"I am fully convinced that Chiropractors prevent thousands of unnecessary surgeries every year. When it comes to neuromusculoskeletal conditions, I don't think other health care providers can make that claim."
I am fully convinced that Yoga Therapists with training in Western Physical Therapy do the same, and with less risk to the patient. The hybrid vigor between those two disciplines is tremendous.
I'm not an economist. Why is a tax based on income preferred to a tax based on amount of assets? Like 5%. Corporate entities would be taxed the same way.
I'm not saying I made the best decision, just presenting the decision I made. Anyway, I think teachers are wrong often enough that I'll get another chance in the near future.;) Though probably not until September, at least. lol.
You are absolutely correct about that.
Are you referring to the fractional reserve banking system as the source of new money? I just recently came across that, thanks to someone's sig line on here, which pointed to the "Money as Debt" instructional animation at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-905047436 2583451279 which is incredibly illuminating. It did take me a few weeks to prove to myself that it isn't bullshit though, and it helped that I have a friend who loan officer at a bank and he believes in the current system. He played a great devil's advocate.
I'm not sure you made the correct decision regarding the Pluto misinformation. I remember when I was in the 3rd grade (10 years old?) My teacher mentioned that the Empire States Building was the largest in the world. This was in the early 80's, no shit. I had just gone to stay with my Aunt that summer, in Chicago, who worked in the Sear's Tower, and she took me on the tour. Realizing that teachers can be very wrong, while sill being nice and well meaning, at an early age helped me to grow into a skeptical & free thinker. You may have missed a potentially invaluable life lesson.
Sure, but I don't get how Jobs thinks his new market share on PCs will come at the expense of Firefox. I am an apple fanboy, and Safari isn't even good enough for me to use on my apple machines- I use Firefox. I expect the Firefox userbase on Windows is pretty much like the Firefox userbase on Macs... I don't see Firefox loosing. The probable real motive for Safari deployment is explained is dozens of other posts.
Or maybe tradegy is just the hack writer's easiest way to make his story seem more profound than it actually is, because people think the way you do?
It certainly worked that way for The Departed.
"Hmm, curious, I wonder how they'll resolve this loose end, it could end up being trouble for---oh... I see, everyone is conveniently killed."
And it worked for Six Feet Under. Everyone's life story really does end with death. I will pick the easy "everyone dies" over the kitsch "happily ever after" any day of the week: I remember the movies in the 80's. I prefer it to the arthouse/French "nothing changes, no one grows" as well. Killing everyone off at the end of the narrative is better. It worked for the Greeks, it worked for Shakespeare. It is true to life.
As for the Sopranos, if he lives or dies is immaterial to me: I felt like it portrayed his anxiety in a realistic manner for the first time. He is paranoid of everyone, even when he appears calm and unaware, it seems to Tony like anyone could be his killer and some disaster is about to happen to his Meadow any second now. The source of his fear is not specific, it is the human condition as far as he knows. I would prefer that he died in some totally mundane way: heart attack or better yet traffic accident. That would match the tone of the show. After that I would've chosen a violent tragic death that results from his tragic flaw: continually shitting on his wife.
Tony emerges from below-deck, post-coital grin on his face and humming. Camera follows from behind, and pans counter-clockwise to show Carmela only a few feet away, standing on the pier. Tony, sees her, grunts (or other verbalization of indifference), and turns to return to the cabin. "Tony, I've had enough," cut to black, with sound of gunshot. Two second pause, then sounds of wet gasping with heart beat. Pause. Two rapid gunshots. Silence. Three second pause. Roll credits.
Agreed: Little Snitch is an awesome program, and I think OS X ought to have its functions built in but turned off as a default. Like a box under System Preferences -> Network should read "Require approval for network connections" or something similar.
"If the store even hints that my info is going to be used beyond what it is supplied for, I wouldn't touch the place with a 10 foot pole." And that is the only way to encourage good privacy policies: make it effect the bottom line. It makes me shudder to read some of the proposals floating around designed to enforce privacy rights. The answer to this problem, like so many others is not new laws and policies. The cure would be worse than the disease.
Mentioning free programs in the same sentence as little-snitch leads me to suspect that you are working with a different definition for "free" than most of the others in this thread.
I have a sincere question about Consumer Reports: For many of their car and computer hardware stats don't they depend upon readers sending in surveys? Doesn't that mean their reports may suffer from heavy selection bias? My wife will veto any big ticket item purchase if it doesn't have a favorable review. Thankfully Apple and Honda do very well so I got what I wanted when it has mattered so far, but part of me is worried that even though Consumer Reports is independent their methodology may be crap. My guess is no, but since there isn't a single better data source consulting CR is an important component of an informed decision.
Are the statistics published in Consumer Reports for cars and computers mathematically sound?
You know, for a generation raised on digital music, you sure all get caught in the same groove, sounding like broken records, a lot. Please refrain from analog analogies. Surely you meant to say something along the lines of "You know, for a generation raised on digital music, you sure all report the same sector as bad, a lot" or maybe even "share the same invalid address space, a lot". The contradiction is what makes his analogy good. I appreciate verbal irony, while you apparently fail to recognize it. Please refrain from future criticism of literary devices.
Oh, and just to make this post a little more on-topic: I will not be canceling my XM until the two channels of techno I listen to get canceled. That Carl Cox show they have on channel 80 "The Move" is so fucking good I feel like my head may explode when I hear it each week. If kicking O&A off the air helps provide political cover for the merger with Sirius, and that merger keeps the music I love on the air, than good riddance to Opie and Anthony.
A brief history of rights in the western tradition:
property rights -> limitations on governmental power -> civil liberties -> equal protection -> civil rights
Private property rights should trump civil liberties & civil rights, and to suggest otherwise undermines all freedom.
But wait, what about the soy sauce? Well, it's still there, so your query for things you are out of didn't catch it. How can it know you are low on it?
There could be a scale on each shelf that takes a mass reading, and "mass when empty" could be one of the values on the soy sauce RFID. Hell put a scale & RFID on the bottom of each potted plant you have so your 14th gen Roomba will know when to water them.
Your point, which I totally agree with, is that once everything that isn't instantly disposable gets a chip a million minor daily chores will go away.
They could even make tracking, organizing, and querying legos far easier. And collectible cards. And all other hobby supplies, including those you don't want the in-laws to find when they come up to visit.
So under this philosophy it's ok to put a movie on your website, get a lot of money in google ads or whatever ad format, then wait for the cease and desist to take it down and keep your money?
I agreed with him a little up till this point. The patent and copyright system is a bit borked, but what he suggests is just wrong. *shakes head*
Isn't that the youtube and youtube clone business model?
1. Create a safe harbor web 2.0 site.
2. Allow users to post media they do not own.
3. Collect ad revenue.
4. Take down content after the C&D letter arrives knowing that your users are posting faster than the C&D's can ship.
5. Profit!
Thanks for explaining away those pesky "..." lines.
If you were in England I would recommend a tasting at the L'Artisan du Chocolat factory in Ashford Kent. http://www.artisanduchocolat.com/ArtisanduChocolat Site/product/Chocolate%20tasting/TASTING.htm
Fine chocolate is an endangered species. Chocolate is increasingly a commodity at risk of standardisation, the same blend manufactured by a handful of large groups. In fact, fine chocolate is naturally very varied, determined by the type of tree, climate, fermentation, drying, roasting, conching and refining and the art of the chocolatier. Discover this diversity in our tutored tasting and atelier visit taking you on a journey from cocoa trees to beans, beans to bars and bars to boxed chocolates. The goal of our tasting is not to promote our brand but to enable you to evaluate the quality of chocolate and to recognise truly fine chocolate(s) from nicely-packaged and marketed fakes. Tastings run from 3pm to 5pm on specific Saturdays
Fine chocolate does not age well, does not travel well, and is wasted on an untutored pallet- just like fine wines, cheeses and scotch. There are many chocolatiers in New York, google for a factory-shop that does tastings.
Locally made, fresh, quality chocolate is something else. Hersey's is to Godvia as Godvia is to Michel Cluizel.
There is a Michel Cluizel in NYC: http://www.chocolatmichelcluizel-na.com/about_us.a sp
Chocolat Michel Cluizel's New York store is the first and only Michel Cluizel retail store outside of Paris, and the only retail location in North America for Michel Cluizel's entire line of fine chocolates. Located on the first floor of New York's legendary retailer, ABC Carpet & Home, in between three fine restaurants (Lucy Latin Kitchen, Pipa Tapas Bar and Le Pain Quotidien), we are pleased to bring New Yorkers some of the world's finest chocolate in an engaging and intimate environment. The store features a full selection of chocolate bars, a vast array of bonbons, intense hot and cold chocolate drinks, chocolate desserts. Chocolat Michel Cluizel is the first fine chocolate store in New York to hold a full liquor license; we not only serve fine bonbons that contain liquor, but we are pleased to pair fine porto, brandy, scotch, champagne, cognac and wine with our exceptional chocolates and chocolate drinks. Guided chocolate tasting sessions are held in the store throughout the week and by appointment.
Oh, and if any of the media is reading this, I'm pretty sure the violence in Iraq and Darfur isn't caused by violent video games either. Just to give you a heard start. Now off you go, and don't come back until you have a real story. Thank you for saying that- clear commonsense observations like your's are why I even bother with/.
Now you have another fan.
We should also sterilize (as reversibly as possible) anyone who begins collecting AFDC or TANF, so that they cannot become a further drain on society.
For our friends outside of the U.S.:
AFDC: Aid to Families with Dependent Children (1935-1997) a.k.a. Federal welfare
TANF: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (1997-present) replaced AFDC and placed work requirements and time limitations on benefits. TANF is less expensive than AFDC was, but is less of a safety net. TANF is seen by most Democrats and Republicans as being superior to AFDC.
drinkypoo's expressed view on sterilization (taking him at face value, and out of context) is fairly common in the U.S.
...I'll let others to draw the obvious historical parallel.
Allowing bad parenting is yet another price of freedom, and is well worth it in my opinion. Every proposed solution to bad parenting involving new rules or laws I've heard of was far worse than the original problem. Let bad parents be bad parents, but try to have a personal and positive effect on the youth in your community. Outreach can be a pain, and may be fraught with risks, but it is very effective.
Posting Anon to not get flooded with requests. My training services are availabe online and I will not train any kitten older than 7 weeks. YOU HAVE TO start early and for 2-3 months. and no I will not give out my secrets, I make big bucks at this. Your post left me thinking of a mysterious billionaire cat-trainer decked out in gold, furs, and diamonds. Like a stereotypical dirty-south rapper, only white & geeky, and with many cats.
You are correct about the rewards of socializing your cat. Playing fetch with my very large silver manx is serious fun.
I stand corrected. I have been away from this scene for a number of years. I just remember 5 or 6 years ago, all of my DJ friends would balk at DJs using anything other than tech 12's. Clearly, the industry has come a long way, and while it may become more accepted to use digital formats, I still doubt that it will ever dissapear completely from this scene. The sea change began to occur right after you left, and it was mostly top-down, with the most successful and respected making the change first. Depending on what city you live near you may want to return to the scene- for the most part the only people left really are all about the music, and the music is way better than ever before. All genres, with the exception of house, have seen their best releases in the last year and a half. All of those basement DJs now have a few years of experience with Pro-Tools, and music production software is common and the hardware to run all of it is cheap.
(software quality + amount of file sharing)*(number of users)^(experience)= music quality
The music was good then, it is great now, and is expected to be even better tomorrow.
vinyl is also the de-facto standard for DJ's at parties and clubs. CD equivalents that allow you to mix and scratch are somewhat frowned upon in these areas, and while the rave scene has lost most of it's popularity, there are still quite a few fans out there of this type of entertainment. I don't think that anyone's arguing that vinyl is going to overtake CDs or other digital formats in popularity, merely acknowledging that the format is still thriving, and shows no signs of disappearing any time soon. Vinyl was the standard, but isn't anymore. Today artists like Richie Hawtin and Sasha use Ableton Live http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableton_Live to produce a dynamic set that is impossible to trainspot. Wikipedia has a list of users: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ableton_Live _users
Judging by what was seen at the winter music conference this year, th stand set-up is four decks- two for cds and two for vinyl. Five years ago vinyl was the standard, but times are still changing.
Vinyl is still in common use, esp. for local or regional artists, but of the people I know who actually make their living off of playing music none use vinyl exclusively anymore.
Every President in the 20th Century fired all US Attorneys upon taking the oath of office and assuming the role of the Presidency. This is considered standard practice.
I've lived several years in the US but I never understood this. Anyone cares to enlighten me as to why this is considered normal in a country where there is (supposedly) power separation ? Why does the government even have the power to fire attorneys/judges ? Why is it desirable ? And what do the fired attorneys do with their time until the next election rolls around ? Thank you. I could explain this better if I knew which country you are from. I'm guessing that you may be from a county where judges and and prosecuting attorneys serve under the same department or branch of government. That isn't the case here.
It is normal because the executive branch enforces the laws of the US, which means that law enforcement and prosecuting attorneys serve under the president in the org chart. The most senior members of law enforcement and most senior attorneys in the Justice Department are appointed by the president but must first be confirmed by a vote in the Senate. When a new presidential administration takes office it is standard practice to "clean house" and replace all political appointments. This is considered normal because it always happens and is expected to occur; it is understood that not only are we voting for the man who will serve as president but we are also voting on his judgment and ability to appoint compentent officials. The separation of powers is that the Congress writes and passes the laws and the courts rule on the enforcement of laws. Judges were not fired in this case, and cannot be fired by the president or anyone else in the executive branch.
It is desirable because it s a system that has worked well in the past- appointed officials are typically professional enough to serve the country rather than the just the president or the party of the president. The confirmation process helps to ensure that political operatives do not take office. Part of the reason why this specific case became such an issue is that the congress gave up it's right to a confirmation process to replace district attorneys before the 8 were fired, that law was just repealed so now any future replacements will again be required to meet the approval of the Senate.
In politically sensitive cases a "special prosecutor" is named who (basically) cannot be fired by the Attorney General or the President, to prevent the appearance of a conflict of interest.
The fired attorneys are senior attorneys, they shouldn't have much trouble finding jobs in the private sector. These were the most senior attorneys in the district (multi-state region) where they served, and they know the circuit-court judges, the junior attorneys that are not appointed, and how the system works in a very intimate way. They are very employable, but stand little chance of serving as a US district attorney again. Many of the people nominated to serve as a federal judge have previous experience as a district attorney- that is how valuable the experience is.
I hope I answered your questions well... I'll check back later to resole any other questions you may have.
This is a serious problem when dealing with Chinese companies. Now that Google has opened offices in China and has staffed them with native Chinese people, they're going to have a hard time enforcing western style ideas about copyright and what constitutes "doing no evil". Its a problem we've run into in the past with our Chinese operations. The way the problem was "solved", by removing the engineers names, but still clearly using the other company's engine (they didn't remove the identical bugs), is something I have seen happen in the past when dealing with our R&D team in China when we've found them using code they "borrowed" either from open source code or from an engineers past employer. I've never seen it handled in public like this however.
Google is going to need to take some serious Q&A steps in their Chinese offices to keep stuff like this from happening again or else risk their Chinese office ruining the entire company's reputation. Your's is the cleanest explanation for this event I've read so far.
A little bit of cultural context, and some insight into the difficulties any well-meaning company faces as they grow and grow in size and number of locations- an insightful post. Thanks.
I'm not a Google apologist, but I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt most of the time. This inclination may be the result of an illusion, but there usually is a "they're doing less than evil" explanation like this one.
Seems like a potential legislative tweak to "safe harbor" would be to require service providers like Youtube to track ad hits/revenue gained from any particular content source. If Viacom can prove that the content was theirs, then Youtube should then have to turn over that money to the rightful copyright holder.
Then Viacom would start quietly putting up its own content on YouTube, waiting until it was no longer part of their business plan to have it publicly available, and then send YouTube a takedown notice and demand for restitution.
Viacom gets all the profits, and Google is stuck with all the distribution costs. That's even LESS fair than the current model where Viacom and YouTube both make profits off Viacom's works proportional to the resources they dedicate to distributing them.
Just modify the idea from grandparent so that Viacom's share of Google ad revenue from Viacom IP would be (google's ad revenue)-(google's overhead including admin and distribution costs)-(some number based upon how long the content was left unchallenged to encourage IP owners to be prompt in challenging). This would allow for a more rational sharing of profit between the safe harbor and the copyright holder, rather than an all or nothing legal game.
A good way for Viacom to police Youtube content under this system would be to offer a "bounty" percentage of ad revenue to viewers who report the clips. Suddenly you would have a large population of viewers very familiar will Viacom brands. The system would even be robust enough that attempts to abuse the system (upload, encourage others to view, then challenge for profit) would be good for both YouTube's and Viacom's bottom line.
Viacom vs. Google doesn't have to be a zero-sum game.
Slashdot Mirror
"I am fully convinced that Chiropractors prevent thousands of unnecessary surgeries every year. When it comes to neuromusculoskeletal conditions, I don't think other health care providers can make that claim." I am fully convinced that Yoga Therapists with training in Western Physical Therapy do the same, and with less risk to the patient. The hybrid vigor between those two disciplines is tremendous.
I'm not an economist. Why is a tax based on income preferred to a tax based on amount of assets? Like 5%. Corporate entities would be taxed the same way.
Cheater, I know you faked most of those experience points! You are so out of our playgroup! You'll never run a character in one of my games again!
Are you referring to the fractional reserve banking system as the source of new money? I just recently came across that, thanks to someone's sig line on here, which pointed to the "Money as Debt" instructional animation at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-905047436 2583451279 which is incredibly illuminating. It did take me a few weeks to prove to myself that it isn't bullshit though, and it helped that I have a friend who loan officer at a bank and he believes in the current system. He played a great devil's advocate.
I'm not sure you made the correct decision regarding the Pluto misinformation. I remember when I was in the 3rd grade (10 years old?) My teacher mentioned that the Empire States Building was the largest in the world. This was in the early 80's, no shit. I had just gone to stay with my Aunt that summer, in Chicago, who worked in the Sear's Tower, and she took me on the tour. Realizing that teachers can be very wrong, while sill being nice and well meaning, at an early age helped me to grow into a skeptical & free thinker. You may have missed a potentially invaluable life lesson.
Sure, but I don't get how Jobs thinks his new market share on PCs will come at the expense of Firefox. I am an apple fanboy, and Safari isn't even good enough for me to use on my apple machines- I use Firefox. I expect the Firefox userbase on Windows is pretty much like the Firefox userbase on Macs... I don't see Firefox loosing. The probable real motive for Safari deployment is explained is dozens of other posts.
And it worked for Six Feet Under. Everyone's life story really does end with death. I will pick the easy "everyone dies" over the kitsch "happily ever after" any day of the week: I remember the movies in the 80's. I prefer it to the arthouse/French "nothing changes, no one grows" as well. Killing everyone off at the end of the narrative is better. It worked for the Greeks, it worked for Shakespeare. It is true to life.
As for the Sopranos, if he lives or dies is immaterial to me: I felt like it portrayed his anxiety in a realistic manner for the first time. He is paranoid of everyone, even when he appears calm and unaware, it seems to Tony like anyone could be his killer and some disaster is about to happen to his Meadow any second now. The source of his fear is not specific, it is the human condition as far as he knows. I would prefer that he died in some totally mundane way: heart attack or better yet traffic accident. That would match the tone of the show. After that I would've chosen a violent tragic death that results from his tragic flaw: continually shitting on his wife.
Tony emerges from below-deck, post-coital grin on his face and humming. Camera follows from behind, and pans counter-clockwise to show Carmela only a few feet away, standing on the pier. Tony, sees her, grunts (or other verbalization of indifference), and turns to return to the cabin.
"Tony, I've had enough,"
cut to black, with sound of gunshot. Two second pause, then sounds of wet gasping with heart beat. Pause. Two rapid gunshots. Silence. Three second pause. Roll credits.
Agreed: Little Snitch is an awesome program, and I think OS X ought to have its functions built in but turned off as a default. Like a box under System Preferences -> Network should read "Require approval for network connections" or something similar.
"If the store even hints that my info is going to be used beyond what it is supplied for, I wouldn't touch the place with a 10 foot pole." And that is the only way to encourage good privacy policies: make it effect the bottom line. It makes me shudder to read some of the proposals floating around designed to enforce privacy rights. The answer to this problem, like so many others is not new laws and policies. The cure would be worse than the disease.
Mentioning free programs in the same sentence as little-snitch leads me to suspect that you are working with a different definition for "free" than most of the others in this thread.
I have a sincere question about Consumer Reports: For many of their car and computer hardware stats don't they depend upon readers sending in surveys? Doesn't that mean their reports may suffer from heavy selection bias? My wife will veto any big ticket item purchase if it doesn't have a favorable review. Thankfully Apple and Honda do very well so I got what I wanted when it has mattered so far, but part of me is worried that even though Consumer Reports is independent their methodology may be crap. My guess is no, but since there isn't a single better data source consulting CR is an important component of an informed decision. Are the statistics published in Consumer Reports for cars and computers mathematically sound?
"Poke one subatomic-particle and the other one instantly changes spin!" Grind away brother, it doesn't make it any less true.
Oh, and just to make this post a little more on-topic: I will not be canceling my XM until the two channels of techno I listen to get canceled. That Carl Cox show they have on channel 80 "The Move" is so fucking good I feel like my head may explode when I hear it each week. If kicking O&A off the air helps provide political cover for the merger with Sirius, and that merger keeps the music I love on the air, than good riddance to Opie and Anthony.
A brief history of rights in the western tradition:
property rights -> limitations on governmental power -> civil liberties -> equal protection -> civil rights
Private property rights should trump civil liberties & civil rights, and to suggest otherwise undermines all freedom.
There could be a scale on each shelf that takes a mass reading, and "mass when empty" could be one of the values on the soy sauce RFID. Hell put a scale & RFID on the bottom of each potted plant you have so your 14th gen Roomba will know when to water them.
Your point, which I totally agree with, is that once everything that isn't instantly disposable gets a chip a million minor daily chores will go away.
They could even make tracking, organizing, and querying legos far easier. And collectible cards. And all other hobby supplies, including those you don't want the in-laws to find when they come up to visit.
Isn't that the youtube and youtube clone business model?
1. Create a safe harbor web 2.0 site.
2. Allow users to post media they do not own.
3. Collect ad revenue.
4. Take down content after the C&D letter arrives knowing that your users are posting faster than the C&D's can ship.
5. Profit!
Thanks for explaining away those pesky "..." lines.
If you were in England I would recommend a tasting at the L'Artisan du Chocolat factory in Ashford Kent. http://www.artisanduchocolat.com/ArtisanduChocola
Fine chocolate does not age well, does not travel well, and is wasted on an untutored pallet- just like fine wines, cheeses and scotch. There are many chocolatiers in New York, google for a factory-shop that does tastings.
Locally made, fresh, quality chocolate is something else. Hersey's is to Godvia as Godvia is to Michel Cluizel. There is a Michel Cluizel in NYC: http://www.chocolatmichelcluizel-na.com/about_us.
Now you have another fan.
AFDC: Aid to Families with Dependent Children (1935-1997) a.k.a. Federal welfare
TANF: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (1997-present) replaced AFDC and placed work requirements and time limitations on benefits. TANF is less expensive than AFDC was, but is less of a safety net. TANF is seen by most Democrats and Republicans as being superior to AFDC.
drinkypoo's expressed view on sterilization (taking him at face value, and out of context) is fairly common in the U.S.
Allowing bad parenting is yet another price of freedom, and is well worth it in my opinion. Every proposed solution to bad parenting involving new rules or laws I've heard of was far worse than the original problem. Let bad parents be bad parents, but try to have a personal and positive effect on the youth in your community. Outreach can be a pain, and may be fraught with risks, but it is very effective.
Your post left me thinking of a mysterious billionaire cat-trainer decked out in gold, furs, and diamonds. Like a stereotypical dirty-south rapper, only white & geeky, and with many cats.
You are correct about the rewards of socializing your cat. Playing fetch with my very large silver manx is serious fun.
(software quality + amount of file sharing)*(number of users)^(experience)= music quality
The music was good then, it is great now, and is expected to be even better tomorrow.
Others like Mark Farina use cds. Final Scratch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Scratch is still in use as well.
Judging by what was seen at the winter music conference this year, th stand set-up is four decks- two for cds and two for vinyl. Five years ago vinyl was the standard, but times are still changing.
Vinyl is still in common use, esp. for local or regional artists, but of the people I know who actually make their living off of playing music none use vinyl exclusively anymore.
I've lived several years in the US but I never understood this. Anyone cares to enlighten me as to why this is considered normal in a country where there is (supposedly) power separation ? Why does the government even have the power to fire attorneys/judges ? Why is it desirable ? And what do the fired attorneys do with their time until the next election rolls around ? Thank you. I could explain this better if I knew which country you are from. I'm guessing that you may be from a county where judges and and prosecuting attorneys serve under the same department or branch of government. That isn't the case here.
It is normal because the executive branch enforces the laws of the US, which means that law enforcement and prosecuting attorneys serve under the president in the org chart. The most senior members of law enforcement and most senior attorneys in the Justice Department are appointed by the president but must first be confirmed by a vote in the Senate. When a new presidential administration takes office it is standard practice to "clean house" and replace all political appointments. This is considered normal because it always happens and is expected to occur; it is understood that not only are we voting for the man who will serve as president but we are also voting on his judgment and ability to appoint compentent officials. The separation of powers is that the Congress writes and passes the laws and the courts rule on the enforcement of laws. Judges were not fired in this case, and cannot be fired by the president or anyone else in the executive branch.
It is desirable because it s a system that has worked well in the past- appointed officials are typically professional enough to serve the country rather than the just the president or the party of the president. The confirmation process helps to ensure that political operatives do not take office. Part of the reason why this specific case became such an issue is that the congress gave up it's right to a confirmation process to replace district attorneys before the 8 were fired, that law was just repealed so now any future replacements will again be required to meet the approval of the Senate.
In politically sensitive cases a "special prosecutor" is named who (basically) cannot be fired by the Attorney General or the President, to prevent the appearance of a conflict of interest.
The fired attorneys are senior attorneys, they shouldn't have much trouble finding jobs in the private sector. These were the most senior attorneys in the district (multi-state region) where they served, and they know the circuit-court judges, the junior attorneys that are not appointed, and how the system works in a very intimate way. They are very employable, but stand little chance of serving as a US district attorney again. Many of the people nominated to serve as a federal judge have previous experience as a district attorney- that is how valuable the experience is.
I hope I answered your questions well... I'll check back later to resole any other questions you may have.
A little bit of cultural context, and some insight into the difficulties any well-meaning company faces as they grow and grow in size and number of locations- an insightful post. Thanks.
I'm not a Google apologist, but I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt most of the time. This inclination may be the result of an illusion, but there usually is a "they're doing less than evil" explanation like this one.
Then Viacom would start quietly putting up its own content on YouTube, waiting until it was no longer part of their business plan to have it publicly available, and then send YouTube a takedown notice and demand for restitution.
Viacom gets all the profits, and Google is stuck with all the distribution costs. That's even LESS fair than the current model where Viacom and YouTube both make profits off Viacom's works proportional to the resources they dedicate to distributing them.
Just modify the idea from grandparent so that Viacom's share of Google ad revenue from Viacom IP would be (google's ad revenue)-(google's overhead including admin and distribution costs)-(some number based upon how long the content was left unchallenged to encourage IP owners to be prompt in challenging). This would allow for a more rational sharing of profit between the safe harbor and the copyright holder, rather than an all or nothing legal game. A good way for Viacom to police Youtube content under this system would be to offer a "bounty" percentage of ad revenue to viewers who report the clips. Suddenly you would have a large population of viewers very familiar will Viacom brands. The system would even be robust enough that attempts to abuse the system (upload, encourage others to view, then challenge for profit) would be good for both YouTube's and Viacom's bottom line. Viacom vs. Google doesn't have to be a zero-sum game.