I taught HS science for 5 years. The only class I really liked teaching was Physics, because it lacked a hardcore, "test them to see if they learned the items on the list" metric. I could spend 2/3 of the time teaching, and 1/3 of the time letting my students "run wild", applying what they had learned, and generally just screwing around and LEARNING stuff. No, not the stuff on the checklist.
My high school chemistry teacher was the same, though not all he allowed some students to do their own experiments.
If this was a year before college where students could just play, use what they had learned, create things, and explore the world, then it would be FANTASTIC! We'd be producing some really amazing scientists and engineers.
How about this, give students credit for the work? Kind of like AP, Advanced Placement, on steroids.
Whether Bin Laden was behind the destruction of the twin towers isn't the most relevant thing. What's relevant is that Afghanistan is an Islamic theocracy, and Islamic theocracies tend to be bad for the world and for U.S. interests in particular.
No, what is relevant is that if first Ronald Reagan then Bush Sr had not armed what became the Taliban and al qaeda, then left Afghanistan to deal with the aftermath after the Soviets left then there would not have been an Islamic theocracy. Clinton didn't do anything to improve Afghan either.
Of course the other problem with what he said is that the money spent on the military (including the wars it has fought) doesn't come from a level of government that has any business being involved in education.
That is not compleatly true. If federal taxes weren't as high then states could raise their taxes, they'd thus have more money for education. Oh, and the federal government is in education. While I agree it shouldn't be the feds have entered into education, just look at the United States Department of Education to start with. The U.S. Department of Education 2010 Budget is $46.7 billion. Now that's only a fraction of the cost of the war in Iraq but it's still pretty big.
Anybody who parrots the right-wing talking point that the problem is teachers unions has never taught in both public and private schools.
Up until this I was with you, but if you ever tried to fire a bad teacher in California you'd know just how much an effect bad teachers have on education. Because of powerful teachers' unions students have to suffer years and years before the bad teacher is fired. Meanwhile the only reward good teachers get is the occasional pat on the back and a thank you from students. It takes a lot of dedication for the good teachers to stay. Meanwhile those private schools you say don't have to "take the most difficult cases: students with learning disabilities, physical disabilities, behavioral problems" don't have to take and keep bad teachers either.
you have to prioritize the schools that cater to the very worst students;
To solve America's education problems it will take more than just spending money. One thing that needs to end is to stop allowing poor students to graduate when they don't know the material. Get rid of all this flunking students damage their ego nonsense. Then give the students who want to learn the resources to do so. Allow charter, public, and private schools to compeat for students. Allow magnate schools.
it makes no sense to spend more money on students who are already succeeding.
It makes no sense to hold students back because of lack of money. Money needs to be spent to improve education for everyone. Now what can help teachers with slow students is having those faster and brighter students help those who are slower. It also makes no sense to spend money on people who don't want to learn. I tutored one such student in college in algebra, almost every tyme we met she was drunk. I eventually had to tell the tutoring office I couldn't tutor her because of her drinking, after I asked her not to drink before meeting me. Of course she wasn't paying tuition herself, her parents paid. Along with taxpayers.
On every install I have done for at least the past 2 years, the automatic updates option has been on by default, and set to download and automatically install firefox updates. I have verified this for past discussions on the subject by creating a brand new Windows 7 VM (just fire up a sysprepped one) and installing the latest install from the Mozilla website.
--
OS X - Ive upped my standards, up yours!
Maybe that's the key, the default for Windows installs may be on to check for updates whereas for OSX the default is off.
Then again, my memory is bad and maybe I manually set the check for updates to off. Hold on, let me check... Okay, you're right. I just set up a new account and the default was check for and install updates. My mistake.
I need to check and make sure about something before I state something as a fact. Of course I won't remember in 15 minutes.
"The one thing I need to find out is how to run OSX in a VM in Ubuntu."
That subject is taboo in most places. It can be done, but no one wants you to know it. I'm kind of stuck, because I'm running aging equipment that don't have the most modern virtualization support. I've downloaded half a dozen tools for installing Mac OS's into a VM, and they always barf on me. I really need to update my machines. Socket 940 and 939 Opterons are obsolete now, in spite of the prices I paid for them when they were new.
Maybe your problem is because you tried installing OSX on a PC. I'm going to install Ubuntu on a Mac. When I searched how to run OSX in a VM all I found was some people saying it was impossible and others saying it could be done, but no instructions on how to do it. Of course that was more than 6 months ago so things may of changed.
Socket 940 and 939 Opterons are obsolete now, in spite of the prices I paid for them when they were new.
Yea, I want to upgrade my desktop PC but don't know what CPU to use. Actually rebuild is more appropriate, I'll use the tower case and maybe the power supply but I'll use a new mobo/CPU, graphics card, harddisk drives, and optical drive. I want to set it up as a server but I also want to do some development and photography.
So if they base their number on downloads, by now I should have 3 Ubuntu netbooks, 4 servers, 3 desktops and a couple of computers running Xubuntu and Kubuntu LiveCD. No, I don't.
Coming from the opposite direction, I'll download Ubuntu once, maybe twice, but install it on more than 1 drive. First, I'll install it on the internal drive in my laptop as well as 2 external drives. Then when I get around to it I'll also install it on my desktop PC. Actually that may be the second download because I want to set up the desktop PC as a server.
To muddy the picture even more, for my laptop I plan on installing both Gnome and KDE so I can switch between them.
Ten years ago I found Linux to be buggy and inconsistent as a daily typical use OS.
For about 10 years I had to deal with buggy Windows almost daily. Finally when I got a new laptop I got a MacBook Pro. And while I've had some problems with it, the DVD and graphics both had to be replaced, I have not had as many problems with it as I have had with 3 of my Windows PCs. I had more problems in the first year I had them than in the almost 3 years I've had my Mac. Only one Windows PC had given me less problems than my Mac, that is depending on how it's looked at. While the only hardware problem I had with it was the modem, because the CPU's a DEC Alpha I wasn't able to get much software installed on it. What I find ironic is that most of the software I did install was open source.
Use what works. I haven't yet but I intend on installing Ubuntu on my Mac and when I do I dualboot. Then I'll also use a VM so I don't have to reboot when I'm not going to spend a lot of tyme using Ubuntu. When I will spend a lot then I'll go ahead and boot into Ubuntu.
The one thing I need to find out is how to run OSX in a VM in Ubuntu. Last tyme I looked I didn't find out specific instructions on how to do it. Of course that was months ago, so there may be some ways to do it online now.
I have many problems with these numbers, how many of those are dual boot systems with Windows? I have three machines like that. I'm not sure of any reliable way to differentiate dedicated stand alone desktops. Ubuntu is the kind of thing I muck around with alot, people such as myself drag up the stats if they are trying to work it out from downloads, respository use stats.
Actually going by downloads would lower the number of installations. I can download Ubuntu once then install it on a thousand machines. You could have done that yourself, except installed it 3 tymes instead of a thousand. I could also burn the ISO onto a bunch of DVD/CDs and hand them out for others. Also books and packages with disks are available. Amazon lists 6 ubuntu 9.10 dvds and 35 books, however not all are strictly 9.10.
The more free a software is, the more tougher it becomes to determine the exact number of users. It is better not to spend time on this estimations and use the resources for development.
A business needs to know how big its market potential is and Canonical is a business.
Why hasn't Firefox been pilloried for their phone-home system that is enabled by default?
I am of course talking about their automatic upgrade feature, which is enabled by default and set to carry out upgrades by default, with no prompting to enable or disable the feature
Without ever needing to set them my Firefox preferences to check for updates is not checked.
Odds are they're doing some ip/useragent logging against their package servers, and count each ip/agent combination in the course of a month as a unique user... which should be relatively accurate
Except some users will have more than one installation of Ubuntu. Besides more than one physical machine there are virtual machines as well. Besides the hdd in the MacBook Pro I'm typing this on I have Leopard installed on 2 external drives. And when I get around to installing Snow Leopard on the internal drive I'll also install it on 2 external drives as well. Then I'll install Ubuntu on all three drives.
Actually now that I've thought of it before I upgrade the OSes on the internal drive I may install them on one of the external drives first to test it.
One, there is no free lunch, er health care system. It has to be paid for one way or another. And if people don't see where the money goes, they don't pay out of pocket for instance, then they will not shop around for lower prices. Two, the US does provide free health care, I myself am a prime example. One day more than 10 years ago I was a college student without health insurance, I could not afford it, when I was hit while riding my bike after class. Days later when I came out of a coma I was in a hospital. Without any way to pay, for months I got medical care and therapy. The medical bills, for which I could not pay, came to more than US$120,000. Again for more more than 10 years I've been on disability, Supplemental Security Income which is a government provided income. Because of my disability, for health insurance I am on Medicare, another government program. Both are funded by taxes.
partly because it seems when given the opportunity here many large business operating in the free market will do everything they can to screw the consumer.....
That is why I said we need competition. In a free market insurance companies will compeat with each other to sell insurance.
You can go barefoot in Florida? Nice. I've come across many no shirt/no shoes/no service signs in the mid west...
Yeap, in Florida we can go barefoot. There is the occasional "no shirt/no shoes/no service" sign but many businesses don't require them. Where I live now in the upper Midwest there are more businesses with those signs. Then again the weather is just getting so shirts and shoes aren't needed outdoors here. I love walking around barefoot in my garden however all too often I find broken glass so I'm more careful here than I was in Florida. Heck, in FL I for exercise I ran barefoot.
I'm all for giving people a nudge back to work, but given the long term unemployment of the current recession, lifetime caps seem ridiculous.
I don't know what to think about government provided unemployment insurance. Actually I don't mind if individual states have it but I'm against the federal government doing it. Many foreigners don't know, and Americans forget or don't realize, that the Constitution of the USA enumerates exactly what powers the federal government has. That list is pretty short, the Constitution fits on 10 pages, the amendments take another 7 pages for a total of 17 pages. That is, according to my software and printer. If the Constitution does not say anything about the authority or power of something then the federal government does not have it. And nowhere is health care or medicine found. Neither are a multitude of other things the government does either. And if the Constitution isn't followed then it means nothing.
As for helping people, with work and health care, I too support that but I believe private enterprises and smaller government does it better. Whatever I'd rather the government just give X dollars, say $4000, to people to allow them to buy insurance and set up a health savings account than what the new law does. Combined with a national free, er freer, market in health insurance would drive costs down.
Not everyone knows this so let me explain what I mean by a free market in health insurance. First, each state controls who can sell insurance in the state and people can't cross state lines to buy insurance. For instance I can't buy insurance from someone in another state that is cheaper than insurance is where I am. Secondly, there are tax breaks. Employers get tax breaks for offering employees health insurance. However if an individual buys their own insurance then they do not get tax breaks. If individuals got the same breaks as employers then there would be millions of people in the market for insurance. Those millions would drive insurance costs down.
Aside from the ATCA, any individual committing violence would be subject to prosecution in Columbia.
Yea, just like Blackwater was subject to prosecution in Iraq. After years Blackwater is finally being prosecuted. This after a US judge dropped charges. And if Columbia were to try to prosecute DynCorp it may lose a lot of money the US gives it in aid for the War on Drugs, which is why DynCorp was there.
If their actions were severe enough, they could be tried as war criminals or for crimes against humanity in international court. As corporations operating in a UN member state, the organization which employs such a person would be subject to sanctions or fines decided by a body that they are a lot less likely to have successfully bribed. YMMV.
A lot of good that would do, the US will not hand over a US citizen to face charges in an international court. For instance the US is one of those critical of the International Criminal Court.
The punishment in this case does not fit the crime, but the alternative was for the prosecution to do serious damage not just to Pfizer but to hordes of relatively innocent people as well. Perhaps that is what should have happened, perhaps not.
How would innocent people be harmed by prosecuting to the full extent Pfizer? It could actually help more people. For instance if all of Pfizer's patents were taken away and released to other pharmaceutical companies, they they would compeat with each other and reduce the costs of drugs. Lower prices means more people could afford the drugs.
Actually in practice you do have to prove your innocence or at least afford a good lawyer to find a loophole.
This is one of the reasons that the American prison system is full of poor people who co
No, the reason the American prison system has the highest incarceration rate in the world is because of the stupid War on Drugs and mandatory sentencing guidelines. "We now imprison more people for drug law violations than all of Western Europe, with a much larger population, incarcerates for all offenses". Substance Abuse Treatment and Public Safety [pdf] by the Justice Policy Institute says:
"U.S. prisons or jails have been convicted of a drug offense. The United States incarcerates more people for drug offenses than any other country. With an estimated 6.8 million Americans struggling with drug abuse or dependence,4 the growth of the prison population continues to be driven largely by incarceration for drug offenses."
Others in gael or prison though not convicted of drug offenses are there because they committed another crime such as theft to support their dru8g habit. Re-legalization and taxing drugs would do a lot to reduce the prison population in the US. With drugs being legal the prices will be lower thus reducing crimes such as the above theft, or more importantly murder. It seems that almost daily the news talks about murder Mexico, especially Ciudad Jaurez, Mexico, right across the border from El Paso, Texas. Almost all of these murders have something to do with drugs. Legal drugs being legal to import, as well as legal to grow your own, would significantly reduce violent crimes.
If drugs were taxed then the money collected used for treatment of those who asked for it then drugs abuse and addiction would decline. There are no drugs that are so addictive that people can not be "cured" of their addiction. The Rat Park study showed that in enriched living conditions rats were not addicted to drugs, when given a choice between water with and without the drug they avoided the water laced with the drug. The hypothesis of the test was that living conditions and not drugs cause addiction.
Of course so called Drug Warriors and the prison-industrial complex don't want to hear that.
Personally, I think the correct answer to holding corporations responsible is to force them to pay their fines by selling new stock until they've sold enough stock to raise the money for the fine.
That's no problem for large corporations but may be impractical for smaller ones.
also hurts activist investors
Such investors are only called "activist" because the current system is broken. If investors were required to be responsible for the corporations they own, they'd all either be broke or be "activist".
So, only the wealthy can be stock holders? They would be the only ones who could afford to take the risk of investing in corporations. Corporations were originally given corporate charters, and limited liability, so that the cost of a business could be spread over a number of people without the risk of losing everything.
The Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company were both given their corporate charters, the first ones granted, because their business was risky. They were both shipping companies and they were responsible for any lost cargo, whether it be because the ship sank in bad weather or because it was attacked and captured by pirates. Not only was the company liable for the cargo but it was also liable for the lives of the crew and passengers. An investor could lose not just the money invested but everything including their house. Because of this and because trade was important, limited liability was eventually granted to those who wanted to invest in cargo shipping.
Without some way for regular, low and medium income, people to be able to invest and not risk everything the economy would suck. Even today with the internet it's still hard to find out how a corporation operates or what it's practices are. There would be little trade, you wouldn't have that cellphone or many other things because the coltan needed to make them isn't found everywhere. There would be no shipping, heck the businesses that make them would not exist, it would be too risky.
Hey, the US can't follow China's lead, it can't execute corporate honchos.
Why not? It works for domestic spying, it works with limiting civil rights... ok, to a lesser degree, but how about doing the same with holding CEOs accountable, also to a lesser degree?
Perhaps I should have used a winking smiley, it was supposed to be funny, er tragically funny.
I actually agree but CEOs are not held accountable in the US whereas last year the Chinese executed a CEO, or other corporate executive, because some of what the business sold caused some deaths. Here in the US after more than 20 years Alaskan fishermen still haven't been paid from when the Exxon Valdez oil spill wrecked their lives. They were left holding a bag of shit while Exxon made a lot of money.
[1] note: charged, they still get a day in court if they don't admit it, but they are there to prove their innocence with the proof of guilt being the original evidence of the offence.
Fortunately the US has a system of law wherein the government has to prove guilt, the accused doesn't have to prove innocence.
I hope you don't think that corporations should have the vote.
Give it tyme, corporations are working on that. It won't be long before they get another Supreme Court ruling in their favor. They already have more rights than you or I.
Why shareholders aren't punished for the actions of a corporation is completely beyond me.
The problem with that is that you're penalizing all stockholders, even those who try to clean up the corporation. Or are you one of those who believes in guilt by association? One of the most effective ways to change corporations today is via stockholder activism. Sure investors can use sociallyresponsibleinvesting but that's what shareholder activism is. Of course my way, corporate charter revocation also hurts activist investors.
Especially if you're a private military contractor in Iraq.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5xT1DGJMoQ
DynCorp was operating like that in South America throughout the 1990s. These private military contractors are not held accountable, which is why they're used. They can get away with things the military would have a hard tyme getting away with. And I bet that's one reason Bush pushed to privatize the military. About the only way these corporations can be held accountable is via the Alien Tort Claims Act, which Bush tried to get rid of.
Easy solution, hold the CEOs accoutable for fellonies carried out by corporations. And carry also on some death penalty if needed, you'll see things change in a snap.
Hey, the US can't follow China's lead, it can't execute corporate honchos.
Slashdot Mirror
I taught HS science for 5 years. The only class I really liked teaching was Physics, because it lacked a hardcore, "test them to see if they learned the items on the list" metric. I could spend 2/3 of the time teaching, and 1/3 of the time letting my students "run wild", applying what they had learned, and generally just screwing around and LEARNING stuff. No, not the stuff on the checklist.
My high school chemistry teacher was the same, though not all he allowed some students to do their own experiments.
If this was a year before college where students could just play, use what they had learned, create things, and explore the world, then it would be FANTASTIC! We'd be producing some really amazing scientists and engineers.
How about this, give students credit for the work? Kind of like AP, Advanced Placement, on steroids.
Falcon
My point is that there is nothing morally justifiable about this, or any other war.
A war to stop the Rwanda genocide would not have been justifiable?
Falcon
Whether Bin Laden was behind the destruction of the twin towers isn't the most relevant thing. What's relevant is that Afghanistan is an Islamic theocracy, and Islamic theocracies tend to be bad for the world and for U.S. interests in particular.
No, what is relevant is that if first Ronald Reagan then Bush Sr had not armed what became the Taliban and al qaeda, then left Afghanistan to deal with the aftermath after the Soviets left then there would not have been an Islamic theocracy. Clinton didn't do anything to improve Afghan either.
Falcon
Of course the other problem with what he said is that the money spent on the military (including the wars it has fought) doesn't come from a level of government that has any business being involved in education.
That is not compleatly true. If federal taxes weren't as high then states could raise their taxes, they'd thus have more money for education. Oh, and the federal government is in education. While I agree it shouldn't be the feds have entered into education, just look at the United States Department of Education to start with. The U.S. Department of Education 2010 Budget is $46.7 billion. Now that's only a fraction of the cost of the war in Iraq but it's still pretty big.
Falcon
Anybody who parrots the right-wing talking point that the problem is teachers unions has never taught in both public and private schools.
Up until this I was with you, but if you ever tried to fire a bad teacher in California you'd know just how much an effect bad teachers have on education. Because of powerful teachers' unions students have to suffer years and years before the bad teacher is fired. Meanwhile the only reward good teachers get is the occasional pat on the back and a thank you from students. It takes a lot of dedication for the good teachers to stay. Meanwhile those private schools you say don't have to "take the most difficult cases: students with learning disabilities, physical disabilities, behavioral problems" don't have to take and keep bad teachers either.
Falcon
you have to prioritize the schools that cater to the very worst students;
To solve America's education problems it will take more than just spending money. One thing that needs to end is to stop allowing poor students to graduate when they don't know the material. Get rid of all this flunking students damage their ego nonsense. Then give the students who want to learn the resources to do so. Allow charter, public, and private schools to compeat for students. Allow magnate schools.
it makes no sense to spend more money on students who are already succeeding.
It makes no sense to hold students back because of lack of money. Money needs to be spent to improve education for everyone. Now what can help teachers with slow students is having those faster and brighter students help those who are slower. It also makes no sense to spend money on people who don't want to learn. I tutored one such student in college in algebra, almost every tyme we met she was drunk. I eventually had to tell the tutoring office I couldn't tutor her because of her drinking, after I asked her not to drink before meeting me. Of course she wasn't paying tuition herself, her parents paid. Along with taxpayers.
Falcon
On every install I have done for at least the past 2 years, the automatic updates option has been on by default, and set to download and automatically install firefox updates. I have verified this for past discussions on the subject by creating a brand new Windows 7 VM (just fire up a sysprepped one) and installing the latest install from the Mozilla website.
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OS X - Ive upped my standards, up yours!
Maybe that's the key, the default for Windows installs may be on to check for updates whereas for OSX the default is off.
Then again, my memory is bad and maybe I manually set the check for updates to off. Hold on, let me check... Okay, you're right. I just set up a new account and the default was check for and install updates. My mistake.
I need to check and make sure about something before I state something as a fact. Of course I won't remember in 15 minutes.
Falcon
"The one thing I need to find out is how to run OSX in a VM in Ubuntu."
That subject is taboo in most places. It can be done, but no one wants you to know it. I'm kind of stuck, because I'm running aging equipment that don't have the most modern virtualization support. I've downloaded half a dozen tools for installing Mac OS's into a VM, and they always barf on me. I really need to update my machines. Socket 940 and 939 Opterons are obsolete now, in spite of the prices I paid for them when they were new.
Maybe your problem is because you tried installing OSX on a PC. I'm going to install Ubuntu on a Mac. When I searched how to run OSX in a VM all I found was some people saying it was impossible and others saying it could be done, but no instructions on how to do it. Of course that was more than 6 months ago so things may of changed.
Socket 940 and 939 Opterons are obsolete now, in spite of the prices I paid for them when they were new.
Yea, I want to upgrade my desktop PC but don't know what CPU to use. Actually rebuild is more appropriate, I'll use the tower case and maybe the power supply but I'll use a new mobo/CPU, graphics card, harddisk drives, and optical drive. I want to set it up as a server but I also want to do some development and photography.
Falcon
So if they base their number on downloads, by now I should have 3 Ubuntu netbooks, 4 servers, 3 desktops and a couple of computers running Xubuntu and Kubuntu LiveCD. No, I don't.
Coming from the opposite direction, I'll download Ubuntu once, maybe twice, but install it on more than 1 drive. First, I'll install it on the internal drive in my laptop as well as 2 external drives. Then when I get around to it I'll also install it on my desktop PC. Actually that may be the second download because I want to set up the desktop PC as a server.
To muddy the picture even more, for my laptop I plan on installing both Gnome and KDE so I can switch between them.
Falcon
Ten years ago I found Linux to be buggy and inconsistent as a daily typical use OS.
For about 10 years I had to deal with buggy Windows almost daily. Finally when I got a new laptop I got a MacBook Pro. And while I've had some problems with it, the DVD and graphics both had to be replaced, I have not had as many problems with it as I have had with 3 of my Windows PCs. I had more problems in the first year I had them than in the almost 3 years I've had my Mac. Only one Windows PC had given me less problems than my Mac, that is depending on how it's looked at. While the only hardware problem I had with it was the modem, because the CPU's a DEC Alpha I wasn't able to get much software installed on it. What I find ironic is that most of the software I did install was open source.
Falcon
Use what works. I haven't yet but I intend on installing Ubuntu on my Mac and when I do I dualboot. Then I'll also use a VM so I don't have to reboot when I'm not going to spend a lot of tyme using Ubuntu. When I will spend a lot then I'll go ahead and boot into Ubuntu.
The one thing I need to find out is how to run OSX in a VM in Ubuntu. Last tyme I looked I didn't find out specific instructions on how to do it. Of course that was months ago, so there may be some ways to do it online now.
Falcon
I have many problems with these numbers, how many of those are dual boot systems with Windows? I have three machines like that. I'm not sure of any reliable way to differentiate dedicated stand alone desktops. Ubuntu is the kind of thing I muck around with alot, people such as myself drag up the stats if they are trying to work it out from downloads, respository use stats.
Actually going by downloads would lower the number of installations. I can download Ubuntu once then install it on a thousand machines. You could have done that yourself, except installed it 3 tymes instead of a thousand. I could also burn the ISO onto a bunch of DVD/CDs and hand them out for others. Also books and packages with disks are available. Amazon lists 6 ubuntu 9.10 dvds and 35 books, however not all are strictly 9.10.
Falcon
The more free a software is, the more tougher it becomes to determine the exact number of users. It is better not to spend time on this estimations and use the resources for development.
A business needs to know how big its market potential is and Canonical is a business.
Falcon
Why hasn't Firefox been pilloried for their phone-home system that is enabled by default?
I am of course talking about their automatic upgrade feature, which is enabled by default and set to carry out upgrades by default, with no prompting to enable or disable the feature
Without ever needing to set them my Firefox preferences to check for updates is not checked.
Falcon
Odds are they're doing some ip/useragent logging against their package servers, and count each ip/agent combination in the course of a month as a unique user... which should be relatively accurate
Except some users will have more than one installation of Ubuntu. Besides more than one physical machine there are virtual machines as well. Besides the hdd in the MacBook Pro I'm typing this on I have Leopard installed on 2 external drives. And when I get around to installing Snow Leopard on the internal drive I'll also install it on 2 external drives as well. Then I'll install Ubuntu on all three drives.
Actually now that I've thought of it before I upgrade the OSes on the internal drive I may install them on one of the external drives first to test it.
Falcon
a free universal health care system
One, there is no free lunch, er health care system. It has to be paid for one way or another. And if people don't see where the money goes, they don't pay out of pocket for instance, then they will not shop around for lower prices. Two, the US does provide free health care, I myself am a prime example. One day more than 10 years ago I was a college student without health insurance, I could not afford it, when I was hit while riding my bike after class. Days later when I came out of a coma I was in a hospital. Without any way to pay, for months I got medical care and therapy. The medical bills, for which I could not pay, came to more than US$120,000. Again for more more than 10 years I've been on disability, Supplemental Security Income which is a government provided income. Because of my disability, for health insurance I am on Medicare, another government program. Both are funded by taxes.
partly because it seems when given the opportunity here many large business operating in the free market will do everything they can to screw the consumer.....
That is why I said we need competition. In a free market insurance companies will compeat with each other to sell insurance.
You can go barefoot in Florida? Nice. I've come across many no shirt/no shoes/no service signs in the mid west...
Yeap, in Florida we can go barefoot. There is the occasional "no shirt/no shoes/no service" sign but many businesses don't require them. Where I live now in the upper Midwest there are more businesses with those signs. Then again the weather is just getting so shirts and shoes aren't needed outdoors here. I love walking around barefoot in my garden however all too often I find broken glass so I'm more careful here than I was in Florida. Heck, in FL I for exercise I ran barefoot.
I'm all for giving people a nudge back to work, but given the long term unemployment of the current recession, lifetime caps seem ridiculous.
I don't know what to think about government provided unemployment insurance. Actually I don't mind if individual states have it but I'm against the federal government doing it. Many foreigners don't know, and Americans forget or don't realize, that the Constitution of the USA enumerates exactly what powers the federal government has. That list is pretty short, the Constitution fits on 10 pages, the amendments take another 7 pages for a total of 17 pages. That is, according to my software and printer. If the Constitution does not say anything about the authority or power of something then the federal government does not have it. And nowhere is health care or medicine found. Neither are a multitude of other things the government does either. And if the Constitution isn't followed then it means nothing.
As for helping people, with work and health care, I too support that but I believe private enterprises and smaller government does it better. Whatever I'd rather the government just give X dollars, say $4000, to people to allow them to buy insurance and set up a health savings account than what the new law does. Combined with a national free, er freer, market in health insurance would drive costs down.
Not everyone knows this so let me explain what I mean by a free market in health insurance. First, each state controls who can sell insurance in the state and people can't cross state lines to buy insurance. For instance I can't buy insurance from someone in another state that is cheaper than insurance is where I am. Secondly, there are tax breaks. Employers get tax breaks for offering employees health insurance. However if an individual buys their own insurance then they do not get tax breaks. If individuals got the same breaks as employers then there would be millions of people in the market for insurance. Those millions would drive insurance costs down.
Falcon
Aside from the ATCA, any individual committing violence would be subject to prosecution in Columbia.
Yea, just like Blackwater was subject to prosecution in Iraq. After years Blackwater is finally being prosecuted. This after a US judge dropped charges. And if Columbia were to try to prosecute DynCorp it may lose a lot of money the US gives it in aid for the War on Drugs, which is why DynCorp was there.
If their actions were severe enough, they could be tried as war criminals or for crimes against humanity in international court. As corporations operating in a UN member state, the organization which employs such a person would be subject to sanctions or fines decided by a body that they are a lot less likely to have successfully bribed. YMMV.
A lot of good that would do, the US will not hand over a US citizen to face charges in an international court. For instance the US is one of those critical of the International Criminal Court.
The punishment in this case does not fit the crime, but the alternative was for the prosecution to do serious damage not just to Pfizer but to hordes of relatively innocent people as well. Perhaps that is what should have happened, perhaps not.
How would innocent people be harmed by prosecuting to the full extent Pfizer? It could actually help more people. For instance if all of Pfizer's patents were taken away and released to other pharmaceutical companies, they they would compeat with each other and reduce the costs of drugs. Lower prices means more people could afford the drugs.
Falcon
Actually in practice you do have to prove your innocence or at least afford a good lawyer to find a loophole.
This is one of the reasons that the American prison system is full of poor people who co
No, the reason the American prison system has the highest incarceration rate in the world is because of the stupid War on Drugs and mandatory sentencing guidelines. "We now imprison more people for drug law violations than all of Western Europe, with a much larger population, incarcerates for all offenses". Substance Abuse Treatment and Public Safety [pdf] by the Justice Policy Institute says:
"U.S. prisons or jails have been convicted of a drug offense. The United States incarcerates more people for drug offenses than any other country. With an estimated 6.8 million Americans struggling with drug abuse or dependence,4 the growth of the prison population continues to be driven largely by incarceration for drug offenses."
Others in gael or prison though not convicted of drug offenses are there because they committed another crime such as theft to support their dru8g habit. Re-legalization and taxing drugs would do a lot to reduce the prison population in the US. With drugs being legal the prices will be lower thus reducing crimes such as the above theft, or more importantly murder. It seems that almost daily the news talks about murder Mexico, especially Ciudad Jaurez, Mexico, right across the border from El Paso, Texas. Almost all of these murders have something to do with drugs. Legal drugs being legal to import, as well as legal to grow your own, would significantly reduce violent crimes.
If drugs were taxed then the money collected used for treatment of those who asked for it then drugs abuse and addiction would decline. There are no drugs that are so addictive that people can not be "cured" of their addiction. The Rat Park study showed that in enriched living conditions rats were not addicted to drugs, when given a choice between water with and without the drug they avoided the water laced with the drug. The hypothesis of the test was that living conditions and not drugs cause addiction.
Of course so called Drug Warriors and the prison-industrial complex don't want to hear that.
Falcon
Personally, I think the correct answer to holding corporations responsible is to force them to pay their fines by selling new stock until they've sold enough stock to raise the money for the fine.
That's no problem for large corporations but may be impractical for smaller ones.
also hurts activist investors
Such investors are only called "activist" because the current system is broken. If investors were required to be responsible for the corporations they own, they'd all either be broke or be "activist".
So, only the wealthy can be stock holders? They would be the only ones who could afford to take the risk of investing in corporations. Corporations were originally given corporate charters, and limited liability, so that the cost of a business could be spread over a number of people without the risk of losing everything.
The Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company were both given their corporate charters, the first ones granted, because their business was risky. They were both shipping companies and they were responsible for any lost cargo, whether it be because the ship sank in bad weather or because it was attacked and captured by pirates. Not only was the company liable for the cargo but it was also liable for the lives of the crew and passengers. An investor could lose not just the money invested but everything including their house. Because of this and because trade was important, limited liability was eventually granted to those who wanted to invest in cargo shipping.
Without some way for regular, low and medium income, people to be able to invest and not risk everything the economy would suck. Even today with the internet it's still hard to find out how a corporation operates or what it's practices are. There would be little trade, you wouldn't have that cellphone or many other things because the coltan needed to make them isn't found everywhere. There would be no shipping, heck the businesses that make them would not exist, it would be too risky.
Falcon
Hey, the US can't follow China's lead, it can't execute corporate honchos.
Why not? It works for domestic spying, it works with limiting civil rights... ok, to a lesser degree, but how about doing the same with holding CEOs accountable, also to a lesser degree?
Perhaps I should have used a winking smiley, it was supposed to be funny, er tragically funny.
I actually agree but CEOs are not held accountable in the US whereas last year the Chinese executed a CEO, or other corporate executive, because some of what the business sold caused some deaths. Here in the US after more than 20 years Alaskan fishermen still haven't been paid from when the Exxon Valdez oil spill wrecked their lives. They were left holding a bag of shit while Exxon made a lot of money.
Falcon
[1] note: charged, they still get a day in court if they don't admit it, but they are there to prove their innocence with the proof of guilt being the original evidence of the offence.
Fortunately the US has a system of law wherein the government has to prove guilt, the accused doesn't have to prove innocence.
Falcon
I hope you don't think that corporations should have the vote.
Give it tyme, corporations are working on that. It won't be long before they get another Supreme Court ruling in their favor. They already have more rights than you or I.
Falcon
Why shareholders aren't punished for the actions of a corporation is completely beyond me.
The problem with that is that you're penalizing all stockholders, even those who try to clean up the corporation. Or are you one of those who believes in guilt by association? One of the most effective ways to change corporations today is via stockholder activism. Sure investors can use socially responsible investing but that's what shareholder activism is. Of course my way, corporate charter revocation also hurts activist investors.
Falcon
Especially if you're a private military contractor in Iraq.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5xT1DGJMoQ
DynCorp was operating like that in South America throughout the 1990s. These private military contractors are not held accountable, which is why they're used. They can get away with things the military would have a hard tyme getting away with. And I bet that's one reason Bush pushed to privatize the military. About the only way these corporations can be held accountable is via the Alien Tort Claims Act, which Bush tried to get rid of.
Falcon
Easy solution, hold the CEOs accoutable for fellonies carried out by corporations. And carry also on some death penalty if needed, you'll see things change in a snap.
Hey, the US can't follow China's lead, it can't execute corporate honchos.
Falcon