I've argues something similar lately. My mom was watching TV while I was visiting my parents and one of these ads came on for a group that wants public (Financial and political) support for keeping music in schools. Well she said "It's a shame these things get cut from schools" and I replied "You know exactly why they cut music and art programs at the drop of a hat is, right?". She looks at me funny and says "Maybe?" Having worked as the director of technology for a charter school I replied "It's because they are not mandated to offer art or music. One the other hand they have to offer special ed and primary subjects (math, reading, etc as tested in state testing). So as the money is directed more and more at this limited subset they have to cut it from the things that are not mandated. My own job was eventually in there as to cut another bit from the budget they outsourced IT. At this point I'm not sure what exactly is left for them to cut where I used to work."
That has actually been the case locally. Where I live their has certainly not been any 'recovery' and the cases of violent crime, assaults, and theft have sky rocketed.
Jobs have been steadily dissapearing in my area and the last big corporation (GE transportation services) is planning to 'significantly reduce' it's workforce and move production elsewhere. Some 300,000 odd people live in the city here and easily another 200,000 in areas around here. A ever growing number no longer have jobs and work is becoming increasingly scarce. When you cannot legally afford food for yourself or your family your going to turn to means illegal to do so.
'Retraining' is typically a myth. My state will 'help' dislocated workers by funding a 2 year program (usually an associates degree) which no longer gets you a decent job with the glut of bachelors degree holders. Most businesses (not talking IT here) don't care if you personally know XYZ skill they want, if you don't have someone else (school, another business, etc) willing to say 'yeah he knows XYZ' then they won't even look at you.
I have lived in a rural agrarian area full of farmers, where half of the kids going to my elementary/middle/high school were the sons and daughters of farmers. Almost every one of those kids worked out in the fields at one time during the time just like their parents. Not all of them continued on as farmers as they grew up, but they certainly all worked in the field. Heck my mom even worked an extra job as a fruit picker one summer when I was younger to bring in some more money.
So I can pretty well disprove the whole 'americans won't work in the fields' bit... I think what they generally mean is 'americans won't work in the field for less than a living wage' is more apt for being accurate. Which gets into the whole 'you don't want your foods in the grocery store to rise in price' yet it is usually middle men getting their cut that adds so much to the costs.
Remember I'm from a rural region full of farms and while my parents were not farmers (though my dad grew up on a farm). I can tell you that the 'cheap' roadside stand prices for corn, apples, etc actually bring in more money than the farmers make at selling to the middlemen who then sell it to grocery stores (or off to places that make processed foods). In fact for a lot of local farms still run by farmers, and not corporations (corporate farms have grown huge even here over the last few decades), make so much money from the local roadside foodstand that it has become as much as 33% of their total yearly income even with having to have one or two people work it all day and the costs associated with the stand itself (transport, setup, material cost, etc).
Cut out the middle man and make food local again and we could fix a lot of food cost issues that creates low wages for farm workers.
A large part of this is on economists believing regular inflation is health for an economy and deflation is abhorrent. Part of that makes sense as inflation is required to a growing economy (numerically). On the other hand your tactic would see a stagnant economy, on purpose, at best and a reduction at worst as prices would have to stay the same or go down and could not go up. Which btw is effectively a price floor done another way.
Even with a low 'barrier to entry' many markets have dominant players that can safely ignore the little guys in their market. Look at the cellular industry in the US for example... Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint have long ignored even their fourth largest rival T-Mobile (which now Sprint wants to buy). Even if it cost nothing for a new Cellular carrier to start up nationwide they would have to build from scratch against far larger entrenched players. They also would have to somehow prove to customers what makes them special compared to what they already have. Their are reasons many markets become a collection of a few monopolistic players.
So in essence, I don't see your idea working much better in the real world. While I would love a $0.10 loaf of bread like China or India, we have bread for over $1 because we have inflation which in turn is built on an expanding economy. For another example of this see the housing market in China. The rich are getting all the money from their recent economic expansion and in turn this has risen housing prices sky high (well above what a regular citizen can earn in more than half their lifetime) and even those rates are rising at over 20% per year.
I've had step kids and I was a kid (as was everyone else at some time) and in neither case did I ever fell I had to keep a child entertained. They will find ways to entertain themselves, the most I recall is making sure what they decided to do for entertainment was non-destructive (or at least limited in it's destructiveness).
However I have seen parents who have decided electronics (tv, game systems, etc) were good baby sitters and those kids tend to loose the ability to entertain themselves. Kids who have always had a tv or portable gaming device to keep themselves entertained start to lose their ability to come up with their own entertainments.
" If anything, we need to think about our ever-expanding population. That's the root of the problem."
Most of the developed world has a very low population growth rate. Basically enough people die to offset most of the people born in places like the US, UK, France, Germany, etc... Heck Japan has negative growth because they don't allow very much immigration. So no, population growth isn't really a problem for large portions of the world outside Asia... Places like India and China outnumber the US and the whole of the EU put together in terms of population and they are growing. Even with China trying to curb population growth with their one child policy their growth rate is still higher than most other developed nations in the world.
Btw if you think the 'Great Boston Area' is a problem you should look at 'rural' PA where I live. My entire county is lumbed into one big category even though it is over 50 miles wide and nearly 50 miles north to south. You cannot usually say you want a job in say the largest city in the area without getting all jobs for the entire county at least. Heck the state combines 3 counties here together covering over 300 square miles when talking about jobs even though 90% of all available jobs are actually in or near one city in the middle of that area.
Having known a few McD's managers when I was in high school, I can imagine why... Part of that 'responsibility' can include being moved to other McD's locations at the whim of the higher ups.
One of my classmates in high school was made a manager for the local McD's and before she had graduated from high school they had already shuffled her off to another location ~17 miles away, with no real warning. She couldn't refuse without losing her job. Even as a manager my classmate was not paid very much, she only made about 25% more than the typical line worker... Though she did get a good bit more hours than the typical line worker.
I'm from a small town, 50% of my high school worked at the local McD's... For about 2-5 hours per week. My classmate as a manager was getting around 25 hours, but with so many people wanting a job no one got many hours. These days High School kids find it hard to get a job there and if you look at who works there it is almost all adults, many with associate degrees or more.
Funding education isn't a pure solution, as much as we don't want to think this, but we have already reached a point where many areas of the US where education no longer helps. To many people have unneeded advanced degrees and the only available jobs for them are low paying ones. This slowly bumps up the minimums to get those jobs, so they now require bachelors degrees when high school diploma was all they needed a decade ago. However these jobs are not paying any more than they used to (barring inflation and changes in minimum wage).
Our system was just not built on having a large percentage of jobs (up to 60-70%) that are ones that need huge amounts of education or 'creativity'. Our economy was original designed as a huge sort of pyramid scheme. The bulk of people have low paying jobs that don't require much education and those with education get increasingly get the better paying, but more scarce higher tier jobs until you get up to things like CEO's with (in the old days) 20 or 30 times the income of the grunts. However these days a CEO often makes 200+ times what a grunt does and the grunts still make about what they have, wages having been basically stagnant since the 70's outside the higher ranks of companies. And we have a high enough portion of the population with some sort of post-high school education (40+% or so going to college now) that the grunt jobs now require these levels of advanced education.
Since we can all be sure the CEO's are not giving up their huge salaries and parachutes any time soon, but without that our system is eventually going to fail as ever higher rates of education bump up requirements for even basic jobs that don't pay well.
I mean selling services over the physical infrastructure, much like most of Europe. The government runs the physical layer of the network and anyone can offer services as an ISP over that for rates set by the government (state or local), the federal government can even come in to handle interstate network connections. I'd prefer these be local governments owning the physical infrastructure and if you can effect any level of government as an individual it tends to be your local level.
Btw co-op ISPs have been suffering issues lately, see the story just a few weeks ago with the co-op that dropped service down to really small amounts of bandwidth per month and at very low speeds. Governments on the other hand can be forced to follow certain state or federal minimums.
The example I gave was for my local market and the 1.5m/128k ADSL is through Verizon... And costs $48/month (currently). I have neighbors who use it (and who come to me when they have issues). They could offer more, though they would have to upgrade the local loops where I live as we all seem to be on ancient switching systems that are from the 70's. They accepted hundreds of millions in subsidies from my state over a decade to spread 'broadband internet' across my state, and this is the result.
Time Warner was the other offering 25m/512k cable internet and are the only ones who seem to want business. Though they are, slightly, more expensive at $55/month. Unlike DSL offering though they have upgraded to newer and faster speeds since launching their service. I've seen it go from 5m/384k, to 10m/384k, and then jump all the way to the current 25m/512k last year. I'm quite worried Comcast will decide to drop my area, degrade our service, or increase prices... Possibly the last of those two at the same time.
3G/4G isn't even on the table here as many areas don't get 3G service let alone 4G. I came name the only couple miles of 4G service within 100 miles of where I live. Even on the college campus I work at currently and which leases out towers for all the big cell providers to use, the gear they put in is only 3G. Relying on cellular service is not an option in my area.
I wanted municipal internet back in 2000-2003 before anyone offered broadband in my area, but about that time the communications companies got laws passed in my state making muni run networks illegal. As I said in the original post, I think the state should simply take the physical lines and equipment off the hands of these companies and let the ISPs sell service over them for fixed fees that then go back into supporting the physical infrastructure. If it's handled at the local and state level worried about 'spying' (even though it's already done) should be minimized.
I've been all for the government to claim ownership of the physical aspect of these networks for years and then sell the physical service to ISPs for over a decade. The companies have proved time and again, regardless of massive subsidies, that they only care about milking users and not the experience of those users. Hence 1.5m/128k ADSL 'competing' with 10-25m/512k cable internet and 3G/4G capped wireless networks more recently.
At least with the government doing it we could hold someone accountable, even if the the politicians only care at election time and would likely stick the blame on someone else...
Well as to the first Disney has sued other for creating stories about 'Cinderella' that were animated, even though the Cinderella story predates any animated work by them. The animation was not the same and no copying was done. Simba the White Lion is another example which predates The Lion King (and is most likely the primary inspiration for it), yet they went to court over it. Disney realistically will sue over works that bare any similarity based on underlying story or plot.
As for the second... The hope is that a limited time of exclusive rights to their work gives a monetary incentive to create more works. However this is hit or miss as our system has long since made things nearly impossible to ever became public domain and create the core of the next generation of works. It has become the way for corporations and surviving relations to artists, writers, and anyone else owning a copyright on something to make money without any effort or additions on their part.
I'd argue that maybe copyright has some place, but what we have now is simply ugly and hugely disruptive. It may make more sense to discard it for a time.
While I'm not looking at the quote I got a couple months ago, but including switching them in for my all-season tires the tire place wanted $950. So far I've never had a set of winter tires last more than 2 years before the tread is gone. I blame the dry roads, roads here are generally only snow covered for a short time (unless it's frozen like this week has been). So most of the time your driving on roads that don't match the conditions the tires were designed for.
The cars that day were moving an inch every 5 minutes or so at worst and at best a car length over the same time. Columbus has a circular outer set of interstates, an inner 'cross' of interstates, and a set of local streets. All the roads were identically backed up with miles of traffic even before I was on the road at 6 am that day. I would have been better off walking if Columbus had consistent sidewalks along my path. Columbus though when I was there hated pedestrians and many stretches of road existed with no sidewalks.
So you know I own a '99 Chrysler LHS and yes, $1k was quoted just this year for a set of 17 inch winter tires. The car itself is only bluebooked for a couple times that these days, so that price for tires is silly. My car does fine without them snow, ice, or sleet.
Also on the 'they last more than 1 year' well that works if your not doing alot of mixed driving. Typically though here just south of Lake Erie we can go 2 or 3 weeks of dry roads, then get a blizzard for the next month, then it all goes away again and the roads are bare another couple weeks.
The mixed driving for a winter (because I'm certainly not switching out sets of tires every few weeks) has worn them down considerably. So, in those few years I have splurged on winter tires, when I have them switched back after snow season however takes them off tells me I shouldn't use them again because they are worn down and have a negligible tread. It shouldn't be a surprise if these super expensive winter tires seem to always wear out I'm highly reluctant to purchase them. More so when I've gone through truly horrid weather with 'simple' sets of $300 all season tires.
Here -15F means iced roads, because it's to cold for the 'normal' mix of 'road salts'. So when the sun is on them (it rarely snows during the day) they 'warm up' and the snow from the last night becomes ice. Just like your warmer temps there.
I'd rather have ~30F and get slush, it would be solidly mixed with salt and be a none issue. Really cold weather though and they get cautious and reserved with the special low temp mixes that they don't buy as much of.
Some people up north forget every year, others don't. I spent 4 years outside of the snow belt and still knew how to drive in the ice and snow when I ended up coming back north. This whole week has been below zero (in F) and there has been constant ice on the roads, but we didn't see huge jumps in accidents. Though I will admit a certain number of people do seem to require time to remember how to drive in winter each year...
Well here in PA, snow tires are not required (And I don't have them on my car, I cannot afford $1k on tires every winter). And with the whole -15F this week meant icy roads all around (with light snow falls most nights and clear days). 'Salt' trucks were out, but have limited success in the rather extreme cold for this area. Even so on icy roads I got around in my front wheel drive car with it's all season tires just fine. I just had to pay attention to the road I'm driving on.
I lived in Columbus Ohio a dozen or so years ago and they got a dusting of snow that made my then 1 mile commute take 6 hours... And people simply refused to pay attention to the road and went off it left and right. It's amazing how people that rarely drive in wintery weather seem to blame everything except themselves for such things...
PA (Where I live) has zilch, which I appreciate. Thought hat some schools in Ohio do teach it is a bit mind numbing...
Btw the big fuss for Texas was an end run at the state level to mandate the textbooks for the state include it. Since Texas buys alot of text books the makers of said books for lots of other states would then also include it.... Even if it was not taught there. California and Texas having that kind of pull is what often pisses people off in other states and so gets in the news.
I don't need a medical degree to know that the number of what we now call 'ADD' diagnosis' are up more than 300% from when I went to school in the 70's. Heck some school administrators actively try to force ADD diagnosis' onto 'problem students' (usually boys who want to be active and don't like sitting in a classroom all day). Doing so lets them concentrate such kids in special ed classes and away from traditional classrooms.
There is quite enough evidence for such things if one cares to look for a complete layman to make informed opinions and statements about it. Did you know that for a condition that should statistically effect boys and girls equally the rate for girls is around 5% (which it has basically always been) and the rate for boys is nearly 33%? The rates were the same in the 70's and early 80's and then started to climb drastically. Now what does that say to you?
Ross Perot ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... ), won a large amount of popular vote in 1992 (~19% the largest third party popular vote in almost a century) and I don't recall any big sea changes in the two big parties... He would have probably gotten an even larger share of votes if he hadn't stopped campaigning shortly before the election due to death threats and other craziness.
Except that even if 1/3rd of it is credited or subsidized the remaining 2/3rds may not be within reach of the current owner. A considerable number of people in the US alone live paycheck to paycheck and could never afford the 2/3rds costs to update such a thing. Especially the poor in the 'country' outside of the cities tend to own (with mortgages) their homes, rather than targeting landlords in cities (who may have the funds and just not want to spend them).
Actually since water vapor in clouds is a 'green house' gas, many hot days are rainy or overcast. Though this varies by region. Places like Nevada tend to have dry hot days, places like Florida or other parts of the east coast of the US (for instance) tend to be wet and hot.
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I've argues something similar lately. My mom was watching TV while I was visiting my parents and one of these ads came on for a group that wants public (Financial and political) support for keeping music in schools. Well she said "It's a shame these things get cut from schools" and I replied "You know exactly why they cut music and art programs at the drop of a hat is, right?". She looks at me funny and says "Maybe?" Having worked as the director of technology for a charter school I replied "It's because they are not mandated to offer art or music. One the other hand they have to offer special ed and primary subjects (math, reading, etc as tested in state testing). So as the money is directed more and more at this limited subset they have to cut it from the things that are not mandated. My own job was eventually in there as to cut another bit from the budget they outsourced IT. At this point I'm not sure what exactly is left for them to cut where I used to work."
That has actually been the case locally. Where I live their has certainly not been any 'recovery' and the cases of violent crime, assaults, and theft have sky rocketed.
Jobs have been steadily dissapearing in my area and the last big corporation (GE transportation services) is planning to 'significantly reduce' it's workforce and move production elsewhere. Some 300,000 odd people live in the city here and easily another 200,000 in areas around here. A ever growing number no longer have jobs and work is becoming increasingly scarce. When you cannot legally afford food for yourself or your family your going to turn to means illegal to do so.
'Retraining' is typically a myth. My state will 'help' dislocated workers by funding a 2 year program (usually an associates degree) which no longer gets you a decent job with the glut of bachelors degree holders. Most businesses (not talking IT here) don't care if you personally know XYZ skill they want, if you don't have someone else (school, another business, etc) willing to say 'yeah he knows XYZ' then they won't even look at you.
I have lived in a rural agrarian area full of farmers, where half of the kids going to my elementary/middle/high school were the sons and daughters of farmers. Almost every one of those kids worked out in the fields at one time during the time just like their parents. Not all of them continued on as farmers as they grew up, but they certainly all worked in the field. Heck my mom even worked an extra job as a fruit picker one summer when I was younger to bring in some more money.
So I can pretty well disprove the whole 'americans won't work in the fields' bit... I think what they generally mean is 'americans won't work in the field for less than a living wage' is more apt for being accurate. Which gets into the whole 'you don't want your foods in the grocery store to rise in price' yet it is usually middle men getting their cut that adds so much to the costs.
Remember I'm from a rural region full of farms and while my parents were not farmers (though my dad grew up on a farm). I can tell you that the 'cheap' roadside stand prices for corn, apples, etc actually bring in more money than the farmers make at selling to the middlemen who then sell it to grocery stores (or off to places that make processed foods). In fact for a lot of local farms still run by farmers, and not corporations (corporate farms have grown huge even here over the last few decades), make so much money from the local roadside foodstand that it has become as much as 33% of their total yearly income even with having to have one or two people work it all day and the costs associated with the stand itself (transport, setup, material cost, etc).
Cut out the middle man and make food local again and we could fix a lot of food cost issues that creates low wages for farm workers.
A large part of this is on economists believing regular inflation is health for an economy and deflation is abhorrent. Part of that makes sense as inflation is required to a growing economy (numerically). On the other hand your tactic would see a stagnant economy, on purpose, at best and a reduction at worst as prices would have to stay the same or go down and could not go up. Which btw is effectively a price floor done another way.
Even with a low 'barrier to entry' many markets have dominant players that can safely ignore the little guys in their market. Look at the cellular industry in the US for example... Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint have long ignored even their fourth largest rival T-Mobile (which now Sprint wants to buy). Even if it cost nothing for a new Cellular carrier to start up nationwide they would have to build from scratch against far larger entrenched players. They also would have to somehow prove to customers what makes them special compared to what they already have. Their are reasons many markets become a collection of a few monopolistic players.
So in essence, I don't see your idea working much better in the real world. While I would love a $0.10 loaf of bread like China or India, we have bread for over $1 because we have inflation which in turn is built on an expanding economy. For another example of this see the housing market in China. The rich are getting all the money from their recent economic expansion and in turn this has risen housing prices sky high (well above what a regular citizen can earn in more than half their lifetime) and even those rates are rising at over 20% per year.
I've had step kids and I was a kid (as was everyone else at some time) and in neither case did I ever fell I had to keep a child entertained. They will find ways to entertain themselves, the most I recall is making sure what they decided to do for entertainment was non-destructive (or at least limited in it's destructiveness).
However I have seen parents who have decided electronics (tv, game systems, etc) were good baby sitters and those kids tend to loose the ability to entertain themselves. Kids who have always had a tv or portable gaming device to keep themselves entertained start to lose their ability to come up with their own entertainments.
" If anything, we need to think about our ever-expanding population. That's the root of the problem."
Most of the developed world has a very low population growth rate. Basically enough people die to offset most of the people born in places like the US, UK, France, Germany, etc... Heck Japan has negative growth because they don't allow very much immigration. So no, population growth isn't really a problem for large portions of the world outside Asia... Places like India and China outnumber the US and the whole of the EU put together in terms of population and they are growing. Even with China trying to curb population growth with their one child policy their growth rate is still higher than most other developed nations in the world.
Btw if you think the 'Great Boston Area' is a problem you should look at 'rural' PA where I live. My entire county is lumbed into one big category even though it is over 50 miles wide and nearly 50 miles north to south. You cannot usually say you want a job in say the largest city in the area without getting all jobs for the entire county at least. Heck the state combines 3 counties here together covering over 300 square miles when talking about jobs even though 90% of all available jobs are actually in or near one city in the middle of that area.
Having known a few McD's managers when I was in high school, I can imagine why... Part of that 'responsibility' can include being moved to other McD's locations at the whim of the higher ups.
One of my classmates in high school was made a manager for the local McD's and before she had graduated from high school they had already shuffled her off to another location ~17 miles away, with no real warning. She couldn't refuse without losing her job. Even as a manager my classmate was not paid very much, she only made about 25% more than the typical line worker... Though she did get a good bit more hours than the typical line worker.
I'm from a small town, 50% of my high school worked at the local McD's... For about 2-5 hours per week. My classmate as a manager was getting around 25 hours, but with so many people wanting a job no one got many hours. These days High School kids find it hard to get a job there and if you look at who works there it is almost all adults, many with associate degrees or more.
Funding education isn't a pure solution, as much as we don't want to think this, but we have already reached a point where many areas of the US where education no longer helps. To many people have unneeded advanced degrees and the only available jobs for them are low paying ones. This slowly bumps up the minimums to get those jobs, so they now require bachelors degrees when high school diploma was all they needed a decade ago. However these jobs are not paying any more than they used to (barring inflation and changes in minimum wage).
Our system was just not built on having a large percentage of jobs (up to 60-70%) that are ones that need huge amounts of education or 'creativity'. Our economy was original designed as a huge sort of pyramid scheme. The bulk of people have low paying jobs that don't require much education and those with education get increasingly get the better paying, but more scarce higher tier jobs until you get up to things like CEO's with (in the old days) 20 or 30 times the income of the grunts. However these days a CEO often makes 200+ times what a grunt does and the grunts still make about what they have, wages having been basically stagnant since the 70's outside the higher ranks of companies. And we have a high enough portion of the population with some sort of post-high school education (40+% or so going to college now) that the grunt jobs now require these levels of advanced education.
Since we can all be sure the CEO's are not giving up their huge salaries and parachutes any time soon, but without that our system is eventually going to fail as ever higher rates of education bump up requirements for even basic jobs that don't pay well.
Wow, you only have to pay $44.99? My TW bill for cable internet is currently $59.99 (not including taxes and fees)...
I mean selling services over the physical infrastructure, much like most of Europe. The government runs the physical layer of the network and anyone can offer services as an ISP over that for rates set by the government (state or local), the federal government can even come in to handle interstate network connections. I'd prefer these be local governments owning the physical infrastructure and if you can effect any level of government as an individual it tends to be your local level.
Btw co-op ISPs have been suffering issues lately, see the story just a few weeks ago with the co-op that dropped service down to really small amounts of bandwidth per month and at very low speeds. Governments on the other hand can be forced to follow certain state or federal minimums.
The example I gave was for my local market and the 1.5m/128k ADSL is through Verizon... And costs $48/month (currently). I have neighbors who use it (and who come to me when they have issues). They could offer more, though they would have to upgrade the local loops where I live as we all seem to be on ancient switching systems that are from the 70's. They accepted hundreds of millions in subsidies from my state over a decade to spread 'broadband internet' across my state, and this is the result.
Time Warner was the other offering 25m/512k cable internet and are the only ones who seem to want business. Though they are, slightly, more expensive at $55/month. Unlike DSL offering though they have upgraded to newer and faster speeds since launching their service. I've seen it go from 5m/384k, to 10m/384k, and then jump all the way to the current 25m/512k last year. I'm quite worried Comcast will decide to drop my area, degrade our service, or increase prices... Possibly the last of those two at the same time.
3G/4G isn't even on the table here as many areas don't get 3G service let alone 4G. I came name the only couple miles of 4G service within 100 miles of where I live. Even on the college campus I work at currently and which leases out towers for all the big cell providers to use, the gear they put in is only 3G. Relying on cellular service is not an option in my area.
I wanted municipal internet back in 2000-2003 before anyone offered broadband in my area, but about that time the communications companies got laws passed in my state making muni run networks illegal. As I said in the original post, I think the state should simply take the physical lines and equipment off the hands of these companies and let the ISPs sell service over them for fixed fees that then go back into supporting the physical infrastructure. If it's handled at the local and state level worried about 'spying' (even though it's already done) should be minimized.
I've been all for the government to claim ownership of the physical aspect of these networks for years and then sell the physical service to ISPs for over a decade. The companies have proved time and again, regardless of massive subsidies, that they only care about milking users and not the experience of those users. Hence 1.5m/128k ADSL 'competing' with 10-25m/512k cable internet and 3G/4G capped wireless networks more recently.
At least with the government doing it we could hold someone accountable, even if the the politicians only care at election time and would likely stick the blame on someone else...
Well as to the first Disney has sued other for creating stories about 'Cinderella' that were animated, even though the Cinderella story predates any animated work by them. The animation was not the same and no copying was done. Simba the White Lion is another example which predates The Lion King (and is most likely the primary inspiration for it), yet they went to court over it. Disney realistically will sue over works that bare any similarity based on underlying story or plot.
As for the second... The hope is that a limited time of exclusive rights to their work gives a monetary incentive to create more works. However this is hit or miss as our system has long since made things nearly impossible to ever became public domain and create the core of the next generation of works. It has become the way for corporations and surviving relations to artists, writers, and anyone else owning a copyright on something to make money without any effort or additions on their part.
I'd argue that maybe copyright has some place, but what we have now is simply ugly and hugely disruptive. It may make more sense to discard it for a time.
While I'm not looking at the quote I got a couple months ago, but including switching them in for my all-season tires the tire place wanted $950. So far I've never had a set of winter tires last more than 2 years before the tread is gone. I blame the dry roads, roads here are generally only snow covered for a short time (unless it's frozen like this week has been). So most of the time your driving on roads that don't match the conditions the tires were designed for.
The cars that day were moving an inch every 5 minutes or so at worst and at best a car length over the same time. Columbus has a circular outer set of interstates, an inner 'cross' of interstates, and a set of local streets. All the roads were identically backed up with miles of traffic even before I was on the road at 6 am that day. I would have been better off walking if Columbus had consistent sidewalks along my path. Columbus though when I was there hated pedestrians and many stretches of road existed with no sidewalks.
So you know I own a '99 Chrysler LHS and yes, $1k was quoted just this year for a set of 17 inch winter tires. The car itself is only bluebooked for a couple times that these days, so that price for tires is silly. My car does fine without them snow, ice, or sleet.
Also on the 'they last more than 1 year' well that works if your not doing alot of mixed driving. Typically though here just south of Lake Erie we can go 2 or 3 weeks of dry roads, then get a blizzard for the next month, then it all goes away again and the roads are bare another couple weeks.
The mixed driving for a winter (because I'm certainly not switching out sets of tires every few weeks) has worn them down considerably. So, in those few years I have splurged on winter tires, when I have them switched back after snow season however takes them off tells me I shouldn't use them again because they are worn down and have a negligible tread. It shouldn't be a surprise if these super expensive winter tires seem to always wear out I'm highly reluctant to purchase them. More so when I've gone through truly horrid weather with 'simple' sets of $300 all season tires.
Here -15F means iced roads, because it's to cold for the 'normal' mix of 'road salts'. So when the sun is on them (it rarely snows during the day) they 'warm up' and the snow from the last night becomes ice. Just like your warmer temps there.
I'd rather have ~30F and get slush, it would be solidly mixed with salt and be a none issue. Really cold weather though and they get cautious and reserved with the special low temp mixes that they don't buy as much of.
Some people up north forget every year, others don't. I spent 4 years outside of the snow belt and still knew how to drive in the ice and snow when I ended up coming back north. This whole week has been below zero (in F) and there has been constant ice on the roads, but we didn't see huge jumps in accidents. Though I will admit a certain number of people do seem to require time to remember how to drive in winter each year...
Well here in PA, snow tires are not required (And I don't have them on my car, I cannot afford $1k on tires every winter). And with the whole -15F this week meant icy roads all around (with light snow falls most nights and clear days). 'Salt' trucks were out, but have limited success in the rather extreme cold for this area. Even so on icy roads I got around in my front wheel drive car with it's all season tires just fine. I just had to pay attention to the road I'm driving on.
I lived in Columbus Ohio a dozen or so years ago and they got a dusting of snow that made my then 1 mile commute take 6 hours... And people simply refused to pay attention to the road and went off it left and right. It's amazing how people that rarely drive in wintery weather seem to blame everything except themselves for such things...
PA (Where I live) has zilch, which I appreciate. Thought hat some schools in Ohio do teach it is a bit mind numbing...
Btw the big fuss for Texas was an end run at the state level to mandate the textbooks for the state include it. Since Texas buys alot of text books the makers of said books for lots of other states would then also include it.... Even if it was not taught there. California and Texas having that kind of pull is what often pisses people off in other states and so gets in the news.
I don't need a medical degree to know that the number of what we now call 'ADD' diagnosis' are up more than 300% from when I went to school in the 70's. Heck some school administrators actively try to force ADD diagnosis' onto 'problem students' (usually boys who want to be active and don't like sitting in a classroom all day). Doing so lets them concentrate such kids in special ed classes and away from traditional classrooms.
There is quite enough evidence for such things if one cares to look for a complete layman to make informed opinions and statements about it. Did you know that for a condition that should statistically effect boys and girls equally the rate for girls is around 5% (which it has basically always been) and the rate for boys is nearly 33%? The rates were the same in the 70's and early 80's and then started to climb drastically. Now what does that say to you?
Ross Perot ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... ), won a large amount of popular vote in 1992 (~19% the largest third party popular vote in almost a century) and I don't recall any big sea changes in the two big parties... He would have probably gotten an even larger share of votes if he hadn't stopped campaigning shortly before the election due to death threats and other craziness.
Based on some experience with it, I'd say a large number of non-voters don't vote because they don't see anyone they wish to vote for...
Except that even if 1/3rd of it is credited or subsidized the remaining 2/3rds may not be within reach of the current owner. A considerable number of people in the US alone live paycheck to paycheck and could never afford the 2/3rds costs to update such a thing. Especially the poor in the 'country' outside of the cities tend to own (with mortgages) their homes, rather than targeting landlords in cities (who may have the funds and just not want to spend them).
Actually since water vapor in clouds is a 'green house' gas, many hot days are rainy or overcast. Though this varies by region. Places like Nevada tend to have dry hot days, places like Florida or other parts of the east coast of the US (for instance) tend to be wet and hot.