Yeah, "threaten" them with not paying for Medicare/Medicaid patients that they typically lose money on and that they'd prefer not to deal with anyway? So, what's to stop the hospitals from simply saying "Your proposal is acceptable", and refusing to treat (other than immediate emergency stabilization in preparation for transfer to other facilities) any Medicare/Medicaid patients?
There are already an increasing number of doctors who are dropping and/or refusing to accept any more Medicare/Medicaid patients due to Obamacare. I guess the government thought that hospitals shouldn't be left out. Perhaps we'll start seeing back-alley appendectomies and hip surgeries join back-alley abortions.
People shouldn't be able to vote themselves benefits.
This.
Why should people who by choice haven't contributed either economically or with service be able to vote themselves the fruits of others' labor who have contributed, or have a say in how the country is run if they are unwilling to serve or contribute in any meaningful way and thus are unwilling to have a stake in the costs and repercussions of the decisions?
It's something that was understood in the US' beginning, but has lost it's meaning for many these days. Freedom isn't free, and neither is having a voice in how your society is run and it's treasure spent. Everyone who votes must have "skin in the game" for the nation to not eventually devolve to chaos & collapse.
Once a hugely-powerful system like this is fully-implemented, "stupid DRM tricks" are actually the least worrisome aspect. What government can accomplish in the way of control of everyone's information & digital communications is far more worrisome.
Ahhh, but you know you're not allowed to cause harmful interference; so, the onus will be on you to resolve the problem...
In the US most consumer devices must not cause interfere to Amateur Radio operations, but Amateur Radio equipment is allowed priority regarding interfere with most consumer devices. This is because the Amateur Radio Service and the experienced radio operators are considered valuable national resources, particularly in emergency/disaster scenarios.
Hams have generally cultivated a culture of being considerate & helpful to those nearby who experience RFI (Radio Frequency Interference). Hams will typically go out of their way to help resolve common consumer interference issues, but they are not required to do so under the laws & regulations in most cases.
Had a neighbor once with a cranial-rectal impaction who filed a complaint with the FCC against me. They guy was so clueless he described me as a CB radio operator. He was convinced in his own mind that I had to quit operating because I interfered with his crappy B&W portable TV (this was the early '80s) he had in his garage to watch football. I even offered to help him choose & install RF filters, etc to no avail. He insisted I must stop transmitting.
Based on his description of me to the FCC as a "CB radio operator", they sent out a monitoring van and a Federal Marshall in case illegal CB equipment like illegal CB transmitter amplifiers needed to be seized. Of course, as soon as they arrived and realized I was a Ham they tried to explain the situation to the neighbor. The neighbor wasn't buying it, and actually threatened to "cut that $&%@# antenna lead" if "you useless Feds don't enforce the law!!".
The neighbor got a stern lecture from the Federal Marshall that not only would he open himself to trespass, property damage, and vandalism charges, he could also face federal felony charges arising from deliberately sabotaging federally-authorized emergency communications.
I never heard another word from the clueless neighbor.
I'm wondering why no one is asking about using dogs for bomb sniffing.
What does it matter what steps you take to screen passengers when the rest of the security picture is all but ignored?
I've worked as an avionics tech for various companies at a number of airports. Maintenance personnel typically have either a mag-stripe employee card, newer outfits an RFID-equipped card, or not much at all except knowing which peripheral access gate to walk or drive through (yes, a personal vehicle) and dressed/acting like you belong there. Direct access to the tarmac and flightline is unsecured or minimally-secured at most airports. The cards are typically only required to enter buildings.
All this TSA grope-n-scope is security theater, pure & simple. Heck, why would a terrorist bother when he could walk straight out onto a flightline with a gun & suicide vest, grab an aircraft refueling truck (they are usually either idling or have the keys always in them) and crash it into an airliner taxiing towards the runway for takeoff?
Instead, we have the TSA groping children and screening pilots the same as passengers (hint: they don't need a weapon...they already have control of the entire aircraft.). They're looking for weapons/bombs (almost anything can be, or be made into, a weapon) rather than the potential bomber.
It's a losing strategy, as it is impossible to screen out every single possible weapon. It can't even be done in most prisons. Israel screens passengers with about 90 seconds worth of common sense questions. You get a steak knife with your in-flight meal. No gropes/scans. After the tens of billions wasted already, the excuse of "it costs too much!" is laughable. The only time a politician is against spending other people's money is when it doesn't advance their agenda.
So no. He didn't "guess" the password. He didn't have to--she gave it to him. By this lawyer's logic, someone who enters a building via a door that has the word "PUSH" written on it is a master catburglar.
My guess is that the female prosecutor has a vicarious emotional stake in this case. The prosecutor herself likely has either gone through a contentious divorce, and/or got caught cheating herself.
If I were the defense counsel, I'd have investigators looking more at the *prosecutor's* past marital/relationship history, rather than the defense's client or the prosecution's witness. There's probably some dirt there that makes the pursuit of this case in this manner by the prosecutor make a lot more sense.
Cambridge is Cambridge, a huge and ancient university with one of the best academic reputations in the world, which is ready, willing, and able to fight for academic freedom
That gives me this mental image of Stephen Hawking wearing one of those old WW1 British "pie-pan" helmets while chasing scantily-clad female soldiers in his trademark powered wheelchair which has had all manner of huge guns, rockets, etc bolted to it such that it suddenly over-balances and falls over on its' side in typical "Monty Python"/"Benny Hill" style ("Yakkety Sax" theme music optional).
The camera man wasn't in the cops face. He wasn't in the face of the emergency personel. This wouldn't have made it to youtube or the cover of our school's paper if the cop didn't act like he did.
The police chief came out later and said the cameraman was in the right. But that doesn't prevent the cop from acting like an asshole the entire time. The cameraman was physically shaking from being intimidated.
~But you don't understand! The cop told him to turn it off! The cop is the law, and the law is the cop. It's really very simple from the cop's point of view...the law is whatever the cop says it is, you must do whatever the cop says no matter what, don't you understand?~
The way the cop was fingering that taser in his holster while repeatedly "asking" he turn off the camera was particularly comforting. I think that student came very, *very* close to joining the "don't taze me, bro!" club, or the "battery of an officer by repeatedly striking the officer's fist with his face" club, and probably would have if not for the number of witnesses around.
At the point the cop asked the student to go outside, I would have been concerned that the cop wanted me to go outside so as to taze/arrest me without so many witnesses around.
Many, many cops in my experience (my nephew is a cop) generally do NOT like, or will tolerate, being contradicted as to what they may or may not legally do or what they may legally order someone to do or not do, by civvies and perps.
They are used to having their orders followed without question, and it annoys the crap out of them when some "troublemaker" "back-talks" them with "some stupid legal rights crap". They tend to switch to "I'll show this smart-ass twerp who's in charge here by whatever means I can!" mode.
No clue. yesterday, I was advocating Net Neutrality in a discussion here on Slashdot, and I continue to advocate for it. What the FCC is showing here, however, is not what I and other like-minded folks are advocating. I think the first post has it right...money runs things.
PS: Sincere apologies to those who told me to read up yesterday...now that I have, I can see why you're calling bullshit. Please note that my support of Net Neutrality stands, but not this version of it.
First, props to you Pojut, for being enough of a stand-up person and intellectually honest enough to admit publicly when you're wrong. We need people representing us in D.C. that are willing to do the same.
As I've said/posted many times in regard to NN, most people like me who were against NN were against it precisely because we knew it would end badly and not really address the problems that it was supposedly created to correct/prevent (sending competing services' packets to QOS/routing/pingtime hell without protection money). It simply does not take umpteen-thousand pages of legislation or rulemaking/regulation to accomplish the purported goals.
We've learned over the last few decades that anything they (either by Rs or Ds or both together) pass regarding practically any topic will be a tangled and lengthy monstrosity with practically everything including the kitchen sink thrown in (except for what they told us they wanted it for) and end up as not much more than power grabs, payoffs to political allies, and more paths through which to suck money from the people and restrict their freedoms.
This kind of underhanded political crap is why many people feel that, on balance, the best thing that Congress can do for the people these days is nothing at all. That is also why I and many others cringe at the thought of the FCC granting itself power to regulate the internet at all in the first place. ISPs may be greedy, amoral bloodsuckers but government is all that *and* a bag of ACTA/DMCA/PATRIOT Act with guns, goons, taxation, and prisons.
After reading your post, I can only conclude that we are actually not all that far apart, ideologically speaking.
I generally lean to "small-l" libertarian in a general way, but more socially-liberal. I detest both the D's and the R's, as their "reindeer games" together between the Progressives in both parties (Progressive & "Progressive-lite") have nearly destroyed this nation. Communism and Socialism I reject totally, as they have proven time after time over the course of history to be horrible for the populations suffering under those systems as well as crippling the general advancement of humanity in terms of the freedoms, opportunities, and living standards enjoyed by the lowest on the economic and socio-political ladder.
I don't limit my information-gathering to one network, or even one nations' news and information apparatus. Likewise, I have read much of Mao, Lenin, Marx, etc and have done my personal due diligence in regards to checking sources and facts. Again, I would urge you to read with an open mind the books I linked to. You're missing a lot if you don't, and will only to be your loss.
Omestes, in a general reply to your mini-novel-length post that would require answers that approach book-length to answer completely in any case, I would point you to the books I linked to above. In particular "Liberty and Tyranny", and "The Five-Thousand Year Leap".
I would also recommend "Broke" by Glenn Beck. It is a fascinating read and is backed up with a huge section of source-references & citations. I would go so far as to say to ignore the commentary, anecdotes, etc and simply examine the cited facts and do some checking of your own.
If you simply attempt to deflect, ridicule, and dismiss outright the idea of actually reading and/or listening to, and checking presented facts, references, citations from, people who hold different opinions than your own and evaluating them with intellectual honesty, how will you ever know if you're mistaken about anything? Or are you willing to see only 3 lights if they tell you so?
If you're OK with self-imposed internal intellectual censorship, then it's useless to waste time debating with you. Doing so in that case would be akin to attempting to teach a dog to solve differential equations; a total waste of time for the would-be teacher and annoying as hell for the dog.
Have you done the same research to see where the money for Fox News comes from and who is associated?
Progressives damning themselves in their own words on video completely changes their recorded images and words depending on who paid for the camera? Does Fox have secret reality-altering tech in their cameras?
Interesting set of physical laws operating there in your universe.
Here in *this* continuum, recordings of the same event from the same location and time by two cameras funded by different groups come out being pretty much identical.
I think you suffer from the behavioral phenomenon of projecting upon others what you despise in yourself, which seems to be a common affliction among Progressives.
The good news is this affliction is curable with education and an open mind. You can start with these;
And here's what I observed: World Public Opinion is sponsored by the Liberal-leaning, socialist-loving University of Maryland (the state where 70% of the government is Democrat)(and 90% of professors are too). So the survey bashing Libertarian-leaning FOX viewers is as unsurprising as a Microsoft-funded survey showing Google Chrome is insecure. BOTH surveys are meaningless bullshit, not worth the paper they are printed on.
If you simply go to the WPO website, the list of supporters is right there. Most telling among the listings is the Tides Foundation, commonly & widely known to be a Soros-controlled and funded Progressive/Left propaganda and financing organization, among the many other Progressive/Left groups and organizations listed.
"WPO is made possible by the generous support of:
Rockefeller Foundation Rockefeller Brothers Fund Tides Foundation Ford Foundation German Marshall Fund of the United States Compton Foundation Carnegie Corporation Benton Foundation Ben and Jerry's Foundation University of Maryland Foundation Circle Foundation JEHT Foundation Stanley Foundation Ploughshares Fund Calvert Foundation Secure World Foundation Oak Foundation United States Institute of Peace"
Is anyone surprised that such people would view anyone not in lock-step with the Progressive talking points as "uninformed", particularly Fox News viewers?
Nothing to see here, people. Move along, move along.
But given your suggestion that this case of the government being too small is actually caused by the government being to big it seems as likely that you are consciously seeking to deceive as simply mistaken.
I suggested no such thing. Stop with the strawman argument.
I'm not making any partisan or ideological argument here. It's simply a fact that, generally speaking, smaller and less complicated systems are easier to observe & track in detail than larger, more complicated systems.
Being that the government is a system, if the system (government) had been smaller, odds would have been higher that oversight mechanisms might have prevented the scenario described in TFA, or at the least reduced the amount of time it's taken to find what went wrong and possibly halted it sooner before so much damage was done.
Don't let ideology or politics blind you to simple facts. If your politics or ideology causes your beliefs to run contrary to facts, the problem is not the facts nor the people pointing them out, but much closer to home.
The free market system in this regard is failing, it's making people make bad decisions due to their own greed.
No, the _government_ failed. Government !== the free market. It was the government that failed to pay attention to it's own research, and allowed this compound to be sold the same as any other insecticides that have been *properly* tested & approved.
The government took upon itself the responsibility of determining what is safe. It wasn't bad decisions by the farmers, as they were using something that the government said was OK to use. Farmers, of all people, would understand that killing bees that pollinate their crops is a very bad thing and not worth a fraction of a percent in additional yield.
Does anyone doubt that there was some political and/or financial quid-pro-quo going on that got that damning research ignored? This is one of the problems with a huge government; oversight becomes increasingly difficult and ineffective the larger government grows. It just creates too many "cracks" through which corruption and incompetence can slip undetected and uncorrected, with occasionally-disastrous results as exemplified by this incident.
And those DNS servers are your business, not the governments business.
Until the government decides otherwise.
The FCC is already bypassing Congress to implement NN and the EPA is also bypassing Congress to implement Cap & Trade, both through just writing regulations with the power of law, effectively creating laws without legislative participation or oversight.
Congress does not have the power to delegate, "loan out", or "sub-contract" the power to legislate and create law according to most plain language Constitutional interpretations. Not that the SCOTUS and/or lower courts might very well have decided Congress could delegate it's powers, I'm not aware of any decisions regarding it. Besides, just because 9 lifetime political appointees in black robes pronounce something from on high makes it neither Constitutional nor a fact, neither does it make it right and/or just.
That is the job of We the People. We are the oversight on government. And for the last 100 years or so, we've really sucked at it, because it was easier to ignore and just bitch.
No, seriously. Local elections and primaries are where those with ideas outside the two-party box can get a start. If it means that much to you, run for an elected position yourself in your town/county/district if there is nobody to represent your views.
The system was designed to require user input & active participation to function as intended. The situations and conditions in the US today are directly the result of an increasing lack of both over the last ~60 years or so.
Home Theater in the dash is illegal. Video viewable from the drivers seat is illegal. Rear view camera would probably be enabled only when you back up. That is how mine works anyway. The rest of the time, the display functions as my radio controls and/or my GPS. And the GPS controls are also not usable while driving. There is an override, so a passenger can use it, but the key sequence of the override is so complicated only a passenger could possibly enter it correctly.
I wonder how many accidents will be caused by lost people traveling alone with no easy/safe place to pull over, who attempt to enter the override code while driving anyways?
For a hypothetical (yes, yes...I know) example, would a single mother, new to L.A. and lost in a bad area, stop to use the GPS while chatting with the group of bored gang members standing around nearby looking for entertainment, or try to override it to get out of there rather than risking passing the same gang's corner again?
I wonder if the driver in this example could be successful in a lawsuit if she were to stop to use the GPS and then be attacked? Would it get a quick and silent settlement? Would/should she get a ticket regardless of the circumstances, and even if no harm occurred at all (she didn't wreck or swerve, and didn't stop to get attacked, but got pulled over)?
Even worse than that, his argument is that because one thing eventually created new problems we shouldn't try something completely different because it has the possibility of creating problems later. So basically, he's against trying to make any progress at all because there's always some problem that may or may not come from it.
It's that whole pesky "sentience" thing again, as usual.
If that's the case then copyright owners need to start paying property taxes on their "intellectual property."
Why? You don't pay tax on most property (cars, paintings, jewellery, yachts) just by owning it.
I'm not sure if that was sarcasm or not.
If it's a serious comment, then apparently you've never lived in some of the higher-tax states in the US, particularly in some of the larger metropolitan areas of the northeast and some in the northwest. Luxury taxes and other taxes/annual fees/etc on various types of personal property are fairly common in many places and can be quite punitive in some cases.
The fault is with idiotic and greedy politicians that can't run a capitalist economy effectively, combined with the impact of the domino-like economic failures caused by the collapse of socialistic governments in Greece, Portugal, etc.
Make note here. One thing that makes it completely pointless to argue with some libertarian types: as far as they are concerned, a free market capitalist economy is never at fault. No matter how obvious the opposite might be, it's always because of state regulation and/or socialism. Always.
The other thing being that they are, for the most part, absolutely correct.
I would have read that link, but it's a you have to register to read this-site. I don't like those. I posted it in reply to another comment here already, but I actually got a hollowbody custom designed guitar here last week with UPS. Went perfect.
Oops, sorry about the registration-required link...I completely forgot. However, I can tell you absolutely that registration is safe with this site. You won't receive spam, etc. It's worth registering if you have any interest at all in the workings of the equipment you play through.
If you enjoy playing through vacuum tube amps and want to understand a little more and/or do a little tweaking/modding or even try an amp or effects project, it's a great resource. The amp techs and others that post there are *extremely* knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful. It's one of the best amp-builder's forums on the 'net, IMHO.
Glad to hear your guitar arrived in good shape. I've had mixed results.
I design and hand-build vacuum tube guitar & bass amplifiers as a small side-business. I end up shipping them all over. There are a good number of others that do so as well. This is a very relevant/. topic for those like us.
Here's a link to a forum thread where several amp-building friends/acquaintances of mine share their horror stories, some with pictures of the wreckage.
It's not only the value of the hardware, it's as much or more about the huge number of man-hours plus the blood, sweat, and tears that go into hand-building (no PCBs...all hand-wired) and individually tweaking these amplifiers.
Trying to get compensated for the damages can be a nightmare. I can't even imagine what those who make & sell/ship musical instruments like hollow-body guitars and acoustic guitars, violins, etc must go through [shudders].
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Yeah, "threaten" them with not paying for Medicare/Medicaid patients that they typically lose money on and that they'd prefer not to deal with anyway? So, what's to stop the hospitals from simply saying "Your proposal is acceptable", and refusing to treat (other than immediate emergency stabilization in preparation for transfer to other facilities) any Medicare/Medicaid patients?
There are already an increasing number of doctors who are dropping and/or refusing to accept any more Medicare/Medicaid patients due to Obamacare. I guess the government thought that hospitals shouldn't be left out. Perhaps we'll start seeing back-alley appendectomies and hip surgeries join back-alley abortions.
Strat
People shouldn't be able to vote themselves benefits.
This.
Why should people who by choice haven't contributed either economically or with service be able to vote themselves the fruits of others' labor who have contributed, or have a say in how the country is run if they are unwilling to serve or contribute in any meaningful way and thus are unwilling to have a stake in the costs and repercussions of the decisions?
I think Robert A. Heinlein was onto something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers#Politics
It's something that was understood in the US' beginning, but has lost it's meaning for many these days. Freedom isn't free, and neither is having a voice in how your society is run and it's treasure spent. Everyone who votes must have "skin in the game" for the nation to not eventually devolve to chaos & collapse.
Strat
You message insinuates that the actions of producing a computer chip with some technology is clearly and inexcusably morally wrong.
In this case, that insinuation is considered by many to be correct.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
Once a hugely-powerful system like this is fully-implemented, "stupid DRM tricks" are actually the least worrisome aspect. What government can accomplish in the way of control of everyone's information & digital communications is far more worrisome.
Strat
Ahhh, but you know you're not allowed to cause harmful interference; so, the onus will be on you to resolve the problem...
In the US most consumer devices must not cause interfere to Amateur Radio operations, but Amateur Radio equipment is allowed priority regarding interfere with most consumer devices. This is because the Amateur Radio Service and the experienced radio operators are considered valuable national resources, particularly in emergency/disaster scenarios.
Hams have generally cultivated a culture of being considerate & helpful to those nearby who experience RFI (Radio Frequency Interference). Hams will typically go out of their way to help resolve common consumer interference issues, but they are not required to do so under the laws & regulations in most cases.
Had a neighbor once with a cranial-rectal impaction who filed a complaint with the FCC against me. They guy was so clueless he described me as a CB radio operator. He was convinced in his own mind that I had to quit operating because I interfered with his crappy B&W portable TV (this was the early '80s) he had in his garage to watch football. I even offered to help him choose & install RF filters, etc to no avail. He insisted I must stop transmitting.
Based on his description of me to the FCC as a "CB radio operator", they sent out a monitoring van and a Federal Marshall in case illegal CB equipment like illegal CB transmitter amplifiers needed to be seized. Of course, as soon as they arrived and realized I was a Ham they tried to explain the situation to the neighbor. The neighbor wasn't buying it, and actually threatened to "cut that $&%@# antenna lead" if "you useless Feds don't enforce the law!!".
The neighbor got a stern lecture from the Federal Marshall that not only would he open himself to trespass, property damage, and vandalism charges, he could also face federal felony charges arising from deliberately sabotaging federally-authorized emergency communications.
I never heard another word from the clueless neighbor.
Strat
I'm wondering why no one is asking about using dogs for bomb sniffing.
What does it matter what steps you take to screen passengers when the rest of the security picture is all but ignored?
I've worked as an avionics tech for various companies at a number of airports. Maintenance personnel typically have either a mag-stripe employee card, newer outfits an RFID-equipped card, or not much at all except knowing which peripheral access gate to walk or drive through (yes, a personal vehicle) and dressed/acting like you belong there. Direct access to the tarmac and flightline is unsecured or minimally-secured at most airports. The cards are typically only required to enter buildings.
All this TSA grope-n-scope is security theater, pure & simple. Heck, why would a terrorist bother when he could walk straight out onto a flightline with a gun & suicide vest, grab an aircraft refueling truck (they are usually either idling or have the keys always in them) and crash it into an airliner taxiing towards the runway for takeoff?
Instead, we have the TSA groping children and screening pilots the same as passengers (hint: they don't need a weapon...they already have control of the entire aircraft.). They're looking for weapons/bombs (almost anything can be, or be made into, a weapon) rather than the potential bomber.
It's a losing strategy, as it is impossible to screen out every single possible weapon. It can't even be done in most prisons. Israel screens passengers with about 90 seconds worth of common sense questions. You get a steak knife with your in-flight meal. No gropes/scans. After the tens of billions wasted already, the excuse of "it costs too much!" is laughable. The only time a politician is against spending other people's money is when it doesn't advance their agenda.
Strat
So no. He didn't "guess" the password. He didn't have to--she gave it to him. By this lawyer's logic, someone who enters a building via a door that has the word "PUSH" written on it is a master catburglar.
My guess is that the female prosecutor has a vicarious emotional stake in this case. The prosecutor herself likely has either gone through a contentious divorce, and/or got caught cheating herself.
If I were the defense counsel, I'd have investigators looking more at the *prosecutor's* past marital/relationship history, rather than the defense's client or the prosecution's witness. There's probably some dirt there that makes the pursuit of this case in this manner by the prosecutor make a lot more sense.
Strat
Cambridge is Cambridge, a huge and ancient university with one of the best academic reputations in the world, which is ready, willing, and able to fight for academic freedom
That gives me this mental image of Stephen Hawking wearing one of those old WW1 British "pie-pan" helmets while chasing scantily-clad female soldiers in his trademark powered wheelchair which has had all manner of huge guns, rockets, etc bolted to it such that it suddenly over-balances and falls over on its' side in typical "Monty Python"/"Benny Hill" style ("Yakkety Sax" theme music optional).
Strat
Not all cops know this law.
The camera man wasn't in the cops face. He wasn't in the face of the emergency personel. This wouldn't have made it to youtube or the cover of our school's paper if the cop didn't act like he did.
The police chief came out later and said the cameraman was in the right. But that doesn't prevent the cop from acting like an asshole the entire time. The cameraman was physically shaking from being intimidated.
~But you don't understand! The cop told him to turn it off! The cop is the law, and the law is the cop. It's really very simple from the cop's point of view...the law is whatever the cop says it is, you must do whatever the cop says no matter what, don't you understand?~
The way the cop was fingering that taser in his holster while repeatedly "asking" he turn off the camera was particularly comforting. I think that student came very, *very* close to joining the "don't taze me, bro!" club, or the "battery of an officer by repeatedly striking the officer's fist with his face" club, and probably would have if not for the number of witnesses around.
At the point the cop asked the student to go outside, I would have been concerned that the cop wanted me to go outside so as to taze/arrest me without so many witnesses around.
Many, many cops in my experience (my nephew is a cop) generally do NOT like, or will tolerate, being contradicted as to what they may or may not legally do or what they may legally order someone to do or not do, by civvies and perps.
They are used to having their orders followed without question, and it annoys the crap out of them when some "troublemaker" "back-talks" them with "some stupid legal rights crap". They tend to switch to "I'll show this smart-ass twerp who's in charge here by whatever means I can!" mode.
Strat
No clue. yesterday, I was advocating Net Neutrality in a discussion here on Slashdot, and I continue to advocate for it. What the FCC is showing here, however, is not what I and other like-minded folks are advocating. I think the first post has it right...money runs things.
PS: Sincere apologies to those who told me to read up yesterday...now that I have, I can see why you're calling bullshit. Please note that my support of Net Neutrality stands, but not this version of it.
First, props to you Pojut, for being enough of a stand-up person and intellectually honest enough to admit publicly when you're wrong. We need people representing us in D.C. that are willing to do the same.
As I've said/posted many times in regard to NN, most people like me who were against NN were against it precisely because we knew it would end badly and not really address the problems that it was supposedly created to correct/prevent (sending competing services' packets to QOS/routing/pingtime hell without protection money). It simply does not take umpteen-thousand pages of legislation or rulemaking/regulation to accomplish the purported goals.
We've learned over the last few decades that anything they (either by Rs or Ds or both together) pass regarding practically any topic will be a tangled and lengthy monstrosity with practically everything including the kitchen sink thrown in (except for what they told us they wanted it for) and end up as not much more than power grabs, payoffs to political allies, and more paths through which to suck money from the people and restrict their freedoms.
This kind of underhanded political crap is why many people feel that, on balance, the best thing that Congress can do for the people these days is nothing at all. That is also why I and many others cringe at the thought of the FCC granting itself power to regulate the internet at all in the first place. ISPs may be greedy, amoral bloodsuckers but government is all that *and* a bag of ACTA/DMCA/PATRIOT Act with guns, goons, taxation, and prisons.
Strat
After reading your post, I can only conclude that we are actually not all that far apart, ideologically speaking.
I generally lean to "small-l" libertarian in a general way, but more socially-liberal. I detest both the D's and the R's, as their "reindeer games" together between the Progressives in both parties (Progressive & "Progressive-lite") have nearly destroyed this nation. Communism and Socialism I reject totally, as they have proven time after time over the course of history to be horrible for the populations suffering under those systems as well as crippling the general advancement of humanity in terms of the freedoms, opportunities, and living standards enjoyed by the lowest on the economic and socio-political ladder.
I don't limit my information-gathering to one network, or even one nations' news and information apparatus. Likewise, I have read much of Mao, Lenin, Marx, etc and have done my personal due diligence in regards to checking sources and facts. Again, I would urge you to read with an open mind the books I linked to. You're missing a lot if you don't, and will only to be your loss.
Oh, and Merry Christmas! :-)
Strat
Omestes, in a general reply to your mini-novel-length post that would require answers that approach book-length to answer completely in any case, I would point you to the books I linked to above. In particular "Liberty and Tyranny", and "The Five-Thousand Year Leap".
I would also recommend "Broke" by Glenn Beck. It is a fascinating read and is backed up with a huge section of source-references & citations. I would go so far as to say to ignore the commentary, anecdotes, etc and simply examine the cited facts and do some checking of your own.
If you simply attempt to deflect, ridicule, and dismiss outright the idea of actually reading and/or listening to, and checking presented facts, references, citations from, people who hold different opinions than your own and evaluating them with intellectual honesty, how will you ever know if you're mistaken about anything? Or are you willing to see only 3 lights if they tell you so?
If you're OK with self-imposed internal intellectual censorship, then it's useless to waste time debating with you. Doing so in that case would be akin to attempting to teach a dog to solve differential equations; a total waste of time for the would-be teacher and annoying as hell for the dog.
Strat
"-1 Offtopic"
For directly discussing the survey in TFS and who performed it?
Really? REALLY?
I guess that mod couldn't find the "-1 I'm angered by what you posted but can't dispute the facts" button.
Noob! Get off my lawn!
Have you done the same research to see where the money for Fox News comes from and who is associated?
Progressives damning themselves in their own words on video completely changes their recorded images and words depending on who paid for the camera? Does Fox have secret reality-altering tech in their cameras?
Interesting set of physical laws operating there in your universe.
Here in *this* continuum, recordings of the same event from the same location and time by two cameras funded by different groups come out being pretty much identical.
I think you suffer from the behavioral phenomenon of projecting upon others what you despise in yourself, which seems to be a common affliction among Progressives.
The good news is this affliction is curable with education and an open mind. You can start with these;
The 5,000 Year Leap: http://www.amazon.com/Five-Thousand-Year-Leap-Anniversary/dp/0981559662/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292541691&sr=1-1
George Washington's Sacred Fire: http://www.amazon.com/George-Washingtons-Sacred-Peter-Lillback/dp/0978605268/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292542011&sr=1-4
Liberty and Tyranny: http://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Tyranny-Conservative-Mark-Levin/dp/B004E3XD4E/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292542306&sr=1-1
Strat
And here's what I observed: World Public Opinion is sponsored by the Liberal-leaning, socialist-loving University of Maryland (the state where 70% of the government is Democrat)(and 90% of professors are too). So the survey bashing Libertarian-leaning FOX viewers is as unsurprising as a Microsoft-funded survey showing Google Chrome is insecure. BOTH surveys are meaningless bullshit, not worth the paper they are printed on.
If you simply go to the WPO website, the list of supporters is right there. Most telling among the listings is the Tides Foundation, commonly & widely known to be a Soros-controlled and funded Progressive/Left propaganda and financing organization, among the many other Progressive/Left groups and organizations listed.
"WPO is made possible by the generous support of:
Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Tides Foundation
Ford Foundation
German Marshall Fund of the United States
Compton Foundation
Carnegie Corporation
Benton Foundation
Ben and Jerry's Foundation
University of Maryland Foundation
Circle Foundation
JEHT Foundation
Stanley Foundation
Ploughshares Fund
Calvert Foundation
Secure World Foundation
Oak Foundation
United States Institute of Peace"
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/about.php?nid=&id=
Is anyone surprised that such people would view anyone not in lock-step with the Progressive talking points as "uninformed", particularly Fox News viewers?
Nothing to see here, people. Move along, move along.
Strat
But given your suggestion that this case of the government being too small is actually caused by the government being to big it seems as likely that you are consciously seeking to deceive as simply mistaken.
I suggested no such thing. Stop with the strawman argument.
I'm not making any partisan or ideological argument here. It's simply a fact that, generally speaking, smaller and less complicated systems are easier to observe & track in detail than larger, more complicated systems.
Being that the government is a system, if the system (government) had been smaller, odds would have been higher that oversight mechanisms might have prevented the scenario described in TFA, or at the least reduced the amount of time it's taken to find what went wrong and possibly halted it sooner before so much damage was done.
Don't let ideology or politics blind you to simple facts. If your politics or ideology causes your beliefs to run contrary to facts, the problem is not the facts nor the people pointing them out, but much closer to home.
Strat
The free market system in this regard is failing, it's making people make bad decisions due to their own greed.
No, the _government_ failed. Government !== the free market. It was the government that failed to pay attention to it's own research, and allowed this compound to be sold the same as any other insecticides that have been *properly* tested & approved.
The government took upon itself the responsibility of determining what is safe. It wasn't bad decisions by the farmers, as they were using something that the government said was OK to use. Farmers, of all people, would understand that killing bees that pollinate their crops is a very bad thing and not worth a fraction of a percent in additional yield.
Does anyone doubt that there was some political and/or financial quid-pro-quo going on that got that damning research ignored? This is one of the problems with a huge government; oversight becomes increasingly difficult and ineffective the larger government grows. It just creates too many "cracks" through which corruption and incompetence can slip undetected and uncorrected, with occasionally-disastrous results as exemplified by this incident.
Strat
And those DNS servers are your business, not the governments business.
Until the government decides otherwise.
The FCC is already bypassing Congress to implement NN and the EPA is also bypassing Congress to implement Cap & Trade, both through just writing regulations with the power of law, effectively creating laws without legislative participation or oversight.
Congress does not have the power to delegate, "loan out", or "sub-contract" the power to legislate and create law according to most plain language Constitutional interpretations. Not that the SCOTUS and/or lower courts might very well have decided Congress could delegate it's powers, I'm not aware of any decisions regarding it. Besides, just because 9 lifetime political appointees in black robes pronounce something from on high makes it neither Constitutional nor a fact, neither does it make it right and/or just.
That is the job of We the People. We are the oversight on government. And for the last 100 years or so, we've really sucked at it, because it was easier to ignore and just bitch.
Strat
And what if no-one is running who won't do that?
Busy this election cycle, are we?
No, seriously. Local elections and primaries are where those with ideas outside the two-party box can get a start. If it means that much to you, run for an elected position yourself in your town/county/district if there is nobody to represent your views.
The system was designed to require user input & active participation to function as intended. The situations and conditions in the US today are directly the result of an increasing lack of both over the last ~60 years or so.
If nothing changes, nothing changes.
Strat
Home Theater in the dash is illegal. Video viewable from the drivers seat is illegal.
Rear view camera would probably be enabled only when you back up. That is how mine works anyway. The rest of the time, the display functions as my radio controls and/or my GPS. And the GPS controls are also not usable while driving. There is an override, so a passenger can use it, but the key sequence of the override is so complicated only a passenger could possibly enter it correctly.
I wonder how many accidents will be caused by lost people traveling alone with no easy/safe place to pull over, who attempt to enter the override code while driving anyways?
For a hypothetical (yes, yes...I know) example, would a single mother, new to L.A. and lost in a bad area, stop to use the GPS while chatting with the group of bored gang members standing around nearby looking for entertainment, or try to override it to get out of there rather than risking passing the same gang's corner again?
I wonder if the driver in this example could be successful in a lawsuit if she were to stop to use the GPS and then be attacked? Would it get a quick and silent settlement? Would/should she get a ticket regardless of the circumstances, and even if no harm occurred at all (she didn't wreck or swerve, and didn't stop to get attacked, but got pulled over)?
Strat
Even worse than that, his argument is that because one thing eventually created new problems we shouldn't try something completely different because it has the possibility of creating problems later. So basically, he's against trying to make any progress at all because there's always some problem that may or may not come from it.
It's that whole pesky "sentience" thing again, as usual.
Darned if you do, or darned 'cause you drool.
Have to go now. I have a mess to mop up.
Strat
If that's the case then copyright owners need to start paying property taxes on their "intellectual property."
Why? You don't pay tax on most property (cars, paintings, jewellery, yachts) just by owning it.
I'm not sure if that was sarcasm or not.
If it's a serious comment, then apparently you've never lived in some of the higher-tax states in the US, particularly in some of the larger metropolitan areas of the northeast and some in the northwest. Luxury taxes and other taxes/annual fees/etc on various types of personal property are fairly common in many places and can be quite punitive in some cases.
Strat
I've been using these for years to rape snipers and campers.
Now the snipers I can understand, but campers? Don't the park rangers frown on that?
You made Yogi & BooBoo cry, you insensitive clod!
Strat
The fault is with idiotic and greedy politicians that can't run a capitalist economy effectively, combined with the impact of the domino-like economic failures caused by the collapse of socialistic governments in Greece, Portugal, etc.
Make note here. One thing that makes it completely pointless to argue with some libertarian types: as far as they are concerned, a free market capitalist economy is never at fault. No matter how obvious the opposite might be, it's always because of state regulation and/or socialism. Always.
The other thing being that they are, for the most part, absolutely correct.
Strat
I would have read that link, but it's a you have to register to read this-site. I don't like those. I posted it in reply to another comment here already, but I actually got a hollowbody custom designed guitar here last week with UPS. Went perfect.
Oops, sorry about the registration-required link...I completely forgot. However, I can tell you absolutely that registration is safe with this site. You won't receive spam, etc. It's worth registering if you have any interest at all in the workings of the equipment you play through.
If you enjoy playing through vacuum tube amps and want to understand a little more and/or do a little tweaking/modding or even try an amp or effects project, it's a great resource. The amp techs and others that post there are *extremely* knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful. It's one of the best amp-builder's forums on the 'net, IMHO.
Glad to hear your guitar arrived in good shape. I've had mixed results.
Rock on!
Strat
I design and hand-build vacuum tube guitar & bass amplifiers as a small side-business. I end up shipping them all over. There are a good number of others that do so as well. This is a very relevant /. topic for those like us.
Here's a link to a forum thread where several amp-building friends/acquaintances of mine share their horror stories, some with pictures of the wreckage.
http://www.weberorders.com/forum/index.php?topic=1781.0
It's not only the value of the hardware, it's as much or more about the huge number of man-hours plus the blood, sweat, and tears that go into hand-building (no PCBs...all hand-wired) and individually tweaking these amplifiers.
Trying to get compensated for the damages can be a nightmare. I can't even imagine what those who make & sell/ship musical instruments like hollow-body guitars and acoustic guitars, violins, etc must go through [shudders].
Strat