One BIG difference between AT&T and Microsoft that you left out. AT&T was GRANTED monopoly status by the government. That means that if anyone had tried to compete with AT&T before they, shall we say, fell out of favor with their master, that the government would have restrained them from competing by force.
See the difference?
I'd call it more "pro-freedom" than pro-business. There's a moral issue here: Microsoft makes products that consumers and other companies are free to take or leave.
And any interpretation of anti-trust law that tries to abridge their right to offer their products in the way they see fit, is an infringement of their rights. As much as people may hate it, Microsoft doesn't exist for their benefit.
"Pure Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner"
It's strange that some people think that just because W made the decision to restrict _federal_ funding for any more stem cell lines, that there will be no more research. Private biomed companies are free to do all the research they want WITH THEIR OWN MONEY.
The public school system has done a fine job of teaching the tired old New Deal argument that if you don't want tax money to pay for something, you must be against it.
It amazes me to see kooks like Jon try to convince people that Microsoft is more powerful than the government.
Let's take a little tally:
Tactical Nukes held by US Gov't: 10,000
Tactical Nukes held by MS: 0
Warplanes held by US Gov't: 50,000
Warplanes heldy by MS: 0 ... etc. etc.
And don't give me this stuff about money being power...if corrupt politicians take bribes, don't blame the money, blame the politician (and the voters who put him there)
Jon, how many people haven't been bullied at one time in their life? We could certainly improve our kids' lives by reducing the incidence of bullying but, c'mon, it's not an excuse for slaughtering your classmates.
Kids have had bullies and pecking orders forever, but high school mass-murders are relatively new. So the question is: what has changed between then and now? I think it's fairly obvious that people have become increasingly desensitized toward violence and that "murder thy neighbor" video games (along with Tarantino
movies and the like) are evidence of it.
I'm not blaming video games or "Natural Born Killers" for school violence: I'm just saying they are evidence of a declining respect for life in the culture.
Why the callousness towards life? I've got a few ideas.
edw, if I hear one more attack of an idea based on the personality of the person who espoused it, I'm going to give up on the education system.
The question is: does SimCity, by its assumptions, advocate a particular political philosophy? I have no idea, but I do know that we'll never get anywhere by judging ideas based on whether we like or dislike the person who espouses them.
If Adolph Hitler had been the first to come up with the idea that the world was round, he would have been right. If Mussolini had been the first to insist that maggots were caused by fly eggs and not "spontaneous generation", he would have been right, too. Get it?
So though Ayn Rand may have been paranoid, made mountains out of molehills, delusional, etc. that isn't a valid argument against her ideas.
I know this isn't glamorous or integrated, but an encryption program that does really well without the need for public keys is something called Crypt-o-Text, written by Rodney Savard (check him out at www.savard.com) It's basically a notepad that you cut and paste encrypted text to/from. Works for me.
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One BIG difference between AT&T and Microsoft that you left out. AT&T was GRANTED monopoly status by the government. That means that if anyone had tried to compete with AT&T before they, shall we say, fell out of favor with their master, that the government would have restrained them from competing by force. See the difference?
I'd call it more "pro-freedom" than pro-business. There's a moral issue here: Microsoft makes products that consumers and other companies are free to take or leave.
And any interpretation of anti-trust law that tries to abridge their right to offer their products in the way they see fit, is an infringement of their rights. As much as people may hate it, Microsoft doesn't exist for their benefit.
"Pure Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner"
C'mon, corporations don't pay taxes, they simply pass on those charges to consumers.
It's strange that some people think that just because W made the decision to restrict _federal_ funding for any more stem cell lines, that there will be no more research. Private biomed companies are free to do all the research they want WITH THEIR OWN MONEY.
The public school system has done a fine job of teaching the tired old New Deal argument that if you don't want tax money to pay for something, you must be against it.
It amazes me to see kooks like Jon try to convince people that Microsoft is more powerful than the government.
... etc. etc.
Let's take a little tally:
Tactical Nukes held by US Gov't: 10,000
Tactical Nukes held by MS: 0
Warplanes held by US Gov't: 50,000
Warplanes heldy by MS: 0
And don't give me this stuff about money being power...if corrupt politicians take bribes, don't blame the money, blame the politician (and the voters who put him there)
Jon, how many people haven't been bullied at one time in their life? We could certainly improve our kids' lives by reducing the incidence of bullying but, c'mon, it's not an excuse for slaughtering your classmates.
Kids have had bullies and pecking orders forever, but high school mass-murders are relatively new. So the question is: what has changed between then and now? I think it's fairly obvious that people have become increasingly desensitized toward violence and that "murder thy neighbor" video games (along with Tarantino
movies and the like) are evidence of it.
I'm not blaming video games or "Natural Born Killers" for school violence: I'm just saying they are evidence of a declining respect for life in the culture.
Why the callousness towards life? I've got a few ideas.
edw, if I hear one more attack of an idea based on the personality of the person who espoused it, I'm going to give up on the education system.
The question is: does SimCity, by its assumptions, advocate a particular political philosophy? I have no idea, but I do know that we'll never get anywhere by judging ideas based on whether we like or dislike the person who espouses them.
If Adolph Hitler had been the first to come up with the idea that the world was round, he would have been right. If Mussolini had been the first to insist that maggots were caused by fly eggs and not "spontaneous generation", he would have been right, too. Get it?
So though Ayn Rand may have been paranoid, made mountains out of molehills, delusional, etc. that isn't a valid argument against her ideas.
I know this isn't glamorous or integrated, but an encryption program that does really well without the need for public keys is something called Crypt-o-Text, written by Rodney Savard (check him out at www.savard.com) It's basically a notepad that you cut and paste encrypted text to/from. Works for me.