You can think of nuclear weapons as something bad and contagious, like herpies, than some sort of benifit. The U.S. certainly isn't any safer with nuclear weapons than before nuclear weapons, and looking at the wars that the U.S. lost (in Vietnam, and probably Iraq) nukes are completly useless for any type of conflict that will happen in the modern real world.
One does not have to think that those with nuclear weapons are superior to understand that it makes a lot of sense, like herpies or the clap, to keep nuclear weapons from spreading. It is a lot harder to get the U.S., or Russia, or France to give up nukes once they have them, than to make sure that those countries don't inadvertently spread nukes to anyone else. It is also a lot easier to convince the U.S., France, Russia, etc., to get rid of their weapons over time if every tin-pot dictator isn't trying to get their hands on them.
File sharing DOES hurt the current model of the music biz... one that is based on the disposable mega-pop-star. It is hard to sell 10 million albums for a musician with one hit song when someone can just download the single they like so easily. For a pop-phenomena, it is very easy to hit the critical mass of people online to share something.
On the other hand, there is a lot of music that is very hard to find on file sharing networks. Whole genres of music are pretty much unaccounted for on file sharing networks. If you can't listen to it on an FM radio station, good luck finding it. There might be a successful business model in selling fewer records of more artists, than selling more records of a handful of artists.
Regardless, it is not the role of the government to be propping up outdated business models. I think it is pretty clear that the automobile was pretty disastrous to the blacksmithing and livery industries... but it created even more profitable industries in the long run. Think of the mess we would be in if we tried to save the blacksmithing and livery industries as large scale parts of our economy. True, file-sharing IS stealing and immoral, I don't deny that: but so is taking my tax money against my will, in order to fund a government agency to preemptively go after file sharing, or to legally harass potentially innocent people, or to legally restrict new technologies because they *MAY* potentially be used for file sharing. The immorality of file-sharing (extremely minor evil, if it is evil at all) is far outweighed by the immorality of the draconian methods required for enforcement.
And specific to the music industry... WE WILL NEVER HAVE A SHORTAGE OF MUSIC!!! Music is one of those things people enjoy doing without payment... and one of those things that garners a lot of non-financial rewards (attention, respect, adoration). Look at all the garage bands, amateur musicians, people making demo CDs, people posting their music free on websites, and tell me that we would not have lots and lots of music, even if the entire industry collapsed. Making music is not like building airplanes, in that it takes vast amounts of capital and can be dangerous if done by people who don't know what they are doing.
One thing I don't believe any other government, or people, have done throughout history is to insist other governments should be more like their own and encouraging change with a very large military.
This has to be the single stupidest statement I have ever read on slashdot. Have you ever heard of the British Empire? The French Empire? Soviet Domination of Eastern Europe? Did it ever occure to you that pretty much everywhere in the world was some sort of colony of a European power? How does this stupid shit get modded +5?
Essentially, Canada has the fastest growing economy in North America, one of the fastest in the world, and has been the biggest winner in NAFTA. Canada also has the highest minimum wage of the three countries.
If you can't understand why jobs move to Canada, it is because your understanding is distorted. Virtually all workers make MORE than minimum wage.
First, even if minimum wages are higher in Canada, that doesn't mean wages for specific skilled jobs are in Canada. An engineer, researcher, technician, cameraman, etc., has slightly lower wages compared to the U.S. (Because of a lower cost of living, difference in currency values, often times a lower tax rate), which makes it highly attractive to move skilled jobs into Canada (and high paying skilled jobs are exactly the ones Canada wants attract). Canada has decided to go the global-trade, high-tech high-skill route, and the United States government is still trying to live like it is the 1950s.
The reason jobs are moving out of the U.S. is because Americans are getting lazier and stupider. Over-regulation, lawsuits, terrorist hysteria, drug hysteria, a crumbling education system, high taxes (Yes, in many cases the taxes and regulation is worse in the United States than Canada).
I am wrong... I can export PDF files perfectly in Open Office. I was typing faster than I was thinking and it came out to seem like I am editing PDFs in Open Office. Sorry about the mistake.
I agree with you that the goal should be to legalize immigration instead of looking the other way about illegal immigration...
But answer me this... would you illegally immigrate from Mexico to the U.S. if you were poor and living in Mexico? I know I would illegally immigrate in a second. I just can't summon up that much moral outrage about a crime I would gladly commit if I was in their shoes.
I am certainly not in favor of giving users fewer choices for the sake of making MS or anyone wealthier... If I had my way, all computer OSs would be more along the lines of FreeBSD (even the GPL with linux is a bit restrictive in my opinion).
However, Microsoft is not a monopoly. There is fantastic choice in computer operating systems. Every computer I have owned has been able to run a non-Microsoft OS, and virtually all the peripherals I have purchased in the last couple years have come with Mac, Linux, and Windows drivers.
The danger of allowing the government the power to dictate software engineering decisions, is much greater than the potential abuse of the market Microsoft can do. Would you want the government to make a law telling you want you can and can't put in software you write? What if the government decided that all OSs need to keep logs of every action you take in an OS, in case law enforcement needs to investigate you? What if airlines sue to have software banned that looks for the cheapest airline fares online?
And what about the fact that there is not even any law about this thing? Elected leaders have not decided on certain standards than an OS must meet, and that is being enforced equally on Microsoft to the letter of the law. This is about a handful of corporations, getting an un-elected government official, to force Microsoft to do things totally outside of what is required by the law, in order to further their corporate agenda. We essentially have the government legislating outside the electorial process, on behalf of a couple corporations... you can't see how that is anti-Democratic.
I know people want to "STICK IT TO MICRO$OFT THOSE BIG CORPORATE BASTARDS" mentality tends to take presidence over any caution or reason... but did it ever occure to you that things like this can have broad implications outside of the immediate concerns? That there can be drastic unintended consequences everytime the government broadly expands its power? That, in the long run, things like this can have an entirely different effect than what is intended? Can't you see how reasonable people would be highly skeptical about handing over the power to make software engineering decisions to a government official, completly outside the democratic process and on behalf of other large corporations, even if the target is Microsoft?
I mean, I am against terrorism, I think terrorists are criminals and should be punished, but I still thing there should be all sorts of limits to what the government should be allowed to do to fight terrorism. So if I don't want to give the government total arbitrary power to fight terrorism, can you understand how I would be just as sceptical to give the government total arbitrary power to fight Microsoft?
but what you really get with NAFTA is corporations being able to open offices in places without human rights controls
You realize that we are talking about the NORTH AMERICAN free trade agreement, right? We aren't talking about trade with Malasia or China here. Most of the jobs displaced in the U.S. have gone to Canada, which has a higher minimum wage and more strict government labor regulations. American's aren't buying stuff from Canada because it is made in sweatshops, OK?
Even Mexico is a genuine democracy with a decent enough record on human rights (relativly speaking)... If companies were trying to get labor as cheap as possible and minimum concern for human rights, they would go to China, Malasia, Indonessia, not Mexico.
The whole Free Market "Issue" is insane.
What is insane about letting people buy and sell from people who speak a different language or have a different skin color or live on a different continent? Insanity is the idea that there is some fundamental reason you shouldn't be allowed to engage in open economic activity with people in Canada or Mexico, just because you and they happen to be born on opposite sides of an imaginary line. The U.S. government should let people in the U.S. buy and sell to and from whoever they want, and if there are human rights problems in Canada, or Mexico, or anywhere - that is the buisness of Canada or Mexico or whoever to deal with themselves as seperate, soveriegn nations independant of the United States. Given some of the things the U.S. has done in it's history, it is absolutly arrogant and self-rightious for the United States to deny other countries free economic exchange under the pretense of "human rights".
It's also why we want to bring "Democracy" to other countries, we think we can control them better than dictators. We tried dictators for years, but they can be so unpredictable. With a democracy, we can always put in X dollars and get whoever we want elected or removed. We've had so much luck doing so in America.
Democracy is not popular elections (although that is what Democracy has been distorted to mean to most people nowadays). You can have a popularly elected dictator. People can vote for policies that are anti-democratic. Democracy is not voting... voting is simply one ingredient of democracy. If you have TRUE democracy (completly unrestricted free speech and free press, a seperation of government powers such as executive, legislative, and judicial, and strict constitutional limits placed on the power of the state in addition to popular elections), it would be very hard for the U.S. or anyone else to manipulate another country. The only governments that are manipulated or controlled by foreign powers are ones that are already non-democratic (although they may have popular elections).
Not only that, Adobe products create PDFs that don't 100% follow the PDF format, just to introduce slight incompatibilites with non-Adobe software. When you create a PDF in an Adobe product, then try to open it in Open Office (which follows the PDF format perfectly), and you find slight changes, most people will think it is Open Office's fault and not Adobe.
Your statement is a contradiction. If Microsoft was a monopoly, you could not treat it different than it's competitors, because there would be no competitors.
Microsoft is not a monopoly. It is competing with, and losing ground to, Linux and OSX. Microsoft is the biggest player on the market, but they are not a Monopoly. They have been punished by governments for participating in anti-competitive buisness practices, but no government has ever actually accused them of being a monopoly. Microsoft is not a monopoly, period.
No, NAFTA was a gimme to certain corporate interests. You do realize, of course, that corporations compete with each other. What is good for one corporation, can be terrible for another, correct? To claim something is "to help the corporations" is idiocy, as the last thing a specific corporation wants to do is help a competitor.
In the case of NAFTA, it was written to protect certain politically connected industries in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, to the detrement of other industries or companies. However, I suspect it is not the fact that NAFTA isn't really free trade that is worrying you... but you are against NAFTA because you erroniously believe that NAFTA is a free trade (and not a mutual protectionist agreement, which is what NAFTA really is).
What does Bush do? Try to make illegal imigration legal and get more mexicans into the country? Conservatives hate this, dems are supposed to be somewhat okay with it, but again, corporate interests love it. If you really wanted to stop immigration, you'd just set up some serious fines or jailtime for employing immigrants. It'll never happen.
Once again, it is not a matter of Republicans or Democrats being for or against immigration... it is that our economy depends on it. Even if certain groups of conservatives (and certain working class democrats) are upset about brown people coming to America... to restrict immigration would destroy the U.S. economy. A politician might alienate come constituency by be pro-immigration - but he will alienate EVERYONE if the economy totally tanks.
But what I think is most interesting is that the examples you use and are upset about are both examples of percieved exercise of freedom. Democrats don't get upset because a Dem is against gay marrage (being against gay marrage being essentially an anti-freedom position), but they do get upset if a Dem is for free trade (essentially a pro-freedom position). Republicans don't get mad at Bush for spying on U.S. citizens (essentially an anti-freedom position)... but are outraged when Bush supports more unrestricted immigration (essentially a pro-freedom position). It seems like the issues that really galvanize outrage from people, and cross party lines, are issues where people want the government to heavily restrict other people.
Other than the CO2 emmissions produced at auto factories, auto producers don't produce any significant amounts of CO2. They are not externalizing costs.
The consumer is externalizing the costs. But it is not politically viable to expect the consumer to use less fuel.
Just as a side note - SUVs are NOT worse to the enviornment if they are being used at full capacity. A single Hummer carrying a 6 person carpool to the office would actually be far more fuel efficient than each one of those 6 people driving an individual Prius to the office. Loading the back of an SUV with cargo and making one single trip would be more fuel efficent than making several trips in an economy car. That is why big fat gas-guzzling vehicles like busses and trains are considered enviornmentally friendly.
We don't nessicarily want people to stop buying or using SUVs. We just want them to stop using SUVs as single passenger commuter vehicles.
While your arguement that pollution can distort the market by hiding the real costs of a product to consumers and shifting costs in the market is accurate, I doubt that is the intent of the lawsuit. The intent of the lawsuit is to create PR that you are "protecting the enviornment" ahead of an election, while not actually passing a law that will piss off SUV-loving voters.
But even if it was the intent of the law, it is a willfully retarded way of accomplishing the goal. A better way would be to calculate the cost, per ton of CO2 emmission, of planting and maintaining enough trees to be a carbon sink, and simply charging that much per ton.
You are right, air is not used as a product of a free market. Your lungs are state assets being collectivly managed and centrally planned by the democratic majority. The people vote with their pocketbook and lifestyle choices to contaminate the air at a certain level, and your personal preferences are as irrelevant as your personal preferences in public education, law enforcement, or health care.
Tragedy of the commons is a bitch! If only people COULD own a chunk of the air... then maybe most people would try to keep it clean the same way they do their front lawn.
If the automakers were violating the enviornmental laws, the government of California could bring a criminal case against the companies and their CEOs. That is how the law is supposed to work. People are supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty. If you have enough evidence to prove them guilty, give them a trial and send them to jail.
Suing the automakers is a way the government can harrass and intimidate companies, without having to actually have any real evidence that you would need in a criminal trial. It is a way to bypass the due process of the law. It is the same as holding a person as an "enemy combatant" because there isn't enough evidence to charge them with terrorism under normal law - It is a total bullshit way to get rid of constitutional protection and due process, but as long as the cause is vaugly populist ("fighting terrorism", or "saving the enviornment", or some other vauge politically popular cause), closet facists like you will be glad to watch the constitution go bye-bye. After all, they are "sticking it to the evil corporations". (well, not the corporations that make BMWs, or Mercedes, just the cars that those declasse "common" people drive).
You see, politicians are in a hard spot. People totally don't give a shit about the enviornment, yet they want the government to "do something" about the enviornment. How do you look like you are trying to reduce CO2 output, and yet at the same time make sure no-one dares fuck with people's SUVs and cheap gas? If you pass a law restricting emmissions, Joe Blow might have to downgrade from an Escalade class vehicle to a Ford Explorer type vehicle... I mean, Joe Blow has organisms when he hears politicians talk about the "protecting the enviornment", and it is what he believes is the most important issue of the 21st century... but DONT FUCK WITH HIS SUV!!!
So how does a politician in the state with the highest per-capita ownership of Hummers deal with the enviornmental issue? The politican can't tighten the laws, because auto companies might actually follow the laws, and then Joe Sixpack will be pissed off he has to buy a smaller car. No, you sue the auto companies for some vauge enviornmental "crime". The lawsuit won't get anywhere, but the companies just might settle if the cost is cheaper than fighting it in court. You can declare it a "victory for the enviornment", and Joe Blow can still drive the kids half a block to school without any sense of responsiblity that his own lifestyle choices effect the enviornment. After all, it isn't like the auto companies produce big gas-guzzling cars because that is what people want to buy, right?
I won't address the crack-headed mistakes the howstuffworks article you submitted made... I am assuming that you just provided that article as an easy place for people to start learning about sound.
But as for CD vs. Vinyl -
First, there is no data compression on CDs, there is quantitization. CD use raw waveform data.
Second, most vinyl records nowadays are digitally recorded and mastered. A lot of times people even use the same digital master as the CD and say "just press it on vinyl" (yikes!).
Third, nyquist frequency and sample rate effects the maximum frequency, not low frequencies. Vinyl tends to be mastered with more bass, as they assume people who play vinyl have a better sound system, or it is specificly a dance music release, where as CDs are mastered to sound OK even on cheap boomboxes or ripped to mp3 players, etc. There is no technical limitations that keep CDs from being mastered to have the same low frequency response as vinyl.
That being said, there are tactile benifits to vinyl, when it comes to mixing, scratching, etc... certainly, it makes a lot of sense for DJs to use vinyl. But dance music usually uses 12" records, not 7".
Indie music used to be released on vinyl because it was cheaper (CD manufacturing at one time was prohibitivly expensive for small record labels), and over time even though the economic benefits of vinyl no longer exist (vinyl manufacture is MORE expensive nowadays), it is still "cool" and "fashionable".
Even with dance and hiphop music, where there is actually a need for vinyl records for mixing/scratching/djing, for every person who is actually a DJ spinning music, there are 20 or 30 people who purchase the vinyl because they think it is "cool".
I find myself annoying so much music that I want to buy is only available on vinyl. It is a pain in the ass to digitize and burn to CD.
Vinyl will last longer than bits on a CD... provided you don't actually play the vinyl. But once you start playing it, you wear away the grooves. You could listen to a CD every day for a decade, with no real loss in sound... impossible on vinyl. And with the CD, you could make a near perfect digital copy at the half-life of the CD, and keep your music forever.
Most people WANT to live in a restricted society. They don't consider a fascist society a bad thing. There is some controversy on what sort of ideals our fascism should ironhandedly enforce (left or right), but fascism has broad based popular support from virtually everyone. And in the case of the child porn hysteria, it is the boogyman of both the left, and the right, which is why it is such a popular political card to play.
Socialized medicine doesn't provide very good care. Living under a so-called "excellent" socialized system, and having lived under the "horrible" U.S. system, I would say I most definitly prefer the U.S. system. That being said, the U.S. system is more than half funded by the government, and so very much regulated by government, that you could hardly call the U.S. system a market based system. At best the U.S. system is a hybrid market-government system.
As for choice, your insurance may make choices for you... however, you do have a choice in insurance companies. You also have the choice to purchase treatment yourself if your insurance company doesn't want to pay. And as for voting the fuckers out, the people in charge of the government health care monopoly are unionized government workers, who are pretty much employed for life. You can vote the politicians out, but the people in charge of the health care system can never be voted out, and they will never go out of buisness.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no USSR call for disarmament in any on the links returned in this search.
Or rather, one person claims the codes were '00000000', completely unverified by any other source.
You can think of nuclear weapons as something bad and contagious, like herpies, than some sort of benifit. The U.S. certainly isn't any safer with nuclear weapons than before nuclear weapons, and looking at the wars that the U.S. lost (in Vietnam, and probably Iraq) nukes are completly useless for any type of conflict that will happen in the modern real world.
One does not have to think that those with nuclear weapons are superior to understand that it makes a lot of sense, like herpies or the clap, to keep nuclear weapons from spreading. It is a lot harder to get the U.S., or Russia, or France to give up nukes once they have them, than to make sure that those countries don't inadvertently spread nukes to anyone else. It is also a lot easier to convince the U.S., France, Russia, etc., to get rid of their weapons over time if every tin-pot dictator isn't trying to get their hands on them.
File sharing DOES hurt the current model of the music biz... one that is based on the disposable mega-pop-star. It is hard to sell 10 million albums for a musician with one hit song when someone can just download the single they like so easily. For a pop-phenomena, it is very easy to hit the critical mass of people online to share something.
On the other hand, there is a lot of music that is very hard to find on file sharing networks. Whole genres of music are pretty much unaccounted for on file sharing networks. If you can't listen to it on an FM radio station, good luck finding it. There might be a successful business model in selling fewer records of more artists, than selling more records of a handful of artists.
Regardless, it is not the role of the government to be propping up outdated business models. I think it is pretty clear that the automobile was pretty disastrous to the blacksmithing and livery industries... but it created even more profitable industries in the long run. Think of the mess we would be in if we tried to save the blacksmithing and livery industries as large scale parts of our economy. True, file-sharing IS stealing and immoral, I don't deny that: but so is taking my tax money against my will, in order to fund a government agency to preemptively go after file sharing, or to legally harass potentially innocent people, or to legally restrict new technologies because they *MAY* potentially be used for file sharing. The immorality of file-sharing (extremely minor evil, if it is evil at all) is far outweighed by the immorality of the draconian methods required for enforcement.
And specific to the music industry... WE WILL NEVER HAVE A SHORTAGE OF MUSIC!!! Music is one of those things people enjoy doing without payment... and one of those things that garners a lot of non-financial rewards (attention, respect, adoration). Look at all the garage bands, amateur musicians, people making demo CDs, people posting their music free on websites, and tell me that we would not have lots and lots of music, even if the entire industry collapsed. Making music is not like building airplanes, in that it takes vast amounts of capital and can be dangerous if done by people who don't know what they are doing.
One thing I don't believe any other government, or people, have done throughout history is to insist other governments should be more like their own and encouraging change with a very large military.
This has to be the single stupidest statement I have ever read on slashdot. Have you ever heard of the British Empire? The French Empire? Soviet Domination of Eastern Europe? Did it ever occure to you that pretty much everywhere in the world was some sort of colony of a European power? How does this stupid shit get modded +5?
Are they lost, as in someone stole them? or simply not properly asset tracked? The article doesn't make it clear.
Here is some information about Canada and NAFTA:
. aspx?isRedirect=True&Language=E&publication_id=380 884
http://w01.international.gc.ca/minpub/Publication
Essentially, Canada has the fastest growing economy in North America, one of the fastest in the world, and has been the biggest winner in NAFTA. Canada also has the highest minimum wage of the three countries.
If you can't understand why jobs move to Canada, it is because your understanding is distorted. Virtually all workers make MORE than minimum wage.
First, even if minimum wages are higher in Canada, that doesn't mean wages for specific skilled jobs are in Canada. An engineer, researcher, technician, cameraman, etc., has slightly lower wages compared to the U.S. (Because of a lower cost of living, difference in currency values, often times a lower tax rate), which makes it highly attractive to move skilled jobs into Canada (and high paying skilled jobs are exactly the ones Canada wants attract). Canada has decided to go the global-trade, high-tech high-skill route, and the United States government is still trying to live like it is the 1950s.
The reason jobs are moving out of the U.S. is because Americans are getting lazier and stupider. Over-regulation, lawsuits, terrorist hysteria, drug hysteria, a crumbling education system, high taxes (Yes, in many cases the taxes and regulation is worse in the United States than Canada).
I am wrong... I can export PDF files perfectly in Open Office. I was typing faster than I was thinking and it came out to seem like I am editing PDFs in Open Office. Sorry about the mistake.
I agree with you that the goal should be to legalize immigration instead of looking the other way about illegal immigration...
But answer me this... would you illegally immigrate from Mexico to the U.S. if you were poor and living in Mexico? I know I would illegally immigrate in a second. I just can't summon up that much moral outrage about a crime I would gladly commit if I was in their shoes.
I am certainly not in favor of giving users fewer choices for the sake of making MS or anyone wealthier... If I had my way, all computer OSs would be more along the lines of FreeBSD (even the GPL with linux is a bit restrictive in my opinion).
However, Microsoft is not a monopoly. There is fantastic choice in computer operating systems. Every computer I have owned has been able to run a non-Microsoft OS, and virtually all the peripherals I have purchased in the last couple years have come with Mac, Linux, and Windows drivers.
The danger of allowing the government the power to dictate software engineering decisions, is much greater than the potential abuse of the market Microsoft can do. Would you want the government to make a law telling you want you can and can't put in software you write? What if the government decided that all OSs need to keep logs of every action you take in an OS, in case law enforcement needs to investigate you? What if airlines sue to have software banned that looks for the cheapest airline fares online?
And what about the fact that there is not even any law about this thing? Elected leaders have not decided on certain standards than an OS must meet, and that is being enforced equally on Microsoft to the letter of the law. This is about a handful of corporations, getting an un-elected government official, to force Microsoft to do things totally outside of what is required by the law, in order to further their corporate agenda. We essentially have the government legislating outside the electorial process, on behalf of a couple corporations... you can't see how that is anti-Democratic.
I know people want to "STICK IT TO MICRO$OFT THOSE BIG CORPORATE BASTARDS" mentality tends to take presidence over any caution or reason... but did it ever occure to you that things like this can have broad implications outside of the immediate concerns? That there can be drastic unintended consequences everytime the government broadly expands its power? That, in the long run, things like this can have an entirely different effect than what is intended? Can't you see how reasonable people would be highly skeptical about handing over the power to make software engineering decisions to a government official, completly outside the democratic process and on behalf of other large corporations, even if the target is Microsoft?
I mean, I am against terrorism, I think terrorists are criminals and should be punished, but I still thing there should be all sorts of limits to what the government should be allowed to do to fight terrorism. So if I don't want to give the government total arbitrary power to fight terrorism, can you understand how I would be just as sceptical to give the government total arbitrary power to fight Microsoft?
but what you really get with NAFTA is corporations being able to open offices in places without human rights controls
You realize that we are talking about the NORTH AMERICAN free trade agreement, right? We aren't talking about trade with Malasia or China here. Most of the jobs displaced in the U.S. have gone to Canada, which has a higher minimum wage and more strict government labor regulations. American's aren't buying stuff from Canada because it is made in sweatshops, OK?
Even Mexico is a genuine democracy with a decent enough record on human rights (relativly speaking)... If companies were trying to get labor as cheap as possible and minimum concern for human rights, they would go to China, Malasia, Indonessia, not Mexico.
The whole Free Market "Issue" is insane.
What is insane about letting people buy and sell from people who speak a different language or have a different skin color or live on a different continent? Insanity is the idea that there is some fundamental reason you shouldn't be allowed to engage in open economic activity with people in Canada or Mexico, just because you and they happen to be born on opposite sides of an imaginary line. The U.S. government should let people in the U.S. buy and sell to and from whoever they want, and if there are human rights problems in Canada, or Mexico, or anywhere - that is the buisness of Canada or Mexico or whoever to deal with themselves as seperate, soveriegn nations independant of the United States. Given some of the things the U.S. has done in it's history, it is absolutly arrogant and self-rightious for the United States to deny other countries free economic exchange under the pretense of "human rights".
It's also why we want to bring "Democracy" to other countries, we think we can control them better than dictators. We tried dictators for years, but they can be so unpredictable. With a democracy, we can always put in X dollars and get whoever we want elected or removed. We've had so much luck doing so in America.
Democracy is not popular elections (although that is what Democracy has been distorted to mean to most people nowadays). You can have a popularly elected dictator. People can vote for policies that are anti-democratic. Democracy is not voting... voting is simply one ingredient of democracy. If you have TRUE democracy (completly unrestricted free speech and free press, a seperation of government powers such as executive, legislative, and judicial, and strict constitutional limits placed on the power of the state in addition to popular elections), it would be very hard for the U.S. or anyone else to manipulate another country. The only governments that are manipulated or controlled by foreign powers are ones that are already non-democratic (although they may have popular elections).
Not only that, Adobe products create PDFs that don't 100% follow the PDF format, just to introduce slight incompatibilites with non-Adobe software. When you create a PDF in an Adobe product, then try to open it in Open Office (which follows the PDF format perfectly), and you find slight changes, most people will think it is Open Office's fault and not Adobe.
Why should Microsoft have to exclude basic security in their operating system, that is a standard part of Linux and OSX?
Your statement is a contradiction. If Microsoft was a monopoly, you could not treat it different than it's competitors, because there would be no competitors.
Microsoft is not a monopoly. It is competing with, and losing ground to, Linux and OSX. Microsoft is the biggest player on the market, but they are not a Monopoly. They have been punished by governments for participating in anti-competitive buisness practices, but no government has ever actually accused them of being a monopoly. Microsoft is not a monopoly, period.
NAFTA is simply a gimme to corporate interests
No, NAFTA was a gimme to certain corporate interests. You do realize, of course, that corporations compete with each other. What is good for one corporation, can be terrible for another, correct? To claim something is "to help the corporations" is idiocy, as the last thing a specific corporation wants to do is help a competitor.
In the case of NAFTA, it was written to protect certain politically connected industries in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, to the detrement of other industries or companies. However, I suspect it is not the fact that NAFTA isn't really free trade that is worrying you... but you are against NAFTA because you erroniously believe that NAFTA is a free trade (and not a mutual protectionist agreement, which is what NAFTA really is).
What does Bush do? Try to make illegal imigration legal and get more mexicans into the country? Conservatives hate this, dems are supposed to be somewhat okay with it, but again, corporate interests love it. If you really wanted to stop immigration, you'd just set up some serious fines or jailtime for employing immigrants. It'll never happen.
Once again, it is not a matter of Republicans or Democrats being for or against immigration... it is that our economy depends on it. Even if certain groups of conservatives (and certain working class democrats) are upset about brown people coming to America... to restrict immigration would destroy the U.S. economy. A politician might alienate come constituency by be pro-immigration - but he will alienate EVERYONE if the economy totally tanks.
But what I think is most interesting is that the examples you use and are upset about are both examples of percieved exercise of freedom. Democrats don't get upset because a Dem is against gay marrage (being against gay marrage being essentially an anti-freedom position), but they do get upset if a Dem is for free trade (essentially a pro-freedom position). Republicans don't get mad at Bush for spying on U.S. citizens (essentially an anti-freedom position)... but are outraged when Bush supports more unrestricted immigration (essentially a pro-freedom position). It seems like the issues that really galvanize outrage from people, and cross party lines, are issues where people want the government to heavily restrict other people.
Other than the CO2 emmissions produced at auto factories, auto producers don't produce any significant amounts of CO2. They are not externalizing costs.
The consumer is externalizing the costs. But it is not politically viable to expect the consumer to use less fuel.
Just as a side note - SUVs are NOT worse to the enviornment if they are being used at full capacity. A single Hummer carrying a 6 person carpool to the office would actually be far more fuel efficient than each one of those 6 people driving an individual Prius to the office. Loading the back of an SUV with cargo and making one single trip would be more fuel efficent than making several trips in an economy car. That is why big fat gas-guzzling vehicles like busses and trains are considered enviornmentally friendly.
We don't nessicarily want people to stop buying or using SUVs. We just want them to stop using SUVs as single passenger commuter vehicles.
While your arguement that pollution can distort the market by hiding the real costs of a product to consumers and shifting costs in the market is accurate, I doubt that is the intent of the lawsuit. The intent of the lawsuit is to create PR that you are "protecting the enviornment" ahead of an election, while not actually passing a law that will piss off SUV-loving voters.
But even if it was the intent of the law, it is a willfully retarded way of accomplishing the goal. A better way would be to calculate the cost, per ton of CO2 emmission, of planting and maintaining enough trees to be a carbon sink, and simply charging that much per ton.
You are right, air is not used as a product of a free market. Your lungs are state assets being collectivly managed and centrally planned by the democratic majority. The people vote with their pocketbook and lifestyle choices to contaminate the air at a certain level, and your personal preferences are as irrelevant as your personal preferences in public education, law enforcement, or health care.
Tragedy of the commons is a bitch! If only people COULD own a chunk of the air... then maybe most people would try to keep it clean the same way they do their front lawn.
If the automakers were violating the enviornmental laws, the government of California could bring a criminal case against the companies and their CEOs. That is how the law is supposed to work. People are supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty. If you have enough evidence to prove them guilty, give them a trial and send them to jail.
Suing the automakers is a way the government can harrass and intimidate companies, without having to actually have any real evidence that you would need in a criminal trial. It is a way to bypass the due process of the law. It is the same as holding a person as an "enemy combatant" because there isn't enough evidence to charge them with terrorism under normal law - It is a total bullshit way to get rid of constitutional protection and due process, but as long as the cause is vaugly populist ("fighting terrorism", or "saving the enviornment", or some other vauge politically popular cause), closet facists like you will be glad to watch the constitution go bye-bye. After all, they are "sticking it to the evil corporations". (well, not the corporations that make BMWs, or Mercedes, just the cars that those declasse "common" people drive).
You see, politicians are in a hard spot. People totally don't give a shit about the enviornment, yet they want the government to "do something" about the enviornment. How do you look like you are trying to reduce CO2 output, and yet at the same time make sure no-one dares fuck with people's SUVs and cheap gas? If you pass a law restricting emmissions, Joe Blow might have to downgrade from an Escalade class vehicle to a Ford Explorer type vehicle... I mean, Joe Blow has organisms when he hears politicians talk about the "protecting the enviornment", and it is what he believes is the most important issue of the 21st century... but DONT FUCK WITH HIS SUV!!!
So how does a politician in the state with the highest per-capita ownership of Hummers deal with the enviornmental issue? The politican can't tighten the laws, because auto companies might actually follow the laws, and then Joe Sixpack will be pissed off he has to buy a smaller car. No, you sue the auto companies for some vauge enviornmental "crime". The lawsuit won't get anywhere, but the companies just might settle if the cost is cheaper than fighting it in court. You can declare it a "victory for the enviornment", and Joe Blow can still drive the kids half a block to school without any sense of responsiblity that his own lifestyle choices effect the enviornment. After all, it isn't like the auto companies produce big gas-guzzling cars because that is what people want to buy, right?
I won't address the crack-headed mistakes the howstuffworks article you submitted made... I am assuming that you just provided that article as an easy place for people to start learning about sound.
But as for CD vs. Vinyl -
First, there is no data compression on CDs, there is quantitization. CD use raw waveform data.
Second, most vinyl records nowadays are digitally recorded and mastered. A lot of times people even use the same digital master as the CD and say "just press it on vinyl" (yikes!).
Third, nyquist frequency and sample rate effects the maximum frequency, not low frequencies. Vinyl tends to be mastered with more bass, as they assume people who play vinyl have a better sound system, or it is specificly a dance music release, where as CDs are mastered to sound OK even on cheap boomboxes or ripped to mp3 players, etc. There is no technical limitations that keep CDs from being mastered to have the same low frequency response as vinyl.
That being said, there are tactile benifits to vinyl, when it comes to mixing, scratching, etc... certainly, it makes a lot of sense for DJs to use vinyl. But dance music usually uses 12" records, not 7".
Indie music used to be released on vinyl because it was cheaper (CD manufacturing at one time was prohibitivly expensive for small record labels), and over time even though the economic benefits of vinyl no longer exist (vinyl manufacture is MORE expensive nowadays), it is still "cool" and "fashionable".
Even with dance and hiphop music, where there is actually a need for vinyl records for mixing/scratching/djing, for every person who is actually a DJ spinning music, there are 20 or 30 people who purchase the vinyl because they think it is "cool".
I find myself annoying so much music that I want to buy is only available on vinyl. It is a pain in the ass to digitize and burn to CD.
Vinyl will last longer than bits on a CD... provided you don't actually play the vinyl. But once you start playing it, you wear away the grooves. You could listen to a CD every day for a decade, with no real loss in sound... impossible on vinyl. And with the CD, you could make a near perfect digital copy at the half-life of the CD, and keep your music forever.
Most people WANT to live in a restricted society. They don't consider a fascist society a bad thing. There is some controversy on what sort of ideals our fascism should ironhandedly enforce (left or right), but fascism has broad based popular support from virtually everyone. And in the case of the child porn hysteria, it is the boogyman of both the left, and the right, which is why it is such a popular political card to play.
Socialized medicine doesn't provide very good care. Living under a so-called "excellent" socialized system, and having lived under the "horrible" U.S. system, I would say I most definitly prefer the U.S. system. That being said, the U.S. system is more than half funded by the government, and so very much regulated by government, that you could hardly call the U.S. system a market based system. At best the U.S. system is a hybrid market-government system.
As for choice, your insurance may make choices for you... however, you do have a choice in insurance companies. You also have the choice to purchase treatment yourself if your insurance company doesn't want to pay. And as for voting the fuckers out, the people in charge of the government health care monopoly are unionized government workers, who are pretty much employed for life. You can vote the politicians out, but the people in charge of the health care system can never be voted out, and they will never go out of buisness.