I could be totally wrong, but I'm going to guess that the paper applications have no real value; the real data is stored in a database file. It's easy to remove personally identifiable fields from the tables and leave the non-personal data for analysis. Shred the paper, anonymize the digital data, keep it around and release it to the public perhaps.
That kind of data could be very useful in some kind of complex economic modelling software, or perhaps the data over time can use used as an economic or some other indicator, or perhaps an unusual change in the normal pattern could indicate something. I don't know what the actual data is specifically, but if it is stripped of personally identifiable bits then I'm sure someone would find it very valuable. Given how easy it should be to provide, why not?
Because Americans are no longer educated about their government or their history, and as long as they can catch the latest episode of Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo they really don't care about what is happening. Those of us who DO care and pay attention are in the extreme minority. No matter how loudly we shout about the problems we're racing into, the rest of America looks at as like we're some crazy conspiracy theorists.
It doesn't help that many of the large news outlets are government sycophants, refusing to carry news that may damage the current administration. Note that this behavior is not limited to CBS or our current administration. They're all corrupt to some degree.
But yeah, nobody gives a shit, give them some Soma, all is well. Aldous Huxly was right.
Unfortunately I see far less fear mongering and fraudulent reporting on Fox than I do on MSNBC or CBS. I'm not saying that any of those networks are great - they're not - but when Canada allows Al-Jazeera and declines to carry Fox, one does start to wonder if the real issue is reporting and not simply politics.
That depends on if you're someone who takes every word literally (which is very precarious once you learn about the evolution of Biblical texts) or someone who is happy to take a large part of the Bible as metaphor. As an example, the beginning of Genesis famously states that the world took 6 days to create and that the 7th day was rest.
Only the most literal of readers would believe that it took six actual days; something that isn't even possible, since a "day" is a full revolution of the earth, and that wasn't even created on the first "day". It's metaphor, trying to explain how the world was created in stages.
Once can view the Garden of Eden story as metaphor as well, how the human psyche moved from an animal state of innocence (unable to comprehend advanced concepts like shame, guilt, etc.) and to a state where it can comprehend more complex ideas.
Then there's all of those laws; a lot of them pertain to sanitation so that you don't get sick or spread illness. When the Plague was ravaging Europe, the Jewish people had a much lower infection rate because they followed these rules.
Some parts of the Bible are pretty interesting and insightful, and even if it gets some things wrong in a scientific sense - especially if taken literally - some things may not be quite as wrong as a lot of people think.
I say this as a Pagan-ish type, by the way; I have no personal reason to put parts of the Bible in a positive light.
Once must also take into consideration that the people who put forth those ideas were doing the best they could with the knowledge they had. I'm sure that in 500 years people will look back at us and say, "Wow, those guys sure were dumb, why didn't they see X, Y, and Z for what it really was?"
One book that does provide a very good treatment of where science and religion overlap is The Universe in a Single Atom by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. One of the core concepts of the book is what I described above; old religious texts were written a long time ago and those people didn't know all of the things we do now. He promotes science as a good thing, and says that if science can prove that a certain religious law, theory, philosophical point, etc., can be proven wrong by science, then it is the religion that should change.
He also talks about how science and religion exist to answer fundamentally different questions. Science tells us "how" something happens, but religion helps us answer what it means in a philosophical sense.
It's an excellent book and well worth reading by religious, non-religious, science, and non-science alike.
When the government wastes money on ridiculous studies then they obviously have enough for the important things. Asking for more money is inappropriate and they shouldn't have it.
I think we can both agree on that. If you think federal money being spent on rabbit massages is a great idea, well, I don't know what to tell you other than you are part of the problem.
You also say that it's a drop in the bucket. Does that change the fact that it is a complete waste? Big or small, it is a sign that there is plenty of money for the important programs.
As an analogy, with your thinking, I could go to the extreme and say, "beating someone up isn't as big a deal as violent rape or murder, so we'll just let people get beat up." It's the same concept and also ridiculous. It's all wrong, and we should stop beatings along with rape and murder, yes?
But since you bring up the topic, what would I like to cut?
I'd be happy to cut the defense budget. I'm not convinced that we really need military bases scattered throughout the world, for example. We see articles here on Slashdot on a fairly regular basis about military boondoggles that cost many billions of dollars - so maybe we need stricter controls on military contracts.
Health care? Sure, I'm willing to make some cuts there. The problem is that we shouldn't have to, but unfortunately we're so far in debt that we're left with little other choice. So we'll have to make cuts there too.
What about welfare? If you have a cell phone, a car, a television with cable, you are not poor. America has the wealthiest "poor" in the world. Welfare should provide, truly, the bare minimum to get by. Keep the heat and lights on, some food in your belly, that's it. I'm not the biggest Clinton fan, but his changes to our welfare programs made a big difference. We should do more along those lines.
Ideally, the entitlement programs in general should not be in the federal purview. It should be a state issue. Same with education. Same with a lot of things.
Not all things that I want to cut, but out of necessity, something has to get the axe. So it might as well be a little bit of everything. No sacred cows.
Have you seen what happens when a government is so deeply in debt that all it can do is print stacks of cash and dive into hyper inflation? It's not pretty. We're headed down that road. Not tomorrow, not next year, but that's where we are going.
That was the brilliance of a limited federal government, by the way. If a state screwed up and made a mess of things, people could vote with their feet and go somewhere else until the legislature woke up and fixed their issues. If another state did something brilliant the others could follow suit. A marketplace of ideas, if you will.
With a single entity in charge of nearly everything these days, well, you're stuck. The feds make a bad policy decision and it affects everyone, and there's very little recourse for the individual.
But since you're here saying, "Well, that program doesn't matter because it was just a little waste," you're probably going to just gloss over all of this and slap up yet another tired progressive meme. Oh well.
Yes, adding yet another tax is one way to help that, but why do governments worldwide - mine included - never consider the possibility that they're spending too much money? When our government is spending money on swedish massages for rabbits and then whining that they don't have enough cash to toss around, I am completely uninterested in giving them a single penny more.
I also never knew it existed. Everyone is aware of NetFlix; a lot of people also know about Amazon Prime's video services, but most people don't seem to use it.
You can't compete if nobody knows that your service is out there.
Yes, he promised us the most transparent government ever. It's not his fault though, it's all those hard drives, you know, they just... Gosh, they keep crashing. Whoops.
I don't know much about the initd vs. systemd argument, I haven't kept up with it and honestly I don't care, but I would like to add this:
Isn't one of the beauties of Linux, and free software in general, the power of choice? systemd is offering a choice, an alternative. Surely there will be distributions that use systemd and those that do not. Now the end user has - gasp - a choice. How is this bad? If you think systemd sucks for whatever reason then just don't use it. If you think it is awesome, then go ahead and use it. This is the power of choice, the power of the free market, and when it comes to free software the market is very, very open.
Why are people getting so pissy over someone offering an alternative? Did systemd give all of these people a bad touch or something?
When I saw the headline I honestly did think that this project was someone creating a mockery of systemd, called "useless-d", which was built to take systemd's ideals to some kind of absurd extreme.
Now that I know useless-d is a real software project I'm inclined to give it even less attention. If the developers cannot be bothered to take their own software seriously, why should I? There is a space for tongue-in-cheek names, cute names, and all the rest, but this one is just plain bad.
This is an incredibly large undertaking, and problems with large undertakings are fairly common.
This was not an incredibly large undertaking. The functionality is not complex. Nothing about it is complex or incredible large.
It has to: 1. Allow you to create an account; 2. Verify your identify; 3. Show you available health care plans in your area; 4. Let you select one; 5. Help you pay for it.
In its basic form, this is something that a group of college kids could whip up in a week or so.
The only thing even approaching complex is scaling to handle a ton of load during the registration periods - and those are problems that have been solved at Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and any other high traffic site.
Maybe you like this health care system, and that's okay. We can disagree on that point. What I cannot allow is for you to tell me that this website is some kind of horrible, complex, unknown beast that simply could not be tamed, a website so complex that few applications could approach it in terms of functional requirements.
I also thought I'd never say this... But I don't know if this is the right thing to do. It sounds all fancy and wonderful and all, but think about this:
Which ISPs can afford to upgrade their infrastructure to provide this speed to all their users? The large ones, the powerful ones, that ones that already have the money. This means that the smaller ISPs, the ones that are already struggling, will have an even more difficult time since they're no longer receiving your tax dollars.
My question is this: Why should there be subsidies at all? If there must be subsidies, why are they slanted to help the already-successful, larger companies?
Exactly what I wanted to say. In fact, to get a STEM degree, you are required to have critical thinking and problem solving skills. A Liberal Arts degree just means you took a bunch of classes that didn't amount to much of anything else, but you wanted a piece of paper so that's the one you get. That implies a lack of critical thinking, not an abundance of it.
I don't know about you, but I would rather have the USA, despite all of its faults (and we have many), in control of these things instead of countries like Iran or North Korea.
This kind of functionality would be enough for me to switch mail providers.
Yes, yes, it can always be done manually, but I have a lot of friends that aren't as tech savvy as I am. Generating a key, keeping the private one somewhere safe, copying text from the PGP application, pasting it correctly, copying incoming text, pasting, decrypting, etc., etc., it's all a pain in the butt for the typical computer user.
If Yahoo can manage to implement this correctly so that it is safe AND easy to use that's a big deal.
They can choose to expose all of their personal medical information to the world for public consumption and sale, or they can keep their information private. Better yet, allow people to sell their medical information to companies.
That way people who enjoy their privacy can keep their privacy. People like you who care more about data can have their data. Everyone wins.
The major problem here is the brokering of private data, not only without consent, but also without any knowledge that it is happening.
As a side note, since you're so fascinated with the transparency and the data-driven-without-consent thing...
We should also have access to all of your financial transactions, too. After all, bad financial situations can cause lower standards of living which also affects health. We should also have access to all of your communications - email, instant messages, phone calls - so that we can use that to evaluate your mental health and build a graph of your relationships. We should also keep tabs on where you are at all times in case you are making bad decisions like visiting "the wrong part of town".
After all, just think about how all that data can help!
If that is how you want to live your life don't let me stop you from living it. You can do whatever you want. Just don't force me to live it as well.
It gives me a paycheck every two weeks but the work is utterly devoid of personal fulfillment. If I had known fifteen years ago what to expect from a career in software I would have spent my time getting a completely different degree.
Do you remember the days when a politician would do something slightly out of line, he'd get caught, and then he'd resign? Well, I'm only a touch over 30, so I don't remember that happening but I know that it used to happen. Modern politicians seem to have no shame, no honor, no integrity; they will say whatever is required to get elected, do whatever they want while in office, and tell you, "Yeah? What are YOU going to do about it?" if you call them out on it.
The worst part - the absolute worst part - is that they're allowed to do this. Too many people look at the ballot and like zombies pick the 'D' or the 'R' after the name instead of looking at what that person has done or considering the person's character.
Character and principles matter. If you're a scumbag then you're a scumbag no matter what party you're in. Stop circling he damn wagons around some slimeball just because he has the same R or D that you do. If someone is scum toss them out. If you're stuck in the tribal mentality then it is even more important to do this so that YOUR tribe isn't the tribe of scum.
(You != the person I'm replying to; You = the public in general )
Just maybe this has nothing to do with race or sexism and they just hired the best people they could find.
Like a lot of people at Slashdot, I work in the IT industry too. Most of our people are male, and either Caucasian or Indian. Does that mean that the company I work for is part of some evil conspiracy to keep aphroditic purple martians out of the IT work force? Nope. We'd hire my dog if she was good at what needed to be done. Nobody cares what your body looks like as long as you're Nice and Competent. We simply don't get a lot of female, Chinese, Norwegian, Mexican, Brazilian, etc., people applying.
Is that a problem? I don't think so. Maybe certain demographics - gasp - have a majority of their interests in other areas. There's far more female nurses in hospitals than male nurses and although I see it mentioned from time to time, I never see hospitals being excoriated and dragged over the coals because they don't have a 50% male nursing force. Basketball is dominated by people with dark skin and I don't see people complaining that the white guys are under-represented.
This isn't any different. The opportunities are there. The education is available. Maybe certain demographics just aren't as interested in IT.
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
Many other ancient cultures have Great Flood stories as well.
It is my opinion that when so many different people, from so many different parts of the world, with vastly different systems of beliefs and cultures, agree on an old historic event there just may be a kernel of truth to it all.
I dunno... I ordered something by 2 day mail and it was shipped via USPS. It was shipped Thursday of last week. It's still not here. This is not uncommon. FedEx and UPS don't seem to have these problems.
I know, I know - anecdotal, one person - but it's is annoying to have people scream that USPS is the pinnacle of efficiency when 2 day shipping regularly turns into 4 and 5 days.
#1 is critically important. It is my understanding that getting land rights to put up poles and lay cable is the largest hurdle for many potential providers, to the point of making it cost prohibitive. And who is lobbying to keep it that way? The one provider already in the area. This must be fixed. I agree with you that a free-er (as opposed to completely free) market solution is the best. We just need some ground rules to ensure that competition can be made fair.
Too many people are looking to strong-arm the companies with strict regulation instead of looking at the situation and providing an environment in which the free market can work. We haven't really had a chance for the free market to work, and #1 is a great example of why, so we haven't seen what the free market can do in this sector.
Let's try the less-government solution first. If that doesn't work, then we can go to the more-government later. We can ALWAYS get more government later. It's excruciatingly difficult to go the other direction.
Slashdot Mirror
I could be totally wrong, but I'm going to guess that the paper applications have no real value; the real data is stored in a database file. It's easy to remove personally identifiable fields from the tables and leave the non-personal data for analysis. Shred the paper, anonymize the digital data, keep it around and release it to the public perhaps.
That kind of data could be very useful in some kind of complex economic modelling software, or perhaps the data over time can use used as an economic or some other indicator, or perhaps an unusual change in the normal pattern could indicate something. I don't know what the actual data is specifically, but if it is stripped of personally identifiable bits then I'm sure someone would find it very valuable. Given how easy it should be to provide, why not?
Because Americans are no longer educated about their government or their history, and as long as they can catch the latest episode of Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo they really don't care about what is happening. Those of us who DO care and pay attention are in the extreme minority. No matter how loudly we shout about the problems we're racing into, the rest of America looks at as like we're some crazy conspiracy theorists.
It doesn't help that many of the large news outlets are government sycophants, refusing to carry news that may damage the current administration. Note that this behavior is not limited to CBS or our current administration. They're all corrupt to some degree.
But yeah, nobody gives a shit, give them some Soma, all is well. Aldous Huxly was right.
Unfortunately I see far less fear mongering and fraudulent reporting on Fox than I do on MSNBC or CBS. I'm not saying that any of those networks are great - they're not - but when Canada allows Al-Jazeera and declines to carry Fox, one does start to wonder if the real issue is reporting and not simply politics.
That depends on if you're someone who takes every word literally (which is very precarious once you learn about the evolution of Biblical texts) or someone who is happy to take a large part of the Bible as metaphor. As an example, the beginning of Genesis famously states that the world took 6 days to create and that the 7th day was rest.
Only the most literal of readers would believe that it took six actual days; something that isn't even possible, since a "day" is a full revolution of the earth, and that wasn't even created on the first "day". It's metaphor, trying to explain how the world was created in stages.
Once can view the Garden of Eden story as metaphor as well, how the human psyche moved from an animal state of innocence (unable to comprehend advanced concepts like shame, guilt, etc.) and to a state where it can comprehend more complex ideas.
Then there's all of those laws; a lot of them pertain to sanitation so that you don't get sick or spread illness. When the Plague was ravaging Europe, the Jewish people had a much lower infection rate because they followed these rules.
Some parts of the Bible are pretty interesting and insightful, and even if it gets some things wrong in a scientific sense - especially if taken literally - some things may not be quite as wrong as a lot of people think.
I say this as a Pagan-ish type, by the way; I have no personal reason to put parts of the Bible in a positive light.
Once must also take into consideration that the people who put forth those ideas were doing the best they could with the knowledge they had. I'm sure that in 500 years people will look back at us and say, "Wow, those guys sure were dumb, why didn't they see X, Y, and Z for what it really was?"
One book that does provide a very good treatment of where science and religion overlap is The Universe in a Single Atom by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. One of the core concepts of the book is what I described above; old religious texts were written a long time ago and those people didn't know all of the things we do now. He promotes science as a good thing, and says that if science can prove that a certain religious law, theory, philosophical point, etc., can be proven wrong by science, then it is the religion that should change.
He also talks about how science and religion exist to answer fundamentally different questions. Science tells us "how" something happens, but religion helps us answer what it means in a philosophical sense.
It's an excellent book and well worth reading by religious, non-religious, science, and non-science alike.
When the government wastes money on ridiculous studies then they obviously have enough for the important things. Asking for more money is inappropriate and they shouldn't have it.
I think we can both agree on that. If you think federal money being spent on rabbit massages is a great idea, well, I don't know what to tell you other than you are part of the problem.
You also say that it's a drop in the bucket. Does that change the fact that it is a complete waste? Big or small, it is a sign that there is plenty of money for the important programs.
As an analogy, with your thinking, I could go to the extreme and say, "beating someone up isn't as big a deal as violent rape or murder, so we'll just let people get beat up." It's the same concept and also ridiculous. It's all wrong, and we should stop beatings along with rape and murder, yes?
But since you bring up the topic, what would I like to cut?
I'd be happy to cut the defense budget. I'm not convinced that we really need military bases scattered throughout the world, for example. We see articles here on Slashdot on a fairly regular basis about military boondoggles that cost many billions of dollars - so maybe we need stricter controls on military contracts.
Health care? Sure, I'm willing to make some cuts there. The problem is that we shouldn't have to, but unfortunately we're so far in debt that we're left with little other choice. So we'll have to make cuts there too.
What about welfare? If you have a cell phone, a car, a television with cable, you are not poor. America has the wealthiest "poor" in the world. Welfare should provide, truly, the bare minimum to get by. Keep the heat and lights on, some food in your belly, that's it. I'm not the biggest Clinton fan, but his changes to our welfare programs made a big difference. We should do more along those lines.
Ideally, the entitlement programs in general should not be in the federal purview. It should be a state issue. Same with education. Same with a lot of things.
Not all things that I want to cut, but out of necessity, something has to get the axe. So it might as well be a little bit of everything. No sacred cows.
Have you seen what happens when a government is so deeply in debt that all it can do is print stacks of cash and dive into hyper inflation? It's not pretty. We're headed down that road. Not tomorrow, not next year, but that's where we are going.
That was the brilliance of a limited federal government, by the way. If a state screwed up and made a mess of things, people could vote with their feet and go somewhere else until the legislature woke up and fixed their issues. If another state did something brilliant the others could follow suit. A marketplace of ideas, if you will.
With a single entity in charge of nearly everything these days, well, you're stuck. The feds make a bad policy decision and it affects everyone, and there's very little recourse for the individual.
But since you're here saying, "Well, that program doesn't matter because it was just a little waste," you're probably going to just gloss over all of this and slap up yet another tired progressive meme. Oh well.
Yes, adding yet another tax is one way to help that, but why do governments worldwide - mine included - never consider the possibility that they're spending too much money? When our government is spending money on swedish massages for rabbits and then whining that they don't have enough cash to toss around, I am completely uninterested in giving them a single penny more.
I also never knew it existed. Everyone is aware of NetFlix; a lot of people also know about Amazon Prime's video services, but most people don't seem to use it.
You can't compete if nobody knows that your service is out there.
Yes, he promised us the most transparent government ever. It's not his fault though, it's all those hard drives, you know, they just... Gosh, they keep crashing. Whoops.
I don't know much about the initd vs. systemd argument, I haven't kept up with it and honestly I don't care, but I would like to add this:
Isn't one of the beauties of Linux, and free software in general, the power of choice? systemd is offering a choice, an alternative. Surely there will be distributions that use systemd and those that do not. Now the end user has - gasp - a choice. How is this bad? If you think systemd sucks for whatever reason then just don't use it. If you think it is awesome, then go ahead and use it. This is the power of choice, the power of the free market, and when it comes to free software the market is very, very open.
Why are people getting so pissy over someone offering an alternative? Did systemd give all of these people a bad touch or something?
When I saw the headline I honestly did think that this project was someone creating a mockery of systemd, called "useless-d", which was built to take systemd's ideals to some kind of absurd extreme.
Now that I know useless-d is a real software project I'm inclined to give it even less attention. If the developers cannot be bothered to take their own software seriously, why should I? There is a space for tongue-in-cheek names, cute names, and all the rest, but this one is just plain bad.
This was not an incredibly large undertaking. The functionality is not complex. Nothing about it is complex or incredible large.
It has to:
1. Allow you to create an account;
2. Verify your identify;
3. Show you available health care plans in your area;
4. Let you select one;
5. Help you pay for it.
In its basic form, this is something that a group of college kids could whip up in a week or so.
The only thing even approaching complex is scaling to handle a ton of load during the registration periods - and those are problems that have been solved at Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and any other high traffic site.
Maybe you like this health care system, and that's okay. We can disagree on that point. What I cannot allow is for you to tell me that this website is some kind of horrible, complex, unknown beast that simply could not be tamed, a website so complex that few applications could approach it in terms of functional requirements.
Except that subsidies are the antithesis to a free market. It's cronyism.
I also thought I'd never say this... But I don't know if this is the right thing to do. It sounds all fancy and wonderful and all, but think about this:
Which ISPs can afford to upgrade their infrastructure to provide this speed to all their users? The large ones, the powerful ones, that ones that already have the money. This means that the smaller ISPs, the ones that are already struggling, will have an even more difficult time since they're no longer receiving your tax dollars.
My question is this: Why should there be subsidies at all? If there must be subsidies, why are they slanted to help the already-successful, larger companies?
Exactly what I wanted to say. In fact, to get a STEM degree, you are required to have critical thinking and problem solving skills. A Liberal Arts degree just means you took a bunch of classes that didn't amount to much of anything else, but you wanted a piece of paper so that's the one you get. That implies a lack of critical thinking, not an abundance of it.
Microtransactions, coming to a Minecraft release near you.
I don't know about you, but I would rather have the USA, despite all of its faults (and we have many), in control of these things instead of countries like Iran or North Korea.
This kind of functionality would be enough for me to switch mail providers.
Yes, yes, it can always be done manually, but I have a lot of friends that aren't as tech savvy as I am. Generating a key, keeping the private one somewhere safe, copying text from the PGP application, pasting it correctly, copying incoming text, pasting, decrypting, etc., etc., it's all a pain in the butt for the typical computer user.
If Yahoo can manage to implement this correctly so that it is safe AND easy to use that's a big deal.
Why not give people the choice?
They can choose to expose all of their personal medical information to the world for public consumption and sale, or they can keep their information private. Better yet, allow people to sell their medical information to companies.
That way people who enjoy their privacy can keep their privacy. People like you who care more about data can have their data. Everyone wins.
The major problem here is the brokering of private data, not only without consent, but also without any knowledge that it is happening.
As a side note, since you're so fascinated with the transparency and the data-driven-without-consent thing...
We should also have access to all of your financial transactions, too. After all, bad financial situations can cause lower standards of living which also affects health. We should also have access to all of your communications - email, instant messages, phone calls - so that we can use that to evaluate your mental health and build a graph of your relationships. We should also keep tabs on where you are at all times in case you are making bad decisions like visiting "the wrong part of town".
After all, just think about how all that data can help!
If that is how you want to live your life don't let me stop you from living it. You can do whatever you want. Just don't force me to live it as well.
It gives me a paycheck every two weeks but the work is utterly devoid of personal fulfillment. If I had known fifteen years ago what to expect from a career in software I would have spent my time getting a completely different degree.
Do you remember the days when a politician would do something slightly out of line, he'd get caught, and then he'd resign? Well, I'm only a touch over 30, so I don't remember that happening but I know that it used to happen. Modern politicians seem to have no shame, no honor, no integrity; they will say whatever is required to get elected, do whatever they want while in office, and tell you, "Yeah? What are YOU going to do about it?" if you call them out on it.
The worst part - the absolute worst part - is that they're allowed to do this. Too many people look at the ballot and like zombies pick the 'D' or the 'R' after the name instead of looking at what that person has done or considering the person's character.
Character and principles matter. If you're a scumbag then you're a scumbag no matter what party you're in. Stop circling he damn wagons around some slimeball just because he has the same R or D that you do. If someone is scum toss them out. If you're stuck in the tribal mentality then it is even more important to do this so that YOUR tribe isn't the tribe of scum.
(You != the person I'm replying to; You = the public in general )
Just maybe this has nothing to do with race or sexism and they just hired the best people they could find.
Like a lot of people at Slashdot, I work in the IT industry too. Most of our people are male, and either Caucasian or Indian. Does that mean that the company I work for is part of some evil conspiracy to keep aphroditic purple martians out of the IT work force? Nope. We'd hire my dog if she was good at what needed to be done. Nobody cares what your body looks like as long as you're Nice and Competent. We simply don't get a lot of female, Chinese, Norwegian, Mexican, Brazilian, etc., people applying.
Is that a problem? I don't think so. Maybe certain demographics - gasp - have a majority of their interests in other areas. There's far more female nurses in hospitals than male nurses and although I see it mentioned from time to time, I never see hospitals being excoriated and dragged over the coals because they don't have a 50% male nursing force. Basketball is dominated by people with dark skin and I don't see people complaining that the white guys are under-represented.
This isn't any different. The opportunities are there. The education is available. Maybe certain demographics just aren't as interested in IT.
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
Many other ancient cultures have Great Flood stories as well.
It is my opinion that when so many different people, from so many different parts of the world, with vastly different systems of beliefs and cultures, agree on an old historic event there just may be a kernel of truth to it all.
I dunno... I ordered something by 2 day mail and it was shipped via USPS. It was shipped Thursday of last week. It's still not here. This is not uncommon. FedEx and UPS don't seem to have these problems.
I know, I know - anecdotal, one person - but it's is annoying to have people scream that USPS is the pinnacle of efficiency when 2 day shipping regularly turns into 4 and 5 days.
#1 is critically important. It is my understanding that getting land rights to put up poles and lay cable is the largest hurdle for many potential providers, to the point of making it cost prohibitive. And who is lobbying to keep it that way? The one provider already in the area. This must be fixed. I agree with you that a free-er (as opposed to completely free) market solution is the best. We just need some ground rules to ensure that competition can be made fair.
Too many people are looking to strong-arm the companies with strict regulation instead of looking at the situation and providing an environment in which the free market can work. We haven't really had a chance for the free market to work, and #1 is a great example of why, so we haven't seen what the free market can do in this sector.
Let's try the less-government solution first. If that doesn't work, then we can go to the more-government later. We can ALWAYS get more government later. It's excruciatingly difficult to go the other direction.
I'm not, because that would make you just as bad as the NSA.
Maybe that person has a good reason for voting against it. The article itself is very scant on details, but it does have near the bottom:
So maybe the intent of the law is quite good; I think we can all agree with that. However, it is possible that the law is poorly written.
This would not be the first well intentioned yet poorly written law in history.