Siiiigghhh.. fish farming.. you know, as opposed to getting in your boat and going out to fish in the ocean then being surprised when one day there's no fish?
Oh that's what you mean? Like farmed fish don't need to be fed and don't know massive amounts of antibiotics. Except they do. Farmed fish requires vast amounts of wild caught fish to feed. Daniel Pauly "a professor of fisheries science at the University of British Columbia, has calculated that it takes 2 to 5 lbs. of anchovies, sardines, menhaden and the other oily fish that comprise fish meal to produce 1 lb. of farmed salmon". Because they are packed into small areas they also need those antibiotics, which end up in the ocean leading to antibiotic resistance. Fish farms also create dead zones.
For Pete's sake, the guy was saying we should stop oil production to force people to use non-existent renewable energy.
Ever hear of geothermal? Solar? Wind? They all exist. And if they were given as much in subsidies as coal, nuclear power, and petroleum they would be producing a lot more energy.
That was no answer, at least for debating or otherwise trying to get someone to change what they believe. Fine if you don't want to persuade others you're right but if so then why speak at all?
To badly paraphrase Noam Chomsky, capitalists are actually big fans of socialism. They love the idea of socializing harm... it's the profits they don't like sharing.
No, that's neither capitalists nor free market supporters. What those are are corporatists or Fascists.
If someone actually comes up with a feasible, scalable alternative to fossil fuels, the switch to using that idea would just take care of itself due to market forces.
Only if that were true, but it's not. Those who use fossil fuels get to pass on the external costs to others. One way to make polluters pay is by taxing carbon. But of course some complain that that harms businesses or people. Are you one of them?
And that's only half of it. Fossil fuel supporters complain about how alternative energy sources get subsidies. Well, guess what? So do fossil fuels. Here's Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) bragging about how his bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!'. He starts by saying the Nuclear Power industry has received $145 Billion in federal subsides over the years. But combined solar and wind have only gotten $5 billion. In another video the CEO of Chevron agrees to lobby with Sierra Club to end coal subsidies. Those subsidies for nuclear power above? The Freemarket CATO institute reprinted a "Forbes" article printed on 26 November 2007 about how the Nulear Power Industry is Hooked on Subsidies. Among other things it says "How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors." In 2007 in the US all alternative energy sources including the $3.0 Billion corn based ethanol got, when corn is not a good feedstock for ethanol, got $4.875 Billion dollars. Subtract that $3 Billion and geothermal, solar, wind, and others only got $1.875 Billion. Coal got $3.760 Billion. Itself, oil has gotten the majority of federal energy incentives.
What is happening is the government and not a free market is picking winners and losers. The government should end all subsidies, including allowing industries to pass external costs to others, and let the different players compeat.
I expect you to be a big boy and find your own citation.
And what if there are none? Say for instance someone pulls something out of their ass, how will someone else find a citation supporting it? No, the one who makes a statement has the responsibility to back it up.
But as I recall it was the liberal bias of all those GreenPeace types that killed it. So, it looks like liberal bias fucked us before and is coming back for seconds!
Except that ignores reality. Not even China, France, India, or Russia finds nuclear power profitable. Nuclear power appeals to state planners not businesses.
There was a time when peak oil was an economic argument, but now it is firmly a doom-and-gloom, we're-killing-the-earth argument.
The use of fossil fuels is both an economic and an environmental issue. Just because more people are concerned about pollution that doesn't negate peak oil. Well, environmental issues become economic ones too. More than 20 years later the fish still have not recovered, nor have the fishermen been compensated, from the Exxon ValdezOil Spill. Fishermen in Alabama and LA are already feeling the economic effects of the Gulf spill.
The good news is that there will be a charity concert in New Orleans, so BP won't have to pay so much money to their victims.
If it ends up like Vladez oil spill BP won't have to pay anything. More than 20 years later the fish have not recovered and the fishermen have not been compensated. Heck, oil still persists, is still found. Large corporations laugh while going to the bank to make another deposit while the people pay.
you must make your argument in a coherent matter, not raising a red herring argument to any post you disagree with.
You said you saw my post all over this article, but obviously you didn't read them. If you had you would have read coherent arguments such as this one and this one
Okay now this:
I do believe sir, that you have missed the point of the grandparent post entirely.
I did not miss it at all. I have posted dealing with other articles the dangers of walled gardens. Here's a comment I wrote regarding Apple's walled garden for iPads and iPhones. Another comment I made regards broadband walled gardens. In other posts I brought up one method of increasing competition, local groups could do what was done for a Broadband Utopia. In northestern Utah a group of communities got together and built their own broadband infrastructure. Anybody that wants to can use the infrastructure to offer broadband net access, cable TV, and or phone service along with any other service that can use the infrastructure. I may support it but not if the federal government does it.
We don't need competition, we need more threats of competition which the government often unintentionally removes
How is there a threat of competition when you've excluded the possibility "we don't need competition" of competition? There may be one in an imaginary world but not in the real word.
and we need true private property in the communications industry as you point out, not this government-controlled licensing scheme.
You exclude competition with the first part in your post but then you allow competition here.
here, let me break it down to the most bare bones obvious choices:
1. no government or weakened government = unfettered corporate power (what you get with your ideology, but don't admit it or don't realize it)
No, let me break it down to the basics. The government grants corporations their corporate charter. With no government there are no corporations.
3. strong government = curtailed corporate power (where we should go)
Any government powerful enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take it away. Let's look at a couple of Thomas Jefferson's quotes:
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every
form of tyranny over the mind of man."
And in The Forgotten Essentials of Jefferson's Philosophy. "To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."
but what you seem to want is obviously far, far worse. with no government or weakened government, the only power around, without any checks or balances on it, are the corporations.
Point to one place where I said I did not want any government. On second thought, forget it. I don't want to continue with someone who puts words in my mouth I did not say.
The first person broadcasting on a specific frequency in a specific area has the right to do so. Anybody who comes after that and interferes has to adjust the frequency they broadcast on or stop broadcasting.
There would have to be court actions to resolve disputes
I know this is slashdot but if you had read the article I linked to you would have read where it said the courts were resolving the issue:
"For when interference on the same channel began to occur, the injured party took the airwave aggressors into court, and the courts were beginning to bring order out of the chaos by very successfully applying the common law theory of property rights--in very many ways similar to the libertarian theory--to this new technological area. In short, the courts were beginning to assign property rights in the airwaves to their 'homesteading' users."
If someone were to start broadcasting in an area on a frequency someone else was already broadcasting on the first person was able to sue those who were interfering and win the right to continue while those interfering had to stop.
or an agency could be created to manage the spectrum and license parts of the spectrum to people to radiate, the licensing fees would go towards the cost of managing the spectrum.
So only those with large bank accounts were able to broadcast? There is no need for the artificial limit to who can broadcast. There is no spectrum scarcity, The End of Spectrum Scarcity. There actually was no scarcity when licenses were first required and with improvements in electronics more and more broadcasters were able to broadcast.
Optimal Abolition of FCC Spectrum Allocation[pdf]
"Property Rights for Spectrum Markets"
"Market allocation of radio spectrum was the policy recommendation of Coase (1959). Yet scholars who rst attempted to formulate the enabling mechanism of property rights in frequencies (Coase, Meckling, and Minasian, 1963; Levin, 1968; DeVany, Eckert, Meyers, O'Hara, and Scott, 1969; Minasian 1975) met with limited success. Experience illuminating how such markets would function was scarce. Today, however, data on spectrum rights regimes abound. One body of evidence comes from the U.S. experience with liberal licenses for cellular networks; another from countries that have adopted more general spectrum property regimes."
The FCC needs to be redefined with a much clearer scope
No, the FCC needs to be abolished. It exists only to keep the mass media the mass media reducing competition. Put another way, it's centralized planning with the attending command and control mechanisms. There is no other reason for it to exist.
you tell me how to solve the problem of corporate influence if you weaken the government
Deh, it is government that gives corporations their power and influence. Government is the only thing that can give corporations their limited liability. You end corporate influence by reducing the government that makes them powerful. How dense must a person be not to realize that?
because currently there is a lot of fud out there that it is the government itself which is the enemy, when we both know that is a red herring
As I stated in my prior post, you're wrong again. Government is the problem. Big businesses were able to grease the palms of politicians.
if the people who believe that fud could see that (bought and paid for) demagogues are redirecting their righteous anger in the wrong direction, then maybe we could finally pull the curtain back and see the wizard for what he is
financial influence in a democratic system warps and weakens it.
If only people like you didn't believe the FUD. You would make it worse not better.
in fact, any student of economic history knows that corporatism, monopolies, oligopolies are greater threats to capitalism than socialism or communism ever could be
the libertarian naivete that a free market of equals is a natural balance and that governments can only interfere in that is nonsense
Where did you get your education so that you know more about economics than Dr Milton Freidman who won the Nobel Prize in Economics?
the truth is that some players in the free market grow and begin to use their heft to suppress smaller players.
Maybe but that happens in other markets too, such as the mixed economy we have now. The large telecos and cablecos got the way they are not in a free market but because governments gave them monopolies. Nearly every large business got there with government assistance.
the way to fight that is to have a government with strong regulatory powers to enforce equality amongst 800 pound gorillas and tiny players. you want to be taxed to do this
No, the way to end it, the 800lb gorilla beating up the tiny players, is by allowing a free market not by granting monopolies.
insomuch as the government is merely a tool of the big time players is the extent which corporate dollars warp and infect and corrupt the government that is supposed to regulate them
That is precisely why the airwaves were licensed. Big broadcasters had trouble with the courts siding with those who started broadcasting on a given frequency in specific areas so they went to congress passing out money to buy congressional votes requiring licensing. They had the money to buy licenses while the neighborhood kids didn't. Oh, boo hoo the broadcasters claimed the airwaves were a scarcity, it wasn't true then and it's even less true today.
in other words, if you are a true believer in capitalism, you will lose your libertarian naivete and insist on a strong regulatory government to keep the marketplace healthy
Again no, it's precisely the opposite. The government created the problems we have today and more government won't solve it. What will solve it is a freer market, no government granted monopolies.
and you will recognize the greatest threat to capitalism is not the government, it is corporations and their corruption OF government
Which is why you want less government not more, the more government the more power corporations have. Say I, or you or someone else, runs a small lawn care and landscaping business in town. An 800lb gorilla comes to town but doesn't want to compeat with the local businesses, what is it going to do? Ah, "we've pay off the local government to require testing and licensing, that will reduce the competition."
The only possible recourse (and a far better one I think) would be perusing them for fraud: They are offering Internet access, which implies unfiltered access, where packets are not modified by the ISP (but they may be prioritized or even dropped for network reasons, that's how IP and TCP was engineered).
No, another recourse is to have competition. Because of the limits on how many cables or fiber can be laid down in an area, the only way to have competition in land-line services is by separating ownership of the infrastructure from the services it can deliver. The owner of the infrastructure would have to allow any and all of those who wanted to provide a service to do so as long as they have the capability. Now, wireless doesn't have those problems. Discounting licensing of the airwaves, which I personally believe should be stopped and instead allow people to homestead radio/TV frequencies, any number of people or organizations could setup transceivers for wireless broadband.
if Comcast upgrades its connection to Google but not to Bing (at least, not yet), that makes Google a faster responding search provider, customers use Bing less, and Microsoft is screwed
Except the opposite would happen, ComCast would make Google slower not faster and Bing faster not slower. Comcast is in bed with MS.
What is needed is clear legislation from Congress that enumerate what exactly the FCC is allowed to regulate.
It was a failure of congress to give the FCC and before it the Federal Radio Commission, from which the FCC was created, the power to regulate the airwaves period. It was done at the behest of the large mass media companies, it allowed them to reduce a lot of their competition.
I know he claimed to be a Deist, but remember, he was also a politician.
He got into trouble with other Christians because he was Deist. As I said in my previous post some Christians campaigned against him because he was not their kind of Christian, he didn't believe Jesus was the "Son of God". That's not something a politician would claim without good reason.
The Deists claimed to be Christian, which was good PR
I don't know if Thomas Jefferson or any other Founding Father claimed to be Christian, at least in public. They did make sure the Constitution did say "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." Jefferson even said in a letter to his son that religion was a private matter and that's where is should stay. A number of religious people say the USA Constitution and Bill of Rights says nothing about the separation of church and state, however Jefferson did say it about the First Amendment.
Yes, the word itself just means "without knowledge", but I've never encountered it used in reference to any knowledge other than religious knowledge...at least without qualifying phrases as in "I'm a UFO agnostic.". (I don't *think* that's a religious usage.)
Well I shortened the definition from it's full meaning, the AskOxford.com definition of agnostic is "noun a person who believes that nothing can be known concerning the existence of God."
Oh, and some for some people UFOs are religious, some believe life or at least humans were seeded on earth by aliens.
Slashdot Mirror
Siiiigghhh.. fish farming.. you know, as opposed to getting in your boat and going out to fish in the ocean then being surprised when one day there's no fish?
Oh that's what you mean? Like farmed fish don't need to be fed and don't know massive amounts of antibiotics. Except they do. Farmed fish requires vast amounts of wild caught fish to feed. Daniel Pauly "a professor of fisheries science at the University of British Columbia, has calculated that it takes 2 to 5 lbs. of anchovies, sardines, menhaden and the other oily fish that comprise fish meal to produce 1 lb. of farmed salmon". Because they are packed into small areas they also need those antibiotics, which end up in the ocean leading to antibiotic resistance. Fish farms also create dead zones.
Still think fish farming is the answer?
Falcon
For Pete's sake, the guy was saying we should stop oil production to force people to use non-existent renewable energy.
Ever hear of geothermal? Solar? Wind? They all exist. And if they were given as much in subsidies as coal, nuclear power, and petroleum they would be producing a lot more energy.
Falcon
That was no answer, at least for debating or otherwise trying to get someone to change what they believe. Fine if you don't want to persuade others you're right but if so then why speak at all?
Falcon
your beloved David Souter
What am I thinking of now?
If you guessed I was thinking you're a troll you're right, but I seriously doubt it.
Falcon
Fishermen are throwback hunter/gathers. Farming.. heard of it?
Fertilizer, ever heard of it? Ever hear fish are among the most heart healthy? Ever hear of land being polluted?
Falcon
To badly paraphrase Noam Chomsky, capitalists are actually big fans of socialism. They love the idea of socializing harm ... it's the profits they don't like sharing.
No, that's neither capitalists nor free market supporters. What those are are corporatists or Fascists.
Falcon
If someone actually comes up with a feasible, scalable alternative to fossil fuels, the switch to using that idea would just take care of itself due to market forces.
Only if that were true, but it's not. Those who use fossil fuels get to pass on the external costs to others. One way to make polluters pay is by taxing carbon. But of course some complain that that harms businesses or people. Are you one of them?
And that's only half of it. Fossil fuel supporters complain about how alternative energy sources get subsidies. Well, guess what? So do fossil fuels. Here's Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) bragging about how his bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!'. He starts by saying the Nuclear Power industry has received $145 Billion in federal subsides over the years. But combined solar and wind have only gotten $5 billion. In another video the CEO of Chevron agrees to lobby with Sierra Club to end coal subsidies. Those subsidies for nuclear power above? The Freemarket CATO institute reprinted a "Forbes" article printed on 26 November 2007 about how the Nulear Power Industry is Hooked on Subsidies. Among other things it says "How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors." In 2007 in the US all alternative energy sources including the $3.0 Billion corn based ethanol got, when corn is not a good feedstock for ethanol, got $4.875 Billion dollars. Subtract that $3 Billion and geothermal, solar, wind, and others only got $1.875 Billion. Coal got $3.760 Billion. Itself, oil has gotten the majority of federal energy incentives.
What is happening is the government and not a free market is picking winners and losers. The government should end all subsidies, including allowing industries to pass external costs to others, and let the different players compeat.
Falcon
I expect you to be a big boy and find your own citation.
And what if there are none? Say for instance someone pulls something out of their ass, how will someone else find a citation supporting it? No, the one who makes a statement has the responsibility to back it up.
Falcon
But as I recall it was the liberal bias of all those GreenPeace types that killed it. So, it looks like liberal bias fucked us before and is coming back for seconds!
Except that ignores reality. Not even China, France, India, or Russia finds nuclear power profitable. Nuclear power appeals to state planners not businesses.
Falcon
There was a time when peak oil was an economic argument, but now it is firmly a doom-and-gloom, we're-killing-the-earth argument.
The use of fossil fuels is both an economic and an environmental issue. Just because more people are concerned about pollution that doesn't negate peak oil. Well, environmental issues become economic ones too. More than 20 years later the fish still have not recovered, nor have the fishermen been compensated, from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. Fishermen in Alabama and LA are already feeling the economic effects of the Gulf spill.
Falcon
The good news is that there will be a charity concert in New Orleans, so BP won't have to pay so much money to their victims.
If it ends up like Vladez oil spill BP won't have to pay anything. More than 20 years later the fish have not recovered and the fishermen have not been compensated. Heck, oil still persists, is still found. Large corporations laugh while going to the bank to make another deposit while the people pay.
Falcon
First this:
you must make your argument in a coherent matter, not raising a red herring argument to any post you disagree with.
You said you saw my post all over this article, but obviously you didn't read them. If you had you would have read coherent arguments such as this one and this one
Okay now this:
I do believe sir, that you have missed the point of the grandparent post entirely.
I did not miss it at all. I have posted dealing with other articles the dangers of walled gardens. Here's a comment I wrote regarding Apple's walled garden for iPads and iPhones. Another comment I made regards broadband walled gardens. In other posts I brought up one method of increasing competition, local groups could do what was done for a Broadband Utopia. In northestern Utah a group of communities got together and built their own broadband infrastructure. Anybody that wants to can use the infrastructure to offer broadband net access, cable TV, and or phone service along with any other service that can use the infrastructure. I may support it but not if the federal government does it.
Falcon
We don't need competition, we need more threats of competition which the government often unintentionally removes
How is there a threat of competition when you've excluded the possibility "we don't need competition" of competition? There may be one in an imaginary world but not in the real word.
and we need true private property in the communications industry as you point out, not this government-controlled licensing scheme.
You exclude competition with the first part in your post but then you allow competition here.
Falcon
Better smack it harder.
here, let me break it down to the most bare bones obvious choices:
1. no government or weakened government = unfettered corporate power (what you get with your ideology, but don't admit it or don't realize it)
No, let me break it down to the basics. The government grants corporations their corporate charter. With no government there are no corporations.
3. strong government = curtailed corporate power (where we should go)
Any government powerful enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take it away. Let's look at a couple of Thomas Jefferson's quotes:
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
And in The Forgotten Essentials of Jefferson's Philosophy. "To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."
but what you seem to want is obviously far, far worse. with no government or weakened government, the only power around, without any checks or balances on it, are the corporations.
Point to one place where I said I did not want any government. On second thought, forget it. I don't want to continue with someone who puts words in my mouth I did not say.
Falcon
The first person broadcasting on a specific frequency in a specific area has the right to do so. Anybody who comes after that and interferes has to adjust the frequency they broadcast on or stop broadcasting.
There would have to be court actions to resolve disputes
I know this is slashdot but if you had read the article I linked to you would have read where it said the courts were resolving the issue:
"For when interference on the same channel began to occur, the injured party took the airwave aggressors into court, and the courts were beginning to bring order out of the chaos by very successfully applying the common law theory of property rights--in very many ways similar to the libertarian theory--to this new technological area. In short, the courts were beginning to assign property rights in the airwaves to their 'homesteading' users."
If someone were to start broadcasting in an area on a frequency someone else was already broadcasting on the first person was able to sue those who were interfering and win the right to continue while those interfering had to stop.
or an agency could be created to manage the spectrum and license parts of the spectrum to people to radiate, the licensing fees would go towards the cost of managing the spectrum.
So only those with large bank accounts were able to broadcast? There is no need for the artificial limit to who can broadcast. There is no spectrum scarcity, The End of Spectrum Scarcity. There actually was no scarcity when licenses were first required and with improvements in electronics more and more broadcasters were able to broadcast.
"Property Rights for Spectrum Markets"
"Market allocation of radio spectrum was the policy recommendation of Coase (1959). Yet scholars who rst attempted to formulate the enabling mechanism of property rights in frequencies (Coase, Meckling, and Minasian, 1963; Levin, 1968; DeVany, Eckert, Meyers, O'Hara, and Scott, 1969; Minasian 1975) met with limited success. Experience illuminating how such markets would function was scarce. Today, however, data on spectrum rights regimes abound. One body of evidence comes from the U.S. experience with liberal licenses for cellular networks; another from countries that have adopted more general spectrum property regimes."
The FCC needs to be redefined with a much clearer scope
No, the FCC needs to be abolished. It exists only to keep the mass media the mass media reducing competition. Put another way, it's centralized planning with the attending command and control mechanisms. There is no other reason for it to exist.
Falcon
you tell me how to solve the problem of corporate influence if you weaken the government
Deh, it is government that gives corporations their power and influence. Government is the only thing that can give corporations their limited liability. You end corporate influence by reducing the government that makes them powerful. How dense must a person be not to realize that?
Falcon
because currently there is a lot of fud out there that it is the government itself which is the enemy, when we both know that is a red herring
As I stated in my prior post, you're wrong again. Government is the problem. Big businesses were able to grease the palms of politicians.
if the people who believe that fud could see that (bought and paid for) demagogues are redirecting their righteous anger in the wrong direction, then maybe we could finally pull the curtain back and see the wizard for what he is
financial influence in a democratic system warps and weakens it.
If only people like you didn't believe the FUD. You would make it worse not better.
Falcon
in fact, any student of economic history knows that corporatism, monopolies, oligopolies are greater threats to capitalism than socialism or communism ever could be
the libertarian naivete that a free market of equals is a natural balance and that governments can only interfere in that is nonsense
Where did you get your education so that you know more about economics than Dr Milton Freidman who won the Nobel Prize in Economics?
the truth is that some players in the free market grow and begin to use their heft to suppress smaller players.
Maybe but that happens in other markets too, such as the mixed economy we have now. The large telecos and cablecos got the way they are not in a free market but because governments gave them monopolies. Nearly every large business got there with government assistance.
the way to fight that is to have a government with strong regulatory powers to enforce equality amongst 800 pound gorillas and tiny players. you want to be taxed to do this
No, the way to end it, the 800lb gorilla beating up the tiny players, is by allowing a free market not by granting monopolies.
you want the "bureaucracy" that does this
Again no, a free market needs no bureaucracy. At it needs are the courts. Before first the Federal Radio Commission then it's replacement the Federal Communications Commission licensed the airwaves courts used common law to allow people to homestead the airwaves.
insomuch as the government is merely a tool of the big time players is the extent which corporate dollars warp and infect and corrupt the government that is supposed to regulate them
That is precisely why the airwaves were licensed. Big broadcasters had trouble with the courts siding with those who started broadcasting on a given frequency in specific areas so they went to congress passing out money to buy congressional votes requiring licensing. They had the money to buy licenses while the neighborhood kids didn't. Oh, boo hoo the broadcasters claimed the airwaves were a scarcity, it wasn't true then and it's even less true today.
in other words, if you are a true believer in capitalism, you will lose your libertarian naivete and insist on a strong regulatory government to keep the marketplace healthy
Again no, it's precisely the opposite. The government created the problems we have today and more government won't solve it. What will solve it is a freer market, no government granted monopolies.
and you will recognize the greatest threat to capitalism is not the government, it is corporations and their corruption OF government
Which is why you want less government not more, the more government the more power corporations have. Say I, or you or someone else, runs a small lawn care and landscaping business in town. An 800lb gorilla comes to town but doesn't want to compeat with the local businesses, what is it going to do? Ah, "we've pay off the local government to require testing and licensing, that will reduce the competition."
Falcon
The only possible recourse (and a far better one I think) would be perusing them for fraud: They are offering Internet access, which implies unfiltered access, where packets are not modified by the ISP (but they may be prioritized or even dropped for network reasons, that's how IP and TCP was engineered).
No, another recourse is to have competition. Because of the limits on how many cables or fiber can be laid down in an area, the only way to have competition in land-line services is by separating ownership of the infrastructure from the services it can deliver. The owner of the infrastructure would have to allow any and all of those who wanted to provide a service to do so as long as they have the capability. Now, wireless doesn't have those problems. Discounting licensing of the airwaves, which I personally believe should be stopped and instead allow people to homestead radio/TV frequencies, any number of people or organizations could setup transceivers for wireless broadband.
Falcon
if Comcast upgrades its connection to Google but not to Bing (at least, not yet), that makes Google a faster responding search provider, customers use Bing less, and Microsoft is screwed
Except the opposite would happen, ComCast would make Google slower not faster and Bing faster not slower. Comcast is in bed with MS.
Falcon
The correct way to do this is to give the FCC the authority
No, the correct way to do this is to abolish the FCC and allow the airwaves to be homesteaded.
Falcon
What is needed is clear legislation from Congress that enumerate what exactly the FCC is allowed to regulate.
It was a failure of congress to give the FCC and before it the Federal Radio Commission, from which the FCC was created, the power to regulate the airwaves period. It was done at the behest of the large mass media companies, it allowed them to reduce a lot of their competition.
Falcon
Comcast makeing NBC cable only and kill off sat tv will likely fall under monopoly laws.
I'd imagine it would also make a lot of stockholders irate, reducing the earnings and profit potential of NBC.
Falcon
I know he claimed to be a Deist, but remember, he was also a politician.
He got into trouble with other Christians because he was Deist. As I said in my previous post some Christians campaigned against him because he was not their kind of Christian, he didn't believe Jesus was the "Son of God". That's not something a politician would claim without good reason.
The Deists claimed to be Christian, which was good PR
I don't know if Thomas Jefferson or any other Founding Father claimed to be Christian, at least in public. They did make sure the Constitution did say "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." Jefferson even said in a letter to his son that religion was a private matter and that's where is should stay. A number of religious people say the USA Constitution and Bill of Rights says nothing about the separation of church and state, however Jefferson did say it about the First Amendment.
Yes, the word itself just means "without knowledge", but I've never encountered it used in reference to any knowledge other than religious knowledge...at least without qualifying phrases as in "I'm a UFO agnostic.". (I don't *think* that's a religious usage.)
Well I shortened the definition from it's full meaning, the AskOxford.com definition of agnostic is "noun a person who believes that nothing can be known concerning the existence of God."
Oh, and some for some people UFOs are religious, some believe life or at least humans were seeded on earth by aliens.
Falcon
Installing OS X take me less tyme than installing MS Windows did. And that's on a Mac laptop versus a PC tower.
Falcon