The adults know that you can't fix the problems of a mostly government-controlled mess by making it fully government-controlled. Keynesians are infantile morons.
-jcr
Precisely. As it says in the summary, "hastily-crafted amendment." What's the rush? Congress, enough with the Clinton-style "crises" (whose raison d'être is ramming pork and bad law through without adequate oversight.) We want you to take your time, dot the i's, cross the t's, and check the nuts and bolts. If this truly is as important as you say, then it's worth doing right, and that takes time. We're talking over a trillion dollars (again!).So, you're not doing it right, you simply cannot be, because it simply is not possible to perform a job so hideously complex in a couple of weeks. Mark my words, it will come out, after all the dust settles and Americans begin to see how government, big pharma and the insurance companies have screwed them yet again, that this health care "reform" will be anything but. Remember, a complex bill can look very good on the surface, but the Devil truly is in the details, and you can bet there are going to be some highly profitable details buried in those pages: a single paragraph snuck in at the last minute can be all it takes.
This is a crock, and it shows pretty clearly that Obama has delusions of grandeur. Personally, I want a President to manage the country: do as little damage as possible along the way, and perhaps improve a few things here and there. What I don't want are sweeping changes like this, under any circumstances short of outright war with another superpower. That's because Congress gets involved and grabs even more money and power for the government and themselves, and leaves us with even less than we had before. That's how it works. Think about the damage those 434 people have done in the past fifty years since World War II, and tell me that we should trust those pricks with another penny of our money.
This whole thing is a crock. If you really believe the insurance companies are worried about this bill (as they should be, if it were truly what Congress says it is) I have a bridge to sell you. It won't help treat your illness, but it will make me a whole lot of money.
It just your turn for now. The "only country in the world" event passes to China very soon.
I wouldn't be too sure of that. China has it's own set of problems. They're not making the same set of mistakes that the Soviet Empire did, true, but their ultimate success in this game is by no means assured. Time will tell, however.
As for your analogy, you likely (not knowing the details of your medical condition) would not be able to demonstrate that you are "disabled
Oh, I'm not disabled... I've just spent too many years driving a desk. I was just trying to point out there that are things that I would like to do, but that I have to accept that I can't, and that if the law is going to be involved, there had better be a good reason.
I know, there's a fine line to be walked here, and no-one wants to mistreat the less fortunate. But there are always costs involved, and we all have to accept that if the law requires corporations to spend money accommodating the disabled, we are all going to pay for it in the end. I'm willing to make that trade off in most cases (especially in this one, since I'll never buy another Sony product anyway.)
From a purely selfish perspective, we should also admit to ourselves that any one of us could become disabled some day. Do we really want to live in a society that will treat us poorly? I don't... but neither would I want to become an undue burden on that society.
This isn't a liberal/conservative/libertarian issue. I'm fairly liberal myself and I'm left wondering if they can sue publishers for not having all of their books on tape.
You can sue for anything in this country. Doesn't mean you'll win... but I wouldn't put it past someone to do just that. A lot has to do with what our culture has become, one in which no matter what happens it's always someone else's fault, and someone else is responsible to fix it.
There's a lot more merit to this case than you're giving it credit for.
Sure. But that's not really the issue. This is more a question of legitimate (or otherwise) use of government authority: is this a case worthy of the Feds forcing compliance, or should it be reserved for more important problems. Doesn't matter what you and I think anyway... the courts will sort it out one way or the other.
As someone who used to be a game developer, supporting a color blind player is not as "dead simple" to fix as you think. It's not just a matter of turning down chrominance and making everything gray scale. If it were that easy, just tell the player to turn down the color on his monitor. Problem solved!
Requiring a game publisher to make a major change to an existing application is probably unreasonable. For future products, maybe not. It wouldn't necessarily be a huge factor if it's accounted for up front.
It's too bad you had to politicize an otherwise reasonable post and opinion.
That's not much politicizing, and if you can't accept a little of that then why, exactly, are you on Slashdot? How we treat disabled and handicapped people is a very politically-active topic in this country today, so a little politicizing is certainly in order. How we, as a society, divert resources to help the less-advantaged is very much a legitimate political issue. Nor, in case any of you are thinking that, am I advocating that we leave the helpless to suffer on their own. I just don't believe that corporations should be required to accommodate everyone's use of their products, especially in areas where it's clear the application is, well, kinda inappropriate anyway.
Regardless, the point is that a certain class of individuals generally known as "liberals" tend to want to help everyone (for a variety of reasons, one of which is that it makes the liberal feel good about himself) but don't always consider whether that's actually in everyone's best interests.
In my humble opinion, providing access for the disabled is not only the right thing to do but it will generate more profit for Sony.
That's a fine-sounding liberal opinion, but when did accessibility to a video game, which presupposes a minimum level of vision, become a privilege mandated by the Federal Government? We are not talking about an essential service here, access to government records, we aren't even talking about a visually-impaired person being unable to order products online. It's a video game. Entertainment, no more.
Look, sometimes we can't do fun things that we'd like to do, but it doesn't mean we should start hiring lawyers. There was a time in my life when I'd go rock-climbing (only a few times, but it was fun and I was in pretty good physical shape back then.) Almost thirty years later and I wouldn't even bother trying: totally out of my league now, having been at a desk job for almost that long. So, that being the case, should I start complaining that rock faces should be made "accessible" to me in my "impaired" condition?
Why two? Try one, and if you don't do too badly you get to go home and not go to prison. Serving on Congress was intended to be a civic duty, not a career. You get in, do what needs to be done, and then get out and live under the laws you created.. Right now, the disconnect between Congress and We the People is so great that even two terms is too much. And you're right about that: the reason for that chasm was the advent of the career politician, the individual who (ahem!) "serves" term after term after term until he becomes dangerously divorced from reality, or any real concern for the citizen.
Who says we use dirt? You know that lettuce you see in the supermarket? It was most likely grown on water no dirt needed. If I remember that science channel show correctly, they are looking into other crops as well. Lettuce was easy and it worked for commercial purposes.
Personally, I'd like to see NASA get at least 2% of the total budget, which is more than 3 times what it gets now, but I seem to be in the minority on that one.
Not by me you're not. Ask people that tell you that we should redirect NASA budget into "social programs" and more welfare (and there are many such myopic individuals) how NASA's funding compares to the DOD's. Most times I've asked that question the typically ignorant answer is "oh, about equal, I'd say." Explain how miniscule the total outlay for space exploration (expensive as it is) is in relation to our defense spending, and sometimes eyebrows go up.
Sure it is. Nerds like expensive toys. Expensive toys cost money. If our imperious leaders and Captains of industry take all our money away, nerds won't be able to afford their expensive toys.
...to really see it in action. The state legislature approval rating was approaching single digits last I heard.
Do you think a single one of those scumbags give a gnat's fart about it?
They don't have to- not with district boundaries drawn like fractals and the vast majority of you voting the Party line.
All I can say is, the Founders got a lot of things right. Including the fact that sometimes leaders squeeze the citizen to the point where he feels he doesn't have options. The Founders tried to enshrine the ability to eliminate such leadership by any means necessary, when necessary, into the core of our legal system. The only remaining question is... at what point do we have to replace them the hard way? Apparently just voting them out doesn't have very much of an effect anymore.
Sure it is. Nerds like expensive toys. Expensive toys cost money. If our imperious leaders and Captains of industry take all our money away, nerds won't be able to afford their expensive toys.
Just because some paranoid mcarthyist hacks in the government think some guy seems a bit whack doesnt mean they should have a right to go around fucking people over with no fly lists unless its proven in a court.
No argument there. The whole system is a crock, that's for sure, and is about as naked a power grab as I've ever seen. It's bad enough that several thousand people had to die because of some people's religious intoxication, but what we did to ourselves since is even more obscene.
It may have sounded like I was trying to excuse the Feds behavior, but I wasn't. I was objecting to the GP's presumption that everyone on some arbitrary list is a terrorist, just because someone in government says they are.
And maybe they are, but as I said, let's not throw due process out the window.
If 9% of the list o' terrorists are also on the no-fly list, that means that the feds are happy with 91% of terrorists being on airplanes.
Suspected terrorists. Let's not through due process out the window just yet. And I doubt that the Feds believe that those 9% are all actual terrorists, just people who may have links to some terrorist organization or other, and thereby deserve special attention. And of those, a few are considered bad enough to be kept out of the skies.
Soooo really what you're saying is Apple takes stuff other people have already released/made, makes ui tweaks, then makes it "cool"
The attitude that mere "ui tweaks" aren't innovative or important is the reason why the "Year of the Linux Desktop" will forever be a joke.
Truer words were never spoken. Much as I detest Apple the Corporation, I will admit that Apple the UI Designer does some damned cool things. Even Microsoft is putting some spit and polish on Windows 7, and as you can probably tell from my other posts I'm no Microsoft fan either. But it seems like the only Linux distro that's really paying attention to detail is Ubuntu, and they have a ways to go.
Opera on a whole plethora of devices - possibly most importantly Opera for Symbian 60. Heck, the inbuilt web browser in several models of the Communicator.
Time Machine? Done earlier and better by a dozen different corporate backup solutions.
No miracles here; nothing new here either.
Stop making this about Apple. It's not. I'm trying to make the simple point (which you just did for me, thank you very much) that Microsoft isn't doing anything particularly cool, in fact, they never really have outside of Windows and Office. Other companies have taken the lead.
Why was this modded offtopic? It's a direct response to a dubious claim made in the parent post
Gates made the claim, not me, and the point (which you seem to have missed in your haste to pick nits) is that Microsoft isn't doing much of anything new. Not that they ever did, but Microsoft talks about "software as a service" and lots of other things... but outfits like Google and Apple and others are actually developing and selling those things. Microsoft is still primarily a vendor of Windows and Office, and it's likely they'll always be that. They've essentially failed at everything else they've tried.
Slashdot Mirror
the adults are trying to make things better.
The adults know that you can't fix the problems of a mostly government-controlled mess by making it fully government-controlled. Keynesians are infantile morons.
-jcr
Precisely. As it says in the summary, "hastily-crafted amendment." What's the rush? Congress, enough with the Clinton-style "crises" (whose raison d'être is ramming pork and bad law through without adequate oversight.) We want you to take your time, dot the i's, cross the t's, and check the nuts and bolts. If this truly is as important as you say, then it's worth doing right, and that takes time. We're talking over a trillion dollars (again!).So, you're not doing it right, you simply cannot be, because it simply is not possible to perform a job so hideously complex in a couple of weeks. Mark my words, it will come out, after all the dust settles and Americans begin to see how government, big pharma and the insurance companies have screwed them yet again, that this health care "reform" will be anything but. Remember, a complex bill can look very good on the surface, but the Devil truly is in the details, and you can bet there are going to be some highly profitable details buried in those pages: a single paragraph snuck in at the last minute can be all it takes.
This is a crock, and it shows pretty clearly that Obama has delusions of grandeur. Personally, I want a President to manage the country: do as little damage as possible along the way, and perhaps improve a few things here and there. What I don't want are sweeping changes like this, under any circumstances short of outright war with another superpower. That's because Congress gets involved and grabs even more money and power for the government and themselves, and leaves us with even less than we had before. That's how it works. Think about the damage those 434 people have done in the past fifty years since World War II, and tell me that we should trust those pricks with another penny of our money.
This whole thing is a crock. If you really believe the insurance companies are worried about this bill (as they should be, if it were truly what Congress says it is) I have a bridge to sell you. It won't help treat your illness, but it will make me a whole lot of money.
Seems kind of pointless, personally.
Maybe that's because you missed the point.
The USA is the only country in the world.
Everything else is just a proxy state.
It just your turn for now. The "only country in the world" event passes to China very soon.
I wouldn't be too sure of that. China has it's own set of problems. They're not making the same set of mistakes that the Soviet Empire did, true, but their ultimate success in this game is by no means assured. Time will tell, however.
Suck it, Europe! What with Canada... USA! FUCK YEAH!
How's your education system going? Any improvements?
Apparently, you misunderstood the parent. He was actually criticizing the U.S. (or perhaps you didn't get the "USA! FUCK YEAH!" reference.)
Wait - you mean that I shouldn't sue the Olympics commission?
Oh, I think you should sue. And maybe you'd get a nice out-of-court settlement to help with your retirement!
As for your analogy, you likely (not knowing the details of your medical condition) would not be able to demonstrate that you are "disabled
Oh, I'm not disabled ... I've just spent too many years driving a desk. I was just trying to point out there that are things that I would like to do, but that I have to accept that I can't, and that if the law is going to be involved, there had better be a good reason.
... but neither would I want to become an undue burden on that society.
I know, there's a fine line to be walked here, and no-one wants to mistreat the less fortunate. But there are always costs involved, and we all have to accept that if the law requires corporations to spend money accommodating the disabled, we are all going to pay for it in the end. I'm willing to make that trade off in most cases (especially in this one, since I'll never buy another Sony product anyway.)
From a purely selfish perspective, we should also admit to ourselves that any one of us could become disabled some day. Do we really want to live in a society that will treat us poorly? I don't
This isn't a liberal/conservative/libertarian issue. I'm fairly liberal myself and I'm left wondering if they can sue publishers for not having all of their books on tape.
You can sue for anything in this country. Doesn't mean you'll win ... but I wouldn't put it past someone to do just that. A lot has to do with what our culture has become, one in which no matter what happens it's always someone else's fault, and someone else is responsible to fix it.
There's a lot more merit to this case than you're giving it credit for.
Sure. But that's not really the issue. This is more a question of legitimate (or otherwise) use of government authority: is this a case worthy of the Feds forcing compliance, or should it be reserved for more important problems. Doesn't matter what you and I think anyway ... the courts will sort it out one way or the other.
As someone who used to be a game developer, supporting a color blind player is not as "dead simple" to fix as you think. It's not just a matter of turning down chrominance and making everything gray scale. If it were that easy, just tell the player to turn down the color on his monitor. Problem solved!
Requiring a game publisher to make a major change to an existing application is probably unreasonable. For future products, maybe not. It wouldn't necessarily be a huge factor if it's accounted for up front.
That's a fine-sounding liberal opinion...
It's too bad you had to politicize an otherwise reasonable post and opinion.
That's not much politicizing, and if you can't accept a little of that then why, exactly, are you on Slashdot? How we treat disabled and handicapped people is a very politically-active topic in this country today, so a little politicizing is certainly in order. How we, as a society, divert resources to help the less-advantaged is very much a legitimate political issue. Nor, in case any of you are thinking that, am I advocating that we leave the helpless to suffer on their own. I just don't believe that corporations should be required to accommodate everyone's use of their products, especially in areas where it's clear the application is, well, kinda inappropriate anyway.
Regardless, the point is that a certain class of individuals generally known as "liberals" tend to want to help everyone (for a variety of reasons, one of which is that it makes the liberal feel good about himself) but don't always consider whether that's actually in everyone's best interests.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
That's the best Slashdot disclaimer I've seen yet.
In my humble opinion, providing access for the disabled is not only the right thing to do but it will generate more profit for Sony.
That's a fine-sounding liberal opinion, but when did accessibility to a video game, which presupposes a minimum level of vision, become a privilege mandated by the Federal Government? We are not talking about an essential service here, access to government records, we aren't even talking about a visually-impaired person being unable to order products online. It's a video game. Entertainment, no more.
Look, sometimes we can't do fun things that we'd like to do, but it doesn't mean we should start hiring lawyers. There was a time in my life when I'd go rock-climbing (only a few times, but it was fun and I was in pretty good physical shape back then.) Almost thirty years later and I wouldn't even bother trying: totally out of my league now, having been at a desk job for almost that long. So, that being the case, should I start complaining that rock faces should be made "accessible" to me in my "impaired" condition?
Please.
2 term max across the board.
Why two? Try one, and if you don't do too badly you get to go home and not go to prison. Serving on Congress was intended to be a civic duty, not a career. You get in, do what needs to be done, and then get out and live under the laws you created.. Right now, the disconnect between Congress and We the People is so great that even two terms is too much. And you're right about that: the reason for that chasm was the advent of the career politician, the individual who (ahem!) "serves" term after term after term until he becomes dangerously divorced from reality, or any real concern for the citizen.
Think about it, if you started a revolution and overthrew the government, who would you choose as a leader instead?
Presumably, someone who has it clearly in his mind that he's replaceable.
Who says we use dirt? You know that lettuce you see in the supermarket? It was most likely grown on water no dirt needed. If I remember that science channel show correctly, they are looking into other crops as well. Lettuce was easy and it worked for commercial purposes.
Yes, I know, hydroponics ... been around for ages.
Personally, I'd like to see NASA get at least 2% of the total budget, which is more than 3 times what it gets now, but I seem to be in the minority on that one.
Not by me you're not. Ask people that tell you that we should redirect NASA budget into "social programs" and more welfare (and there are many such myopic individuals) how NASA's funding compares to the DOD's. Most times I've asked that question the typically ignorant answer is "oh, about equal, I'd say." Explain how miniscule the total outlay for space exploration (expensive as it is) is in relation to our defense spending, and sometimes eyebrows go up.
Looks like 'closed' is the new 'open' in the EU.
Actually, it looks like "corrupt" is the same old corrupt that it's always been. Gotta wonder just what changed hands to make that happen.
Encumbents are re-elected at enormous rates, even right now.
Before you make stupid arguments about how killing people is the only way to get change, you might want to assess the current situation accurately.
You certainly like to read things into what people say, don't you.
I think not.
Sure it is. Nerds like expensive toys. Expensive toys cost money. If our imperious leaders and Captains of industry take all our money away, nerds won't be able to afford their expensive toys.
What do you mean, flamebait? Mods, get a grip.
...to really see it in action. The state legislature approval rating was approaching single digits last I heard.
Do you think a single one of those scumbags give a gnat's fart about it?
They don't have to- not with district boundaries drawn like fractals and the vast majority of you voting the Party line.
All I can say is, the Founders got a lot of things right. Including the fact that sometimes leaders squeeze the citizen to the point where he feels he doesn't have options. The Founders tried to enshrine the ability to eliminate such leadership by any means necessary, when necessary, into the core of our legal system. The only remaining question is ... at what point do we have to replace them the hard way? Apparently just voting them out doesn't have very much of an effect anymore.
I think not.
Sure it is. Nerds like expensive toys. Expensive toys cost money. If our imperious leaders and Captains of industry take all our money away, nerds won't be able to afford their expensive toys.
Just because some paranoid mcarthyist hacks in the government think some guy seems a bit whack doesnt mean they should have a right to go around fucking people over with no fly lists unless its proven in a court.
No argument there. The whole system is a crock, that's for sure, and is about as naked a power grab as I've ever seen. It's bad enough that several thousand people had to die because of some people's religious intoxication, but what we did to ourselves since is even more obscene.
It may have sounded like I was trying to excuse the Feds behavior, but I wasn't. I was objecting to the GP's presumption that everyone on some arbitrary list is a terrorist, just because someone in government says they are.
And maybe they are, but as I said, let's not throw due process out the window.
If 9% of the list o' terrorists are also on the no-fly list, that means that the feds are happy with 91% of terrorists being on airplanes.
Suspected terrorists. Let's not through due process out the window just yet. And I doubt that the Feds believe that those 9% are all actual terrorists, just people who may have links to some terrorist organization or other, and thereby deserve special attention. And of those, a few are considered bad enough to be kept out of the skies.
Soooo really what you're saying is Apple takes stuff other people have already released/made, makes ui tweaks, then makes it "cool"
The attitude that mere "ui tweaks" aren't innovative or important is the reason why the "Year of the Linux Desktop" will forever be a joke.
Truer words were never spoken. Much as I detest Apple the Corporation, I will admit that Apple the UI Designer does some damned cool things. Even Microsoft is putting some spit and polish on Windows 7, and as you can probably tell from my other posts I'm no Microsoft fan either. But it seems like the only Linux distro that's really paying attention to detail is Ubuntu, and they have a ways to go.
Nomad.
Opera on a whole plethora of devices - possibly most importantly Opera for Symbian 60. Heck, the inbuilt web browser in several models of the Communicator.
Time Machine? Done earlier and better by a dozen different corporate backup solutions.
No miracles here; nothing new here either.
Stop making this about Apple. It's not. I'm trying to make the simple point (which you just did for me, thank you very much) that Microsoft isn't doing anything particularly cool, in fact, they never really have outside of Windows and Office. Other companies have taken the lead.
Why was this modded offtopic? It's a direct response to a dubious claim made in the parent post
Gates made the claim, not me, and the point (which you seem to have missed in your haste to pick nits) is that Microsoft isn't doing much of anything new. Not that they ever did, but Microsoft talks about "software as a service" and lots of other things ... but outfits like Google and Apple and others are actually developing and selling those things. Microsoft is still primarily a vendor of Windows and Office, and it's likely they'll always be that. They've essentially failed at everything else they've tried.