The second part of your wish, that devices dial-down their power to the minimum needed, is certainly possible,...
The issue being, of course, if your currently connected "closest device" is in the living room near the router and you want to connect from your bedroom. You'll have to enter the SSID and channel manually because your bedroom device won't hear any broadcasts.
And, of course, when you connect from your bedroom the power will go up and may start interfering with your neighbor.
Try "Bell Labs." While Maiman claimed to have observed lasing, his observations did not reach the oscillation threshold and produce the "characteristic laser pencil beam". He was using a short ruby which didn't mode lock. More important, he made claims, while Bell scientists demonstrated it in real time. ("Bell Labs and the ruby laser", Physics Today, Jan. 2010.)
Bell Labs was looking for ways to send communications long distances. Private company looking for return on investment.
Why pay $10 so I can be distracted by self-absorbed morons who can't go 20 minutes without checking their messages?
If you are paying more attention to the people around you who are looking at their cellphones than to the movie, don't blame the people around you, blame your choice of movie.
I can't imagine why you'd be distracted by my pulling my cellphone out of my pocket and looking at it, unless you're ADHD or something. In that case, stay home.
Of course I read the link. I didn't say anything about the difficulty of obtaining said information. The original story laid out just how easy it was. At times, a simple phone call or a post-it note was enough. It was also illegal, which was my point. The ECPA says when and how you can get information without a warrant. It lays out specific conditions. If those conditions are not met, then the data access is illegal.
You should read the ECPA and not just the link, although the wiki link was also pretty clear about it. It is NOT illegal for the FBI to ask for calling records without a warrant because calling records are not interception of an electronic communication as covered by the ECPA. The FBI cannot ask the telco to put a tap on a line and report the content of the communications without a warrant, but that's not what was happening.
You WANT it to be illegal, but sorry, the ECPA doesn't make it that way. The facts remain: the FBI, CIA, NSA, state or local law enforcement, or even Nutty Uncle Joe, can ASK the telco for calling records without breaking the law. The telco can GIVE them the records without breaking the law. They don't HAVE to give them. If the telco says "no", then a warrant would be required.
I posted the link to refute the various statements I see that claim that it is legal for the phone company to hand over customer data anytime the government says "please".
You should have read the link and noticed that it doesn't say that before posting it. You should have also read the Qwest privacy policy which I posted the relevant paragraph from earlier where it says explicitly that it CAN and WILL do exactly that.
Except upon getting your drivers license you sign an agreement to let your car be searched or you forfeit your license. So yes you can refuse, but at that time you loose your license and then your car doesn't do much good.
I did not sign any such agreement, and I expect that any half-wit lawyer could get that provision of the "contract" thrown out as invalid. It's coercive.
On the other hand, the law does call for loss of license if you refuse a breath-alyzer test after adequate cause has been shown to justify it. That's considerably different than a blanket agreement to allow a search of your vehicle.
...but I can't understand what sick individual decided all the houses on that street should perpetually remain that one shade of ugly brown.
CCA's (codes, covenants and somethings, I think they're called) are a pre-emptive strike at those individuals who would buy a house in a small neighborhood and then paint it pink or yellow or some other unwelcome color. Or who would turn the front yard into a rock garden complete with 83 gnome statues. Or do anything else that would make the property values of the neighbors go down. Or be ugly.
It also stops the "keep up with the Jones'" problems, since nobody changes anything nobody has to one-up anyone else. And keeps someone from letting the place go to rot or the lawn go to seed.
It's a nasty side-effect of suburban living. Pack too many rats into one small cage and they start eating each other's young.
Spam need not actually be profitable: as long as enough fools pay someone to send it, or don't realize that what they are being is actually spam services, it will continue splashing into our spam folders at an amazing pace.
Have you ever tried explaining to some company that "ConstantContact" uses that name not because it sounds good but because that is exactly what they do? One company I deal with alot decided to outsource their marketing lists through them, so I told them to unsubscribe me. I explained to them in detail why what they were doing was wrong and bad for their image, but they didn't care or didn't agree. It's been more than two years, I'm still getting the marketing email, despite multiple instructions to that company to remove my address.
And then my college started using the same spamhaus to send some college notices.
And spam is much more easily defined and blocked than "cancer",...
No, I can honestly say I've gotten more spam in my email than I have cancer in my email, so cancer must be easier to define and block.
If public key authentication and strong encryption were the norm,...
Then the use of email would plummet as few people want to deal with all of that -- rather, few people want to KNOW how to deal with that. If my mother had to know about public keys and stuff in order to use email, she'd be offline.
Let's put it this way. I deal with a state-wide emergency service outfit that uses radio-based email for emergency communications. You can't get more easily hackable than that. There is NO routing information maintained at the radio-internet boundary, so a fake email from the internet to a radio destination is untrackable. Use of callsigns on the radio side is pretty much 'honor system'. You'd think those people doing this would seek out and use public key signatures (not encryption, since amateur radio traffic cannot be encrypted), but no. It's too hard. Writing your message in a standalone text editor, dropping a file into WinGPG to create the signature, and attaching both files in the email is just too much work.
Messages encoded with a compromised key would have an invalid security envelope.
Given the number of legitimate email messages I see that have bogus headers already, I think that filtering based on this additional criterion would create more problems than it solves. Given the number of GOVERNMENT websites I go to that have invalid or expired SSL certs, I think you might be overestimating the viability of this solution.
Costs for sending, receiving & filtering spam are paid by parties other than the ones spamming.
That is the textbook definition of "economic issue". That's why spam is so profitable, and that's why it will never die. Implementing technical solutions just raises the bar until the spammers start using them.
Why do you think they call it the "CAN SPAM" act? It's not because spamming is being canned (i.e. "discarded, dust-binned"), it is because spammers who follow the law CAN spam legally. So you create this public key system. Fine. Spammers can create keys just like anyone else. Then their email is signed, sealed and delivered.
Spamming will not stop until there is no economic incentive for it. I.e., the spammers don't make money by doing it. There are only two ways for this to become true:
Raise the cost of sending spam.
Lower the return rate.
The latter can only be done with full voluntary compliance of the recipients, and unfortunately the recipients who respond are doing so because they see value in what the spammer is selling. "Hey, I can save you $10 on each printer cartridge..." It's a rare person who will say "no, I'll keep paying $10 more because I don't do business with spammers.".
The former will inevitably raise the cost of email for everyone, since the spammers can bypass any but the most draconian payment systems. ("Charge a dime for each email...". Ok, who charges? The ISP? Welcome to the ISP run by the spammer. The upstream? By the time the charges get passed through the ISP to the source the source can be long-gone, or will be some grandma whos email address was forged. Or the ISP will be run by the spammer and he'll simply ignore the bill and change upstreams.)
So really, the only solution is a social one, and that's the hardest kind to implement.
"Do you really think that the cop who pulls you over for a traffic violation really needs to call a judge to get approval to ask you if he can search your vehicle? That's ridiculous."
In the US? Yes, he does.
NO, he does not. He can ask you at any time if he can search your vehicle. There is no reason to call a judge to get permission to ask. If he's going to call a judge, it's because you said NO and he's going to get a warrant.
I've denied permission to search my vehicle on three occasions,
And did the cop call a judge prior to asking you for permission on any of those three occasions? Of course not. There is no requirement for him to do so.
The moment you waver, and say something that might be construed as permission to search, you WILL BE searched.
Of course. And if you try to claim "he didn't ask a judge before asking me for permission" you'll be laughed... I was going to write "out of court", but really "laughed into a jail cell".
If the telcos are giving the information to the FBI voluntarily, then there is no judge and no subpoena required. The Constitution protects you from involuntary acts (like searches of your car) but not from voluntary ones (like searches where you said "ok"). The FBI can ASK the telco for information anytime they want. The law does not prohibit this. Just like they can ask to search your car. They cannot DEMAND the information without a warrant. A "post-it note" doesn't require a judge's signature. A subpoena does.
IMHO, the question isn't about the legality of handing it over, but the legality of the Government asking for it without a court order.
There is no law preventing the government from asking without a court order. There is a constitutional amendment dealing with the government compelling the release. I read some of the "damning report", and the worst I could find is where one agent told the telco they were going to get a subpoena for the data, but it was clear from the letter that they hadn't done so. The telco turned it over voluntarily.
The fourth amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure, and there is an argument to be made that there is an expectation of privacy regarding this information.
Even when the telco tells you EXPLICITLY that they will happily hand your private information over to the government upon request? I posted a paragraph from the Qwest policy just above, and it is clear that all the government has to do is ask for it. I expect other telco's policies are similar of not identical.
In any case, I don't care if the FBI gets the information with a post-it note, as long as that note has reasonable cause and a judge's signature on it.
Why in God's name do you think a request for information needs to have a judge's signature on it? A subpoena, yes. A "can you send us..." note? Do you think that every question that every cop asks someone needs to have a judge's approval? Do you really think that the cop who pulls you over for a traffic violation really needs to call a judge to get approval to ask you if he can search your vehicle? That's ridiculous.
The issue here is not the government asking, it's that the telcos give it. But then, they've told you they will, so you have no reason to expect them to grow a backbone and say "no" when asked.
Breach of contract. They include a privacy policy in their TOS.
Have you ever read your telco privacy policy? My telco is Qwest, and I just went to their website to see exactly what their policy is. I quote:
Qwest discloses personal information collected online to affiliates and to others, including our business partners and vendors, to provide the products and services you request and to enhance those products and services. We may share personal information collected online with the government or third parties who make a lawful request for it. We may also disclose personal information collected online to others to assert and defend our legal rights, and as otherwise authorized or required by law.
They are quite upfront about sharing your information with the government. All they need to do is make "a lawful request" for it. There is no law that says the FBI cannot ASK Qwest for your information, so ASKING is a lawful request.
There could be a law in the way requiring... wait, they're already doing this despite there being laws in the way!
Exactly what law is in the way of the FBI making a request for information and the source giving it to them?
Now, there's a requirement for warrants and stuff if the source isn't cooperative, but gosh if I can find a law that says the FBI cannot ASK for information without a warrant. The only ones I know say that they cannot DEMAND it without one.
...and the service provider is glad to not tell you they've violated their own privacy policy by giving out info without the proof that they're being legally obligated to do so.
Hey! That's the point. They weren't legally obligated to do so.
The bad guys here aren't the FBI for asking, it's the sources for giving it without being forced to do so.
Car analogy: who's the stupid one if a cop pulls you over and then asks to search your car AND YOU SAY OK? Which one of your constitutional rights was violated? (Hint: none.)
You're talking as if the CRA forced banks to open the flood gates and hand out loans to anyone who asked for it. This may be what the banks did, but it was not what the law was designed or intended for.
Gosh, you mean a law might have had unintended consequences? Gee. Yes, the INTENT of the law was quite noble. That does not absolve the instigators of that law from responsibility for the actual results. Nor the Clinton-istas who tightened up that law.
The only forcing the CRA does is make banks specifically assess an individual applicant's borrowing ability.
From wikipedia: "To enforce the statute, federal regulatory agencies examine banking institutions for CRA compliance, and take this information into consideration when approving applications for new bank branches or for mergers or acquisitions (Section 804.)." Compliance was not measured by looking at all the loans and seeing if they were assessed properly. Compliance was measured by statistics. What percentage of loans went where. If 100 people walked in the door from a specific area, and all 100 of them were poor risks, the bank SHOULD have been able to refuse all 100 loan apps. But that would put their percentage at ZERO, and that would have put them out of compliance. That bank could not say no when they should have because they wouldn't have been able to grow. No new branches for you.
And if those 100 people who wanted a loan couldn't afford the payments for a fixed-rate loan, but could manage the early payments on an ARM, don't you imagine that both the bank (who needs the percentages) and the applicant (who wants to buy a house -- the American dream pushed on them by Franks etc.) will take that path?
And I notice in your reply you completely glossed over the part where I mention the majority of the subprime loans made weren't regulated by the CRA.
What? Wiki to the rescue again: "The Act mandates that all banking institutions that receive FDIC insurance be evaluated by Federal banking agencies to determine if the bank offers credit... in all communities in which they are chartered to do business in."
All communities. All that receive FDIC insurance.
The banks could have enforced income verification.
Yes, and then been refused the next time they wanted to add a branch somewhere because their percentages were too low.
But you're assuming the greed in people wanting the "American Dream" is greater than the greed of an industry whose sole purpose is making money.
When that industry is forced to make loans that it knows will cost them money, you cannot claim they are being greedy. You have to look at WHY they made those loans. OTOH, the people who took out the loans knowing that they'd be stuck in five or ten years when the balloons came due, maybe planning on selling prior to that, maybe hoping for rescue, were greedy. There was no federal regulation saying they had to take out those loans. Nobody held a gun to their head. They saw a way to get something they wanted but really couldn't afford and took it. It's hard not to call that greedy.
What is ridiculous is thinking that an industry filled entirely with people who want to make as much money as possible wouldn't go for the chance to make huge, fast profits.
Notice that the people who work in the banks, for the most part, get salaries. They don't see "huge fast profits". And we all see how well those "huge fast profits" worked out, don't we? You don't think the banks knew it, too? Of course they did. You admit that they knew the loans were crap. And yet you accuse them of being out for "huge fast profits", based on making money-losing loans. Yeah, that's how I'd go about making 'huge fast profits', I'll sell my product to people who can't pay for it and I'll have to repo and resell it. That's a great way of making a profit.
which is to say that there will be a minimum standard of care
Thank God we can get ourselves a minimum standard, instead of keeping the high standards we have now.
As it turns out, there are millions of uninsured patients--or underinsured--who are simply told "no" because they are poor.
It is dishonest in the extreme to ignore in those millions of uninsured people those who have chosen not to have insurance.
I find that unacceptable.
I find it perfectly acceptable that people who don't want to pay for insurance don't have to.
We already have a government-run system that works.
If it worked, people like you wouldn't be demanding changes. Apparently you can't make up your mind. Either it works and we don't need to change it or it doesn't work and we need radical changes to make it fully socialized and rationed beyond any reasonable limits. Pick one.
And I don't know any elderly who are complaining about the quality of care they get with Medicare.
Ignorance is no excuse. If there was no complaint, where are there so many ads for medicare supplement insurance? And cries about elders who can't afford their meds? This is the government run system that works.
Their costs do not go up beyond the general inflation index of healthcare costs, nor their services down.
THEIR costs don't go up because TAXES do and the deficit does. And I debate your claim that services haven't gone down.
The system works for most people. Taking that system away from them to deal with those who have chosen not to participate is insulting. Risking the quality of the current care so we can be just like France is ridiculous. Ignoring the fact that the system will fail from overload while claiming it will be just great for everyone is dishonest beyond any measure.
If every other advanced country in the world is doing it, it can't be that bad of an idea.
If we had taken that attitude in 1776, we'd still be a colony of the Brits. And lest we forget, forty million Frenchmen WERE wrong. But yes, let's do it just like the French.
Presumably one has to have local access, since to provide input to the NVidia driver one needs a display server running locally and provide bogus input to it.
Since it was a display driver, all you had to do to exploit it was be able to see the screen.
You're talking about how increasing the risk pool would somehow increase the cost of care when the majority of uninsured are in the just-graduated-college age bracket and think they're bulletproof.
No, I've said nothing about "just-graduated-college" people. It's actually pretty simple. If you have free health care you are more likely to use it than if you don't. When everyone has it, everyone will be using it. What will they use it for? Yes, serious conditions certainly, but for colds and flus and cuts and scrapes and sprains and everything else that bothers them. They won't go to a doctor when they feel fine, so they won't have a regular physician. The brunt of the costs will be in the ER where it costs more to deal with a cold than a doctor's office. The only way to prevent that is to limit services -- which leads to waiting lines for those who need them. Just like in Canada.
And comparing true universal care to "only for people under 17" care is apples to oranges.
"Children under 17" are not a disjoint set from "all people", they are a subset. What happens when you give free care to everyone under 17 is a very good indicator of what will happen when you try to give it to everyone. What happens when you give free ANYTHING to everyone is a good indicator of what will happen when you talk about health care.
However, if mom and dad are covered by the state too, they're paying their premiums to the state instead,
By "premiums" you mean "taxes". But the point remains -- the state calculated what they thought they could do and the users came out of the woodwork to claim their free care. That's going to happen for any "free" care system you create. The number of users will balloon from today's numbers. The amount of available services won't increase because there is no profit to drive investment, so more people will be seeking the same or fewer services.
And if you're going to compare to a UHC system, compare to the best, not the worst. How about France?
Ohh, I see. Hopeless optimism is the argument you make for free care. What makes you think that we are going to have "the best" free system instead of repeats of the poor government-run systems we've already seen? It's a fool who plans health care based on "best case" scenarios. In fact, best case says you don't need health care because "best case" nobody needs it.
And for that matter have you ever had to make an appointment with a specialist here in the US? It takes 3 months to get in,...
I have, and it has never taken me more than a week to see one. A day or two at most, and the worst case was having to travel to a different city to see one in a week because the local specialist was on vacation. (And I needed the week to have the swelling go down on the break before the specialist could operate.) The day after I saw the specialist, I was checked into the hospital for surgery. When I needed a respiratory specialist for tests for a different condition, I saw him the next day. No, I have never seen the same kinds of delays reported as common in the Canadian system. This "three months" is what you get from free care, not what I've seen at all.
In a UHC system patients are prioritized based on need,...
In other words, you could die waiting for your care because someone else thought you didn't need it. Hmmmm, a grand system. Just what we ought to have.
Heart surgeries come before hip transplants.
I believe you'd find that operations are already prioritized in most hospitals. I don't know, I don't work there, but I do know that when I go with less critical things I wind up waiting. Either all the docs are out for a smoke or they're dealing with more serious cases. I suspect it's the latter. The doc who set my arm was in surgery when I got there, and he didn't rip off the mask and come down to set mine before he finished what he was doing.
Can you debate the point that an insurance company makes more money if they take in more
Seriously? A law designed to keep banks from categorically denying loans based on region caused the housing bust?
If banks wanted to keep growing and making money, they had to have statistics that showed they weren't doing this. Either they'd have to lie about the loans, or make enough of them to keep the feds happy. This is regulation. It interferes with the free market. Those loans had to go somewhere.
It wasn't, say, the mortgage-backed securities that allowed banks to roll their crap loans in with good ones and sell the lot for quick profit (not to mention negating their risk for those crap loans) on the assumption that the good loans will outweigh the bad?
Once you force banks to make the loans, you can't complain when they try to stay in business (i.e., make a profit so they can pay interest to the depositors).
And it wasn't the regulations allowing ARM loans in the first place, loans that were designed so people could get bigger loans than they otherwise could afford?
It was government interference in the process that caused the problem, not the banks themselves. When Franks and Scott are telling everyone that they should buy houses, and rig the tax system to help promote it, then people are going to want it.
But here's the thing: was it applicants who approved those loans?
So the bank dissapproves the loan and their CRA numbers go down and they get dinged for redlining. Here we are back at the government regulations having an unintended consequence.
Silly me, I see now, of course it's the poor people's fault. They were the ones who were too greedy, not the banks/mortgage companies.
Well, when someone tries to get a loan that is bigger than they can afford, and the banks have the feds overseeing their approval processes, who is to blame? The bank for doing what the laws tell them they have to, or the people who knew (or should have known) they were getting in over their heads? Yes, it seems callous to blame people who are looking to live in better surroundings than they can afford, but it's still true. It's also easily predictable.
And the continual loosening of lending standards made under the assumption that the market will self-adjust had nothing to do with it.
I have no idea where you get this from. Of course lessening the standards had a lot to do with it. That's what the CRA forced banks into. But everyone claims "greedy banks" were the cause, and that's simply not true. The banks were very well aware that the loans were bad and they were going to lose money -- they can't be called greedy for making loans they KNOW are losers. The only reason they would do it is because federal regulations called for it.
Did those loans wind up concentrated in larger banks? Of course. Once they were made, either the originating bank forclosed and lost the money (and maybe failed) or they sold them off to someone else. But eventually those loans had to be written off. Banks as a whole lost. Greedy greedy banks, losing money by making bad loans to people.
No, I'm pretty sure I'll stand by my original statement that regulation should be made to limit corporate greed,...
Then you'll ignore the fact that the housing bubble was created by over-regulation and not a lack of regulation. A lack of regulation would have allowed banks to avoid bad loans from the beginning, but then that would have prevented the "dream" of home ownership to those who couldn't really afford it after all. It is simply ridiculous to pretend that banks would act against their own financial interests by forcing people to take bad loans. It is even more ridiculous to ignore the regulations that forced them into that position.
While I might not have convinced you of anything, I did not call you stupid for believing what you do while trying to discuss it with you.
Envision the end product of the capitalist delusion.
There is no delusion. Implied insults are just as useless in making your arguments.
One person owns everything,
I see where you get the idea this is a delusion -- because it is. This is not the end product of capitalism. The end product is many people owning things, exchanging them at rates they consider fair. If one person owned everything, what would other people trade with him? More importantly, where is he going to get the time to manage and maintain "everything"? He cannot do it himself. And he's certainly not going to get to the point of owning everything, since selling things to others is a major component of capitalism.
But who am I to say no, that's not right. I'm the guy who knows the basics of right from wrong.
Yes, you've certainly convinced me, you are the only person in the world who knows the basics of right and wrong, so you ought to be the one setting all the rates for everything. Let me know how that works out for you, ok?
By that logic, the fact that so many people have illegal stuff in their homes...
Failed logic alert! No, sorry. You're wrong. Your home is a private residence. The "border crossing" is a public place. Different levels of expectations apply, and different protections. I didn't say you couldn't make an argument against it, just that is would be hard to do. And you haven't.
And, of course, once you... raise suspicion, the "unreasonable" argument goes away.
That argument sounds completely unreasonable to me.
Well, that's a fair statement. It may sound unreasonable to you, but it is established jurisprudence. If you give a cop probable cause he gets a lot more leeway in what he can do. And, of course, the very amendment we are discussing talks about "unreasonable" searches, so creating a reason does water down your protections against "unreasonable".
It says that if the cop thinks there is something illegal in your house has free reign.
No, it says no such thing. "A cop thinks" is not the same as creating probable cause or reasonable suspicion. And again, you mistake a public place with a private one.
You're making my argument for me--a system with no profit motive will go with the 'best' rather than the cheapest. Once you eliminate the profit motive, the only motivation left is to provide the most effective care for the money.
Nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
Once the "profit motive" is gone, you're talking government-run tax-funded health care. That's not an infinite pot of money.
Once you are talking government-run, then you open the floodgates for the number of people you have to treat, and lower the significance of any illness they seek treatment for. That means MANY more people in the system and thus LESS money per person. You can't afford "best", all you can afford to give out for "free" is "cheapest".
In addition, once you lose any profit motive, you lose creation incentive. Why should any company invest billions in research for cures that they can't make money on? Remember, companies are owned by PEOPLE, through stocks, and the stock market (at least the health stocks) would dive if there was no return on investments.
Who's going to take care of you if there is no "profit motive"? Doctors and nurses don't work for nothing. The ones that will are hardly going to be 'the best', even if they are 'cheapest'.
Hawaii proved this when they tried to provide government-run health insurance for all children under 17 who didn't have other insurance. They ran out of money. Too many people chasing too few dollars. Parents realized they didn't need to pay for insurance for Little Jimmy because the state would take care of him, so they cancelled the policy they were paying for and put Little Jimmy on the dole. Those who wouldn't have gone to a doctor for some sprain or fever wound up going to doctors -- and ERs -- and the state just couldn't afford it anymore. They had to shut the program down. They couldn't afford "best", they couldn't even afford "cheapest".
We already pay multiples of what countries that have universal healthcare pay.
Hiding the costs in taxes and ignoring the difference in quality doesn't make a fair comparison. Why do you think that so many Canadians come to the US to get basic treatment if their universal healthcare system is so great? Is a ten month waiting list for ultrasounds a sign of a good or bad system?
It's time to realize that ANY system that is based on calculations of current levels of staffing and use will be wildly overwhelmed when the number of users goes way up and the number of providers goes down. It's nonsensical at best, and dishonest at worst, to pretend that "universal health care" will not be overloaded from the second day it is in place, and grow worse as time goes on. It will be like every public welfare program ever created -- it will outgrow every cost estimate and continue growing.
Because the owners aren't the just deservers of the benefits of the labor. Duh.
Why not? After all, the owners PAID the laborers in exchange for that labor. Further, the owners put up their own money to create the enterprise prior to it becoming "self-sufficient", and are on the hook for the bills if the times change the the enterprise loses money. Only if the laborers are risking THEIR capital should they reap extra rewards based on the use of that capital.
Are you stupid?
Oh, okay. That's the kind of arguments you are going to use to support your position. Convinces me.
I included reasonable payment for the capital outlay in my model.
I understand you included what YOU figured was appropriate in some model that you've come up with. Sadly, nobody died and left you in charge of deciding what was sufficient for other people.
Unless your model covers slavery exclusively, then it includes the fact that the laborers have decided that the fee they are being paid is sufficient for the labor they are providing. Further, unless your model is also communist (where the workers own the means of production) then the workers are not risking their money creating the system so deserve no return on that money when there is success -- just as they pay nothing when the system fails. Why do you believe you should have the right to decide otherwise?
In short, if Mickey-D's offers me $8/hour to flip burgers and I say "ok", who are YOU to come along and say "and Mickey-D must also pay you a cut of the profits for the store", especially since I don't have to put money into the system when there are losses?
We can not and should not allow only the markets to have total control of themselves. If you do, you end up with situations like the housing crisis and subsequent recession we're dealing with now.
Isn't it a shame I can interrupt your fine rant with the fact that the housing problem came about because of over-regulation, not a lack of it? The Community Reinvestment Act required banks to make questionable housing loans because if their statistics for any certain areas were too low, they'd be guilty of "redlining". That created loans with no down payments or balloon options, and people who wanted "the American Dream" that the people like Barney Frank and Scott were telling them they should have took out loans they couldn't afford in the long run.
So no, don't blame the banks, who did what the government wanted them to. And don't blame the banks who had to create some means of dealing with the poor quality loans they were forced to make to stay in business. Put the blame on the people who created the CRA and then strengthened it.
That you would imagine that banks would make loans that they knew weren't going to be repaid, and then claim they were greedy for doing so, is simply ridiculous. If you find any company doing things that will cause them to go bankrupt, on a regular basis, look for the regulation that's forcing them. Don't blame it on a lack of regulation. Banks don't make money on bad loans, they lose it. If they're making bad loans, there's a reason.
And God forbid, don't put the blame on the people who took out loans with balloon options that would put them upside down and unable to make the balloon payments. When I bought my first and only house I was offered such insane terms and I simply said "no". End of problem.
As for this "capitalist free market" that will screw you, I hate to point out that the free market is well aware that it needs customers to survive, and if they "squeeze you for every last dime" they will run out of customers and go broke. And that this "capitalist free market" is made up of Mom-and-Pop operations -- small business vastly outnumbers the mega-giant corporations.
First, I wish I had mods points for the people above you in the thread. Costs don't go down if everyone has to be in the pool. Just one trivial example why: people who aren't covered now don't go to the ER when they get sick, they don't participate in the medical system at all and they get better all by themselves. (And if you don't believe this, why were hospital ERs deluged to the point they had to refuse admittance to people with the flu this last fall?) A few years ago I had a cut that I went to the ER to deal with, which I would NOT have bothered had the Home Depot where I was injured not said "go to the ER, we'll cover it" (which they then refused to pay a dime for, asshole Home Depot.)
About a year ago I was in a motorcycle accident.
So YOU are one of those high-risks that everyone else has to pay for when you get hurt having your fun. You get the fun of riding, I get the fun of working to pay to fix you when you get broken. This is a perfect example of why some people want to opt-out of having to pay for health care for other people. They don't ride death-traps, they don't jump out of perfectly good airplanes, they don't inhale burning vegetable matter, they don't try to ride on top of waves, they don't drown their bodies in depressants or strange elixers that make them feel invincible.
They would rather spend the money they worked for on a new TV instead of paying for your surgeries that were necessary only because you like to ride motorcycles.
Why should your costs be ZERO? Why shouldn't you have a healthy co-pay? Hell, even the cut I went to the ER for cost me 20% of the total, and I was doing nothing more dangerous than standing in the checkout line at Home Depot.
Point is, insurance isn't the sucker's bet that a lot of people seem to think.
Whether it is a sucker's bet depends on the odds, and if you choose to do risky things that changes the odds and makes insurance less of a bet and more of a "get out of jail free" card.
It's too bad they used the word "unreasonable" rather than "unwarranted".
Well, that's one opinion. Mine differs. They used the correct word, I believe.
However, the implication seems to be that they can't search without a warrant:
No, the implication is that they can't make unreasonable searches, because they did choose to use the word "unreasonable" instead of "unwarranted".
The visual search the cop makes of a car as he approaches a roadside stop is perfectly reasonable but there is no warrant, and it is ridiculous to think that a warrant should be required. The pat-down he uses to check for weapons is just as reasonable although arguably so.
That doesn't sound to me like border searches are legal, but I'm a nerd, not a lawyer.
That's why you should use the same word the founders did ("unreasonable") and not replace it with a different one.
The fact that so much truly illegal stuff is caught by border searches makes it hard to argue that searches conducted at the border are unreasonable. The fact that a lot of the illegality is import related makes it hard to argue that searches at the point where import takes place is unreasonable. And, of course, once you get caught in one lie or raise suspicion, the "unreasonable" argument goes away.
That said, since the intent of the search of laptops is to find illegal "information", and that possession and not import is usually the crime, it can be argued that searching laptops is unreasonable. Further, since the search involves confiscating the object, it's even easier to argue unreasonableness. To use a car analogy, if the visual search of your vehicle at a traffic stop required towing the vehicle to the impound lot so a professional could look at it, it would be clear that the visual search would be unreasonable.
Well, pilots of small aircraft (myself included) found it the best, cheapest nav choice prior to GPS.
Unless you happened to fly anywhere near any of the LORAN transmitter sites. Ever see a C172 doing 400 knots? My LORAN told me I was...
And horse and buggy was the best, cheapest transportation prior to the automobile. Anyone keeping a horse and buggy in the garage just in case the oil supplies go away?
Maybe I'm just nostalgic because being able to navigate "Loran Direct" was so superior to flying from VOR to VOR.
Slashdot Mirror
The issue being, of course, if your currently connected "closest device" is in the living room near the router and you want to connect from your bedroom. You'll have to enter the SSID and channel manually because your bedroom device won't hear any broadcasts.
And, of course, when you connect from your bedroom the power will go up and may start interfering with your neighbor.
Try "Bell Labs." While Maiman claimed to have observed lasing, his observations did not reach the oscillation threshold and produce the "characteristic laser pencil beam". He was using a short ruby which didn't mode lock. More important, he made claims, while Bell scientists demonstrated it in real time. ("Bell Labs and the ruby laser", Physics Today, Jan. 2010.)
Bell Labs was looking for ways to send communications long distances. Private company looking for return on investment.
If you are paying more attention to the people around you who are looking at their cellphones than to the movie, don't blame the people around you, blame your choice of movie.
I can't imagine why you'd be distracted by my pulling my cellphone out of my pocket and looking at it, unless you're ADHD or something. In that case, stay home.
You should read the ECPA and not just the link, although the wiki link was also pretty clear about it. It is NOT illegal for the FBI to ask for calling records without a warrant because calling records are not interception of an electronic communication as covered by the ECPA. The FBI cannot ask the telco to put a tap on a line and report the content of the communications without a warrant, but that's not what was happening.
You WANT it to be illegal, but sorry, the ECPA doesn't make it that way. The facts remain: the FBI, CIA, NSA, state or local law enforcement, or even Nutty Uncle Joe, can ASK the telco for calling records without breaking the law. The telco can GIVE them the records without breaking the law. They don't HAVE to give them. If the telco says "no", then a warrant would be required.
I posted the link to refute the various statements I see that claim that it is legal for the phone company to hand over customer data anytime the government says "please".
You should have read the link and noticed that it doesn't say that before posting it. You should have also read the Qwest privacy policy which I posted the relevant paragraph from earlier where it says explicitly that it CAN and WILL do exactly that.
I did not sign any such agreement, and I expect that any half-wit lawyer could get that provision of the "contract" thrown out as invalid. It's coercive.
On the other hand, the law does call for loss of license if you refuse a breath-alyzer test after adequate cause has been shown to justify it. That's considerably different than a blanket agreement to allow a search of your vehicle.
CCA's (codes, covenants and somethings, I think they're called) are a pre-emptive strike at those individuals who would buy a house in a small neighborhood and then paint it pink or yellow or some other unwelcome color. Or who would turn the front yard into a rock garden complete with 83 gnome statues. Or do anything else that would make the property values of the neighbors go down. Or be ugly.
It also stops the "keep up with the Jones'" problems, since nobody changes anything nobody has to one-up anyone else. And keeps someone from letting the place go to rot or the lawn go to seed.
It's a nasty side-effect of suburban living. Pack too many rats into one small cage and they start eating each other's young.
Have you ever tried explaining to some company that "ConstantContact" uses that name not because it sounds good but because that is exactly what they do? One company I deal with alot decided to outsource their marketing lists through them, so I told them to unsubscribe me. I explained to them in detail why what they were doing was wrong and bad for their image, but they didn't care or didn't agree. It's been more than two years, I'm still getting the marketing email, despite multiple instructions to that company to remove my address.
And then my college started using the same spamhaus to send some college notices.
And spam is much more easily defined and blocked than "cancer",...
No, I can honestly say I've gotten more spam in my email than I have cancer in my email, so cancer must be easier to define and block.
Then the use of email would plummet as few people want to deal with all of that -- rather, few people want to KNOW how to deal with that. If my mother had to know about public keys and stuff in order to use email, she'd be offline.
Let's put it this way. I deal with a state-wide emergency service outfit that uses radio-based email for emergency communications. You can't get more easily hackable than that. There is NO routing information maintained at the radio-internet boundary, so a fake email from the internet to a radio destination is untrackable. Use of callsigns on the radio side is pretty much 'honor system'. You'd think those people doing this would seek out and use public key signatures (not encryption, since amateur radio traffic cannot be encrypted), but no. It's too hard. Writing your message in a standalone text editor, dropping a file into WinGPG to create the signature, and attaching both files in the email is just too much work.
Messages encoded with a compromised key would have an invalid security envelope.
Given the number of legitimate email messages I see that have bogus headers already, I think that filtering based on this additional criterion would create more problems than it solves. Given the number of GOVERNMENT websites I go to that have invalid or expired SSL certs, I think you might be overestimating the viability of this solution.
Costs for sending, receiving & filtering spam are paid by parties other than the ones spamming.
That is the textbook definition of "economic issue". That's why spam is so profitable, and that's why it will never die. Implementing technical solutions just raises the bar until the spammers start using them.
Why do you think they call it the "CAN SPAM" act? It's not because spamming is being canned (i.e. "discarded, dust-binned"), it is because spammers who follow the law CAN spam legally. So you create this public key system. Fine. Spammers can create keys just like anyone else. Then their email is signed, sealed and delivered.
Spamming will not stop until there is no economic incentive for it. I.e., the spammers don't make money by doing it. There are only two ways for this to become true:
The latter can only be done with full voluntary compliance of the recipients, and unfortunately the recipients who respond are doing so because they see value in what the spammer is selling. "Hey, I can save you $10 on each printer cartridge..." It's a rare person who will say "no, I'll keep paying $10 more because I don't do business with spammers.".
The former will inevitably raise the cost of email for everyone, since the spammers can bypass any but the most draconian payment systems. ("Charge a dime for each email...". Ok, who charges? The ISP? Welcome to the ISP run by the spammer. The upstream? By the time the charges get passed through the ISP to the source the source can be long-gone, or will be some grandma whos email address was forged. Or the ISP will be run by the spammer and he'll simply ignore the bill and change upstreams.)
So really, the only solution is a social one, and that's the hardest kind to implement.
"Do you really think that the cop who pulls you over for a traffic violation really needs to call a judge to get approval to ask you if he can search your vehicle? That's ridiculous."
In the US? Yes, he does.
NO, he does not. He can ask you at any time if he can search your vehicle. There is no reason to call a judge to get permission to ask. If he's going to call a judge, it's because you said NO and he's going to get a warrant.
I've denied permission to search my vehicle on three occasions,
And did the cop call a judge prior to asking you for permission on any of those three occasions? Of course not. There is no requirement for him to do so.
The moment you waver, and say something that might be construed as permission to search, you WILL BE searched.
Of course. And if you try to claim "he didn't ask a judge before asking me for permission" you'll be laughed ... I was going to write "out of court", but really "laughed into a jail cell".
If the telcos are giving the information to the FBI voluntarily, then there is no judge and no subpoena required. The Constitution protects you from involuntary acts (like searches of your car) but not from voluntary ones (like searches where you said "ok"). The FBI can ASK the telco for information anytime they want. The law does not prohibit this. Just like they can ask to search your car. They cannot DEMAND the information without a warrant. A "post-it note" doesn't require a judge's signature. A subpoena does.
There is no law preventing the government from asking without a court order. There is a constitutional amendment dealing with the government compelling the release. I read some of the "damning report", and the worst I could find is where one agent told the telco they were going to get a subpoena for the data, but it was clear from the letter that they hadn't done so. The telco turned it over voluntarily.
The fourth amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure, and there is an argument to be made that there is an expectation of privacy regarding this information.
Even when the telco tells you EXPLICITLY that they will happily hand your private information over to the government upon request? I posted a paragraph from the Qwest policy just above, and it is clear that all the government has to do is ask for it. I expect other telco's policies are similar of not identical.
In any case, I don't care if the FBI gets the information with a post-it note, as long as that note has reasonable cause and a judge's signature on it.
Why in God's name do you think a request for information needs to have a judge's signature on it? A subpoena, yes. A "can you send us..." note? Do you think that every question that every cop asks someone needs to have a judge's approval? Do you really think that the cop who pulls you over for a traffic violation really needs to call a judge to get approval to ask you if he can search your vehicle? That's ridiculous.
The issue here is not the government asking, it's that the telcos give it. But then, they've told you they will, so you have no reason to expect them to grow a backbone and say "no" when asked.
Have you ever read your telco privacy policy? My telco is Qwest, and I just went to their website to see exactly what their policy is. I quote:
Qwest discloses personal information collected online to affiliates and to others, including our business partners and vendors, to provide the products and services you request and to enhance those products and services. We may share personal information collected online with the government or third parties who make a lawful request for it. We may also disclose personal information collected online to others to assert and defend our legal rights, and as otherwise authorized or required by law.
They are quite upfront about sharing your information with the government. All they need to do is make "a lawful request" for it. There is no law that says the FBI cannot ASK Qwest for your information, so ASKING is a lawful request.
So, wanna try again? What contract do YOU have?
Exactly what law is in the way of the FBI making a request for information and the source giving it to them?
Now, there's a requirement for warrants and stuff if the source isn't cooperative, but gosh if I can find a law that says the FBI cannot ASK for information without a warrant. The only ones I know say that they cannot DEMAND it without one.
Hey! That's the point. They weren't legally obligated to do so.
The bad guys here aren't the FBI for asking, it's the sources for giving it without being forced to do so.
Car analogy: who's the stupid one if a cop pulls you over and then asks to search your car AND YOU SAY OK? Which one of your constitutional rights was violated? (Hint: none.)
Gosh, you mean a law might have had unintended consequences? Gee. Yes, the INTENT of the law was quite noble. That does not absolve the instigators of that law from responsibility for the actual results. Nor the Clinton-istas who tightened up that law.
The only forcing the CRA does is make banks specifically assess an individual applicant's borrowing ability.
From wikipedia: "To enforce the statute, federal regulatory agencies examine banking institutions for CRA compliance, and take this information into consideration when approving applications for new bank branches or for mergers or acquisitions (Section 804.)." Compliance was not measured by looking at all the loans and seeing if they were assessed properly. Compliance was measured by statistics. What percentage of loans went where. If 100 people walked in the door from a specific area, and all 100 of them were poor risks, the bank SHOULD have been able to refuse all 100 loan apps. But that would put their percentage at ZERO, and that would have put them out of compliance. That bank could not say no when they should have because they wouldn't have been able to grow. No new branches for you.
And if those 100 people who wanted a loan couldn't afford the payments for a fixed-rate loan, but could manage the early payments on an ARM, don't you imagine that both the bank (who needs the percentages) and the applicant (who wants to buy a house -- the American dream pushed on them by Franks etc.) will take that path?
And I notice in your reply you completely glossed over the part where I mention the majority of the subprime loans made weren't regulated by the CRA.
What? Wiki to the rescue again: "The Act mandates that all banking institutions that receive FDIC insurance be evaluated by Federal banking agencies to determine if the bank offers credit ... in all communities in which they are chartered to do business in."
All communities. All that receive FDIC insurance.
The banks could have enforced income verification.
Yes, and then been refused the next time they wanted to add a branch somewhere because their percentages were too low.
But you're assuming the greed in people wanting the "American Dream" is greater than the greed of an industry whose sole purpose is making money.
When that industry is forced to make loans that it knows will cost them money, you cannot claim they are being greedy. You have to look at WHY they made those loans. OTOH, the people who took out the loans knowing that they'd be stuck in five or ten years when the balloons came due, maybe planning on selling prior to that, maybe hoping for rescue, were greedy. There was no federal regulation saying they had to take out those loans. Nobody held a gun to their head. They saw a way to get something they wanted but really couldn't afford and took it. It's hard not to call that greedy.
What is ridiculous is thinking that an industry filled entirely with people who want to make as much money as possible wouldn't go for the chance to make huge, fast profits.
Notice that the people who work in the banks, for the most part, get salaries. They don't see "huge fast profits". And we all see how well those "huge fast profits" worked out, don't we? You don't think the banks knew it, too? Of course they did. You admit that they knew the loans were crap. And yet you accuse them of being out for "huge fast profits", based on making money-losing loans. Yeah, that's how I'd go about making 'huge fast profits', I'll sell my product to people who can't pay for it and I'll have to repo and resell it. That's a great way of making a profit.
Thank God we can get ourselves a minimum standard, instead of keeping the high standards we have now.
As it turns out, there are millions of uninsured patients--or underinsured--who are simply told "no" because they are poor.
It is dishonest in the extreme to ignore in those millions of uninsured people those who have chosen not to have insurance.
I find that unacceptable.
I find it perfectly acceptable that people who don't want to pay for insurance don't have to.
We already have a government-run system that works.
If it worked, people like you wouldn't be demanding changes. Apparently you can't make up your mind. Either it works and we don't need to change it or it doesn't work and we need radical changes to make it fully socialized and rationed beyond any reasonable limits. Pick one.
And I don't know any elderly who are complaining about the quality of care they get with Medicare.
Ignorance is no excuse. If there was no complaint, where are there so many ads for medicare supplement insurance? And cries about elders who can't afford their meds? This is the government run system that works.
Their costs do not go up beyond the general inflation index of healthcare costs, nor their services down.
THEIR costs don't go up because TAXES do and the deficit does. And I debate your claim that services haven't gone down.
The system works for most people. Taking that system away from them to deal with those who have chosen not to participate is insulting. Risking the quality of the current care so we can be just like France is ridiculous. Ignoring the fact that the system will fail from overload while claiming it will be just great for everyone is dishonest beyond any measure.
If every other advanced country in the world is doing it, it can't be that bad of an idea.
If we had taken that attitude in 1776, we'd still be a colony of the Brits. And lest we forget, forty million Frenchmen WERE wrong. But yes, let's do it just like the French.
Since it was a display driver, all you had to do to exploit it was be able to see the screen.
No, I've said nothing about "just-graduated-college" people. It's actually pretty simple. If you have free health care you are more likely to use it than if you don't. When everyone has it, everyone will be using it. What will they use it for? Yes, serious conditions certainly, but for colds and flus and cuts and scrapes and sprains and everything else that bothers them. They won't go to a doctor when they feel fine, so they won't have a regular physician. The brunt of the costs will be in the ER where it costs more to deal with a cold than a doctor's office. The only way to prevent that is to limit services -- which leads to waiting lines for those who need them. Just like in Canada.
And comparing true universal care to "only for people under 17" care is apples to oranges.
"Children under 17" are not a disjoint set from "all people", they are a subset. What happens when you give free care to everyone under 17 is a very good indicator of what will happen when you try to give it to everyone. What happens when you give free ANYTHING to everyone is a good indicator of what will happen when you talk about health care.
However, if mom and dad are covered by the state too, they're paying their premiums to the state instead,
By "premiums" you mean "taxes". But the point remains -- the state calculated what they thought they could do and the users came out of the woodwork to claim their free care. That's going to happen for any "free" care system you create. The number of users will balloon from today's numbers. The amount of available services won't increase because there is no profit to drive investment, so more people will be seeking the same or fewer services.
And if you're going to compare to a UHC system, compare to the best, not the worst. How about France?
Ohh, I see. Hopeless optimism is the argument you make for free care. What makes you think that we are going to have "the best" free system instead of repeats of the poor government-run systems we've already seen? It's a fool who plans health care based on "best case" scenarios. In fact, best case says you don't need health care because "best case" nobody needs it.
And for that matter have you ever had to make an appointment with a specialist here in the US? It takes 3 months to get in,...
I have, and it has never taken me more than a week to see one. A day or two at most, and the worst case was having to travel to a different city to see one in a week because the local specialist was on vacation. (And I needed the week to have the swelling go down on the break before the specialist could operate.) The day after I saw the specialist, I was checked into the hospital for surgery. When I needed a respiratory specialist for tests for a different condition, I saw him the next day. No, I have never seen the same kinds of delays reported as common in the Canadian system. This "three months" is what you get from free care, not what I've seen at all.
In a UHC system patients are prioritized based on need,...
In other words, you could die waiting for your care because someone else thought you didn't need it. Hmmmm, a grand system. Just what we ought to have.
Heart surgeries come before hip transplants.
I believe you'd find that operations are already prioritized in most hospitals. I don't know, I don't work there, but I do know that when I go with less critical things I wind up waiting. Either all the docs are out for a smoke or they're dealing with more serious cases. I suspect it's the latter. The doc who set my arm was in surgery when I got there, and he didn't rip off the mask and come down to set mine before he finished what he was doing.
Can you debate the point that an insurance company makes more money if they take in more
If banks wanted to keep growing and making money, they had to have statistics that showed they weren't doing this. Either they'd have to lie about the loans, or make enough of them to keep the feds happy. This is regulation. It interferes with the free market. Those loans had to go somewhere.
It wasn't, say, the mortgage-backed securities that allowed banks to roll their crap loans in with good ones and sell the lot for quick profit (not to mention negating their risk for those crap loans) on the assumption that the good loans will outweigh the bad?
Once you force banks to make the loans, you can't complain when they try to stay in business (i.e., make a profit so they can pay interest to the depositors).
And it wasn't the regulations allowing ARM loans in the first place, loans that were designed so people could get bigger loans than they otherwise could afford?
It was government interference in the process that caused the problem, not the banks themselves. When Franks and Scott are telling everyone that they should buy houses, and rig the tax system to help promote it, then people are going to want it.
But here's the thing: was it applicants who approved those loans?
So the bank dissapproves the loan and their CRA numbers go down and they get dinged for redlining. Here we are back at the government regulations having an unintended consequence.
Silly me, I see now, of course it's the poor people's fault. They were the ones who were too greedy, not the banks/mortgage companies.
Well, when someone tries to get a loan that is bigger than they can afford, and the banks have the feds overseeing their approval processes, who is to blame? The bank for doing what the laws tell them they have to, or the people who knew (or should have known) they were getting in over their heads? Yes, it seems callous to blame people who are looking to live in better surroundings than they can afford, but it's still true. It's also easily predictable.
And the continual loosening of lending standards made under the assumption that the market will self-adjust had nothing to do with it.
I have no idea where you get this from. Of course lessening the standards had a lot to do with it. That's what the CRA forced banks into. But everyone claims "greedy banks" were the cause, and that's simply not true. The banks were very well aware that the loans were bad and they were going to lose money -- they can't be called greedy for making loans they KNOW are losers. The only reason they would do it is because federal regulations called for it.
Did those loans wind up concentrated in larger banks? Of course. Once they were made, either the originating bank forclosed and lost the money (and maybe failed) or they sold them off to someone else. But eventually those loans had to be written off. Banks as a whole lost. Greedy greedy banks, losing money by making bad loans to people.
No, I'm pretty sure I'll stand by my original statement that regulation should be made to limit corporate greed,...
Then you'll ignore the fact that the housing bubble was created by over-regulation and not a lack of regulation. A lack of regulation would have allowed banks to avoid bad loans from the beginning, but then that would have prevented the "dream" of home ownership to those who couldn't really afford it after all. It is simply ridiculous to pretend that banks would act against their own financial interests by forcing people to take bad loans. It is even more ridiculous to ignore the regulations that forced them into that position.
While I might not have convinced you of anything, I did not call you stupid for believing what you do while trying to discuss it with you.
Envision the end product of the capitalist delusion.
There is no delusion. Implied insults are just as useless in making your arguments.
One person owns everything,
I see where you get the idea this is a delusion -- because it is. This is not the end product of capitalism. The end product is many people owning things, exchanging them at rates they consider fair. If one person owned everything, what would other people trade with him? More importantly, where is he going to get the time to manage and maintain "everything"? He cannot do it himself. And he's certainly not going to get to the point of owning everything, since selling things to others is a major component of capitalism.
But who am I to say no, that's not right. I'm the guy who knows the basics of right from wrong.
Yes, you've certainly convinced me, you are the only person in the world who knows the basics of right and wrong, so you ought to be the one setting all the rates for everything. Let me know how that works out for you, ok?
Failed logic alert! No, sorry. You're wrong. Your home is a private residence. The "border crossing" is a public place. Different levels of expectations apply, and different protections. I didn't say you couldn't make an argument against it, just that is would be hard to do. And you haven't.
And, of course, once you... raise suspicion, the "unreasonable" argument goes away.
That argument sounds completely unreasonable to me.
Well, that's a fair statement. It may sound unreasonable to you, but it is established jurisprudence. If you give a cop probable cause he gets a lot more leeway in what he can do. And, of course, the very amendment we are discussing talks about "unreasonable" searches, so creating a reason does water down your protections against "unreasonable".
It says that if the cop thinks there is something illegal in your house has free reign.
No, it says no such thing. "A cop thinks" is not the same as creating probable cause or reasonable suspicion. And again, you mistake a public place with a private one.
Nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
Once the "profit motive" is gone, you're talking government-run tax-funded health care. That's not an infinite pot of money.
Once you are talking government-run, then you open the floodgates for the number of people you have to treat, and lower the significance of any illness they seek treatment for. That means MANY more people in the system and thus LESS money per person. You can't afford "best", all you can afford to give out for "free" is "cheapest".
In addition, once you lose any profit motive, you lose creation incentive. Why should any company invest billions in research for cures that they can't make money on? Remember, companies are owned by PEOPLE, through stocks, and the stock market (at least the health stocks) would dive if there was no return on investments.
Who's going to take care of you if there is no "profit motive"? Doctors and nurses don't work for nothing. The ones that will are hardly going to be 'the best', even if they are 'cheapest'.
Hawaii proved this when they tried to provide government-run health insurance for all children under 17 who didn't have other insurance. They ran out of money. Too many people chasing too few dollars. Parents realized they didn't need to pay for insurance for Little Jimmy because the state would take care of him, so they cancelled the policy they were paying for and put Little Jimmy on the dole. Those who wouldn't have gone to a doctor for some sprain or fever wound up going to doctors -- and ERs -- and the state just couldn't afford it anymore. They had to shut the program down. They couldn't afford "best", they couldn't even afford "cheapest".
We already pay multiples of what countries that have universal healthcare pay.
Hiding the costs in taxes and ignoring the difference in quality doesn't make a fair comparison. Why do you think that so many Canadians come to the US to get basic treatment if their universal healthcare system is so great? Is a ten month waiting list for ultrasounds a sign of a good or bad system?
It's time to realize that ANY system that is based on calculations of current levels of staffing and use will be wildly overwhelmed when the number of users goes way up and the number of providers goes down. It's nonsensical at best, and dishonest at worst, to pretend that "universal health care" will not be overloaded from the second day it is in place, and grow worse as time goes on. It will be like every public welfare program ever created -- it will outgrow every cost estimate and continue growing.
Why not? After all, the owners PAID the laborers in exchange for that labor. Further, the owners put up their own money to create the enterprise prior to it becoming "self-sufficient", and are on the hook for the bills if the times change the the enterprise loses money. Only if the laborers are risking THEIR capital should they reap extra rewards based on the use of that capital.
Are you stupid?
Oh, okay. That's the kind of arguments you are going to use to support your position. Convinces me.
I included reasonable payment for the capital outlay in my model.
I understand you included what YOU figured was appropriate in some model that you've come up with. Sadly, nobody died and left you in charge of deciding what was sufficient for other people.
Unless your model covers slavery exclusively, then it includes the fact that the laborers have decided that the fee they are being paid is sufficient for the labor they are providing. Further, unless your model is also communist (where the workers own the means of production) then the workers are not risking their money creating the system so deserve no return on that money when there is success -- just as they pay nothing when the system fails. Why do you believe you should have the right to decide otherwise?
In short, if Mickey-D's offers me $8/hour to flip burgers and I say "ok", who are YOU to come along and say "and Mickey-D must also pay you a cut of the profits for the store", especially since I don't have to put money into the system when there are losses?
Isn't it a shame I can interrupt your fine rant with the fact that the housing problem came about because of over-regulation, not a lack of it? The Community Reinvestment Act required banks to make questionable housing loans because if their statistics for any certain areas were too low, they'd be guilty of "redlining". That created loans with no down payments or balloon options, and people who wanted "the American Dream" that the people like Barney Frank and Scott were telling them they should have took out loans they couldn't afford in the long run.
So no, don't blame the banks, who did what the government wanted them to. And don't blame the banks who had to create some means of dealing with the poor quality loans they were forced to make to stay in business. Put the blame on the people who created the CRA and then strengthened it.
That you would imagine that banks would make loans that they knew weren't going to be repaid, and then claim they were greedy for doing so, is simply ridiculous. If you find any company doing things that will cause them to go bankrupt, on a regular basis, look for the regulation that's forcing them. Don't blame it on a lack of regulation. Banks don't make money on bad loans, they lose it. If they're making bad loans, there's a reason.
And God forbid, don't put the blame on the people who took out loans with balloon options that would put them upside down and unable to make the balloon payments. When I bought my first and only house I was offered such insane terms and I simply said "no". End of problem.
As for this "capitalist free market" that will screw you, I hate to point out that the free market is well aware that it needs customers to survive, and if they "squeeze you for every last dime" they will run out of customers and go broke. And that this "capitalist free market" is made up of Mom-and-Pop operations -- small business vastly outnumbers the mega-giant corporations.
About a year ago I was in a motorcycle accident.
So YOU are one of those high-risks that everyone else has to pay for when you get hurt having your fun. You get the fun of riding, I get the fun of working to pay to fix you when you get broken. This is a perfect example of why some people want to opt-out of having to pay for health care for other people. They don't ride death-traps, they don't jump out of perfectly good airplanes, they don't inhale burning vegetable matter, they don't try to ride on top of waves, they don't drown their bodies in depressants or strange elixers that make them feel invincible.
They would rather spend the money they worked for on a new TV instead of paying for your surgeries that were necessary only because you like to ride motorcycles.
Why should your costs be ZERO? Why shouldn't you have a healthy co-pay? Hell, even the cut I went to the ER for cost me 20% of the total, and I was doing nothing more dangerous than standing in the checkout line at Home Depot.
Point is, insurance isn't the sucker's bet that a lot of people seem to think.
Whether it is a sucker's bet depends on the odds, and if you choose to do risky things that changes the odds and makes insurance less of a bet and more of a "get out of jail free" card.
Well, that's one opinion. Mine differs. They used the correct word, I believe.
However, the implication seems to be that they can't search without a warrant:
No, the implication is that they can't make unreasonable searches, because they did choose to use the word "unreasonable" instead of "unwarranted".
The visual search the cop makes of a car as he approaches a roadside stop is perfectly reasonable but there is no warrant, and it is ridiculous to think that a warrant should be required. The pat-down he uses to check for weapons is just as reasonable although arguably so.
That doesn't sound to me like border searches are legal, but I'm a nerd, not a lawyer.
That's why you should use the same word the founders did ("unreasonable") and not replace it with a different one.
The fact that so much truly illegal stuff is caught by border searches makes it hard to argue that searches conducted at the border are unreasonable. The fact that a lot of the illegality is import related makes it hard to argue that searches at the point where import takes place is unreasonable. And, of course, once you get caught in one lie or raise suspicion, the "unreasonable" argument goes away.
That said, since the intent of the search of laptops is to find illegal "information", and that possession and not import is usually the crime, it can be argued that searching laptops is unreasonable. Further, since the search involves confiscating the object, it's even easier to argue unreasonableness. To use a car analogy, if the visual search of your vehicle at a traffic stop required towing the vehicle to the impound lot so a professional could look at it, it would be clear that the visual search would be unreasonable.
Unless you happened to fly anywhere near any of the LORAN transmitter sites. Ever see a C172 doing 400 knots? My LORAN told me I was...
And horse and buggy was the best, cheapest transportation prior to the automobile. Anyone keeping a horse and buggy in the garage just in case the oil supplies go away?
Maybe I'm just nostalgic because being able to navigate "Loran Direct" was so superior to flying from VOR to VOR.
Try GPS direct. It's even funner.