Well, unless you are proposing eugenics of some sort - or a death penalty for being without a job, then Welfare is better and cheaper than the equivelent criminal justice available currently, or that I can think of.
My reasoning is simple really: Welfare currently requires training + attempts to find work to stay on it in most locations in the US to recieve it. Part of the services include job training, as well as assistance in breaking addiction to drugs or whatever. Basically here - you have some chance of turining the recipient into a contributing member of society.
For a prisoner, the average cost is quite a bit, over $20k/year, but in general, prison doesn't do good things for a person - there's no cutting someone off if they never get better (unless they do something that warrents the death penalty, which gets quoted at costing $4 million...) they aren't doing anything to contribute to society during their incarceration. Recidivism rates are high, and people who become criminals often escalate their crimes during their criminal career.
I don't advocate welfare out of a fear of crime, but out of cost savings. As far as I can see, it's far cheaper to have people on welfare than in prison.
Why would best buy want to sell to you though? I mean, you're not going to buy the "Advanced Security Setup" for $118 on your new PC, you won't buy the $150 "Performance Service Plan", hell you don't want to actually buy a PC - and I seriously doubt you'd ever come in and pay their Geek Squad $256 for a "Complete OS Service" when you had an OS problem.
Indeed, if I was going to be entirely legit, I could likely go back to dial-up. I'd rather by CDs than DRMed stuff from iTMS, and NetFilx doesn't require High-Speed internet, I did it for years on dial-up.
However, when it would save me only $10 a month compared to DSL... The cost factor, plus the fact that there are 3 + people wanting to be online all the time now, plus not needing a PC "dial-up" router, keeps me on DSL. Of course, again, if you don't want to be on-line all the time, then not needing a second phone line drastically increases the savings from $10 a month to $35 a month, which would then be worth it.
Umm, they are doing the exact same thing in China - noting that results have been censored by the government. I see this as a good thing, now people who care can go to the (slow) google.com and see what was censored.
Or do you think Google ought to just shut down in the US because US law requires them to "censor" certain results as indicated in the GPP?
I know, to some extent, using a large amount of RAM is basically part of the whole fast back system. Opera defaults to using ~ 30% of physical RAM for that.
Now, if FF is growing to the point it's crashing machines due to eating up the full pagefile -that's a memory leak.
But neither browser is going to immediately release the memory from a tab when you close it (well, at least Opera doesn't - so it can do the undo close tab feature).
All that said, IME, Opera does not slow down my PC when eating 300MB of RAM in virtual memory, as it's working set is always ~ 70MB.
The other thing is are people quoting Physical RAM use, or virtual memory use... These are usually not the same on Windows.
Google maps still seem pretty overratted to me, I much prefer maps24.com, it both always works (google aside from groups and search seems to like giving me a loading screen and nothing more) and it's smoother, plus has other cool things.
Where exactly do you live? In the US, all major vendors sold in retail (Best Buy, Circuit City, etc) ship XP Home on all but their most expensive computers/laptops.
But if you break AACS, then HDCP really doesn't matter beyond pissing off consumers of the earlier devices (bad idea, but they don't seem to care). Cause if you break AACS, then you just strip out HDCP or whatever and send non protected data out the video card.
Unless, of course, they try and make it so you can't have unprotected HD content at all, even if it's your own... which I don't think will fly very well, but maybe.
You know, this also raises a point - if your non protected content is reduced to SD, won't that cause a lot of people to return products, or not buy in the first place, as they don't see any improvement?
Seriously, I don't see a major difference between DVD and HDTV on the displays at Best Buy. I can't really figure out why anyone who a) has decent amounts of disposable income and b)is a big videophile would be spending over the $150 at Walmart for a standard 27" TV. HDTVs are still too pricy at $800+. I can barely justify spending $150 on something as little used as a TV.
I already watch everything on my 19" monitor, which mostly just works for me. I never even went DVI, cause the cables prices are outrageous, and I don't see any advantage over the VGA cable that came with the monitor.
When HDTVs are $100-$150, maybe we'll see large market penetration. I just find it hard to believe that the mass market that has been used to midsized TVs costing an average of $120 will be rushing out to spend $1k on a new TV.
And what is worth watching is on at inconvienient times, you can't pause it to take a bathroom break, you can't rewind it to catch some dialog you missed, and it has 18 minutes of commercials even when you pay for access (cable).
And, the technological advancements that resolve these issues like PVRs (TiVo) are slowly becoming crippled or may be outright disabled by new technologies promoted by the MPAA and friends (broadcast flag).
What I don't understand is why I (in a country where false advertising is supposedly illegial) as a customer should have to interpret what the company says. I mean, why can they not just say what they mean?
I mean, how far will I get if I sign up for netflix at $30 a month, but then pay them $5 a month, and claim - who really thought I meant $30 *american* dollars? LOLZ, the idiots!
That's how I feel about what many companies are doing. I'd much prefer they lay out what they actually can offer, and let me choose, than overpromise and underdeliver all the time. That should flat out be illegial.
The worst thing is the use of Unlimited. Look, in certain instances, one can use colloqualisms like "this car flies down the road", and most people can understand that you mean it drives fast, not that you're going to take off into the air.
Unlimited isn't a colloqualism for limited. Black is not white.
I'm tired of having to try and guess what the companies really mean. I think we need to toughen up our advertising laws, or enforce the false advertising ones more. IE, if you say unlimited, and introduce intentional limits - bam, legal problems.
See, this is what bothers me. They have several tiers of service already based on how many discs you can get at a time, and certain ones limit how many per month.
Why not either extend the limit to x per month on all the plans (annoying to heavy renters though) or just raise the price of the plan to where even if the person watched each movie they got the day they got it and turned it around, Netflix still makes a profit?
Or, even better, do both, but have the ones with monthly limits be cheaper (like now, but allow some more expensive plans with 15 movies a month rather than say 4).
I hate all these "hidden costs" now adays. Just put the real price up front, and charge what you have to to provide the service, don't put in hidden or vague delays, limits, caps whatever.
There's always been this double standard on the internet where it's cool to have an extension or BHO, but god forbid if you have to add a bookmarklet, edit an ini file, or run a separate program.
I've never really understood it, to me, if I'd have to download something else in FF, and I can do the same by downloading something else of a slightly different class and stay with Opera or IE which I've already got configured... I don't see the point of switching. That's just me though.
I think killing encrypted traffic might well be a problem for ISPs... How would they deal with the whole SSL for online banking and such? I think they might well quickly become known as the "No security for banking or shopping" ISP.
If they allow SSL, then I really would think it's not too difficult to use that as a tunnel.
The other problem with blocking bittorrent is that it is becoming increasingly legit - Opera, Blizzard and others are using it as an official distribution mechanism... Do they want to open themselves up to companies getting pissed at them? Or hordes of customers complaining that WOW doesn't work right?
Woah. I really think that a libertarian ought to back up on telling two people what they can and can't do in their own home, on their own time.
If you have kids, you don't have a right to force me to pay for their care against my will.
That's better - that's at least consistant. And I have some good arguments on costs that I've posted to/. before.
Quote: In your above senario, let's say there is no Social Services and welfare (to work in many places). So that person has -$$ because of bad life judgements.
As a liberal, I don't care about that person. I'm looking at a big picture - those children and that woman having no money will still cost me, even if I don't pay into social programs.
Why? Here:
Instead of preventative health care, they end up in the emergency room. But can't pay that much larger bill. Guess what - that gets passed on to people who can pay the bill - you and I.
Even if we don't treat people at the emergency room regardless of proof of insurance it costs us.
How? Here:
Now, when you are having a heart attack (or whatever) and the paramedics show up, someone has to find your proof of insurance or give them a large wad of cash so they know you can pay for treatment. Guess what, while they were running the forms, you died! Doesn't that suck? But at least you didn't have to pay towards the people you listed above.
A good reason to have medicaid style programs is that emergency room visits are made more common by not getting checked out (for whatever reason, I know for me it's been money related) on a regular basis and only going when you're flopping around dying.
There are hundreds of medical issues from the flu to cancer that can be very cheap to treat if cought early (the kind of stuff that is found in doctors visits, not at the emergency room after a collapse) but incredibly expensive if impossible to treat once you're in the emergencey room having reached a critical point.
Another common argument that get's made that misses the point is "go live on the street until you make your mind up to put in the effort to keep a roof over your head."(The idea that there should not be any sort of housing support)
Now, that is just creating emergency room visits. Because they can't afford a home, they're out exposed to the elements. You know what that causes? Sickness. So some cop finds them dying on the street. Most will call an ambulance - and back to square one there.
Moreso, now you also are putting mobile sickness breeding grounds wandering around outside. All sorts of sicknesses spread in that manner, through sick people outside...
Lets get away from medicine. Those people who get no help from anyone now are trying to feed themselves. Look at the innercity, what do they do to get money? They have no skills to get a job with, so they either start dealing drugs, or start stealing things.
Either way, now you pay - more - in both losing areas of the city you feel safe in, and in a larger police force to try and stop such crime, and possibly in the additional hassle of dealing with police more often. To clarify:
Such suggestions lead to crime, violence, and increased police cost. Someone will have to deal with the people so poor they cannot pay for housing or feed themselves - it can be Social services, or it can be Police. Guess what though, Social Services sometimes turns these people into contributing workers in our society, all the Police can do is put them in Jail.
Now you're supporting them more than ever, at greater cost.
The last point I want to address in your post is the idea that Social Services will make all your cares go away. I have no idea where this concept comes from, but people on welfare or government assistance aren't living like Bill Gates!
There are stringent requirements to get government assistance. First you have to show you need it. Then you have to attend various program
What I find weird is why they didn't just BUY Maxathon or one of the other good IE shells. Those really are competition for Opera and FireFox, but IE7 so far seems to be barely "good enough". OTOH, MS has been going with the barely there for years.
Does Opera run better or worse than the other browsers? IDK, I hate to get into the old argument, but unless you define bloat as sheer # of features (I usually put in them interfering with me, or running slow, or taking up lots of memory/processor time).
OTOH, Opera loves memory too - especially on windows with java. And the netscape flash plugin leaks memory, so on windows that's an issue unless you disable plugins/flash somehow.
I will say that for me, even on WinXP, I find Opera snappy, and not very difficult to pare down to a setup I like.
However, I'm supriese that Safari isn't more than sufficient on a Mac, I was under the impression it was pretty much the best browser for OSX.
I still don't really get the use - web pages are textual documents, and really, I still don't see how this is faster then just clicking on the tab you want.
I can't talk much about Linux save what I've read, as I've never been very successful installing applications on any linux. But there are lots of apps that for whatever reason only work on WinXP and newer (I think to force upgrades, I can't imagine there was some big difference between Photoshop 7 and CS1 that necessitated WinXP only, same with the latest Encarta) and others that only work on 2k and newer (which makes sense as NT is somewhat different from 9x).
But is there some reason you (or maybe the app creators - let's place blame where it's due) can't bring in newer libraries for that app?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, unless you are proposing eugenics of some sort - or a death penalty for being without a job, then Welfare is better and cheaper than the equivelent criminal justice available currently, or that I can think of.
My reasoning is simple really: Welfare currently requires training + attempts to find work to stay on it in most locations in the US to recieve it. Part of the services include job training, as well as assistance in breaking addiction to drugs or whatever. Basically here - you have some chance of turining the recipient into a contributing member of society.
For a prisoner, the average cost is quite a bit, over $20k/year, but in general, prison doesn't do good things for a person - there's no cutting someone off if they never get better (unless they do something that warrents the death penalty, which gets quoted at costing $4 million...) they aren't doing anything to contribute to society during their incarceration. Recidivism rates are high, and people who become criminals often escalate their crimes during their criminal career.
I don't advocate welfare out of a fear of crime, but out of cost savings. As far as I can see, it's far cheaper to have people on welfare than in prison.
Why would best buy want to sell to you though? I mean, you're not going to buy the "Advanced Security Setup" for $118 on your new PC, you won't buy the $150 "Performance Service Plan", hell you don't want to actually buy a PC - and I seriously doubt you'd ever come in and pay their Geek Squad $256 for a "Complete OS Service" when you had an OS problem.
You don't make them any money.
Indeed, if I was going to be entirely legit, I could likely go back to dial-up. I'd rather by CDs than DRMed stuff from iTMS, and NetFilx doesn't require High-Speed internet, I did it for years on dial-up.
However, when it would save me only $10 a month compared to DSL... The cost factor, plus the fact that there are 3 + people wanting to be online all the time now, plus not needing a PC "dial-up" router, keeps me on DSL. Of course, again, if you don't want to be on-line all the time, then not needing a second phone line drastically increases the savings from $10 a month to $35 a month, which would then be worth it.
Mod Parent UP!
Umm, they are doing the exact same thing in China - noting that results have been censored by the government. I see this as a good thing, now people who care can go to the (slow) google.com and see what was censored.
Or do you think Google ought to just shut down in the US because US law requires them to "censor" certain results as indicated in the GPP?
Opera could/should handle IRC, but Skype? Isn't that pretty processor intensive what with the compression, encryption etc...?
Sounds sort of like Freenet... Which mostly doesn't work.
I know, to some extent, using a large amount of RAM is basically part of the whole fast back system. Opera defaults to using ~ 30% of physical RAM for that.
Now, if FF is growing to the point it's crashing machines due to eating up the full pagefile -that's a memory leak.
But neither browser is going to immediately release the memory from a tab when you close it (well, at least Opera doesn't - so it can do the undo close tab feature).
All that said, IME, Opera does not slow down my PC when eating 300MB of RAM in virtual memory, as it's working set is always ~ 70MB.
The other thing is are people quoting Physical RAM use, or virtual memory use... These are usually not the same on Windows.
So, it's very similar in concept to freenet, but it seems like it might actually work, while being entirely non-anonymous.
Google maps still seem pretty overratted to me, I much prefer maps24.com, it both always works (google aside from groups and search seems to like giving me a loading screen and nothing more) and it's smoother, plus has other cool things.
I'm pretty sure thats exactly what open source means. You may be conflating FSF/GPL with open source though.
Where exactly do you live? In the US, all major vendors sold in retail (Best Buy, Circuit City, etc) ship XP Home on all but their most expensive computers/laptops.
But if you break AACS, then HDCP really doesn't matter beyond pissing off consumers of the earlier devices (bad idea, but they don't seem to care). Cause if you break AACS, then you just strip out HDCP or whatever and send non protected data out the video card.
Unless, of course, they try and make it so you can't have unprotected HD content at all, even if it's your own... which I don't think will fly very well, but maybe.
You know, this also raises a point - if your non protected content is reduced to SD, won't that cause a lot of people to return products, or not buy in the first place, as they don't see any improvement?
Seriously, I don't see a major difference between DVD and HDTV on the displays at Best Buy. I can't really figure out why anyone who a) has decent amounts of disposable income and b)is a big videophile would be spending over the $150 at Walmart for a standard 27" TV. HDTVs are still too pricy at $800+. I can barely justify spending $150 on something as little used as a TV.
I already watch everything on my 19" monitor, which mostly just works for me. I never even went DVI, cause the cables prices are outrageous, and I don't see any advantage over the VGA cable that came with the monitor.
When HDTVs are $100-$150, maybe we'll see large market penetration. I just find it hard to believe that the mass market that has been used to midsized TVs costing an average of $120 will be rushing out to spend $1k on a new TV.
And what is worth watching is on at inconvienient times, you can't pause it to take a bathroom break, you can't rewind it to catch some dialog you missed, and it has 18 minutes of commercials even when you pay for access (cable).
And, the technological advancements that resolve these issues like PVRs (TiVo) are slowly becoming crippled or may be outright disabled by new technologies promoted by the MPAA and friends (broadcast flag).
What I don't understand is why I (in a country where false advertising is supposedly illegial) as a customer should have to interpret what the company says. I mean, why can they not just say what they mean?
I mean, how far will I get if I sign up for netflix at $30 a month, but then pay them $5 a month, and claim - who really thought I meant $30 *american* dollars? LOLZ, the idiots!
That's how I feel about what many companies are doing. I'd much prefer they lay out what they actually can offer, and let me choose, than overpromise and underdeliver all the time. That should flat out be illegial.
The worst thing is the use of Unlimited. Look, in certain instances, one can use colloqualisms like "this car flies down the road", and most people can understand that you mean it drives fast, not that you're going to take off into the air.
Unlimited isn't a colloqualism for limited. Black is not white.
I'm tired of having to try and guess what the companies really mean. I think we need to toughen up our advertising laws, or enforce the false advertising ones more. IE, if you say unlimited, and introduce intentional limits - bam, legal problems.
See, this is what bothers me. They have several tiers of service already based on how many discs you can get at a time, and certain ones limit how many per month.
Why not either extend the limit to x per month on all the plans (annoying to heavy renters though) or just raise the price of the plan to where even if the person watched each movie they got the day they got it and turned it around, Netflix still makes a profit?
Or, even better, do both, but have the ones with monthly limits be cheaper (like now, but allow some more expensive plans with 15 movies a month rather than say 4).
I hate all these "hidden costs" now adays. Just put the real price up front, and charge what you have to to provide the service, don't put in hidden or vague delays, limits, caps whatever.
There's always been this double standard on the internet where it's cool to have an extension or BHO, but god forbid if you have to add a bookmarklet, edit an ini file, or run a separate program.
I've never really understood it, to me, if I'd have to download something else in FF, and I can do the same by downloading something else of a slightly different class and stay with Opera or IE which I've already got configured... I don't see the point of switching. That's just me though.
I think killing encrypted traffic might well be a problem for ISPs... How would they deal with the whole SSL for online banking and such? I think they might well quickly become known as the "No security for banking or shopping" ISP.
If they allow SSL, then I really would think it's not too difficult to use that as a tunnel.
The other problem with blocking bittorrent is that it is becoming increasingly legit - Opera, Blizzard and others are using it as an official distribution mechanism... Do they want to open themselves up to companies getting pissed at them? Or hordes of customers complaining that WOW doesn't work right?
You don't have a right to having kids.
/. before.
Woah. I really think that a libertarian ought to back up on telling two people what they can and can't do in their own home, on their own time.
If you have kids, you don't have a right to force me to pay for their care against my will.
That's better - that's at least consistant. And I have some good arguments on costs that I've posted to
Quote:
In your above senario, let's say there is no Social Services and welfare (to work in many places). So that person has -$$ because of bad life judgements.
As a liberal, I don't care about that person. I'm looking at a big picture - those children and that woman having no money will still cost me, even if I don't pay into social programs.
Why? Here:
Instead of preventative health care, they end up in the emergency room. But can't pay that much larger bill. Guess what - that gets passed on to people who can pay the bill - you and I.
Even if we don't treat people at the emergency room regardless of proof of insurance it costs us.
How? Here:
Now, when you are having a heart attack (or whatever) and the paramedics show up, someone has to find your proof of insurance or give them a large wad of cash so they know you can pay for treatment. Guess what, while they were running the forms, you died! Doesn't that suck? But at least you didn't have to pay towards the people you listed above.
A good reason to have medicaid style programs is that emergency room visits are made more common by not getting checked out (for whatever reason, I know for me it's been money related) on a regular basis and only going when you're flopping around dying.
There are hundreds of medical issues from the flu to cancer that can be very cheap to treat if cought early (the kind of stuff that is found in doctors visits, not at the emergency room after a collapse) but incredibly expensive if impossible to treat once you're in the emergencey room having reached a critical point.
Another common argument that get's made that misses the point is "go live on the street until you make your mind up to put in the effort to keep a roof over your head."(The idea that there should not be any sort of housing support)
Now, that is just creating emergency room visits. Because they can't afford a home, they're out exposed to the elements. You know what that causes? Sickness. So some cop finds them dying on the street. Most will call an ambulance - and back to square one there.
Moreso, now you also are putting mobile sickness breeding grounds wandering around outside. All sorts of sicknesses spread in that manner, through sick people outside...
Lets get away from medicine. Those people who get no help from anyone now are trying to feed themselves. Look at the innercity, what do they do to get money? They have no skills to get a job with, so they either start dealing drugs, or start stealing things.
Either way, now you pay - more - in both losing areas of the city you feel safe in, and in a larger police force to try and stop such crime, and possibly in the additional hassle of dealing with police more often. To clarify:
Such suggestions lead to crime, violence, and increased police cost. Someone will have to deal with the people so poor they cannot pay for housing or feed themselves - it can be Social services, or it can be Police. Guess what though, Social Services sometimes turns these people into contributing workers in our society, all the Police can do is put them in Jail.
Now you're supporting them more than ever, at greater cost.
The last point I want to address in your post is the idea that Social Services will make all your cares go away. I have no idea where this concept comes from, but people on welfare or government assistance aren't living like Bill Gates!
There are stringent requirements to get government assistance. First you have to show you need it. Then you have to attend various program
What I find weird is why they didn't just BUY Maxathon or one of the other good IE shells. Those really are competition for Opera and FireFox, but IE7 so far seems to be barely "good enough". OTOH, MS has been going with the barely there for years.
Does Opera run better or worse than the other browsers? IDK, I hate to get into the old argument, but unless you define bloat as sheer # of features (I usually put in them interfering with me, or running slow, or taking up lots of memory/processor time).
OTOH, Opera loves memory too - especially on windows with java. And the netscape flash plugin leaks memory, so on windows that's an issue unless you disable plugins/flash somehow.
I will say that for me, even on WinXP, I find Opera snappy, and not very difficult to pare down to a setup I like.
However, I'm supriese that Safari isn't more than sufficient on a Mac, I was under the impression it was pretty much the best browser for OSX.
I still don't really get the use - web pages are textual documents, and really, I still don't see how this is faster then just clicking on the tab you want.
I can't talk much about Linux save what I've read, as I've never been very successful installing applications on any linux. But there are lots of apps that for whatever reason only work on WinXP and newer (I think to force upgrades, I can't imagine there was some big difference between Photoshop 7 and CS1 that necessitated WinXP only, same with the latest Encarta) and others that only work on 2k and newer (which makes sense as NT is somewhat different from 9x).
But is there some reason you (or maybe the app creators - let's place blame where it's due) can't bring in newer libraries for that app?