Wow, that's just hilarious and I'm not even going to spend the time. Search the archives of the last six months of Apple posts here for detailed debunkings of every single one of these silly lies. 1995 called, they want their FUD back.
This hate-apple cognitive dissonance is just hilarious. News flash: other than the looks factor, everything you mention is NO DIFFERENT than in the case of carrying an extra swappable battery. It's the SAME THING. Carrying one in the first place? Not forgetting it? Extra weight? Check, check, check, check, check, check, check.... brilliant!
Unlikely. It's because of things such (my nightmare example from the past three weeks): RedHat Enterprise Linux with Apache2 shipping with a version of libaprutil which is at least three years and eight revs past its prime, and which includes crash-inducing memory-management bugs.
And you can't update it because then it's not the blessed, beatific RHEL release anymore, so vendors won't support their products on it.:P
I'm not quite sure what your point is. I didn't say they're stupid or uncreative. I was pointing out that they know their field, but they don't know someone else's. And as such, shouldn't pretend to. That last bit is the crux of it.
There is a lot of fundamental misunderstanding. Example: certain faculty are just insistent, no matter how many time per year they are told otherwise, that our central IT staff exist to build class websites for them. They don't want to take the classes we offer; they just want us to do it, dammit! Two problems:
1. They can't get it through their "bright, creative" skulls that it's not us they should be mad at. Their DEPARTMENT should shell out for them to hire someone to build their site, if they don't want to do it. If they can't convince their department to put out the dough, that's a problem between them, not with us.
2. They think they're too good to learn how to use the tools provided to accomplish delivery of course content over the web, because, and I quote, "I'm here to learn other things, like !" And yet, they expect their students, who are also their to learn , to sit and learn said tools. This obviously isn't a problem with anything but faculty ego. Classic big-fish-in-small-pond: because they chair some conference that maybe 60 people in the world know or care about, and which will never have any impact on anything, anywhere, they think the world must revolve around them.
I see the same thing from certain types of students, business and med school jerks, sales and HR people, the whole nine yards. I like helping people. It's the only reason I do this job--all things considered, I'd rather be fishing than playing with a computer. But they won't let me work with them, they just want to give orders, and you can cram that. These people need to go back to kindergarten and learn how to behave amongs the humans.
I always find that amusing. No offense, but most of the students who think they're leet hackers, and most of the CSCI post-docs and the faculty who give papers at technology in education conferences...still have not even the first, faintest, foggiest clue of what has to be done to keep a 120,000 user public institution running smoothly on a day-to-day basis.
I use to think the way you do when I was a student, then I got a job on this side of the fence and realized that, even though I knew more about (for example) our campus network than anyone else in my dorms, I was only seeing the tip of the iceberg. And only from one perspective, at that.
I guess I don't understand why you think the Mini loses that comparison. It has a much better processor, and advantages in things like FireWire and disk writing (that Dimension comes with DVD-ROM, which means not even CD writing--you need to upgrade to a combo drive), 802.11 wireless and Bluetooth. So it has much better hardware, an infinitely better software bundle (because there's none on the Dell), a longer warranty, and costs $150 less
The Dell has a monitor, mouse, and keyboard, which if you don't have any laying around (which is the mini's target market, after all--those who do) equivalents can be had for around $150 (probably less if you're willing to look around and/or go refurb).
I'm genuinely curious to see a Win machine that's comparable to a mini for less. Or, the same price with more features.
Compare, for example, a basic Mac Mini to a basic Dell Dimension. The Mini is $599, the Dimension normally $639 but on sale now for $519. So, with a price slash, it's $80 less but:
1. It's far larger. 2. Doesn't have a dual-core processor. 3. Doesn't let you burn any discs. Have to pay more for a combo drive, and decent burning software. 4. Comes with a locked-down OS in a "Home" edition--sufficient for a lot of people, maybe. But a point against it. 5. No FireWire. 6. 90-day warranty vs. a year. 7. No anti-virus, which is a must.
etc, etc. The Dell falls far short in everything but HDD, which is cheap and plentiful as an add-on, if you need it.
You have to look at laptops and the better towers to get a Win system that has comparable specs to any Apple, and in those comparisons the Mac is nearly always hundreds cheaper. Build comparable consumer laptops at Apple and Dell--Dell comes out $300 more expensive, with the following differences:
1. No FireWire 2. No software 3. Locked-down "Home" OS.
The dell has 3.5 inches of screen real estate on the Mac (Apple only offers 15+ inch screens on the MBPro). If that matters to you, it's an advantage obviously. So again, we're seeing that it's hard to build comparable systems, because there's more flexibility on the Win side (admittedly). But if you do come up with things remotely comparable either on price or specs, the Mac will generally win out, by a wide margin, in the other category.
Yes, but let's give him credit more for certain conceptual elements of how it could work in the real world, rather than for "inventing" it out of whole cloth. It's an obvious concept that someone was going to manage to implement sooner or later--certainly not in the exact same model that we're now used to, but something similar.
The "GUI" has been around at least since rock-paper-scissors was surpassed by games on boards. Thousands of years. `
You're either cosmically unlucky, or dropping your laptops every time you pick them up.
I work at a 80k+ user institution. Over eighty thousand, a large percentage of whom have laptops and use both our services, our sales channels, and our help desk. I see a very large sample size.
The MBP has its problems just like anything, but far less than any other laptop. Biggest issue was heat in early models, no longer a problem.
I don't see the amount of problems you're talking about in 150 machines, much less eight. Seriously. This isn't an attack on you, you just may want to examine what's going on in your environment or supply chain.
Take a look at real numbers. Things have changed. In laptops, you will not find a comparable system to any Mac which is cheaper, and most are *hundreds* more expensive. In towers, the only place where Macs are not cheaper than any comparable system is in a very small window in the absolute middle of the road, where sellers like Dell can make the most of their volumes of scale.
Higher-end towers are many hundreds to over a thousand dollars cheaper on the Mac side, and for generally better hardware/more advanced specs. Over one thousand dollars cheaper for a better machine. Take a look for yourself.
Even anti-Mac sources have done these comparisons recently and grudgingly come to this conclusion, including PC World and the Guardian.
That was nearly incomprehensible. Thanks for raving.
I never said or implied anything about undesirability. On the contrary, I said that Apple doesn't compete in certain markets (such as build-your-own), so if you desire that, you SHOULD buy something else. That way you'll get what you want......I'm pretty sure this was obvious and you're just insane, but feel free to correct me.
They have better graphics cards than equivalently priced PCs. But you're certainly free to step up to a Pro if it's not good enough for you. That's, uh, sort of how buying stuff works.
Sorry, I work on Solaris. I just know the difference between a good notebook for $1500 and one for $2100 (that's the Mac vs Dell versions of the one I'm typing on). Thanks for playing though.
You still haven't said where you can actually obtain a cheaper-for-the-same-specs grey box.
And putting it together yourself is a totally different market altogether. You're not buying a computer. You're buying parts. Apple doesn't exist in that market. If you like that, that's great, but the fact that Apple doesn't compete in that sector doesn't mean they're more expensive, just absent. Welcome to non-sequiter theater!
It seems the hockey puck was universally hated, even by mac fans. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person alive that liked it and wants it back, heh.
I use the mouse by dialing the sensitivity up as high as I can and then just making small flicks to move it around. The hockey puck rested perfectly under my fingers for that. I don't need all that palm contact that a normal mouse has. Makes me feel like I'm using Playskool tools.
Are you contending that you have the time and ability to investigate every single claim that you read on the Internet and determine its veracity and pparticularly context?
No, you can't. Context encompasses most of human knowledge in one way or another. At some point, you're trusting arguments and maxims from sources that you take to be more expert than yourself. And as much as you might like to contest this, all those claims and utterings, every one, do affect your opinions and judgement whether you've thorougly vetted them or not. That's just how the human mind works--once you see, you can't unsee. Thus, an integral part of evaluating speech on the merits is having the tools to know the source of claims, so that you may evaluate conflicts of interest along with the facts themselves (and so that, as appropriate, those who use their wealth to spread lies can be held to account if in no other way than the court of public opinion).
The obvious point is that someone who is going to support a decision to send more troops in to an area when there's very little reason to believe it will accomplish anything other than getting them killed, would do well to think about the human impact. This is to draw a line between the times when personal sacrifice is overshadowed by the greater good, and the times when there is no greater good.
Boxer never said Rice wasn't qualified to make decisions on Iraq because she didn't have children. I defy you to point to where she said or implied it. I dare you. You can't.
It's utterly illogical, given that in the same breath Boxer also pointed out the she herself wasn't going to pay a personal price for Iraq, having no family of the right age to serve there. She certainly wasn't saying that she isn't qualified to make any decisions about Iraq; she obviously thinks she is, or she wouldn't be involved in this at all.
Or, as was once the case, most people would own a home and it would cost a lot less, because the system of housing loans and using them as leverage for short-term investment would be not exist to nearly the scale it does now.
Not that it's necessarily better, for many reasons, but it's not necessarily worse, either. Just different. History shows that when normal people can't get home loans for an amount equal to ten years' gross income, they don't all end up in tenements; houses just cost less, and banks make less money. Normal people may end up benefiting in some ways from the availability of money that is consequent in your outline, but all the wealth created pretty much goes to the bank, with interest.
I think you're underestimating the extent to which the trickle-down religionists believe that selling a Twinkie does create wealth. Or at least, want other people to think so.
Fine, in the early 1940's there was something called the Fairness Doctrine, but it was and is not the same as the Fairness Doctrine that was repealed by the FCC in 1987 and is not the same fairness doctrine being pushed today. Congratulations on calling names, but a Google search result doesn't not make you an expert.
Right off the bat we have serious problems. I would like you to justify your statement that it wasn't the "same" Fairness Doctrine. It was clarified by the FCC over time, obviously, but the policy started there with its basics (equal airtime for opposing views) remaining at the heart of the regulations, uninterrupted, until 1987. And stating a quality of a person (ignorance) is not the same as calling a name. Hopefully this will become apparent upon reflection.
This already exists and the FCC maintains control via this standard. The Fairness Doctrine today does not affect who gets licenses as much as it requires that those who already have licenses must give equal time between two opposing viewpoints.
Would you agree, upon reflection, that you make an absurd proposition by claiming that the Doctrine affects who may keep a license, but not who gets one? It is both logically incongruous, and a non-sequiter. Incongruous because in order to keep a license, one must also be able to get one; a non-sequiter because your programming can obviously not be evaluated until it exists--which means that talking about not affecting who can "get" a license initially is rather.... moot.
They can't just exist, they must both get EQUAL air time. What effect do you think that would have on a stations' profitability? Or, do you even understand the concept of FREE and commercial enterprise? (Your comments tell me you do not.)
It might increase their profitability, as they end up reaching a wider margin of target audiences. This used to be the norm and it worked. Without the Doctrine it *doesn't* work, because stations are segmented--liberal vs conservative--and so people have the luxury of saying, "hah! I'm not going to listen to Mr Conservative on AM1000, because the rest of their shows are liberal and I don't want to support them! I'm only going to listen to Mrs Conservative, Mr Paleocon, and Mr Neocon on AM840 so I'm only supporting conservatives!" And, vice versa.
I'm honestly not trying to be offensive, but your simplistic characterization of free markets makes me think that you're probably fairly young, and hence may not remember that when there was a Fairness Doctrine talk radio was probably even more popular and profitable than it is today (although there are a lot of variables--I'm not attempting to say that business got worse because of the repeal of the FD, just that it certainly did not get any better). As a share of radio listeners, news/talk has declined in the past ten years. Its audience, like that of allegedly liberal network news broadcasts, is increasingly old, and dying off. Any peak that talk radio may have hit in the mid 90s was due mostly to Rush Limbaugh, who would have existed with or without the Fairness Doctrine--people were doing the same schtick since the 60s, he just had the perfect storm of personality and catching the Baby Boomers when they were getting old and grouchy and sick of listening to the same five Zeppelin songs on classic rock radio all the time. Arbitron, as well as other researchers, has a lot of interesting data on this.
More broadly and importantly: "free" enterprise ends where other concerns are greater. You don't have an exclusive right to profit from a citizen in a physical sense (ie, slavery), and there's no reason you should have an exclusive right to profit from a citizen in the non-physical either. Equal protection under the law and government by consent of the governed is incompatible with non-competitive bully-pulpit propaganda. Guess what? With the Fairness Doctrine in effect, you can still watch only your side if you want to. You can change the channel when the other side comes on. All it do
I will pass the cost in some form to the consumer, change my business so that I avoid the tax, or reduce the amount it cost me to do business while still collecting the same amount for the product.
The second and third options are where you actually paying the tax comes in. If "you" is not you, running a small business, but "you" being the executives of huge, multinational corporations such as, say, Exxon-Mobile, those are not really options in a short-term sense. In the long term you might be able to change your business and/or reduce other costs, but there are two things working against you:
1. Inertia, which cannot be underestimated in oligopolies where there is little true competition.
2. A lack of "fat" to trim. These sorts of companies are brutal on expenses. They are minimized wherever possible, on a large scale. The opportunities for cutting costs to any measurable degree exist almost exclusively in long-term R&D, and in day-to-day office waste that is basically impossible to expunge without costing more than is saved (people having an extra martini at lunch on the company dime, stealing reams of printer paper to take home, etc).
Here's a hint: You didn't quote a damn thing that said or implied that only people who are paying a personal price are exclusively "qualified" or have "a right" to anything.
Can you show how you got from A (the quote) to B (your conclusion), because one is not prima facie evidence for the other.
I was a good little Limbaugh invisible-hander until I got a real job and left my parents' house...
In some respects it *is* a zero-sum game, and the fact that you don't get that it the problem. Yes, some wealth can be "created". Most transactions, however, do not create wealth; they just move it. When a transaction does create wealth, it is nearly always for the party that already has wealth, IE, has capital to "add value" or to force other people to strip mine someone else's land.
Clueless. Try economics 201, at least. 101 is to set the stage, and just like Newtonian physics, it doesn't work in the real world for anything more interesting than a marble sliding down a ramp. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and all that.
It is a great idea, for many reasons. One of the best is that the airwaves are a limited public resource that are the most effective means in history of reaching people and molding their attitudes and opinions. Remember that crucial fact: it's a limited resource that is vital to our continued existence as free human beings in the United States. There is no reason that anyone should be allowed to "own" it with impunity, any more than someone should be allowed to "own" the airspace over Illinois or the Mississippi River.
There are exactly two choices:
1. A small oligopoly of for-profit companies decides what is acceptable, with day-to-day choices made by "journalists" who only care about propaganda and shouting matches. 2. The people decide what is acceptable.
In case 1, this oligopoly controls the airwaves and does everything to advance the corporate agenda (which is not always, but often, harmful to individuals, and is always harmful to a free government by consent of the people);
In case 2, the people, through their elected representatives, can say "everything is acceptable except propaganda with no counter-argument". That is the Fairness Doctrine.
It should be a no-brainer. The only people that can honestly consider the subject and still be against it, are the delusionists who think "the market" will fix everything.
Also, if you are going to extrapolate from Barbara Boxer to all Democrats, I'm going to extrapolate from David Duke to all Republicans.
You do agree that consumers are only willing to pay a certain amount for a product, yes?
Do you then see that there is a limit to the cost increases that can be passed along to the consumer?
If suddenly there was a 100% tax on imported silicon boards, and you make high-tech clock radios in a plant in Texas, you are *not* going to be able to pass that along to consumers. Your competitors who either import the finished product rather than the component; and those who fabricate their boards here in the US, will have prices much lower than yours, and you willl go out of business, period, end of story.
So, you'll either change your business or go out of business, but you won't be passing along the cost to the consumer. That's all I'm getting at.
Oil, same thing. Only so much of a cost increase can be passed along to the consumer before people finally start buying more fuel efficient vehicles, including hybrids and electric cars. Or, start relying more on alternative fuels such as biomass and ethanol. Past that point, demand and hence profits will fall drastically with any more "passing of costs" to the consumer, so a smart company is willing to eat that tax, take a 1% ding in their huge profit margin to maintain demand. Does that make sense?
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Wow, that's just hilarious and I'm not even going to spend the time. Search the archives of the last six months of Apple posts here for detailed debunkings of every single one of these silly lies. 1995 called, they want their FUD back.
This hate-apple cognitive dissonance is just hilarious. News flash: other than the looks factor, everything you mention is NO DIFFERENT than in the case of carrying an extra swappable battery. It's the SAME THING. Carrying one in the first place? Not forgetting it? Extra weight? Check, check, check, check, check, check, check.... brilliant!
Unlikely. It's because of things such (my nightmare example from the past three weeks): RedHat Enterprise Linux with Apache2 shipping with a version of libaprutil which is at least three years and eight revs past its prime, and which includes crash-inducing memory-management bugs. And you can't update it because then it's not the blessed, beatific RHEL release anymore, so vendors won't support their products on it. :P
I'm not quite sure what your point is. I didn't say they're stupid or uncreative. I was pointing out that they know their field, but they don't know someone else's. And as such, shouldn't pretend to. That last bit is the crux of it.
There is a lot of fundamental misunderstanding. Example: certain faculty are just insistent, no matter how many time per year they are told otherwise, that our central IT staff exist to build class websites for them. They don't want to take the classes we offer; they just want us to do it, dammit! Two problems:
1. They can't get it through their "bright, creative" skulls that it's not us they should be mad at. Their DEPARTMENT should shell out for them to hire someone to build their site, if they don't want to do it. If they can't convince their department to put out the dough, that's a problem between them, not with us.
2. They think they're too good to learn how to use the tools provided to accomplish delivery of course content over the web, because, and I quote, "I'm here to learn other things, like !" And yet, they expect their students, who are also their to learn , to sit and learn said tools. This obviously isn't a problem with anything but faculty ego. Classic big-fish-in-small-pond: because they chair some conference that maybe 60 people in the world know or care about, and which will never have any impact on anything, anywhere, they think the world must revolve around them.
I see the same thing from certain types of students, business and med school jerks, sales and HR people, the whole nine yards. I like helping people. It's the only reason I do this job--all things considered, I'd rather be fishing than playing with a computer. But they won't let me work with them, they just want to give orders, and you can cram that. These people need to go back to kindergarten and learn how to behave amongs the humans.
I always find that amusing. No offense, but most of the students who think they're leet hackers, and most of the CSCI post-docs and the faculty who give papers at technology in education conferences...still have not even the first, faintest, foggiest clue of what has to be done to keep a 120,000 user public institution running smoothly on a day-to-day basis.
I use to think the way you do when I was a student, then I got a job on this side of the fence and realized that, even though I knew more about (for example) our campus network than anyone else in my dorms, I was only seeing the tip of the iceberg. And only from one perspective, at that.
I guess I don't understand why you think the Mini loses that comparison. It has a much better processor, and advantages in things like FireWire and disk writing (that Dimension comes with DVD-ROM, which means not even CD writing--you need to upgrade to a combo drive), 802.11 wireless and Bluetooth. So it has much better hardware, an infinitely better software bundle (because there's none on the Dell), a longer warranty, and costs $150 less
The Dell has a monitor, mouse, and keyboard, which if you don't have any laying around (which is the mini's target market, after all--those who do) equivalents can be had for around $150 (probably less if you're willing to look around and/or go refurb).
I'm genuinely curious to see a Win machine that's comparable to a mini for less. Or, the same price with more features.
Compare, for example, a basic Mac Mini to a basic Dell Dimension. The Mini is $599, the Dimension normally $639 but on sale now for $519. So, with a price slash, it's $80 less but:
1. It's far larger.
2. Doesn't have a dual-core processor.
3. Doesn't let you burn any discs. Have to pay more for a combo drive, and decent burning software.
4. Comes with a locked-down OS in a "Home" edition--sufficient for a lot of people, maybe. But a point against it.
5. No FireWire.
6. 90-day warranty vs. a year.
7. No anti-virus, which is a must.
etc, etc. The Dell falls far short in everything but HDD, which is cheap and plentiful as an add-on, if you need it.
You have to look at laptops and the better towers to get a Win system that has comparable specs to any Apple, and in those comparisons the Mac is nearly always hundreds cheaper. Build comparable consumer laptops at Apple and Dell--Dell comes out $300 more expensive, with the following differences:
1. No FireWire
2. No software
3. Locked-down "Home" OS.
The dell has 3.5 inches of screen real estate on the Mac (Apple only offers 15+ inch screens on the MBPro). If that matters to you, it's an advantage obviously. So again, we're seeing that it's hard to build comparable systems, because there's more flexibility on the Win side (admittedly). But if you do come up with things remotely comparable either on price or specs, the Mac will generally win out, by a wide margin, in the other category.
Yes, but let's give him credit more for certain conceptual elements of how it could work in the real world, rather than for "inventing" it out of whole cloth. It's an obvious concept that someone was going to manage to implement sooner or later--certainly not in the exact same model that we're now used to, but something similar.
The "GUI" has been around at least since rock-paper-scissors was surpassed by games on boards. Thousands of years. `
You're either cosmically unlucky, or dropping your laptops every time you pick them up.
I work at a 80k+ user institution. Over eighty thousand, a large percentage of whom have laptops and use both our services, our sales channels, and our help desk. I see a very large sample size.
The MBP has its problems just like anything, but far less than any other laptop. Biggest issue was heat in early models, no longer a problem.
I don't see the amount of problems you're talking about in 150 machines, much less eight. Seriously. This isn't an attack on you, you just may want to examine what's going on in your environment or supply chain.
Take a look at real numbers. Things have changed. In laptops, you will not find a comparable system to any Mac which is cheaper, and most are *hundreds* more expensive. In towers, the only place where Macs are not cheaper than any comparable system is in a very small window in the absolute middle of the road, where sellers like Dell can make the most of their volumes of scale.
Higher-end towers are many hundreds to over a thousand dollars cheaper on the Mac side, and for generally better hardware/more advanced specs. Over one thousand dollars cheaper for a better machine. Take a look for yourself.
Even anti-Mac sources have done these comparisons recently and grudgingly come to this conclusion, including PC World and the Guardian.
That was nearly incomprehensible. Thanks for raving.
...I'm pretty sure this was obvious and you're just insane, but feel free to correct me.
I never said or implied anything about undesirability. On the contrary, I said that Apple doesn't compete in certain markets (such as build-your-own), so if you desire that, you SHOULD buy something else. That way you'll get what you want...
They have better graphics cards than equivalently priced PCs. But you're certainly free to step up to a Pro if it's not good enough for you. That's, uh, sort of how buying stuff works.
Sorry, I work on Solaris. I just know the difference between a good notebook for $1500 and one for $2100 (that's the Mac vs Dell versions of the one I'm typing on). Thanks for playing though.
All very nice.
You still haven't said where you can actually obtain a cheaper-for-the-same-specs grey box.
And putting it together yourself is a totally different market altogether. You're not buying a computer. You're buying parts. Apple doesn't exist in that market. If you like that, that's great, but the fact that Apple doesn't compete in that sector doesn't mean they're more expensive, just absent. Welcome to non-sequiter theater!
It seems the hockey puck was universally hated, even by mac fans. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person alive that liked it and wants it back, heh.
I use the mouse by dialing the sensitivity up as high as I can and then just making small flicks to move it around. The hockey puck rested perfectly under my fingers for that. I don't need all that palm contact that a normal mouse has. Makes me feel like I'm using Playskool tools.
1997 called, it wants it's meme back.
2 006/0809_dt3200.html
Saying "Macs are teh expensive LOLRZ!" is the quickest way to guarantee that everyone who has a clue will know you're a lying douche.
Example:
http://www.systemshootouts.org/shootouts/desktop/
Not only is the Mac cheaper--in the areas where they differ, it wins orders of magnitude more categories than the Dell.
AND it includes a display, the Dell doesn't.
The difference is even more obvious with high-end and budget laptops. Macs with better specs are up to a thousand dollars cheaper.
Are you contending that you have the time and ability to investigate every single claim that you read on the Internet and determine its veracity and pparticularly context?
No, you can't. Context encompasses most of human knowledge in one way or another. At some point, you're trusting arguments and maxims from sources that you take to be more expert than yourself. And as much as you might like to contest this, all those claims and utterings, every one, do affect your opinions and judgement whether you've thorougly vetted them or not. That's just how the human mind works--once you see, you can't unsee. Thus, an integral part of evaluating speech on the merits is having the tools to know the source of claims, so that you may evaluate conflicts of interest along with the facts themselves (and so that, as appropriate, those who use their wealth to spread lies can be held to account if in no other way than the court of public opinion).
I did read it. And heard it.
The obvious point is that someone who is going to support a decision to send more troops in to an area when there's very little reason to believe it will accomplish anything other than getting them killed, would do well to think about the human impact. This is to draw a line between the times when personal sacrifice is overshadowed by the greater good, and the times when there is no greater good.
Boxer never said Rice wasn't qualified to make decisions on Iraq because she didn't have children. I defy you to point to where she said or implied it. I dare you. You can't.
It's utterly illogical, given that in the same breath Boxer also pointed out the she herself wasn't going to pay a personal price for Iraq, having no family of the right age to serve there. She certainly wasn't saying that she isn't qualified to make any decisions about Iraq; she obviously thinks she is, or she wouldn't be involved in this at all.
Or, as was once the case, most people would own a home and it would cost a lot less, because the system of housing loans and using them as leverage for short-term investment would be not exist to nearly the scale it does now.
Not that it's necessarily better, for many reasons, but it's not necessarily worse, either. Just different. History shows that when normal people can't get home loans for an amount equal to ten years' gross income, they don't all end up in tenements; houses just cost less, and banks make less money. Normal people may end up benefiting in some ways from the availability of money that is consequent in your outline, but all the wealth created pretty much goes to the bank, with interest.
I think you're underestimating the extent to which the trickle-down religionists believe that selling a Twinkie does create wealth. Or at least, want other people to think so.
Fine, in the early 1940's there was something called the Fairness Doctrine, but it was and is not the same as the Fairness Doctrine that was repealed by the FCC in 1987 and is not the same fairness doctrine being pushed today. Congratulations on calling names, but a Google search result doesn't not make you an expert.
Right off the bat we have serious problems. I would like you to justify your statement that it wasn't the "same" Fairness Doctrine. It was clarified by the FCC over time, obviously, but the policy started there with its basics (equal airtime for opposing views) remaining at the heart of the regulations, uninterrupted, until 1987. And stating a quality of a person (ignorance) is not the same as calling a name. Hopefully this will become apparent upon reflection.
This already exists and the FCC maintains control via this standard. The Fairness Doctrine today does not affect who gets licenses as much as it requires that those who already have licenses must give equal time between two opposing viewpoints.
Would you agree, upon reflection, that you make an absurd proposition by claiming that the Doctrine affects who may keep a license, but not who gets one? It is both logically incongruous, and a non-sequiter. Incongruous because in order to keep a license, one must also be able to get one; a non-sequiter because your programming can obviously not be evaluated until it exists--which means that talking about not affecting who can "get" a license initially is rather.... moot.
They can't just exist, they must both get EQUAL air time. What effect do you think that would have on a stations' profitability? Or, do you even understand the concept of FREE and commercial enterprise? (Your comments tell me you do not.)
It might increase their profitability, as they end up reaching a wider margin of target audiences. This used to be the norm and it worked. Without the Doctrine it *doesn't* work, because stations are segmented--liberal vs conservative--and so people have the luxury of saying, "hah! I'm not going to listen to Mr Conservative on AM1000, because the rest of their shows are liberal and I don't want to support them! I'm only going to listen to Mrs Conservative, Mr Paleocon, and Mr Neocon on AM840 so I'm only supporting conservatives!" And, vice versa.
I'm honestly not trying to be offensive, but your simplistic characterization of free markets makes me think that you're probably fairly young, and hence may not remember that when there was a Fairness Doctrine talk radio was probably even more popular and profitable than it is today (although there are a lot of variables--I'm not attempting to say that business got worse because of the repeal of the FD, just that it certainly did not get any better). As a share of radio listeners, news/talk has declined in the past ten years. Its audience, like that of allegedly liberal network news broadcasts, is increasingly old, and dying off. Any peak that talk radio may have hit in the mid 90s was due mostly to Rush Limbaugh, who would have existed with or without the Fairness Doctrine--people were doing the same schtick since the 60s, he just had the perfect storm of personality and catching the Baby Boomers when they were getting old and grouchy and sick of listening to the same five Zeppelin songs on classic rock radio all the time. Arbitron, as well as other researchers, has a lot of interesting data on this.
More broadly and importantly: "free" enterprise ends where other concerns are greater. You don't have an exclusive right to profit from a citizen in a physical sense (ie, slavery), and there's no reason you should have an exclusive right to profit from a citizen in the non-physical either. Equal protection under the law and government by consent of the governed is incompatible with non-competitive bully-pulpit propaganda. Guess what? With the Fairness Doctrine in effect, you can still watch only your side if you want to. You can change the channel when the other side comes on. All it do
I will pass the cost in some form to the consumer, change my business so that I avoid the tax, or reduce the amount it cost me to do business while still collecting the same amount for the product.
The second and third options are where you actually paying the tax comes in. If "you" is not you, running a small business, but "you" being the executives of huge, multinational corporations such as, say, Exxon-Mobile, those are not really options in a short-term sense. In the long term you might be able to change your business and/or reduce other costs, but there are two things working against you:
1. Inertia, which cannot be underestimated in oligopolies where there is little true competition.
2. A lack of "fat" to trim. These sorts of companies are brutal on expenses. They are minimized wherever possible, on a large scale. The opportunities for cutting costs to any measurable degree exist almost exclusively in long-term R&D, and in day-to-day office waste that is basically impossible to expunge without costing more than is saved (people having an extra martini at lunch on the company dime, stealing reams of printer paper to take home, etc).
Here's a hint: You didn't quote a damn thing that said or implied that only people who are paying a personal price are exclusively "qualified" or have "a right" to anything.
Can you show how you got from A (the quote) to B (your conclusion), because one is not prima facie evidence for the other.
This is all propaganda and bullshit.
I was a good little Limbaugh invisible-hander until I got a real job and left my parents' house...
In some respects it *is* a zero-sum game, and the fact that you don't get that it the problem. Yes, some wealth can be "created". Most transactions, however, do not create wealth; they just move it. When a transaction does create wealth, it is nearly always for the party that already has wealth, IE, has capital to "add value" or to force other people to strip mine someone else's land.
Clueless. Try economics 201, at least. 101 is to set the stage, and just like Newtonian physics, it doesn't work in the real world for anything more interesting than a marble sliding down a ramp. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and all that.
You are utterly ignorant. The Fairness Doctrine had existed, in one form or another, since before most Americans had television in their homes (pre-1050). See: http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/F/htmlF/fairness doct/fairnessdoct.htm
It is a great idea, for many reasons. One of the best is that the airwaves are a limited public resource that are the most effective means in history of reaching people and molding their attitudes and opinions. Remember that crucial fact: it's a limited resource that is vital to our continued existence as free human beings in the United States. There is no reason that anyone should be allowed to "own" it with impunity, any more than someone should be allowed to "own" the airspace over Illinois or the Mississippi River.
There are exactly two choices:
1. A small oligopoly of for-profit companies decides what is acceptable, with day-to-day choices made by "journalists" who only care about propaganda and shouting matches.
2. The people decide what is acceptable.
In case 1, this oligopoly controls the airwaves and does everything to advance the corporate agenda (which is not always, but often, harmful to individuals, and is always harmful to a free government by consent of the people);
In case 2, the people, through their elected representatives, can say "everything is acceptable except propaganda with no counter-argument". That is the Fairness Doctrine.
It should be a no-brainer. The only people that can honestly consider the subject and still be against it, are the delusionists who think "the market" will fix everything.
Also, if you are going to extrapolate from Barbara Boxer to all Democrats, I'm going to extrapolate from David Duke to all Republicans.
Grow up and read a book.
You do agree that consumers are only willing to pay a certain amount for a product, yes?
Do you then see that there is a limit to the cost increases that can be passed along to the consumer?
If suddenly there was a 100% tax on imported silicon boards, and you make high-tech clock radios in a plant in Texas, you are *not* going to be able to pass that along to consumers. Your competitors who either import the finished product rather than the component; and those who fabricate their boards here in the US, will have prices much lower than yours, and you willl go out of business, period, end of story.
So, you'll either change your business or go out of business, but you won't be passing along the cost to the consumer. That's all I'm getting at.
Oil, same thing. Only so much of a cost increase can be passed along to the consumer before people finally start buying more fuel efficient vehicles, including hybrids and electric cars. Or, start relying more on alternative fuels such as biomass and ethanol. Past that point, demand and hence profits will fall drastically with any more "passing of costs" to the consumer, so a smart company is willing to eat that tax, take a 1% ding in their huge profit margin to maintain demand. Does that make sense?