More often, they are removing the regulatory foundation necessary for the market to succeed, ironically in the name of a free market.
A completely unregulated market, far from being free, is bound to end up with a few large players and prohibitive barriers to entry for smaller players. Given that conservatives today represent those large players, they know this perfectly well, and it is their goal. But they hide it behind disingenuous free-market rhetoric. In my experience, as a small business owner, it's the regulation and taxes that create barriers to entry. What kind of barriers are caused by removing regulation?
I'm not a huge social media guy, so I can't really offer too many opinions. I do like Myspace because it's so open. Easy to find and add new people.
I do think part of Orkut's problem is the name. Read an article recently about how people with common names are more likely to succeed in school and business. I think the same thing holds true for products. If you can't figure out how to pronounce a name, or if it sounds silly, people don't use it.
That would be political suicide because it would be perceived as leaving the troops high and dry.
And I care because? I didn't vote for anyone to further their career. I voted for them to expect them to do the right thing. If the people who elected them want to stop the war, then they should do everything in their power to do it. If they are just a bunch of career politicians covering their asses, they are just as bad as the Republicans - actually worse. Many of the Republicans believe in the war in Iraq, they are voting their conscience.
The only person who can realistically stop the war is the president.
No, the only ones who can stop it are the American people. It will be interesting to see, if Obama is elected, if much actually changes. He's pledged to have troops out of Iraq in 16 months - I'll be AMAZED if it happens.
Actually, not always. I think Google is a good example of a company that hasn't done that. Their ads are relatively unobtrusive, and even useful. They don't do pop-ups or flashing ads or other irritating things that Myspace and Facebook are doing. Their model is quite sustainable and seems to work.
Sites collapse under their own weight when people get greedy. If the advertising remains reasonable the provider can make money and have some longevity.
It's just the way it is, and investing in one of these sites like it's going to be the next amazon or google is pretty silly.
The only argument that I have about that is achieving 'critical mass'. Myspace is successful due to it's large userbase. Same thing with Facebook. Retail sites, like Amazon, only need to drive buyers to the site to be successful. A social networking site really has to have everybody on it to be successful. If your friends aren't on Myspace, you probably won't use it. The more entrenched social groups are in one site, the more difficult it is to build a competitor and be successful.
Congress will usually defer to the president, even if the president is a moron. That's the way our political system is designed to work.
No, our system is designed to work in just the opposite manner. Our founding fathers came from a country with a monarch they hated. The last thing they wanted was a President that became a tyrant. Our system is specifically designed to make it as difficult as possible to get anything done. Not only do both the House and Senate have to have a majority on everything, it then has to get past the President. The President has very limited power when it comes to passing laws. He cannot even pass a budget without both Houses of Congress approving it. Yes, he has veto power, but if Congress doesn't pass the law to start with there is nothing to veto.
This Democratically controlled Congress has been well within their power to stop funding for the action in Iraq - forcing the President's hand. They just haven't done it.
You may be the first person ever to accuse me of being unthinking. Actually I was just being lazy and a bit of a troll.
The way I see it, conservatives think that business is the end goal of all things, and that we need a healthy underclass to keep things profitable. Thus they want to hand money to corporations, since it should, in theory, move down the ladder. If it doesn't, thats okay, since the CEOs are happy.
First off business, or more accurately economics, is everything when it comes to politics. Without money the government doesn't function, corporations are angry and the citizens are angry. Without money we wouldn't even have a rich or poor to worry about. In spite of that, I'm not sure I personally know anyone who would consider themselves 'conservative' who would agree with your statement about corporations and CEOs. It's one of those things we go along with.
Liberals want to accept any populist notion as a good thing, but generally think that the poor needs more support than the rich.
Basically, conservatives steal from the poor and give to the rich, while liberals do the opposite.
Don't kid yourself. Both sides still from the middle class, that's why it's shrinking. In fact, despite the lip service Liberal politicians pay to the 'poor', they have no intention of expanding the middle class. It's the poor people that get them elected.
Conservativims is generally also tied to ideas of theocracy, while liberalism is tied to PC ideologies, and as stated (somewhat innacurate, since a theocracy is ALSO a nannystate) intituting a nanny state.
So basically we have the relio-fascists versus the nanny-socialists.
Neither seems that... good. Though in practice, they generaly amount to the same thing, turning America into a third world-country though greed, graft, and corruption. Not to mention unrealistic dogmatism.
I can definitely agree with you here. The conservatives definitely have their own nanny rules. In fact, I think that's one of our largest problems. We get nannying from both sides of the aisle. It's getting to the point where a man can't breathe.
I'd prefer we had a real progressive party, and a real libertarian party. Convervativism, and Liberalism are a hoax. People who put one above the other are brainwashed. Both sides are equally evil, and both sides are capable of having some good ideas.
What is needed for America is lots of ideological opposition. Open minded opposition.
What America really needs is leadership. As you say, both sides have some good things most of us could agree on. The War on Terror and Global Warming are elusive goals. The current administration has done nothing to make us feel better about our lives. There are troops conducting a pointless war half a world away that has no tangible endpoint. We are deeper in debt, inflation is up, fuel prices are killing us and our quality of life isn't any better than it was eight years ago. Our next president needs to find something this country can sink it's teeth into and go after it.
Conservatives think a man should be free to make his own way, Liberals think everyone should be babysat and evil politicians just pander to whoever can make the biggest campaign contribution, but I digress.
My original point is you have to have a more focused vision than 'bringing prosperity'. FDR had the "New Deal". JFK wanted to put a man on the moon. Eisenhower wanted to free the American to travel the country. Clinton What do Obama or McCain want to do? We need specifics?
These parts, it is illegal to dispose of batteries as waste, they are supposed to be recycled (this doesn't mean that everybody recycles them, but it does mean that it is straightforward to do it).
Sure, but the recycling process isn't perfect. There is always some waste, and sometimes 'recycling' is just another term for environmentally safe disposal. Just because it can't be thrown in the trash doesn't mean we need the chemicals available, especially when there is a power grid available with a (in theory) lower environmental impact.
Great idea. Think I read somewhere that the next generation of hybrid cars will use some kind of hydraulic storage rather than electrical. Wonder if the same thing could be done pneumatically. Compress air with the power and release it to run a generator on demand.
He could use a battery from a car with a dead cell. Lights will still work at 10V. A new battery should last more than five years. A cheap battery where I live is about the same price as the solar cell, and the application is not particularly demanding.
You could always use a gell cell in place of the lead acid battery. I'm not sure I've ever had a car battery where I knew just one cell was bad. That's a possibility, but testing for it would be tricky.
Thing is, running wiring from the house and installing a single CFL or even incandescent if temperatures are too extreme wouldn't use much electricity. If it's a shed, it probably wouldn't receive high usage and it would take a long time to use enough electricity to justify the cost of a $50 battery.
According to this site http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cost.html
A 100W incandescent lightbulb takes.1Kwh to burn 1 hour. Figure a price of $0.10/Kwh, the installer could use the bulb for an hour every night of the year for $3.65. In five years he would have saved $18.25 with the solar setup, not nearly enough to buy a battery. Use a 13 Watt CFL instead, and you are down around 47 cents a year.
The whole thing is a nice idea, but not economically feasible.
Actually, I looked at all of those articles, and none of them are what I would call 'poisoning'.
They discuss his positions on minimum wage, NAFTA, Iraq, goverment health insurance, the GI bill, Social Security and Abortion. One also deals with his economic advisor, Phill Gramm (yes, the Gramm from Gramm-Rudman-Hollings and Gramm-Leach-Bliley) being a paid economic lobbyist. This is all good information and lets the public know where McCain stands on some important issues. If they were personal attacks about his marriage or military record I would say they would be poisoning, but they all seem to be very relevant to me.
Unifying the country is a good thing. It doesn't mean we all agree, but it means we are all going in the same general direction and making progress. Right now the US is not just divided, it's segmented. No one is a fan of the poor economy, high fuel prices, Gitmo controversy, the morass that is Iraq, and the perceived lack of leadership in Washington.
Our greatest presidents are the ones that could unite the people behind a common cause and make us proud to be Americans. FDR, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Reagan, these men were all visionaries and they accomplished some major goals because they were able to unify the country behind some major ideas. FDR had the New Deal and then, of course, WWII. JFK had the space program and the cold war. Eisenhower built the Interstate system and fought communism. Reagan freed hostages and fought the cold war.
All of these leaders were able to find a common enemy or problem and then use constructive solutions to unify the country. Our next President should, ideally, have a vision, be able to sell this vision to the American people, and move us forward in a positive way to accomplish these goals. Since the end of the Cold War, America has struggled. There has been no common purpose to unite behind. Bush tried to use 9/11 and Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, but it's such a vague, indefinable threat that people rapidly lose interest.
Thing is, unifying the country by looking the other way on candidates actions doesn't help. McCain is a doddering old man who doesn't seem to have any direction. Obama says he has direction, but so far we haven't been able to pin down what it is. To succeed a candidate needs to communicate what he wants for the future of this country, and be able to weather any negative attacks against him. Negative information, as long as it's accurate, is good for this country and shouldn't be swept under the carpet in the name of 'unification'.
Dashboard solar panel intended to boost a car battery $50 AUD
Car Battery
12V Light fittings intended for a caravan or similar
Interesting. Purchasing a car battery is expensive (both up front and every 3-5 years when you have to replace it), plus environmentally bad. The battery will likely offset any gains to be had from the solar installation itself.
Wiring is not rocket science. There is no reason a person cannot get instructions, educate himself and do it properly. No one should just 'figure it out'. Electricians are trained an licensed to do their job - they aren't born with the skill.
In my community, it's perfectly legal for a homeowner to complete work to their house as long as they pull a permit and have the work inspected. If this is an option (check your local laws) it's a good way to make sure you don't burn anything down. The inspector will make sure your work is up to code and won't burn your house down.
Maybe because it creates an image where there is little to differentiate of your product from that of the next guy? Makes it kind of hard to justify ridiculous profit margins... Or maybe you will have to compete with your hardware. If these companies are cutting corners on their software development, they are probably cutting corners on their hardware development as well. If company Z has better hardware and can use your GPL software, you are pretty much SCREWED.
I don't know anything about California, but it could be that the government is trying to protect people from possible harms of bad and unnecessary testing.
Bad testing I can agree with, and the proper way to go about this would be to prosecute the testers for fraud.
There is not really any such thing as unnecessary testing. If a company can conduct a test, and the results are accurate and as promised to the customer, how can that be construed as unnecessary? The only time I've every seen the concept of "unnecessary testing" come into play is when medical treatment is limited by cost, due to involvement by insurance companies and inflated medical costs. Neither of these has any impact in this situation. These are private citizens using private funds to get their genetics tested - who's to say what is necessary.
Not to rant, but I think this is one major flaw with current US healthcare. In the name of 'protecting the citizens' our government has made sure that anyone that can give medical advice needs to have paid for (in both time and money) 12 years of school, be certified, government approved and insured. Then we all sit around and wonder why medical costs are so high. If private companies can replace all this training with $1000 (or less) machines our poor liberal Californians won't be able to achieve their goal of universal (socialist) healthcare.
He filed a lawsuit here in Omaha against the police chief for not handing over evidence on a sealed, active investigation on Robert Hawkins. He should have known better since we all know Robert Hawkins was undercover trying to stop a nuclear attack...
Because haphazardly hacked together code is usually full of bugs and design limitations, while obfuscated code is simply rearranged good code? Integrating with buggy, poorly written code is not my cup of tea. Yes, because we all know that obfuscated code NEVER has any bugs or design limitations. If the Microsoft document format and Windows File Sharing can be reverse engineered I'm sure anything can.
Yes, but you can do that now. I can't see the carriers aren't going to finance your phone purchase if you buy it elsewhere and roll the payment into your bill for the next 24 months. Not much incentive for them to do that, unless they want to get into the banking business.
The only way I can imagine they will finance the purchase of the phone is if they sell it to you to start with, which is pretty much what they are doing now.
In my personal experience I have never felt a cellular carrier tried in any way to mislead me or missrepresent the agreement I was makeing with them. I hear allot of bitching about celluar contract but I hardly ever hear people telling me they were hornswaggled. Exactly. If carriers are misrepresenting their contract or changing the terms of the agreement that should be dealt with. If people are just expressing buyers remorse they need to suck it up and be smarter next time.
If the FCC nixes the fees, then plans will go down (not paying for the phone) and you will pay more for the phone, possibly on a 24 month payment plan rolled into your bill. I like that a lot.
Or the plans will stay the same and you will have to pay for the phone as well. It's kind of like the gas tax holiday, if the market will bear a certain amount for a monthly cell phone bill, there's no reason to think that the plan would get cheaper just because they aren't providing the phone.
Also, how is a 2 year payment plan for the phone any different than a contract with a cancellation fee? If you decide to cancel you contract prior to the 2 years, you will still be liable for the price of the phone.
First, that's not what I said. My point is that government regulation is NOT "Market Forces".
Second, yeah, they do solve everything. Government interference just postpones the inevitable. If you aren't smart enough to understand a contract you probably shouldn't sign your name to it. If you do understand it, and then it doesn't work out quite the way you want, you have no cause to cry foul.
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That's exactly right. Unhealthy eating, lack of exercise, and smoking could kill us. I'm sure that cancer, and brain problems could too.
Still,living to 80 years old or whatever would be MUCH better if I had a 20 year old body again.
I'm not a huge social media guy, so I can't really offer too many opinions. I do like Myspace because it's so open. Easy to find and add new people.
I do think part of Orkut's problem is the name. Read an article recently about how people with common names are more likely to succeed in school and business. I think the same thing holds true for products. If you can't figure out how to pronounce a name, or if it sounds silly, people don't use it.
That would be political suicide because it would be perceived as leaving the troops high and dry.
And I care because? I didn't vote for anyone to further their career. I voted for them to expect them to do the right thing. If the people who elected them want to stop the war, then they should do everything in their power to do it. If they are just a bunch of career politicians covering their asses, they are just as bad as the Republicans - actually worse. Many of the Republicans believe in the war in Iraq, they are voting their conscience.The only person who can realistically stop the war is the president.
No, the only ones who can stop it are the American people. It will be interesting to see, if Obama is elected, if much actually changes. He's pledged to have troops out of Iraq in 16 months - I'll be AMAZED if it happens.Actually, not always. I think Google is a good example of a company that hasn't done that. Their ads are relatively unobtrusive, and even useful. They don't do pop-ups or flashing ads or other irritating things that Myspace and Facebook are doing. Their model is quite sustainable and seems to work.
Sites collapse under their own weight when people get greedy. If the advertising remains reasonable the provider can make money and have some longevity.
It's just the way it is, and investing in one of these sites like it's going to be the next amazon or google is pretty silly.
The only argument that I have about that is achieving 'critical mass'. Myspace is successful due to it's large userbase. Same thing with Facebook. Retail sites, like Amazon, only need to drive buyers to the site to be successful. A social networking site really has to have everybody on it to be successful. If your friends aren't on Myspace, you probably won't use it. The more entrenched social groups are in one site, the more difficult it is to build a competitor and be successful.Congress will usually defer to the president, even if the president is a moron. That's the way our political system is designed to work.
No, our system is designed to work in just the opposite manner. Our founding fathers came from a country with a monarch they hated. The last thing they wanted was a President that became a tyrant. Our system is specifically designed to make it as difficult as possible to get anything done. Not only do both the House and Senate have to have a majority on everything, it then has to get past the President. The President has very limited power when it comes to passing laws. He cannot even pass a budget without both Houses of Congress approving it. Yes, he has veto power, but if Congress doesn't pass the law to start with there is nothing to veto.This Democratically controlled Congress has been well within their power to stop funding for the action in Iraq - forcing the President's hand. They just haven't done it.
I smell a bit of unthinking bias there.
You may be the first person ever to accuse me of being unthinking. Actually I was just being lazy and a bit of a troll.The way I see it, conservatives think that business is the end goal of all things, and that we need a healthy underclass to keep things profitable. Thus they want to hand money to corporations, since it should, in theory, move down the ladder. If it doesn't, thats okay, since the CEOs are happy.
First off business, or more accurately economics, is everything when it comes to politics. Without money the government doesn't function, corporations are angry and the citizens are angry. Without money we wouldn't even have a rich or poor to worry about. In spite of that, I'm not sure I personally know anyone who would consider themselves 'conservative' who would agree with your statement about corporations and CEOs. It's one of those things we go along with.Liberals want to accept any populist notion as a good thing, but generally think that the poor needs more support than the rich.
Basically, conservatives steal from the poor and give to the rich, while liberals do the opposite.
Don't kid yourself. Both sides still from the middle class, that's why it's shrinking. In fact, despite the lip service Liberal politicians pay to the 'poor', they have no intention of expanding the middle class. It's the poor people that get them elected.Conservativims is generally also tied to ideas of theocracy, while liberalism is tied to PC ideologies, and as stated (somewhat innacurate, since a theocracy is ALSO a nannystate) intituting a nanny state.
So basically we have the relio-fascists versus the nanny-socialists.
Neither seems that... good. Though in practice, they generaly amount to the same thing, turning America into a third world-country though greed, graft, and corruption. Not to mention unrealistic dogmatism.
I can definitely agree with you here. The conservatives definitely have their own nanny rules. In fact, I think that's one of our largest problems. We get nannying from both sides of the aisle. It's getting to the point where a man can't breathe.I'd prefer we had a real progressive party, and a real libertarian party. Convervativism, and Liberalism are a hoax. People who put one above the other are brainwashed. Both sides are equally evil, and both sides are capable of having some good ideas.
What is needed for America is lots of ideological opposition. Open minded opposition.
What America really needs is leadership. As you say, both sides have some good things most of us could agree on. The War on Terror and Global Warming are elusive goals. The current administration has done nothing to make us feel better about our lives. There are troops conducting a pointless war half a world away that has no tangible endpoint. We are deeper in debt, inflation is up, fuel prices are killing us and our quality of life isn't any better than it was eight years ago. Our next president needs to find something this country can sink it's teeth into and go after it.You forget that Democrats control congress. The Democrats haven't exactly been instituting change.
And I would say it this way
Conservatives think a man should be free to make his own way, Liberals think everyone should be babysat and evil politicians just pander to whoever can make the biggest campaign contribution, but I digress.
My original point is you have to have a more focused vision than 'bringing prosperity'. FDR had the "New Deal". JFK wanted to put a man on the moon. Eisenhower wanted to free the American to travel the country. Clinton What do Obama or McCain want to do? We need specifics?
What environmental cost are you worried about?
These parts, it is illegal to dispose of batteries as waste, they are supposed to be recycled (this doesn't mean that everybody recycles them, but it does mean that it is straightforward to do it).
Sure, but the recycling process isn't perfect. There is always some waste, and sometimes 'recycling' is just another term for environmentally safe disposal. Just because it can't be thrown in the trash doesn't mean we need the chemicals available, especially when there is a power grid available with a (in theory) lower environmental impact.Great idea. Think I read somewhere that the next generation of hybrid cars will use some kind of hydraulic storage rather than electrical. Wonder if the same thing could be done pneumatically. Compress air with the power and release it to run a generator on demand.
Thing is, running wiring from the house and installing a single CFL or even incandescent if temperatures are too extreme wouldn't use much electricity. If it's a shed, it probably wouldn't receive high usage and it would take a long time to use enough electricity to justify the cost of a $50 battery.
According to this site http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cost.html
A 100W incandescent lightbulb takes
The whole thing is a nice idea, but not economically feasible.
Actually, I looked at all of those articles, and none of them are what I would call 'poisoning'.
They discuss his positions on minimum wage, NAFTA, Iraq, goverment health insurance, the GI bill, Social Security and Abortion. One also deals with his economic advisor, Phill Gramm (yes, the Gramm from Gramm-Rudman-Hollings and Gramm-Leach-Bliley) being a paid economic lobbyist. This is all good information and lets the public know where McCain stands on some important issues. If they were personal attacks about his marriage or military record I would say they would be poisoning, but they all seem to be very relevant to me.
Unifying the country is a good thing. It doesn't mean we all agree, but it means we are all going in the same general direction and making progress. Right now the US is not just divided, it's segmented. No one is a fan of the poor economy, high fuel prices, Gitmo controversy, the morass that is Iraq, and the perceived lack of leadership in Washington.
Our greatest presidents are the ones that could unite the people behind a common cause and make us proud to be Americans. FDR, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Reagan, these men were all visionaries and they accomplished some major goals because they were able to unify the country behind some major ideas. FDR had the New Deal and then, of course, WWII. JFK had the space program and the cold war. Eisenhower built the Interstate system and fought communism. Reagan freed hostages and fought the cold war.
All of these leaders were able to find a common enemy or problem and then use constructive solutions to unify the country. Our next President should, ideally, have a vision, be able to sell this vision to the American people, and move us forward in a positive way to accomplish these goals. Since the end of the Cold War, America has struggled. There has been no common purpose to unite behind. Bush tried to use 9/11 and Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, but it's such a vague, indefinable threat that people rapidly lose interest.
Thing is, unifying the country by looking the other way on candidates actions doesn't help. McCain is a doddering old man who doesn't seem to have any direction. Obama says he has direction, but so far we haven't been able to pin down what it is. To succeed a candidate needs to communicate what he wants for the future of this country, and be able to weather any negative attacks against him. Negative information, as long as it's accurate, is good for this country and shouldn't be swept under the carpet in the name of 'unification'.
- Dashboard solar panel intended to boost a car battery $50 AUD
- Car Battery
- 12V Light fittings intended for a caravan or similar
Interesting. Purchasing a car battery is expensive (both up front and every 3-5 years when you have to replace it), plus environmentally bad. The battery will likely offset any gains to be had from the solar installation itself.Wiring is not rocket science. There is no reason a person cannot get instructions, educate himself and do it properly. No one should just 'figure it out'. Electricians are trained an licensed to do their job - they aren't born with the skill.
In my community, it's perfectly legal for a homeowner to complete work to their house as long as they pull a permit and have the work inspected. If this is an option (check your local laws) it's a good way to make sure you don't burn anything down. The inspector will make sure your work is up to code and won't burn your house down.
I don't know anything about California, but it could be that the government is trying to protect people from possible harms of bad and unnecessary testing.
Bad testing I can agree with, and the proper way to go about this would be to prosecute the testers for fraud.
There is not really any such thing as unnecessary testing. If a company can conduct a test, and the results are accurate and as promised to the customer, how can that be construed as unnecessary? The only time I've every seen the concept of "unnecessary testing" come into play is when medical treatment is limited by cost, due to involvement by insurance companies and inflated medical costs. Neither of these has any impact in this situation. These are private citizens using private funds to get their genetics tested - who's to say what is necessary.
Not to rant, but I think this is one major flaw with current US healthcare. In the name of 'protecting the citizens' our government has made sure that anyone that can give medical advice needs to have paid for (in both time and money) 12 years of school, be certified, government approved and insured. Then we all sit around and wonder why medical costs are so high. If private companies can replace all this training with $1000 (or less) machines our poor liberal Californians won't be able to achieve their goal of universal (socialist) healthcare.
Yes, but you can do that now. I can't see the carriers aren't going to finance your phone purchase if you buy it elsewhere and roll the payment into your bill for the next 24 months. Not much incentive for them to do that, unless they want to get into the banking business.
The only way I can imagine they will finance the purchase of the phone is if they sell it to you to start with, which is pretty much what they are doing now.
Or the plans will stay the same and you will have to pay for the phone as well. It's kind of like the gas tax holiday, if the market will bear a certain amount for a monthly cell phone bill, there's no reason to think that the plan would get cheaper just because they aren't providing the phone.
Also, how is a 2 year payment plan for the phone any different than a contract with a cancellation fee? If you decide to cancel you contract prior to the 2 years, you will still be liable for the price of the phone.
First, that's not what I said. My point is that government regulation is NOT "Market Forces".
Second, yeah, they do solve everything. Government interference just postpones the inevitable. If you aren't smart enough to understand a contract you probably shouldn't sign your name to it. If you do understand it, and then it doesn't work out quite the way you want, you have no cause to cry foul.