I owe you an apology. Earlier I said that I rolled my eyes when I you used the word 'fascism'. I'm usually skeptical when people use words like that, because it's typically done simply to inflame the discussion. I've changed my tune after the dialogue with Grishnakh. He genuinely seems to believe that Government should have the ability to regulate procreation and that the tyranny of the majority is sufficient justification to strip away freedoms. Subordinate yourself to the state! Society as defined by us knows better than you.
All of what you said can be done with an adopted child.
Ever known anybody that went through the adoption process? It's not an easy undertaking. I watched someone get denied at the last minute for no reason at all. This was after they went through the rectal exam that is the adoption process, answering all manner of questions ranging from their finances and background to their damn sex life. Yes, the Social Worker actually asked about that, using the excuse of "A satisfied husband won't molest the kids." or some such bullshit.
After all this they finally met the kid and became emotionally attached to it, only to be rejected at the last minute as previously mentioned. This process was emotionally scarring to say the least. It reminded me of the women that I've known whom have miscarried. To get that emotionally invested in something and then to lose it at the last moment.
It's not that easy to adopt a kid in the United States.
There's also the matter that some of us actually have an attachment to our family, history, culture, etc and would like to ensure that it survives for another generation. I don't think that's selfish at all, though some would probably disagree.
the current anti-government populace would never accept such a "radical" solution
If the populace is truly opposed to it then the FCC has no business doing it. I don't think they are opposed to it, I think they are just skeptical that the Government will make it better. Historically it has a mixed track record in this regard.
Consider what happens if the Chinese and Indians emulate Americans in commuting fifty miles from McMansions.
Perfectly supportable with electric cars using power generated by carbon neutral sources. We've got at least three of those (hydro, nuclear, wind) available using existing technology. If battery technology turns out not to scale well enough to support this, then there's always synthesized oil, hydrogen, etc.
When they all expect a steady supply of disposable electronics full of rare-earth metals, thrown away when the next version comes out.
Many companies specialize in recycling these sorts of resources. There's also a whole solar system filled with them. Just because it's not currently commercially viable to engage in these enterprises does not mean that it will remain so in the future. A few decades ago it wasn't economically viable to extract oil from tar sands. Today it's done on a routine basis.
When they all expect to fly on holiday every year at a minimum.
And? Planes can't operate on synthetic fuels?
But like the end of civilisation, these things are always fifty years away.
Didn't someone predict that 50 years ago? And 50 before that? Funny, we're still here....
There really aren't any legal or regulatory barriers. It's really the whole financial problem that would prevent new lines, and local regulations to exclusively lease current lines to a given company.
I guess I don't have to point out that you are wrong when you already did it for me.
On telephone poles that are already erected. There's no reason other than collusion to say that only three companies (electric/telco/cable) are allowed to access them. They are placed on public property (utility easements) after all and should not be used for the exclusive benefit of the telecommunications duopoly and power monopoly.
There's a term for couples who practice that: "parents". It doesn't work reliably; women's bodies aren't like clocks, their cycles change unpredictably.
With the correct implementation it's actually reasonably effective. It's a little bit more involved than just marking up the calender and hoping for the best. The best methods measure the woman's body temperature, cervical mucus and other factors. Wikipedia quotes a "typical use" effectiveness of 2-25% for it. That compares to 10-18% for condoms.
It's not perfect, but then nothing is. It is a viable solution for people whom don't want to subject the wife to hormonal birth control or those whose religious beliefs preclude the use of artificial methods.
However, remove that, and you still have the market problem of building a network - even a regional one.
So what? That's a perfectly solvable problem, even with a saturated market. The market for grocery stores is mature and well established but new ones still crop up from time to time. They haven't all merged into one mega "Food Store, Inc." The difference of course is that I generally don't need to outbid a national corporation to receive a license to operate a grocery store.
Finally, it is not tied to Net Neutrality, nor to any regulation around it.
I didn't claim it was. All I said was that regulation tends to protect the status quo and that it gets in the way of innovation. Do you dispute either of those claims? Do you think the internet would have grown into what it is today if the entrepreneurs working in garages had to worry about seeking regulatory approval for their activities?
Where's your freedom to smoke or ingest anything you please, including commonly-growing herbs? Western society doesn't think too much of that particular freedom, and has removed it altogether.
You haven't been watching the news much lately, have you? We are actually making progress on this front. It's slow, but political change always is. I would predict the legalization of pot will happen within our lifetimes.
Again, the Roman Catholic Church is the LAST group you should EVER go to for sexual advice.
Who in this conversation suggested going to them for sexual advice?
Keeping people sexually frustrated might not make them into pedophiles, but it certainly does make them more likely to commit sexual crimes of some type
Says who?
Worse yet, the Church actually tells married couples to be abstinent to avoid having children.
That's not what I've heard from my Catholic friends. The Church encourages natural family planning. I've never heard them encourage a married couple to abstain from sexual activity. Catholic doctrine encourages frequent copulation during marriage.
If society reaches the point where there's too many people, and not enough resources, then your "right" to have 20 kids will be seen as a threat to society's health, and your rights will be curtailed.
The day that happens is the day that freedom and self-determination die. Society does not have the right to tell me what I can and can not do with my body. I also reject the notion that the Earth is anywhere near carrying capacity or that we couldn't come up with technological solutions to the problem if it were. If it wasn't for technology we'd be living in nomadic bands and the Earth's carrying capacity for us would be measured with six or seven digits.
China has already reached this point and enacted restrictions on breeding.
Actually they are nearing the point of ending that policy, because even they have realized that it's doing more harm than good. The next generation of Chinese will have 200,000,000 more males than females. That's unprecedented in human history and it remains to be seen what the consequences will be.
You may not like their limits on freedom (I don't either), but their policies are definitely working.
That remains to be seen. China may be flying high right now, but this is not the first time in Chinese history that they've opened up trade with the rest of the world. Historically when they've done so in the past the coastal regions get rich while the interior stagnates -- exactly what's happening right now. Eventually it falls apart on itself and they withdraw from the world for a few generations. That may or may not happen this go around, but even if it doesn't they still have huge challenges to overcome before we can pronounce that their policies have been successful.
As for the "F" word, I'm not sure you know what it means.
Fascism has many faces but they all require the subordination of the individual to the state. This is incompatible with our way of life.
is that it is a multi-billion dollar proposition to enter that market
Sure, if you want to build a nationwide network. I live in a city of 50,000. It would not cost billions of dollars to enter this market. The only thing stopping someone is the fact that the local government doles out the right to sell service in the form of exclusive franchise agreements. Good luck outbidding Time Warner when the contract comes up.....
How do you propose that society support people who have 12 kids, like the Octomom?
Stop supporting people who can't take care of themselves and the problem solves itself naturally in short order. Yes, that's cold and heartless, but I would take the loss of the welfare state over the loss of my right to control my own body. Telling me how many kids I'm allowed to have is not compatible with Western notions of freedom and self-determination.
What are you basing the "not enough resources" claim on? Energy? There's enough uranium in the oceans to power mankind for millions of years. Food? We already produce more food than we need. It breaks down because of economics and distribution. Even if there was a food shortage, it could be solved overnight by the simple act of reducing our meat consumption.
I'm always skeptical of people that project current resource consumption/production trends and pronounce that the end of civilization is 50 years away. People have been doing this in one form or another since the 1800s and we are still here.
How's abstinence working out for your priests, after all? Apparently, not too well, because they're all secretly molesting young boys.
Abstinence has nothing to do with that. I've been pretty sexually frustrated at times in my life (cue/. living in Mom's basement jokes...) and I've never looked at little boys as an outlet for my energies. One can be horny without becoming a pedophile.
Even unwilling men could easily be subjected to it, perhaps even without their knowledge as they walk in a public area.
Are you serious? I rolled my eyes over the GP's usage of the 'F' word but it's this type of thinking that feeds into that paranoia. If we are to remain a society that values freedom and self-determination you have no right at all to tell me whether or not I can have kids or how many I can have. As the feminists say, "My body, my choice."
I guess it depends on where you live. I've always lived in communities with large numbers of Italian-Americans and the local pizza shop is almost always superior to the chains. As I said, this is one of the things keeping me in the Northeast. Hard to find a good pizza in the rest of the country, at least in my experience.
Don't most hormonal birth control methods stabilize the timing of the menses? An ex of mine had very irregular periods (2-4 months between them) until she started using hormonal birth control. After that she could set her watch by the timing.
I had thought about that too. It would take several weeks before it "kicked in" because of the lag time for sperm production. Shut down your testicles tomorrow and you'll still be fertile until the stored sperm in the epididymis is used up. Given that, I don't see this method as being particularly popular unless you can keep "zapping" the testicles to ensure they don't resume sperm production. If they do then you are looking at another few weeks of having to use alternate birth control methods and in that case what's the damn point?
But, that said, is it really acceptable to tell a network owner what they have to do their network?
A Democrat would say that it is acceptable because we gave them tax credits/land grants/franchise agreements to help them build their networks. Of course it's this bastard marriage of Big Government and Big Business that is slowly eroding all of our personal/economic liberties and I don't regard further codifying this marriage into law with regulations that will protect the duopoly as an improvement.
Except that the internet is not and has never been "the same". If the internet was kept "the same" we'd be having this conversation on Usenet over a period of days while we each waited for the UUCP batch job to run and update the posts.
Do you think that we would have seen all of this innovation on the internet if it had been regulated since day one? Regulation tends to protect the status quo. I'm not sure if it's really the way we want to go with regards to the internet. I've maintained for awhile now that it would be better to remove the legal/regulatory barriers that keep new upstarts from entering the ISP market. I would much rather see a multitude of companies competing for my business than a regulated duopoly that buys off regulators to protect it's business model.
Slashdot Mirror
Your analogy was brilliant, just so you know.
Isn't the disgust of unshaven women amusing? Why would you be disgusted by nature's creation?
I owe you an apology. Earlier I said that I rolled my eyes when I you used the word 'fascism'. I'm usually skeptical when people use words like that, because it's typically done simply to inflame the discussion. I've changed my tune after the dialogue with Grishnakh. He genuinely seems to believe that Government should have the ability to regulate procreation and that the tyranny of the majority is sufficient justification to strip away freedoms. Subordinate yourself to the state! Society as defined by us knows better than you.
Scary stuff.
All of what you said can be done with an adopted child.
Ever known anybody that went through the adoption process? It's not an easy undertaking. I watched someone get denied at the last minute for no reason at all. This was after they went through the rectal exam that is the adoption process, answering all manner of questions ranging from their finances and background to their damn sex life. Yes, the Social Worker actually asked about that, using the excuse of "A satisfied husband won't molest the kids." or some such bullshit.
After all this they finally met the kid and became emotionally attached to it, only to be rejected at the last minute as previously mentioned. This process was emotionally scarring to say the least. It reminded me of the women that I've known whom have miscarried. To get that emotionally invested in something and then to lose it at the last moment.
It's not that easy to adopt a kid in the United States.
There's also the matter that some of us actually have an attachment to our family, history, culture, etc and would like to ensure that it survives for another generation. I don't think that's selfish at all, though some would probably disagree.
the current anti-government populace would never accept such a "radical" solution
If the populace is truly opposed to it then the FCC has no business doing it. I don't think they are opposed to it, I think they are just skeptical that the Government will make it better. Historically it has a mixed track record in this regard.
Consider what happens if the Chinese and Indians emulate Americans in commuting fifty miles from McMansions.
Perfectly supportable with electric cars using power generated by carbon neutral sources. We've got at least three of those (hydro, nuclear, wind) available using existing technology. If battery technology turns out not to scale well enough to support this, then there's always synthesized oil, hydrogen, etc.
When they all expect a steady supply of disposable electronics full of rare-earth metals, thrown away when the next version comes out.
Many companies specialize in recycling these sorts of resources. There's also a whole solar system filled with them. Just because it's not currently commercially viable to engage in these enterprises does not mean that it will remain so in the future. A few decades ago it wasn't economically viable to extract oil from tar sands. Today it's done on a routine basis.
When they all expect to fly on holiday every year at a minimum.
And? Planes can't operate on synthetic fuels?
But like the end of civilisation, these things are always fifty years away.
Didn't someone predict that 50 years ago? And 50 before that? Funny, we're still here....
There really aren't any legal or regulatory barriers. It's really the whole financial problem that would prevent new lines, and local regulations to exclusively lease current lines to a given company.
I guess I don't have to point out that you are wrong when you already did it for me.
On telephone poles that are already erected. There's no reason other than collusion to say that only three companies (electric/telco/cable) are allowed to access them. They are placed on public property (utility easements) after all and should not be used for the exclusive benefit of the telecommunications duopoly and power monopoly.
There's a term for couples who practice that: "parents". It doesn't work reliably; women's bodies aren't like clocks, their cycles change unpredictably.
With the correct implementation it's actually reasonably effective. It's a little bit more involved than just marking up the calender and hoping for the best. The best methods measure the woman's body temperature, cervical mucus and other factors. Wikipedia quotes a "typical use" effectiveness of 2-25% for it. That compares to 10-18% for condoms.
It's not perfect, but then nothing is. It is a viable solution for people whom don't want to subject the wife to hormonal birth control or those whose religious beliefs preclude the use of artificial methods.
However, remove that, and you still have the market problem of building a network - even a regional one.
So what? That's a perfectly solvable problem, even with a saturated market. The market for grocery stores is mature and well established but new ones still crop up from time to time. They haven't all merged into one mega "Food Store, Inc." The difference of course is that I generally don't need to outbid a national corporation to receive a license to operate a grocery store.
Finally, it is not tied to Net Neutrality, nor to any regulation around it.
I didn't claim it was. All I said was that regulation tends to protect the status quo and that it gets in the way of innovation. Do you dispute either of those claims? Do you think the internet would have grown into what it is today if the entrepreneurs working in garages had to worry about seeking regulatory approval for their activities?
Where's your freedom to smoke or ingest anything you please, including commonly-growing herbs? Western society doesn't think too much of that particular freedom, and has removed it altogether.
You haven't been watching the news much lately, have you? We are actually making progress on this front. It's slow, but political change always is. I would predict the legalization of pot will happen within our lifetimes.
Again, the Roman Catholic Church is the LAST group you should EVER go to for sexual advice.
Who in this conversation suggested going to them for sexual advice?
Keeping people sexually frustrated might not make them into pedophiles, but it certainly does make them more likely to commit sexual crimes of some type
Says who?
Worse yet, the Church actually tells married couples to be abstinent to avoid having children.
That's not what I've heard from my Catholic friends. The Church encourages natural family planning. I've never heard them encourage a married couple to abstain from sexual activity. Catholic doctrine encourages frequent copulation during marriage.
If society reaches the point where there's too many people, and not enough resources, then your "right" to have 20 kids will be seen as a threat to society's health, and your rights will be curtailed.
The day that happens is the day that freedom and self-determination die. Society does not have the right to tell me what I can and can not do with my body. I also reject the notion that the Earth is anywhere near carrying capacity or that we couldn't come up with technological solutions to the problem if it were. If it wasn't for technology we'd be living in nomadic bands and the Earth's carrying capacity for us would be measured with six or seven digits.
China has already reached this point and enacted restrictions on breeding.
Actually they are nearing the point of ending that policy, because even they have realized that it's doing more harm than good. The next generation of Chinese will have 200,000,000 more males than females. That's unprecedented in human history and it remains to be seen what the consequences will be.
You may not like their limits on freedom (I don't either), but their policies are definitely working.
That remains to be seen. China may be flying high right now, but this is not the first time in Chinese history that they've opened up trade with the rest of the world. Historically when they've done so in the past the coastal regions get rich while the interior stagnates -- exactly what's happening right now. Eventually it falls apart on itself and they withdraw from the world for a few generations. That may or may not happen this go around, but even if it doesn't they still have huge challenges to overcome before we can pronounce that their policies have been successful.
As for the "F" word, I'm not sure you know what it means.
Fascism has many faces but they all require the subordination of the individual to the state. This is incompatible with our way of life.
is that it is a multi-billion dollar proposition to enter that market
Sure, if you want to build a nationwide network. I live in a city of 50,000. It would not cost billions of dollars to enter this market. The only thing stopping someone is the fact that the local government doles out the right to sell service in the form of exclusive franchise agreements. Good luck outbidding Time Warner when the contract comes up.....
How do you propose that society support people who have 12 kids, like the Octomom?
Stop supporting people who can't take care of themselves and the problem solves itself naturally in short order. Yes, that's cold and heartless, but I would take the loss of the welfare state over the loss of my right to control my own body. Telling me how many kids I'm allowed to have is not compatible with Western notions of freedom and self-determination.
What are you basing the "not enough resources" claim on? Energy? There's enough uranium in the oceans to power mankind for millions of years. Food? We already produce more food than we need. It breaks down because of economics and distribution. Even if there was a food shortage, it could be solved overnight by the simple act of reducing our meat consumption.
I'm always skeptical of people that project current resource consumption/production trends and pronounce that the end of civilization is 50 years away. People have been doing this in one form or another since the 1800s and we are still here.
How's abstinence working out for your priests, after all? Apparently, not too well, because they're all secretly molesting young boys.
Abstinence has nothing to do with that. I've been pretty sexually frustrated at times in my life (cue /. living in Mom's basement jokes...) and I've never looked at little boys as an outlet for my energies. One can be horny without becoming a pedophile.
Even unwilling men could easily be subjected to it, perhaps even without their knowledge as they walk in a public area.
Are you serious? I rolled my eyes over the GP's usage of the 'F' word but it's this type of thinking that feeds into that paranoia. If we are to remain a society that values freedom and self-determination you have no right at all to tell me whether or not I can have kids or how many I can have. As the feminists say, "My body, my choice."
If you want kids, have kids, but don't deny that it's the supremely selfish act.
Maybe for you. I can think of nothing more selfish than to deny the awesomeness of my genes to future generations ;)
Yes... your Slashdot username is based on a FIGURE SKATER... females are out of the picture entirely.
Actually I based on my username on the Vulcan heaven from Star Trek V. "Sha Ka Ree"
The movie sucked but at the time I was too lazy to come up with something better and it was fresh in my mind.
I guess it depends on where you live. I've always lived in communities with large numbers of Italian-Americans and the local pizza shop is almost always superior to the chains. As I said, this is one of the things keeping me in the Northeast. Hard to find a good pizza in the rest of the country, at least in my experience.
random menstrual flow
Don't most hormonal birth control methods stabilize the timing of the menses? An ex of mine had very irregular periods (2-4 months between them) until she started using hormonal birth control. After that she could set her watch by the timing.
I had thought about that too. It would take several weeks before it "kicked in" because of the lag time for sperm production. Shut down your testicles tomorrow and you'll still be fertile until the stored sperm in the epididymis is used up. Given that, I don't see this method as being particularly popular unless you can keep "zapping" the testicles to ensure they don't resume sperm production. If they do then you are looking at another few weeks of having to use alternate birth control methods and in that case what's the damn point?
There's always plan b....... ;)
Yes, I'm going straight to hell.
But, that said, is it really acceptable to tell a network owner what they have to do their network?
A Democrat would say that it is acceptable because we gave them tax credits/land grants/franchise agreements to help them build their networks. Of course it's this bastard marriage of Big Government and Big Business that is slowly eroding all of our personal/economic liberties and I don't regard further codifying this marriage into law with regulations that will protect the duopoly as an improvement.
Except that the internet is not and has never been "the same". If the internet was kept "the same" we'd be having this conversation on Usenet over a period of days while we each waited for the UUCP batch job to run and update the posts.
Do you think that we would have seen all of this innovation on the internet if it had been regulated since day one? Regulation tends to protect the status quo. I'm not sure if it's really the way we want to go with regards to the internet. I've maintained for awhile now that it would be better to remove the legal/regulatory barriers that keep new upstarts from entering the ISP market. I would much rather see a multitude of companies competing for my business than a regulated duopoly that buys off regulators to protect it's business model.