No argument on the hypocrisy. It's an annoyingly stubborn leftover from our puritanical roots, and many of us (fundies, mostly) are all about pretending that our "founding fathers" were possessed of superior "moral fiber". The result is the staggering collection of hangups that make a naked boob a national disaster but someone's bullet-riddled naked spleen just good, clean fun.
On the other hand, I take issue with the notion that 14-16 year olds are capable of understanding sex. In this country they are demonstrably unprepared to engage in sex in any manner approaching responsible, to which the depressing statistics will attest. Maybe, if we had the maturity and intelligence to treat the subject in an open and responsible manner, that would change, but for now (and as a sweeping generalization, I'll admit) it ain't happening. Christ, we still have a large number of idiots who believe that "abstinence only" education works.
Seriously, you rip the wings off of a fighter jet and make it stay on the ground does it become a car?
Yes. It rolls along on it's wheels and not on wings. It is steered by moving it's (usually front) wheels, not by aerodynamic control surfaces like rudders and ailerons. Indeed, whatever aerodynamic features it has are there primarily to ensure that it stays on the ground, rolling on and being steered by it's wheels.
While there may be copper/fiber that is owned by multiple companies in a given patch of ground, this is, almost always, not true in the residential last mile. Where it's profitable, telco's will be happy to dig a trench and pull fiber to your door. That means business locations and typically, only those with enough density to make that profit likely. Back on the block, that ain't happening. Or hadn't you noticed?
Telecom is indeed a natural monopoly. It makes no more sense to allow 1+n companies to string telecom cabling as it does to allow 1+n companies to string electrical distribution lines. Same goes for wireless, because the available spectrum is finite, just like the right-of-way for poles and underground cabling is finite.
As for your assertion that towns near you have multiple cable providers, it has already been observed that such is an example of exactly why it makes more sense to adopt the public utility model. It may be that one provider owns the cable, but multiple providers are able to lease spectrum and/or bandwidth thereon. The happy result is, as you state, lower prices, because the model enables competition where it is practical to do so - on a level playing field where all comers have access to the same infrastructure at competitive rates.
Stupid people gave their personal information to some ASP who promised, in writing, to do "whatever they fucking felt like doing" with that information. Now said stupid people are shocked.
Like a marine field stripping and assembling a weapon? Really?
Handle the assembly of your weapon like that dork did his "server" (in quotes for reasons that should be obvious), and "...you will become dead Marines".
I was with you, right up to the part where you said...
I want my liberty not harassment; nor serfdom to the noble class (US congress/EU parliament).
The elected officials that make up those bodies are not the "noble class" (House of Lords being, in part at least, an arguable exception). The "nobility", or what passes for it, are those who pay to have the members of those bodies elected. Special interests, e.g. large corporations, own those officials and compel them to do their bidding. "The government" is not the problem. The problem is that we have let someone other than "the people" control that government.
Having lived in and visited countries with largely state-run telecom industry and then come home to the USA, I think it should be painfully obvious to all that government does not do a good job at running telecommunications. I know this isn't an attempt at running a telecom, but it sounds like they are going to screw the pooch just by trying to influence the market. The power of the FCC to f-things up is just that immense.
And I'm going to punch the next person that tells me "Broadband is a right". The hell it is. It is a good, a service that must be paid for, same as healthcare. You can not have a right to something that is non-free. Now I'm open to discussion on whether the state should pay for people to have a certain good, but see the above on how well states run telecoms.
Erm..., you've got it wrong. In parts of the U.S. the electrical (and other) utilities are operated by a government entity, a "public utility district" or P.U.D. In other places, the electrical utilities, at least, are run by profiteers. Guess which system works better? And by better, we mean cheaper, more reliable, and of higher quality. That's right, all of the above. The reason for this is simple - accountability. In a marketplace that defines a natural monopoly, the mythical "invisible hand" of market economics is, de facto, not in play. Consumers can't shop for a better deal and, not being share holders, have no other influence on the provider. The P.U.D. customer, on the other hand, has the equivalent of share holder status. He/she has a vote that will elect the officials who will run the "company". The officials' jobs are tied to the customers' satisfaction above all else. And guess what? It works.
So why should telecom be any different? Socialize the ownership and operation of the infrastructure, and let the market, now open to all via that infrastructure, determine what sells and what doesn't.
Yes, but more likely than not many of the key parts (with the most valuable IP) - the processor/SoC, digital tuners, etc, are made for a US owned company by workers in a foreign country...
There. Fixed that for you.
I haven't seen an Intel processor that was actually manufactured in the U.S. in what, 15 years? 20?
As for your argument that RIAA and MPAA are "losing billions" to Chinese piracy, please... First of all, that argument doesn't fly here in the U.S. (no, not every pirated copy is a lost sale), so why should it be any different in a country where the average citizen has even less disposable income than here? More to the point, suggesting that music and movies will solve our trade deficit is, well, stupid, even if those industries' bullshit "lost sales" figures were based on reality.
Anyone who buys drugs, or more importantly, has selected a physician who can be convinced to prescribe said drugs, on the basis of what the drug company put up on a social networking site deserve's to be removed from the gene pool.
It's a trick question. Bradley knows full well that words the specifically say that, are not in The Constitution itself. Oh, they are a matter of record, and yes, in just so many words. Just not in that particular document. That's what Bradley and his ilk bank on - ignorance. They know that that the drooling dittoheads they play to are disinclined, if not incapable, of reading for themselves and learning what the framers of The Constitution had in mind when the drafted that great work.
Fairness? You think Detroit compares to the poverty in the rest of the world? You're very delusional.
Pats of it, sadly, really do. Not that this extreme case negates the argument that most U.S. citizens are almost totally out of touch with the level of suffering experienced by most of their fellow Earthlings.
Far from it, but I think the parent's point was that in a country with as much going for it as the U.S. such festering sores like Detroit should never happen.
By your own admission, most of the Internet now runs on Cisco gear. When this new product is deployed, this will still be true. The product offers nothing revolutionary with regard to the Internet itself other than greater capacity. In other words, it's a bigger pipe. Wow.
Sorry, that's not exactly the fundamental change your marketing people are so breathlessly hyping about.
Cisco built a bigger, faster router.
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along. Move along. Just Cisco marketing engaging their HYPErdrive by claiming to "...change the Internet forever..." and other HYPErbolic phraseology.
ISPs have a strong incentive to reduce heavy bittorrent traffic on their networks...
Actually, they have no such thing. What they should be doing is acting like the carriers that the are and looking at traffic, not at content. They should be all over finding ways to keep the traffic generated at the edge as close to the edge as possible. Torrent does this by design. What's inside the packets should be of no concern to the provider of the tubes, only that the tubes are used as efficiently as possible.
The Cloud will take care that your information is safely encrypted, distributed and secure.
I've seen the inside of "The Cloud". It looks a lot like the "non-cloud" environment. The parts that are different have nothing to do with enhancing security. Fail.
"all automated", eh?
You, sir, have no idea what you are talking about. The parent is right. The process is anything but automated, and deliberately geared to make it difficult for vendors to process claims and receive compensation. I work in the industry and have first-hand knowledge. I see these deliberate inefficiencies heaped upon the vendors (who get the blame for rising costs) every day. You truly have no idea about what really goes on. Alas, you have lots of company at the "private insurance must be more efficient" kool-aid dispenser.
This can be fixed, and it doesn't require a high risk, just due diligence, and hard work.
Which makes it, politically, decidedly non-sexy, and therefore unlikely to be seriously considered as a workable approach. I've seen it with my own eyes, made the same suggestions almost 10 years ago when Richard Clarke and the PCCIP dog and pony show was in town. Blank stares at the suggestion that the PC's of "the masses" were the high ground and could be taken at will by the bad guys. Then, as now, the reality, evident to anyone with a clue when it comes to security issues, is that we are on our own. The government can't/won't get it. Even if they did get it, the bureaucratic nature of that beast renders it incapable of the operational agility required to make much of a difference. The recent cyber war games made that quite clear.
The failures of Health Care, Train infrastructure, and Scientific literacy are _arguably_ the fault of Government INTERVENTION and not the free market.
Utter bullshit.
How is it that, by any credible measure, U.S. healthcare lags behind that ofevery other industrialized western nation when it comes to getting value ("health") from money spent on care? Simple - a free market only works in the theoretical world where consumers are able to make informed decisions about what to buy and from whom. Health care, by it's very nature, defies this requirement. Often, the "purchase decision" must be made in a time frame that does not permit anything even remotely resembling an informed decision. More importantly, the vast majority of health care consumers lack the expertise to effectively "shop", even if such an exercise were practical in most health care scenarios.
It doesn't take a lawyer to realize that the potential liability incurred by willfully ignoring a recall that is tied to issues that have already caused multiple deaths is significant. Imagine hearing the lawyer representing the people who were rear-ended by your runaway Camry as he introduces "Exhibit-A. A document signed by the respondent, wherein he acknowledges that his vehicle has the potential for loss of throttle and braking control, and that said loss of control could result in the respondent or others being injured or seriously killed..."
Get your car fixed. If the update bricks your ride, it's Toyota's problem. If your ride kills people because you ignored a recall, it's your problem.
I quit going to credit unions because I got the worst service at the three I've tried. Terrible customer service, even with medium sized accounts (20-60k), terrible people working there, few ATMs, etc.
I find I get way better service at big banks like Wells Fargo or US Bank.
I've had just the opposite experience. So the point to our two provincialist arguments is, what? Right, non-existent. On the other hand, the business practices of the two institutions (banks and credit unions) are a measurable quantity, and the credit unions win hands down, in most cases. We've recently moved some of our accounts to a local bank and have found the customer service, features, and business practices that leave us with a clear conscience, so there are cases where a bank is a good choice, just not any of the major ones.
A group of "industry scientists" has, they claim, shown conclusively that there is no "space junk problem". Moreover, they have shown that even if there is a problem, it is not man-made but is instead, due to natural changes that are cyclical in nature.
Slashdot Mirror
No argument on the hypocrisy. It's an annoyingly stubborn leftover from our puritanical roots, and many of us (fundies, mostly) are all about pretending that our "founding fathers" were possessed of superior "moral fiber". The result is the staggering collection of hangups that make a naked boob a national disaster but someone's bullet-riddled naked spleen just good, clean fun.
On the other hand, I take issue with the notion that 14-16 year olds are capable of understanding sex. In this country they are demonstrably unprepared to engage in sex in any manner approaching responsible, to which the depressing statistics will attest. Maybe, if we had the maturity and intelligence to treat the subject in an open and responsible manner, that would change, but for now (and as a sweeping generalization, I'll admit) it ain't happening. Christ, we still have a large number of idiots who believe that "abstinence only" education works.
Seriously, you rip the wings off of a fighter jet and make it stay on the ground does it become a car?
Yes. It rolls along on it's wheels and not on wings. It is steered by moving it's (usually front) wheels, not by aerodynamic control surfaces like rudders and ailerons. Indeed, whatever aerodynamic features it has are there primarily to ensure that it stays on the ground, rolling on and being steered by it's wheels.
While there may be copper/fiber that is owned by multiple companies in a given patch of ground, this is, almost always, not true in the residential last mile. Where it's profitable, telco's will be happy to dig a trench and pull fiber to your door. That means business locations and typically, only those with enough density to make that profit likely. Back on the block, that ain't happening. Or hadn't you noticed?
Telecom is indeed a natural monopoly. It makes no more sense to allow 1+n companies to string telecom cabling as it does to allow 1+n companies to string electrical distribution lines. Same goes for wireless, because the available spectrum is finite, just like the right-of-way for poles and underground cabling is finite. As for your assertion that towns near you have multiple cable providers, it has already been observed that such is an example of exactly why it makes more sense to adopt the public utility model. It may be that one provider owns the cable, but multiple providers are able to lease spectrum and/or bandwidth thereon. The happy result is, as you state, lower prices, because the model enables competition where it is practical to do so - on a level playing field where all comers have access to the same infrastructure at competitive rates.
Stupid people gave their personal information to some ASP who promised, in writing, to do "whatever they fucking felt like doing" with that information. Now said stupid people are shocked.
Move along, now. Move along.
Like a marine field stripping and assembling a weapon? Really?
Handle the assembly of your weapon like that dork did his "server" (in quotes for reasons that should be obvious), and "...you will become dead Marines".
I want my liberty not harassment; nor serfdom to the noble class (US congress/EU parliament).
The elected officials that make up those bodies are not the "noble class" (House of Lords being, in part at least, an arguable exception). The "nobility", or what passes for it, are those who pay to have the members of those bodies elected. Special interests, e.g. large corporations, own those officials and compel them to do their bidding. "The government" is not the problem. The problem is that we have let someone other than "the people" control that government.
Having lived in and visited countries with largely state-run telecom industry and then come home to the USA, I think it should be painfully obvious to all that government does not do a good job at running telecommunications. I know this isn't an attempt at running a telecom, but it sounds like they are going to screw the pooch just by trying to influence the market. The power of the FCC to f-things up is just that immense.
And I'm going to punch the next person that tells me "Broadband is a right". The hell it is. It is a good, a service that must be paid for, same as healthcare. You can not have a right to something that is non-free. Now I'm open to discussion on whether the state should pay for people to have a certain good, but see the above on how well states run telecoms.
Erm..., you've got it wrong. In parts of the U.S. the electrical (and other) utilities are operated by a government entity, a "public utility district" or P.U.D. In other places, the electrical utilities, at least, are run by profiteers. Guess which system works better? And by better, we mean cheaper, more reliable, and of higher quality. That's right, all of the above. The reason for this is simple - accountability. In a marketplace that defines a natural monopoly, the mythical "invisible hand" of market economics is, de facto, not in play. Consumers can't shop for a better deal and, not being share holders, have no other influence on the provider. The P.U.D. customer, on the other hand, has the equivalent of share holder status. He/she has a vote that will elect the officials who will run the "company". The officials' jobs are tied to the customers' satisfaction above all else. And guess what? It works.
So why should telecom be any different? Socialize the ownership and operation of the infrastructure, and let the market, now open to all via that infrastructure, determine what sells and what doesn't.
Yes, but more likely than not many of the key parts (with the most valuable IP) - the processor/SoC, digital tuners, etc, are made for a US owned company by workers in a foreign country...
There. Fixed that for you.
I haven't seen an Intel processor that was actually manufactured in the U.S. in what, 15 years? 20?
As for your argument that RIAA and MPAA are "losing billions" to Chinese piracy, please... First of all, that argument doesn't fly here in the U.S. (no, not every pirated copy is a lost sale), so why should it be any different in a country where the average citizen has even less disposable income than here? More to the point, suggesting that music and movies will solve our trade deficit is, well, stupid, even if those industries' bullshit "lost sales" figures were based on reality.
Anyone who buys drugs, or more importantly, has selected a physician who can be convinced to prescribe said drugs, on the basis of what the drug company put up on a social networking site deserve's to be removed from the gene pool.
It's a trick question. Bradley knows full well that words the specifically say that, are not in The Constitution itself. Oh, they are a matter of record, and yes, in just so many words. Just not in that particular document. That's what Bradley and his ilk bank on - ignorance. They know that that the drooling dittoheads they play to are disinclined, if not incapable, of reading for themselves and learning what the framers of The Constitution had in mind when the drafted that great work.
Is New Zealand's government not elected by it's citizens?
There is not truer saying than "We get the government we deserve."
Fairness? You think Detroit compares to the poverty in the rest of the world? You're very delusional.
Pats of it, sadly, really do. Not that this extreme case negates the argument that most U.S. citizens are almost totally out of touch with the level of suffering experienced by most of their fellow Earthlings. Far from it, but I think the parent's point was that in a country with as much going for it as the U.S. such festering sores like Detroit should never happen.
By your own admission, most of the Internet now runs on Cisco gear. When this new product is deployed, this will still be true. The product offers nothing revolutionary with regard to the Internet itself other than greater capacity. In other words, it's a bigger pipe. Wow.
Sorry, that's not exactly the fundamental change your marketing people are so breathlessly hyping about.
Cisco built a bigger, faster router.
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along. Move along. Just Cisco marketing engaging their HYPErdrive by claiming to "...change the Internet forever..." and other HYPErbolic phraseology.
Please...
ISPs have a strong incentive to reduce heavy bittorrent traffic on their networks...
Actually, they have no such thing. What they should be doing is acting like the carriers that the are and looking at traffic, not at content. They should be all over finding ways to keep the traffic generated at the edge as close to the edge as possible. Torrent does this by design. What's inside the packets should be of no concern to the provider of the tubes, only that the tubes are used as efficiently as possible.
The Cloud will take care that your information is safely encrypted, distributed and secure.
I've seen the inside of "The Cloud". It looks a lot like the "non-cloud" environment. The parts that are different have nothing to do with enhancing security. Fail.
"all automated", eh?
You, sir, have no idea what you are talking about. The parent is right. The process is anything but automated, and deliberately geared to make it difficult for vendors to process claims and receive compensation. I work in the industry and have first-hand knowledge. I see these deliberate inefficiencies heaped upon the vendors (who get the blame for rising costs) every day. You truly have no idea about what really goes on. Alas, you have lots of company at the "private insurance must be more efficient" kool-aid dispenser.
Yes, let's.
Medicare overhead - ~5.2%-8% (depending on whose numbers you use)
Private insurers' overhead - ~16%-35% (depending on whose numbers you use)
So keep your government hands off my Medicare...
Oh. Wait...
This can be fixed, and it doesn't require a high risk, just due diligence, and hard work.
Which makes it, politically, decidedly non-sexy, and therefore unlikely to be seriously considered as a workable approach. I've seen it with my own eyes, made the same suggestions almost 10 years ago when Richard Clarke and the PCCIP dog and pony show was in town. Blank stares at the suggestion that the PC's of "the masses" were the high ground and could be taken at will by the bad guys. Then, as now, the reality, evident to anyone with a clue when it comes to security issues, is that we are on our own. The government can't/won't get it. Even if they did get it, the bureaucratic nature of that beast renders it incapable of the operational agility required to make much of a difference. The recent cyber war games made that quite clear.
The failures of Health Care, Train infrastructure, and Scientific literacy are _arguably_ the fault of Government INTERVENTION and not the free market.
Utter bullshit.
How is it that, by any credible measure, U.S. healthcare lags behind that ofevery other industrialized western nation when it comes to getting value ("health") from money spent on care? Simple - a free market only works in the theoretical world where consumers are able to make informed decisions about what to buy and from whom. Health care, by it's very nature, defies this requirement. Often, the "purchase decision" must be made in a time frame that does not permit anything even remotely resembling an informed decision. More importantly, the vast majority of health care consumers lack the expertise to effectively "shop", even if such an exercise were practical in most health care scenarios.
It doesn't take a lawyer to realize that the potential liability incurred by willfully ignoring a recall that is tied to issues that have already caused multiple deaths is significant. Imagine hearing the lawyer representing the people who were rear-ended by your runaway Camry as he introduces "Exhibit-A. A document signed by the respondent, wherein he acknowledges that his vehicle has the potential for loss of throttle and braking control, and that said loss of control could result in the respondent or others being injured or seriously killed..."
Get your car fixed. If the update bricks your ride, it's Toyota's problem. If your ride kills people because you ignored a recall, it's your problem.
I quit going to credit unions because I got the worst service at the three I've tried. Terrible customer service, even with medium sized accounts (20-60k), terrible people working there, few ATMs, etc.
I find I get way better service at big banks like Wells Fargo or US Bank.
I've had just the opposite experience. So the point to our two provincialist arguments is, what? Right, non-existent. On the other hand, the business practices of the two institutions (banks and credit unions) are a measurable quantity, and the credit unions win hands down, in most cases. We've recently moved some of our accounts to a local bank and have found the customer service, features, and business practices that leave us with a clear conscience, so there are cases where a bank is a good choice, just not any of the major ones.
A group of "industry scientists" has, they claim, shown conclusively that there is no "space junk problem". Moreover, they have shown that even if there is a problem, it is not man-made but is instead, due to natural changes that are cyclical in nature.
Best 3 minutes and 22 seconds I've wasted in a long, long time.