I hate the taste and texture of most vegetables and always have. I'm eating more now than I used to because I understand the health benefits, but it took a while to get past the gag reflex for some (cooked leafy greens especially). It also helps that my wife loves more kinds of vegetables than I knew even existed.
That being said, we are trying what you are (I think) implying parents should do. Treats for my daughter often include fruits and veggies. And it's already starting to pay off (my daughter is not yet 3), as the other day she finished off her broccoli and cauliflower while the chicken alfredo was only half eaten.
I'll also add that it's amazing how sweet even sour fruits can seem when you cut out the junk food sweets from your diet. It does take a while to get the tongue used to the less sweetened foods if you've been eating lots of sugary foods. That was one of the hard things for my wife when she moved from Vietnam to the states in her early teens. She couldn't eat a lot of American junk foods because they were too sweet. I've had the Viet version of Jell-o. It's not very good, but she thinks it is sweet.
Why did you question (and post those questions to) the previous poster? I'll tell you right now you had no choice in the matter. You had an illusion of choice. No matter how hard and long you thought about what was written, you were going to have those questions and you were going to post those questions. But then, I'm erring there, because no matter what you may think contrariwise, you were going to think as long and hard about what was written as you did, no more, no less. I've rewritten this submission several times, but no matter what, I was going to rewrite it several times. I've also looked out the window a couple of times while writing this, but I had no say in the matter.
Consider rocks falling in an avalanche (not that you have any choice in the matter, you will or you won't but it won't be by decision). Rocks falling down in an avalanche are just as pointless as your (and my) posts. Sure they have effects that are due to causes, which were only effects from other causes ad infinitum, and the end result is the end result, but there was no point to it. You only think you have a point, but you don't, just like the rocks in the avalanche don't have a point. Just like the rocks, you are simply yet another effect of previous causes, which are simply effects of the causes before them, ad infinitum.
In fact, the term "no matter what" is ridiculous, because in the end, it mattered. This post is a result of me writing the previous iterations. I wouldn't have ended up with this post, unless I had written the previous iterations, as those were just some of the causes of this effect. Because I wrote those previous iterations, I ended up writing this. Then again, I had no say in writing those previous iterations. Those were merely the effects of you writing what you did, which was utterly pointless, just as the rocks had no point. Also, I have no point, I merely think I do. Then again, cause and effect tells me that there were some causes that effected me to think that, as well as think that cause and effect has any say in the matter.
In the end, no matter what, you are either going to reply to me, or you aren't, but you only think you are making that decision, and no matter which "decision" you make, it was all caused by the environmental factors that are effecting you. Just understand that you have no point. But there is no point in me telling you that. We are, after all, just rocks in the avalanche.
Why do you hope we have free will? I don't even understand that hope. What does holding on to the idea of free will give you? Why even care?
Free will discussions always make me laugh. If we have no free will, then the GP has no choice whether to hope for it, or whether or not to care. Those things are just a manifestation of all the environmental factors that have been in the posters life, so it's pointless to question him for holding out hope or caring. Then again, it's pointless for me to tell you not to question because your questioning is only a manifestation of the environmental factors in your life. But then again, I couldn't help but to tell you that because that was determined by the environmental factors in my life, including this train of posts.
In short, I'd like to say we should all forget about the whole mess, but nobody has any control over whether or not to forget about the whole mess. Heck, I can't even stop myself from laughing at these kinds of discussions.
How do you propose that the government not make money off of it? Are you suggesting that they provide a special exemption to drugs from sales tax? I know Washington state (and I'm sure others) don't have sales taxes on unprepared foods, but I'm having a hard time seeing cocaine lumped into the same category as bread and cheese.
If the will is, even in part, determined by the environment, it may as well be completely determined by the environment.
I can think of a lot of stuff that is determined by something else "in part" but would be absolutely ridiculous to then come to the conclusion that it may as well be determined completely by that other thing. Just looking around me, the water in my cup is shaped like my cup, but the shape of the cup only plays a part; gravity is also a contributing factor. The colors on my screen are effected by the red values, but the blue and green values also contribute to that (and if they didn't, my colorblind eyes would have a hard time making out all the different shades of red).
It's ridiculous to think that if the environment plays even a small part that it may as well play the whole part. In fact, saying that the environment plays a small part acknowledges that there is something other than the environment that is at play. Either the environment is the whole picture, or there is something else there. Those are the only options. That other stuff can be the whole picture or can share the space with the environment, but you cannot have the environment playing a small part and yet being the only part.
as if the Japanese people were a different species.
I know it's not all that nice to bring up differences in races, but those differences exist. For example, my wife (Vietnamese) discovered that Asians are more likely to be diagnosed with gestational diabetes but after more research found that part of the problem isn't that Asians get it more often, it's that doctors diagnose them with gestational diabetes more often than they ought because their bodies handle the tests differently.
Let's start with the disclaimers: I doubt the best solution is 100% government or free market and 0% of opposite. I do lean more towards free market though.
What you wrote is wrong. Let's look at the US (and all industrialized nations) in the mid to late 19th and early 20th century. For starters, they were industrialized because of the free market. Because the free market brought in the industrial revolution most people finally had more prospects than farming. Not that there is anything wrong with being a farmer, it's just that if that's not what you wanted to do in life, before the industrial revolution, you didn't really have many other options.
Those 12 hour days and 6-7 day work weeks were on the way out by the time the government got involved. Labor Unions had done a lot to change that. But even without labor unions, you eventually get people who wise up and realize that a happy workforce with low turnover is a more productive work force. In fact, it is not the government that decided that 40 hour work weeks should be the norm, it was the free market in the form of Henry Ford.
And as for your illiteracy stats, it was the industrial revolution that brought prices of paper down enough which allowed for people to learn to read and write. Also, you're stats are bunk. Illiteracy rates in 1870 was about 20% and that declines to less than 8% by 1910.
I can't make out the point of your comment. Are you trying to refute the GP with that quote? Mice, like humans, have mammary glands. Does that mean we are descended from mice? Or could it be that we are both separate branches that coexist with each other?
For Evolution, the biggest problem is the jump from non-life to life
This is one thing that many people do not understand about evolution. Evolution is totally unconnected with how life came to be. The jump you mention is Abiogenesis, not evolution. You have valid questions about the increase of complexity which a sibling poster comments on, but the jump from inanimate to living is not in the domain of evolution.
While I agree that copyright terms should be much shorter, I don't think they should end at death. Copyright laws are an incentive to create. For many (if not all) that incentive is financial. If J.G. Ballard decided to write one more book while on his death bed so that his family could profit off of it, that'd be no different than an engineer doing one more year of work while on Chemo so that his family could profit off that. That being said, I do think that the inherited copyright ought to be taxed the same way as any other inheritance. Either tax all income at the inheritance tax rate, tax the remaining length of the term at the same rate (10 years left taxed at 10% becomes 9 years) or both.
I like the idea of various copyright term lengths, but I don't think they should be automatically grouped by medium or any thing of the like. I think it ought to be based on how much money you are willing to pay. There should still be limits. But we could have system where the longer the terms, the more costly, such as:
5 years: $500
10 years: $25,000
20 years: $100,000
40 years: $1,000,000
You could then say 40 years is the maximum, you can renew any time while your copyright is still valid, bu you'll have to pay the higher amount minus what you already paid.
The point of copyright laws (at least in the US) were to act as an incentive to get people to create works that would eventually go into the public domain. We all know that not all works are worth the same. I could put together an album or a book this weekend that certainly would only be worth 5 years of copyright (if that), but Warner Bros. would be fools not to think the Dark Knight is worth at least 10.
This way the creator can estimate how much he thinks he will earn or decide how much that kind of control of his works is worth to him. In the Warner Bros. example, Most of their money will come in the first 5 years (as in almost all cases), but there will be some trickle effect wherein they figure they'll get another million between 5 and 10 years, but decide it won't be worth getting the 20 years. At the same time, J.K. Rowling might decide that since she's releasing (speaking as if she had only released Philospher's Stone) 6 more books over the course of 10 years, with movies not being finished years after that, and knowing that even the last movie will garner interest in the first book, decides for a copyright length of 20 years. Disney would choose 40 years for all of their works regardless of their quality.
I should also mention that I think the automatic copyrighting thing is stupid. If you want copyright protections for your works, file it with the copyright office.
You haven't looked much into what Trent Reznor is doing have you? He's making lots of money of concerts for sure, but that is hardly what the GP is referring to. He's trying a bunch of different models, even some that would work for other forms of entertainment, including books, movies, and games. And to be certain, he's not the only one. Jill Sobule raised over $75,000 in less than two months to finance her next album. That is, fans gave her money for an album she hadn't even made yet. I bet if Asimov were still around, and he asked his fans for $75,000 to fund his next book, he'd have it in less time than that.
I live in Seattle (well, eastside anyway) but grew up in Phoenix. The clouds and the rain don't bother me. Maybe it's still a novelty for me, but I don't see my views on it changing anytime soon. Granted, I didn't mind the heat in Phoenix , nor the humidity in Houston. So maybe I'm just weird in that I don't put too much stock in weather. In either case, I like Seattle.
Let's continue with your analogy. You take your meal home and add salt. It turns out your salt supplier failed to mention that its really sodium chromate instead of sodium chloride. Who is at fault? Who should "own" the problem?
How? Most of the electricity in this country comes from coal.
I think you answered your own question without even getting into specifics. Let's assume coal burning power plants and gas using cars have the same environmental footprint. 52% of electricity generated in the US is from coal. Just by switching to all electric cars cuts environmental impact by 50%.
That doesn't even take into account how much easier it is to clean coal emissions from a hundreds of immobile sources vs cleaning ICE emissions from hundreds of millions of moving sources. It also doesn't take into account how easy it would be to switch the power source. The numbers I've seen are about 600 coal plants and about 204 million cars in the US. Making a cleaner coal plant would require doing the same to 340,000 cars. But if we had all electric cars, then replacing one coal plant, or even just making one coal plant cleaner, means you've already made that many cars or more that much cleaner.
But it is creative. Or I should say, it can be creative. That song did not exist until Kutiman made it. Not one of the videos he used were that song, they were their own songs (and in some cases just sounds), but not the one he created.
I say, publisher followed simple supply/demand law
I don't think you understand economics. By all means, let WotC follow the law of Supply and Demand. All digital files are essentially infinite. The intersection of infinite supply with any demand, is at the price point of free.
As far as being customer goes, simple calculation of buck-per-hour should show you how much value you get.
It looks like you really are ignorant of economics. Value and price are two totally separate issues. Price is how much the buyer needs to pay to acquire the item, Value is how much the buyer is willing to pay. Only an idiot would pay more than he values, but everyone will pay less than they value it if given the opportunity. At best, that calculation will only tell the buyer a maximum amount he is willing to pay. However, determining value based on the number of hours has got to be one of the most simplistic and stupid ideas out there. If I'm traveling from San Diego to New York, should I pay more to drive or to fly? Should I pay more for the game Portal, or for Fury? Should I pay more for Gigli (121 minutes) or for Citizen Kane (119 minutes)?
This last weekend I bought twelve 8 ft 2x6 boards for a raised garden. I brought them home all inside my Honda Fit, totally enclosed, all doors shut, all windows closed. All I'm saying is that some of those subcompacts are not as compact as people think they are.
Changing the voting system would be great, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking it would solve the world's problems. I'd like to think it will, but the the issue I think is much deeper and lies not in the election system, but in people.
Try making a list of all the issues you consider to be important. Then prioritize that list. If you can do that for even 5 issues, I'd say you're already way ahead of the majority of actual voters, let alone eligible voters. Most people pick only 2-3 issues that are really important to them. These can be easily prioritized, but once you get up to 5 or more different issues it becomes more difficult.
Now that you've made your list, try finding someone in government anywhere that agrees with you on those 5 issues. If you have taken the time to do that, you're already way ahead of the vast majority of voters, who typically don't look beyond the little D or R at the end of a candidates name. Some will look past that and find out what the candidate's position is on their 2-3 issues. But now you've looked at a bunch of politicians for 5 or more issues, so you're winning
Now, out of all the candidate's you've got in your list, you're going to have to spend even more time (and remember the law of diminishing returns) figuring out which one you disagree with the least on all of the other issues you didn't pick and didn't prioritize. Unless you are extremely lucky (or are in your list of candidates) it is highly probable that you will end up disagreeing with your chosen candidate on many issues. As a recap, you've gone through a lot more time and effort than probably ~60% of voters (Look for Vote by Party ID) who have also gone through more effort and than ~62% of the eligible voters and you still ended up disagreeing with your candidate the same as if you hadn't gone through all that trouble.
tl;dr: Changing the voting system is a step in the right direction, but until people are willing to deal with more than just sound bites and easy "us vs them" choices, it's not going to mean a whole lot.
Congress shall accept no donations but from the People.
Hopefully this law would also block the buying-out of Congressmen by corporations.
This wouldn't do a thing to stop corporations from buying-out congress critters. Joe Lobbyist from Microsoft currently uses Microsoft's money to lobby congress critters with. If this law was passed, Microsoft would just give Joe Lobbyist some stupid job, and then give him large bonuses with every once in a while and encourage him to donate to his senator for the same reasons.
Having worked in an emergency room near downtown Phoenix for a time (not as a doctor, however) I can tell you that most of the time it was rather boring. Occasionally we got someone in who was badly messed up and that caused excitement, but for the most part it was uninsured people wanting to be checked out for the common cold.
If the gym offered an unlimited family plan, AND the gym considered orphans in an orphanage to be family, then you would have every right to use the gym as such. Would I complain? Yes, but not to you. I would complain to (and be angry with) the gym for overselling and tell them they need to increase capacity or limit use.
Go look again and you will see that no where in my post did I say anything for or against Time Warner's caps. I was only pointing out to Citizen of Earth that it is foolish to get angry at AliasMarlowe for using what AliasMarlowe had paid for. What he is complaining about isn't AliasMarlowe's fault, it's the ISP's fault for overselling. Reading it again, he's actually upset that his ISP doesn't offer a tiered pricing structure. Meaning he has to pay the same price as someone else who uses it more. To go back to the gym analogy, he isn't complaining that someone is using the gym all the time, he's complaining that he has to pay the same amount. And I merely pointed out to him that he was happy with the deal when he got it.
That having been said, if the ISP (or gym) decides to limit use (rather than upgrade capacity), then they need to realize they are changing the terms of the deal and that people who were once happy, might no longer be happy, and those people have every right to complain to the ISP (or gym). Unfortunately, most people don't have competing ISPs to choose from, so Time Warner can easily get away with this. Some other posters have pointed out that most (if not all) of the places they are introducing these caps to are places that have essentially no other alternative. If we solved that problem, the vast majority of problems with ISPs would go away.
Slashdot Mirror
I hate the taste and texture of most vegetables and always have. I'm eating more now than I used to because I understand the health benefits, but it took a while to get past the gag reflex for some (cooked leafy greens especially). It also helps that my wife loves more kinds of vegetables than I knew even existed.
That being said, we are trying what you are (I think) implying parents should do. Treats for my daughter often include fruits and veggies. And it's already starting to pay off (my daughter is not yet 3), as the other day she finished off her broccoli and cauliflower while the chicken alfredo was only half eaten.
I'll also add that it's amazing how sweet even sour fruits can seem when you cut out the junk food sweets from your diet. It does take a while to get the tongue used to the less sweetened foods if you've been eating lots of sugary foods. That was one of the hard things for my wife when she moved from Vietnam to the states in her early teens. She couldn't eat a lot of American junk foods because they were too sweet. I've had the Viet version of Jell-o. It's not very good, but she thinks it is sweet.
Why did you question (and post those questions to) the previous poster? I'll tell you right now you had no choice in the matter. You had an illusion of choice. No matter how hard and long you thought about what was written, you were going to have those questions and you were going to post those questions. But then, I'm erring there, because no matter what you may think contrariwise, you were going to think as long and hard about what was written as you did, no more, no less. I've rewritten this submission several times, but no matter what, I was going to rewrite it several times. I've also looked out the window a couple of times while writing this, but I had no say in the matter.
Consider rocks falling in an avalanche (not that you have any choice in the matter, you will or you won't but it won't be by decision). Rocks falling down in an avalanche are just as pointless as your (and my) posts. Sure they have effects that are due to causes, which were only effects from other causes ad infinitum, and the end result is the end result, but there was no point to it. You only think you have a point, but you don't, just like the rocks in the avalanche don't have a point. Just like the rocks, you are simply yet another effect of previous causes, which are simply effects of the causes before them, ad infinitum.
In fact, the term "no matter what" is ridiculous, because in the end, it mattered. This post is a result of me writing the previous iterations. I wouldn't have ended up with this post, unless I had written the previous iterations, as those were just some of the causes of this effect. Because I wrote those previous iterations, I ended up writing this. Then again, I had no say in writing those previous iterations. Those were merely the effects of you writing what you did, which was utterly pointless, just as the rocks had no point. Also, I have no point, I merely think I do. Then again, cause and effect tells me that there were some causes that effected me to think that, as well as think that cause and effect has any say in the matter.
In the end, no matter what, you are either going to reply to me, or you aren't, but you only think you are making that decision, and no matter which "decision" you make, it was all caused by the environmental factors that are effecting you. Just understand that you have no point. But there is no point in me telling you that. We are, after all, just rocks in the avalanche.
Free will discussions always make me laugh. If we have no free will, then the GP has no choice whether to hope for it, or whether or not to care. Those things are just a manifestation of all the environmental factors that have been in the posters life, so it's pointless to question him for holding out hope or caring. Then again, it's pointless for me to tell you not to question because your questioning is only a manifestation of the environmental factors in your life. But then again, I couldn't help but to tell you that because that was determined by the environmental factors in my life, including this train of posts.
In short, I'd like to say we should all forget about the whole mess, but nobody has any control over whether or not to forget about the whole mess. Heck, I can't even stop myself from laughing at these kinds of discussions.
How do you propose that the government not make money off of it? Are you suggesting that they provide a special exemption to drugs from sales tax? I know Washington state (and I'm sure others) don't have sales taxes on unprepared foods, but I'm having a hard time seeing cocaine lumped into the same category as bread and cheese.
I can think of a lot of stuff that is determined by something else "in part" but would be absolutely ridiculous to then come to the conclusion that it may as well be determined completely by that other thing. Just looking around me, the water in my cup is shaped like my cup, but the shape of the cup only plays a part; gravity is also a contributing factor. The colors on my screen are effected by the red values, but the blue and green values also contribute to that (and if they didn't, my colorblind eyes would have a hard time making out all the different shades of red).
It's ridiculous to think that if the environment plays even a small part that it may as well play the whole part. In fact, saying that the environment plays a small part acknowledges that there is something other than the environment that is at play. Either the environment is the whole picture, or there is something else there. Those are the only options. That other stuff can be the whole picture or can share the space with the environment, but you cannot have the environment playing a small part and yet being the only part.
I know it's not all that nice to bring up differences in races, but those differences exist. For example, my wife (Vietnamese) discovered that Asians are more likely to be diagnosed with gestational diabetes but after more research found that part of the problem isn't that Asians get it more often, it's that doctors diagnose them with gestational diabetes more often than they ought because their bodies handle the tests differently.
Dallas is in Northeast Texas. It doesn't surprise me in the least that a Texan would consider Dallas to be in "the Northeast".
Let's start with the disclaimers: I doubt the best solution is 100% government or free market and 0% of opposite. I do lean more towards free market though.
What you wrote is wrong. Let's look at the US (and all industrialized nations) in the mid to late 19th and early 20th century. For starters, they were industrialized because of the free market. Because the free market brought in the industrial revolution most people finally had more prospects than farming. Not that there is anything wrong with being a farmer, it's just that if that's not what you wanted to do in life, before the industrial revolution, you didn't really have many other options.
Those 12 hour days and 6-7 day work weeks were on the way out by the time the government got involved. Labor Unions had done a lot to change that. But even without labor unions, you eventually get people who wise up and realize that a happy workforce with low turnover is a more productive work force. In fact, it is not the government that decided that 40 hour work weeks should be the norm, it was the free market in the form of Henry Ford.
And as for your illiteracy stats, it was the industrial revolution that brought prices of paper down enough which allowed for people to learn to read and write. Also, you're stats are bunk. Illiteracy rates in 1870 was about 20% and that declines to less than 8% by 1910.
I can't make out the point of your comment. Are you trying to refute the GP with that quote? Mice, like humans, have mammary glands. Does that mean we are descended from mice? Or could it be that we are both separate branches that coexist with each other?
Interesting that the runner in that clip is wearing shoes.
This is one thing that many people do not understand about evolution. Evolution is totally unconnected with how life came to be. The jump you mention is Abiogenesis, not evolution. You have valid questions about the increase of complexity which a sibling poster comments on, but the jump from inanimate to living is not in the domain of evolution.
While I agree that copyright terms should be much shorter, I don't think they should end at death. Copyright laws are an incentive to create. For many (if not all) that incentive is financial. If J.G. Ballard decided to write one more book while on his death bed so that his family could profit off of it, that'd be no different than an engineer doing one more year of work while on Chemo so that his family could profit off that. That being said, I do think that the inherited copyright ought to be taxed the same way as any other inheritance. Either tax all income at the inheritance tax rate, tax the remaining length of the term at the same rate (10 years left taxed at 10% becomes 9 years) or both.
I like the idea of various copyright term lengths, but I don't think they should be automatically grouped by medium or any thing of the like. I think it ought to be based on how much money you are willing to pay. There should still be limits. But we could have system where the longer the terms, the more costly, such as:
You could then say 40 years is the maximum, you can renew any time while your copyright is still valid, bu you'll have to pay the higher amount minus what you already paid.
The point of copyright laws (at least in the US) were to act as an incentive to get people to create works that would eventually go into the public domain. We all know that not all works are worth the same. I could put together an album or a book this weekend that certainly would only be worth 5 years of copyright (if that), but Warner Bros. would be fools not to think the Dark Knight is worth at least 10.
This way the creator can estimate how much he thinks he will earn or decide how much that kind of control of his works is worth to him. In the Warner Bros. example, Most of their money will come in the first 5 years (as in almost all cases), but there will be some trickle effect wherein they figure they'll get another million between 5 and 10 years, but decide it won't be worth getting the 20 years. At the same time, J.K. Rowling might decide that since she's releasing (speaking as if she had only released Philospher's Stone) 6 more books over the course of 10 years, with movies not being finished years after that, and knowing that even the last movie will garner interest in the first book, decides for a copyright length of 20 years. Disney would choose 40 years for all of their works regardless of their quality.
I should also mention that I think the automatic copyrighting thing is stupid. If you want copyright protections for your works, file it with the copyright office.
You haven't looked much into what Trent Reznor is doing have you? He's making lots of money of concerts for sure, but that is hardly what the GP is referring to. He's trying a bunch of different models, even some that would work for other forms of entertainment, including books, movies, and games. And to be certain, he's not the only one. Jill Sobule raised over $75,000 in less than two months to finance her next album. That is, fans gave her money for an album she hadn't even made yet. I bet if Asimov were still around, and he asked his fans for $75,000 to fund his next book, he'd have it in less time than that.
I live in Seattle (well, eastside anyway) but grew up in Phoenix. The clouds and the rain don't bother me. Maybe it's still a novelty for me, but I don't see my views on it changing anytime soon. Granted, I didn't mind the heat in Phoenix , nor the humidity in Houston. So maybe I'm just weird in that I don't put too much stock in weather. In either case, I like Seattle.
Let's continue with your analogy. You take your meal home and add salt. It turns out your salt supplier failed to mention that its really sodium chromate instead of sodium chloride. Who is at fault? Who should "own" the problem?
I think you answered your own question without even getting into specifics. Let's assume coal burning power plants and gas using cars have the same environmental footprint. 52% of electricity generated in the US is from coal. Just by switching to all electric cars cuts environmental impact by 50%.
That doesn't even take into account how much easier it is to clean coal emissions from a hundreds of immobile sources vs cleaning ICE emissions from hundreds of millions of moving sources. It also doesn't take into account how easy it would be to switch the power source. The numbers I've seen are about 600 coal plants and about 204 million cars in the US. Making a cleaner coal plant would require doing the same to 340,000 cars. But if we had all electric cars, then replacing one coal plant, or even just making one coal plant cleaner, means you've already made that many cars or more that much cleaner.
But it is creative. Or I should say, it can be creative. That song did not exist until Kutiman made it. Not one of the videos he used were that song, they were their own songs (and in some cases just sounds), but not the one he created.
C'est Dommage
I don't think you understand economics. By all means, let WotC follow the law of Supply and Demand. All digital files are essentially infinite. The intersection of infinite supply with any demand, is at the price point of free.
It looks like you really are ignorant of economics. Value and price are two totally separate issues. Price is how much the buyer needs to pay to acquire the item, Value is how much the buyer is willing to pay. Only an idiot would pay more than he values, but everyone will pay less than they value it if given the opportunity. At best, that calculation will only tell the buyer a maximum amount he is willing to pay. However, determining value based on the number of hours has got to be one of the most simplistic and stupid ideas out there. If I'm traveling from San Diego to New York, should I pay more to drive or to fly? Should I pay more for the game Portal, or for Fury? Should I pay more for Gigli (121 minutes) or for Citizen Kane (119 minutes)?
This last weekend I bought twelve 8 ft 2x6 boards for a raised garden. I brought them home all inside my Honda Fit, totally enclosed, all doors shut, all windows closed. All I'm saying is that some of those subcompacts are not as compact as people think they are.
Changing the voting system would be great, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking it would solve the world's problems. I'd like to think it will, but the the issue I think is much deeper and lies not in the election system, but in people.
Try making a list of all the issues you consider to be important. Then prioritize that list. If you can do that for even 5 issues, I'd say you're already way ahead of the majority of actual voters, let alone eligible voters. Most people pick only 2-3 issues that are really important to them. These can be easily prioritized, but once you get up to 5 or more different issues it becomes more difficult.
Now that you've made your list, try finding someone in government anywhere that agrees with you on those 5 issues. If you have taken the time to do that, you're already way ahead of the vast majority of voters, who typically don't look beyond the little D or R at the end of a candidates name. Some will look past that and find out what the candidate's position is on their 2-3 issues. But now you've looked at a bunch of politicians for 5 or more issues, so you're winning
Now, out of all the candidate's you've got in your list, you're going to have to spend even more time (and remember the law of diminishing returns) figuring out which one you disagree with the least on all of the other issues you didn't pick and didn't prioritize. Unless you are extremely lucky (or are in your list of candidates) it is highly probable that you will end up disagreeing with your chosen candidate on many issues. As a recap, you've gone through a lot more time and effort than probably ~60% of voters (Look for Vote by Party ID) who have also gone through more effort and than ~62% of the eligible voters and you still ended up disagreeing with your candidate the same as if you hadn't gone through all that trouble.
tl;dr: Changing the voting system is a step in the right direction, but until people are willing to deal with more than just sound bites and easy "us vs them" choices, it's not going to mean a whole lot.
This wouldn't do a thing to stop corporations from buying-out congress critters. Joe Lobbyist from Microsoft currently uses Microsoft's money to lobby congress critters with. If this law was passed, Microsoft would just give Joe Lobbyist some stupid job, and then give him large bonuses with every once in a while and encourage him to donate to his senator for the same reasons.
Having worked in an emergency room near downtown Phoenix for a time (not as a doctor, however) I can tell you that most of the time it was rather boring. Occasionally we got someone in who was badly messed up and that caused excitement, but for the most part it was uninsured people wanting to be checked out for the common cold.
If the gym offered an unlimited family plan, AND the gym considered orphans in an orphanage to be family, then you would have every right to use the gym as such. Would I complain? Yes, but not to you. I would complain to (and be angry with) the gym for overselling and tell them they need to increase capacity or limit use.
Go look again and you will see that no where in my post did I say anything for or against Time Warner's caps. I was only pointing out to Citizen of Earth that it is foolish to get angry at AliasMarlowe for using what AliasMarlowe had paid for. What he is complaining about isn't AliasMarlowe's fault, it's the ISP's fault for overselling. Reading it again, he's actually upset that his ISP doesn't offer a tiered pricing structure. Meaning he has to pay the same price as someone else who uses it more. To go back to the gym analogy, he isn't complaining that someone is using the gym all the time, he's complaining that he has to pay the same amount. And I merely pointed out to him that he was happy with the deal when he got it.
That having been said, if the ISP (or gym) decides to limit use (rather than upgrade capacity), then they need to realize they are changing the terms of the deal and that people who were once happy, might no longer be happy, and those people have every right to complain to the ISP (or gym). Unfortunately, most people don't have competing ISPs to choose from, so Time Warner can easily get away with this. Some other posters have pointed out that most (if not all) of the places they are introducing these caps to are places that have essentially no other alternative. If we solved that problem, the vast majority of problems with ISPs would go away.