And y'know, I don't always mind the nickel-and-dime approach, within reason. They just need to limit it to what really costs them money, rather than getting petty. Weight costs money, so baggage costs money. I tend to travel light, so by all means, charge an extra $50 to the morons who could sneak Grandma on in their ginormous bags. Soda, OTOH, costs less than fuel. Charge me a buck for a half-can, and you can bet your ass I'll bring my own with me from the terminal (where it only costs half-insane)
Fares previously included luggage, and planes had lower fuel economy than they do now, today a plane can fly farther on a tank of fuel than they could 10, 20 years ago. I wouldn't mind paying more for more baggage but I'd be pretty pissed if I had to pay extra for 1 carry-on and 1 check-in bag. Heck I don't think more had to be paid a life-time ago when I flew with a boxed bike as well as carry-on and checked baggage. Now I'd willingly pay say $5 or $10 for the bike but not for the two bags.
If it means universal service provisions for broadband internet access, then yes.
There are people in rural areas right now that don't have Internet access because telcos aren't willing to spend the money to run it out to them.
Universal service provisions allowed telephone service to reach every single person in the entire country back in the day. The same thing should happen for broadband internet access today.
I find it ironic that you can propose this is a good idea if used for Universal Access, and then in the same post, inform us that some rural areas don't have internet access.
Wait, What? We've had Universal Service for decades in the telephone industry, and now you inform us that rural areas don't even have dial-up internet access?
You can have phone service but not internet access. Phone lines good enough for voice may not be good enough for data transmission. I know, I used to live somewhere where after a while I lost the ability to call into my ISP. The noise on the lines to the building was just too much, and the phone company would not correct the problem.
People in rural areas can use dialup, (most likely) DSL, or satellite.
That shows how much you know. At least one DSL faq, DSL FAQS says that the farthest DSL can go is 29,100 feet (8,800 meters), At that distance the max speed is 128kbps though. Using ADSL loop extenders that can be extended from 6 miles to 10 miles from the central office. Satellite goes much further but it has its own problems. Like interference and latency or signal delays. Actually what may be better for some is G4 over a cellular network.
I have a friend who recently bought a house out in BFE Tennessee and he gets DSL. It's slow by my standards but that's what you have to deal with when you chose not to live with the rest of society
It's not always the location, sometimes it's the provider. A couple of years ago I could have gotten fiber, to the neighborhood, through Qwest. Since the change over to Centurylink though fiber is not available. I delayed in waiting too long to see if my ISP could offer fiber through Qwest.
No one has a right to Internet access, and it's not even essential to life like food is
One, food isn't a right either. And two, life isn't essential. Oh, and you don't pay the full cost of food either. Large corporations like Cargill get billions of US taxpayer dollars a year in subsidies. The Free Markets CATO Institute published a policy analysis about Archer Daniels Midland, A Case Study In Corporate Welfare. ADM like Cargill get billions of dollars in subsidies a year. I don't know about you but I'd rather choose who I hand money to, either as a trade or a donation. Government doesn't give that option though.
Blame our (great)grandparents. Had they not ratified the 16th amendment, that particular imbalance would be much more difficult.
No, I blame the ratification of the 12th Amendment. The Democratic and Republican parties love that amendment. I propose an amendment myself, one than repeals the 12th. And the electoral college. With my amendment every candidate runs for president and the voters get to rank them, something like the Condorcet methods. In my preferred method though a vote of "0", zero, counts against the candidate whereas no vote does not. It works like this, all of a candidate's votes are added up then the total is divided by the number of votes. A zero counts as a vote whereas a blank does not. I don't know how it would work in practice but it'd stir up politics.
Thanks for the link, by the way. The data was fun to play with, even if only for a few minutes. (I spent some time looking for that other factor that I alluded to.)
I originally got the link from a page on CATO's website though I didn't find the page just now.
And that is why the US is destined to fall behind. Selfish pricks think even a dollar to help the nation is too much.
The people that want all of the advantages of living out in the sticks whole accepting none of the downsides, by forcing everyone to pay to eliminate those downsides, are the selfish pricks.
Nice try.
Those who want to eat cheaply are the selfish pricks.
And the cost of upgrading this 4% would come from corporation's multimillion dollar profits. Like corporate charity.
This is completely identical to taxing all of the customers of the corporation, raising the price they pay by x%.
There is no free lunch. Gov't mandates do not cause goods to pop out of thin air. "Corporate profits" are not an independent pool of money that you can meddle with, because they're based on a percentage of the value people place on the goods provided.
Okay then, take away their monopolies. Allow competitors the ability to use the same right of way the incumbent uses. They'll then cry about having competition.
I can see it now phone/power poles straining under the load of fifty cables, or 50 poles trying to squeeze into a small space. How about 100 strands of fiber sharing underground pipes, or 100 pipes sharing the same space.
again, wtf does the FCC have to do with the internet?
Is this a joke? They're the Federal Communications Commission. Are you contending that the Internet isn't a form of interstate communication?
Where does the word "Communications" make it's appearance in the Constitution of the USA?
In a letter to Albert Gallatin Thomas Jeffersonwrote “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.” James Madison, the father of the Constitution, once wrote “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents” when congress undertook to appropriate $15,000 "for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo (now Haiti) to Baltimore and Philadelphia". In the Marbury v Madison case in 1803 Justice Marshall wrote:
The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the Constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the Constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it; or, that the legislature may alter the Constitution by an ordinary act.
Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The Constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it.
If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law: if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts on the part of the people to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.
You can have your cake and eat it, too. But I'm not responsible for buying it for you.
Except it's more like you having and eating your cake, and you are responsible. Where does your food come from? Farms in rural settings? If they have to pay a lot for broadband then they will raise their prices for your food. Unless you can do or make for yourself everything you want you have to pay for others to receive services and goods you get too. Personally I'd rather pay more or donate to those I choose to than have government forcibly take money from me to give to others. At the same tyme I believe in getting what I pay for as well as having a choice as to who will provide what I want to buy. However we, US taxpayers, don't have either. The federal government gave the cable and phone broadband providers $200 Billion, oops >$300 Billion to build out broadband access. We did not get it. Governments also gave these large corporations monopolies, get rid of the monopolies and let there be competition. That includes airwave monopolies.
That's because it was established in 1934. Putting the same wording in a modern bill would be vilified as socialist, big government, anti-capitalism, and anti-freedom.
Because it might be. Read the wiki article The New Deal and corporatism Churchill, FDR, and Mussolini wrote to each other, praised each other, and used each others ideas. For instance Mussolini praised FDR's New Deal. One part of the New Deal was the National Industrial Recovery ACT (NIRA). Former Republican President Herbert Hoover wrote Among the early Roosevelt fascist measures was the National Industry Recovery Act (NRA) of June 16, 1933 in his memoirs in 1951. So it's not just people today saying such a bill would be called socialist.
"We should avoid entangling alliances with european powers that could draw us into bloodshed..... rest assured while one European leader runs-around mad, and the others act as if they are halfway there themselves, we shall remain at peace here in North America." - George Washington)
Who says Americans don't do irony.
My country has been drawn into two major land wars since the turn of the century and in both cases, it was by the USA.
For more irony read what George Washington said about torture: George Washington: No Torture on My Watch. He wouldn't have allowed the water boarding of German mercenaries working for the British.
We just believe that people, not governments, are the best source of help for the poor. Ron Paul probably doesn't belong in that particular list with Sarah Palin and George Bush, by the way.
I agree about Ron Paul. However the NYT article doesn't tell the whole story. Red States Feed at Federal Trough, Blue States Supply the Feed explains how blue states pay more in federal taxes than they get back in spending whereas red states get more from the feds than they pay in taxes. For every dollar blue state New Yorkers pay in federal taxes they get back $0.81. Red state North Dakota residents receive $2.03 for every dollar they pay.
Maybe the rest of the world is tired of the American sense of entitlement, your tendency to export really bad laws onto everybody else, and the fact that... well... as a nation you're kind of assholes on balance. At least, that's how you project yourselves. And to the rest of the world, people like George Bush, Sarah Palin, and Run Paul all reinforce that. You're a country who figures the rich should stay rich, and the poor should go fuck themselves.
You decry the "American sense of entitlement" and "Run Paul" one sentence later. If you meant Ron Paul then there wouldn't be an "American sense of entitlement". Nor would the US export bad laws as a President Ron Paul would try to get rid of as many victim-less crime laws as he could. The US has the world's largest prison population and the biggest set of crimes prisoners were found guilty of is drug laws. People who don't harm or steal from others are in gaol simply because they dealt in or possessed illegal drugs. By getting rid of laws that make possession and use of drugs a crime not only can the prison population be cut substantially but the people could actually boost the economy by working and paying taxes. The government's budget, what it spends would be much smaller too. And wouldn't be partially hidden, like the billions of dollars spent on stupid and unconstitutional wars. No war on liberty, which is what the war on drugs is, no Afghan war, no Iraq war. There would also be no subsidies to large corporations, like the billions of dollars in subsidies Cargill gets for exporting food, driving farmers in third world nations off their own farms because they can't compeat against US government largess.
But that doesn't mean I want to fight their wars! If for example: Britain or France suddenly decided to go to war against Iran.
Well, I might point out that it was you guys who waded into Iraq and Afghanistan and pretty much demanded the world follow along with you... I believe Bush famously said "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists". You'll notice that lots of other countries committed resources (and lives) to that, but in the end, absolutely none of the reasons it was done were ever proven to be valid. There never was a good reason to go into Iraq, but you guys bullied everyone else into doing it with you.
I am an American who disagreed with invading both Afghanistan and Iraq. I would have liked to see the Afghans set up democratic political and free trade systems after the Soviet pulled out of Afghanistan. But the then US administration left them alone after arming the Taliban. If the US had not armed the Mujahideen, some of whom became the Taliban, and tried to at least encourage people to travel to and do business with Afghanistan after the Soviet pullout then the Taliban would not have been as bad and caused as much trouble as they did. I also opposed the arming and assistance of Saddam Hussein throughout the 1980s. Saddam could gas Iraqi villages and neither Reagan nor Bush Sr would stop arming Saddam. Bush Sr's support of Saddam only came to an end after Saddam invaded Kuwait. The admin even knew before hand that Saddam was going to invade Kuwait but did nothing to discourage or stop it. Even after the wars, Kuwait is still a monarchy.
This is a two way street. And if you want to start disentangling yourselves from your allies, well, you might not find yourself with much support later.
As soon as the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist so should have NATO. NATO was created as a reaction to and fear of the Soviets and the Pact. With them gone NATO's reason to exist was gone too.
I'm sure the Europeans aren't all that thrilled with their banking and flight data being handed over to serve US interests. So maybe everyone just says "well, since you think we're not such good allies, we're not doing that any more".
I'm not trilled, I actually hate, the sharing of data between and within governments. I fear government far more than I do businesses, criminals and organized crime syndicates, and terrorists. Actually it's government who gives them the power they have. Governments grant corporate charters to corporations as well as the monopolies many of them enjoy. Governments make victim-less crimes which make organized crime families powerful. And governments also create or arm terrorists.
The problem in the US is that the government was big enough to actually save the assholes on Wall Street.
The problem in the USA is that politicians in both political parties do not follow the Constitution of the USA. The Constitution set up a small and limited government however both Democrats and Republicans want big government. The main difference between them is what part of government is big and what part is smart or nonexistent.
I can't come up with anything I could say to get me arrested here (in the Netherlands) that wouldn't get someone arrested in America as well. Could you name an example?
The penal code of The Netherlands has laws sanctioning certain types of expression. For instance there's Lese-majest: "In October 2007, a 47-year-old man was fined €400 for, amongst other things, lese-majesty in the Netherlands when he called Queen Beatrix a "whore" and described several sexual acts he would like to perform on her to a police officer."
So they are far left and far right at the same time?
Do you have no idea what those words mean, or are you out of your damn mind?
They have problems, but you using these words as namecalling is not helping anyone.
Are you referring to the use of both "socialist" and and "fascist" in the same sentence? If so then you don't know anything about fascism then. From the wiki article Corporatism: "In Italy from 1922 until 1943, corporatism became influential amongst Italian nationalists led by Benito Mussolini." In 1935 in "The Doctrine of Fascism" Benito Mussolini said: The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State. Dusting off my education, in a public school, more than 30 years ago, we were taught socialism was the public ownership of the means of production, but people can still own private property such as a house.
As for leftist policies wiki has the article Left-wing politics which states The spectrum of left-wing politics ranges from centre-left to far left (or ultra-left). The term centre left describes a position within the political mainstream. The terms far left and ultra-left refer to positions that are more radical. The centre-left includes social democrats, social liberals, progressives and also some democratic socialists and greens (in particular the eco-socialists). Centre-left supporters accept market allocation of resources in a mixed economy with a significant public sector and a thriving private sector. Centre-left policies tend to favour limited state intervention in matters pertaining to the public interest. In the section Varieties the article mentions other meanings.
If it means universal service provisions for broadband internet access, then yes.
There are people in rural areas right now that don't have Internet access because telcos aren't willing to spend the money to run it out to them.
Universal service provisions allowed telephone service to reach every single person in the entire country back in the day. The same thing should happen for broadband internet access today.
I'm going to burst your bubble. In the US governments has already given cablecos and telcos hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to build out broadband. However all these companies did was pocket the money to be used as pocket liners. Former telecom industry analyst Bruce Kushnick documented how the federal government was ripped off by businesses in the e-book $200 Billion Broadband Scandal. In New Jersey alone Verizon was given tax breaks along with allowed to raise phone rates to cover the state with broadband. An agreement was reached between the state and Verizon 20 years ago but the state does not have wide coverage of broadband yet.
The only non-big government inexpensive way broadband will become more widely available throughout the US is by allowing competition and getting rid of monopolies/duopolies. Google is in the process of rolling-out fiber in Kansas City. Before fiber is rolled out in a neighborhood Google is asking 25% of the people to sign up and it costs $10. Wiki has an article on the plan, Google Fiber, including the cost for the services. 1Gbps net access and TV cost $120 a month with $300 construction fee. A Nexus 7 tablet is included. Internet access alone is $70 a month. In both cases the construction fee is waived if a 2 year contract is signed. And "Free Internet" with speeds of 5 Mbps / 1 Mbps is provided for the cost of the construction fee which can be spread out over a year, $25 a month.
There are people in rural areas right now that don't have Internet access because telcos aren't willing to spend the money to run it out to them.
While it may be expensive to roll out cables and fiber that's not true with radio, wire-less, access. Of course wire-less has it's own problems, such as not being that secure and not being as fast as fiber.
The problem with Qi is its about as "english language" as Shinjitai
English has the great ability of incorporating words from other languages into it's lexicon. I doubt there are many English words that are not borrowed from other languages. English itself is one such word.
Anyone that has played Scrabble (especially against a computer) know that there's tons of words out there that no one has ever heard of, most of which you can't even find a definition for.
Look in the Oxford English Dictionary or OED. The full edition has more than 600,000 definitions in 20 volumes. It takes all that space giving the etymology, historical formation, or origins of words. I found my spelling of time as "tyme" in the OED.
What the hell is a Qi? I don't know, but I can get 66 points for it
"Qi" is one of the alternate spellings for the Asian word for the circulating life energy in all living things. Other spellings are "chi" and "ki".
Yes that is true. Sure, there are PCs that are more expensive than macs, but you're not doing an apples-to-apples (no pun) comparison. Macs are consumer systems, so you compare them to other consumer systems. If mbps came with FireGL or Quattro cards, you could then make a comparison to like systems.
I did an apples-to-apples comparison. I picked a 17" MacBook Pro then tried finding a 17" Dell laptop with similar specs. I dare you to do the same.
> So you know more than all the professional graphic artists and photographers do about their profession? Are you one yourself? Fact is is many of them use Macs, and only Macs. Sure others use Windows PC and others are trying out Linux PCs but you're stupid if you believe no one uses Macs.
I never said none used Macs. Many do, some don't. From what I've seen graphic designers use mac more often than not. That wasn't my claim. My claim is that mac is not everything to everyone.
Again you're contradicting yourself. You in fact did say, cut and paste, "This is why you never see workstation grade graphics in a mac - just the regular ATI/nVidia consumer parts." Either graphic artists use Macs or they don't. You say Macs only use consumer graphics cards that are not good enough for workstation graphics. Then you say graphic designers do use Macs after-all. Wait, maybe you're separating graphic artists from designers, if so why and what about photographers? I am one.
And nowhere in your previous replies to me did you say "My claim is that mac is not everything to everyone." However I do agree with it. Linux is terrific for some people. Using used parts I rebuild PCs then install Ubuntu on them. I'm about to install Ubuntu 11.10 on my Mac making it dual-boot. Though I won't some also use MS Windows to triple-boot. Others use Macs. So many that Apple has become the largest PC OEM. In case you try to say that was last year, or other years gone by, that article is dated 10 days ago in the 4th of February 2011 and it talks about Q4 2011. In that quarter "Acer, Dell and HP lost market share while Apple saw significant gains". But anyway, for others MS Windows work okay.
Let's list what you can upgrade on a Newegg PC and compare it to a Mac Pro:
...
- change to another apple motherboard
Or any other motherboard. Most any mobo, whether micro-ATX, mini-ATX, mini-ITX, or ATX. Did doesn't matter if it has 2 PCIe x16 slots or none. The same applies to the rest of your list as well. Fact is is the Mac Pro case can have almost any components mounted in that can be mounted in any other full size case. Recently I rebuilt a Dell Precision workstation with 2 2.4GHz Xeon processors using the Dell case, but I could have used an Mac Pro case too.
>I provide real data and all you do is talk, where is your data?
Really? You went out and found the most expensive enterprise grade laptop you could,
No I didn't. I search the Dell website for the laptop that came closest to the MacBook Pro's specs. If it happens to be an "enterprise grade laptop" Dell has then so is the Apple laptop.
Go look at a dell XPS series, any size. You'll find is dead simple to configure it to have better specs than a mbp but will cost significantly less.
Using the above link, your own, the only OS choices I see are various MS Windows OSes, no OSX and no Linux. Excuse me for not wanting to be treated like a criminal. Which MS does requiring Activation and all the spyware. The display may be 1920x1080 where as the MBP's display is 1920x1200. I didn't see it for the Dell but the MBP can drive a 2560 by 1600 pixels external display. The one thing the Dell has no Mac does is a Blu-Ray Drive. Apple does not support Blu-Ray. This is one of the things I didn't like about Steve Jobs. However an external Blu-Ray burner can still be used. Myself, I'm thinking about getting one and removing the internal DVD, substituting a second hard disk drive for it, to expand my internal storage. Using either
You obviously didn't understand what I was talking about *at all*. You mentioned VirtualBox, Fusion 4, and Parallels. Try running OS X in VirtualBox or Parallels without using a hacked up OSx86 version. Oh wait you can't.
You did not say "run OS X virtually" or any such wording, you said How about virtualization? Let's now look at virtualizing OSX, Google is your friend...
That's 5 of Google's more than 150,00 results. Are you again going to say I didn't understand what you meant?
In response to my asking about terminal services, you respond "OSX has terminal". Clearly you have no idea what I'm talking about and didn't even bother to do the five seconds of googling to find out.
Just like you didn't spend the fives seconds to Google virtualize OSX. You didn't bother doing what you accuse me of not doing, Google terminal services osx. When I just did Google suggested "terminal services osx" and "terminal services osx client". I'm sure you're competent enough to look at some of the results yourself, if not I see no reason to continue.
The system you found has a quattro 3000M graphics card. Do you know how insanely expensive those are? That is not a consumer graphics card, like the one in the macbook pro.
Which graphics card in the MacBook Pro, it has two? The Dell only has one. According to Notebookcheck the AMD Radeon HD 6770M the MBP has is a "middle class graphics card for laptops in 2011." So while the Quadro 3000M is a pro graphics card, and has more memory the Radeon HD6770M isn't exactly a consumer graphics card like you said.
You really never pay full price for those Dell laptops.
Yeap I saw that. Dell jacks up the price then gives purchasers an"Instant Saving" of several hundred dollars.
I should probably point out that this laptop you pointed out isn't even a consumer laptop. Apple is all about the consumer, and doesn't care about the enterprise.
You say one thing in one sentence then promptly contradict yourself in the next. Is the MacBook Pro not for consumers or is Apple not only a consumer enterprise.
This is why you never see workstation grade graphics in a mac - just the regular ATI/nVidia consumer parts.
So you know more than all the professional graphic artists and photographers do about their profession? Are you one yourself? Fact is is many of them use Macs, and only Macs. Sure others use Windows PC and others are trying out Linux PCs but you're stupid if you believe no one uses Macs.
> The same applies to all other all-in-ones whether Apple, Dell, HP, or any other. The same with the Mac Mini.
So? I'm not really limiting myself to all-in-ones.
Do you always criticize those who agree with you?
Let's look at the Mac Pro.
But you didn't. You said The iMac is a desktop with zero upgrade ability. Even then though you don't look at the Mac Pro. It is just about as expandable as any system NewEgg will assemble. I do agree though you can get better components with custom built systems, no matter who the OEM is. Dell, HP, Leveno, and so on. Are you going to criticize this too?
Again, no. If you spend more on a PC than a Mac, that PC will *severely* outspec the mac. You can probably find a few outliers (such as Thinkstations) that are more comparable, but even those come with more workstation grade components than any mac. Macs are vastly more expensive than any equivalent-spec consumer PC.
I provide real data and all you do is talk, where is your data? Without data it's not real. But don't bother, I'm sure you or anyone else can provide data supporting your position. Then again not everything is uniform. There is no "what's best" for everything. As I've said in threads above this one volunteering for Free Geek I disassemble used and old PCs then rebuild new systems with old but good parts. Once built we then install Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx, and sell them. And we support the PCs we sell for 1 year.
Slashdot Mirror
And y'know, I don't always mind the nickel-and-dime approach, within reason. They just need to limit it to what really costs them money, rather than getting petty. Weight costs money, so baggage costs money. I tend to travel light, so by all means, charge an extra $50 to the morons who could sneak Grandma on in their ginormous bags. Soda, OTOH, costs less than fuel. Charge me a buck for a half-can, and you can bet your ass I'll bring my own with me from the terminal (where it only costs half-insane)
Fares previously included luggage, and planes had lower fuel economy than they do now, today a plane can fly farther on a tank of fuel than they could 10, 20 years ago. I wouldn't mind paying more for more baggage but I'd be pretty pissed if I had to pay extra for 1 carry-on and 1 check-in bag. Heck I don't think more had to be paid a life-time ago when I flew with a boxed bike as well as carry-on and checked baggage. Now I'd willingly pay say $5 or $10 for the bike but not for the two bags.
Falcon
If it means universal service provisions for broadband internet access, then yes.
There are people in rural areas right now that don't have Internet access because telcos aren't willing to spend the money to run it out to them.
Universal service provisions allowed telephone service to reach every single person in the entire country back in the day. The same thing should happen for broadband internet access today.
I find it ironic that you can propose this is a good idea if used for Universal Access, and then in the same post, inform us that some rural areas don't have internet access.
Wait, What? We've had Universal Service for decades in the telephone industry, and now you inform us that rural areas don't even have dial-up internet access?
You can have phone service but not internet access. Phone lines good enough for voice may not be good enough for data transmission. I know, I used to live somewhere where after a while I lost the ability to call into my ISP. The noise on the lines to the building was just too much, and the phone company would not correct the problem.
Falcon
People in rural areas can use dialup, (most likely) DSL, or satellite.
That shows how much you know. At least one DSL faq, DSL FAQS says that the farthest DSL can go is 29,100 feet (8,800 meters), At that distance the max speed is 128kbps though. Using ADSL loop extenders that can be extended from 6 miles to 10 miles from the central office. Satellite goes much further but it has its own problems. Like interference and latency or signal delays. Actually what may be better for some is G4 over a cellular network.
I have a friend who recently bought a house out in BFE Tennessee and he gets DSL. It's slow by my standards but that's what you have to deal with when you chose not to live with the rest of society
It's not always the location, sometimes it's the provider. A couple of years ago I could have gotten fiber, to the neighborhood, through Qwest. Since the change over to Centurylink though fiber is not available. I delayed in waiting too long to see if my ISP could offer fiber through Qwest.
Falcon
No one has a right to Internet access, and it's not even essential to life like food is
One, food isn't a right either. And two, life isn't essential. Oh, and you don't pay the full cost of food either. Large corporations like Cargill get billions of US taxpayer dollars a year in subsidies. The Free Markets CATO Institute published a policy analysis about Archer Daniels Midland, A Case Study In Corporate Welfare. ADM like Cargill get billions of dollars in subsidies a year. I don't know about you but I'd rather choose who I hand money to, either as a trade or a donation. Government doesn't give that option though.
Falcon
I know it's a crazy prospect, but maybe giving monopolistic freebies to enormous corporations isn't in the public's best interest.
Giving government the same monopolistic freebies isn't in the public interest either.
Falcon
Blame our (great)grandparents. Had they not ratified the 16th amendment, that particular imbalance would be much more difficult.
No, I blame the ratification of the 12th Amendment. The Democratic and Republican parties love that amendment. I propose an amendment myself, one than repeals the 12th. And the electoral college. With my amendment every candidate runs for president and the voters get to rank them, something like the Condorcet methods. In my preferred method though a vote of "0", zero, counts against the candidate whereas no vote does not. It works like this, all of a candidate's votes are added up then the total is divided by the number of votes. A zero counts as a vote whereas a blank does not. I don't know how it would work in practice but it'd stir up politics.
Thanks for the link, by the way. The data was fun to play with, even if only for a few minutes. (I spent some time looking for that other factor that I alluded to.)
I originally got the link from a page on CATO's website though I didn't find the page just now.
Falcon
And that is why the US is destined to fall behind. Selfish pricks think even a dollar to help the nation is too much.
The people that want all of the advantages of living out in the sticks whole accepting none of the downsides, by forcing everyone to pay to eliminate those downsides, are the selfish pricks. Nice try.
Those who want to eat cheaply are the selfish pricks.
Falcon
And the cost of upgrading this 4% would come from corporation's multimillion dollar profits. Like corporate charity.
This is completely identical to taxing all of the customers of the corporation, raising the price they pay by x%.
There is no free lunch. Gov't mandates do not cause goods to pop out of thin air. "Corporate profits" are not an independent pool of money that you can meddle with, because they're based on a percentage of the value people place on the goods provided.
Okay then, take away their monopolies. Allow competitors the ability to use the same right of way the incumbent uses. They'll then cry about having competition.
I can see it now phone/power poles straining under the load of fifty cables, or 50 poles trying to squeeze into a small space. How about 100 strands of fiber sharing underground pipes, or 100 pipes sharing the same space.
Falcon
again, wtf does the FCC have to do with the internet?
Is this a joke? They're the Federal Communications Commission. Are you contending that the Internet isn't a form of interstate communication?
Where does the word "Communications" make it's appearance in the Constitution of the USA?
In a letter to Albert Gallatin Thomas Jeffersonwrote “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.” James Madison, the father of the Constitution, once wrote “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents” when congress undertook to appropriate $15,000 "for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo (now Haiti) to Baltimore and Philadelphia". In the Marbury v Madison case in 1803 Justice Marshall wrote:
The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the Constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the Constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it; or, that the legislature may alter the Constitution by an ordinary act.
Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The Constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it.
If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law: if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts on the part of the people to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.
Falcon
You can have your cake and eat it, too. But I'm not responsible for buying it for you.
Except it's more like you having and eating your cake, and you are responsible. Where does your food come from? Farms in rural settings? If they have to pay a lot for broadband then they will raise their prices for your food. Unless you can do or make for yourself everything you want you have to pay for others to receive services and goods you get too. Personally I'd rather pay more or donate to those I choose to than have government forcibly take money from me to give to others. At the same tyme I believe in getting what I pay for as well as having a choice as to who will provide what I want to buy. However we, US taxpayers, don't have either. The federal government gave the cable and phone broadband providers $200 Billion, oops >$300 Billion to build out broadband access. We did not get it. Governments also gave these large corporations monopolies, get rid of the monopolies and let there be competition. That includes airwave monopolies.
That's because it was established in 1934. Putting the same wording in a modern bill would be vilified as socialist, big government, anti-capitalism, and anti-freedom.
Because it might be. Read the wiki article The New Deal and corporatism Churchill, FDR, and Mussolini wrote to each other, praised each other, and used each others ideas. For instance Mussolini praised FDR's New Deal. One part of the New Deal was the National Industrial Recovery ACT (NIRA). Former Republican President Herbert Hoover wrote Among the early Roosevelt fascist measures was the National Industry Recovery Act (NRA) of June 16, 1933 in his memoirs in 1951. So it's not just people today saying such a bill would be called socialist.
Falcon
"We should avoid entangling alliances with european powers that could draw us into bloodshed..... rest assured while one European leader runs-around mad, and the others act as if they are halfway there themselves, we shall remain at peace here in North America." - George Washington)
Who says Americans don't do irony.
My country has been drawn into two major land wars since the turn of the century and in both cases, it was by the USA.
For more irony read what George Washington said about torture: George Washington: No Torture on My Watch. He wouldn't have allowed the water boarding of German mercenaries working for the British.
Falcon
We just believe that people, not governments, are the best source of help for the poor. Ron Paul probably doesn't belong in that particular list with Sarah Palin and George Bush, by the way.
I agree about Ron Paul. However the NYT article doesn't tell the whole story. Red States Feed at Federal Trough, Blue States Supply the Feed explains how blue states pay more in federal taxes than they get back in spending whereas red states get more from the feds than they pay in taxes. For every dollar blue state New Yorkers pay in federal taxes they get back $0.81. Red state North Dakota residents receive $2.03 for every dollar they pay.
Falcon
Maybe the rest of the world is tired of the American sense of entitlement, your tendency to export really bad laws onto everybody else, and the fact that ... well ... as a nation you're kind of assholes on balance. At least, that's how you project yourselves. And to the rest of the world, people like George Bush, Sarah Palin, and Run Paul all reinforce that. You're a country who figures the rich should stay rich, and the poor should go fuck themselves.
You decry the "American sense of entitlement" and "Run Paul" one sentence later. If you meant Ron Paul then there wouldn't be an "American sense of entitlement". Nor would the US export bad laws as a President Ron Paul would try to get rid of as many victim-less crime laws as he could. The US has the world's largest prison population and the biggest set of crimes prisoners were found guilty of is drug laws. People who don't harm or steal from others are in gaol simply because they dealt in or possessed illegal drugs. By getting rid of laws that make possession and use of drugs a crime not only can the prison population be cut substantially but the people could actually boost the economy by working and paying taxes. The government's budget, what it spends would be much smaller too. And wouldn't be partially hidden, like the billions of dollars spent on stupid and unconstitutional wars. No war on liberty, which is what the war on drugs is, no Afghan war, no Iraq war. There would also be no subsidies to large corporations, like the billions of dollars in subsidies Cargill gets for exporting food, driving farmers in third world nations off their own farms because they can't compeat against US government largess.
Falcon
Well, I might point out that it was you guys who waded into Iraq and Afghanistan and pretty much demanded the world follow along with you ... I believe Bush famously said "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists". You'll notice that lots of other countries committed resources (and lives) to that, but in the end, absolutely none of the reasons it was done were ever proven to be valid. There never was a good reason to go into Iraq, but you guys bullied everyone else into doing it with you.
I am an American who disagreed with invading both Afghanistan and Iraq. I would have liked to see the Afghans set up democratic political and free trade systems after the Soviet pulled out of Afghanistan. But the then US administration left them alone after arming the Taliban. If the US had not armed the Mujahideen, some of whom became the Taliban, and tried to at least encourage people to travel to and do business with Afghanistan after the Soviet pullout then the Taliban would not have been as bad and caused as much trouble as they did. I also opposed the arming and assistance of Saddam Hussein throughout the 1980s. Saddam could gas Iraqi villages and neither Reagan nor Bush Sr would stop arming Saddam. Bush Sr's support of Saddam only came to an end after Saddam invaded Kuwait. The admin even knew before hand that Saddam was going to invade Kuwait but did nothing to discourage or stop it. Even after the wars, Kuwait is still a monarchy.
This is a two way street. And if you want to start disentangling yourselves from your allies, well, you might not find yourself with much support later.
As soon as the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist so should have NATO. NATO was created as a reaction to and fear of the Soviets and the Pact. With them gone NATO's reason to exist was gone too.
I'm sure the Europeans aren't all that thrilled with their banking and flight data being handed over to serve US interests. So maybe everyone just says "well, since you think we're not such good allies, we're not doing that any more".
I'm not trilled, I actually hate, the sharing of data between and within governments. I fear government far more than I do businesses, criminals and organized crime syndicates, and terrorists. Actually it's government who gives them the power they have. Governments grant corporate charters to corporations as well as the monopolies many of them enjoy. Governments make victim-less crimes which make organized crime families powerful. And governments also create or arm terrorists.
Falcon
The problem in the US is that the government was big enough to actually save the assholes on Wall Street.
The problem in the USA is that politicians in both political parties do not follow the Constitution of the USA. The Constitution set up a small and limited government however both Democrats and Republicans want big government. The main difference between them is what part of government is big and what part is smart or nonexistent.
Falcon
I can't come up with anything I could say to get me arrested here (in the Netherlands) that wouldn't get someone arrested in America as well. Could you name an example?
The penal code of The Netherlands has laws sanctioning certain types of expression. For instance there's Lese-majest: "In October 2007, a 47-year-old man was fined €400 for, amongst other things, lese-majesty in the Netherlands when he called Queen Beatrix a "whore" and described several sexual acts he would like to perform on her to a police officer."
Falcon
So they are far left and far right at the same time?
Do you have no idea what those words mean, or are you out of your damn mind?
They have problems, but you using these words as namecalling is not helping anyone.
Are you referring to the use of both "socialist" and and "fascist" in the same sentence? If so then you don't know anything about fascism then. From the wiki article Corporatism: "In Italy from 1922 until 1943, corporatism became influential amongst Italian nationalists led by Benito Mussolini." In 1935 in "The Doctrine of Fascism" Benito Mussolini said: The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State. Dusting off my education, in a public school, more than 30 years ago, we were taught socialism was the public ownership of the means of production, but people can still own private property such as a house.
As for leftist policies wiki has the article Left-wing politics which states The spectrum of left-wing politics ranges from centre-left to far left (or ultra-left). The term centre left describes a position within the political mainstream. The terms far left and ultra-left refer to positions that are more radical. The centre-left includes social democrats, social liberals, progressives and also some democratic socialists and greens (in particular the eco-socialists). Centre-left supporters accept market allocation of resources in a mixed economy with a significant public sector and a thriving private sector. Centre-left policies tend to favour limited state intervention in matters pertaining to the public interest. In the section Varieties the article mentions other meanings.
Falcon
If it means universal service provisions for broadband internet access, then yes.
There are people in rural areas right now that don't have Internet access because telcos aren't willing to spend the money to run it out to them.
Universal service provisions allowed telephone service to reach every single person in the entire country back in the day. The same thing should happen for broadband internet access today.
I'm going to burst your bubble. In the US governments has already given cablecos and telcos hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to build out broadband. However all these companies did was pocket the money to be used as pocket liners. Former telecom industry analyst Bruce Kushnick documented how the federal government was ripped off by businesses in the e-book $200 Billion Broadband Scandal. In New Jersey alone Verizon was given tax breaks along with allowed to raise phone rates to cover the state with broadband. An agreement was reached between the state and Verizon 20 years ago but the state does not have wide coverage of broadband yet.
The only non-big government inexpensive way broadband will become more widely available throughout the US is by allowing competition and getting rid of monopolies/duopolies. Google is in the process of rolling-out fiber in Kansas City. Before fiber is rolled out in a neighborhood Google is asking 25% of the people to sign up and it costs $10. Wiki has an article on the plan, Google Fiber, including the cost for the services. 1Gbps net access and TV cost $120 a month with $300 construction fee. A Nexus 7 tablet is included. Internet access alone is $70 a month. In both cases the construction fee is waived if a 2 year contract is signed. And "Free Internet" with speeds of 5 Mbps / 1 Mbps is provided for the cost of the construction fee which can be spread out over a year, $25 a month.
There are people in rural areas right now that don't have Internet access because telcos aren't willing to spend the money to run it out to them.
While it may be expensive to roll out cables and fiber that's not true with radio, wire-less, access. Of course wire-less has it's own problems, such as not being that secure and not being as fast as fiber.
Falcon
The problem with Qi is its about as "english language" as Shinjitai
English has the great ability of incorporating words from other languages into it's lexicon. I doubt there are many English words that are not borrowed from other languages. English itself is one such word.
Falcon
Anyone that has played Scrabble (especially against a computer) know that there's tons of words out there that no one has ever heard of, most of which you can't even find a definition for.
Look in the Oxford English Dictionary or OED. The full edition has more than 600,000 definitions in 20 volumes. It takes all that space giving the etymology, historical formation, or origins of words. I found my spelling of time as "tyme" in the OED.
What the hell is a Qi? I don't know, but I can get 66 points for it
"Qi" is one of the alternate spellings for the Asian word for the circulating life energy in all living things. Other spellings are "chi" and "ki".
Falcon
Yes that is true. Sure, there are PCs that are more expensive than macs, but you're not doing an apples-to-apples (no pun) comparison. Macs are consumer systems, so you compare them to other consumer systems. If mbps came with FireGL or Quattro cards, you could then make a comparison to like systems.
I did an apples-to-apples comparison. I picked a 17" MacBook Pro then tried finding a 17" Dell laptop with similar specs. I dare you to do the same.
Falcon
> So you know more than all the professional graphic artists and photographers do about their profession? Are you one yourself? Fact is is many of them use Macs, and only Macs. Sure others use Windows PC and others are trying out Linux PCs but you're stupid if you believe no one uses Macs.
I never said none used Macs. Many do, some don't. From what I've seen graphic designers use mac more often than not. That wasn't my claim. My claim is that mac is not everything to everyone.
Again you're contradicting yourself. You in fact did say, cut and paste, "This is why you never see workstation grade graphics in a mac - just the regular ATI/nVidia consumer parts." Either graphic artists use Macs or they don't. You say Macs only use consumer graphics cards that are not good enough for workstation graphics. Then you say graphic designers do use Macs after-all. Wait, maybe you're separating graphic artists from designers, if so why and what about photographers? I am one.
And nowhere in your previous replies to me did you say "My claim is that mac is not everything to everyone." However I do agree with it. Linux is terrific for some people. Using used parts I rebuild PCs then install Ubuntu on them. I'm about to install Ubuntu 11.10 on my Mac making it dual-boot. Though I won't some also use MS Windows to triple-boot. Others use Macs. So many that Apple has become the largest PC OEM. In case you try to say that was last year, or other years gone by, that article is dated 10 days ago in the 4th of February 2011 and it talks about Q4 2011. In that quarter "Acer, Dell and HP lost market share while Apple saw significant gains". But anyway, for others MS Windows work okay.
Let's list what you can upgrade on a Newegg PC and compare it to a Mac Pro:
- change to another apple motherboard
Or any other motherboard. Most any mobo, whether micro-ATX, mini-ATX, mini-ITX, or ATX. Did doesn't matter if it has 2 PCIe x16 slots or none. The same applies to the rest of your list as well. Fact is is the Mac Pro case can have almost any components mounted in that can be mounted in any other full size case. Recently I rebuilt a Dell Precision workstation with 2 2.4GHz Xeon processors using the Dell case, but I could have used an Mac Pro case too.
>I provide real data and all you do is talk, where is your data?
Really? You went out and found the most expensive enterprise grade laptop you could,
No I didn't. I search the Dell website for the laptop that came closest to the MacBook Pro's specs. If it happens to be an "enterprise grade laptop" Dell has then so is the Apple laptop.
Go look at a dell XPS series, any size. You'll find is dead simple to configure it to have better specs than a mbp but will cost significantly less.
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=dncwcp4&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&model_id=xps-l702x
Using the above link, your own, the only OS choices I see are various MS Windows OSes, no OSX and no Linux. Excuse me for not wanting to be treated like a criminal. Which MS does requiring Activation and all the spyware. The display may be 1920x1080 where as the MBP's display is 1920x1200. I didn't see it for the Dell but the MBP can drive a 2560 by 1600 pixels external display. The one thing the Dell has no Mac does is a Blu-Ray Drive. Apple does not support Blu-Ray. This is one of the things I didn't like about Steve Jobs. However an external Blu-Ray burner can still be used. Myself, I'm thinking about getting one and removing the internal DVD, substituting a second hard disk drive for it, to expand my internal storage. Using either
You obviously didn't understand what I was talking about *at all*. You mentioned VirtualBox, Fusion 4, and Parallels. Try running OS X in VirtualBox or Parallels without using a hacked up OSx86 version. Oh wait you can't.
You did not say "run OS X virtually" or any such wording, you said How about virtualization? Let's now look at virtualizing OSX, Google is your friend...
That's 5 of Google's more than 150,00 results. Are you again going to say I didn't understand what you meant?
In response to my asking about terminal services, you respond "OSX has terminal". Clearly you have no idea what I'm talking about and didn't even bother to do the five seconds of googling to find out.
Just like you didn't spend the fives seconds to Google virtualize OSX. You didn't bother doing what you accuse me of not doing, Google terminal services osx. When I just did Google suggested "terminal services osx" and "terminal services osx client". I'm sure you're competent enough to look at some of the results yourself, if not I see no reason to continue.
Falcon
The system you found has a quattro 3000M graphics card. Do you know how insanely expensive those are? That is not a consumer graphics card, like the one in the macbook pro.
Which graphics card in the MacBook Pro, it has two? The Dell only has one. According to Notebookcheck the AMD Radeon HD 6770M the MBP has is a "middle class graphics card for laptops in 2011." So while the Quadro 3000M is a pro graphics card, and has more memory the Radeon HD6770M isn't exactly a consumer graphics card like you said.
You really never pay full price for those Dell laptops.
Yeap I saw that. Dell jacks up the price then gives purchasers an"Instant Saving" of several hundred dollars.
I should probably point out that this laptop you pointed out isn't even a consumer laptop. Apple is all about the consumer, and doesn't care about the enterprise.
You say one thing in one sentence then promptly contradict yourself in the next. Is the MacBook Pro not for consumers or is Apple not only a consumer enterprise.
This is why you never see workstation grade graphics in a mac - just the regular ATI/nVidia consumer parts.
So you know more than all the professional graphic artists and photographers do about their profession? Are you one yourself? Fact is is many of them use Macs, and only Macs. Sure others use Windows PC and others are trying out Linux PCs but you're stupid if you believe no one uses Macs.
> The same applies to all other all-in-ones whether Apple, Dell, HP, or any other. The same with the Mac Mini.
So? I'm not really limiting myself to all-in-ones.
Do you always criticize those who agree with you?
Let's look at the Mac Pro.
But you didn't. You said The iMac is a desktop with zero upgrade ability. Even then though you don't look at the Mac Pro. It is just about as expandable as any system NewEgg will assemble. I do agree though you can get better components with custom built systems, no matter who the OEM is. Dell, HP, Leveno, and so on. Are you going to criticize this too?
Again, no. If you spend more on a PC than a Mac, that PC will *severely* outspec the mac. You can probably find a few outliers (such as Thinkstations) that are more comparable, but even those come with more workstation grade components than any mac. Macs are vastly more expensive than any equivalent-spec consumer PC.
I provide real data and all you do is talk, where is your data? Without data it's not real. But don't bother, I'm sure you or anyone else can provide data supporting your position. Then again not everything is uniform. There is no "what's best" for everything. As I've said in threads above this one volunteering for Free Geek I disassemble used and old PCs then rebuild new systems with old but good parts. Once built we then install Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx, and sell them. And we support the PCs we sell for 1 year.
Falcon