Yes, you're tired of people not tolerating your intolerance.
The weird thing about religious beliefs is that people feel that they are not being tolerated when they try to force those beliefs on others, and that somehow it's their right to force their beliefs on others. You are absolutely free to hate gay people. You are free to think women should all wear burkas. It's when you stone a woman in the street for not wearing a burka, or take a gay person's rights away, that you are being intolerant. And it's no surprise that people who disagree with you don't tolerate your behavior.
So the idea that the problem is that we don't "agree" with you is a complete red herring. It's true that we don't agree with you (those of us who don't). But what we are intolerant of is not your opinion, but your actions in forcing your opinion on us.
If someone said that in Alabama in 1957, it would speak directly to their character. I certainly would not hire them for a leadership position if they refused to even talk about why they said that. And that is precisely what Brendan did. I think it's fine to be open to people changing and growing, and when someone has had a change of heart we should honor and even reward that. But what if that person who said what they said in 1957 refused to talk about it? Did not seem to exhibit any remorse? Should we just give them a pass, because the times were what they were? What about the people in 1957 who said "I don't give a damn what people think, every citizen deserves the right to vote?" Treat them both the same?
Being physically restrained from entering the hospital room where your loved one and partner of thirty years is dying, because you and they are the same sex, is WAY THE FUCK WORSE than losing a cushy job because you exercised your right to advocate for a law that would prevent same-sex partners from having the same rights that opposite-sex married partners have. I can barely begin to imagine how bad that would be, and I don't have to find out, because I am straight, and was able to marry my partner over a decade ago.
Er, no. You are free to advocate whatever you think is best for your municipality, state, country, and world, and people are free to disagree with you. And in the process, hopefully we arrive at a place that's generally beneficial. Your freedom is a freedom from government interference. This freedom is crucial. We've seen the government act to chill free speech in the past, and it's very dangerous. You should look into the Alien and Sedition act, for instance. The idea is that if you disagree with the government's decision to go to war, you can be prosecuted. This doesn't work, because it prevents debate, and prevents a plurality of views. It's better for the government to let you say what you want.
What is not the case, however, is that if you say something reprehensible in public, there need not be any consequences for doing so. The only consequence you are free from is prosecution. You can be shunned by people who despise what you stand for. You can be asked to step down from a leadership position. This is one of the strongest powers that the people, as opposed to the government, have. It's been used to unseat despots in the past.
Which bible verse says (or doesn't say) you're not supposed to fuck children? AFAIK that's something our society decided was important—that is, it's not a religious dictate codified as law, but an ethical judgment codified as law.
If the Democrats are working to curtail the rights of others, then you probably should be ashamed to vote for them, and fearful of being judged for doing so, yes. If you are working to give to others rights that you currently have, or fighting so that you and your fellows can have rights that others currently have and you don't, that's praiseworthy. The people who are withholding those rights might still take action against you (there are a fair number of corporations in the U.S. who will punish/fire employees for being openly Democratic). But from a moral standpoint, people who would treat others equally clearly occupy the high ground, and people who want to treat some people better than others do not. I can provide quotes from the New Testament, spoken by Jesus, if you have any questions that need clarification.
Actually peer pressure is one of the ways that persecution stops. This is a classic example of peer pressure punishing someone for engaging in persecution of a minority. This is not analogous to having a disagreement about a matter of fact. This is a case where someone deliberately took action to make sure that someone he doesn't like wouldn't have the same rights he has.
So while I think the basic point you are making has some validity, the problem is that while I would not shun Brendan for actively supporting proposition 8, any more than I would shun someone who opposed freeing the slaves, it would definitely color my attitude toward that person, and the contexts in which I would trust that person to speak on my behalf.
The nature of leadership roles, such as CEO, is that the leader is not being hired solely for their ability to do a particular set of tasks. They are being hired to lead the organization. So a CEO who is willing to take away from others rights that he keeps for himself is simply not someone I'd want to work for. How do I know he's not going to do the same to me? And an organization looking for a CEO ought to be concerned about the direction in which that CEO would lead the organization.
Free speech is a constitutional restriction on the government. It does not mean that you are not subject to criticism. It just means the government can't stop you from speaking. That's _all_ it means.
Excuuse me? You think some Johnny-come-lately power plant, by virtue of having been here for a mere 42 years, has some kind of special right to continue operating outside its safe lifetime at the risk of all the homeowners in the area, just because some of them arrived after the plant was built? As it happens, I grew up about five miles downstream of the VY site, and was 7 when it started operations. But even if that weren't the case, your logic is offensive. A brief incumbency in the neighborhood does not give a corporation special privileges with respect to imposing its externalities on its neighbors. The natural heritage that exists in the general area of the VY power plant has tremendous value, and should not be placed at risk in the service of short-term expediency.
Right, because the NRC is noted as a really strict regulator that never gives nuclear plants the pass on safety issues. Oh wait, no it's not.
It's not accurate to say that most of Vermont's energy came from Vermont Yankee, although certainly quite a bit did. We import a lot of energy from Hydro Quebec, and we are adding renewables at a rapid pace. So yeah, Vermont Yankee going offline will change things, but we'll manage. Indeed, losing a source of subsidized power will create more opportunities for expansion of renewables.
Incorrect. VY sells power to utilities. They are supposed to factor the cost of decommissioning into the cost of the power. The utilities then charge what they have to to pay for the power they buy. The PUC just makes sure that they get a fair return, but no more, based on actual costs.
The tritium leaks aren't likely a problem at all, except that they indicate that the infrastructure is decaying. It's unfortunate that people go "oh noes! tritium" when really they should be going "oh noes! plant is falling apart!"
Um. The plant was originally licensed to operate for 40 years. It is falling apart. Literally: a few years back one of the cooling towers collapsed. Buried pipes are leaking, and nobody knows where the pipes are or where the leaks are. Sources for backup power have dried up because the providers don't want to be held liable in the event of an accident. The idea of extending its operating permit for another 20 years was incredibly irresponsible. The State of Vermont refused to certify its continued operation, but the courts overrode the state.
It is bloody unfortunate that the low cost of shale oil is what finally did the plant in, but closing it is the right move. The only decent alternative would be an extremely costly remodel, which would not likely be cheaper than closing it and building a new one with better technology. The alternative Entergy wanted was to keep running it, and damn the safety concerns, because they wouldn't have to pay if it failed catastrophically anyway.
What would actually happen in this situation is that homeowners would get shafted, just like they always are when government-sponsored corporate welfare goes wrong (e.g., the crash of 2008). So no worries about the government running out of money. As a neighbor to Vermont Yankee, I am keenly aware that if it were to have a serious radiation-releasing accident, I would simply have to walk away from my rather substantial real estate investment. This is why it always pisses me off when people rant about how cheap nuclear is. Of course it's cheap: when you can get local property owners to indemnify you against accidents, you are getting a subsidy, and subsidies are great for the bottom line.
Yes, but if there's a 20 year delay, that's a real problem. It's been on the verge of possible to have something like the Oculus Rift for about ten years, and we're just now seeing real samples. Oculus' patents will prevent competition. So I suspect that the best we are going to get will be hacked Rift headsets that remove the DRM, and people getting sued or chucked in jail as a result.
Yup, this is a fucking disaster. I was really looking forward to using an Oculus Rift. Now it's going to be a vehicle for delivering ads, and we won't see a useful implementation until all the patents expire, if then. The worst part is, Zuckerberg probably doesn't even realize he's killing the product by buying it.
Nope, my 20mbps commercial service from Comcast was _exactly_ the same as my 20mbps home service is, except that I got a static IP address and had to deal with their horrible CPE router instead of using my own very nice CPE router. If you think about it, what you said doesn't even make sense, unless Comcast Business has a completely separate infrastructure to Comcast home, which would be much more expensive, and which I saw no evidence of. We are talking about peering here, and they are charging Netflix for peering, not me, so that's the same whether it's a business connection or a home connection. And the business connection, which did certainly come with a better SLA, cost about 20% more.
You may be talking about a dedicated peering arrangement, but that's not in any way analogous to my home connection—indeed, it's what Netflix is being double-charged for, according to TFA.
Yup. BTW, I found it ironic that you mentioned enforcing differentiated service for users as a cost. I agree that it's a cost, but for some reason ISPs seem to think of it as a profit center.
That would be true of the major cost of providing internet service were the per-packet cost. But in fact the major cost is in installing and maintaining the lines. Next is the cost of running packets through them. That cost breaks down into network management, energy, and infrastructure. In point of fact, there is no real additional per-packet cost. What costs is having enough capacity to carry the packets. So when I buy a network connection that promises 20mbps of capacity, presumably the ISP has 20mbps of capacity for me. At which point you have to ask yourself, what does it matter whether I use the whole capacity or only part of it? Either way, I'm paying for my 20mbps, and I should get to use it.
Of course, the ISP doesn't actually reserve 20mbps for me, at least in the U.S. They figure that for every N customers that are paying for 20mbps, they will have to configure 20mbps of capacity. This is where your talk of socialism comes in: if I actually use my 20mbps that I paid for, and you don't, then in theory you are subsidizing my network use, because there's only 20mbps between N of us (where N could be 10, 20, or even worse).
But even that isn't correct, because it doesn't account for profit. How much of the $80/month I spend on my 20mbps connection is cost, and how much is profit? Suppose N=20. Suppose the profit margin is 90% (which it probably is). That means that 20mbps of actual capacity costs the ISP 0.1*80*N, which is $160. So the ISP is charging the customer $1600 for $160 of bandwidth. They could deliver as much as ten times the bandwidth before their profits went to zero. Chances are that the point at which I am getting Netflix, you are getting Netflix, and all our neighbors are getting Netflix is well below that cutoff, because we typically don't all watch at once.
But even that analysis is wrong, because in fact your ISP does already have 20mbps capacity to your home which is not shared, and is not amortized across other customers. The capacity that is amortized across other customers is core bandwidth: the bandwidth that happens at the peering point, and between that point and the ISP's network distribution center near where you live. That bandwidth is really cheap compared to the bandwidth they have already delivered to the edge of the network: to you.
So in fact it's quite likely that they can deliver full Netflix bandwidth to everyone and still make a profit. So where's your socialism in this picture? It isn't there, unless you mean corporate socialism: government-sponsored monopolies that deliver money-printing profits to those that own them, because we have no choice—we buy Internet from the local monopoly ISP, or we don't get Internet at all. And because we have no choice, Netflix has no choice. They can't go with the ISP that offers them cheaper transit, and use that to drive customers to that ISP, because in most markets there is no that ISP. There is one ISP, zero competition, and a lot of people overpaying for internet service.
Huh. Are you sure they are casual, and that they arrived after you did? I know you want to believe that, but it's just like any claim of ownership over a bit of turf. It's got no basis in reality—it's just something you made up because it pleased you to think it. I've never played with a misogynist group, because I wouldn't want to, but I think I've had just as much fun as you did; possibly more. You can still talk trash and yell booyah when you own the other team. Female gamers don't mind talking trash, in my experience. Just don't make the trash talk misogynistic. It's really not that hard, and it's hardly PC.
I bet if you went into a regular bar and people in the bar started groping you, you wouldn't like it. Or if they started making rude comments about your gender, or your package, or your hair. Women like to game too. So games aren't analogous to gay bars. They are analogous to bars, if we go with the basic theme of your analogy. And what is being proposed here is that the bouncers toss your ass out of the bar if you harass the other patrons.
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Yes, you're tired of people not tolerating your intolerance.
The weird thing about religious beliefs is that people feel that they are not being tolerated when they try to force those beliefs on others, and that somehow it's their right to force their beliefs on others. You are absolutely free to hate gay people. You are free to think women should all wear burkas. It's when you stone a woman in the street for not wearing a burka, or take a gay person's rights away, that you are being intolerant. And it's no surprise that people who disagree with you don't tolerate your behavior.
So the idea that the problem is that we don't "agree" with you is a complete red herring. It's true that we don't agree with you (those of us who don't). But what we are intolerant of is not your opinion, but your actions in forcing your opinion on us.
If someone said that in Alabama in 1957, it would speak directly to their character. I certainly would not hire them for a leadership position if they refused to even talk about why they said that. And that is precisely what Brendan did. I think it's fine to be open to people changing and growing, and when someone has had a change of heart we should honor and even reward that. But what if that person who said what they said in 1957 refused to talk about it? Did not seem to exhibit any remorse? Should we just give them a pass, because the times were what they were? What about the people in 1957 who said "I don't give a damn what people think, every citizen deserves the right to vote?" Treat them both the same?
Being physically restrained from entering the hospital room where your loved one and partner of thirty years is dying, because you and they are the same sex, is WAY THE FUCK WORSE than losing a cushy job because you exercised your right to advocate for a law that would prevent same-sex partners from having the same rights that opposite-sex married partners have. I can barely begin to imagine how bad that would be, and I don't have to find out, because I am straight, and was able to marry my partner over a decade ago.
Er, no. You are free to advocate whatever you think is best for your municipality, state, country, and world, and people are free to disagree with you. And in the process, hopefully we arrive at a place that's generally beneficial. Your freedom is a freedom from government interference. This freedom is crucial. We've seen the government act to chill free speech in the past, and it's very dangerous. You should look into the Alien and Sedition act, for instance. The idea is that if you disagree with the government's decision to go to war, you can be prosecuted. This doesn't work, because it prevents debate, and prevents a plurality of views. It's better for the government to let you say what you want.
What is not the case, however, is that if you say something reprehensible in public, there need not be any consequences for doing so. The only consequence you are free from is prosecution. You can be shunned by people who despise what you stand for. You can be asked to step down from a leadership position. This is one of the strongest powers that the people, as opposed to the government, have. It's been used to unseat despots in the past.
Which bible verse says (or doesn't say) you're not supposed to fuck children? AFAIK that's something our society decided was important—that is, it's not a religious dictate codified as law, but an ethical judgment codified as law.
If the Democrats are working to curtail the rights of others, then you probably should be ashamed to vote for them, and fearful of being judged for doing so, yes. If you are working to give to others rights that you currently have, or fighting so that you and your fellows can have rights that others currently have and you don't, that's praiseworthy. The people who are withholding those rights might still take action against you (there are a fair number of corporations in the U.S. who will punish/fire employees for being openly Democratic). But from a moral standpoint, people who would treat others equally clearly occupy the high ground, and people who want to treat some people better than others do not. I can provide quotes from the New Testament, spoken by Jesus, if you have any questions that need clarification.
Actually peer pressure is one of the ways that persecution stops. This is a classic example of peer pressure punishing someone for engaging in persecution of a minority. This is not analogous to having a disagreement about a matter of fact. This is a case where someone deliberately took action to make sure that someone he doesn't like wouldn't have the same rights he has.
So while I think the basic point you are making has some validity, the problem is that while I would not shun Brendan for actively supporting proposition 8, any more than I would shun someone who opposed freeing the slaves, it would definitely color my attitude toward that person, and the contexts in which I would trust that person to speak on my behalf.
The nature of leadership roles, such as CEO, is that the leader is not being hired solely for their ability to do a particular set of tasks. They are being hired to lead the organization. So a CEO who is willing to take away from others rights that he keeps for himself is simply not someone I'd want to work for. How do I know he's not going to do the same to me? And an organization looking for a CEO ought to be concerned about the direction in which that CEO would lead the organization.
Free speech is a constitutional restriction on the government. It does not mean that you are not subject to criticism. It just means the government can't stop you from speaking. That's _all_ it means.
So is the FPGA something a normal geek could ever get any use out of? It looks cool, but it also looks like the learning curve is nearly vertical.
Excuuse me? You think some Johnny-come-lately power plant, by virtue of having been here for a mere 42 years, has some kind of special right to continue operating outside its safe lifetime at the risk of all the homeowners in the area, just because some of them arrived after the plant was built? As it happens, I grew up about five miles downstream of the VY site, and was 7 when it started operations. But even if that weren't the case, your logic is offensive. A brief incumbency in the neighborhood does not give a corporation special privileges with respect to imposing its externalities on its neighbors. The natural heritage that exists in the general area of the VY power plant has tremendous value, and should not be placed at risk in the service of short-term expediency.
Right, because the NRC is noted as a really strict regulator that never gives nuclear plants the pass on safety issues. Oh wait, no it's not.
It's not accurate to say that most of Vermont's energy came from Vermont Yankee, although certainly quite a bit did. We import a lot of energy from Hydro Quebec, and we are adding renewables at a rapid pace. So yeah, Vermont Yankee going offline will change things, but we'll manage. Indeed, losing a source of subsidized power will create more opportunities for expansion of renewables.
Incorrect. VY sells power to utilities. They are supposed to factor the cost of decommissioning into the cost of the power. The utilities then charge what they have to to pay for the power they buy. The PUC just makes sure that they get a fair return, but no more, based on actual costs.
The tritium leaks aren't likely a problem at all, except that they indicate that the infrastructure is decaying. It's unfortunate that people go "oh noes! tritium" when really they should be going "oh noes! plant is falling apart!"
Um. The plant was originally licensed to operate for 40 years. It is falling apart. Literally: a few years back one of the cooling towers collapsed. Buried pipes are leaking, and nobody knows where the pipes are or where the leaks are. Sources for backup power have dried up because the providers don't want to be held liable in the event of an accident. The idea of extending its operating permit for another 20 years was incredibly irresponsible. The State of Vermont refused to certify its continued operation, but the courts overrode the state.
It is bloody unfortunate that the low cost of shale oil is what finally did the plant in, but closing it is the right move. The only decent alternative would be an extremely costly remodel, which would not likely be cheaper than closing it and building a new one with better technology. The alternative Entergy wanted was to keep running it, and damn the safety concerns, because they wouldn't have to pay if it failed catastrophically anyway.
What would actually happen in this situation is that homeowners would get shafted, just like they always are when government-sponsored corporate welfare goes wrong (e.g., the crash of 2008). So no worries about the government running out of money. As a neighbor to Vermont Yankee, I am keenly aware that if it were to have a serious radiation-releasing accident, I would simply have to walk away from my rather substantial real estate investment. This is why it always pisses me off when people rant about how cheap nuclear is. Of course it's cheap: when you can get local property owners to indemnify you against accidents, you are getting a subsidy, and subsidies are great for the bottom line.
Netflix looks better than DVD resolution on my 1080i 50" TV.
Yes, but if there's a 20 year delay, that's a real problem. It's been on the verge of possible to have something like the Oculus Rift for about ten years, and we're just now seeing real samples. Oculus' patents will prevent competition. So I suspect that the best we are going to get will be hacked Rift headsets that remove the DRM, and people getting sued or chucked in jail as a result.
Yes, it is absolutely more likely that you will see consumer hardware shipping sooner. That's not the problem.
More affordable? Who gives a shit? I don't want ads. I don't want firmware that's 0wned by facebook, that's tracking and monetizing my saccades.
Yup, this is a fucking disaster. I was really looking forward to using an Oculus Rift. Now it's going to be a vehicle for delivering ads, and we won't see a useful implementation until all the patents expire, if then. The worst part is, Zuckerberg probably doesn't even realize he's killing the product by buying it.
Nope, my 20mbps commercial service from Comcast was _exactly_ the same as my 20mbps home service is, except that I got a static IP address and had to deal with their horrible CPE router instead of using my own very nice CPE router. If you think about it, what you said doesn't even make sense, unless Comcast Business has a completely separate infrastructure to Comcast home, which would be much more expensive, and which I saw no evidence of. We are talking about peering here, and they are charging Netflix for peering, not me, so that's the same whether it's a business connection or a home connection. And the business connection, which did certainly come with a better SLA, cost about 20% more.
You may be talking about a dedicated peering arrangement, but that's not in any way analogous to my home connection—indeed, it's what Netflix is being double-charged for, according to TFA.
Yup. BTW, I found it ironic that you mentioned enforcing differentiated service for users as a cost. I agree that it's a cost, but for some reason ISPs seem to think of it as a profit center.
That would be true of the major cost of providing internet service were the per-packet cost. But in fact the major cost is in installing and maintaining the lines. Next is the cost of running packets through them. That cost breaks down into network management, energy, and infrastructure. In point of fact, there is no real additional per-packet cost. What costs is having enough capacity to carry the packets. So when I buy a network connection that promises 20mbps of capacity, presumably the ISP has 20mbps of capacity for me. At which point you have to ask yourself, what does it matter whether I use the whole capacity or only part of it? Either way, I'm paying for my 20mbps, and I should get to use it.
Of course, the ISP doesn't actually reserve 20mbps for me, at least in the U.S. They figure that for every N customers that are paying for 20mbps, they will have to configure 20mbps of capacity. This is where your talk of socialism comes in: if I actually use my 20mbps that I paid for, and you don't, then in theory you are subsidizing my network use, because there's only 20mbps between N of us (where N could be 10, 20, or even worse).
But even that isn't correct, because it doesn't account for profit. How much of the $80/month I spend on my 20mbps connection is cost, and how much is profit? Suppose N=20. Suppose the profit margin is 90% (which it probably is). That means that 20mbps of actual capacity costs the ISP 0.1*80*N, which is $160. So the ISP is charging the customer $1600 for $160 of bandwidth. They could deliver as much as ten times the bandwidth before their profits went to zero. Chances are that the point at which I am getting Netflix, you are getting Netflix, and all our neighbors are getting Netflix is well below that cutoff, because we typically don't all watch at once.
But even that analysis is wrong, because in fact your ISP does already have 20mbps capacity to your home which is not shared, and is not amortized across other customers. The capacity that is amortized across other customers is core bandwidth: the bandwidth that happens at the peering point, and between that point and the ISP's network distribution center near where you live. That bandwidth is really cheap compared to the bandwidth they have already delivered to the edge of the network: to you.
So in fact it's quite likely that they can deliver full Netflix bandwidth to everyone and still make a profit. So where's your socialism in this picture? It isn't there, unless you mean corporate socialism: government-sponsored monopolies that deliver money-printing profits to those that own them, because we have no choice—we buy Internet from the local monopoly ISP, or we don't get Internet at all. And because we have no choice, Netflix has no choice. They can't go with the ISP that offers them cheaper transit, and use that to drive customers to that ISP, because in most markets there is no that ISP. There is one ISP, zero competition, and a lot of people overpaying for internet service.
Huh. Are you sure they are casual, and that they arrived after you did? I know you want to believe that, but it's just like any claim of ownership over a bit of turf. It's got no basis in reality—it's just something you made up because it pleased you to think it. I've never played with a misogynist group, because I wouldn't want to, but I think I've had just as much fun as you did; possibly more. You can still talk trash and yell booyah when you own the other team. Female gamers don't mind talking trash, in my experience. Just don't make the trash talk misogynistic. It's really not that hard, and it's hardly PC.
I bet if you went into a regular bar and people in the bar started groping you, you wouldn't like it. Or if they started making rude comments about your gender, or your package, or your hair. Women like to game too. So games aren't analogous to gay bars. They are analogous to bars, if we go with the basic theme of your analogy. And what is being proposed here is that the bouncers toss your ass out of the bar if you harass the other patrons.