Remember: time is money, too. If this is more nimble than a standard forklift, you might have that cargo aircraft sitting on the runway for a few minutes less, guzzling less fuel, and holding up fewer other incoming flights. There are a lot of indirect costs avoided by speeding up logistics operations. If it takes an operator and two support guys to do work in half the time, compared to a fork lift driver and one support guy, it might still be cheaper.
If there are things you can do with something like this which you simply cannot do with a forklift (which seems very likely - especially in rough terrain and lots of emergency response type scenearios), then you might avoid the entire cost of (and personnel involved in) enhancing a remote airstrip.
The only thing I thought the whole time I watched this is US defense spending is way to over bloated to have this kind of useless spending.
Which means you have absolutely no idea what it costs to recruit, train, field, and retain modern military personnel. If you can deploy three or four fewer people to an airstrip someplace, and unload a bunch of emergency medical supplies in a fraction of the time, you're reducing costs, not adding to them. Of course you know that, and you're just looking for some junior high school level The Military Is Bad No Matter What slashkarma.
And you would be... what? An old-world Nanny State leftist? Greek, perhaps? Or maybe an ex-pat Parisian who left in the 60's to go to Venezuela? Ah, paradise!
All laws benefit one group by disadvantaging another
Sure, OK. And you have a problem with taking away the advantage (the consequenceless use of violence) held by criminals? You really think that a rapist or a murderer has the moral equivalence of a carpenter or a teacher, and can't see that it's rational to give non-aggressors an advantage over violent parasites?
No. Nations that don't have a constitutional framework founded in liberty (freedom of speech, assembly, etc) might fit that description, but not all nations. Nations are either subject to the rule of law (as backed up by their founding documents) or they are just mob rule (or a fuedal society). A nation that doesn't prevent thugs from telling you what to do isn't keeping people free. A nation that is constititionally chartered around the idea of keeping thugs (individual or governmental) in check is, in fact, a preserver of liberty.
That doesn't mean that it always goes well, but that's the general idea. You seem to be suggesting that ALL nations are oppressive because some nations are oppressive to thugs. Denying liberty to those who seek to deny liberty to others is not oppression. It's the opposite.
Why do we still have nation-states? What good do they serve?
They help to make sure that even though millions of people want to live under Sharia law, I don't have to. Yet.
"People willing to do whatever it takes" include law enforcement and intel pros who have stopped multiple such attacks before they were completed. People being willing to do what they must did not prevent poorly executed bombs from taking down multiple aircraft in the last few months.
If there was simply an arbitrary limit of 15% on the market share of internet advertising...
If there was, then you would be forcing 85% of the people to buy services they don't necessarily want. That would force 85% of the add sellers to artificually lower their prices in order to attract business they aren't otherwise earning, thus making your regulation kill business health. And of course your solution for that would be to have the government control not only how many ad sellers there are, but what they must charge to display someone's ad. No thanks, comrade.
It seems that attacking the mythical "Slashdot group think" is an easy way to get a +5 Insightful on almost any story these days.
You mean kind of like karma whoring by trotting out the "The Slashdot Groupthink Meme Is False" meme? The only reason you're being so defensive is because he's actually dead on. The editorial slant at slashdot, and the large majority of the comments surrounding such issues, are just as he satirically describes them. And, of course, you know that, or you wouldn't be so prickly about it.
You are technically correct (since I'm not a leech, or piracy advocate either), but you know he's actually correct, in practical terms, when it comes to the culture that rules slashdot and its ratings system.
that's the price we demand now for some minor inconvenience
I help clients with web sites that, if successfully DDoS'ed at the wrong time of the year, could go out of business. Businesses who are in the middle of a crucual product launch, or who must refund huge amounts of subscriptions because of being unavailable during a critical time. Black Friday shopping spikes, that sort of thing. Burning down those sites is just as bad as burning down their warehouse.
Of course they care. That's the whole point. They care that some people are going to cost them more than others, and they adjust for that. The subtext of your comment seems to be that everyone should pay the higher price because a few people are statistically going to be more expensive to service. You might (might) reasonably expect that of a government-provided service, but of a private company that's looking to make money from loaning money? Let 'em live or die by how their market responds to the prices the offer. And likewise let high-risk people be a bit reflective about why other people are skittish about taking that risk for them.
The "public option" variants that were discussed involved no net reduction in health care costs, in any way, period. It simply would have provided more services, while increasing the bill to people already paying... and while hugely increasing government bureaucracy in order to administer it, and the money to support that. The "public option" rubric was only trotted out as a back door way to kill off the ability for people to privately purchase insurance and the medical care of their choice.
People were 70% for it until it got demolished to basically something entirely different.
No. People were "for" it for as long it remained a nebulous "reform" that promised impossible things. This is why Pelosi characterized it as something that had to be passed first, so that people could find out what was in it, after the fact. She knew that being clear about the bill's contents up front would just hurry along the pace at which it lost support. As soon as people started to see where it was headed, support for it dropped through the floor. All the more so when people saw what the left was willing to do to ram it through, against the wishes of the majority... and hence the spanking that the left just took in the polls.
Voting "no" when you know the deal is going to pass is purely for appearances for the folks back home.
So... you're saying that every legislator should vote to support bills with which they disagree, just because it's going to pass anyway? Are you even listening to yourself? Those people voted No on that monstrosity of a bill because they knew that the "folks back home" were solidly opposed to it. The majority of the people in the US did not want the bill passed, and the people who passed it had to resort to parlimentary circus tricks to ram it through. Voting against it was the ethical thing to do, and the dems that voted for it despite the wishes of their constituents are now feeling the (appropriate) pain.
That mandate will bring in more money than a Saudi arms deal. I doubt a single politician was actually against this massive windfall.
Have you been that brainwashed, or are you just trolling? The bill is not a windfall. It adds enormously to the deficit, piling on ever more debt. The bill costs wildly more money than it takes from tax payers, even after it snuck in things like new sales taxes on your house, new IRS involvement in small business transactions, etc. That you would characterize the thing as a windfall indicates your complete mis-apprehension of the reality of what the last congress, with Obama, did when they forced that nonsense through.
Yeah some people are a bit sensitive about allowing a lunitic fringe that (litterally) ruined the entire continent and caused untold suffering for so many to spread their filth in public again. Imagine that; when we say "Nie wieder", "Never again", we mean it.
Except, you've got all sorts of new lunatic fringe types who are preaching new kinds of kill-the-other-culture religious toxicity, and that is being protected in the name of diversity. So it's not that Europeans are consistently interested in preventing people from saying "filthy" things. Just some people.
is the shitstorm about saying "retarded" over yet in the US
Did I say that the PC Police in the US aren't also wrong-headed cowards? Of course they are. I'm responding to a post that sugggested, specifically, that the EU would be a good body for serving up a guide to information. My point is that the EU prefers to filter history, out of a deep sense of embarassment.
No I don't want that. Luckily for me, it really doesn't do that.
Right. I'm responding to the notion that it should do that (be in the internet information search business).
Sounds like something that's right up the EU's alley: creating a public alternative to a foreign-owned monopoly in a critical growth sector.
You know what else is right up the EU's alley? Banning references to certain bits of history, getting tangled up in astounding fits of political correctness, etc. Do you really want a government that aggressively controls the speech of its citizens to be running a search engine? If you want that, you can go to China.
The ISPs are obligated to provide me a platform for my speech because I'M FUCKING PAYING FOR IT.
No, they're obligated to provide whatever it is that's described in the contract that defines your relationship with them. That may not, in fact, include them giving your traffic a higher priority than someone else's.
And you can simply read the text of his nomination acceptance speech for his own reference to his election being the mark of world-healing and ocean-receding. Of course, you already knew that, and you're just playing dumb to cast some doubt should someone else come along.
Still not a good analogy. There is no internet in the way that most people think of it. There are just networks. Self-contained, stand-alone networks. They are interconnected only through the deliberate, case-by-case agreements set up between those network operators that establish peering connections between them. To use your analogy, it would be like having a bunch of adjoining parking lots, owned by individual operators, and they only act like a road because of agreements between them to allow some parts of the lots to be used in that way (as a way to get from one lot to another non-adjoining destination lot).
It is entirely obvious this is a civil rights issue. Not one of race or gender or age, but one of every persons right to expression without oppression from the corporatations obsessetion to controlling this country.
So, just to clarify, here. If I form a publishing company in order to print a newsletter that I will distribute in my neighborhood, I must allow anyone who wants me to print their own communication - no matter what I think of it - to tell me how I should use the pages of my publication? And I must allow, as I walk around the neighborhood dropping off my newsletter, anyone who demands that I also distribute their publication? And if my company starts into the business of delivering one person's publications, I therefore have to deliver anything that anyone else insists that I deliver? This is your take on what the first amendment is about? This is what you think "civil rights" is about - the ability of one person to force another person to do something?
if we paid for it as a country then the first amendment applies fully and reduces an ISP fom being a 'platform'' to being a means to access the platform
Nonsense. If that were true, then you could say that every private print shop that has its physical operations reachable by public road must print anything that anyone demands they print. After all, if the taxpayers didn't maintain that road, the print shop could never have set up shop, right? Do you really think that's what the first amendment is about?
Damned government has no right to force private businesses to observe people's "civil rights."
Really? You're really implying that network providers are shaping traffic based on protected classes defined within Civil Rights statutes? You're suggesting that networks are de-prioritizing things like huge torrent traffic use by small numbers of users because of the skin color of those users? What's it like to have absolutely no perspective, whatsoever?
Slashdot Mirror
Remember: time is money, too. If this is more nimble than a standard forklift, you might have that cargo aircraft sitting on the runway for a few minutes less, guzzling less fuel, and holding up fewer other incoming flights. There are a lot of indirect costs avoided by speeding up logistics operations. If it takes an operator and two support guys to do work in half the time, compared to a fork lift driver and one support guy, it might still be cheaper.
If there are things you can do with something like this which you simply cannot do with a forklift (which seems very likely - especially in rough terrain and lots of emergency response type scenearios), then you might avoid the entire cost of (and personnel involved in) enhancing a remote airstrip.
The only thing I thought the whole time I watched this is US defense spending is way to over bloated to have this kind of useless spending.
Which means you have absolutely no idea what it costs to recruit, train, field, and retain modern military personnel. If you can deploy three or four fewer people to an airstrip someplace, and unload a bunch of emergency medical supplies in a fraction of the time, you're reducing costs, not adding to them. Of course you know that, and you're just looking for some junior high school level The Military Is Bad No Matter What slashkarma.
You new worlders are so cute
... what? An old-world Nanny State leftist? Greek, perhaps? Or maybe an ex-pat Parisian who left in the 60's to go to Venezuela? Ah, paradise!
And you would be
So you are admitting the government of the United States of America is a thug against the very citizens it is supposed to protect
Gee. No, I'm not saying the opposite of what I'm saying, actually.
All laws benefit one group by disadvantaging another
Sure, OK. And you have a problem with taking away the advantage (the consequenceless use of violence) held by criminals? You really think that a rapist or a murderer has the moral equivalence of a carpenter or a teacher, and can't see that it's rational to give non-aggressors an advantage over violent parasites?
Which is why most models of open source governance work on a consensus model.
Which is a terrible idea. That's how you get the tyranny of the majority. Governance must be based on principle, not consensus.
Nations help oppress people, not keep them free
No. Nations that don't have a constitutional framework founded in liberty (freedom of speech, assembly, etc) might fit that description, but not all nations. Nations are either subject to the rule of law (as backed up by their founding documents) or they are just mob rule (or a fuedal society). A nation that doesn't prevent thugs from telling you what to do isn't keeping people free. A nation that is constititionally chartered around the idea of keeping thugs (individual or governmental) in check is, in fact, a preserver of liberty.
That doesn't mean that it always goes well, but that's the general idea. You seem to be suggesting that ALL nations are oppressive because some nations are oppressive to thugs. Denying liberty to those who seek to deny liberty to others is not oppression. It's the opposite.
Why do we still have nation-states? What good do they serve?
They help to make sure that even though millions of people want to live under Sharia law, I don't have to. Yet.
"People willing to do whatever it takes" include law enforcement and intel pros who have stopped multiple such attacks before they were completed. People being willing to do what they must did not prevent poorly executed bombs from taking down multiple aircraft in the last few months.
If there was simply an arbitrary limit of 15% on the market share of internet advertising...
If there was, then you would be forcing 85% of the people to buy services they don't necessarily want. That would force 85% of the add sellers to artificually lower their prices in order to attract business they aren't otherwise earning, thus making your regulation kill business health. And of course your solution for that would be to have the government control not only how many ad sellers there are, but what they must charge to display someone's ad. No thanks, comrade.
It seems that attacking the mythical "Slashdot group think" is an easy way to get a +5 Insightful on almost any story these days.
You mean kind of like karma whoring by trotting out the "The Slashdot Groupthink Meme Is False" meme? The only reason you're being so defensive is because he's actually dead on. The editorial slant at slashdot, and the large majority of the comments surrounding such issues, are just as he satirically describes them. And, of course, you know that, or you wouldn't be so prickly about it.
You are technically correct (since I'm not a leech, or piracy advocate either), but you know he's actually correct, in practical terms, when it comes to the culture that rules slashdot and its ratings system.
that's the price we demand now for some minor inconvenience
I help clients with web sites that, if successfully DDoS'ed at the wrong time of the year, could go out of business. Businesses who are in the middle of a crucual product launch, or who must refund huge amounts of subscriptions because of being unavailable during a critical time. Black Friday shopping spikes, that sort of thing. Burning down those sites is just as bad as burning down their warehouse.
they just don't care
Of course they care. That's the whole point. They care that some people are going to cost them more than others, and they adjust for that. The subtext of your comment seems to be that everyone should pay the higher price because a few people are statistically going to be more expensive to service. You might (might) reasonably expect that of a government-provided service, but of a private company that's looking to make money from loaning money? Let 'em live or die by how their market responds to the prices the offer. And likewise let high-risk people be a bit reflective about why other people are skittish about taking that risk for them.
The "public option" variants that were discussed involved no net reduction in health care costs, in any way, period. It simply would have provided more services, while increasing the bill to people already paying... and while hugely increasing government bureaucracy in order to administer it, and the money to support that. The "public option" rubric was only trotted out as a back door way to kill off the ability for people to privately purchase insurance and the medical care of their choice.
People were 70% for it until it got demolished to basically something entirely different.
... and hence the spanking that the left just took in the polls.
No. People were "for" it for as long it remained a nebulous "reform" that promised impossible things. This is why Pelosi characterized it as something that had to be passed first, so that people could find out what was in it, after the fact. She knew that being clear about the bill's contents up front would just hurry along the pace at which it lost support. As soon as people started to see where it was headed, support for it dropped through the floor. All the more so when people saw what the left was willing to do to ram it through, against the wishes of the majority
Voting "no" when you know the deal is going to pass is purely for appearances for the folks back home.
... you're saying that every legislator should vote to support bills with which they disagree, just because it's going to pass anyway? Are you even listening to yourself? Those people voted No on that monstrosity of a bill because they knew that the "folks back home" were solidly opposed to it. The majority of the people in the US did not want the bill passed, and the people who passed it had to resort to parlimentary circus tricks to ram it through. Voting against it was the ethical thing to do, and the dems that voted for it despite the wishes of their constituents are now feeling the (appropriate) pain.
So
That mandate will bring in more money than a Saudi arms deal. I doubt a single politician was actually against this massive windfall.
Have you been that brainwashed, or are you just trolling? The bill is not a windfall. It adds enormously to the deficit, piling on ever more debt. The bill costs wildly more money than it takes from tax payers, even after it snuck in things like new sales taxes on your house, new IRS involvement in small business transactions, etc. That you would characterize the thing as a windfall indicates your complete mis-apprehension of the reality of what the last congress, with Obama, did when they forced that nonsense through.
Yeah some people are a bit sensitive about allowing a lunitic fringe that (litterally) ruined the entire continent and caused untold suffering for so many to spread their filth in public again. Imagine that; when we say "Nie wieder", "Never again", we mean it.
Except, you've got all sorts of new lunatic fringe types who are preaching new kinds of kill-the-other-culture religious toxicity, and that is being protected in the name of diversity. So it's not that Europeans are consistently interested in preventing people from saying "filthy" things. Just some people.
is the shitstorm about saying "retarded" over yet in the US
Did I say that the PC Police in the US aren't also wrong-headed cowards? Of course they are. I'm responding to a post that sugggested, specifically, that the EU would be a good body for serving up a guide to information. My point is that the EU prefers to filter history, out of a deep sense of embarassment.
No I don't want that. Luckily for me, it really doesn't do that.
Right. I'm responding to the notion that it should do that (be in the internet information search business).
Sounds like something that's right up the EU's alley: creating a public alternative to a foreign-owned monopoly in a critical growth sector.
You know what else is right up the EU's alley? Banning references to certain bits of history, getting tangled up in astounding fits of political correctness, etc. Do you really want a government that aggressively controls the speech of its citizens to be running a search engine? If you want that, you can go to China.
The ISPs are obligated to provide me a platform for my speech because I'M FUCKING PAYING FOR IT.
No, they're obligated to provide whatever it is that's described in the contract that defines your relationship with them. That may not, in fact, include them giving your traffic a higher priority than someone else's.
Uh, references for that?
Well, you can look here, among the hundreds of other places you can find such nauseating stuff:
http://fr.sevenload.com/videos/7yvebuv-School-kids-taught-to-praise-Obama
And you can simply read the text of his nomination acceptance speech for his own reference to his election being the mark of world-healing and ocean-receding. Of course, you already knew that, and you're just playing dumb to cast some doubt should someone else come along.
I like that interpretation because it makes sense. Only property huggers fail to see it. No I'm *not* being sarcastic.
So, in order to prevent a society made of government-enforced slavery, you're proposing private roads?
Still not a good analogy. There is no internet in the way that most people think of it. There are just networks. Self-contained, stand-alone networks. They are interconnected only through the deliberate, case-by-case agreements set up between those network operators that establish peering connections between them. To use your analogy, it would be like having a bunch of adjoining parking lots, owned by individual operators, and they only act like a road because of agreements between them to allow some parts of the lots to be used in that way (as a way to get from one lot to another non-adjoining destination lot).
It is entirely obvious this is a civil rights issue. Not one of race or gender or age, but one of every persons right to expression without oppression from the corporatations obsessetion to controlling this country.
So, just to clarify, here. If I form a publishing company in order to print a newsletter that I will distribute in my neighborhood, I must allow anyone who wants me to print their own communication - no matter what I think of it - to tell me how I should use the pages of my publication? And I must allow, as I walk around the neighborhood dropping off my newsletter, anyone who demands that I also distribute their publication? And if my company starts into the business of delivering one person's publications, I therefore have to deliver anything that anyone else insists that I deliver? This is your take on what the first amendment is about? This is what you think "civil rights" is about - the ability of one person to force another person to do something?
if we paid for it as a country then the first amendment applies fully and reduces an ISP fom being a 'platform'' to being a means to access the platform
Nonsense. If that were true, then you could say that every private print shop that has its physical operations reachable by public road must print anything that anyone demands they print. After all, if the taxpayers didn't maintain that road, the print shop could never have set up shop, right? Do you really think that's what the first amendment is about?
Damned government has no right to force private businesses to observe people's "civil rights."
Really? You're really implying that network providers are shaping traffic based on protected classes defined within Civil Rights statutes? You're suggesting that networks are de-prioritizing things like huge torrent traffic use by small numbers of users because of the skin color of those users? What's it like to have absolutely no perspective, whatsoever?