a business. Rarely does a CEO have to order people out into the field to die. Rarely can a CEO put someone into prison for failing to obey an order. Your odd view of the military is one of the common failings of liberals who think that the military is nothing more than a public service organization that should be transporting food and medicine to needy people. Or maybe out filling sandbags to help with floods.
Does the fact that a leading candidate on the other side ran a business that successfully cannibalized other businesses make him the best person for the job?
Of course one qualification is not enough to fully judge a candidate. And I doubt you will find that this one qualification is all that is being presented.
Certainly more important than the current notion, that the guy who has the most money gets to rule.
You mean like Warren Buffet who is busy twisting public policy to meet his personal goals? Or George Soros, who is using his money to push his goals? Those "most money" people?
I assumed you were talking about the US, but now it is clear you aren't. The one with the "most money" doesn't get to rule. It takes an election. Even those with a lot of money to send lots of lawyers into a state to try to prevent legal ballots from being counted don't always win.
The "cancel" doesn't exist in the NNTP protocol. NNTP is a protocol for transporting news articles, one of which may be a cancel control message as defined in USEFOR and USEPRO.
The answer to why server admins don't honor cancel control messages is simple: they are routinely and regularly abused and honoring them would make USENET unusable.
This decision will be the death knell for USENET. Making server admins responsible for monitoring content will get them to turn it off.
Broadcast stations are guaranteed carriage on Cable TV systems by law.
That is not a guaranteed revenue stream for the programming that is carried on that station, it may be a revenue stream for the station itself. A station still decides which programs to carry based on MARKET forces. And those choices are increasingly towards shows like Cops and Cheaters and even unending infomercials.
But the shows only have to be good enough to earn a marginal profit.
You really don't understand market driven consumerism, do you? If a network or station thinks that another program will earn them MORE money during the same timeslot, the one they were carrying is gone. It isn't an issue of "enough". They're in business to make money, within the nebulous constraints of serving the public interest. And that's why even their "public interest" programs like news are dumbing down and filled with fluff pieces about local people.
However, that IS all that a non-profit station like public TV has to worry about. Cover the costs is the prime goal. That's why they are not market driven like the broadcast stations are, and can broadcast "better" stuff. At least "less popular". They are the exception to the market driven consequences of broadcast TV.
They can appeal to the least common denominator and still be guaranteed an audience because nobody has to opt-in to getting the stations.
Nobody is guaranteed an audience just because they are on cable. The reason they HAVE an audience as large as they get is because they DO cater to the lowest common denominator -- getting the most number of viewers. More viewers, more ad revenue. Market driven television, catering to the lowest common denominator, which is EXACTLY MY POINT. The latter is due to the former.
Turning all of cable into ala carte will create the same market driven results that broadcast has gone through. Broadcast has to serve the lowest common demoninator because there is no guaranteed revenue stream. The advertisers pay for programming, and if nobody watches they don't pay. For cable networks, the ones who are subsidized by being part of a package don't feel the full effects of that market pressure and can afford to do "less popular" programming. Make them fully ad supported and ala carte (viewer selected) and they'll go away, and their "less popular" stuff goes with them.
That's a failed assessment. Advertisers won't accept a higher ad price for the same viewership
It's not the same viewership. The current system has "one million have access to". Ala carte would result in "one hundred thousand pay extra for". That is a significant difference in both numbers of viewers and quality of same.
The change in subscribers wouldn't affect their ratings,
It won't change the "Neilson numbers", but it certainly will change the demographics and desirability of those viewers. People who pay extra to watch a channel are more likely to be interested in that programming and content, more likely to watch that programming and content, and have disposable income.
Yes, the actual Nielson ratings may go down due to the loss of "viewers" who have parked the telly on ESPN as background for a party or to keep the kids entertained, but those who pay for the channel have just pre-qualified themselves for whatever marketing takes place thereon.
It's the same kind of difference between someone setting up a street corner booth to sell fishing supplies and setting one up at a sporting goods show. The former will get him more people walking by, but they are all unqualified (in marketing terms) and many have no interest at all in what he's selling. At the show, there may be many fewer people, but they are all prequals because they have paid money to come to the show and that means a higher probability that the passersby will have an active interest in what he's hawking. The higher cost of being a vendor at the show is more than offset by the higher rate of sales, and that's why the show operator can charge more for booth space there than could be charged for a sidewalk space.
You're proving the opposite by citing the broadcast channels, which everybody has to pay for, regardless if they like the programming or not, and denouncing the result of that as crap (I assume - I don't watch those shows).
I'm speaking directly to market driven programming. If a show on broadcast doesn't make money, it goes away. If it doesn't make money in the first three weeks it goes away. This is purely market driven. The stuff that Joe Public watches when he comes home and pops a beer is what stays. Things that make him think or put him to sleep go away.
The exception that proves the rule is public broadcasting. They get money from people who pay directly. As long as the costs are covered for their artsy stuff, they'll keep playing it.
Another exception that proves the rule is Nightline. You may not remember how Nightline started, but when it did, nobody was doing latenight news programming. ABC only started the precusor to Nightline to cover the Iranian hostage crisis under Carter. Every night, an update on the crisis. "Day 45", etc. Only because they had a significant number of viewers, they decided to continue the news programming as an experiment. Had that program not been getting eyes, we wouldn't have nightline or any of the other late night news programs that came from it. And are slowly dying out.
Since they're guaranteed a revenue stream
I don't know where you get this idea from. Nothing on broadcast TV is guaranteed a revenue stream. If the advertisers don't think enough people are seeing their ads, they don't advertise. Poof goes the revenue stream. Sometimes in as little as half an hour. One show.
Compare that with HBO series.
HBO series are not broadcast TV and fall squarely into the niche cable-package marketing paradigm. There are not one but ten channels with the name "HBO" on my cable system, of which 7 are unique. You may want to buy "HBO", but you get ten (at least) channels when you do. Probably more, but I can't find a description of just what you do get when you buy HBO on Comcast.
When you start doing ala carte marketing, you will enter the same market driven world that broadcast operates in. If there aren't enough people who want to watch your program, the advertisers who support it will stop and the programs go away. If there aren't enough people who pay for the channel, eventually the entire channel will go away and nobody watches it anymore. You are left with what the majority wants, which is what we get on broadcast. Cable was meant to be so much more than that.
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That's either pure politics again or it's politics creating bad science.
What? A scientific study that tells us that ice cream is bad for these specific reasons is POLITICS? No, it's a scientific study. I didn't say it was a biased or faulty scientific study.
Science may tell us that something is bad for us.
That's what I just said.
An enlightened policy will make sure people know of the result and how well proven (or not) it is and urge us to do the right thing.
And that "enlightened policy" is exactly what I'm talking about being necessary instead of just "science". The "enlightened policy" looks at more than just the scientific study, it looks at all the other issues involved.
I understand your skepticism though,
No, clearly you do not, because I am not talking about taking a skeptical view of science, I'm talking about considering more than science when it comes to dealing with social and societal issues. I don't care if the science is unimpeachable and proven beyond any reasonable doubt, there are other things to consider when making laws.
Newton's laws of motion are pretty well defined and accepted. Momentum increases as the square of the velocity. You'd have to be really outside the norm to think otherwise. So, applying that science to automotive policy, speed limits should be as low as possible. Five MPH at most. Double that limit to ten and you've multiplied the momentum by 4 and the amount of damage by the same. Maybe even 5MPH is too much!
But wait -- people need to get from point A to point B in a reasonable time. Rules can be put into place to lessen the likelyhood of colissions. People will naturally go at a speed they feel is safe, all else being equal, so putting a 5MPH limit on major roads is not going to be effective anyway. These are things that fall outside Newton's laws that still need to be considered.
It's all because those salty bags of water don't feel compelled to limit themselves to what is "safer" or "safest" according to science. It's only a wonderful side-effect that some of the science that tells us what is "safer" isn't really very good science, or is simply wrong, that makes not blindly obeying the scientists an even better thing.
For the commenter that asked me how I think the FDA determines drug laws, well, they already do that. I was responding specifically to a comment that said "more is better" when it comes to having science determine laws. But even there, too, drugs are approved that have known side effects. The benefits of the drug to people's lives is still a consideration, over and above the science. That's a good thing.
You don't have to enforce scientific results; they have a tendency to do that by themselves.
No, they don't. There is nothing coming out of a scientific study of the effects of, say, tobacco, that prevents anyone from smoking. If that were true, nobody would be smoking today. They'd all have been prevented from doing so by the scientific studies that tell them it is bad for them.
To get the enforcement, you need laws and someone who comes arrest you if you break them. Laws come from politicians.
It would be a BAD thing if scientific studies resulted in laws without any concern for anything else, like this "emotional" economy or freedom or rights or any of the other human considerations. Not only when the scientific studies are wrong, but when they are right, too.
For Yucca, let's suppose that every study says "this is a safe place to bury wastes". Should you ignore every other concern and forge blithely ahead building a nuclear waste dump there? Suppose there was a study that said that your back yard was a safe place to bury nuclear wastes, and a backhoe will be around tomorrow at 8AM to start digging. Would you be happy?
Did you realise that scientific studies have shown that eating ice-cream...
Did you realize that that was only one small example of the bigger picture, and that by poking holes in ice cream you've not actually dealt with the bigger issues involved?
Luckily we already have that to some extent in the field of medicine, but we could do with more.
Do you mean like a full study of the effectiveness of specific medical treatments and the probabilities of success and such, so that each member of society will have only the most likely to succeed and best rate-of-return procedures paid for?
Or like as soon as a scientific study shows that something is bad for people (like eating too much ice cream) it is made illegal?
Politics and government shouldn't be about enforcing scientific results, it needs to take into account people and their odd quirks, like a desire to be able to make their own choices about things and exhibit some level of freedom.
As I said elsewhere, do you really think they weighed every moon rock they collected?
I can see the mistake now.
"You guys weighed all those rocks before we took off, right"?
"Yeah, well within allowance."
"Well, you remembered that the gravitational field is less on the moon, so something that weighs 1 pound on the moon is actually a lot more massive than something that weighs 1 pound on the earth, right? And that propulsion systems deal with mass, not weight, right?"
Sound of hatch opening and 80% of the rock payload being jetisoned.
I just tried unlinking my bank account from PayPal... My account is now unverified and has a spending limit unless I either re-link an account, or sign up for a PayPal credit card (my Confirmed MasterCard is not enough).
See, you don't have to have a bank account linked to PayPal. You can sign up for their credit card. It's obvious!
I have been an eBay user paying through PayPal for a very long time. Seven years, ten years, something like that. Same credit card (with renewals, of course) for all that time. I eventually hit my $10,000 spending limit.
The nice people at PayPal told me that I MUST give them a direct pathway into my bank account or use their credit card AS A FRAUD PREVENTION METHOD. Many many years of using the same credit card, spending $10,000, and they are telling me that the real owner of the card (me) wouldn't have noticed fraudlent charges long ago and reported it? That's insane.
Fortunately I had an old credit union account with just $5 in it that I could devote to these shysters so if they decide to drain my account for some reason it will fail. They wanted the password so they could see the account online themselves; I had to get the CU to reactivate it just for PayPal. The "small amount" they were going to deposit? Hmmm, someday, maybe.
I'm stuck having to go through the long process of changing the payment method each and every time I use PayPal to buy something; there is no way to set it, even though it is my money and my accounts they want access to. PayPal, you've verified my identity and authenticity, there is no reason you need further access to my bank account and no reason you shouldn't allow me to go back to paying with my credit card by default. Since you keep demanding this, it's clear that you lied about the reason you wanted it in the first place. Ethical company, my ass.
The sales tax rate would be based on the average sales tax rate for the state.
Do you really imagine that the people who live in the countryside would be happy to pay extra sales tax because the morons in the biggest city in the state cannot manage their money efficiently and have implemented a local sales tax?
The state would then take the revenue under this special code and divide it amongst the locales based on a fairness algorithm.
Oh goody. A "fairness" algorithm. Make the people in the country pay more sales tax and get less benefit from it. Peachy.
That may not work out to be true, but let's just start from that stipulation. Let's assume, in addition, ...
It is most certainly not going to be true, since radio is unlikely to ever go away. The fiasco that has been digital television will force such a backlash against any suggestion that radio follow suit that any politician who suggests it will be tarred and feathered.
But if we are going to assume silly things, I'd rather assume that the moon is made of green cheese and we can feed all the homeless and poor by sending them to live there on rocket ships made of unicorn horn powered by fairy wings.
Then let's look at the costs and the downsides.
Planning without consideration of costs and "downsides" is what gives us projects like OWIN -- the Oregon Wideband Information Network (I think that's what it stands for). A broadband microwave backbone covering the I5 corridor providing unified public safety communications services to every municipality within the region.
At least, that's what it was supposed to be. It has turned into a 700MHz trunked system for the Portland area. Maybe extending into Salem, the state capitol. I don't know. But certainly not the grand glorious "robust, fast, ubiquitous, reliable, and something that you can thoroughly take for granted" system that was promised when it was started and money was allocated.
It's about time there was a government subsidy to supply me with a backyard, a fishing stream, and a corn field for the kid to walk through.
Shhhhh. Don't give them ideas. If your city hasn't gotten bit by the "open space" bug, where owners of private land are denied the privilege of building a house because some of the people in the city want that land to stay as "open space", they eventually will.
We've got, essentially, a full-up rental market and ridiculous rents for what is available, because developers in this city are required to keep from using 2/3 of the property they own just to keep the "open space" nutcases from taking them to court to stop all development. The land belongs to the developer, it's the people who are used to having open space next to their apartment complex that demand that the land never be used for anything. They don't scrape the money together to buy it, but they will hire lawyers to sue.
That applies not only to land that actually has open space and trees and stuff, but to a miserable little parcel of land next to the railroad yard. It's been a decade of argument about what can't be built there and why, all with the result that the view of the railroad yard isn't obstructed for the neighbors.
Banking online doesn't work reliably on dialup any more.
Banking online is not a necessity of life. Many banks have these things they call "offices". It isn't as convenient to go to the "office", but "less convenient" doesn't turn something into a necessity worth public subsidy.
Really, a broadband subsidy / mandated rollout now makes just as much sense as the mandated telephone rollout did in the 20th century.
Really? Seriously? You are comparing "online banking because you don't want to drive into town to the bank's office" with "being able to call a doctor or fire department when you cut your arm off in the threshing machine or the house is on fire"?
The ability to get help in a life-threatening situation justifies the telephone subsidy. Whether that subsidy takes the form of a POTS wireline or giving people refurbished cell phones doesn't matter.
The ability to check your bank balance without having to leave home doesn't justify squat. If you think you are going to die because you cannot determine how much money you have in the bank right this second, then you shouldn't have bet on the Packers to win by 7, or maybe you need a more forgiving bookie.
I wonder what affect this would have on that area if me and my friends in the same boat had the opportunity to live around the people we grew up with.
Apparently none, since you already have the opportunity to live there and have chosen to live elsewhere. You made that choice based on things you value, which you are free to do. You apparently didn't value what the effect of your presence would be enough to live there, but want us to subsidize you so you can.
... and I think those areas would get a real boost in opportunity if businesses where able to operate in these lower income areas of the country.
Many years ago, HP in this area understood the value of having their IT people online at home and paid for network lines there. They didn't do it out of the goodness of their heart, it was a business decision based on costs and benefits.
If the company you work for doesn't think it is a cost effective thing to pay for your network connection, then I'm sure that it isn't a cost effective thing for ME to pay for it, either.
High speed internet is not a necessity. People live full and complete lives without it. More important, nobody dies because they don't have it. Yes, it's cool, and yes it can make life easier, but so too does owning a refridgerator make life easier. Yet, nobody calls for taxes on anything so that people who cannot afford refridgerators can buy them. There is no "rural refridgeration program".
Since landline telephone service is no longer as important, it makes sense to shift the priority from giving those people landline phone service to broadband internet access.
Telephone service is more important than broadband. Telephone service is how you call 911.
It costs more for broadband than for a simple copper pair for POTS. There is no justification for the extra expense.
Subsidies are not universally a bad thing. This is a service that would not otherwise be provided because of the high cost.
By "this", you mean broadband. It's a shame that people won't get broadband, but hardly earth shattering or life threatening. POTS, OTOH, is important. And, as you admit, lower cost.
There are some folks who will never get broadband service of any kind unless we spread the costs of providing it across society.
And? So what? There will be lots of things that people won't be able to afford if nobody buys it for them. Should "I can't afford" become the sole justification for government handouts to everyone? I'd like a Ferrari, please. I can't afford one. A Cessna 182, also. Glass cockpit. I can't afford that, either. If you buy me an airplane, I promise to use it to search for lost people -- which will have a direct and measurable impact on saving lives, compared to the nebulous "gee isn't it cool" factor of having broadband.
If the fee for subsidizing rural and remote phone service is no longer needed for that purpose, it should be retired. What will happen, though, is that a fee, once created, will never go away. Government will simply find another use for the money and keep the fee.
Example? Our city added a tax to our water bill to fix one specific major street in town. It was built incorrectly, but instead of getting the contractor out to fix it, the city decided they would do it. They started collecting the fee and then ... waited. In the meantime, a local developer screwed up his support wall for the hillside the road was on and damaged the road. He got to pay for fixing a large part of the road that the water tax was intended to fix. After a few years, the city finally fixed the rest of the road. Did the tax go away? Of course not. They had a list of other roads that they could use the money for, so the tax stuck around (without any chance of public comment or debate) and we're still being taxed on our water to fix a road that was fixed three years ago.
Now that everyone is used to paying that tax, they added more taxes on the water supply to pay for tree maintenance and sidewalk repairs, and to make the pitiful excuse for bus service in this town free for everyone.
I expect the next tax on the water supply will be to support the 911 center, since the proposed tax on cell phone bills to do that got shot down when it came up for a public vote.
You don't even know what little town you are blowing through let alone who actually has jurisdiction in that area,
If you knew how often the automatic distribution of 911 calls from cell calls fails in just that kind of situation, you'd not be so smug about this. Fortunately, those places where it fails are able to forward your call to the right jurisdiction and the response is only slightly delayed.
Just for example, if you are on the interstate outside the city limits, the response needs to come from the state police. If you are inside the city limits, the city may or may not have jurisdiction. Fire and ambulance are the same thing. You're using the same cell tower, and if you are using GSM (I think it is, it may be the other way around) that doesn't have E911 GPS, dispatch has nothing other than your description of where you are to work with. Even with E911 GPS, that data may take a minute or more to be delivered (the GPS has to turn on and get a location, and then that has to be delivered to the 911 center, which they may actually have to ask for an update to get.)
It doesn't matter if you have the local number for dispatch. If you have the right one, well, that was lucky. If you have the wrong one, they'll do the same transfer to the right PSAP (911 center) that they'd do if 911 misdelivered the call. It's not a big deal. It's dealt with.
Fine. Now you have to clean up shit from your front lawn every day,
Interesting. I live where we pay for the service, and I don't have to clean up anything from my lawn every day. An occasional McD wrapper is about it, other than the repeated crap from the local newspaper that they deliver every week despite being told to stop. Neither would be different with city pickup -- the former is from cretins who are walking back home from the McD on the corner and are too lazy to carry the crap with them, and the latter is an explicit dump and run operation from someone who doesn't think what they are dumping is shit.
People who dump crap on other people's lawns aren't doing it because they don't want to pay for service at home, they are doing it because they have something in their hands that they want to get rid of and don't want to carry it anymore. It doesn't matter if they do or don't have trash pickup at home.
I don't need a 911 operator at all times, I can call the police dispatch or fire department directly (just like before 911).
Ummm, just who do you think does the police and fire dispatch these days? Right, the 911 center. It doesn't matter if you use the 911 emergency number or the direct regular phone number, it goes the same place to the same people.
The only advantage to calling on a direct line is if you know the non-emergency number, and then the advantage is that they know it isn't an emergency and can ignore the call if they are busy.
I don't need things like trash pickup,
Then don't pay for the service. Oh, you get taxed so everyone pays for the trash pickup even if they don't want it?
The list goes on and on, but I want a smaller scope of government and correspondingly lower taxes.
There are many things that can and should be cut from government, but the 911 dispatch system is not one of them. If you're forced to pay for a trash service that you don't want, that is one of them. There is no inherent reason a government should be taxing you for that service.
If the industry can't survive in a world with the technology where copies are made essentially for free, then that industry should die.
Then what would you have to make copies of?
There is a significant difference between the music industry and the scribe/printing press analogy you use. The scribes were not responsible for creating content, only copying it. The printing press did nothing to replace the content creators.
The "music industry" includes those that create the content that you want to copy for free. You can't replace the entire industry with a CD burner and a net connection, since the CD burner and net connection cannot create the content, only copy it.
Maybe you should try getting more of your news from the Daily Show as well.
When comedy programs are presented as the best source of news, something is wrong. But how can people not be tricked into thinking The Daily Show is "news" when it is carried on CNN International and presented to the entire world as "news"?
The comment about learning all about England from Benny Hill is spot on. Duels of honor are conducted in England by slapping each other with fish (Monty Python), and all young children are obvious liars (Outnumbered). B&B's in that country are all run by people like Basil Fawlty, too.
It has been shown that Daily Show viewers are more informed than others.
Given the name of the website, I suspect that what you meant to say was that viewers of the humor of Jon Stewart agree with more progressive concepts than those who don't. Yes, I think that is an obvious conclusion. And yes, "Think Progress" pretty much sums it up.
At best, it's a case of "people who are more informed might watch more topical programming than those who aren't, and that might include 'The Daily Show', a humor program based on current events." Causal link? Unproven.
Of course you would already know this if you watched the Daily Show.
There are many things you would "know" if you watched "The Daily Show", and one of them should be that comedy is, for the most part, based on deliberate and often biased distortions of the truth. The latter is often overlooked by Daily Show viewers.
You agreed to an implicit contract that while on someone else's property (the Movie Theater's) you don't have the right to cause panic or disrupt the general public.
Umm, no I didn't.
And I suspect that the owner of the theater would be in just as much trouble with the law over yelling "fire" when there's a crowd in his house and there is no fire as anyone else would be.
Probably more, since he'll be the one liable for deaths due to insufficient exits.
That's like saying selling rock cocaine on a street corner qualifies you to be CEO of Pfizer.
No, it's not. Not even close.
OK, you're right. I left out the fact that he's got really good hair.
Sorry, for a minute I forgot that this was /. and having an adult conversation was prohibited by the TOS. Please carry on...
They turn end of life consoling into death panels.
And who turns review boards that will determine if certain treatments are worth the cost for specific patients into "end of life consoling"? You really believe that those boards were there to make the people who were denied treatment feel better about their life ending?
Where are the factual inaccuracies believed by the left?
A budget that doesn't have as large an increase in spending as liberals want is a budget cut.
Dumping billions of dollars on "shovel ready projects" will keep the unemployment rate below 9%.
That Obama will close Gitmo "on day one".
That Obama will pull us out of Iraq "on day one".
I'd say "every word of the Obamacare bill", but very few on the left even read it before they voted for it. They simply didn't have time to do so.
...like lowering taxes on the rich helps anyone but the rich.
You are aware, I assume, that Mr. Obama admitted that lowering taxes on the rich would result in higher tax revenues, which one would assume can be considered a benefit for all. He admitted this during a democratic candidate debate upon questioning by Mr. Blitzer. He said, rather clearly, that he understood that lower tax rates result in higher revenues, but that higher rates for the rich is "fair" -- despite them already paying the majority of the income tax revenue.
No 6th grader is going to grok the scientific method.
Ummm, do you have proof of this? I had a pretty good handle on it back then. I don't think I was alone.
The entire point of the scientific method is that the human mind is not designed to work that way. It takes years of training to think that way.
No, it takes exposure to it, and some experience, but "years of training"? Certainly not.
It's a shame we still have to train such thinking in college.
It is a shame that we still have to train basic math and english to people in college, but that's a problem with the current educational system and not proof that nobody can understand such things until they have "years of training". People, as a whole, have a wide range of abilities and talents, and pretending that, because some need remedial math or science education to make it through college, everyone needs it is lunacy.
Why do you think the North West passage opened up for the first time in memory? The cap on the North Pole has never been as small as it was this August.
In the first sentence you admit that the data you have is "in memory". In the latter, you make a sweeping statement about all time. How do you know it has never been as small as you claim it is?
"Within human memory" is a very very tiny part of the geological time scale. Unless, of course, you wish to argue that the earth really is only 6000 years old and humans were created on day two. Or was it three? Then you can almost equate "never" and "in memory".
Prediction: It will be smaller yet next August. This claim is falsifiable, at it was made last year, but you can wait until next year if you want to call it science.
What do you think either verifying or falsifying this prediction proves? What is the hypothesis that you are trying to support?
Look at the currently popular notion in the US that to run government, we need someone with experience running a private corporation.
Huh? You mean the US, where the current president has had zero experience running anything but a campaign? Where the democrat president before him ran nothing but a governor's office? I don't think this notion is quite as popular as you pretend.
On the other hand, why shouldn't it be a qualification? Running something other than a political machine seems like a desirable thing. Having run a successful business, and demonstrating a basic understanding of economics and how money works and how to meet a payroll seems to me to be a good thing.
If that were the true measure, then a general would make the best president
Logical fallacy. The military is not a business. Rarely does a CEO have to order people out into the field to die. Rarely can a CEO put someone into prison for failing to obey an order. Your odd view of the military is one of the common failings of liberals who think that the military is nothing more than a public service organization that should be transporting food and medicine to needy people. Or maybe out filling sandbags to help with floods.
Does the fact that a leading candidate on the other side ran a business that successfully cannibalized other businesses make him the best person for the job?
Of course one qualification is not enough to fully judge a candidate. And I doubt you will find that this one qualification is all that is being presented.
Certainly more important than the current notion, that the guy who has the most money gets to rule.
You mean like Warren Buffet who is busy twisting public policy to meet his personal goals? Or George Soros, who is using his money to push his goals? Those "most money" people?
I assumed you were talking about the US, but now it is clear you aren't. The one with the "most money" doesn't get to rule. It takes an election. Even those with a lot of money to send lots of lawyers into a state to try to prevent legal ballots from being counted don't always win.
The answer to why server admins don't honor cancel control messages is simple: they are routinely and regularly abused and honoring them would make USENET unusable.
This decision will be the death knell for USENET. Making server admins responsible for monitoring content will get them to turn it off.
Broadcast stations are guaranteed carriage on Cable TV systems by law.
That is not a guaranteed revenue stream for the programming that is carried on that station, it may be a revenue stream for the station itself. A station still decides which programs to carry based on MARKET forces. And those choices are increasingly towards shows like Cops and Cheaters and even unending infomercials.
But the shows only have to be good enough to earn a marginal profit.
You really don't understand market driven consumerism, do you? If a network or station thinks that another program will earn them MORE money during the same timeslot, the one they were carrying is gone. It isn't an issue of "enough". They're in business to make money, within the nebulous constraints of serving the public interest. And that's why even their "public interest" programs like news are dumbing down and filled with fluff pieces about local people.
However, that IS all that a non-profit station like public TV has to worry about. Cover the costs is the prime goal. That's why they are not market driven like the broadcast stations are, and can broadcast "better" stuff. At least "less popular". They are the exception to the market driven consequences of broadcast TV.
They can appeal to the least common denominator and still be guaranteed an audience because nobody has to opt-in to getting the stations.
Nobody is guaranteed an audience just because they are on cable. The reason they HAVE an audience as large as they get is because they DO cater to the lowest common denominator -- getting the most number of viewers. More viewers, more ad revenue. Market driven television, catering to the lowest common denominator, which is EXACTLY MY POINT. The latter is due to the former.
Turning all of cable into ala carte will create the same market driven results that broadcast has gone through. Broadcast has to serve the lowest common demoninator because there is no guaranteed revenue stream. The advertisers pay for programming, and if nobody watches they don't pay. For cable networks, the ones who are subsidized by being part of a package don't feel the full effects of that market pressure and can afford to do "less popular" programming. Make them fully ad supported and ala carte (viewer selected) and they'll go away, and their "less popular" stuff goes with them.
That's a failed assessment. Advertisers won't accept a higher ad price for the same viewership
It's not the same viewership. The current system has "one million have access to". Ala carte would result in "one hundred thousand pay extra for". That is a significant difference in both numbers of viewers and quality of same.
The change in subscribers wouldn't affect their ratings,
It won't change the "Neilson numbers", but it certainly will change the demographics and desirability of those viewers. People who pay extra to watch a channel are more likely to be interested in that programming and content, more likely to watch that programming and content, and have disposable income.
Yes, the actual Nielson ratings may go down due to the loss of "viewers" who have parked the telly on ESPN as background for a party or to keep the kids entertained, but those who pay for the channel have just pre-qualified themselves for whatever marketing takes place thereon.
It's the same kind of difference between someone setting up a street corner booth to sell fishing supplies and setting one up at a sporting goods show. The former will get him more people walking by, but they are all unqualified (in marketing terms) and many have no interest at all in what he's selling. At the show, there may be many fewer people, but they are all prequals because they have paid money to come to the show and that means a higher probability that the passersby will have an active interest in what he's hawking. The higher cost of being a vendor at the show is more than offset by the higher rate of sales, and that's why the show operator can charge more for booth space there than could be charged for a sidewalk space.
You're proving the opposite by citing the broadcast channels, which everybody has to pay for, regardless if they like the programming or not, and denouncing the result of that as crap (I assume - I don't watch those shows).
I'm speaking directly to market driven programming. If a show on broadcast doesn't make money, it goes away. If it doesn't make money in the first three weeks it goes away. This is purely market driven. The stuff that Joe Public watches when he comes home and pops a beer is what stays. Things that make him think or put him to sleep go away.
The exception that proves the rule is public broadcasting. They get money from people who pay directly. As long as the costs are covered for their artsy stuff, they'll keep playing it.
Another exception that proves the rule is Nightline. You may not remember how Nightline started, but when it did, nobody was doing latenight news programming. ABC only started the precusor to Nightline to cover the Iranian hostage crisis under Carter. Every night, an update on the crisis. "Day 45", etc. Only because they had a significant number of viewers, they decided to continue the news programming as an experiment. Had that program not been getting eyes, we wouldn't have nightline or any of the other late night news programs that came from it. And are slowly dying out.
Since they're guaranteed a revenue stream
I don't know where you get this idea from. Nothing on broadcast TV is guaranteed a revenue stream. If the advertisers don't think enough people are seeing their ads, they don't advertise. Poof goes the revenue stream. Sometimes in as little as half an hour. One show.
Compare that with HBO series.
HBO series are not broadcast TV and fall squarely into the niche cable-package marketing paradigm. There are not one but ten channels with the name "HBO" on my cable system, of which 7 are unique. You may want to buy "HBO", but you get ten (at least) channels when you do. Probably more, but I can't find a description of just what you do get when you buy HBO on Comcast.
When you start doing ala carte marketing, you will enter the same market driven world that broadcast operates in. If there aren't enough people who want to watch your program, the advertisers who support it will stop and the programs go away. If there aren't enough people who pay for the channel, eventually the entire channel will go away and nobody watches it anymore. You are left with what the majority wants, which is what we get on broadcast. Cable was meant to be so much more than that.