That's a silly thing to say, and it's obviously false.
*sigh*. You're right, we're living in an era of unparalleled cooperation between the two dominant political parties. The Republicans in the legislature haven't been obstinate for the sake of obstruction at all, no. *sigh*
According to polls, many Americans were opposed to the passage of the ACA; sometimes a majority.
And so this is your rationale for claiming that it was pushed down Americans' throats? That for the most part a minority of Americans were opposed to it? I suppose you're similarly opposed to any other legislation that falls short of unanimous support?
Sadly, it's unlikely that anything interesting will happen this year. I don't see the Democrat/Republican control over our government weakening any time soon. If you expect any meaningful change to come from either side of the same coin, you haven't been paying attention.
Not one Republican in Congress has voted for any bill supported by Obama. That's more an indication of hyperpartisanship than merit of the legislation itself. The ACA was pushed down Republicans' throats, for sure. Americans in general, however, supported it to various extents. I myself supported it, despite thinking it's shitty, because it's still less shitty than the alternative. Despite being a part of the "hates the ACA" statistic, I still supported its passage, and I wouldn't say it was pushed down my throat any more than our previous shitty healthcare system was pushed down my throat.
The bill was Romney's. He campaigned for it. The legislature made a number of changes, but it was his bill. That it was also supported by Democrats has no bearing on this fact. After the bill's passage, Romney engaged in extensive self-congratulatory behavior. He did not grumble about the terrible healthcare reform bill that was passed against his wishes.
Also, can you please clear up what you mean by "Romney signed the bill with 8 gubernatorial vetos, of which 6 were overridden by the state legislature." I was under the impression that Romney was the governor of Massachusetts at the time. Are you saying he vetoed and signed the bill simultaneously? Or that he didn't sign it because he didn't need to because the bill was passed with a veto-proof majority of the legislature? Or that Romney was battling himself to veto/sign the bill?
Romney signed legislation that the people of Massachusetts (a very liberal state) wanted.
Don't try to distance him from this legislation. While the Massachusetts legislature did make a number of changes to Romney's original proposal before it was passed, it was Romney's proposal. It wasn't some ballot initiative or invention of the legislature.
Additionally, you'll find that there was widespread support for healthcare reform at the national level as well. Much like the Massachusetts healthcare reform, national healthcare reform was also something that the people wanted. And much like the Massachusetts healthcare reform, the national healthcare reform also had its share of opposition. You make it sound like the American public was united against the ACA, when it is plainly obvious to any honest person that there was in fact extensive support for an overhaul of our healthcare system. Obama had made healthcare reform a large part of the platform that got him elected. This wasn't something that was snuck in or pushed down anyone's throat. It may be hard for some people to believe it, but there's actually a whole range of different opinions on this issue. Just because it was pushed down the throat of an unwilling sideslash doesn't mean the rest of the country was opposed to reform.
That being said, I believe the ACA sucks ass and that single payer was the way to go. I suppose you'd count me alongside yourself as part of the "unwilling American public"?
I'm aware of the rack, but I've already got way too much shit in the kitchen. One day, it came down to the microwave bacon rack or the immersion blender, and I decided the immersion blender was way more valuable to me.
That being said, wringing out the paper towels would be blasphemy. By that point, the lard has already been tainted with that paper towel flavor. Don't ask me how I know.
How do we know that production of kiddie porn is motivated by financial concerns? How do we know that eliminating the "market" for kiddie porn will eliminate or decrease the production of kiddie porn and the resulting exploitation of children? Is it not possible that pedophiles, hebephiles, and ephebophiles would continue to violate children and adolescents and retain photographic evidence of their crimes even without financial motivation to do so?
Conversations on this subject come across as a whole bunch of unfounded assumptions. It does not follow that legalization of kiddie porn necessarily encourages exploitation of more children. I'm fine with acknowledging my own personal assumption that most child abuse is not a result of it being "lucrative" but instead stems from family members (or close family friends) taking advantage of children to satisfy their own personal desires. Are you suggesting creepy uncles only molest little kids because it's "lucrative"?
I know it can be difficult to restrain oneself when there's a parcel of gooey deliciousness sitting there, fumes of flavor enticing and tempting. But really, if you just wait approximately three minutes after it's out of the microwave, you'll find that the outside is still nice and toasty, but now the inside isn't some strange combination of lava and ice cubes. Let that heat distribution even out and your processed food product will be much more enjoyable.
Seriously. This coming from a bacon lover who saved the rendered bacon lard from all his bacon frying adventures. Once you go microwave bacon, you never go back. Perfectly crispy every time.
But you don't get to save all the bacon lard, unfortunately. Good thing I still have a solid 8 oz. left from my frying days.
You're misrepresenting the problem. Google Voice is not singling out messages sent from IPhones.
Group messages from any phone are sent as MMS. Google Voice does not support any MMS. It's Google Voice, not 'gMessage'.
Note: When replying to group messages, IPhones default to 'reply all' and send MMS. Some Android phones default to 'reply' and send SMS, others default to 'reply all' and send MMS.
You keep talking about this low end Universal Communication solution. I have no idea what that's supposed to mean, but I find it interesting that you're very specific with your phrasing. I'm surprised to hear that Apple is peddling a low end anything, but is there also some kind of high end Universal Communication solution?
Sprint and AT&T both offer unlimited talk&text plans, and they are both nationwide carriers with a majority of their coverage areas lying outside of major metropolitcan areas. I can't speak for Verizon or T-Mobile, but I'd be surprised if they didn't offer such plans.
That being said, I prefer SMS over IP-based messaging, and everyone I know still uses SMS (not "TXT") or MMS for domestic messaging.
Sure, except that Google Talk was discontinued a while back. That and the fact that Google Talk didn't double as an SMS messaging application. Which suggests that this isn't anything like a friend stopping using Google Talk.
This really has to do with elasticity of demand. You're assuming that people's bandwidth usage is for the most part constant, but that spending can be variable. I'm assuming that people's spending is for the most part constant, and their bandwidth usage is variable. Reality is somewhere in between. I do know that if I was on a metered ISP, I'd think twice before leaving all these torrents seeding, or before downloading the entire set of Globe Trekker episodes, because I have only so much I'm willing to spend on Internet access. Similarly, if (for the price I'm already paying today) I had unlimited 1Gbps service, I'd download a lot more than I do already.
You do bring up a very valid point though. Due to geographical monopolies, there's very little stopping ISPs from sitting on their aging infrastructure while subscribers clog it up completely with their demand for bandwidth. Degradation of service may piss customers off, but what are they going to do, switch to the nonexistent competitor ISP? Indeed, a lack of competition really does limit the pressure on ISPs to upgrade their shit.
However, your claim that people paying more encourages investment in infrastructure is similarly impacted by the lack of competition. While in theory, having better infrastructure allows a metering ISP to sell more bits to their customers, it also allows them to raise prices to increase revenues while discouraging any expansion in traffic load. The market will bear quite a bit when there's no effective competition.
And so either way, we end up with shitty infrastructure, which is consistent with what we see today. In the end, it may not really matter whether ISPs offer metered or unlimited service. In the end, consumers are fucked either way. The real reason why we don't see any meaningful investment in infrastructure is lack of effective competition. This is further corroborated by the fact that every time Google so much as looks at an area as a candidate for a fiber rollout, incumbent ISPs start scrambling to provide improved service offerings.
I can only imagine how much your coworkers appreciated your presence there, after a 40 minute uphill bike ride wearing unbreathable rain gear. Unless of course this was one of those mythical minimum wage jobs that provides workers with access to showers.
Wow, within five years they'll be offering us some blazing fast 925Kb/s service. I can't wait.
Pedantic 2 cents: Bandwidth, in networking, is the difference between the highest and lowest frequencies in a given band of frequencies. That is, it is the width of a band on a graph where the horizontal axis denotes frequency. Bandwidth, capacity, and throughput are not synonymous. Bandwidth is measured in Hz, but we've all gotten rather lazy and far removed from the physical layer.
In all fairness, why should you get 2TB of bandwidth for the same price as the other 90% who are using 500GB?
Because this encourages people to use more bandwidth. When people use more bandwidth, it encourages investment in infrastructure. When infrastructure is invested in, speeds get faster for everyone.
I never understood the argument for conservation of bandwidth. Sure, we could start nickle and diming everyone for each bit they push. That would indeed put downward pressure on the amount of traffic flowing across these links, which should in turn stave off any need to upgrade the infrastructure. Is that what we want? Why?
Indeed, so this whole debate is much ado about nothing. Since southern California is a veritable rain forest, there's no shortage of potable water and no concern for irrigation of agricultural land.
Thank you for offering your two cents. Perhaps you can inform the news media and the farmers in that area, as they've been unable to STFU about the dire water shortage throughout the Central Valley.
Also, you may want to correct the numerous articles that refer to parts of the Central Valley as semi-arid desert. Maybe start with Wikipedia, which tells me the Central Valley includes "the Tulare Basin and its semi-arid desert climate at the southernmost end."
Finally, I suggest you take a road trip outside of the area to get some perspective. To many Americans, the Central Valley could be described as a desert, even if only in the colloquial sense. The Central Valley, while sunny, is not naturally arable land. Without extensive irrigation, none of the crops that cover it today would survive.
Ah, that makes sense. There's not enough water in the Great Plains, so we're moving our agriculture to the lush Mojave Desert with its bountiful aquifers?
My apologies. Farmers in the desert use about 8 times as much water as California urbanites. Of course, if you look at per-person usage, it's probably hundreds of times more water, but there's no need to go down that road.
Anyway, California's gross state product is right around $2T, which suggests that those farms in the San Joaquin account for less than one percent of California's economy. It's a rounding error. Any economic argument is bound to fail here, as agriculture is virtually meaningless in this context.
As far as supplying half the fruit in this nation, are you suggesting that without insane subsidies it would still be cheaper to farm in the Californian desert than to simply import fruit from actual arable land? I find that hard to believe, and you haven't offered any convincing evidence.
I don't want food grown in a desert, no. There's plenty of agricultural land elsewhere. In places that get actual rainfall. In places where there are no hipster douchebags or urban centers. Why can't food be grown in the Great Plains instead of the Mojave Desert?
Slashdot Mirror
That's a silly thing to say, and it's obviously false.
*sigh*. You're right, we're living in an era of unparalleled cooperation between the two dominant political parties. The Republicans in the legislature haven't been obstinate for the sake of obstruction at all, no. *sigh*
According to polls, many Americans were opposed to the passage of the ACA; sometimes a majority.
And so this is your rationale for claiming that it was pushed down Americans' throats? That for the most part a minority of Americans were opposed to it? I suppose you're similarly opposed to any other legislation that falls short of unanimous support?
Sadly, it's unlikely that anything interesting will happen this year. I don't see the Democrat/Republican control over our government weakening any time soon. If you expect any meaningful change to come from either side of the same coin, you haven't been paying attention.
Not one Republican in Congress has voted for any bill supported by Obama. That's more an indication of hyperpartisanship than merit of the legislation itself. The ACA was pushed down Republicans' throats, for sure. Americans in general, however, supported it to various extents. I myself supported it, despite thinking it's shitty, because it's still less shitty than the alternative. Despite being a part of the "hates the ACA" statistic, I still supported its passage, and I wouldn't say it was pushed down my throat any more than our previous shitty healthcare system was pushed down my throat.
See my other response here.
The bill was Romney's. He campaigned for it. The legislature made a number of changes, but it was his bill. That it was also supported by Democrats has no bearing on this fact. After the bill's passage, Romney engaged in extensive self-congratulatory behavior. He did not grumble about the terrible healthcare reform bill that was passed against his wishes.
Also, can you please clear up what you mean by "Romney signed the bill with 8 gubernatorial vetos, of which 6 were overridden by the state legislature." I was under the impression that Romney was the governor of Massachusetts at the time. Are you saying he vetoed and signed the bill simultaneously? Or that he didn't sign it because he didn't need to because the bill was passed with a veto-proof majority of the legislature? Or that Romney was battling himself to veto/sign the bill?
Romney signed legislation that the people of Massachusetts (a very liberal state) wanted.
Don't try to distance him from this legislation. While the Massachusetts legislature did make a number of changes to Romney's original proposal before it was passed, it was Romney's proposal. It wasn't some ballot initiative or invention of the legislature.
Additionally, you'll find that there was widespread support for healthcare reform at the national level as well. Much like the Massachusetts healthcare reform, national healthcare reform was also something that the people wanted. And much like the Massachusetts healthcare reform, the national healthcare reform also had its share of opposition. You make it sound like the American public was united against the ACA, when it is plainly obvious to any honest person that there was in fact extensive support for an overhaul of our healthcare system. Obama had made healthcare reform a large part of the platform that got him elected. This wasn't something that was snuck in or pushed down anyone's throat. It may be hard for some people to believe it, but there's actually a whole range of different opinions on this issue. Just because it was pushed down the throat of an unwilling sideslash doesn't mean the rest of the country was opposed to reform.
That being said, I believe the ACA sucks ass and that single payer was the way to go. I suppose you'd count me alongside yourself as part of the "unwilling American public"?
I'm aware of the rack, but I've already got way too much shit in the kitchen. One day, it came down to the microwave bacon rack or the immersion blender, and I decided the immersion blender was way more valuable to me.
That being said, wringing out the paper towels would be blasphemy. By that point, the lard has already been tainted with that paper towel flavor. Don't ask me how I know.
How do we know that production of kiddie porn is motivated by financial concerns? How do we know that eliminating the "market" for kiddie porn will eliminate or decrease the production of kiddie porn and the resulting exploitation of children? Is it not possible that pedophiles, hebephiles, and ephebophiles would continue to violate children and adolescents and retain photographic evidence of their crimes even without financial motivation to do so?
Conversations on this subject come across as a whole bunch of unfounded assumptions. It does not follow that legalization of kiddie porn necessarily encourages exploitation of more children. I'm fine with acknowledging my own personal assumption that most child abuse is not a result of it being "lucrative" but instead stems from family members (or close family friends) taking advantage of children to satisfy their own personal desires. Are you suggesting creepy uncles only molest little kids because it's "lucrative"?
I would say "thanks Obama" but it's more like "thanks Democrats" since the ACA disaster was passed on a 100% partisan basis.
Nevermind that it's virtually identical to the plan that Romney implemented in his home state.
If you still think there's any meaningful difference between Democrats and Republicans, you're hopelessly ignorant of the world around you.
Pull your head out of your ass, stop throwing your vote away, and support an independent or third party next time around.
It's really not rocket science. You wait.
I know it can be difficult to restrain oneself when there's a parcel of gooey deliciousness sitting there, fumes of flavor enticing and tempting. But really, if you just wait approximately three minutes after it's out of the microwave, you'll find that the outside is still nice and toasty, but now the inside isn't some strange combination of lava and ice cubes. Let that heat distribution even out and your processed food product will be much more enjoyable.
Microwave bacon.
Seriously. This coming from a bacon lover who saved the rendered bacon lard from all his bacon frying adventures. Once you go microwave bacon, you never go back. Perfectly crispy every time.
But you don't get to save all the bacon lard, unfortunately. Good thing I still have a solid 8 oz. left from my frying days.
You're misrepresenting the problem. Google Voice is not singling out messages sent from IPhones.
Group messages from any phone are sent as MMS. Google Voice does not support any MMS. It's Google Voice, not 'gMessage'.
Note: When replying to group messages, IPhones default to 'reply all' and send MMS. Some Android phones default to 'reply' and send SMS, others default to 'reply all' and send MMS.
You keep talking about this low end Universal Communication solution. I have no idea what that's supposed to mean, but I find it interesting that you're very specific with your phrasing. I'm surprised to hear that Apple is peddling a low end anything, but is there also some kind of high end Universal Communication solution?
Sprint and AT&T both offer unlimited talk&text plans, and they are both nationwide carriers with a majority of their coverage areas lying outside of major metropolitcan areas. I can't speak for Verizon or T-Mobile, but I'd be surprised if they didn't offer such plans.
That being said, I prefer SMS over IP-based messaging, and everyone I know still uses SMS (not "TXT") or MMS for domestic messaging.
Sure, except that Google Talk was discontinued a while back. That and the fact that Google Talk didn't double as an SMS messaging application. Which suggests that this isn't anything like a friend stopping using Google Talk.
This really has to do with elasticity of demand. You're assuming that people's bandwidth usage is for the most part constant, but that spending can be variable. I'm assuming that people's spending is for the most part constant, and their bandwidth usage is variable. Reality is somewhere in between. I do know that if I was on a metered ISP, I'd think twice before leaving all these torrents seeding, or before downloading the entire set of Globe Trekker episodes, because I have only so much I'm willing to spend on Internet access. Similarly, if (for the price I'm already paying today) I had unlimited 1Gbps service, I'd download a lot more than I do already.
You do bring up a very valid point though. Due to geographical monopolies, there's very little stopping ISPs from sitting on their aging infrastructure while subscribers clog it up completely with their demand for bandwidth. Degradation of service may piss customers off, but what are they going to do, switch to the nonexistent competitor ISP? Indeed, a lack of competition really does limit the pressure on ISPs to upgrade their shit.
However, your claim that people paying more encourages investment in infrastructure is similarly impacted by the lack of competition. While in theory, having better infrastructure allows a metering ISP to sell more bits to their customers, it also allows them to raise prices to increase revenues while discouraging any expansion in traffic load. The market will bear quite a bit when there's no effective competition.
And so either way, we end up with shitty infrastructure, which is consistent with what we see today. In the end, it may not really matter whether ISPs offer metered or unlimited service. In the end, consumers are fucked either way. The real reason why we don't see any meaningful investment in infrastructure is lack of effective competition. This is further corroborated by the fact that every time Google so much as looks at an area as a candidate for a fiber rollout, incumbent ISPs start scrambling to provide improved service offerings.
I can only imagine how much your coworkers appreciated your presence there, after a 40 minute uphill bike ride wearing unbreathable rain gear. Unless of course this was one of those mythical minimum wage jobs that provides workers with access to showers.
To avoid encouraging a bandwidth-conservation culture and instead provide an incentive for the ISP to continually upgrade their infrastructure.
Wow, within five years they'll be offering us some blazing fast 925Kb/s service. I can't wait.
Pedantic 2 cents: Bandwidth, in networking, is the difference between the highest and lowest frequencies in a given band of frequencies. That is, it is the width of a band on a graph where the horizontal axis denotes frequency. Bandwidth, capacity, and throughput are not synonymous. Bandwidth is measured in Hz, but we've all gotten rather lazy and far removed from the physical layer.
In all fairness, why should you get 2TB of bandwidth for the same price as the other 90% who are using 500GB?
Because this encourages people to use more bandwidth. When people use more bandwidth, it encourages investment in infrastructure. When infrastructure is invested in, speeds get faster for everyone.
I never understood the argument for conservation of bandwidth. Sure, we could start nickle and diming everyone for each bit they push. That would indeed put downward pressure on the amount of traffic flowing across these links, which should in turn stave off any need to upgrade the infrastructure. Is that what we want? Why?
I googled i-MiEV:
MSRP: From $22,995
How does one get 1/3 off the MSRP?
I agree. You are the worst driver ever.
Most people that drive like idiots do so inadvertantly. You, on the other hand, do so with great deliberation.
You make me wish I had a huge manly unaerodynamic truck to run you off the road with.
Just get yourself an electric bicycle and be done with it.
Heart rocks. I saw them a few years ago, and they've still got it. Also, early 70s Nancy was hot :)
Indeed, so this whole debate is much ado about nothing. Since southern California is a veritable rain forest, there's no shortage of potable water and no concern for irrigation of agricultural land.
Thank you for offering your two cents. Perhaps you can inform the news media and the farmers in that area, as they've been unable to STFU about the dire water shortage throughout the Central Valley.
Also, you may want to correct the numerous articles that refer to parts of the Central Valley as semi-arid desert. Maybe start with Wikipedia, which tells me the Central Valley includes "the Tulare Basin and its semi-arid desert climate at the southernmost end."
Finally, I suggest you take a road trip outside of the area to get some perspective. To many Americans, the Central Valley could be described as a desert, even if only in the colloquial sense. The Central Valley, while sunny, is not naturally arable land. Without extensive irrigation, none of the crops that cover it today would survive.
Ah, that makes sense. There's not enough water in the Great Plains, so we're moving our agriculture to the lush Mojave Desert with its bountiful aquifers?
... wat?
My apologies. Farmers in the desert use about 8 times as much water as California urbanites. Of course, if you look at per-person usage, it's probably hundreds of times more water, but there's no need to go down that road.
Anyway, California's gross state product is right around $2T, which suggests that those farms in the San Joaquin account for less than one percent of California's economy. It's a rounding error. Any economic argument is bound to fail here, as agriculture is virtually meaningless in this context.
As far as supplying half the fruit in this nation, are you suggesting that without insane subsidies it would still be cheaper to farm in the Californian desert than to simply import fruit from actual arable land? I find that hard to believe, and you haven't offered any convincing evidence.
I don't want food grown in a desert, no. There's plenty of agricultural land elsewhere. In places that get actual rainfall. In places where there are no hipster douchebags or urban centers. Why can't food be grown in the Great Plains instead of the Mojave Desert?