Yahoo for years has been selling email addresses and or sending out emails on clients behalf. Approximately 90 percent of the email I receive on YAHOO is SPAM. YAHOO spam filter don't work as I have been getting email from the same company for over 2 years
I wonder why you get as much spam as you do, less than 10% of the spam I get with Yahoo! email gets past the bulk filter. I might get one or two spam messages that makes it past the filter a day.
I will leave YAHOO if this goes through.
Though not a founder of any, I am a member of several Yahoo! Groups, in one I posted a TFA about the MS offer. I asked what others thought about it saying if MS did buy Yahoo! I'd resign from all of my groups.
If M$ buys Yahoo I will cancel my paid 'Yahoo Mail' account with them. Nuf said
I'll cancel my free Yahoo! Mail. Oops, I've never seen how to cancel it. However I am a member of some Yahoo! Groups, my homepage is set as Yahoo! Groups' homepage. In one of my groups I posted about the MS offer and said if MS did buy Yahoo! I'd cancel my membership in every group. Then I'd have to find another webmail provider.
And this is definitely consistent with Microsoft's tendency to buy their success, rather than derive it from innovation and products that are actually new.
That was something that got me about TFA, it says "In the past, when Microsoft moved beyond its stronghold in desktop computer software -- and into areas like video games and data-center software -- it has done so mainly with in-house investment, patience and tenacity." About the only thing it sales MS bought was an online ad agency.
The main reason is that they have the whole school going on Blackboard, and most assignments are submitted online.
Yea for some of my classes we had to submit all our work online. However colleges can still use an open format, simply there's no reason to require.docx or any other proprietary document format.
Yes, OO.o saves in Word format, but it doesn't always look the same and it defaults to.odt, which I'm sure would be a pain in the ass because most people wouldn't think to change the type every time.
By using OO.org colleges can save money, even colleges pay for Office. So what if there's costs to switch to OO.org, there's also costs to switch to the new version of Office. They both require users to be trained to use them. And colleges should be training, when they aren't educating students, to be able to work with the rest of the world. And there are many countries who's population can afford MS products. In countries like China and India MS has to practically give Windows and Office away free, well not really free but at tremendously reduced costs. I'm not sure about the "R", Russia, in "BRIC", but in Brazil, India, and China open source is growing. MS has to use bribery to get public officials to use Windows or Office. And despite what complaints people in the US make they have to be able to work in the international arena.
My school (DeVry) decided to throw in the Cost of Vista, XP, and Office into my tuition, so I figured I may as well use it if I'm paying for it.
If you have to pay anyway go ahead and use them. More and more colleges are requiring laptops and apps to use on them. I don't mind that so much bt what I f mind is when they specific specific OSes and apps. What they should do instead is tell the students what they will need in general then allow the students to pick apps that can handle it. Only when there's a specific requirement should a specific app be required. Several years ago I ran into this, at the college I was attending for my major in computer science they required required a class in MS Frontpage. However in the art department for web design they required Dreamweaver. I had used Frontpage before and didn't like it so I was able to get permission to take the Dreamweaver class in place of the Frontpage class. Also the computer classes used Windows and the art classes used Macs.
A company is expected to be profit-oriented, and 'by any means necessary' is the American Way.
Actually "by any means" isn't part of the American way. A good introduction to the American Way is Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America". Thomas Jefferson warned about a corporate aristocracy saying "I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of their country."
Yahoo's in trouble. On the Mac they just don't cut it.
I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro and I have no problem with displaying Yahoo! in Firefox, I hadn't tried Safari though. I'm a member of some Yahoo! Groups and have my homepage set as the Groups homepage.
if you see an announcement that Google is splitting 2 or 3 for 1, call your broker with market orders to sell
That's a bad move. Sometimes when a stock splits the value actually goes up, if a stock is listed for $100 and there's a 2 for 1 split afterwards each stock may be worth $60. I'd be more worried if a corporation said it were going to do a reverse split, combining 2 or more stocks into one.
But the applications are what keep people on Windows. Get people to move to a cross-platform software package, say Open Office, GnuCash, KDE desktop, FireFox browser, vlc and flash for video, and a couple of nice games, then when people have the option of getting Windows or Linux the next time around, Microsoft will lose a customer or have to drop their price to stay in the game.
As much as I'd like this to be true many people will stay with what they are comfortable with. Even if the alternative is free.
Until 2007, I was absolutely 100% for OO.o. Since using 2007, though, they've definitely passed OO.o back up. It's much faster (that was the main reason I went to OO.o) and Word has an absolutely perfect interface. They've finally done something right in the 2007 release.
You still have to pay a lot for Office 2007, unless you get the education version. I'm using native Mac port of OO.o NeoOffice. And though I haven't created a 2007.docx document, though there is an option to save in that format, with it I have downloaded and read Office 2007 documents with NeoOffice without a problem.
#3 there is a big difference between passing a congressional bill and performing constitutional duties- I don't know how much you know about politics, but the ratification of a bill is far less stringent than the passing of an amendment and was made so for good reason as laws are able to be reversed easily and repealed and amendments become a part of the judicial system which governs the land.
You like so many others make the mistake of what the USA Constitution is. It does not say what the federal government must do, it instead limits what it can do. If the Constitution is quiet on something the federal government can do nothing about it. Amendment 10 even states this explicitly, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." So there being nothing in the Constitution about health the federal government can do nothing about it, without an amendment. You want the feds to do something then propose an amendment, don't treat the Constitution like it's toilet paper. That's what Article 5 is there for.
Also, congressional laws are not part of the judicial branch they remain in the arm of the legislative branch with reaching powers over the other branches. when you have an amendment in order to challenge an action it needs to go to the court (judicial) branch in order to be challanged- not so with a bill/law.
I don't know where you went to school but if it was in the USA they taught poorly. Fact is is the USA Constitution setup a system with three legs, congressional, executive, and judicial whereby no one branch of government would have too much power. Fact is is one role of Supreme Court is to make sure the executive and judicial branches do not break the Constitution.
Unfortuantely it didn't take very long before it was broken. Though it may of been broken earlier the first tyme I can recall the Constitution being broken was by President Jackson. In Worcester v. Georgia the US Supreme Court ordered the release of 2 missionaries, Samuel A. Worcester and Elizur Butler, from gaol. Chief Justice John Marshall, writing for the majority, said they had to be released. However Jackson refused to release them saying "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."
don't get me wrong, I want it to happen, but it's wishful thinking
I'm no supporter of Microsoft, I don't like how it is run, but I don't want to see MS put out of business. Instead what I want to see is MS operating in a truly free market and not use it's monopoly position to harm competitors. They should instead compeat with better products.
Sure, MSFT is powerful, but with this Yahoo acquisition, they are taking on premium-weighted debt, and it really raises a question as to whether that asset will justify the premium. Yahoo has been declining, and it is not clear that the mere acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft will succeed where Microsoft has failed in all of their other non-Windows-Office monopoly. That is the $44 billion dollar question, IMHO.
Something I find ironic about MS acquiring Yahoo! to compeat with Google is that Yahoo! was one of Google's angel investors before the Google IPO.
At my uni they make us pay for Vista, XP, Office, Server 2003, etc by adding it to our tuition... and still no one uses it.
Fixed that for ya boss.
Actually MS almost gives Office et alia away to colleges students. This is one way MS achieves lockin, students get used to using them in college then when they start working they expect their employer to use them as well.
one of my courses require it (meh) which means not only using office, but having to boot into windows to do it. its better than OO, for certain, but i just write essays and basic research papers, why its required is beyond me.
First MS Office also runs on OS X. Then with Crossover MS Office, up to 2003, Office for Window will run on both Linux and OS X. However I don't use MS Office at all, on my Mac with 10.4 I use the Mac native port of OO.org, NeoOffice I have had no problem opening even MS Office 2007 documents. When I download a.doc document NeoOffice handles it with no problems.
Yes! This is absolutely correct. If the socialists out there desire a more detailed explanation of why this is correct then I whole heartedly recommend the following article: by Milton Friedman
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
It doesn't say the government can't give faith based groups money for programs like soup kitchens.
I think you're making the same mistake a lot of others make in saying that if the USA Constitution doesn't say government can't do something then it can. However the Constitution in fact limits what government can do, if the Constitution says nothing about it then government has no power to do it. For instance Article 1, Section 1 specifically states what power congress has. Article 2, Section 1 lays out the power of the President. Neither one gives congress or the president the power to give any organization, religious or nonreligious, money for soup kitchens.
Do these countries really have faster speeds than the Broadband Utopia [ieee.org] in northeastern Utah? They offer 30Mbps now and are capable of delivering 100+ Mbps.
In a word: Yes.
100Mb or 1Gb is readilly available in Japan and Sweden (two countries where I have friends that have this in their home) against quite normal prices.
Thanks, now I wonder what the population densities are for each. The US is spread out so much it would be so expensive to bring broadband to everybody, especially to those who's closest neighbors are more than a mile away. However because their densities cities like NYC, Chicago, and LA could inexpensively offer high speed broadband to residents. To lay fiber in these cities is a lot cheaper than laying fiber in suburban and rural locations. I think high speed broadband in these cities should be ubiquitous.
If the people on/. stopped whining and actually did there responsibility and talked to their representatives they would see change.
You may of had good luck with your representatives but it didn't work for me. When I got my first tax forms from the army, it said I was paid $5000 more than I was paid. After jumping through a bunch of hoops going up my chain of command and writing both my senator and representative after 3 years I gave up. I was due a refund and after 3 years I went ahead and filed my taxes for that year. I got the refund and deposited it but the following day the IRS seized my account.
Says who? Who appointed you and vested you with the power to decide what the basis of a capitalist economy is?
Well, I own a dictionary, whereas you apparently do not. This makes me more qualified to speak about the meaning of words. I suggest you check out www.dictionary.com for details.
As the Father of Capitalism and the Free Market I believe Adam Smith is the most qualified to define what capitalism's responsibility is. If his "The Wealth of Nations" isn't informative enough his "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" should do the trick. Or for a debate on what capitalism's responsibility is read a debate in the Libertarian magazine "Reason" with Milton Friedman, Whole Foods' John Mackey, and Cypress Semiconductor's T.J. Rodgers called "Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business".
It's not only capitalism vs communism by the way, you see the same results any time you have a society based on personal achievement vs one based on a lack of personal accountability and victimhood. Look at Israel vs Palestine
Israel vs Palestine is a bad choice, Israel stole much of the land that was valuable and even now controls the water Palestinians need. However Palestinians have to share blame as well. Arafat and other leaders worked to keep Palestinians downtrodden so they could keep their power.
And now, we have in the USA a bunch of social programs to help those downtrodden. Did we have those prior the New Deal?
Those social welfare programs in the US started with the New Deal aren't ready about helping the poor. The way they work actually keeps the needy needy. Someone poor and receiving government assistance is almost trapped. Once they start making enough money they risk losing all the assistance they receive. For instance years ago I had to drop out of college so I could get full tyme employment, the job I finally got didn't allow me to take classes when they were offered. Though I worked full tyme my employer didn't offer health insurance. So I looked into getting my own and the cheapest I found was about 1/3 of my income, and I was trying to save money for tuition. A room mate suggested I check with the county health department, they told me there I made to much money too get any medical assistance. The health worker, just as in the movie "John Q" told me it was too bad I worked. I was left with a bad choice, I could either work and earn money but not enough to get health insurance or I could quit working thus not earning any money but then I'd be able to get medical care. I forewent the insurance and looked for a better job, while still working. Eventually I got a job that allowed me to take a class or two a semester, depending on class schedules.
No, it isn't, because a free market has no responsibility to provide for peoples needs in the first place.
Actually the Father of the Freemarket Adam Smith argued it is the freemarket's responsibility to provide for the people's needs, and that a freemarket was the most efficient way of meeting those needs. If you don't believe me and it hasn't come out for you with his "Wealth of Nations" then read his The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Back in October 2005 Libertarian magazine "Reason" had a debate on this with Milton Friedman, Whole Foods' John Mackey, and Cypress Semiconductor's T.J. Rodgers entitled "Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business".
Just fine thank you. I have a health savings account which I have been putting money into for years now.
Great. Now, how do feel about having to pay twice as much money as the person in the next industrialized nation, and that's before you get to the expense of a serious operation or illness. You're cutting off your nose to spite your face.
People in countries with socialized medicine don't really pay half of what those in the US pay. They pay less out of pocket but they pay more taxes, which makes it look like health care is free. If you think health care is expensive now wait until it's free. True, while Canadians pay less for drugs and people living in border states rent buses to buy their prescription drugs in Canada, that's because the Canadian government buy drugs in bulk and US laws prevent this, many Canadians come to the US when they need an operation. In Canada they can be stuck on a waiting list whereas in the US you can walk into a doctor's office and s/he will schedule an operation within days, if not that day. Less than a few hours ago on CNN Dr Sonja Gupta had a show on the national health care crisis in the US. In it he talked about this. Two other things he talked about caught my attention. One was that how France is considered as having the best, or one of the best, health care systems in the world. However a person with cancer has a greater likelihood of dying from the cancer than a cancer patient in the US very various reasons. Including being stuck on a waiting list.
The second one was that the reason the US has the health care crisis stems from WWII. During the war the US had wage control laws where employers could raise the wages paid to employees. To allow employers to entice people to work for them though they were allowed to offer employees benefits like health insurance, and the government gave tax breaks for offering these benefits. Though the wage control laws are gone, the tax breaks are still in effect. By allowing employers to pay employees more without making them pay more in taxes, employees could then buy health insurance on their own and with so many buying it it would lower the costs of health insurance.
The one problem I have with this is that those with pre-existing conditions may not be able to get health insurance, it may not cover the pre-existing conditions, or it will be too expensive. However since insurance is a risk pool maybe what could be done is to have insurance companies pay into a national insurance pool where people can get coverage. And going back to buying drugs in bulk like Canada does, despite that fact that many people don't like Walmart because of it's size the company is basically demanding pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of drugs they sale to Walmart. I think a statement from Walmart said they wanted the highest price drug sold there to be no higher than $10. Let me see... I didn't find it but here's an article about how Walmart will sell a month's supply of almost 300 drugs for $4. Several years ago I had 3 prescriptions and even with insurance one of the drugs cost me $120 a month. And that's not nearly as high as some drugs cost.
I'm tired of hearing about people claiming the employees never see the benefits of tax breaks. Even if they don't get paid more and the product doesn't get cheaper, the employees can BUY STOCK in their company and reap the benefits of greater profits from less taxes. Why does anyone not own any stock in the company they work for??
Yea like everyone can afford to buy the stocks of their employer, then end up like those employees of Enron who couldn't sell their shares. Some companies do have good ESOPs, Employee Stock Ownership Programs. Years ago I knew 2 people who worked at Home Depot and they had signed up with the ESOP there. Home Depot deducted a little pay from each paycheck and gave them stocks instead. For the most part these programs can be good, if you can afford it. And if the corporation has a Divident Reinvestment Program, DRIP, there's another way to build up a nest egg. But you have to be able to afford it.
The real solution is to tax wealth rather than income, so that investment becomes the best strategy for tax avoidance.
No, I'd say taxing spending is the best strategy, ie a sales tax. If any thing's income should be taxed it's corporations. Corporations grant stockholders limited liability and if they want that it should be taxed. Then have user fees, for instance for building and maintaining roads a tax on fuel should be high enough to pay for the roads.
Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo for years has been selling email addresses and or sending out emails on clients behalf. Approximately 90 percent of the email I receive on YAHOO is SPAM. YAHOO spam filter don't work as I have been getting email from the same company for over 2 years
I wonder why you get as much spam as you do, less than 10% of the spam I get with Yahoo! email gets past the bulk filter. I might get one or two spam messages that makes it past the filter a day.
I will leave YAHOO if this goes through.
Though not a founder of any, I am a member of several Yahoo! Groups, in one I posted a TFA about the MS offer. I asked what others thought about it saying if MS did buy Yahoo! I'd resign from all of my groups.
FalconIf M$ buys Yahoo I will cancel my paid 'Yahoo Mail' account with them. Nuf said
I'll cancel my free Yahoo! Mail. Oops, I've never seen how to cancel it. However I am a member of some Yahoo! Groups, my homepage is set as Yahoo! Groups' homepage. In one of my groups I posted about the MS offer and said if MS did buy Yahoo! I'd cancel my membership in every group. Then I'd have to find another webmail provider.
FalconAnd this is definitely consistent with Microsoft's tendency to buy their success, rather than derive it from innovation and products that are actually new.
That was something that got me about TFA, it says "In the past, when Microsoft moved beyond its stronghold in desktop computer software -- and into areas like video games and data-center software -- it has done so mainly with in-house investment, patience and tenacity." About the only thing it sales MS bought was an online ad agency.
FalconThe main reason is that they have the whole school going on Blackboard, and most assignments are submitted online.
Yea for some of my classes we had to submit all our work online. However colleges can still use an open format, simply there's no reason to require .docx or any other proprietary document format.
Yes, OO.o saves in Word format, but it doesn't always look the same and it defaults to .odt, which I'm sure would be a pain in the ass because most people wouldn't think to change the type every time.
By using OO.org colleges can save money, even colleges pay for Office. So what if there's costs to switch to OO.org, there's also costs to switch to the new version of Office. They both require users to be trained to use them. And colleges should be training, when they aren't educating students, to be able to work with the rest of the world. And there are many countries who's population can afford MS products. In countries like China and India MS has to practically give Windows and Office away free, well not really free but at tremendously reduced costs. I'm not sure about the "R", Russia, in "BRIC", but in Brazil, India, and China open source is growing. MS has to use bribery to get public officials to use Windows or Office. And despite what complaints people in the US make they have to be able to work in the international arena.
FalconMy school (DeVry) decided to throw in the Cost of Vista, XP, and Office into my tuition, so I figured I may as well use it if I'm paying for it.
If you have to pay anyway go ahead and use them. More and more colleges are requiring laptops and apps to use on them. I don't mind that so much bt what I f mind is when they specific specific OSes and apps. What they should do instead is tell the students what they will need in general then allow the students to pick apps that can handle it. Only when there's a specific requirement should a specific app be required. Several years ago I ran into this, at the college I was attending for my major in computer science they required required a class in MS Frontpage. However in the art department for web design they required Dreamweaver. I had used Frontpage before and didn't like it so I was able to get permission to take the Dreamweaver class in place of the Frontpage class. Also the computer classes used Windows and the art classes used Macs.
FalconA company is expected to be profit-oriented, and 'by any means necessary' is the American Way.
Actually "by any means" isn't part of the American way. A good introduction to the American Way is Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America". Thomas Jefferson warned about a corporate aristocracy saying "I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of their country."
Yahoo's in trouble. On the Mac they just don't cut it.
I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro and I have no problem with displaying Yahoo! in Firefox, I hadn't tried Safari though. I'm a member of some Yahoo! Groups and have my homepage set as the Groups homepage.
if you see an announcement that Google is splitting 2 or 3 for 1, call your broker with market orders to sell
That's a bad move. Sometimes when a stock splits the value actually goes up, if a stock is listed for $100 and there's a 2 for 1 split afterwards each stock may be worth $60. I'd be more worried if a corporation said it were going to do a reverse split, combining 2 or more stocks into one.
FalconBut the applications are what keep people on Windows. Get people to move to a cross-platform software package, say Open Office, GnuCash, KDE desktop, FireFox browser, vlc and flash for video, and a couple of nice games, then when people have the option of getting Windows or Linux the next time around, Microsoft will lose a customer or have to drop their price to stay in the game.
As much as I'd like this to be true many people will stay with what they are comfortable with. Even if the alternative is free.
FalconUntil 2007, I was absolutely 100% for OO.o. Since using 2007, though, they've definitely passed OO.o back up. It's much faster (that was the main reason I went to OO.o) and Word has an absolutely perfect interface. They've finally done something right in the 2007 release.
You still have to pay a lot for Office 2007, unless you get the education version. I'm using native Mac port of OO.o NeoOffice. And though I haven't created a 2007 .docx document, though there is an option to save in that format, with it I have downloaded and read Office 2007 documents with NeoOffice without a problem.
Falconthe real lack at Microsoft is not money, but brains.
Microsoft has some good brains, unfortunately none of them are running the company.
Falcon#3 there is a big difference between passing a congressional bill and performing constitutional duties- I don't know how much you know about politics, but the ratification of a bill is far less stringent than the passing of an amendment and was made so for good reason as laws are able to be reversed easily and repealed and amendments become a part of the judicial system which governs the land.
You like so many others make the mistake of what the USA Constitution is. It does not say what the federal government must do, it instead limits what it can do. If the Constitution is quiet on something the federal government can do nothing about it. Amendment 10 even states this explicitly, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." So there being nothing in the Constitution about health the federal government can do nothing about it, without an amendment. You want the feds to do something then propose an amendment, don't treat the Constitution like it's toilet paper. That's what Article 5 is there for.
Also, congressional laws are not part of the judicial branch they remain in the arm of the legislative branch with reaching powers over the other branches. when you have an amendment in order to challenge an action it needs to go to the court (judicial) branch in order to be challanged- not so with a bill/law.
I don't know where you went to school but if it was in the USA they taught poorly. Fact is is the USA Constitution setup a system with three legs, congressional, executive, and judicial whereby no one branch of government would have too much power. Fact is is one role of Supreme Court is to make sure the executive and judicial branches do not break the Constitution.
Unfortuantely it didn't take very long before it was broken. Though it may of been broken earlier the first tyme I can recall the Constitution being broken was by President Jackson. In Worcester v. Georgia the US Supreme Court ordered the release of 2 missionaries, Samuel A. Worcester and Elizur Butler, from gaol. Chief Justice John Marshall, writing for the majority, said they had to be released. However Jackson refused to release them saying "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."
Falcondon't get me wrong, I want it to happen, but it's wishful thinking
I'm no supporter of Microsoft, I don't like how it is run, but I don't want to see MS put out of business. Instead what I want to see is MS operating in a truly free market and not use it's monopoly position to harm competitors. They should instead compeat with better products.
FalconSure, MSFT is powerful, but with this Yahoo acquisition, they are taking on premium-weighted debt, and it really raises a question as to whether that asset will justify the premium. Yahoo has been declining, and it is not clear that the mere acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft will succeed where Microsoft has failed in all of their other non-Windows-Office monopoly. That is the $44 billion dollar question, IMHO.
Something I find ironic about MS acquiring Yahoo! to compeat with Google is that Yahoo! was one of Google's angel investors before the Google IPO.
FalconAt my uni they make us pay for Vista, XP, Office, Server 2003, etc by adding it to our tuition... and still no one uses it.
Fixed that for ya boss.
Actually MS almost gives Office et alia away to colleges students. This is one way MS achieves lockin, students get used to using them in college then when they start working they expect their employer to use them as well.
Falconone of my courses require it (meh) which means not only using office, but having to boot into windows to do it. its better than OO, for certain, but i just write essays and basic research papers, why its required is beyond me.
First MS Office also runs on OS X. Then with Crossover MS Office, up to 2003, Office for Window will run on both Linux and OS X. However I don't use MS Office at all, on my Mac with 10.4 I use the Mac native port of OO.org, NeoOffice I have had no problem opening even MS Office 2007 documents. When I download a .doc document NeoOffice handles it with no problems.
FalconYes! This is absolutely correct. If the socialists out there desire a more detailed explanation of why this is correct then I whole heartedly recommend the following article: by Milton Friedman
Thanks for TFA link.
FalconThe first amendment says:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
It doesn't say the government can't give faith based groups money for programs like soup kitchens.
I think you're making the same mistake a lot of others make in saying that if the USA Constitution doesn't say government can't do something then it can. However the Constitution in fact limits what government can do, if the Constitution says nothing about it then government has no power to do it. For instance Article 1, Section 1 specifically states what power congress has. Article 2, Section 1 lays out the power of the President. Neither one gives congress or the president the power to give any organization, religious or nonreligious, money for soup kitchens.
FalconDo these countries really have faster speeds than the Broadband Utopia [ieee.org] in northeastern Utah? They offer 30Mbps now and are capable of delivering 100+ Mbps.
In a word: Yes.
100Mb or 1Gb is readilly available in Japan and Sweden (two countries where I have friends that have this in their home) against quite normal prices.
Thanks, now I wonder what the population densities are for each. The US is spread out so much it would be so expensive to bring broadband to everybody, especially to those who's closest neighbors are more than a mile away. However because their densities cities like NYC, Chicago, and LA could inexpensively offer high speed broadband to residents. To lay fiber in these cities is a lot cheaper than laying fiber in suburban and rural locations. I think high speed broadband in these cities should be ubiquitous.
FalconIf the people on /. stopped whining and actually did there responsibility and talked to their representatives they would see change.
You may of had good luck with your representatives but it didn't work for me. When I got my first tax forms from the army, it said I was paid $5000 more than I was paid. After jumping through a bunch of hoops going up my chain of command and writing both my senator and representative after 3 years I gave up. I was due a refund and after 3 years I went ahead and filed my taxes for that year. I got the refund and deposited it but the following day the IRS seized my account.
FalconSays who? Who appointed you and vested you with the power to decide what the basis of a capitalist economy is?
Well, I own a dictionary, whereas you apparently do not. This makes me more qualified to speak about the meaning of words. I suggest you check out www.dictionary.com for details.
As the Father of Capitalism and the Free Market I believe Adam Smith is the most qualified to define what capitalism's responsibility is. If his "The Wealth of Nations" isn't informative enough his "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" should do the trick. Or for a debate on what capitalism's responsibility is read a debate in the Libertarian magazine "Reason" with Milton Friedman, Whole Foods' John Mackey, and Cypress Semiconductor's T.J. Rodgers called "Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business".
FalconIt's not only capitalism vs communism by the way, you see the same results any time you have a society based on personal achievement vs one based on a lack of personal accountability and victimhood. Look at Israel vs Palestine
Israel vs Palestine is a bad choice, Israel stole much of the land that was valuable and even now controls the water Palestinians need. However Palestinians have to share blame as well. Arafat and other leaders worked to keep Palestinians downtrodden so they could keep their power.
Otherwise I generally agree with you.
FalconAnd now, we have in the USA a bunch of social programs to help those downtrodden. Did we have those prior the New Deal?
Those social welfare programs in the US started with the New Deal aren't ready about helping the poor. The way they work actually keeps the needy needy. Someone poor and receiving government assistance is almost trapped. Once they start making enough money they risk losing all the assistance they receive. For instance years ago I had to drop out of college so I could get full tyme employment, the job I finally got didn't allow me to take classes when they were offered. Though I worked full tyme my employer didn't offer health insurance. So I looked into getting my own and the cheapest I found was about 1/3 of my income, and I was trying to save money for tuition. A room mate suggested I check with the county health department, they told me there I made to much money too get any medical assistance. The health worker, just as in the movie "John Q" told me it was too bad I worked. I was left with a bad choice, I could either work and earn money but not enough to get health insurance or I could quit working thus not earning any money but then I'd be able to get medical care. I forewent the insurance and looked for a better job, while still working. Eventually I got a job that allowed me to take a class or two a semester, depending on class schedules.
FalconNo, it isn't, because a free market has no responsibility to provide for peoples needs in the first place.
Actually the Father of the Freemarket Adam Smith argued it is the freemarket's responsibility to provide for the people's needs, and that a freemarket was the most efficient way of meeting those needs. If you don't believe me and it hasn't come out for you with his "Wealth of Nations" then read his The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Back in October 2005 Libertarian magazine "Reason" had a debate on this with Milton Friedman, Whole Foods' John Mackey, and Cypress Semiconductor's T.J. Rodgers entitled "Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business".
FalconJust fine thank you. I have a health savings account which I have been putting money into for years now.
Great. Now, how do feel about having to pay twice as much money as the person in the next industrialized nation, and that's before you get to the expense of a serious operation or illness. You're cutting off your nose to spite your face.
People in countries with socialized medicine don't really pay half of what those in the US pay. They pay less out of pocket but they pay more taxes, which makes it look like health care is free. If you think health care is expensive now wait until it's free. True, while Canadians pay less for drugs and people living in border states rent buses to buy their prescription drugs in Canada, that's because the Canadian government buy drugs in bulk and US laws prevent this, many Canadians come to the US when they need an operation. In Canada they can be stuck on a waiting list whereas in the US you can walk into a doctor's office and s/he will schedule an operation within days, if not that day. Less than a few hours ago on CNN Dr Sonja Gupta had a show on the national health care crisis in the US. In it he talked about this. Two other things he talked about caught my attention. One was that how France is considered as having the best, or one of the best, health care systems in the world. However a person with cancer has a greater likelihood of dying from the cancer than a cancer patient in the US very various reasons. Including being stuck on a waiting list.
The second one was that the reason the US has the health care crisis stems from WWII. During the war the US had wage control laws where employers could raise the wages paid to employees. To allow employers to entice people to work for them though they were allowed to offer employees benefits like health insurance, and the government gave tax breaks for offering these benefits. Though the wage control laws are gone, the tax breaks are still in effect. By allowing employers to pay employees more without making them pay more in taxes, employees could then buy health insurance on their own and with so many buying it it would lower the costs of health insurance.
The one problem I have with this is that those with pre-existing conditions may not be able to get health insurance, it may not cover the pre-existing conditions, or it will be too expensive. However since insurance is a risk pool maybe what could be done is to have insurance companies pay into a national insurance pool where people can get coverage. And going back to buying drugs in bulk like Canada does, despite that fact that many people don't like Walmart because of it's size the company is basically demanding pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of drugs they sale to Walmart. I think a statement from Walmart said they wanted the highest price drug sold there to be no higher than $10. Let me see... I didn't find it but here's an article about how Walmart will sell a month's supply of almost 300 drugs for $4. Several years ago I had 3 prescriptions and even with insurance one of the drugs cost me $120 a month. And that's not nearly as high as some drugs cost.
FalconI'm tired of hearing about people claiming the employees never see the benefits of tax breaks. Even if they don't get paid more and the product doesn't get cheaper, the employees can BUY STOCK in their company and reap the benefits of greater profits from less taxes. Why does anyone not own any stock in the company they work for??
Yea like everyone can afford to buy the stocks of their employer, then end up like those employees of Enron who couldn't sell their shares. Some companies do have good ESOPs, Employee Stock Ownership Programs. Years ago I knew 2 people who worked at Home Depot and they had signed up with the ESOP there. Home Depot deducted a little pay from each paycheck and gave them stocks instead. For the most part these programs can be good, if you can afford it. And if the corporation has a Divident Reinvestment Program, DRIP, there's another way to build up a nest egg. But you have to be able to afford it.
FalconThe real solution is to tax wealth rather than income, so that investment becomes the best strategy for tax avoidance.
No, I'd say taxing spending is the best strategy, ie a sales tax. If any thing's income should be taxed it's corporations. Corporations grant stockholders limited liability and if they want that it should be taxed. Then have user fees, for instance for building and maintaining roads a tax on fuel should be high enough to pay for the roads.
Falcon