A de facto monopoly is not a government-granted one. When someone complains that a cable company has a government-granted monopoly, then they are either ignorant or deliberately spreading misinformation.
There are also many reasons for de facto monopolies, none of which have anything to do with franchising or federal law. Of COURSE a municipality can ALLOW a de facto monopoly. It isn't against the law for a de facto monopoly to exist.
But this has NOTHING to do with ISPs, because there has NEVER been a government-granted monopoly to any ISP.
In this context, the "prosperity of the economy" would be the prosperity of the companies impacted
We're all part of the economy.
You're assuming, rather than asking a question of me.
That's called a "rhetorical question", and yes, we assume that you don't want the US economy to take a dive into the crapper just because of ill-considered privacy laws. But, who knows? I've been surprised when someone has actually said something ridiculous in response to such a question.
It *sounds* like you are arguing that the only way that these companies can be profitable (not go into bankruptcy) is to make sure that privacy laws don't interfere with their ability to make money
It only sounds that way because that's what you want to hear me saying. You are forgetting that there are more companies involved than just one, and more than just the companies that you'd like to regulate into submission. If you get enacted a ridiculous privacy law it may raise the costs for anyone doing business with that data, and prices go up so they do continue to make a profit. You've ignored the ripple effect that those costs will have on the companies they deal with, and then the next level. "Profit" deals with that one company. "Prosperity" is the entire package.
I suppose I could rephrase my earlier inquiry, and ask if you think that prioritizing the ability for companies to make profit is a good approach to making laws concerning online privacy,
And there you are back at substituting your own words for what was actually said, and arguing from that straw man position.
Why is profit a consideration for online privacy rules?
They didn't say profit. They said prosperity. Different word.
they *must* take the profits of companies that will need to comply with them into consideration when creating them?
They didn't say that. You did.
When you use the word they did, then yes, you need to take the prosperity of the economy into account when enacting laws. What good are privacy laws if you drive the economy into the crapper and the companies you are regulating go into bankruptcy because of them? Do you want lawmakers that don't care at all if the growth of the economy goes negative because of the laws they write? Or do you want laws that balance the competing concerns of privacy and the economy?
I think we've had a history of too many laws that ignore obvious consequences to the economy and the people dependent upon it. Laws like "ACA", which everyone above the age of 3 should have realized would have forced people to change their insurance companies and/or plans, and then they'd have to change doctors when their plan changed, and then they'd be paying more if they bought insurance instead of not, or were in a mixed-risk group instead of a low-risk group. Laws like "CRA" that forced banks to make bad loans if they wanted to expand and grow and ignored that bad loans have to go somewhere.
That kind of deliberate ignorance got old very quickly and should have taught a lesson. But you think prosperity shouldn't be a concern when laws are made, so apparently not.
How about [forcing] inter-operation of service providers' message & voice apps?
Which section of the Constitution gives the US government this legislative oversite? Do you REALLY want the US government mandating APIs for smartphone apps?
Heck, I can effortlessly send email from whatever client I choose without worrying whether a recipient who has conveyed a valid address will receive it.
Then you are completely ignorant of the internet and the current state of zealotry over spam prevention. You cannot assume that any email you send to anyone ever gets there, or that the contents will be unmolested enroute. "Ignorance is bliss".
But in any case, your "effortless" email is not based on US legislation mandating interoperability, it is based on IETF RFC, and a previous desire for all players to play well together. There is no federal law requiring anyone to follow RFC5322, otherwise a LOT of websites would be fined for not accepting a wide range of valid email addresses as defined in that RFC.
This is about companies wanting to *prevent* states from passing their own privacy laws, because of things like states passing laws against using facial recognition.
The internet is inherently an interstate operation, and thus the federal government is right to preempt states from enacting a mish-mash of varying laws. One company trying to follow fifty different laws that may contradict each other is a waste of time and money. Sometimes the ICC is applied very loosely. This is not such a time.
Besides, you should want federal laws. That prevents Big Corp X from operating out of state Y to get around The People's Republic of California's laws over privacy.
When millions say your food-like product is made out of plastic... well, maybe it is made out of plastic.
What a remarkable universe you live in where a lie told a million times about a factual matter becomes fact. Here in the universe where Earth is, we have a saying. "Forty million Frenchmen can be wrong." Google it if you don't recognize it.
Your entire rant is so filled with digressions that it is painful to read. But finally you seem to be trying to make a point...
For any government, especially one like India's, (let's not forget they style themselves as "the world's largest democracy,") to reach its giant, government hand into the conversation and pluck voices out of it and silence them on PepsiCo's behalf is straight-up bullshit.
Even when you actually get around to trying to make a point you insert needless digression. But anyway... it is not bullshit. Freedom of speech does not mean you have the inalienable right to spout deliberate lies intended to cause others harm. It's called either libel or slander, and just because PepsiCo is a multinational company doesn't mean you can try to damage them by lying about their products. You can express your opinion ("this tastes like plastic") but not post lies about it ("it's made of plastic"). This is case law, even in the country of the First Amendment.
There are free programs to help people who can't read learn how to.
That's nice. The point remains, it is possible to create situations where anything is completely worthless -- including paper books and libraries. Pointing to cases when ebooks are useless doesn't prove anything any more than my cases where paper books are worthless did.
Other then the library, there is not a free program to lend people books to read or readers to let them read free e-books (which mostly aren't offered except for ancient books out of copyright).
I read lot of ebooks for free. Some are out of copyright, but many are not. The two main sources I have are because the libraries pay a fee -- which could be paid to Amazon to do the same thing if Amazon started providing that service. Therefore, Amazon could easily take over the lending function of the library for ebooks, and we both know that there are lots of cases where paper books are completely worthless.
If they can't carry the book around, libraries offer a place to sit and read.
Public parks offer a place to sit and read, for free. You see, libraries aren't necessary.
As for the rest, you have confused censorship with choosing on a limited budget and with limited space what books will do the most good for the most people.
Both fit the commonly used definition of censorship. I also don't remember when I elected the librarian to decide what was "the most good" for me.
As for the 3D printing, you typically pay for the materials used and even enough over to eventually pay for the printer.
Thus a subsidy. You're not paying the true cost. And it has nothing at all to do with the real function of a library. It's a makerspace.
The American Airlines want to land in Taiwan. And China is making rules about that. That is the point.
Wrong. PRC is making laws regarding how airlines REFER TO airports in Taiwan. They are making no rules regarding landing in Taiwan. Airlines are complying because they want to retain landing rights IN PRC.
And the US response should be that they will impose some unspecified sanctions on all airlines that do not refer to Taiwan for flights to that country and see what response they get.
So the proper response to an edict from a totalitarian government overreaching its span of control is to become totalitarian and overreach our span of control, too?
It is interesting to see how we accept behaviour from China
I think it is AA that has the prayer about changing what you can, accepting what you can't change, and the ability to know the difference.
It's a given that you have to abide by the rules of countries you want to make business with. But abiding by rules of countries other than the one you want to land in?
If you don't think that American Airlines, and US airlines in general, don't want to land in PRC you are woefully ignorant of the global aviation marketplace.
Perhaps less obvious is that in order to stay airworthy, the planes those airlines fly depend on cheap Chinese-made parts, and cut-rate labour in places like Singapore and Indonesia.
It is less obvious because it is not true. While the labor may be cheaper in Singapore or Indonesia, the "cheap Chinese-made parts" won't allow any US flag or operated airline to keep its aircraft "airworthy". Counterfeit parts are a problem, and a reason to ground a fleet if they are found in significant numbers. If a fatal crash occurs and the NTSB finds a "cheap Chinese-made part" was the cause, the airline will be facing huge lawsuits from the heirs.
Also, Singapore and Indonesia, if they are providing lower cost labor, will not stop doing so just because an airline lists "Taipai, Taiwan" as a destination. They need the money.
The whole DPRK and Helsinki debacles have shown the world that all you have to do is make vague assurances not backed by substance and laud Trump with platitudes and tell him how great he is and he will walk away happy and saying how successful he was while you go on doing whatever you were doing.
You mean the DPRK debacle where the US gave them lots of money to stop doing nuclear weapons and they kept developing nuclear weapons? That debacle? That wasn't Trump.
In quite a twist of irony, western countries should consider adopting legislation that was recently approved in Russia: criminal liability for both companies and itÃ(TM)s owners for complying with sanctions set by 'foreign' entities.
What a crock. One government making it illegal for a multinational company to obey the laws of another country just because they're the laws of another country. It's one thing to criminalize an activity that another country has not, but completely different to criminalize the simple act of obeying another country's laws.
Perhaps we should criminalize any attempt at trademarking the word "it", or even just the inappropriate use of the contraction for "it is" when the possessive "its" should be used?
If you think for one second that Trump would go to war with China over Taiwan, you're delusional.
A war with China? That should be a fun half hour.
If you think for one second that PRC would go to war with anyone over ROC you're delusional. They don't have to.
You want to pretend that Trump doesn't know where these countries are?
No, he wants to spread fear and hatred for the politician he didn't vote for. It is the politically correct thing for all erudite people to do these days.
It's in the Elk's dining room, so yes, buying a lunch is how you get a seat. It's not a public meeting room.
Is lunch available at the library?
Why the hell should the library be serving lunch? Of course not. A public meeting discussing public operation of the public government should not have "lunch" as part of the requirement. Either eat before or after, or bring a snack, or go without. You should have the choice. It is ridiculous to exclude people from participating in a public meeting just because they don't have the money to buy a lunch or don't want to eat what the Elks serve.
E-books are completely worthless to people who don't have something to read it on.
Paper books are completely worthless to people who cannot read. Paper books are completely worthless to people who cannot carry them around to read them. You can create all kinds of worthless situations for anything.
E-book readers don't have story hour for kids to get them interested in reading.
Kids go to school. School should be getting them interested in reading. That's one of the jobs of the schools.
Most librarians take a fairly dim view of censorship.
What? In any library, the person most responsible for the censorship is THE HEAD LIBRARIAN. He's the one making the buying decisions, he's the one that says "we don't buy that book", he's the one saying "we don't make that book available for free to our citizens". They SAY they take a dim view, they DENY they do it, but when you look at their actions you see the truth is different.
Before you rant about how I'm insulting librarians, I didn't. I am pointing out a fact of their job. They HAVE to make those decisions. They don't have enough money to buy every book or publication. They don't have space to store every book or publication. (By the way, that's another "completely worthless" feature of paper books: paper books are completely worthless if you don't have the space to store the paper book.) The only thing librarians need to accept is the fact they are doing it and stop denying that it is part of their job.
This is just yet another attempt to remove the last bit of actual public service
No, it is an evaluation of whether the "public service" that a library provides is either valuable enough to keep paying for, or something that the "library" should be doing instead of doing it some other less expensive way.
so the tax money can be spent on more subsidies and pork
I'm sorry, but free 3D printing is a subsidy and pork just like all the other pork you want to complain about.
(you didn't think taxes would go down, did you)?
Well, that's the downside to having a "library district" that has its own tax levy. It's easier to browbeat and cajole (and extort) more tax money from the public if you can say "we'll have to close the library if you don't give us more of your hard-earned money", but then it is more likely that taxes will go down if the library stops needing the money and cannot justify renewing the tax levy. Yes, when a tax levy expires taxes actually go down.
But many of us aren't aware of the impact our libraries have on our own communities, nor the programs they offer.
As a "Friend of the Library" who pays money to be one, I have a good handle on the "programs".
1. They are a great place for homeless people to sleep during the day, with bathrooms and water fountains, and if they are literate enough, stuff to read. Also daily papers they can read the comics in and do the crosswords.
2. It's a free babysitting service when they run a movie night.
3. Some libraries (not mine) pay for toys that college kids can come play with, like 3D printers.
4. They have free (I think) meeting rooms, none of which are used by the local government to hold public meetings. Our city likes to have "lunch meetings" at the local Elks Club where they discuss city business and you get to pay $10 for lunch for the privilege of attending.
5. Free babysitting during the day, too.
6. An attraction to the downtown so the city can collect money from parking meters, and by ticketing people who stay 5 minutes too long (the cop shop is right across the street.)
There is a used bookstore right across the street that has a much larger stock of local history books, so "repository of old books" is not a unique feature of the library anymore. (The most interesting local history book I have read actually came free through Gutenberg, and isn't in the library.) The fire department and county have meeting rooms that people can use. Free wireless blankets the Uni.
The most book related service (other than loaning physical books, which is dropping in popularity) is their yearly book sale where they sell off used library books -- which puts to rest the claim that they are a stable repository of old books. That sale is well attended, especially by the used book dealers, and even though there is supposed to be a rule about no scanning of books for the first day of the sale, it is never enforced. I've pointed out violators and nothing is done about it. So, it seems, the library service being performed is being a profitable source of used books paid for by the taxpayers and sold for a profit by the dealers. A subsidy, they would call that.
Yes, libraries as libraries area a valuable asset. They aren't libraries as much anymore. And they aren't cheap to run, by their own choice. Our library continually begs for more tax money, after building a beautiful brick and glass monument to excess to keep the books they haven't sold yet in.
For all of what you are saying, the essence is that libraries that are libraries are an obsolete thing. You can run the same service online cheaper. No, it may not have all the same books, but the library catalog changes on a regular basis, too. I'm referring to Overdrive, which isn't "the library", is it an online service that is available to people who have a library card because the library pays for it.
I'm also talking about Google or Duck Duck Go or whatever your favorite search engine is. Sometimes a librarian can come up with a better set of search terms than you can, or they may know the answer, but that's just because they are a different person. It's isn't necessarily because they are a librarian.
The censorship issue is also not solved by a library. The librarian decides what books to buy and what magazines to subscribe to. They have community members who watch what they do and complain when community standards are violated. The most fascinating lie about censorship I've ever heard came from the mouth of a head librarian. You know, a government official with the power to keep published material out of the hands of the citizens. She denied there was any censorship at the library -- despite being the person most responsible for deciding which books would NOT be made available for free to the public in her county. (Yes, it's not true censorship because anyone can go to the next town over and hope they have the book there, or buy it themselves, but it fits "censorship" a lot better than a lot of things called "censorship" today.)
Libraries that have morphed into "community center" are surviving, bit not for the functions of a library. The number of people accessing the physical books is dwindling as the population ages and old people die. People don't "ask the librarian" as much anymore, especially if the question is in any way embarassing. It is truly better for the impersonal Google to cache your question about sex instead of having your neighbor the librarian knowing about it.
The "makerspace" function is surviving. The "meeting room" function is surviving. The "borrow a DVD so you can rip the content and have a free copy" function is growing. The online books function is growing (free books, by the way.)
And especially with Amazon. I remember shortly after Kindle came out, they remotely deleted all the George Orwell books people had bought
And your local librarian can walk over to the shelf and pull the copies the library has and send them to recycling, too. They pull old stuff all the time and nobody cares, because they need space to put the new books. They choose not to buy certain new books because they don't reflect community values or aren't perceived to be of sufficient interest to merit spending money on them. My "community values" means we gets several copies of Hillary's books and few, if any, of the opposing viewpoint. When I put a hold on "What Happened", or whatever it was called, I was a small number in line on a lot of copies. The same time I put a hold on a pro-Trump book, and I'm number 201 waiting for one copy.
If you think libraries are immune to such things with physical books, remember this. In the mid-50's, if I recall the year right, EVERY LIBRARY COPY of a Bell System Technical Journal had a couple of pages cut out of it. Those pages described the in-band long-distance signalling system that allowed hackers to build blue boxes and made Captain Crunch infamous. I checked. I found a college library that had copies of the journal and sure enough, it was missing those pages.
I didn't like the experience then and I don't think I'd like it now.
A few years ago I went to the library to read the magazines. It was a good experience. They had what I wanted, and they had nice comfy chairs to sit in while doing it. Not long ago I did the same thing. The selection was more limited and the comfy chairs had been replaced with hard-backed uncomfortable things. The place also smelled. (The
Of course it does. Where I'm at I can get any ISP I want, as long as I don't care that it's not broadband and comes over DSL. So effectively no,
You don't say where you are so it is impossible to verify your claim. I'll just say that every time I've heard the story about "there's only one ISP", it always turns out that isn't true. For example, the poor people of the Colorado town that was featured on/. a few months ago that voted to implement municipal fiber because there was "no competition"? I did a google for providers for that town and found 8 residential broadband and 8 business broadband (and not the same 8) serving that town. Every other time I've checked up, I've found the same kind of situation.
Now, the fact may be that there is only one ISP that is broadband and advertises heavily or is provided through your cable company so it is convenient to get service from or already has a wire/fiber attached to your house, but the fact is also that there is, whenever I look, there are many more than "one".
Its even worse other places.
And now the nebulous "other places" that are even less provable.
So no you can't pick your ISP if you actually want a connection you can use.
"Monopoly" is not defined by how high you can set your expectations. If that were the case, then we could just claim there are NO ISPs in the entire country... and I bet someone would call me on that.
Slashdot Mirror
There are also many reasons for de facto monopolies, none of which have anything to do with franchising or federal law. Of COURSE a municipality can ALLOW a de facto monopoly. It isn't against the law for a de facto monopoly to exist.
But this has NOTHING to do with ISPs, because there has NEVER been a government-granted monopoly to any ISP.
In this context, the "prosperity of the economy" would be the prosperity of the companies impacted
We're all part of the economy.
You're assuming, rather than asking a question of me.
That's called a "rhetorical question", and yes, we assume that you don't want the US economy to take a dive into the crapper just because of ill-considered privacy laws. But, who knows? I've been surprised when someone has actually said something ridiculous in response to such a question.
It *sounds* like you are arguing that the only way that these companies can be profitable (not go into bankruptcy) is to make sure that privacy laws don't interfere with their ability to make money
It only sounds that way because that's what you want to hear me saying. You are forgetting that there are more companies involved than just one, and more than just the companies that you'd like to regulate into submission. If you get enacted a ridiculous privacy law it may raise the costs for anyone doing business with that data, and prices go up so they do continue to make a profit. You've ignored the ripple effect that those costs will have on the companies they deal with, and then the next level. "Profit" deals with that one company. "Prosperity" is the entire package.
I suppose I could rephrase my earlier inquiry, and ask if you think that prioritizing the ability for companies to make profit is a good approach to making laws concerning online privacy,
And there you are back at substituting your own words for what was actually said, and arguing from that straw man position.
Most of the city has a government-granted monopoly given to Comcast and as far as I know,
Then you know wrong, since exclusive franchises have been illegal by federal law for more than 20 years.
Why is profit a consideration for online privacy rules?
They didn't say profit. They said prosperity. Different word.
they *must* take the profits of companies that will need to comply with them into consideration when creating them?
They didn't say that. You did.
When you use the word they did, then yes, you need to take the prosperity of the economy into account when enacting laws. What good are privacy laws if you drive the economy into the crapper and the companies you are regulating go into bankruptcy because of them? Do you want lawmakers that don't care at all if the growth of the economy goes negative because of the laws they write? Or do you want laws that balance the competing concerns of privacy and the economy?
I think we've had a history of too many laws that ignore obvious consequences to the economy and the people dependent upon it. Laws like "ACA", which everyone above the age of 3 should have realized would have forced people to change their insurance companies and/or plans, and then they'd have to change doctors when their plan changed, and then they'd be paying more if they bought insurance instead of not, or were in a mixed-risk group instead of a low-risk group. Laws like "CRA" that forced banks to make bad loans if they wanted to expand and grow and ignored that bad loans have to go somewhere.
That kind of deliberate ignorance got old very quickly and should have taught a lesson. But you think prosperity shouldn't be a concern when laws are made, so apparently not.
How about [forcing] inter-operation of service providers' message & voice apps?
Which section of the Constitution gives the US government this legislative oversite? Do you REALLY want the US government mandating APIs for smartphone apps?
Heck, I can effortlessly send email from whatever client I choose without worrying whether a recipient who has conveyed a valid address will receive it.
Then you are completely ignorant of the internet and the current state of zealotry over spam prevention. You cannot assume that any email you send to anyone ever gets there, or that the contents will be unmolested enroute. "Ignorance is bliss".
But in any case, your "effortless" email is not based on US legislation mandating interoperability, it is based on IETF RFC, and a previous desire for all players to play well together. There is no federal law requiring anyone to follow RFC5322, otherwise a LOT of websites would be fined for not accepting a wide range of valid email addresses as defined in that RFC.
This is about companies wanting to *prevent* states from passing their own privacy laws, because of things like states passing laws against using facial recognition.
The internet is inherently an interstate operation, and thus the federal government is right to preempt states from enacting a mish-mash of varying laws. One company trying to follow fifty different laws that may contradict each other is a waste of time and money. Sometimes the ICC is applied very loosely. This is not such a time.
Besides, you should want federal laws. That prevents Big Corp X from operating out of state Y to get around The People's Republic of California's laws over privacy.
Wrong continent. It says "COL".
When millions say your food-like product is made out of plastic... well, maybe it is made out of plastic.
What a remarkable universe you live in where a lie told a million times about a factual matter becomes fact. Here in the universe where Earth is, we have a saying. "Forty million Frenchmen can be wrong." Google it if you don't recognize it.
sorry, I digressed. Anyway...
Your entire rant is so filled with digressions that it is painful to read. But finally you seem to be trying to make a point ...
For any government, especially one like India's, (let's not forget they style themselves as "the world's largest democracy,") to reach its giant, government hand into the conversation and pluck voices out of it and silence them on PepsiCo's behalf is straight-up bullshit.
Even when you actually get around to trying to make a point you insert needless digression. But anyway ... it is not bullshit. Freedom of speech does not mean you have the inalienable right to spout deliberate lies intended to cause others harm. It's called either libel or slander, and just because PepsiCo is a multinational company doesn't mean you can try to damage them by lying about their products. You can express your opinion ("this tastes like plastic") but not post lies about it ("it's made of plastic"). This is case law, even in the country of the First Amendment.
There are free programs to help people who can't read learn how to.
That's nice. The point remains, it is possible to create situations where anything is completely worthless -- including paper books and libraries. Pointing to cases when ebooks are useless doesn't prove anything any more than my cases where paper books are worthless did.
Other then the library, there is not a free program to lend people books to read or readers to let them read free e-books (which mostly aren't offered except for ancient books out of copyright).
I read lot of ebooks for free. Some are out of copyright, but many are not. The two main sources I have are because the libraries pay a fee -- which could be paid to Amazon to do the same thing if Amazon started providing that service. Therefore, Amazon could easily take over the lending function of the library for ebooks, and we both know that there are lots of cases where paper books are completely worthless.
If they can't carry the book around, libraries offer a place to sit and read.
Public parks offer a place to sit and read, for free. You see, libraries aren't necessary.
As for the rest, you have confused censorship with choosing on a limited budget and with limited space what books will do the most good for the most people.
Both fit the commonly used definition of censorship. I also don't remember when I elected the librarian to decide what was "the most good" for me.
As for the 3D printing, you typically pay for the materials used and even enough over to eventually pay for the printer.
Thus a subsidy. You're not paying the true cost. And it has nothing at all to do with the real function of a library. It's a makerspace.
The American Airlines want to land in Taiwan. And China is making rules about that. That is the point.
Wrong. PRC is making laws regarding how airlines REFER TO airports in Taiwan. They are making no rules regarding landing in Taiwan. Airlines are complying because they want to retain landing rights IN PRC.
This has nothing to do with landing in ROC.
And the US response should be that they will impose some unspecified sanctions on all airlines that do not refer to Taiwan for flights to that country and see what response they get.
So the proper response to an edict from a totalitarian government overreaching its span of control is to become totalitarian and overreach our span of control, too?
It is interesting to see how we accept behaviour from China
I think it is AA that has the prayer about changing what you can, accepting what you can't change, and the ability to know the difference.
It's a given that you have to abide by the rules of countries you want to make business with. But abiding by rules of countries other than the one you want to land in?
If you don't think that American Airlines, and US airlines in general, don't want to land in PRC you are woefully ignorant of the global aviation marketplace.
Perhaps less obvious is that in order to stay airworthy, the planes those airlines fly depend on cheap Chinese-made parts, and cut-rate labour in places like Singapore and Indonesia.
It is less obvious because it is not true. While the labor may be cheaper in Singapore or Indonesia, the "cheap Chinese-made parts" won't allow any US flag or operated airline to keep its aircraft "airworthy". Counterfeit parts are a problem, and a reason to ground a fleet if they are found in significant numbers. If a fatal crash occurs and the NTSB finds a "cheap Chinese-made part" was the cause, the airline will be facing huge lawsuits from the heirs.
Also, Singapore and Indonesia, if they are providing lower cost labor, will not stop doing so just because an airline lists "Taipai, Taiwan" as a destination. They need the money.
The whole DPRK and Helsinki debacles have shown the world that all you have to do is make vague assurances not backed by substance and laud Trump with platitudes and tell him how great he is and he will walk away happy and saying how successful he was while you go on doing whatever you were doing.
You mean the DPRK debacle where the US gave them lots of money to stop doing nuclear weapons and they kept developing nuclear weapons? That debacle? That wasn't Trump.
The reality is that his actions are either completely back flipped from what was said,
"If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your [insurance] plan, you can keep your insurance plan."
In quite a twist of irony, western countries should consider adopting legislation that was recently approved in Russia: criminal liability for both companies and itÃ(TM)s owners for complying with sanctions set by 'foreign' entities.
What a crock. One government making it illegal for a multinational company to obey the laws of another country just because they're the laws of another country. It's one thing to criminalize an activity that another country has not, but completely different to criminalize the simple act of obeying another country's laws.
Perhaps we should criminalize any attempt at trademarking the word "it", or even just the inappropriate use of the contraction for "it is" when the possessive "its" should be used?
If you think for one second that Trump would go to war with China over Taiwan, you're delusional.
A war with China? That should be a fun half hour.
If you think for one second that PRC would go to war with anyone over ROC you're delusional. They don't have to.
You want to pretend that Trump doesn't know where these countries are?
No, he wants to spread fear and hatred for the politician he didn't vote for. It is the politically correct thing for all erudite people to do these days.
Point 4: are you forced to buy lunch?
It's in the Elk's dining room, so yes, buying a lunch is how you get a seat. It's not a public meeting room.
Is lunch available at the library?
Why the hell should the library be serving lunch? Of course not. A public meeting discussing public operation of the public government should not have "lunch" as part of the requirement. Either eat before or after, or bring a snack, or go without. You should have the choice. It is ridiculous to exclude people from participating in a public meeting just because they don't have the money to buy a lunch or don't want to eat what the Elks serve.
E-books are completely worthless to people who don't have something to read it on.
Paper books are completely worthless to people who cannot read. Paper books are completely worthless to people who cannot carry them around to read them. You can create all kinds of worthless situations for anything.
E-book readers don't have story hour for kids to get them interested in reading.
Kids go to school. School should be getting them interested in reading. That's one of the jobs of the schools.
Most librarians take a fairly dim view of censorship.
What? In any library, the person most responsible for the censorship is THE HEAD LIBRARIAN. He's the one making the buying decisions, he's the one that says "we don't buy that book", he's the one saying "we don't make that book available for free to our citizens". They SAY they take a dim view, they DENY they do it, but when you look at their actions you see the truth is different.
Before you rant about how I'm insulting librarians, I didn't. I am pointing out a fact of their job. They HAVE to make those decisions. They don't have enough money to buy every book or publication. They don't have space to store every book or publication. (By the way, that's another "completely worthless" feature of paper books: paper books are completely worthless if you don't have the space to store the paper book.) The only thing librarians need to accept is the fact they are doing it and stop denying that it is part of their job.
This is just yet another attempt to remove the last bit of actual public service
No, it is an evaluation of whether the "public service" that a library provides is either valuable enough to keep paying for, or something that the "library" should be doing instead of doing it some other less expensive way.
so the tax money can be spent on more subsidies and pork
I'm sorry, but free 3D printing is a subsidy and pork just like all the other pork you want to complain about.
(you didn't think taxes would go down, did you)?
Well, that's the downside to having a "library district" that has its own tax levy. It's easier to browbeat and cajole (and extort) more tax money from the public if you can say "we'll have to close the library if you don't give us more of your hard-earned money", but then it is more likely that taxes will go down if the library stops needing the money and cannot justify renewing the tax levy. Yes, when a tax levy expires taxes actually go down.
But many of us aren't aware of the impact our libraries have on our own communities, nor the programs they offer.
As a "Friend of the Library" who pays money to be one, I have a good handle on the "programs".
1. They are a great place for homeless people to sleep during the day, with bathrooms and water fountains, and if they are literate enough, stuff to read. Also daily papers they can read the comics in and do the crosswords.
2. It's a free babysitting service when they run a movie night.
3. Some libraries (not mine) pay for toys that college kids can come play with, like 3D printers.
4. They have free (I think) meeting rooms, none of which are used by the local government to hold public meetings. Our city likes to have "lunch meetings" at the local Elks Club where they discuss city business and you get to pay $10 for lunch for the privilege of attending.
5. Free babysitting during the day, too.
6. An attraction to the downtown so the city can collect money from parking meters, and by ticketing people who stay 5 minutes too long (the cop shop is right across the street.)
There is a used bookstore right across the street that has a much larger stock of local history books, so "repository of old books" is not a unique feature of the library anymore. (The most interesting local history book I have read actually came free through Gutenberg, and isn't in the library.) The fire department and county have meeting rooms that people can use. Free wireless blankets the Uni.
The most book related service (other than loaning physical books, which is dropping in popularity) is their yearly book sale where they sell off used library books -- which puts to rest the claim that they are a stable repository of old books. That sale is well attended, especially by the used book dealers, and even though there is supposed to be a rule about no scanning of books for the first day of the sale, it is never enforced. I've pointed out violators and nothing is done about it. So, it seems, the library service being performed is being a profitable source of used books paid for by the taxpayers and sold for a profit by the dealers. A subsidy, they would call that.
Yes, libraries as libraries area a valuable asset. They aren't libraries as much anymore. And they aren't cheap to run, by their own choice. Our library continually begs for more tax money, after building a beautiful brick and glass monument to excess to keep the books they haven't sold yet in.
I'm also talking about Google or Duck Duck Go or whatever your favorite search engine is. Sometimes a librarian can come up with a better set of search terms than you can, or they may know the answer, but that's just because they are a different person. It's isn't necessarily because they are a librarian.
The censorship issue is also not solved by a library. The librarian decides what books to buy and what magazines to subscribe to. They have community members who watch what they do and complain when community standards are violated. The most fascinating lie about censorship I've ever heard came from the mouth of a head librarian. You know, a government official with the power to keep published material out of the hands of the citizens. She denied there was any censorship at the library -- despite being the person most responsible for deciding which books would NOT be made available for free to the public in her county. (Yes, it's not true censorship because anyone can go to the next town over and hope they have the book there, or buy it themselves, but it fits "censorship" a lot better than a lot of things called "censorship" today.)
Libraries that have morphed into "community center" are surviving, bit not for the functions of a library. The number of people accessing the physical books is dwindling as the population ages and old people die. People don't "ask the librarian" as much anymore, especially if the question is in any way embarassing. It is truly better for the impersonal Google to cache your question about sex instead of having your neighbor the librarian knowing about it.
The "makerspace" function is surviving. The "meeting room" function is surviving. The "borrow a DVD so you can rip the content and have a free copy" function is growing. The online books function is growing (free books, by the way.)
And especially with Amazon. I remember shortly after Kindle came out, they remotely deleted all the George Orwell books people had bought
And your local librarian can walk over to the shelf and pull the copies the library has and send them to recycling, too. They pull old stuff all the time and nobody cares, because they need space to put the new books. They choose not to buy certain new books because they don't reflect community values or aren't perceived to be of sufficient interest to merit spending money on them. My "community values" means we gets several copies of Hillary's books and few, if any, of the opposing viewpoint. When I put a hold on "What Happened", or whatever it was called, I was a small number in line on a lot of copies. The same time I put a hold on a pro-Trump book, and I'm number 201 waiting for one copy.
If you think libraries are immune to such things with physical books, remember this. In the mid-50's, if I recall the year right, EVERY LIBRARY COPY of a Bell System Technical Journal had a couple of pages cut out of it. Those pages described the in-band long-distance signalling system that allowed hackers to build blue boxes and made Captain Crunch infamous. I checked. I found a college library that had copies of the journal and sure enough, it was missing those pages.
I didn't like the experience then and I don't think I'd like it now.
A few years ago I went to the library to read the magazines. It was a good experience. They had what I wanted, and they had nice comfy chairs to sit in while doing it. Not long ago I did the same thing. The selection was more limited and the comfy chairs had been replaced with hard-backed uncomfortable things. The place also smelled. (The
Of course it does. Where I'm at I can get any ISP I want, as long as I don't care that it's not broadband and comes over DSL. So effectively no,
You don't say where you are so it is impossible to verify your claim. I'll just say that every time I've heard the story about "there's only one ISP", it always turns out that isn't true. For example, the poor people of the Colorado town that was featured on /. a few months ago that voted to implement municipal fiber because there was "no competition"? I did a google for providers for that town and found 8 residential broadband and 8 business broadband (and not the same 8) serving that town. Every other time I've checked up, I've found the same kind of situation.
Now, the fact may be that there is only one ISP that is broadband and advertises heavily or is provided through your cable company so it is convenient to get service from or already has a wire/fiber attached to your house, but the fact is also that there is, whenever I look, there are many more than "one".
Its even worse other places.
And now the nebulous "other places" that are even less provable.
So no you can't pick your ISP if you actually want a connection you can use.
"Monopoly" is not defined by how high you can set your expectations. If that were the case, then we could just claim there are NO ISPs in the entire country ... and I bet someone would call me on that.
Doesn't matter what your excuse is, get a warrant.
Thank you for calling 911. Please stay on the line and as soon as we get a warrant to record this call we'll be right back to you ... [muzak] ..."
Quite frankly, I'd pay NOT to have to watch any of that.
1. Disconnect your outside antenna or rabbit ears.
2. Send cash to the address I've sent you by email.
You're welcome. Our customer support hotline runs 24 hours a year, at random times. You won't need to call it unless you cannot follow step 1 above.