DC cabling is not going to be adequate to carry residential loads. While you could hack together a cheap system, you'll get the quality that you pay for.
While I honestly couldn't care less if homeowners do so without permits, most jurisdictions do require electrical permits and inspections for installing DC systems. The "burn down your house" is hyperbole, but if you have homeowner's insurance you'll likely need to comply with permitting requirements. In the event of a fire or other damage as a result of wiring, your insurance may not pay even if the work you did played no role in the damage to the structure.
Using small, cheap inverters at point-of-use is going to introduce problems. For one thing, the power produced by cheap inverters is by no means high quality. Most cheap inverters produce modified sine-wave power, which can be problematic for certain appliances (computers, battery chargers, A/V electronics, some electrical appliance motors). You're unlikely to be able to find out whether a particular appliance is affected until after you plug it in. Another problem is that transporting DC at lower voltages means you need conductors larger than a typical AC run would require for the same distance. I'm not sure if you've checked copper prices recently, but it adds up pretty quickly.
For an AC-DC system, the best-practice route would be to install one or more inverters at the location of the mains entrance to the house. This allows for typical residential AC wiring practices to be used, which vastly simplify the situation. It'll save time, money, and headaches in the long run, though the system will initially be a fair bit more expensive. Even an on-the-cheap installation is really anything but cheap.
There are lots of little things with wiring that can have serious consequences.
No, there really aren't. There are a few little things and a few big things, and very few of them are arcane. Electrical systems in a typical residence are neither rocket science nor magic. A relatively good primer for residential electrical systems for a typical homeowner would be B&D Complete Guide to Home Wiring.
Where to put the ground? Please not too near a metal anything especially pipe. Why? It'll accelerate corrosion. Possibly greatly. You can screw up your neighborhood's cable this way too.
Please, please tell me you're not an electrician, nor are studying to become one. Either you WAY oversimplified to the point of making your statement meaningless or you know nothing about the ways galvanic reactions are mitigated in residential wiring. Any text on residential wiring will mention the problems and the very simple ways to avoid them ever becoming an issue.
You're right though, there are fire risks if you don't take any care with your wiring practices. Good wiring practices are amazingly simple to learn. That said, most homeowners I'm aware of who undertake electrical work for themselves do not ever bother to do so.
virtual impossibility of knowing all the minutia of one's own particular circumstance
This statement is a crock. Residential wiring is pretty straightforward for anyone willing to crack any number of simplified wiring books. Solar systems are relatively straightforward as well. I'm honestly not sure why the submitter believes that any number of other project descriptions could not be adapted to a solar shed, unless they plan on tying it into something else at a later date.
However, and it's a big one, solar intertie systems can be enormously complicated. If the submitter is planning on later tying the solar system in a shed to one in a house, said person is going about things bass-ackwards. An intertie needs to be planned from the ground up, or the likelihood of large (and costly) problems shoots through the roof.
Many things need to be answered right from the start. Am I installing a system tied to the power grid? A backup system not tied to the grid? Are there going to be batteries involved? Do I plan to convert to AC, and if so do I need clean sine-wave power? Can my charge controller handle the potential expansion of solar panels? Can additional inverters and/or charge controllers be added to the system without a great deal of hassle should the initially chosen models not handle panel additions? Am I just planning to run dedicated DC lighting circuits? These answers should take into account future plans to expand the system, as picking one particular route and then later making substantial changes to the upgrade path can dramatically increase equipment expenses.
Depending on the complexity of the situation and whether the DIYer actually intends to acquire the knowledge necessary to execute high-quality, functionally correct work, professional help may or may not be necessary.
Developing for other browsers != intentionally denying a browser that is capable of displaying the content perfectly as-written.
I'm not saying that developers are lazy for not taking other browsers into consideration, I'm saying they're lazy when the only reason a browser doesn't work on their site is the browser check code.
I didn't actually say anything about actively supporting other browsers, but rather about intentionally restricting display in other browsers that are otherwise perfectly capable of interacting with the site.
Honestly, if a site is designed to tell you that it won't allow use of a browser that can render it perfectly, it is one developed by people who obviously didn't even bother to test the functionality of the site under those other browsers. Developers who are that lazy aren't going to look at weblogs and give a damn about removing meaningless browser restrictions.
Oil comes up because people are prone to conflating issues that are separate. Oil is not used for power generation except for backup generators and in other limited circumstances.
Or is your fleet of (fossil burning) aircraft carriers the center piece of the problem?
I'm not a military apologist (I'd like to see militaries go away), but there are no active fossil-fuel burning aircraft carriers in the US military.
Pretty sure the "race issue" he brought up was merely an example of using bits and pieces to construct a fundamentally flawed argument, not an attempt to call you a racist.
The most fundamental bases that the Constitution was built on have long been applied to (almost) everyone, citizen or not. The argument that non-citizens should be allowed to be imprisoned indefinitely without recourse is nearly the same as saying that non-citizens should be allowed to be summarily executed without any sort of due process or oversight.
This is not about "citizenship rights," nor immigration. This is about fundamental rights that are supposed to be due every human being regardless of origin. Anything less is an absolutely disgusting, inhuman position to take.
Suspicious or not, if they're hidden he did a damn sight better job than he did hiding himself. There may have been evidence at one time that he had weapons of mass destruction after the UN inspectors left. Past tense. Since the posts were written in present tense, that's what I responded to. At the present time, no such evidence exists. Not sure how much clearer it can be written.
Anti-individualistic, the fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity.... The fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.... Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number.... We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a Fascist century. If the nineteenth century was the century of the individual we are free to believe that this is the 'collective' century, and therefore the century of the State.
Torture and/or indefinite detention without charge at the hands of the State seems to fit pretty well into that.
Yes, Iraq possessed chemical weapons in the past. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of chemical weapons were turned over to UN inspectors for destruction. The above statement should really read, "There is no evidence Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction after turning over Iraqi stockpiles for destruction by the UN."
eBay is not intended for online merchants that already have merchant accounts. It is intended for private sellers. Hopefully this change will reduce the prevalence of professional sellers on eBay.
eBay specifically courts people to sell professionally using their service. You might want to read up on their efforts regarding the Power Seller program (just for starters). This statement is completely and utterly baseless.
The majority of fraudulent transactions on eBay are now processed through shady third-party credit card processors.
The majority of fraudulent transactions involve non-delivery of goods. I'll assume you actually meant "fraudulent transactions by buyers," a much, much smaller segment of eBay fraud. Though, since you seem convinced of this, surely you have numbers to back up "shady credit card processors" as being the largest scam vector. Cashier's checks are popular (personally know of a couple of those), as are fraudulent escrow services. It's a lot harder to operate a fraudulent credit merchant account.
A barrier into providing payment processing for online auctions. You can say they are not a monopoly all you like, but the actual fact of the matter is, if this becomes the standard payment model for eBay services nobody will have a choice of payment processors in the current market. It doesn't matter what might happen sometime in the future. This is how the industry exists right now, and the law isn't really much for looking at theoretical potentialities. They may cease to be a monopoly at some point in the future by virtue of market share changes or other things. That still makes absolutely no difference to the state of the industry right this second. eBay has a de facto monopoly market share in their industry, and are using that weight in order to force down the market share of other payment processors. It does not have to be complete. It doesn't even have to be effective. All that matters is that they are attempting to use their dominant market share in the online auction industry to decrease competitor market share in the payment processing industry.
I did not say taking payments was unnecessary to eBay's business. I said requiring customers to use one particular payment model that is owned by eBay is not necessary to eBay's auction business. Their auction business would survive essentially unchanged if PayPal were swapped out by any other payment processor. There is no inherent technical reason requiring a tie of the use of eBay's services to the use of PayPal's services, hence making it an unlawful service bundle (again, in US law).
Put yet another way, eBay is saying that you cannot pay for items through their site using legal negotiable instruments. Once the auction is over, they have no legitimate say in how the contract between buyer and seller is fulfilled. They are attempting to dictate the payment terms in a contract that they are not actually party to.
Now, if eBay operated as an auctionhouse that took payment on behalf of sellers, they would have more legitimate say in what types of payment were accepted. However, they do not.
After reading this I realize now that replying to your post on this topic is an exercise in futility, though since the reply is written I'll post it anyway. You might not like the way bundling laws work (or perhaps you aren't able to differentiate what makes an unlawful bundle vs one that is perfectly legitimate), but they are there nonetheless.
De facto: in actuality, if not actual legal definition. Market share is a key indicator of monopoly status. Using that market share to create an artificial barrier to entry (into payment processing, not auction sites) is an abuse of that status.
To put it another way, requiring use of PayPal could easily be argued to amount to unlawful bundling of a service that is not strictly necessary to eBay's auction business.
Granted this is all from a US legal standpoint, rather than an Australian one.
It's not unethical. What is unethical is not allowing users to use any other form of payment (aside from COD). Why would an online merchant who already has a merchant gateway (credit card processing) account have to pay PayPal's ridiculous fees? There is absolutely zero technical reason for the prohibition, and aside from check/MO/cashier's check fraud, adds zero to the overall safety of transactions.
They are the defacto monopoly in the online auction space, and are using that weight to shut out competitors in another market (payment processing.)
Two replies basically saying the same thing, so I'll pick one at random (or the top one, so not-so-random) to reply to.
Realistically, business is not about gambling but about taking educated risks. If this were to be the case, there might as well be no actuarial tables produced to calculate risk (and premiums would be adjusted upwards accordingly).
The more of a gamble a business enterprise is, the more profit is expected to be returned to an investor who undertakes the gamble. So, either you increase the uncertainty of the likelihood of return and see a corresponding increase in the profit taken out of the venture when it is successful (read: all premiums go WAY up, since that's where all the profit comes from) or everyone exits the game. If this is ostensibly to get more people covered by health insurance, I'm not sure how arguing for either of those is going to help. The only other option is to fundamentally change the way a particular industry works (such as making insurers NFP). Letting people with pre-existing conditions be guaranteed premiums at the rate everyone else pays is going to accomplish one or the other of the former, nothing else.
Like it or not, most businesses don't exist to charitably help people who are "having a hard time." If you're looking for an organization to help, you need to look somewhere that isn't motivated by bottom-line profit. Again, why I support turning insurers into NFPs. That would actually help, instead of being a feel-good measure that might look good politically but would in reality hurt far more people than it would help (either financially or by making medical insurance unavailable at any cost whatsoever).
To address the actual example of gambling given, it would not be like casinos disallowing people from gambling who know the rules. It would be disallowing people from gambling who they know in advance with absolute 100% certainty will take them to the cleaners with zero risk to the person playing the game. That's very different than simply knowing the rules of the game.
Asking an insurer to insure you when you have a known serious medical condition with a known cost would be like asking a fire insurance company to cover your house while it is in the process of burning to the ground. There's not a scrap of difference between the two. They're both harmful to everyone else who is insured and has to cover the cost of that known loss (because the insurer sure as hell isn't going to lower their profit margins to cover it), and they're both completely unrealistic to expect.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but are you saying you think there shouldn't be limitations on pre-existing conditions?
Not that I support the state of the insurance industry, or even anything close to it, but if all the people with severe problems could be guaranteed acceptance for medical insurance it would bankrupt the entire industry. No more health insurance for anyone.
This is a statement coming from someone who would benefit an extraordinary amount from a lack of such limitations, and I still think it's an atrocious idea.
Personally, I'd like to see states require that insurers of any kind operate as NFPs.
You think the seller has rights regarding the OS? They choose to bundle a software product that says "agree to our EULA or return this software to where you obtained it for a full refund." That pretty much limits the seller's rights when they include it in their product offering.
Sadly, that's the truth. Yay for getting cheap products and crappy service at a lower cost because companies rely on bargain-basement labor in oppressive countries.
You, sir, completely fail at comprehension of the purpose of the Constitution and the nature of rights in general.
If you perhaps took the time to read the actual document, you might see how completely off-base your comments are.
You're right, there is no specific right to privacy outlined in the Constitution. However, the fact that one is not specifically protected is completely irrelevent to whether it exists or not.
I hope you're not a US native, but fear that you actually are. The lack of understanding of the basic fundamentals of government among the US population is dismal at best, and comments like this really do show that the US is getting exactly the government it deserves.
There's this part of the US Constitution granting sole authority to regulate interstate commerce to the federal government. Person A from State A buying goods from State B is an act of interstate commerce, and states have no authority to interfere in said transaction. Additionally, one state's laws cannot be applied to an entity that has no presence in that state. Without an entity having presence in a particular state, there is no jurisdictional authority.
There is little in the law that is "fair" when multiple separate legal entities all have sovereignty within their respective borders. Particular states are always able to compete for the dollars of other people by creating more favorable business environments.
I'm usually not in favor of defending federal control of something, but in the case of interstate commerce it makes a lot of sense to prevent individual states from denying access to their citizens of all the benefits of living in a confederation. If people go outside New York to shop, maybe it shows there's something wrong with the priorities of the New York legislature, rather than being "unfair" to local businesses.
For the sake of argument, the verbatim lecture could conceivably be copyrighted. However, the student's interpretation and works produced are not actually the lecture, but a work derived from the ideas imparted by the lecture. They are akin to a research paper in that they are a restatement of the ideas contained within another work. If anyone owns the copyright to the works (lecture notes) produced by the student, it is the student.
If there can be no derivative works from a lecture, that means there can be no derivative works from a paper. The two are equivalent, apart from the medium through which the ideas are delivered.
Slashdot Mirror
Something that starts with basic theory and ends with the ability to wire a house would be perfect.
RTFS? :)
DC cabling is not going to be adequate to carry residential loads. While you could hack together a cheap system, you'll get the quality that you pay for.
While I honestly couldn't care less if homeowners do so without permits, most jurisdictions do require electrical permits and inspections for installing DC systems. The "burn down your house" is hyperbole, but if you have homeowner's insurance you'll likely need to comply with permitting requirements. In the event of a fire or other damage as a result of wiring, your insurance may not pay even if the work you did played no role in the damage to the structure.
Using small, cheap inverters at point-of-use is going to introduce problems. For one thing, the power produced by cheap inverters is by no means high quality. Most cheap inverters produce modified sine-wave power, which can be problematic for certain appliances (computers, battery chargers, A/V electronics, some electrical appliance motors). You're unlikely to be able to find out whether a particular appliance is affected until after you plug it in. Another problem is that transporting DC at lower voltages means you need conductors larger than a typical AC run would require for the same distance. I'm not sure if you've checked copper prices recently, but it adds up pretty quickly.
For an AC-DC system, the best-practice route would be to install one or more inverters at the location of the mains entrance to the house. This allows for typical residential AC wiring practices to be used, which vastly simplify the situation. It'll save time, money, and headaches in the long run, though the system will initially be a fair bit more expensive. Even an on-the-cheap installation is really anything but cheap.
There are lots of little things with wiring that can have serious consequences.
No, there really aren't. There are a few little things and a few big things, and very few of them are arcane. Electrical systems in a typical residence are neither rocket science nor magic. A relatively good primer for residential electrical systems for a typical homeowner would be B&D Complete Guide to Home Wiring.
Where to put the ground? Please not too near a metal anything especially pipe. Why? It'll accelerate corrosion. Possibly greatly. You can screw up your neighborhood's cable this way too.
Please, please tell me you're not an electrician, nor are studying to become one. Either you WAY oversimplified to the point of making your statement meaningless or you know nothing about the ways galvanic reactions are mitigated in residential wiring. Any text on residential wiring will mention the problems and the very simple ways to avoid them ever becoming an issue.
You're right though, there are fire risks if you don't take any care with your wiring practices. Good wiring practices are amazingly simple to learn. That said, most homeowners I'm aware of who undertake electrical work for themselves do not ever bother to do so.
virtual impossibility of knowing all the minutia of one's own particular circumstance
This statement is a crock. Residential wiring is pretty straightforward for anyone willing to crack any number of simplified wiring books. Solar systems are relatively straightforward as well. I'm honestly not sure why the submitter believes that any number of other project descriptions could not be adapted to a solar shed, unless they plan on tying it into something else at a later date.
However, and it's a big one, solar intertie systems can be enormously complicated. If the submitter is planning on later tying the solar system in a shed to one in a house, said person is going about things bass-ackwards. An intertie needs to be planned from the ground up, or the likelihood of large (and costly) problems shoots through the roof.
Many things need to be answered right from the start. Am I installing a system tied to the power grid? A backup system not tied to the grid? Are there going to be batteries involved? Do I plan to convert to AC, and if so do I need clean sine-wave power? Can my charge controller handle the potential expansion of solar panels? Can additional inverters and/or charge controllers be added to the system without a great deal of hassle should the initially chosen models not handle panel additions? Am I just planning to run dedicated DC lighting circuits? These answers should take into account future plans to expand the system, as picking one particular route and then later making substantial changes to the upgrade path can dramatically increase equipment expenses.
Depending on the complexity of the situation and whether the DIYer actually intends to acquire the knowledge necessary to execute high-quality, functionally correct work, professional help may or may not be necessary.
Developing for other browsers != intentionally denying a browser that is capable of displaying the content perfectly as-written.
I'm not saying that developers are lazy for not taking other browsers into consideration, I'm saying they're lazy when the only reason a browser doesn't work on their site is the browser check code.
I didn't actually say anything about actively supporting other browsers, but rather about intentionally restricting display in other browsers that are otherwise perfectly capable of interacting with the site.
You can enable it on a per-site basis.
Honestly, if a site is designed to tell you that it won't allow use of a browser that can render it perfectly, it is one developed by people who obviously didn't even bother to test the functionality of the site under those other browsers. Developers who are that lazy aren't going to look at weblogs and give a damn about removing meaningless browser restrictions.
Oil comes up because people are prone to conflating issues that are separate. Oil is not used for power generation except for backup generators and in other limited circumstances.
Or is your fleet of (fossil burning) aircraft carriers the center piece of the problem?
I'm not a military apologist (I'd like to see militaries go away), but there are no active fossil-fuel burning aircraft carriers in the US military.
Pretty sure the "race issue" he brought up was merely an example of using bits and pieces to construct a fundamentally flawed argument, not an attempt to call you a racist.
The most fundamental bases that the Constitution was built on have long been applied to (almost) everyone, citizen or not. The argument that non-citizens should be allowed to be imprisoned indefinitely without recourse is nearly the same as saying that non-citizens should be allowed to be summarily executed without any sort of due process or oversight.
This is not about "citizenship rights," nor immigration. This is about fundamental rights that are supposed to be due every human being regardless of origin. Anything less is an absolutely disgusting, inhuman position to take.
Suspicious or not, if they're hidden he did a damn sight better job than he did hiding himself. There may have been evidence at one time that he had weapons of mass destruction after the UN inspectors left. Past tense. Since the posts were written in present tense, that's what I responded to. At the present time, no such evidence exists. Not sure how much clearer it can be written.
From your own Wiki link.
Benito Mussolini, coiner of the term fascismo:
Anti-individualistic, the fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity.... The fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.... Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number.... We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a Fascist century. If the nineteenth century was the century of the individual we are free to believe that this is the 'collective' century, and therefore the century of the State.
Torture and/or indefinite detention without charge at the hands of the State seems to fit pretty well into that.
A story regarding Halabja from a senior CIA official at the time it happened: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9902E7DD1638F932A05752C0A9659C8B63
Yes, Iraq possessed chemical weapons in the past. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of chemical weapons were turned over to UN inspectors for destruction. The above statement should really read, "There is no evidence Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction after turning over Iraqi stockpiles for destruction by the UN."
"Even if he won [the opportunity for] a retrial somehow, he'd likely be convicted."
That's what the sentence means.
Given that the US dollar is going to be sliding for the forseeable future in the best of circumstances, that's highly unlikely.
eBay is not intended for online merchants that already have merchant accounts. It is intended for private sellers. Hopefully this change will reduce the prevalence of professional sellers on eBay.
eBay specifically courts people to sell professionally using their service. You might want to read up on their efforts regarding the Power Seller program (just for starters). This statement is completely and utterly baseless.
The majority of fraudulent transactions on eBay are now processed through shady third-party credit card processors.
The majority of fraudulent transactions involve non-delivery of goods. I'll assume you actually meant "fraudulent transactions by buyers," a much, much smaller segment of eBay fraud. Though, since you seem convinced of this, surely you have numbers to back up "shady credit card processors" as being the largest scam vector. Cashier's checks are popular (personally know of a couple of those), as are fraudulent escrow services. It's a lot harder to operate a fraudulent credit merchant account.
A barrier into providing payment processing for online auctions. You can say they are not a monopoly all you like, but the actual fact of the matter is, if this becomes the standard payment model for eBay services nobody will have a choice of payment processors in the current market. It doesn't matter what might happen sometime in the future. This is how the industry exists right now, and the law isn't really much for looking at theoretical potentialities. They may cease to be a monopoly at some point in the future by virtue of market share changes or other things. That still makes absolutely no difference to the state of the industry right this second. eBay has a de facto monopoly market share in their industry, and are using that weight in order to force down the market share of other payment processors. It does not have to be complete. It doesn't even have to be effective. All that matters is that they are attempting to use their dominant market share in the online auction industry to decrease competitor market share in the payment processing industry.
I did not say taking payments was unnecessary to eBay's business. I said requiring customers to use one particular payment model that is owned by eBay is not necessary to eBay's auction business. Their auction business would survive essentially unchanged if PayPal were swapped out by any other payment processor. There is no inherent technical reason requiring a tie of the use of eBay's services to the use of PayPal's services, hence making it an unlawful service bundle (again, in US law).
Put yet another way, eBay is saying that you cannot pay for items through their site using legal negotiable instruments. Once the auction is over, they have no legitimate say in how the contract between buyer and seller is fulfilled. They are attempting to dictate the payment terms in a contract that they are not actually party to.
Now, if eBay operated as an auctionhouse that took payment on behalf of sellers, they would have more legitimate say in what types of payment were accepted. However, they do not.
After reading this I realize now that replying to your post on this topic is an exercise in futility, though since the reply is written I'll post it anyway. You might not like the way bundling laws work (or perhaps you aren't able to differentiate what makes an unlawful bundle vs one that is perfectly legitimate), but they are there nonetheless.
De facto: in actuality, if not actual legal definition. Market share is a key indicator of monopoly status. Using that market share to create an artificial barrier to entry (into payment processing, not auction sites) is an abuse of that status.
To put it another way, requiring use of PayPal could easily be argued to amount to unlawful bundling of a service that is not strictly necessary to eBay's auction business.
Granted this is all from a US legal standpoint, rather than an Australian one.
It's not unethical. What is unethical is not allowing users to use any other form of payment (aside from COD). Why would an online merchant who already has a merchant gateway (credit card processing) account have to pay PayPal's ridiculous fees? There is absolutely zero technical reason for the prohibition, and aside from check/MO/cashier's check fraud, adds zero to the overall safety of transactions.
They are the defacto monopoly in the online auction space, and are using that weight to shut out competitors in another market (payment processing.)
Google Checkout is competition for PayPal, which is owned by eBay. So yes, they are in competition.
Two replies basically saying the same thing, so I'll pick one at random (or the top one, so not-so-random) to reply to.
Realistically, business is not about gambling but about taking educated risks. If this were to be the case, there might as well be no actuarial tables produced to calculate risk (and premiums would be adjusted upwards accordingly).
The more of a gamble a business enterprise is, the more profit is expected to be returned to an investor who undertakes the gamble. So, either you increase the uncertainty of the likelihood of return and see a corresponding increase in the profit taken out of the venture when it is successful (read: all premiums go WAY up, since that's where all the profit comes from) or everyone exits the game. If this is ostensibly to get more people covered by health insurance, I'm not sure how arguing for either of those is going to help. The only other option is to fundamentally change the way a particular industry works (such as making insurers NFP). Letting people with pre-existing conditions be guaranteed premiums at the rate everyone else pays is going to accomplish one or the other of the former, nothing else.
Like it or not, most businesses don't exist to charitably help people who are "having a hard time." If you're looking for an organization to help, you need to look somewhere that isn't motivated by bottom-line profit. Again, why I support turning insurers into NFPs. That would actually help, instead of being a feel-good measure that might look good politically but would in reality hurt far more people than it would help (either financially or by making medical insurance unavailable at any cost whatsoever).
To address the actual example of gambling given, it would not be like casinos disallowing people from gambling who know the rules. It would be disallowing people from gambling who they know in advance with absolute 100% certainty will take them to the cleaners with zero risk to the person playing the game. That's very different than simply knowing the rules of the game.
Asking an insurer to insure you when you have a known serious medical condition with a known cost would be like asking a fire insurance company to cover your house while it is in the process of burning to the ground. There's not a scrap of difference between the two. They're both harmful to everyone else who is insured and has to cover the cost of that known loss (because the insurer sure as hell isn't going to lower their profit margins to cover it), and they're both completely unrealistic to expect.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but are you saying you think there shouldn't be limitations on pre-existing conditions?
Not that I support the state of the insurance industry, or even anything close to it, but if all the people with severe problems could be guaranteed acceptance for medical insurance it would bankrupt the entire industry. No more health insurance for anyone.
This is a statement coming from someone who would benefit an extraordinary amount from a lack of such limitations, and I still think it's an atrocious idea.
Personally, I'd like to see states require that insurers of any kind operate as NFPs.
You think the seller has rights regarding the OS? They choose to bundle a software product that says "agree to our EULA or return this software to where you obtained it for a full refund." That pretty much limits the seller's rights when they include it in their product offering.
Sadly, that's the truth. Yay for getting cheap products and crappy service at a lower cost because companies rely on bargain-basement labor in oppressive countries.
You, sir, completely fail at comprehension of the purpose of the Constitution and the nature of rights in general.
If you perhaps took the time to read the actual document, you might see how completely off-base your comments are.
You're right, there is no specific right to privacy outlined in the Constitution. However, the fact that one is not specifically protected is completely irrelevent to whether it exists or not.
I hope you're not a US native, but fear that you actually are. The lack of understanding of the basic fundamentals of government among the US population is dismal at best, and comments like this really do show that the US is getting exactly the government it deserves.
There's this part of the US Constitution granting sole authority to regulate interstate commerce to the federal government. Person A from State A buying goods from State B is an act of interstate commerce, and states have no authority to interfere in said transaction. Additionally, one state's laws cannot be applied to an entity that has no presence in that state. Without an entity having presence in a particular state, there is no jurisdictional authority.
There is little in the law that is "fair" when multiple separate legal entities all have sovereignty within their respective borders. Particular states are always able to compete for the dollars of other people by creating more favorable business environments.
I'm usually not in favor of defending federal control of something, but in the case of interstate commerce it makes a lot of sense to prevent individual states from denying access to their citizens of all the benefits of living in a confederation. If people go outside New York to shop, maybe it shows there's something wrong with the priorities of the New York legislature, rather than being "unfair" to local businesses.
For the sake of argument, the verbatim lecture could conceivably be copyrighted. However, the student's interpretation and works produced are not actually the lecture, but a work derived from the ideas imparted by the lecture. They are akin to a research paper in that they are a restatement of the ideas contained within another work. If anyone owns the copyright to the works (lecture notes) produced by the student, it is the student.
If there can be no derivative works from a lecture, that means there can be no derivative works from a paper. The two are equivalent, apart from the medium through which the ideas are delivered.