Interesting that you should choose this example because of my experiences in having a building contractor construct a house for me.
The day after the framing was completed -- and had passed inspection -- my wife and I arrived to see how things were coming along. After noticing that the owner of the contracting company was there and that the subcontractor and his crew were packing up, I suggested that we walk outside. After we got outside my wife asked me why and I said "Because Elmer is in there firing the sub."
After they left, Elmer told us that he and his expeditor had noticed a number of things that the crew had been covering up that weren't done to his standards and should not have passed inspection.
Was the sub-contractor licensed? Yep.
Would I have noticed these issues? I hadn't spotted them by then and I have no reason to believe that I would have found them later (unless the house fell down, to use your terminology). After all, the building inspector missed them too.
Would I build a house without going through inspection? Well, my family came close on my parents' house. About the only thing that hasn't been removed and reconstructed is the outer shell and portions of the floors:
1) New concrete block foundation
2) Large amount of new framing inside (including cutting out and headering off a load-bearing wall)
3) New plumbing (supply, waste and vent)
4) New insulation (didn't have any before)
5) New wiring
6) New drywall
All of this work was done by family members who were not licensed and the work was never inspected (it's in a small town where there is no licensing or inspection structure).
It's the knowledge that counts, the codes and inspections are supposed to ensure that the accumulated knowledge of how to build a house is used. Just as having building codes and requiring inspections to enforce the codes doesn't guarantee that a house won't fall down, not having those inspections or the code doesn't mean that it will.
I don't care that I don't have a degree. I do care when someone tells me I can't do what I've been doing for years without one.
I don't see how that's "Degree Envy".
Are there advantages to having a degree? Sure. And if I were nearing 30 instead of 50, I'd think more seriously about obtaining one. Right now, the benefits don't seem to justify the costs. 'Course, pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is one benefit that's hard to pin a value on....
I'm sure that those of us without degrees would be willing to declare a truce. We won't bring the issue up if no one else does.
My mother used to work for a hospital. I can remember her choosing to wait a little bit before going to the walk-in clinic / emergency room based on which Doctor came off or on shift.
That medical degree doesn't guarantee that you're going to get appropriate care.
I work for a Fortune 500 company. I have no engineering degree. In fact, I have no bachelors degree at all. I do the same work as my co-workers who do have engineering degrees. I design various portions of new products (software and firmware mostly).
If I am not a engineer of some sort, what title best describes my occupation?
(My employer calls me a Senior Software Engineer.)
"This time, owners of the "failed" format will simply be expected to purchase their favourite films again, to the benefit of the movie studios."
I think not -- remember DVD-R vs. DVD+R? I'm betting that the result of the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray format war will be devices that play both formats.
A player that supported both formats would have a clear competitive advantage over players that only supported a single format as long as prices are similar (and, in the long run, the cost of the two formats should end up being about the same).
Then why are they concerned about the licensing fees for the current standard? Maybe because they want to sell their stuff outside China? Maybe because they've signed treaties agreeing to honor the patent laws of other countries?
London was served by two private water companies at the time
His publication was of a NEW theory that "the 'Cholera Poison' reproduced in the human body and was spread through the contamination of food or water"
The generally accepted theory was that cholera, like all diseases, was spread by "contaminated vapors".
Given that almost no one thought disease could be spread by water, how would increased "public oversight over a public consumable" have made any difference?
I don't have much trouble with towns doing this if they can't get the companies to serve them. However, I'd prefer the co-op method mentioned by several other posters.
I do have big problems with towns that have multiple broadband providers available jumping in to the broadband business.
The Village of Jackson in Wisconsin keeps insisting that it needs to provide just this kind of mesh network in spite of the fact that both DSL and cable are available AND a local company provides wireless broadband using Motorola's Canopy system.
While I haven't been able to get a price quote from the village yet, their system doesn't sound much cheaper than the wireless already being provided by the local company.
Your law would put a stake in the heart of this foolishness.
I helped out on a Libertarian congressional candidate's campaign back when the Fairness Doctrine was in place. Broadcast media outlets were so worried about the Fairness Doctrine that we actually received less coverage from them than from the local newspaper (the newspaper didn't like us but at least they would mention the candidate).
Our coverage by radio & television (as compared to the two older parties) improved greatly when the Fairness Doctrine went away.
I would like to see third parties be allowed in the debates. I would like to see extensive reform of the system, but not this cycle. There's too much on the line,...
And then 2008 rolls around and you'll say:
I would like to see third parties be allowed in the debates. I would like to see extensive reform of the system, but not this cycle. There's too much on the line,...
I've heard this line of crap every year since I became seriously interested in politics (let's see...One, two, three, four, five, six, oh my god, seven presidential elections ago!).
I'm voting for Feingold because of his opposition to the Patriot Act. The Republican (Michels) keeps bashing Feingold for voting against the Patriot Act and promises that he (Michels) will vote to renew it. Feingold has also been in the front lines of legalizing importation of Canadian drugs while Michels keeps claiming that Feingold is against importation. Frankly, Michels scares the cr*p out of me.
When it comes to the Presidential race, I don't like Bush's policies (he doesn't deserve re-election) and I don't like Kerry's policies (he doesn't deserve election).
As for the "third-party" product verification -- what makes you think I'm going to trust a "third-party" that has Microsoft (or Diebold or GM or ??) as their largest (or only) customer? I'm far more likely to either make my own judgement OR trust an expert of my own selection.
For some reason, a lot of people think that the choice is limited to corporations or government. That's a very limited view of the options -- especially since corporations only exist by government decree.
I doubt that the LP gains many converts from the Democrats.
I've never voted for a Republican for President. I have voted for a Democrat. I'm about to vote for a Democrat for US Senate (Feingold). In fact, I've rarely voted for any Republican. I will most likely be voting for Badnarik for President.
A friend at work just took the SelectSmart test -- Badnarik was the first candidate on his list, the rest were Democrats until Bush showed up in position 17.
The only polling data I've seen on the subject of who Libertarian voters would otherwise cast their votes for indicates that Democrats and Republicans fair equally well (at 30%).
I figure the "lost" Democratic votes are probably no more than 25% of the Libertarian vote, another full 50% is lost Republican votes, the remaining quarter would just stay home if there wasn't a Libertarian candidate.
There's no substiture for actual data -- this Poll shows different. Those who voted for Ed Thompson, the Libertarian candidate for Governor of Wisconsin, were asked who they would have voted for if Ed had not been on the ballot. They responded with:
Given that Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian candidate for President, is on the ballot in more states than either Cobb or Nader, you're leaving out another obvious choice.
I wouldn't vote for either Cobb or Nader -- I disagree with them more often than I do with Bush or Kerry. I will likely vote for Badnarik.
...and we've only got 10 electoral college votes. The big difference is that the western states are already pretty well decided. Wisconsin is nearly even in most polls. Where would you spend the money and time?
That said, many other years the campaigns have ignored Wisconsin.
But, if the electoral college did not exist, what makes you think they'd be any more likely to visit your "less populous Western state"? I think it more likely that they'd stick to areas with larger populations so as to get more bang for their buck.
I've a DIGITREX DSC3000 (a 3.2 megapixel camera with LCD) that I bought at OfficeMax. It cost $20 after rebate. (I had to buy an Epson printer -- but I'd already decided to buy the printer before I found out about the camera deal.)
Hmmm...
I feel a deep, burning need to tread in your bedroom while you're trying to sleep. I'm sure you won't mind since I have as much right to be in your bedroom as you do...
Over the last two years, I've helped develop industrial ethernet products. Ethereal did everything we ever needed (especially after someone wrote the dissector for the protocol we were using).
One of the best features is that we can easily get a customer to install Ethereal on a laptop to help us diagnose industrial control problems without having to travel to the site.
The Reason Foundation is the parent of Reason Magazine.
The Cato Institute is a separate organization.
The Cato Institute was started by a group of folks who eventually decided that the LP was not radical enough while the Reason Foundation always seemed more moderate.
The reason this is interesting is that the Cato Institute seems to get tied to Republicans in news articles more often than does the Reason Foundation.
Go look at the web demo.
The lower right corner shows a race for County Commissioner that asks voters to rank the candidates. The FAQ on the OVC site also states:
==
Can the Open Voting system handle a variety of vote aggregation (counting) methods?
Yes, the mechanisms used in the Open Voting system may be used with virtually all current and proposed systems of counting votes.
Most of the Open Voting system is concerned with the mechanisms for displaying elections and contests to voters, for aggregating the voter's choices onto a printed ballot, for optionally user verification of that ballot, for casting the ballot, and accumulating an electronic form of that data for use by tabulation tabulation software. The actual tabulation software could be extended to handle any of the various proposed vote counting systems.
Some of the proposed systems of counting votes are somewhat intricate and are beyond the scope of this FAQ.
Your argument is that "the only party benefitted by the supression, is the MPAA. Thus, it's a blatantly corrupt law." As a counter-example, consider a regulation prohibiting someone from using a cell phone on his own property that happens to be next door to a radio telescope. Isn't "the only party benefitted by the supression." the astonomers operating the telescope? Does that mean this is also "a blatantly corrupt law"?
I don't think we can judge a law based soley on who benefits from the law. We need to dig deeper.
With the examples you give, the regulations serve to prevent you from polluting the air I need (emissions controls on cars) or interfering with my electronic equipment (frequency and power on a cordless phone). This is supposed to prevent people from damaging the property of others.
In the case of the broadcast flag, the regulation attempts to prevent you from selling copies of a movie to other people. This is supposed to prevent you from selling other people's property and thereby damaging them by preventing them from deriving full value from their property. 'Course, this is only a valid argument if you accept the idea of intellectual property (and even then, there's damage to the fair use concept).
If you want to argue against intellectual property, do so.
If you're a citizen, and you kill someone in self defense, there aren't any problems.
Well, if you think spending lots of money to defend your self isn't a problem... Go search for a few actual cases of self-defense and the aftermath and you'll quickly see a number of horror stories.
Citizens can go about their lives normally and all we ask in a self defense case is "did they THINK their life was in danger and did they THINK that the only way to avoid it was to use deadly force?". That doesn't cut it with cops, sorry. People can make mistakes, surgeons and lawyers and cops CAN'T.
<IANL>
The standard in Wisconsin for the use of deadly force is: Would a reasonable person believe that they (or someone they're defending) was in danger of death or grave bodily injury? The same standard also holds for police. 'Course, police poke into things that the rest of us would probably just walk away from...
</IANL>
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting that you should choose this example because of my experiences in having a building contractor construct a house for me.
The day after the framing was completed -- and had passed inspection -- my wife and I arrived to see how things were coming along. After noticing that the owner of the contracting company was there and that the subcontractor and his crew were packing up, I suggested that we walk outside. After we got outside my wife asked me why and I said "Because Elmer is in there firing the sub."
After they left, Elmer told us that he and his expeditor had noticed a number of things that the crew had been covering up that weren't done to his standards and should not have passed inspection.
Was the sub-contractor licensed? Yep.
Would I have noticed these issues? I hadn't spotted them by then and I have no reason to believe that I would have found them later (unless the house fell down, to use your terminology). After all, the building inspector missed them too.
Would I build a house without going through inspection? Well, my family came close on my parents' house. About the only thing that hasn't been removed and reconstructed is the outer shell and portions of the floors:
1) New concrete block foundation
2) Large amount of new framing inside (including cutting out and headering off a load-bearing wall)
3) New plumbing (supply, waste and vent)
4) New insulation (didn't have any before)
5) New wiring
6) New drywall
All of this work was done by family members who were not licensed and the work was never inspected (it's in a small town where there is no licensing or inspection structure).
It's the knowledge that counts, the codes and inspections are supposed to ensure that the accumulated knowledge of how to build a house is used. Just as having building codes and requiring inspections to enforce the codes doesn't guarantee that a house won't fall down, not having those inspections or the code doesn't mean that it will.
I don't care that I don't have a degree. I do care when someone tells me I can't do what I've been doing for years without one.
I don't see how that's "Degree Envy".
Are there advantages to having a degree? Sure. And if I were nearing 30 instead of 50, I'd think more seriously about obtaining one. Right now, the benefits don't seem to justify the costs. 'Course, pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is one benefit that's hard to pin a value on....
I'm sure that those of us without degrees would be willing to declare a truce. We won't bring the issue up if no one else does.
Depends on what choices I have.
My mother used to work for a hospital. I can remember her choosing to wait a little bit before going to the walk-in clinic / emergency room based on which Doctor came off or on shift.
That medical degree doesn't guarantee that you're going to get appropriate care.
I work for a Fortune 500 company. I have no engineering degree. In fact, I have no bachelors degree at all. I do the same work as my co-workers who do have engineering degrees. I design various portions of new products (software and firmware mostly).
If I am not a engineer of some sort, what title best describes my occupation?
(My employer calls me a Senior Software Engineer.)
"This time, owners of the "failed" format will simply be expected to purchase their favourite films again, to the benefit of the movie studios." I think not -- remember DVD-R vs. DVD+R? I'm betting that the result of the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray format war will be devices that play both formats. A player that supported both formats would have a clear competitive advantage over players that only supported a single format as long as prices are similar (and, in the long run, the cost of the two formats should end up being about the same).
Then why are they concerned about the licensing fees for the current standard? Maybe because they want to sell their stuff outside China? Maybe because they've signed treaties agreeing to honor the patent laws of other countries?
"based on but incompatible with HD DVD"
I'm wondering how they're going to avoid the patents involved (after all, their stated reason for doing this is to avoid the licensing fees).
- London was served by two private water companies at the time
- His publication was of a NEW theory that "the 'Cholera Poison' reproduced in the human body and was spread through the contamination of food or water"
- The generally accepted theory was that cholera, like all diseases, was spread by "contaminated vapors".
Given that almost no one thought disease could be spread by water, how would increased "public oversight over a public consumable" have made any difference?I don't have much trouble with towns doing this if they can't get the companies to serve them. However, I'd prefer the co-op method mentioned by several other posters. I do have big problems with towns that have multiple broadband providers available jumping in to the broadband business.
Hmmm... I like this proposal.
The Village of Jackson in Wisconsin keeps insisting that it needs to provide just this kind of mesh network in spite of the fact that both DSL and cable are available AND a local company provides wireless broadband using Motorola's Canopy system.
While I haven't been able to get a price quote from the village yet, their system doesn't sound much cheaper than the wireless already being provided by the local company.
Your law would put a stake in the heart of this foolishness.
I helped out on a Libertarian congressional candidate's campaign back when the Fairness Doctrine was in place. Broadcast media outlets were so worried about the Fairness Doctrine that we actually received less coverage from them than from the local newspaper (the newspaper didn't like us but at least they would mention the candidate). Our coverage by radio & television (as compared to the two older parties) improved greatly when the Fairness Doctrine went away.
I would like to see third parties be allowed in the debates. I would like to see extensive reform of the system, but not this cycle. There's too much on the line,...
And then 2008 rolls around and you'll say:
I would like to see third parties be allowed in the debates. I would like to see extensive reform of the system, but not this cycle. There's too much on the line,...
I've heard this line of crap every year since I became seriously interested in politics (let's see...One, two, three, four, five, six, oh my god, seven presidential elections ago!).
I'm voting for Feingold because of his opposition to the Patriot Act. The Republican (Michels) keeps bashing Feingold for voting against the Patriot Act and promises that he (Michels) will vote to renew it. Feingold has also been in the front lines of legalizing importation of Canadian drugs while Michels keeps claiming that Feingold is against importation. Frankly, Michels scares the cr*p out of me.
When it comes to the Presidential race, I don't like Bush's policies (he doesn't deserve re-election) and I don't like Kerry's policies (he doesn't deserve election).
As for the "third-party" product verification -- what makes you think I'm going to trust a "third-party" that has Microsoft (or Diebold or GM or ??) as their largest (or only) customer? I'm far more likely to either make my own judgement OR trust an expert of my own selection.
For some reason, a lot of people think that the choice is limited to corporations or government. That's a very limited view of the options -- especially since corporations only exist by government decree.
I doubt that the LP gains many converts from the Democrats.
I've never voted for a Republican for President. I have voted for a Democrat. I'm about to vote for a Democrat for US Senate (Feingold). In fact, I've rarely voted for any Republican. I will most likely be voting for Badnarik for President.
A friend at work just took the SelectSmart test -- Badnarik was the first candidate on his list, the rest were Democrats until Bush showed up in position 17.
The only polling data I've seen on the subject of who Libertarian voters would otherwise cast their votes for indicates that Democrats and Republicans fair equally well (at 30%).
There's no substiture for actual data -- this Poll shows different. Those who voted for Ed Thompson, the Libertarian candidate for Governor of Wisconsin, were asked who they would have voted for if Ed had not been on the ballot. They responded with:
Maybe for YOU...
Given that Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian candidate for President, is on the ballot in more states than either Cobb or Nader, you're leaving out another obvious choice.
I wouldn't vote for either Cobb or Nader -- I disagree with them more often than I do with Bush or Kerry. I will likely vote for Badnarik.
...and we've only got 10 electoral college votes. The big difference is that the western states are already pretty well decided. Wisconsin is nearly even in most polls. Where would you spend the money and time?
That said, many other years the campaigns have ignored Wisconsin.
But, if the electoral college did not exist, what makes you think they'd be any more likely to visit your "less populous Western state"? I think it more likely that they'd stick to areas with larger populations so as to get more bang for their buck.
I've a DIGITREX DSC3000 (a 3.2 megapixel camera with LCD) that I bought at OfficeMax. It cost $20 after rebate. (I had to buy an Epson printer -- but I'd already decided to buy the printer before I found out about the camera deal.)
Hmmm... I feel a deep, burning need to tread in your bedroom while you're trying to sleep. I'm sure you won't mind since I have as much right to be in your bedroom as you do...
Over the last two years, I've helped develop industrial ethernet products. Ethereal did everything we ever needed (especially after someone wrote the dissector for the protocol we were using). One of the best features is that we can easily get a customer to install Ethereal on a laptop to help us diagnose industrial control problems without having to travel to the site.
The Reason Foundation is the parent of Reason Magazine.
The Cato Institute is a separate organization.
The Cato Institute was started by a group of folks who eventually decided that the LP was not radical enough while the Reason Foundation always seemed more moderate.
The reason this is interesting is that the Cato Institute seems to get tied to Republicans in news articles more often than does the Reason Foundation.
Your argument is that "the only party benefitted by the supression, is the MPAA. Thus, it's a blatantly corrupt law." As a counter-example, consider a regulation prohibiting someone from using a cell phone on his own property that happens to be next door to a radio telescope. Isn't "the only party benefitted by the supression." the astonomers operating the telescope? Does that mean this is also "a blatantly corrupt law"?
I don't think we can judge a law based soley on who benefits from the law. We need to dig deeper.
With the examples you give, the regulations serve to prevent you from polluting the air I need (emissions controls on cars) or interfering with my electronic equipment (frequency and power on a cordless phone). This is supposed to prevent people from damaging the property of others.
In the case of the broadcast flag, the regulation attempts to prevent you from selling copies of a movie to other people. This is supposed to prevent you from selling other people's property and thereby damaging them by preventing them from deriving full value from their property. 'Course, this is only a valid argument if you accept the idea of intellectual property (and even then, there's damage to the fair use concept).
If you want to argue against intellectual property, do so.
For those retrofitting a room for a home theater system, finding a power outlet near a speaker will likely be easier than pulling new cables.
I hate clicking on the wrong button!
If you're a citizen, and you kill someone in self defense, there aren't any problems.
Well, if you think spending lots of money to defend your self isn't a problem... Go search for a few actual cases of self-defense and the aftermath and you'll quickly see a number of horror stories.
Citizens can go about their lives normally and all we ask in a self defense case is "did they THINK their life was in danger and did they THINK that the only way to avoid it was to use deadly force?". That doesn't cut it with cops, sorry. People can make mistakes, surgeons and lawyers and cops CAN'T.
<IANL>
The standard in Wisconsin for the use of deadly force is: Would a reasonable person believe that they (or someone they're defending) was in danger of death or grave bodily injury? The same standard also holds for police. 'Course, police poke into things that the rest of us would probably just walk away from...
</IANL>