I think I'm the only person on the planet who *likes* the different looks for windows in different applications. It makes it much easier for me to see at a glance which of my bazillion open windows are Safari, and which are Path Finder, and which are Mail, and which are iTunes. Provided that all the schemes look finished and professional, I say bring 'em on. (I do think the iTunes scroll bars need some help, though...)
The only problems I have with Apple's current look are that 1) there should be more choices for the color of scroll bars/Apple menu/Spotlight menu, and 2) the bottom left corner of each window should be a resize handle.
For those complaining about the behavior of the Zoom button: Instead of hitting Zoom, hit Option-Command-H to "hide others." Personally, the maximize button is one of the things I hate most about Windows -- I want to be able to see my other open windows when at all possible.
Excel takes six or seven bounces to launch. Not acceptable on up-to-the-minute hardware.
Word eats 7%-10% cpu sitting idle. Doesn't help the battery life when you're writing on the road.
NeoOffice, while a great tool to have around, is so poorly optimized that it's barely faster native than MS Office is under Rosetta (sometimes slower).
Back to the topic... this move by MS is part of a continued effort to prevent Macs from making any inroads into the corporate space, which is MS's most lucrative market. After the next release of Mac Office, the consumers/educational types/etc. will be thrilled -- it will probably look gorgeous, run fast, etc. But business users, most of whom have brain-dead VBA cruft to deal with, will have no choice but to run Windows Office somehow... which involves a license of Windows, at least until CodeWeavers is able to make Office versions newer than 2000 run under Crossover Mac.
I can understand how my somewhat intemperate comment would make it seem like I view urban residents as "lesser," but that's not how I see it -- my point is actually that they are the same. Especially with modern communications, rural and urban residents can largely do the same work. The issue is economic: people living in rural areas impose costs on society that those in urban areas don't. Most importantly, rural infrastructure, per capita served, is enormously more expensive. Rural communications, to date, have required subsidies in order to be provided at all (this may change as satellite communications grow). Rural life causes (again, per capita) more environmental damage than urban life, in most cases.
What I don't see is how rural residents create unique value to society, which urban residents are not capable of providing, and which justifies subsidizing those extra costs. The issue is not whether they contribute at all -- it's whether they contribute enough extra to justify something like the current Senate structure. While I've never lived in a rural area, I suspect the answer is no.
Let me reiterate that I don't have anything against people choosing to live in rural areas -- I just don't want to pay extra to subsidize them, as I do now, solely because they are making a lifestyle choice.
As for the size of the subsidies in question, here's some data at the state level, which is where the structure of the Senate is making a difference. My two home states are Washington and Massachusetts... in both cases, the Senate is instrumental in transferring our wealth to places like Alaska and West Virginia.
...once you remove the balance of the senate then the bias swings in favor of the urban areas and rural America becomes ignored and then further deteriorates.
This result does not demonstrate a bias in favor of urban areas, but an accurate reflection of their economic and social importance.
Under the current regime, as you point out, we subsidize rural residents. (We do the same with suburbanites, but that's an even more difficult political problem requiring a different post...) There is no reason the rest of us should have to pay this subsidy; rural life is not somehow morally superior to other lifestyles, and we as a society have no particular need for rural residents beyond those necessary to keep our farming and recreational operations in business.
From my perspective, it appears that those in favor of the subsidy of rural life (and therefore of the skewed Senate) simply want the rest of us to underwrite their lifestyle preferences. That would be like me asking rural residents to fund a massive capital expansion of the Boston subway.
If the lack of rural residents became a problem for America as a whole, its legislative bodies -- even if accurately allocated -- would step in with whatever subsidy was actually necessary for the country's health.
There is nothing sacred about that piece of paper. It was a pioneering, and largely successful, attempt by victims of tyranny to establish a governmental framework that would protect what they saw as their rights more effectively. But it's not magic. It wasn't perfect in the first place, and changes in society over time (most notably, increased urbanism, staggering population growth, and new scientific knowledge) have reduced its relevance.
Many of the legal efforts to get around the Constitution have been aimed at solving specific, concrete problems in the absence of any possibility of Constitutional amendment. I'd rather see the Constitution amended forthrightly, to keep it up-to-date, than simply circumvented. Of course this would allow the possibility of more frequent changes, including stupid demagogical ones like a flag-burning amendment. Still, it would be nice if laymen could actually understand how the law as it operates relates to Constitutional text.
The first amendments I'd like to see, all of which I think would solve real problems, and none of which could happen right now:
1. A population-based Senate that eliminates the systematic bias in favor of rural areas
2. Explicit codification of the "right to privacy" now derived in a tortured manner from the 1st, 5th, and 14th Amendments
3. Clarification of the Second Amendment so there is no longer any dispute about our ability to apply common-sense regulations like licensing, registration, and insurance to firearm ownership, as we do for other dangerous tools such as cars, heavy equipment, etc.
4. A mechanism for exclusively public financing of campaigns, to increase elected officials' responsiveness to voters rather than money
Of course, your politics may vary, but I think we can agree that law and reality should correspond to at least some degree.
Let's refine your list a little bit. Amendments often have multiple parts, some of which are still meaningful, some of which aren't. Some Bill of Rights provisions have fundamental problems and need changing; the Founding Fathers weren't perfect in their time, and in any case the document is severely outdated. If the Constitution has one overwhelming flaw, it's that amending it is too hard.
1st Amendment: Establishment Clause: eviscerated (thank you, fundie wackjobs)
Free Exercise Clause: as strong as ever (ditto)
Freedom of speech and the press: stronger than some other countries, but still deeply problematic
Right of assembly: OK, unless you're Muslim
Right to petition the government: OK, unless the Bush administration took you prisoner in the war on terra
2nd Amendment: unfortunately, still in good shape
3rd Amendment: Has never been an issue, so it's probably working OK
4th Amendment: Right against searches and seizures: Jurisprudence is a mess. Could be better, could be worse
No warrants w/o probable cause & specifics: Technically working, but probable cause is a little weak
5th Amendment: No prosecution for severe crime w/o grand jury indictment: Still works, but the grand jury itself is a deeply flawed institution
Double jeopardy: Seems to work OK
Right against self-incrimination w/o due process: in a jury setting, there's no way it can work -- the Founding Fathers should have done this one differently
Deprivation of life/liberty/property w/o due process: Due process works fine for those who can afford good lawyers, and is a joke for those who can't
Takings: the language is vague. Whether you think this is working depends on what you think a "taking" is.
6th Amendment: Speedy trial: More or less OK
Right to be informed and confronted with witnesses: Usually works OK
Assistance of counsel: This one is politically difficult, because no one wants to support public defenders. The basic ideas in the jurisprudence are OK but need more teeth in the real world.
7th Amendment: Right to jury: Works OK most of the time
8th Amendment: This is broken, through no fault of the courts. The Bush Administration has singlehandedly made a joke of it.
9th Amendment: Too vague to be meaningful. Surely "the people" don't have every conceivable right (e.g. they don't have the right to murder). There is no way to know what set of rights this amendment refers to.
10th Amendment: Out the window. (Personally, I wouldn't like the world that would result if we started enforcing it... so I'm glad it's dead.)
(Please don't say abortion isn an issue of science - it's an issue of metaphysics and ethics.)
Sorry to burst your bubble. The only way we can intelligibly formulate the ethics of abortion is through empirical data, i.e. science. The enormous and very concrete social costs brought on by a rigid anti-abortion policy are simply ignored by most pro-lifers in favor of meaningless religious dogma. Your "metaphysics," i.e. empirically unverifiable nonsense, is not a reasonable way to form ethical propositions.
There's nothing anti-science about intelligent design. Intelligent design is just saying, "Hey, the universe seems pretty well ordered. What are the chances of that?" It's a metaphysical inquiry that's informed by science.
Two things come to mind here:
1. What is the point of a "metaphysical inquiry supported by science" when the questions being asked are, by definition, beyond science's reach? Science can verify evolution and teach us about problems with the theory. It can't teach us a damn thing, at least not yet, about the presence or nature of any "designer."
2. Even though the inquiry is bound to be fruitless, I could accept it if the proponents of ID actually used the approach you are suggesting they do. Instead, they simply deny good, widely supported scientific conclusions in favor of obscure junk science that is not generally accepted. ID is not science, but empirically unsupportable creationism revised to eliminate some of the more egregious absurdities of Genesis.
Fun experiment on a relatively empty freeway: Find yourself a tailgater, preferably of the "I just like someone else to set the pace and so I'll never pass" variety. Assuming you're on a 60mph freeway, speed up 1 mph every few hundred feet. See how fast you can get going before the tailgater realizes his speed, panics, and backs off.
Back when I had my (dearly departed) Taurus SHO I got a guy up to 102 mph this way. It was amazing to watch the car drop back once he figured out what was going on.
Almost no regular user is thinking about the security implications of his or her computer use. Therefore, the OS designer should do it for them, to prevent damage to other users.
If they are sophisticated enough to think about security at every step, power users can disable or change security features manually.
A computer, to most people, is a tool to write stuff, communicate, and have fun. It's not, in their minds, a tool to promote security. So why not have the machine be as secure as possible automatically?
(KOffice / KMail/ amaroK / etc. Sorry, Apple's cheap imitations just don't cut it for me.)
I have to say I don't understand this comment. Not that there aren't plenty of good reasons to run Linux on your PB G4, but I don't get this.
There is no Apple Office-style product. iWork is designed and priced to cover a much more basic set of needs. While MS Office is made by Satan and can be absurdly expensive it is not a "cheap imitation" of KOffice or OOo -- they are imitating it, sometimes successfully, sometimes less successfully.
The great thing about OS X Mail is that it is *not* an imitation of Outlook like every other email client out there, including KMail. While it has some holes it also has unique capabilities, especially in the interface -- I love the fact that it (unlike any other client I've ever used) will seamlessly combine all my IMAP inboxes and sent-mail folders.
And if you're trying to say that iTunes is a cheap imitation of Amarok... wow. Your *K*ool-Aid is stronger than the stuff Mac zealots are drinking.
I immediately knew that the majority of New Yorkers were not my kind of people. I can hardly imagine that it will be anything different in other big US cities.
Actually, it is different... the U.S. is just too big to be captured by one set of stereotypes.
People in New York, by and large, are the most ambitious in the country. If you want to become "successful," wealthy and famous you go to New York (unless you want to make it in entertainment, which is centered in L.A.). The New York attitude is not replicated elsewhere in the country, for the most part, although there are other problems (see below).
Unfortunately, the New York state of mind is also the attitude present in people who make it into power. Therefore it gets glorified throughout the U.S., to the point that a majority of us actually seem to believe the myth that each person is solely responsible for the outcome of his life no matter what his initial conditions might have been.
When you combine that myth with the reality that only a tiny minority of people can possibly "make it" you have the recipe for all of the pointless anger and confrontation that DO exist throughout the U.S. and infect our politics and policy. Individualistic ethics, properly applied, are very beneficial. Unfettered, as they are here, they are enormously destructive -- to many of my compatriots, cooperation is inherently a sign of weakness, unless it's practiced to the minimum extent necessary to make individuals richer. The U.S. often feels to me, a native and lifelong resident, like a very desolate and lonely place.
Back on topic...
In the center of small towns, where the roads are narrow (think: older European towns), life without traffic controls could work fine. But in newer cities, the problem with taking away traffic controls is that it will dramatically slow traffic down as everyone becomes more careful. Given the distances necessitated by the layout of newer, larger cities, the result will be unmanageable travel times.
For example, in my hometown of Seattle, you can drive from one end of downtown to the other, a distance of about 2 miles, in about 5 minutes on Second (southbound) or Fourth (northbound) Avenues with well-timed flow control. If you had to stop and carefully pick your way through each intersection that trip might take half an hour or more.
Monopolies aren't necessarily harmful; barriers to entry are
Agree 100%. Wal-Mart erects big, effective barriers to entry in its smaller markets, and that is how it perpetuates its monopoly. Even in the bigger markets, no one can compete with Wal-Mart on price; instead, they have to distinguish themselves through fashion or niche marketing or specialization. In the smaller markets, there is simply not room for a niche marketer, and Wal-Mart's market power is such that no retail chain in the world has the capital to make a real go at competing with them directly.
You will argue that the monopoly is not harmful. From the narrow standpoint of consumer prices, it probably isn't, and although markets served only by Wal-Mart certainly have limited selection available to consumers, they did before Wal-Mart showed up. Where the Wal-Mart monopoly is harmful is in the community. Wal-Mart jobs are almost always worse than those they replace. Wal-Mart has zero interest in doing good in local communities, even if they may occasionally announce some sort of big flashy national charitable initiative. Wal-Mart is harmful to the public fisc, as it "encourages" employees to take advantage of public benefits (by providing execrable benefits of its own) where most employers don't.
If there were a free market, I could voice my displeasure at Wal-Mart for doing these harmful things by shopping elsewhere. (Actually, since I live in a big city, I can and do.) But given the barriers to entry that Wal-Mart imposes on would-be competitors, people in many communities have no alternative but to continue supporting Wal-Mart. That is not a free market.
I should have said "Politicians almost never try to exercise any control over the licensing process." I've never heard of any board that was subject to any sort of manipulation by the executive. If you know of counterexamples I'd be curious to hear them.
Wow. Great post. Too bad I'm out of mod points and also already posted.
In light of your post it's interesting to think not only about what government spending constitutes "socialism," but also about exactly how different big business today is from "socialism," not only in its work for the government abroad, but here at home as well.
Of course the best example is Wal-Mart. I've always found their logo, with plain block letters and a star in the middle, creepily Communist. And, sure enough, they have an effective monopoly on virtually all consumer goods across huge swaths of the (rural and exurban) U.S. They determine, through central planning, what goods and services many Americans can buy and what prices those buyers will pay. On the supply side, they exert almost total control over a considerable network of suppliers. The only difference between Wal-Mart and a Soviet store is that the Soviet store was run much less efficiently. For the consumers and suppliers alike, neither one has anything to do with a free market.
Good market regulation and tax policy does not have this effect of entrenching monopolies (or big, established businesses) but of leveling the playing field for competitors.
Without (government) regulation, reputable doctors and health care providers would likely form their own associations which would certify that people were actually competent to practice medicine. And what's more, they might actually be run by medical experts rather than politicians and bureaucrats.
I can't believe after the last 200 years of history that anyone has the gall to make this argument with a straight face.
We had unregulated medicine. Throughout the 19th century. And what did we get? A bunch of traveling quacks with patent syrup. And very little real healing for anybody.
Licensing in high-risk professions is good when the licensing bodies are visible to the public. When there are only a bunch of private trade associations competing with one another, consumer confusion is rampant, and plenty of fly-by-night operators are only too happy to make a quick buck. By contrast, the "bureaucrats" in charge of medical licensing today are medical experts. Politicians have nothing to say about the subject.
To take this as far as possible, are you willing to completely deregulate aviation, getting rid of the FAA and everything it implies... air traffic control, pilot licensing, stringent maintenance standards for aircraft, etc. and farming out those functions to private organizations that you have no way of holding accountable until after you suffer damages? I didn't think so.
The free market is not the only possible organizing principle of human society, folks, or a god to worship. It's a tool to maximize wealth in the short term, and nothing more. It does an excellent job of that, and gets us nice toys in the process. But it's simply not designed to tackle other, very real human necessities, which we expect as part of the social contract: ensuring people a minimum standard of health and safety, managing community goods sustainably, or even providing a fair structure for market participants and processes. As irritating as government can sometimes be, I really don't want to live in an unregulated society, and if you'd come off your ideological high horse and actually look at facts you wouldn't either.
I'm guessing you're in the UK. It's hard for me to imagine the law there is that much different from that in the US, where I am.
If the buses are owned and operated by the government, there are most likely code sections providing that passengers endangering public safety or disturbing the peace (and if I or the police have to use force on you, you fit in at least one of those categories) lose their riding privileges. You couldn't have me arrested for anything; I could have you trespassed from the buses and arrested for assault or disturbing the peace. Incidentally, in my jurisdiction, assault on a transit bus driver earns you a felony conviction and significant prison time.
If the buses are privately owned, as you seem to be implying, then the same rules would apply to them as to any other private property. I (as an agent of the owner) don't want you on board for whatever reason (other than racial discrimination or such)? Great! I tell you to get off, and as soon as you don't, you're trespassing. Again, I can have you arrested, not the other way around.
When I drove, I really didn't take well to people making threats, either empty (like yours) or otherwise. I asked them if what they had said was a threat. If they said no, sit down, and shut up, no problem. If they said yes or any other answer other than no, the police were summoned and the bus wasn't moving until the offender was gone. 99% of passengers play by the rules and pay the correct fare without dumb little games (all of which the driver has seen countless times before, by the way). The inconvenience and danger caused by the other 1% are very unfair to the law-abiding public and shouldn't be tolerated.
Incidentally, in the US at least, no urban bus system has made change for decades. In my system, we eliminated it in 1979 after someone shot one of our drivers for his change purse, and we were one of the last ones. Also, at least in my jurisdiction, for businesses that do make change it is completely legal (so they can keep smaller quantities of change, to reduce the risk of a holdup) to reject bills larger than US$ 20.
I don't apologise and get off the bus because he refuses to take my money.
Speaking as a former city bus driver...
...if you do it regularly, I'll request police at your stop, they'll give you a nice fat ticket and tell you to stay off the buses for a year, and you get to experience the warm, friendly comments from all the other passengers whom you've just delayed by 15 minutes.
RTFM. "Exact change only" is in the documentation (timetable, website). For copyright, basics such as this example are covered in the U.S. (or appropriate nation) Code. And the ethics aren't on your side here either -- ethically, maybe it's OK to use my copyrighted work for your own personal use, but you sure as hell can't use it to make a profit from selling trucks without securing a license from me first.
Interesting. I'm not totally sure this would work for me but it's got me thinking hard. Thanks for the tip.
I'm curious if anyone has used this in an MBP, which has a stock SATA hard drive, and tried a RAID 0 across the SATA primary drive and the ATA/100 secondary drive. I have no idea whether performance from such a setup would be reasonable.
I must admit I've never seen the point of huge amounts of local storage in a laptop (or any standalone PC, for that matter). If you want lots of space, you're far better off putting it into a separate machine.
My life for the foreseeable future requires lots of longish trips and some boring time in hotel rooms. I'd be totally happy if I could 1) load Logic Pro and my several GB of associated stuff; 2) have a few spare GB for a Windows partition; 3) bring my whole music/video collection along without either just choosing "greatest hits" or having to explain for the 2000th time to the TSA that no, my external hard drive is NOT a bomb (as well as tote the extra few pounds and cables around).
Don't know about the C2D models, but my 2.16 CD MBP gets slightly worse life than a friend's 1.83 version. SpeedStep apparently won't slow down the processor quite as far.
The difference is very small though... with the faster processor and my 7200rpm drive it's about 15 minutes. They are claiming slightly improved life for the C2D version, but all CD MBP's get pretty terrible battery life. MacBooks are better, if you can live without a graphics card and with a smaller screen.
Don't worry too much about the 7200rpm drive for now. I have one in my first generation MBP, and wouldn't get it if I were buying today.
The density of the 160GB 5400rpm model, which wasn't available in quantity when the first generation MBP came out, is high enough that performance is really, really close to the 100GB 7200rpm models. My MBP averages about 44MB/s write flat-out... the Seagate 5400.3, according to this, will do over 41. Read speeds are similarly close. If you're really pushing the disk subsystem so hard that you'll notice that difference, do yourself a favor and use the new FW800 port.
When Seagate finally ships its 160GB 7200.2 results may be different. I'm buying one of those for my existing MBP as soon as they ship.
I second the request for 1680x1050. (1920x1200 would just be too much on 15.4".) The faster video cards would probably cause heat issues; all the laptops available with them are thicker and heavier.
For the 12" the MacBook, unlike what we're used to with iBooks, is a legitimate performer unless you need 3D graphics. I'd like an even smaller model, and the option for discrete graphics in the black MB.
What I really want can't be provided by Apple... a fast 320GB notebook drive. That would change my life.
Being the obsessive ID3 tag freak that I am, I have tons of AAC files with bizarre UTF-8 characters in the Title tag, and therefore (letting iTunes do everything automatically) with those characters in the filenames, which causes no problem whatsoever in OS X on an HFS+ volume. It took forever for the lightbulb in my head to flash about why the Finder kept aborting the copy when I tried to copy my entire iTunes folder to an NTFS volume over a network, and leaving inaccessible files of death on the NTFS volume. I believe OS X should handle this situation by automatically changing illegal filenames when copying to an SMB share, but it doesn't. Be forewarned.
Sorry -- I didn't mean my reply to be a personal attack on your post. My point is just something that needs to be repeated often on./, because there is a very persistent idea here that somehow using iTunes or an iPod will contaminate your DRM-free music with DRM.
I do agree with the other poster that iTunes's interface and capabilities give it a competitive advantage over many other music library programs, but I certainly don't see it as the only one out there. Personally, even though all but a tiny fraction of my music is ripped from my own CDs, I use it because it scales relatively well for large libraries, it is well integrated with OS X, and it offers a few more ID3 tags than competing programs, which is very important when you're trying to fit classical music into the ID3 box.
Build up an iTunes collection and you're stuck with Apple players, for life.
OK, it's time again for the Obligatory iTunes Anti-FUD Post.
Remember, kids, iTunes != iTunes Store. If you put your own ripped (or pirated) music into iTunes, THERE IS NO DRM AND NO LOCK-IN. Sorry to shout, but it's amazing how often this point is ignored, misunderstood, or obfuscated, no matter how often it's repeated.
iTunes and DRM only mix when the music is *purchased* from the iTunes Store. Even then, it's trivial for even Joe Sixpack to defeat the DRM if he senses that the end of iTunes is near: burn and rip, or use a hack such as QTFairUse for better quality.
iTunes is perfectly capable of dealing with non-DRM music in any format QuickTime can handle, which includes AAC, MP3, WAV/AIFF and Apple Lossless natively as well as Vorbis and FLAC with plug-ins. (The iPod can't handle the plug-in formats, but if you use Vorbis and FLAC you probably think the iPod is "lame" because its interface isn't confusing enough. [Just teasing!])
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I think I'm the only person on the planet who *likes* the different looks for windows in different applications. It makes it much easier for me to see at a glance which of my bazillion open windows are Safari, and which are Path Finder, and which are Mail, and which are iTunes. Provided that all the schemes look finished and professional, I say bring 'em on. (I do think the iTunes scroll bars need some help, though...)
The only problems I have with Apple's current look are that 1) there should be more choices for the color of scroll bars/Apple menu/Spotlight menu, and 2) the bottom left corner of each window should be a resize handle.
For those complaining about the behavior of the Zoom button: Instead of hitting Zoom, hit Option-Command-H to "hide others." Personally, the maximize button is one of the things I hate most about Windows -- I want to be able to see my other open windows when at all possible.
and the old stuff runs fine under Rosetta.
Powerpoint barely runs at all under Rosetta.
Excel takes six or seven bounces to launch. Not acceptable on up-to-the-minute hardware.
Word eats 7%-10% cpu sitting idle. Doesn't help the battery life when you're writing on the road.
NeoOffice, while a great tool to have around, is so poorly optimized that it's barely faster native than MS Office is under Rosetta (sometimes slower).
Back to the topic... this move by MS is part of a continued effort to prevent Macs from making any inroads into the corporate space, which is MS's most lucrative market. After the next release of Mac Office, the consumers/educational types/etc. will be thrilled -- it will probably look gorgeous, run fast, etc. But business users, most of whom have brain-dead VBA cruft to deal with, will have no choice but to run Windows Office somehow... which involves a license of Windows, at least until CodeWeavers is able to make Office versions newer than 2000 run under Crossover Mac.
I can understand how my somewhat intemperate comment would make it seem like I view urban residents as "lesser," but that's not how I see it -- my point is actually that they are the same. Especially with modern communications, rural and urban residents can largely do the same work. The issue is economic: people living in rural areas impose costs on society that those in urban areas don't. Most importantly, rural infrastructure, per capita served, is enormously more expensive. Rural communications, to date, have required subsidies in order to be provided at all (this may change as satellite communications grow). Rural life causes (again, per capita) more environmental damage than urban life, in most cases.
What I don't see is how rural residents create unique value to society, which urban residents are not capable of providing, and which justifies subsidizing those extra costs. The issue is not whether they contribute at all -- it's whether they contribute enough extra to justify something like the current Senate structure. While I've never lived in a rural area, I suspect the answer is no.
Let me reiterate that I don't have anything against people choosing to live in rural areas -- I just don't want to pay extra to subsidize them, as I do now, solely because they are making a lifestyle choice.
As for the size of the subsidies in question, here's some data at the state level, which is where the structure of the Senate is making a difference. My two home states are Washington and Massachusetts... in both cases, the Senate is instrumental in transferring our wealth to places like Alaska and West Virginia.
This result does not demonstrate a bias in favor of urban areas, but an accurate reflection of their economic and social importance.
Under the current regime, as you point out, we subsidize rural residents. (We do the same with suburbanites, but that's an even more difficult political problem requiring a different post...) There is no reason the rest of us should have to pay this subsidy; rural life is not somehow morally superior to other lifestyles, and we as a society have no particular need for rural residents beyond those necessary to keep our farming and recreational operations in business.
From my perspective, it appears that those in favor of the subsidy of rural life (and therefore of the skewed Senate) simply want the rest of us to underwrite their lifestyle preferences. That would be like me asking rural residents to fund a massive capital expansion of the Boston subway.
If the lack of rural residents became a problem for America as a whole, its legislative bodies -- even if accurately allocated -- would step in with whatever subsidy was actually necessary for the country's health.
There is nothing sacred about that piece of paper. It was a pioneering, and largely successful, attempt by victims of tyranny to establish a governmental framework that would protect what they saw as their rights more effectively. But it's not magic. It wasn't perfect in the first place, and changes in society over time (most notably, increased urbanism, staggering population growth, and new scientific knowledge) have reduced its relevance.
Many of the legal efforts to get around the Constitution have been aimed at solving specific, concrete problems in the absence of any possibility of Constitutional amendment. I'd rather see the Constitution amended forthrightly, to keep it up-to-date, than simply circumvented. Of course this would allow the possibility of more frequent changes, including stupid demagogical ones like a flag-burning amendment. Still, it would be nice if laymen could actually understand how the law as it operates relates to Constitutional text.
The first amendments I'd like to see, all of which I think would solve real problems, and none of which could happen right now:
1. A population-based Senate that eliminates the systematic bias in favor of rural areas
2. Explicit codification of the "right to privacy" now derived in a tortured manner from the 1st, 5th, and 14th Amendments
3. Clarification of the Second Amendment so there is no longer any dispute about our ability to apply common-sense regulations like licensing, registration, and insurance to firearm ownership, as we do for other dangerous tools such as cars, heavy equipment, etc.
4. A mechanism for exclusively public financing of campaigns, to increase elected officials' responsiveness to voters rather than money
Of course, your politics may vary, but I think we can agree that law and reality should correspond to at least some degree.
Let's refine your list a little bit. Amendments often have multiple parts, some of which are still meaningful, some of which aren't. Some Bill of Rights provisions have fundamental problems and need changing; the Founding Fathers weren't perfect in their time, and in any case the document is severely outdated. If the Constitution has one overwhelming flaw, it's that amending it is too hard.
1st Amendment: Establishment Clause: eviscerated (thank you, fundie wackjobs)
Free Exercise Clause: as strong as ever (ditto)
Freedom of speech and the press: stronger than some other countries, but still deeply problematic
Right of assembly: OK, unless you're Muslim
Right to petition the government: OK, unless the Bush administration took you prisoner in the war on terra
2nd Amendment: unfortunately, still in good shape
3rd Amendment: Has never been an issue, so it's probably working OK
4th Amendment: Right against searches and seizures: Jurisprudence is a mess. Could be better, could be worse
No warrants w/o probable cause & specifics: Technically working, but probable cause is a little weak
5th Amendment: No prosecution for severe crime w/o grand jury indictment: Still works, but the grand jury itself is a deeply flawed institution
Double jeopardy: Seems to work OK
Right against self-incrimination w/o due process: in a jury setting, there's no way it can work -- the Founding Fathers should have done this one differently
Deprivation of life/liberty/property w/o due process: Due process works fine for those who can afford good lawyers, and is a joke for those who can't
Takings: the language is vague. Whether you think this is working depends on what you think a "taking" is.
6th Amendment: Speedy trial: More or less OK
Right to be informed and confronted with witnesses: Usually works OK
Assistance of counsel: This one is politically difficult, because no one wants to support public defenders. The basic ideas in the jurisprudence are OK but need more teeth in the real world.
7th Amendment: Right to jury: Works OK most of the time
8th Amendment: This is broken, through no fault of the courts. The Bush Administration has singlehandedly made a joke of it.
9th Amendment: Too vague to be meaningful. Surely "the people" don't have every conceivable right (e.g. they don't have the right to murder). There is no way to know what set of rights this amendment refers to.
10th Amendment: Out the window. (Personally, I wouldn't like the world that would result if we started enforcing it... so I'm glad it's dead.)
(Please don't say abortion isn an issue of science - it's an issue of metaphysics and ethics.)
Sorry to burst your bubble. The only way we can intelligibly formulate the ethics of abortion is through empirical data, i.e. science. The enormous and very concrete social costs brought on by a rigid anti-abortion policy are simply ignored by most pro-lifers in favor of meaningless religious dogma. Your "metaphysics," i.e. empirically unverifiable nonsense, is not a reasonable way to form ethical propositions.
There's nothing anti-science about intelligent design. Intelligent design is just saying, "Hey, the universe seems pretty well ordered. What are the chances of that?" It's a metaphysical inquiry that's informed by science.
Two things come to mind here:
1. What is the point of a "metaphysical inquiry supported by science" when the questions being asked are, by definition, beyond science's reach? Science can verify evolution and teach us about problems with the theory. It can't teach us a damn thing, at least not yet, about the presence or nature of any "designer."
2. Even though the inquiry is bound to be fruitless, I could accept it if the proponents of ID actually used the approach you are suggesting they do. Instead, they simply deny good, widely supported scientific conclusions in favor of obscure junk science that is not generally accepted. ID is not science, but empirically unsupportable creationism revised to eliminate some of the more egregious absurdities of Genesis.
Fun experiment on a relatively empty freeway: Find yourself a tailgater, preferably of the "I just like someone else to set the pace and so I'll never pass" variety. Assuming you're on a 60mph freeway, speed up 1 mph every few hundred feet. See how fast you can get going before the tailgater realizes his speed, panics, and backs off.
Back when I had my (dearly departed) Taurus SHO I got a guy up to 102 mph this way. It was amazing to watch the car drop back once he figured out what was going on.
Almost no regular user is thinking about the security implications of his or her computer use. Therefore, the OS designer should do it for them, to prevent damage to other users.
If they are sophisticated enough to think about security at every step, power users can disable or change security features manually.
A computer, to most people, is a tool to write stuff, communicate, and have fun. It's not, in their minds, a tool to promote security. So why not have the machine be as secure as possible automatically?
(KOffice / KMail/ amaroK / etc. Sorry, Apple's cheap imitations just don't cut it for me.)
I have to say I don't understand this comment. Not that there aren't plenty of good reasons to run Linux on your PB G4, but I don't get this.
There is no Apple Office-style product. iWork is designed and priced to cover a much more basic set of needs. While MS Office is made by Satan and can be absurdly expensive it is not a "cheap imitation" of KOffice or OOo -- they are imitating it, sometimes successfully, sometimes less successfully.
The great thing about OS X Mail is that it is *not* an imitation of Outlook like every other email client out there, including KMail. While it has some holes it also has unique capabilities, especially in the interface -- I love the fact that it (unlike any other client I've ever used) will seamlessly combine all my IMAP inboxes and sent-mail folders.
And if you're trying to say that iTunes is a cheap imitation of Amarok... wow. Your *K*ool-Aid is stronger than the stuff Mac zealots are drinking.
I immediately knew that the majority of New Yorkers were not my kind of people. I can hardly imagine that it will be anything different in other big US cities.
Actually, it is different... the U.S. is just too big to be captured by one set of stereotypes.
People in New York, by and large, are the most ambitious in the country. If you want to become "successful," wealthy and famous you go to New York (unless you want to make it in entertainment, which is centered in L.A.). The New York attitude is not replicated elsewhere in the country, for the most part, although there are other problems (see below).
Unfortunately, the New York state of mind is also the attitude present in people who make it into power. Therefore it gets glorified throughout the U.S., to the point that a majority of us actually seem to believe the myth that each person is solely responsible for the outcome of his life no matter what his initial conditions might have been.
When you combine that myth with the reality that only a tiny minority of people can possibly "make it" you have the recipe for all of the pointless anger and confrontation that DO exist throughout the U.S. and infect our politics and policy. Individualistic ethics, properly applied, are very beneficial. Unfettered, as they are here, they are enormously destructive -- to many of my compatriots, cooperation is inherently a sign of weakness, unless it's practiced to the minimum extent necessary to make individuals richer. The U.S. often feels to me, a native and lifelong resident, like a very desolate and lonely place.
Back on topic...
In the center of small towns, where the roads are narrow (think: older European towns), life without traffic controls could work fine. But in newer cities, the problem with taking away traffic controls is that it will dramatically slow traffic down as everyone becomes more careful. Given the distances necessitated by the layout of newer, larger cities, the result will be unmanageable travel times.
For example, in my hometown of Seattle, you can drive from one end of downtown to the other, a distance of about 2 miles, in about 5 minutes on Second (southbound) or Fourth (northbound) Avenues with well-timed flow control. If you had to stop and carefully pick your way through each intersection that trip might take half an hour or more.
Monopolies aren't necessarily harmful; barriers to entry are
Agree 100%. Wal-Mart erects big, effective barriers to entry in its smaller markets, and that is how it perpetuates its monopoly. Even in the bigger markets, no one can compete with Wal-Mart on price; instead, they have to distinguish themselves through fashion or niche marketing or specialization. In the smaller markets, there is simply not room for a niche marketer, and Wal-Mart's market power is such that no retail chain in the world has the capital to make a real go at competing with them directly.
You will argue that the monopoly is not harmful. From the narrow standpoint of consumer prices, it probably isn't, and although markets served only by Wal-Mart certainly have limited selection available to consumers, they did before Wal-Mart showed up. Where the Wal-Mart monopoly is harmful is in the community. Wal-Mart jobs are almost always worse than those they replace. Wal-Mart has zero interest in doing good in local communities, even if they may occasionally announce some sort of big flashy national charitable initiative. Wal-Mart is harmful to the public fisc, as it "encourages" employees to take advantage of public benefits (by providing execrable benefits of its own) where most employers don't.
If there were a free market, I could voice my displeasure at Wal-Mart for doing these harmful things by shopping elsewhere. (Actually, since I live in a big city, I can and do.) But given the barriers to entry that Wal-Mart imposes on would-be competitors, people in many communities have no alternative but to continue supporting Wal-Mart. That is not a free market.
Fair enough. I oversimplified.
I should have said "Politicians almost never try to exercise any control over the licensing process." I've never heard of any board that was subject to any sort of manipulation by the executive. If you know of counterexamples I'd be curious to hear them.
Wow. Great post. Too bad I'm out of mod points and also already posted.
In light of your post it's interesting to think not only about what government spending constitutes "socialism," but also about exactly how different big business today is from "socialism," not only in its work for the government abroad, but here at home as well.
Of course the best example is Wal-Mart. I've always found their logo, with plain block letters and a star in the middle, creepily Communist. And, sure enough, they have an effective monopoly on virtually all consumer goods across huge swaths of the (rural and exurban) U.S. They determine, through central planning, what goods and services many Americans can buy and what prices those buyers will pay. On the supply side, they exert almost total control over a considerable network of suppliers. The only difference between Wal-Mart and a Soviet store is that the Soviet store was run much less efficiently. For the consumers and suppliers alike, neither one has anything to do with a free market.
Good market regulation and tax policy does not have this effect of entrenching monopolies (or big, established businesses) but of leveling the playing field for competitors.
Without (government) regulation, reputable doctors and health care providers would likely form their own associations which would certify that people were actually competent to practice medicine. And what's more, they might actually be run by medical experts rather than politicians and bureaucrats.
I can't believe after the last 200 years of history that anyone has the gall to make this argument with a straight face.
We had unregulated medicine. Throughout the 19th century. And what did we get? A bunch of traveling quacks with patent syrup. And very little real healing for anybody.
Licensing in high-risk professions is good when the licensing bodies are visible to the public. When there are only a bunch of private trade associations competing with one another, consumer confusion is rampant, and plenty of fly-by-night operators are only too happy to make a quick buck. By contrast, the "bureaucrats" in charge of medical licensing today are medical experts. Politicians have nothing to say about the subject.
To take this as far as possible, are you willing to completely deregulate aviation, getting rid of the FAA and everything it implies... air traffic control, pilot licensing, stringent maintenance standards for aircraft, etc. and farming out those functions to private organizations that you have no way of holding accountable until after you suffer damages? I didn't think so.
The free market is not the only possible organizing principle of human society, folks, or a god to worship. It's a tool to maximize wealth in the short term, and nothing more. It does an excellent job of that, and gets us nice toys in the process. But it's simply not designed to tackle other, very real human necessities, which we expect as part of the social contract: ensuring people a minimum standard of health and safety, managing community goods sustainably, or even providing a fair structure for market participants and processes. As irritating as government can sometimes be, I really don't want to live in an unregulated society, and if you'd come off your ideological high horse and actually look at facts you wouldn't either.
I'm guessing you're in the UK. It's hard for me to imagine the law there is that much different from that in the US, where I am.
If the buses are owned and operated by the government, there are most likely code sections providing that passengers endangering public safety or disturbing the peace (and if I or the police have to use force on you, you fit in at least one of those categories) lose their riding privileges. You couldn't have me arrested for anything; I could have you trespassed from the buses and arrested for assault or disturbing the peace. Incidentally, in my jurisdiction, assault on a transit bus driver earns you a felony conviction and significant prison time.
If the buses are privately owned, as you seem to be implying, then the same rules would apply to them as to any other private property. I (as an agent of the owner) don't want you on board for whatever reason (other than racial discrimination or such)? Great! I tell you to get off, and as soon as you don't, you're trespassing. Again, I can have you arrested, not the other way around.
When I drove, I really didn't take well to people making threats, either empty (like yours) or otherwise. I asked them if what they had said was a threat. If they said no, sit down, and shut up, no problem. If they said yes or any other answer other than no, the police were summoned and the bus wasn't moving until the offender was gone. 99% of passengers play by the rules and pay the correct fare without dumb little games (all of which the driver has seen countless times before, by the way). The inconvenience and danger caused by the other 1% are very unfair to the law-abiding public and shouldn't be tolerated.
Incidentally, in the US at least, no urban bus system has made change for decades. In my system, we eliminated it in 1979 after someone shot one of our drivers for his change purse, and we were one of the last ones. Also, at least in my jurisdiction, for businesses that do make change it is completely legal (so they can keep smaller quantities of change, to reduce the risk of a holdup) to reject bills larger than US$ 20.
I don't apologise and get off the bus because he refuses to take my money.
Speaking as a former city bus driver...
...if you do it regularly, I'll request police at your stop, they'll give you a nice fat ticket and tell you to stay off the buses for a year, and you get to experience the warm, friendly comments from all the other passengers whom you've just delayed by 15 minutes.
RTFM. "Exact change only" is in the documentation (timetable, website). For copyright, basics such as this example are covered in the U.S. (or appropriate nation) Code. And the ethics aren't on your side here either -- ethically, maybe it's OK to use my copyrighted work for your own personal use, but you sure as hell can't use it to make a profit from selling trucks without securing a license from me first.
Interesting. I'm not totally sure this would work for me but it's got me thinking hard. Thanks for the tip.
I'm curious if anyone has used this in an MBP, which has a stock SATA hard drive, and tried a RAID 0 across the SATA primary drive and the ATA/100 secondary drive. I have no idea whether performance from such a setup would be reasonable.
Just add one </i>... the preview button is our friend.
I must admit I've never seen the point of huge amounts of local storage in a laptop (or any standalone PC, for that matter). If you want lots of space, you're far better off putting it into a separate machine.
My life for the foreseeable future requires lots of longish trips and some boring time in hotel rooms. I'd be totally happy if I could 1) load Logic Pro and my several GB of associated stuff; 2) have a few spare GB for a Windows partition; 3) bring my whole music/video collection along without either just choosing "greatest hits" or having to explain for the 2000th time to the TSA that no, my external hard drive is NOT a bomb (as well as tote the extra few pounds and cables around).
Don't know about the C2D models, but my 2.16 CD MBP gets slightly worse life than a friend's 1.83 version. SpeedStep apparently won't slow down the processor quite as far.
The difference is very small though... with the faster processor and my 7200rpm drive it's about 15 minutes. They are claiming slightly improved life for the C2D version, but all CD MBP's get pretty terrible battery life. MacBooks are better, if you can live without a graphics card and with a smaller screen.
Don't worry too much about the 7200rpm drive for now. I have one in my first generation MBP, and wouldn't get it if I were buying today.
The density of the 160GB 5400rpm model, which wasn't available in quantity when the first generation MBP came out, is high enough that performance is really, really close to the 100GB 7200rpm models. My MBP averages about 44MB/s write flat-out... the Seagate 5400.3, according to this, will do over 41. Read speeds are similarly close. If you're really pushing the disk subsystem so hard that you'll notice that difference, do yourself a favor and use the new FW800 port.
When Seagate finally ships its 160GB 7200.2 results may be different. I'm buying one of those for my existing MBP as soon as they ship.
I second the request for 1680x1050. (1920x1200 would just be too much on 15.4".) The faster video cards would probably cause heat issues; all the laptops available with them are thicker and heavier.
For the 12" the MacBook, unlike what we're used to with iBooks, is a legitimate performer unless you need 3D graphics. I'd like an even smaller model, and the option for discrete graphics in the black MB.
What I really want can't be provided by Apple... a fast 320GB notebook drive. That would change my life.
Being the obsessive ID3 tag freak that I am, I have tons of AAC files with bizarre UTF-8 characters in the Title tag, and therefore (letting iTunes do everything automatically) with those characters in the filenames, which causes no problem whatsoever in OS X on an HFS+ volume. It took forever for the lightbulb in my head to flash about why the Finder kept aborting the copy when I tried to copy my entire iTunes folder to an NTFS volume over a network, and leaving inaccessible files of death on the NTFS volume. I believe OS X should handle this situation by automatically changing illegal filenames when copying to an SMB share, but it doesn't. Be forewarned.
Sorry -- I didn't mean my reply to be a personal attack on your post. My point is just something that needs to be repeated often on ./, because there is a very persistent idea here that somehow using iTunes or an iPod will contaminate your DRM-free music with DRM.
I do agree with the other poster that iTunes's interface and capabilities give it a competitive advantage over many other music library programs, but I certainly don't see it as the only one out there. Personally, even though all but a tiny fraction of my music is ripped from my own CDs, I use it because it scales relatively well for large libraries, it is well integrated with OS X, and it offers a few more ID3 tags than competing programs, which is very important when you're trying to fit classical music into the ID3 box.
Build up an iTunes collection and you're stuck with Apple players, for life.
OK, it's time again for the Obligatory iTunes Anti-FUD Post.
Remember, kids, iTunes != iTunes Store. If you put your own ripped (or pirated) music into iTunes, THERE IS NO DRM AND NO LOCK-IN. Sorry to shout, but it's amazing how often this point is ignored, misunderstood, or obfuscated, no matter how often it's repeated.
iTunes and DRM only mix when the music is *purchased* from the iTunes Store. Even then, it's trivial for even Joe Sixpack to defeat the DRM if he senses that the end of iTunes is near: burn and rip, or use a hack such as QTFairUse for better quality.
iTunes is perfectly capable of dealing with non-DRM music in any format QuickTime can handle, which includes AAC, MP3, WAV/AIFF and Apple Lossless natively as well as Vorbis and FLAC with plug-ins. (The iPod can't handle the plug-in formats, but if you use Vorbis and FLAC you probably think the iPod is "lame" because its interface isn't confusing enough. [Just teasing!])