In the United States, we don't have state-run farms to produce food for poor people. We don't have state-run factories to produce clothing for them. We do have a few state-run housing "projects" which are usually considered a disaster.
If the concern with public education is making sure that all kids have access to good education, instead of forcing them into a local school based on geography, give them the money to purchase an education at a school of their choice. This is what we do with food, clothing, rent, and other nessiceties when people are on public assistance.
If you can decide where your child goes to school, you don't have to worry about forcing a huge beurocracy to conform to your wishes. Simply find the best school for your child, and the problem is solved. Bad schools will eventually have to imitate the popular schools, or go out of buisness.
It also solves other problems. Want prayer in schools: send your kids to a religious school. Don't want prayer in schools, send your kid to a secular school. Is your child interested in art and music, send them to a school specializing in that. Is your child interested in math and technology, well send your child to a school specializing in that. All this arguing about what is the "superior system" doesn't matter when every person is free to choose their system.
No-one likes this idea, however, because it means schools can't be a place to universaly force ideas on people. Everyone believes that their view is right, and no-one is going to give up the state-run apperatus for forcing those views on other people's children.
I wouldn't be happy about this if I lived in the EU, but no doubt the recent EU offensive on foriegn companies will encourage those companies to invest outside of the EU. North America and Asia seems a lot less hostile towards buisness nowadays.
Asia might get the better of the deal than North America, but I don't think any company is going to be rushing off to Europe to invest given the lastest attacks by EU Kleptocrats.
The only thing that frightens me is that the U.S. or Canada might try the same self-destructive protectionist policies. Just because Europe is crazy doesn't mean that North America is sane.
You see, unlike books and movies, there is limited radio bandwidth available for video games to be broadcast. This means that the government must step in to regulate this limited resource. Especially since it is being broadcast directly into people's homes.
WHAT??? Video games aren't broadcast into people's home through limited bandwidth? THEN WHY THE FUCK DOESN'T THE GOVERNMENT MIND IT'S OWN FUCKIN' BUISNESS? The next thing you know the government will be telling people they can't smoke in bars, they can go to jail for not wearing a seatbelt, and are not allowed to burn the flag, or tell a "naughty" joke in the workplace!
The U.S. Federal Government has already passed Federal laws that require public institutions that provide free-internet like libraries and schools to filter certain websites. So, if you are in the United States, you can be 100% certain your internet will be censored, because it is already a part of Federal law. It would be illegal in the U.S. NOT to censor your internet access. Both the Republicans and Democrats both STRONGLY support this kind of censorship.
And saying that Microsoft could and does censor stuff is insane. Microsoft is not a government, and does not have a police force or army to enforce any sort of censorship. The most it could do is decide to insert or ommit certain things from it's search engine... but they hardly have a monopoly in search engines.
The money spend by a city for municiple wi-fi is money that won't be spent on schools, police protection, enviornmental protection, fixing roads, buying books for the library, etc... things generally considered the responsibility of cities (unlike municiple wi-fi).
The people who would want and use municiple wi-fi are not needy people. Geeks with iPods and Powerbooks do not need taxpayers, most of which will never use the service, so subsidize their "Egghead Shiek" fantasies of downloading mp3s in a public park.
And that doesn't even include the costs in civil liberties (when the government provides internet access, they will be able to tell what you are surfing, as well as control what websites they want you to see.). And that doesn't include the economic costs that private internet service providers will pay, because how are they supposed to compete with "free" (I mean when Microsoft destroys competitors by giving away a crappy audio player for "free", it is "evil", but an even more monopolistic institution like the government does the same thing and it is good).
Seriously, are all Geeks so giddy to recieve "free" (as in beer... not as in speech) Internet access, they are willing to abandon any kind of common sense on this issue?
Yes, a lot of those guys were good authors, but come on, do we have to hang by every word they say like they were some divine prophet? The 80s Cyberpunk authors were not innovative because of the cyber, but because of the punk. They were innovative because they chose a moraly-ambiquous realistic style to sci-fi, in contrast to cliche melodramatic "Space Opera" sci-fi.
William Gibson didn't predict the internet, the internet existed before WG ever became an author. The technical details of 1980s cyberpunk literature is dodgy at best. The cyberpunk authors worldview is far less accurate than those of say Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock" in the early 1970s.
If William Gibson were really in touch with things, he would know that "re-mixing" music in the modern technological sense began with hip-hop djs scratching and manipulating analog recordings stored on vinyl platters... and that the digital technology has just cought up in the last couple years.
Lawyers cannot be judged the way a computer programer can. A computer programmer does not put a gun to anyones head and force them to do things against their will. That is essentially what a lawyer does... yes, I realize that lawyers will never actually go out and point the gun themselves (cowards), they rely on the police to take the physical risk and do the dirty work of threatening people for them.
But if you peel away the technical jargon, the funny costumes and rituals, and the symbolism and abstraction that they use, lawyers jobs are to manipulate the state to commit violence on their behalf. It is only reasonable that a lawyer get treated with the same sort of disgust and disrespect as we treat certain other occupations: tax collectors, people who butcher animals, people who run toxic waste dumps, etc.
The developed nations might do as you say... and it might slow down the decline in our standard of living. Give us maybe 50 years before our economy collapses instead of 10-20, to make a wild speculation.
But Imperialism will not save us in the long run. Our standard of living will STILL decline. And when the U.S. and Western Europe engage in Imperialism to protect their giant government structure, people will of course blame it on the free-market, not on totalitarianism. So when the Imperialism system collapses, they will replace it with Communism or something else equally as statist.
Laissez Faire Capitalism means that anyone can do just about anything they want without the government telling you what to do. Slavery means you are told what to do, how to do it, and the fruits of what you produce are taken from you by force.
The taxation and regulation of Socialism is analogous to Slavery. Laissez Faire analogous to Anarchy. Anarchy might not be great, but infinitly better than Slavery.
It is shocking just how far the government educational system has twisted the language so that being "free to do whatever you want" is considered "Slavery", and having "a higher authority dictate what you do" is considered "freedom". The George Orwell 1984 "War is Peace! Freedom is Slavery!" newspeak propoganda has clearly already begun.
I think I am going to learn Mandarin so when the boot comes down I can hide in a cargo container and sneak to China. They might not be a free country now, but at least they are heading in the right direction!
Laws against child labor and the 7 day work week only came about after the practice was largely aboloshed already in the marketplace... and was intended to cripple the ability of small family owned buisness to compete with large corporations, not to protect children or workers. Minimum wage doesn't raise anyone's standard of living, because it increases the price of goods and services equal to or greater than the amount it raises wages, it is something that politicians offer in lieu of doing something to actually boost the economy. And I don't see what the enviornmental disaster left behind by the Soviet Union command-economy has anything to do with the EPA.
The government-run schools will feed you the pro-government propogranda where the government takes credit for ending child labor, raising people's standards of living, and just about everything else good. But if such was the case, then how come places line Communist China, or Socialist India of the past manage to get rid of child labor, working long hours with a low standard of living, and enviornmental damage. They had all the government oversight and regulations and then some. And why did the American standard of living, which was the highest in the world and growing exponetially, suddenly drop off and then start to decline as our government became larger and larger?
Government is not magic, and cannot create jobs, wealth, or happiness out of nothing with fairy dust. The goods and services we enjoy is the product of capital (the materials, resources, and machines used), and labor (the people who do the work). Destroy capital, or harm labor, and the standard of living will fall. You cannot legislate those basic facts away.
So stop blaming India and China... The U.S. has only its own greed and lazyness to blame for its economic decline.
You have it backwards. "We" are not losing jobs because "we" (the U.S., Canada, Japan, etc.) are free market and "they" (India, China) aren't. We are losing jobs because "we" are no longer free-market.
40 years ago the U.S. was truly free market, and China and India were truly Socialist, and economicly "we" were kicking "their" ass.
What you are seeing now, is China and India becoming how the U.S. used to be, while the U.S. becomes like China and India used to be. 40 years ago, when the United States was the number one industrial producer, when we had the highest paid workers on the planet, and we were the best educated and had the highest standard of living, there was no such thing as outsourcing. Outsourcing is a product of the post-capitalist "welfare" state.
Companies aren't moving to India to get cheaper labor (that is a side benifit). They are going to India because the market is MORE free than in the U.S., the taxes are lower, and the people work harder and are better educated. "We" got fat and lazy, and we want all our cheap consumer goods and government benifits, and 30 hour work weeks, and we forgot that those goods and services we enjoy are actually produced through capital and labor... not lawsuits, advertisment, and government edicts.
The West is no longer producing anything except government. So, we are now spending our accumulated capital for imported consumer goods and government services. This can last for about 10-15 years, then the economies of the U.S., Western Europe, will have spent all their accumulated captial and will colapse.
Social programs and government intervention have always been to benifit those in power, or those with access to those in power.
School lunch programs were pushed by Agricultural Industry lobbiest so they could sell their leftover food to the government at 10 times the price.
Perscription Drug Benifits for seniors is so that big drug companies can charge even more for drugs.
Government Housing Projects were pushed in by big developers in exchange for offering kickbacks to politicians. The housing projects destroyed neighborhoods with functioning economies with giant Soviet style structures, where the only source of income was the government... thereby ensuring the residents were permanently dependent on their local political machine.
So is it suprising that the left is now cheering the government taking houses from working class people and giving it to big buisness, as a victory for central-planning and against property rights? The left has been a pawn of the power elites since the begining.
Since your world view is being challenges, I urge you to give up the popular myth of the left being for the little guy, and the right wing being for the big corporations... and realize that the real battle isn't between the left and right, but rather between the totalitarians on the left and the right, and free individuals.
Say that when your campaign headquarters are seized by those in power under "eminent domain". And any media that speaks out also gets siezed under "eminent domain".
And the town council folks have high paying jobs waiting for them at Phiser as soon as they are done in office.
I might be beating a dead horse, but the government already keeps all this information plus more on you.
The IRS knows where you live, where you work, what you own, and can find out any sort of financial transaction that you made with the exception of cash-only transactions less than $10,000. Public primary schools, and ALL universities store all your educational information and must give it to the Department of Education on demand or lose funding. All your health information is given to the government by your health insurance company as part of the "regulatory process"... unless your health care is taken care of by the government, in which case the government has even more information.
Sorry people, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. You can't have a police-state without police. It is impossible for the government to provide all the services you want, and to put all the restrictions on behavior that your demand, without putting together massive databases and tracking / survalence of the population. So the government is creating yet another database. Big deal.
Everything has a price. The price you pay for not breathing second hand smoke at a bar, or for making sure no-one tells jokes that might offend you, or for "free" as in beer municipal wifi, is a complete and total loss of privacy.
How can your Big Brother take care of you if he doesn't know things about you?
Except in the case of cell-phones, TV, and radio, none of these were provided by municioalities. Cell phone networks were built by carriers who hoped to make a profit. TV and radio were started by private networks.
Could you imagine how bad cell-phones, TV, and radio would be if it was run by the government?
Your math is all wrong... The cost of running the Wifi might have been one penny per citizen per year - but you are assuming that the entire city population used the thing... but given that 100 or so people used the thing, the costs were much higher.
And why should the government be spending $30,000 a year to wifi a park, even if it is a bargain (which it is not)? Do you think that homeless and underprivledged people have powerbooks to access wifi?
I mean, if it is the job for the government to provide services that anyone with a wifi enabled laptop should be able to afford with no problem, why bother with a free-market at all? Why not go to a Soviet style economy and have the government provide EVERYTHING.
First of all, the development that people have contributed to Firefox, developing Firefox and also developing the free plugins, are worth millions of dollars in man-hours, much more than what AOL gave them.
Second of all, tt doesn't matter who funds the Foundation... if people don't like something about a product, people won't use it. People hate the advertising bar in Opera, and won't use it. People don't find the features in Opera valueable enough to pay for it.
I am not going to choose what product I use based on sympathy and excuses. If a for-profit company wants me to give them my money, they are going to have to give something of equal value to me in return.
This is an the project of the U.S. based Planetary Society, the Russians were simply contracted to do the job (and launching a probe created by a private company, and doing it for a profit, couldn't be more non-Soviet).
Of course the Russians are dusting themselves off... they got paid in advance. But if you read the article, you would see "A government panel will investigate possible reasons behind the failure of the three-stage rocket's first-stage engine".
I understand that there are going to be people who post without bothering to read the article, but when those people are being modded +5 Insightful, I think it is a sign that Slashdot is no longer the effective at moderating itself. Does anyone out there any sites that are like Slashdot used to be?
Unconstitutional legislation IS illegal legislation. The Constitution is the highest law of the land.
That being said, the constitution is largly cerimonial nowadays. Most of what our government does would be considered unconstitutional in any but the most stretched and abused interpretations (certainly things like Gun Control, Medicare, and wars to "liberate" other countries would be unconstitutional). The constitution is largly irrelevent, which is why people might say that "unconstitutional" is different than "illegal".
If it was about getting cheaper labor, U.S. companies would have outsourced all the jobs to third world countries 50 years ago when the U.S. was the number one producer of manufactured goods and it's workers were the highest paid in the world.
The reason we are losing jobs in the United States (and it is not just the U.S., the Europe economy is in just as much trouble), is because we have created an enviornment that is hostile to honest buisness and production.
We have a system where is is easier to litigate than it is to innovate - companies that succesfully produce goods and services are taxed, punished, regulated and litigated until they are unprofitable, while other companies thrive by suing for intellectual property, or by having the government give them subsidies and handouts, or lobbying the government to put their competition out of buisness.
We have a system where someone who developes a new product or service for their employer will never be rewarded as highly as the person who sues their employer because a coworker told a dirty joke.
We have created a climate where it just isn't possible to run a buisness in the U.S... Unless your buisness is based on lawsuits, saturation marketing, government subsidies, government enforced monopolies, or local service (like fast food or retail).
"You are questioning the current U.S. government policies? Oh... OK, by the way, your Internet licence is revoked. It has nothing whatsoever to do with your political beliefs. Have a nice day."
Sure, licence Internet usage. That is a great idea!
I agree with everything you said... but starting it out by quoting Noam Chomsky? Noam Chomsky is one of the the most pro-government writers in America today. He might be against the current U.S. government, but he supports every form of "hate-speech" government censorship, and government nannie-state intervention.
The ol' Chomper would have no trouble with the government stepping in and controlling every aspect of the internet, provided it was a leftist socialist government.
Carjackers will now be offering to pick up your car right at your home. Just leave the keys in the ignition, and email them your address, and they will steal your car far more safely and conviently than the ordinary gun-point on the street corner technique.
Slashdot Mirror
In the United States, we don't have state-run farms to produce food for poor people. We don't have state-run factories to produce clothing for them. We do have a few state-run housing "projects" which are usually considered a disaster.
If the concern with public education is making sure that all kids have access to good education, instead of forcing them into a local school based on geography, give them the money to purchase an education at a school of their choice. This is what we do with food, clothing, rent, and other nessiceties when people are on public assistance.
If you can decide where your child goes to school, you don't have to worry about forcing a huge beurocracy to conform to your wishes. Simply find the best school for your child, and the problem is solved. Bad schools will eventually have to imitate the popular schools, or go out of buisness.
It also solves other problems. Want prayer in schools: send your kids to a religious school. Don't want prayer in schools, send your kid to a secular school. Is your child interested in art and music, send them to a school specializing in that. Is your child interested in math and technology, well send your child to a school specializing in that. All this arguing about what is the "superior system" doesn't matter when every person is free to choose their system.
No-one likes this idea, however, because it means schools can't be a place to universaly force ideas on people. Everyone believes that their view is right, and no-one is going to give up the state-run apperatus for forcing those views on other people's children.
I wouldn't be happy about this if I lived in the EU, but no doubt the recent EU offensive on foriegn companies will encourage those companies to invest outside of the EU. North America and Asia seems a lot less hostile towards buisness nowadays.
Asia might get the better of the deal than North America, but I don't think any company is going to be rushing off to Europe to invest given the lastest attacks by EU Kleptocrats.
The only thing that frightens me is that the U.S. or Canada might try the same self-destructive protectionist policies. Just because Europe is crazy doesn't mean that North America is sane.
You see, unlike books and movies, there is limited radio bandwidth available for video games to be broadcast. This means that the government must step in to regulate this limited resource. Especially since it is being broadcast directly into people's homes.
WHAT??? Video games aren't broadcast into people's home through limited bandwidth? THEN WHY THE FUCK DOESN'T THE GOVERNMENT MIND IT'S OWN FUCKIN' BUISNESS? The next thing you know the government will be telling people they can't smoke in bars, they can go to jail for not wearing a seatbelt, and are not allowed to burn the flag, or tell a "naughty" joke in the workplace!
The U.S. Federal Government has already passed Federal laws that require public institutions that provide free-internet like libraries and schools to filter certain websites. So, if you are in the United States, you can be 100% certain your internet will be censored, because it is already a part of Federal law. It would be illegal in the U.S. NOT to censor your internet access. Both the Republicans and Democrats both STRONGLY support this kind of censorship.
And saying that Microsoft could and does censor stuff is insane. Microsoft is not a government, and does not have a police force or army to enforce any sort of censorship. The most it could do is decide to insert or ommit certain things from it's search engine... but they hardly have a monopoly in search engines.
But you are forgetting opportunity cost:
The money spend by a city for municiple wi-fi is money that won't be spent on schools, police protection, enviornmental protection, fixing roads, buying books for the library, etc... things generally considered the responsibility of cities (unlike municiple wi-fi).
The people who would want and use municiple wi-fi are not needy people. Geeks with iPods and Powerbooks do not need taxpayers, most of which will never use the service, so subsidize their "Egghead Shiek" fantasies of downloading mp3s in a public park.
And that doesn't even include the costs in civil liberties (when the government provides internet access, they will be able to tell what you are surfing, as well as control what websites they want you to see.). And that doesn't include the economic costs that private internet service providers will pay, because how are they supposed to compete with "free" (I mean when Microsoft destroys competitors by giving away a crappy audio player for "free", it is "evil", but an even more monopolistic institution like the government does the same thing and it is good).
Seriously, are all Geeks so giddy to recieve "free" (as in beer... not as in speech) Internet access, they are willing to abandon any kind of common sense on this issue?
Just a correction, he did mention hip hop djs in the article... ignore my last paragraph.
Yes, a lot of those guys were good authors, but come on, do we have to hang by every word they say like they were some divine prophet? The 80s Cyberpunk authors were not innovative because of the cyber, but because of the punk. They were innovative because they chose a moraly-ambiquous realistic style to sci-fi, in contrast to cliche melodramatic "Space Opera" sci-fi.
William Gibson didn't predict the internet, the internet existed before WG ever became an author. The technical details of 1980s cyberpunk literature is dodgy at best. The cyberpunk authors worldview is far less accurate than those of say Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock" in the early 1970s.
If William Gibson were really in touch with things, he would know that "re-mixing" music in the modern technological sense began with hip-hop djs scratching and manipulating analog recordings stored on vinyl platters... and that the digital technology has just cought up in the last couple years.
Lawyers cannot be judged the way a computer programer can. A computer programmer does not put a gun to anyones head and force them to do things against their will. That is essentially what a lawyer does... yes, I realize that lawyers will never actually go out and point the gun themselves (cowards), they rely on the police to take the physical risk and do the dirty work of threatening people for them.
But if you peel away the technical jargon, the funny costumes and rituals, and the symbolism and abstraction that they use, lawyers jobs are to manipulate the state to commit violence on their behalf. It is only reasonable that a lawyer get treated with the same sort of disgust and disrespect as we treat certain other occupations: tax collectors, people who butcher animals, people who run toxic waste dumps, etc.
The developed nations might do as you say... and it might slow down the decline in our standard of living. Give us maybe 50 years before our economy collapses instead of 10-20, to make a wild speculation.
But Imperialism will not save us in the long run. Our standard of living will STILL decline. And when the U.S. and Western Europe engage in Imperialism to protect their giant government structure, people will of course blame it on the free-market, not on totalitarianism. So when the Imperialism system collapses, they will replace it with Communism or something else equally as statist.
Laissez Faire Capitalism means that anyone can do just about anything they want without the government telling you what to do. Slavery means you are told what to do, how to do it, and the fruits of what you produce are taken from you by force.
The taxation and regulation of Socialism is analogous to Slavery. Laissez Faire analogous to Anarchy. Anarchy might not be great, but infinitly better than Slavery.
It is shocking just how far the government educational system has twisted the language so that being "free to do whatever you want" is considered "Slavery", and having "a higher authority dictate what you do" is considered "freedom". The George Orwell 1984 "War is Peace! Freedom is Slavery!" newspeak propoganda has clearly already begun.
I think I am going to learn Mandarin so when the boot comes down I can hide in a cargo container and sneak to China. They might not be a free country now, but at least they are heading in the right direction!
Laws against child labor and the 7 day work week only came about after the practice was largely aboloshed already in the marketplace... and was intended to cripple the ability of small family owned buisness to compete with large corporations, not to protect children or workers. Minimum wage doesn't raise anyone's standard of living, because it increases the price of goods and services equal to or greater than the amount it raises wages, it is something that politicians offer in lieu of doing something to actually boost the economy. And I don't see what the enviornmental disaster left behind by the Soviet Union command-economy has anything to do with the EPA.
The government-run schools will feed you the pro-government propogranda where the government takes credit for ending child labor, raising people's standards of living, and just about everything else good. But if such was the case, then how come places line Communist China, or Socialist India of the past manage to get rid of child labor, working long hours with a low standard of living, and enviornmental damage. They had all the government oversight and regulations and then some. And why did the American standard of living, which was the highest in the world and growing exponetially, suddenly drop off and then start to decline as our government became larger and larger?
Government is not magic, and cannot create jobs, wealth, or happiness out of nothing with fairy dust. The goods and services we enjoy is the product of capital (the materials, resources, and machines used), and labor (the people who do the work). Destroy capital, or harm labor, and the standard of living will fall. You cannot legislate those basic facts away.
So stop blaming India and China... The U.S. has only its own greed and lazyness to blame for its economic decline.
You have it backwards. "We" are not losing jobs because "we" (the U.S., Canada, Japan, etc.) are free market and "they" (India, China) aren't. We are losing jobs because "we" are no longer free-market.
40 years ago the U.S. was truly free market, and China and India were truly Socialist, and economicly "we" were kicking "their" ass.
What you are seeing now, is China and India becoming how the U.S. used to be, while the U.S. becomes like China and India used to be. 40 years ago, when the United States was the number one industrial producer, when we had the highest paid workers on the planet, and we were the best educated and had the highest standard of living, there was no such thing as outsourcing. Outsourcing is a product of the post-capitalist "welfare" state.
Companies aren't moving to India to get cheaper labor (that is a side benifit). They are going to India because the market is MORE free than in the U.S., the taxes are lower, and the people work harder and are better educated. "We" got fat and lazy, and we want all our cheap consumer goods and government benifits, and 30 hour work weeks, and we forgot that those goods and services we enjoy are actually produced through capital and labor... not lawsuits, advertisment, and government edicts.
The West is no longer producing anything except government. So, we are now spending our accumulated capital for imported consumer goods and government services. This can last for about 10-15 years, then the economies of the U.S., Western Europe, will have spent all their accumulated captial and will colapse.
Social programs and government intervention have always been to benifit those in power, or those with access to those in power.
School lunch programs were pushed by Agricultural Industry lobbiest so they could sell their leftover food to the government at 10 times the price.
Perscription Drug Benifits for seniors is so that big drug companies can charge even more for drugs.
Government Housing Projects were pushed in by big developers in exchange for offering kickbacks to politicians. The housing projects destroyed neighborhoods with functioning economies with giant Soviet style structures, where the only source of income was the government... thereby ensuring the residents were permanently dependent on their local political machine.
So is it suprising that the left is now cheering the government taking houses from working class people and giving it to big buisness, as a victory for central-planning and against property rights? The left has been a pawn of the power elites since the begining.
Since your world view is being challenges, I urge you to give up the popular myth of the left being for the little guy, and the right wing being for the big corporations... and realize that the real battle isn't between the left and right, but rather between the totalitarians on the left and the right, and free individuals.
Say that when your campaign headquarters are seized by those in power under "eminent domain". And any media that speaks out also gets siezed under "eminent domain".
And the town council folks have high paying jobs waiting for them at Phiser as soon as they are done in office.
I might be beating a dead horse, but the government already keeps all this information plus more on you.
The IRS knows where you live, where you work, what you own, and can find out any sort of financial transaction that you made with the exception of cash-only transactions less than $10,000. Public primary schools, and ALL universities store all your educational information and must give it to the Department of Education on demand or lose funding. All your health information is given to the government by your health insurance company as part of the "regulatory process"... unless your health care is taken care of by the government, in which case the government has even more information.
Sorry people, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. You can't have a police-state without police. It is impossible for the government to provide all the services you want, and to put all the restrictions on behavior that your demand, without putting together massive databases and tracking / survalence of the population. So the government is creating yet another database. Big deal.
Everything has a price. The price you pay for not breathing second hand smoke at a bar, or for making sure no-one tells jokes that might offend you, or for "free" as in beer municipal wifi, is a complete and total loss of privacy.
How can your Big Brother take care of you if he doesn't know things about you?
Ummm... if the fixed cost was $1,800 per month, and 20 people use it as the article said, that is $90 per month per user.
The cost-per-user does in fact rise when fewer people use the service.
Except in the case of cell-phones, TV, and radio, none of these were provided by municioalities. Cell phone networks were built by carriers who hoped to make a profit. TV and radio were started by private networks.
Could you imagine how bad cell-phones, TV, and radio would be if it was run by the government?
Your math is all wrong... The cost of running the Wifi might have been one penny per citizen per year - but you are assuming that the entire city population used the thing... but given that 100 or so people used the thing, the costs were much higher.
And why should the government be spending $30,000 a year to wifi a park, even if it is a bargain (which it is not)? Do you think that homeless and underprivledged people have powerbooks to access wifi?
I mean, if it is the job for the government to provide services that anyone with a wifi enabled laptop should be able to afford with no problem, why bother with a free-market at all? Why not go to a Soviet style economy and have the government provide EVERYTHING.
First of all, the development that people have contributed to Firefox, developing Firefox and also developing the free plugins, are worth millions of dollars in man-hours, much more than what AOL gave them.
Second of all, tt doesn't matter who funds the Foundation... if people don't like something about a product, people won't use it. People hate the advertising bar in Opera, and won't use it. People don't find the features in Opera valueable enough to pay for it.
I am not going to choose what product I use based on sympathy and excuses. If a for-profit company wants me to give them my money, they are going to have to give something of equal value to me in return.
This is an the project of the U.S. based Planetary Society, the Russians were simply contracted to do the job (and launching a probe created by a private company, and doing it for a profit, couldn't be more non-Soviet).
Of course the Russians are dusting themselves off... they got paid in advance. But if you read the article, you would see "A government panel will investigate possible reasons behind the failure of the three-stage rocket's first-stage engine".
I understand that there are going to be people who post without bothering to read the article, but when those people are being modded +5 Insightful, I think it is a sign that Slashdot is no longer the effective at moderating itself. Does anyone out there any sites that are like Slashdot used to be?
Unconstitutional legislation IS illegal legislation. The Constitution is the highest law of the land.
That being said, the constitution is largly cerimonial nowadays. Most of what our government does would be considered unconstitutional in any but the most stretched and abused interpretations (certainly things like Gun Control, Medicare, and wars to "liberate" other countries would be unconstitutional). The constitution is largly irrelevent, which is why people might say that "unconstitutional" is different than "illegal".
If it was about getting cheaper labor, U.S. companies would have outsourced all the jobs to third world countries 50 years ago when the U.S. was the number one producer of manufactured goods and it's workers were the highest paid in the world.
The reason we are losing jobs in the United States (and it is not just the U.S., the Europe economy is in just as much trouble), is because we have created an enviornment that is hostile to honest buisness and production.
We have a system where is is easier to litigate than it is to innovate - companies that succesfully produce goods and services are taxed, punished, regulated and litigated until they are unprofitable, while other companies thrive by suing for intellectual property, or by having the government give them subsidies and handouts, or lobbying the government to put their competition out of buisness.
We have a system where someone who developes a new product or service for their employer will never be rewarded as highly as the person who sues their employer because a coworker told a dirty joke.
We have created a climate where it just isn't possible to run a buisness in the U.S... Unless your buisness is based on lawsuits, saturation marketing, government subsidies, government enforced monopolies, or local service (like fast food or retail).
"You are questioning the current U.S. government policies? Oh... OK, by the way, your Internet licence is revoked. It has nothing whatsoever to do with your political beliefs. Have a nice day."
Sure, licence Internet usage. That is a great idea!
I agree with everything you said... but starting it out by quoting Noam Chomsky? Noam Chomsky is one of the the most pro-government writers in America today. He might be against the current U.S. government, but he supports every form of "hate-speech" government censorship, and government nannie-state intervention.
The ol' Chomper would have no trouble with the government stepping in and controlling every aspect of the internet, provided it was a leftist socialist government.
Carjackers will now be offering to pick up your car right at your home. Just leave the keys in the ignition, and email them your address, and they will steal your car far more safely and conviently than the ordinary gun-point on the street corner technique.