Well, the issue is, assuming we get what I would want, Universal Health care, is that you would be paying for the basic general level of health care. Like you currently pay for a basic general level of roads. Same with the retirement system. And you get equal use out of them, like the roads.
And even though the retirement system is bad, well so are the roads much of the time.
Now, I want to make sure that I'm clear - I'm not happy with the status quo either. And our current medicare/caid system isn't great, or fair. It's better than nothing, but far better would be equal access for everyone - universal healthcare. Then everyone gets the benefits equally, like the road system.
I also don't know if you read my link, but ensuring people aren't desperate because of medical or financial reasons helps you also. It lessens crime and disease spread, and lowers emergency room visits and so lowers hospital crowding. Read the link.
However, you might have saved a dime(more probably) by sending an e-mail vs sending an express letter with FedEx for same day delivery - or even over a phone call overseas.
You probably saved a dime by having 50% of your incoming calls handled by an automated information line vs having call center employees.
You probably saved a dime by having a teleconference over flying everyone to some location, renting a center and having a meeting.
If, on the other hand, you were talking about a social safety net, I know of few non-leftists would be unwilling to significantly contribute toward a social safety net if they knew it would do any good, i.e., have checks to make sure the recipients are either genuinely unable to produce, or ensure that the aid will render them able to produce. And that just ain't how government help works.
I think you missed significant parts of my original post, to wit:
I can see many practical issues with all of those programs/issues, however I also see them as some see democracy - the worst solution, except for everything else.
There are practical implementation issues. I have yet to see anyone actually propose or test implement a better solution though.
I've heard the charities suggestion, but please explain to me why I should expect that to work better now than in the early 20th century, which I addressed here:
We have seen the quality of life in a close to fully free market economy, in the US during the late 19th and early 20th century. Frightful conflicts arose and led to the forming of unions to end that (though how successful that was is another debate - the point is the masses didn't stand for a fully free market solution).
Do you think our workforce laws have had nothing to do with better conditions at work? Has Social Security not improved the retirements of countless Americans compared to before it existed?
Other than government - how would you implement a universal minimum standard of living?
I think the idea is that with any governmental form other than anarchy, there will be certain things individuals are forced to do to remain part of the society. Taxes are like dues - the only out of paying a particular countries taxes is to leave.
Democracies choices as to what to force people to do are in a large sense voluntary - the populace as a whole can choose what they want to require as dues, be it money or service or something else.
But no society has individual level choice for the dues to that society - because individuals do not make up the society, the group does.
Do you honestly think everyone who opposes Social Security, federal involvement in education, "progressive" income taxaction, capital gains taxation, min. wage laws, etc etc etc is doing so because they hate poor people and want to enrish themselves at their expense? That's a mighty tough conspiracy to maintain, especially since lots of low-income people support Republicans... in fact, the average low-income white person is much more likely to vote Republican than Democrat.
I can see many practical issues with all of those programs/issues, however I also see them as some see democracy - the worst solution, except for everything else.
All of this is that a fully free market economy seems as sustainable as humanities attempts at the opposite - communism. We have seen the quality of life in a close to fully free market economy, in the US during the late 19th and early 20th century. Frightful conflicts arose and led to the forming of unions to end that (though how successful that was is another debate - the point is the masses didn't stand for a fully free market solution).
I find it amazing that people can claim to care about society, and other people in general, yet oppose setting a minimum standard of living and being willing to pay to maintain that. It seems hypocritical to me, and certainly very selfish.
I think what they are saying is that Answers.com didn't pay an upfront fee to have someone put the link to the tool there. That's probably why the link can also be removed by any wikipedian(sp?).
I'm guessing the advertising is more payment for bandwidth use than anything else really.
That's a cool idea, and I think many different entities have tried to do something with it, but there is no standard. Memigo and Digg both try and do something with news like that - but no one seems to comment on Memigo, and Digg's form is horrible for discussion at all. There is no good way to do more than just comment on the original submission.
I think Alexa tried something once, and Flock may be trying to do something, but it won't really be good without a standard. Because no one is going to change from IE or Opera or even FireFox to Flock just to comment on pages they happen to be viewing.
Then you have to deal with the implicit tracking that would be necessary to manage the comments. Many people won't put up with that either.
The document has to be linear, but why would it be bad for the document to be pulled together from many multiple sources? Say like my.yahoo.com or even Slahsdot? I think we have limited working sources already.
Wikipedias can be like this, but the closest thing I can think is the idea of the Google Grid from awhile ago in that flash animition.
The closest today is going to be the aggregator pages like my.yahoo.com. Especially the RSS based ones. Google News is another good example, though not really as integrated.
I think the getting rid of the menu bar for some sort of tabbed interface is a major UI change - and not really one for the better AFAICT. At least the screenshots don't make a compelling benefit to the change, maybe using it for a while would change my mind, but I don't plan to for a while.
Also, I still think major changes to the UI are sort of stupid for MS. If a company is going to have to retrain all it's users for applications and OS use, what benefit is there to paying for Vista vs getting SuSE for free or whatever distro of choice? I mean, Office 12 looks different enough to make the training cost equivelent to changing to Openoffice 2.
Re:Speaking of Open-Source : GFX Cards.
on
Quake 4 Linux
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· Score: 1
I was just saying it's not particularly hard or expensive (as video cards go) to get a PCI interface nVidia card, contrary to the parent poster.
But... Why would I want this/Care? I mean, I can just run a browser normally right? Unless we're figuring it's a good way to further sandbox the browser - in which case it is, but now you have the issues of another OS to deal with - in addition to an alternative browser.
Also, does it allow persistant customization? Can you install extensions? How does it handle saving downloads to your actual computer? If it allows this, is it really worth the overhead for the sandbox (as it's doing very little a well designed browser wouldn't do natively)?
Right, and if you use windows XP correctly it will run smoothly for weeks and more without reboots, and never need a reinstall (well, random hardware problems notwithstanding). Yet, where I work, we still get people every day paying $140 to clean out the spyware and viruses *yet again*.
Most of these people have no idea about "best practices" for computer use for a number of reasons.
1) 0 attempt at education by manufacturers. Most people who buy store sold PCs *still* haven't heard of AV or Anti-Spyware, and Symantec has been advertising out the wazoo + preinstalling for *HOW LONG*?
2) It's obscure and non trivial. You go to start -> control panel, internet options, etc. etc. Disable this and that, and set this entry. Now some sites don't work, so go into your trusted sites list and add this.
3) Now look at firewalls - many people turn them off because they "break" thier internet or their programs... Because the configuration isn't that simple.
All this leads to effective social engineering attacks against most internet users. Plus the constant manual work - checking if the auto updates are working, possibly approving the update, checking on scans, knowing what to do when something is found etc...
Seriously. This is what I use Newsgroups + Streamload for, paying about $25-$35 a month for access. I'd be willing to pay the same for legal access that: a)Was at least lol release quality (HDTV Rip to Xvid @ 350MB for 42 minutes) b)No commercials. c)Easier to get on the DVD Player/set top from PC. Maybe come in SVCD format already? Or even better, push some big (working) XviD or $50 set top player. d)Available for download at the same time the show airs on TV.
It wouldn't have to be *all* shows, but I should be able to choose about 1 per week per dollar over a basic access fee of maybe $10 per month. So if I pay $12 per month, I can get every episode of CSI and NCIS as above. If I pay $25, I should be able to choose 15 shows.
I'd be willing to pay more per show to be able to legally OWN like a DVD the episodes I get that month, to watch whenever, forever. But not ten bajillion times more. Maybe another $1 per show per month.
I think it would likely be an amazing service, and what lots of people would want and be willing to pay for - but I'm sure the various companies would want $10 per show per month or some shit.
Interesting, Trillian for me (though I'm only using it to talk on AIM) uses 9MB. It likely depends on how many networks you connect to at once, and hence how many plugins are loaded.
I mean that (maybe I'm confused) it's ok to have a prohibition on me publishing a new Star Trek story without permission of the copyright holder. That is, allowing someone to copyright the Star Trek univerise and characters, but not the idea of a spaceship story.
Although, it may be that I'm totally wrong and it is currently legal for me to write a new Star Trek story as long as it's different from any currently published one.
Isn't it basically an intake fan at that point? lol.
Please elaborate. I'm not really seeing why this would be so.
It's not in Photoshop. But what might be cooler (not tried myself) is the spot healing tool.
But select the clone brush, alt click on source, click + drag to fill in.
Though, I find that there are plugins to remove redeye that do a great job - and I think Photoshop now has one built in.
Well, the issue is, assuming we get what I would want, Universal Health care, is that you would be paying for the basic general level of health care. Like you currently pay for a basic general level of roads. Same with the retirement system. And you get equal use out of them, like the roads.
And even though the retirement system is bad, well so are the roads much of the time.
Now, I want to make sure that I'm clear - I'm not happy with the status quo either. And our current medicare/caid system isn't great, or fair. It's better than nothing, but far better would be equal access for everyone - universal healthcare. Then everyone gets the benefits equally, like the road system.
I also don't know if you read my link, but ensuring people aren't desperate because of medical or financial reasons helps you also. It lessens crime and disease spread, and lowers emergency room visits and so lowers hospital crowding. Read the link.
However, you might have saved a dime(more probably) by sending an e-mail vs sending an express letter with FedEx for same day delivery - or even over a phone call overseas.
You probably saved a dime by having 50% of your incoming calls handled by an automated information line vs having call center employees.
You probably saved a dime by having a teleconference over flying everyone to some location, renting a center and having a meeting.
I could go on.
If, on the other hand, you were talking about a social safety net, I know of few non-leftists would be unwilling to significantly contribute toward a social safety net if they knew it would do any good, i.e., have checks to make sure the recipients are either genuinely unable to produce, or ensure that the aid will render them able to produce. And that just ain't how government help works.
I think you missed significant parts of my original post, to wit:
I can see many practical issues with all of those programs/issues, however I also see them as some see democracy - the worst solution, except for everything else.
There are practical implementation issues. I have yet to see anyone actually propose or test implement a better solution though.
I've heard the charities suggestion, but please explain to me why I should expect that to work better now than in the early 20th century, which I addressed here:
We have seen the quality of life in a close to fully free market economy, in the US during the late 19th and early 20th century. Frightful conflicts arose and led to the forming of unions to end that (though how successful that was is another debate - the point is the masses didn't stand for a fully free market solution).
Do you think our workforce laws have had nothing to do with better conditions at work? Has Social Security not improved the retirements of countless Americans compared to before it existed?
Other than government - how would you implement a universal minimum standard of living?
I think the idea is that with any governmental form other than anarchy, there will be certain things individuals are forced to do to remain part of the society. Taxes are like dues - the only out of paying a particular countries taxes is to leave.
Democracies choices as to what to force people to do are in a large sense voluntary - the populace as a whole can choose what they want to require as dues, be it money or service or something else.
But no society has individual level choice for the dues to that society - because individuals do not make up the society, the group does.
Do you honestly think everyone who opposes Social Security, federal involvement in education, "progressive" income taxaction, capital gains taxation, min. wage laws, etc etc etc is doing so because they hate poor people and want to enrish themselves at their expense? That's a mighty tough conspiracy to maintain, especially since lots of low-income people support Republicans ... in fact, the average low-income white person is much more likely to vote Republican than Democrat.
5 358#14649568
I can see many practical issues with all of those programs/issues, however I also see them as some see democracy - the worst solution, except for everything else.
Although, I personally support a social saftey net for many reasons, which I've better defined here: http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,1464
All of this is that a fully free market economy seems as sustainable as humanities attempts at the opposite - communism. We have seen the quality of life in a close to fully free market economy, in the US during the late 19th and early 20th century. Frightful conflicts arose and led to the forming of unions to end that (though how successful that was is another debate - the point is the masses didn't stand for a fully free market solution).
I find it amazing that people can claim to care about society, and other people in general, yet oppose setting a minimum standard of living and being willing to pay to maintain that. It seems hypocritical to me, and certainly very selfish.
I think what they are saying is that Answers.com didn't pay an upfront fee to have someone put the link to the tool there. That's probably why the link can also be removed by any wikipedian(sp?).
I'm guessing the advertising is more payment for bandwidth use than anything else really.
That's a cool idea, and I think many different entities have tried to do something with it, but there is no standard. Memigo and Digg both try and do something with news like that - but no one seems to comment on Memigo, and Digg's form is horrible for discussion at all. There is no good way to do more than just comment on the original submission.
I think Alexa tried something once, and Flock may be trying to do something, but it won't really be good without a standard. Because no one is going to change from IE or Opera or even FireFox to Flock just to comment on pages they happen to be viewing.
Then you have to deal with the implicit tracking that would be necessary to manage the comments. Many people won't put up with that either.
The document has to be linear, but why would it be bad for the document to be pulled together from many multiple sources? Say like my.yahoo.com or even Slahsdot? I think we have limited working sources already.
Wikipedias can be like this, but the closest thing I can think is the idea of the Google Grid from awhile ago in that flash animition.
The closest today is going to be the aggregator pages like my.yahoo.com. Especially the RSS based ones. Google News is another good example, though not really as integrated.
I think the getting rid of the menu bar for some sort of tabbed interface is a major UI change - and not really one for the better AFAICT. At least the screenshots don't make a compelling benefit to the change, maybe using it for a while would change my mind, but I don't plan to for a while.
Also, I still think major changes to the UI are sort of stupid for MS. If a company is going to have to retrain all it's users for applications and OS use, what benefit is there to paying for Vista vs getting SuSE for free or whatever distro of choice? I mean, Office 12 looks different enough to make the training cost equivelent to changing to Openoffice 2.
I was just saying it's not particularly hard or expensive (as video cards go) to get a PCI interface nVidia card, contrary to the parent poster.
I really like Blind Guardian - I'm checking out Nightwish now - any other suggestions other than Falconer or Symphony X?
Not hard to find a PCI nVidia card - Best Buy sells them as well as Newegg. They are a crappy FX 5200 though and cost ~$50
But... Why would I want this/Care? I mean, I can just run a browser normally right? Unless we're figuring it's a good way to further sandbox the browser - in which case it is, but now you have the issues of another OS to deal with - in addition to an alternative browser.
Also, does it allow persistant customization? Can you install extensions? How does it handle saving downloads to your actual computer? If it allows this, is it really worth the overhead for the sandbox (as it's doing very little a well designed browser wouldn't do natively)?
Right, and if you use windows XP correctly it will run smoothly for weeks and more without reboots, and never need a reinstall (well, random hardware problems notwithstanding). Yet, where I work, we still get people every day paying $140 to clean out the spyware and viruses *yet again*.
Most of these people have no idea about "best practices" for computer use for a number of reasons.
1) 0 attempt at education by manufacturers. Most people who buy store sold PCs *still* haven't heard of AV or Anti-Spyware, and Symantec has been advertising out the wazoo + preinstalling for *HOW LONG*?
2) It's obscure and non trivial. You go to start -> control panel, internet options, etc. etc. Disable this and that, and set this entry. Now some sites don't work, so go into your trusted sites list and add this.
3) Now look at firewalls - many people turn them off because they "break" thier internet or their programs... Because the configuration isn't that simple.
All this leads to effective social engineering attacks against most internet users. Plus the constant manual work - checking if the auto updates are working, possibly approving the update, checking on scans, knowing what to do when something is found etc...
This is why newsgroups are awesome.
Seriously. This is what I use Newsgroups + Streamload for, paying about $25-$35 a month for access. I'd be willing to pay the same for legal access that:
a)Was at least lol release quality (HDTV Rip to Xvid @ 350MB for 42 minutes)
b)No commercials.
c)Easier to get on the DVD Player/set top from PC. Maybe come in SVCD format already? Or even better, push some big (working) XviD or $50 set top player.
d)Available for download at the same time the show airs on TV.
It wouldn't have to be *all* shows, but I should be able to choose about 1 per week per dollar over a basic access fee of maybe $10 per month. So if I pay $12 per month, I can get every episode of CSI and NCIS as above. If I pay $25, I should be able to choose 15 shows.
I'd be willing to pay more per show to be able to legally OWN like a DVD the episodes I get that month, to watch whenever, forever. But not ten bajillion times more. Maybe another $1 per show per month.
I think it would likely be an amazing service, and what lots of people would want and be willing to pay for - but I'm sure the various companies would want $10 per show per month or some shit.
Interesting, Trillian for me (though I'm only using it to talk on AIM) uses 9MB. It likely depends on how many networks you connect to at once, and hence how many plugins are loaded.
Yeah, but google.com/ig has more on it than a blank page with a small search box at the top.
I mean that (maybe I'm confused) it's ok to have a prohibition on me publishing a new Star Trek story without permission of the copyright holder. That is, allowing someone to copyright the Star Trek univerise and characters, but not the idea of a spaceship story.
Although, it may be that I'm totally wrong and it is currently legal for me to write a new Star Trek story as long as it's different from any currently published one.
So, which do they use? Opera or Mozilla Seamonky?
If that's the case, you likely would be amazed by Opera.
It is? Works perfectly fine for me in Opera 8.5. I just previewed this post 2 times.