Because people don't want 5 different ISPs with 5 different lines going down their street. Local infrastructure for telecom, cable, water, electricity, gas, etc is a "natural monopoly". I don't care if the government or a private company owns/manages the wires in the ground, but the one company I do NOT want managing the wires in the ground is my ISP. I want a company with no incentive whatsoever to give preferential treatment to one ISP over another.
It seems that if the studios keep raising their streaming licensing fees then DVDs eventually will be cheaper for Netflix to handle than streaming. I don't think this will force Netflix out of business.
That is a cynical idea, ok drug companies might prefer long term treatments to cures. But for insurance companies and nationalised health care systems cost is more important.
Maybe health insurance companies should start buying pharma companies? That might change a few things.
According to http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-24.pdf 80% of people 25 yrs old and older have a high school Degree and 24% have a bachelorâ€(TM)s degree or better.
I think one thing I would do is use the money to expose hypocritical people, such as politicians using "family values" types of messages while sucking dick in a bathroom stall or cheating on their wife. I would try to buy legislation requiring drug testing for members of congress and police officers.
I was the one who was blaming religion. I did so partially because I was being lazy. You are correct that people and institutions of power try to control sex to control people. One thing I find funny about this thread is all this talk about sex between a husband and wife for procreation. This is the only sex which seems to be guilt free and I was not thinking of that when I posted.
I've had a lot of sex involving a large number of different fetishes, combinations of genders, and number of participants, but *never* for procreation. Sex for me is entirely about recreation. Sex is *powerful*, so powerful I think it scares the people in power. That is the sex people and institutions in power try to make people feel guilty about.
Do you consider having no sexual inhibitions to be a positive thing?
Guilt about sex is one of the things religion uses to keep people in line. Reduce guilt about sex and you reduce religion's hold over the populace. We can't have that happening, now can we?
Even less often do you hear, "that government employee was an idiot! I'm never paying taxes to that municipality again."
I got a speeding ticket in the town I live. My passive aggressive response was to not spend a penny within the town limits for a year. I hope I deprived them of at least as much money in local sales taxes as they received from the speeding ticket.
Thinking the United States is "the best country in the world" is what I call the "American Delusion". The statement is factually incorrect in so many ways, but the population still thinks we are "the best". If we cannot recognize our problems, how will we ever fix them?
I'm sure different lists will rank slightly differently, lower is better:
Per capita GDP: #6 (wikipedia)
Life expectancy at birth: #50 (CIA factbook)
Freedom of the press: #47 (reporters without borders)
Population living in poverty: #23 (CIA factbook)
Infant mortality: #47 (CIA factbook)
Median household income: #2 (wikipedia)
We are the highest in the following:
Percent of population incarcerated: #1
Health care costs: #1
There is no one indicator of "best", but the Unites states is not the best or even close to the best in many important ways.
Right, because more government control = less evil and well maintained. Just look at the US's current infrastructure and areas of oversight (e.g. the FCC).
When I imagine a world with out the FCC I see a world where the radio spectrum is a wild west of interference and people cranking up their transmitters to drown out my transmitter.
The government, especially the federal government, *should* be there to promote the Common Good. The FCC, FDA, EPA, NIH, and many other government agencies do just that. Yes, they have their problems. We should work to fix these problems not work to abolish the agencies.
I strongly feel states rights should be much stronger. I used to have a problem reconciling this belief with slavery until I realized slavery was not a states rights issue. It was a human rights issue. Human rights and civil rights should be a federal issue
I don't support gay marriage at a federal level. I support abolishing all marriage at a federal level. If we must have something "marriage-like" at a federal level then convert all existing marriages to civil unions and remove the gender restrictions. If you want to get married, go ahead -- but it is a personal and/or religious thing, not a government thing,
This varies depending on the power company. Here in Huntsville I have reasonably reliable electrical service. I can say plenty of bad things about the local power company, but service reliability is not one of my complaints.
I work in telecommunications. There is an industry which should be held criminally negligent for their maintenance of the infrastructure.
Re:Fix? I think you mean, "migrate"
on
The PHP Singularity
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I hate pointers in C, the lack of regular expressions in C, and string handling in C. I think of PHP as "like C without all the stuff I hate about C". I'm sure language purists will be astonished by that statement. I realize PHP isn't fast, but it seems to be fast enough for the stuff we use it for.
I sort of like that. When the PHP docs fail me I can turn to my C and Unix books for documentation on these wrapped functions. However, I can see how many people would not like that.
Re:Fix? I think you mean, "migrate"
on
The PHP Singularity
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The C-like syntax and wrappers for all sorts of handy stuff like POSIX threading, sockets, SSL, etc is why I like PHP. My biggest issue with PHP is that these functions are poorly documented (especially the SSL wrappers). I am not a language purist, I want something easy to use, gives me access to all the nifty stuff Unix can provide, and doesn't make me learn an entirely new syntax. If I was a professional programmer I might feel differently, but for MY needs at my job and for personal projects PHP is a good tool.
In 2010 the average total health insurance premium per year for a single person was $4,940, for a family it is $13,871 per year. This is according to the annual Kaiser/HRET survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Benefits.
The Kaiser Family Foundation, based on historical data on premium increases from 1999 - 2009, projects a family will pay an average of $30,000 per year by 2019.
Health insurance premiums were going to increase significantly without the Affordable Care Act. The existing system is not working, I'm willing to try something else.
Yeah, this is a loser for all Americans. The majority of the country didn't want this legislation.
The majority of Americans did not want civil rights, social security, or interracial marriage.
All Americans win when everyone has health care coverage. The lower income people win because they will be healthier and more productive. Everyone else wins because the lower income people are not getting their primary care via emergency rooms and pass the cost on to the government and people with health insurance.
The only people I hear complaining about this are people with health insurance paid for by someone else (their employer, medicare/medicaid, and the VA). Try paying the full cost of insuring yourself and your family.
I'm of the mindset that even a little alcohol in your system should keep you off the road. Alcohol affects people in different ways, what may be fine for you isn't fine for me. If you wan to have a drink, don't plan on driving.
The logical extension of this is anyone who has not had enough sleep or is hungry, or any number of other things which might impair them slightly should not drive.
Law and Order should do an episode where a DUI is being contested. The defense could call a witness who has had a couple of beers and use a handful of breathalyzers from different manufacturers and models to show they all get different results.
Further question: how will you deal with the inevitability of childbirth on Mars? Note that if you don't send women, the men will be much more likely to fall into depression and refuse to work, even if it means their death.
The solution is obvious: only send gay men or lesbians.
The "suffocation" feeling comes from the build up of carbon dioxide in your body. If you can prevent that you'll peacefully lose consciousnesses and never feel like you are suffocating. Breathing something else like helium or nitrogen with no oxygen would do the trick. If you let the carbon dioxide build up your body will continue to struggle even after you lose consciousnesses.
Microsoft's (near) monopoly in consumer operating systems, office suites, and corporate messaging means their only competition in these areas is the previous versions of their own software. Maybe this has caused a culture of mediocrity through the entire company?
Slashdot Mirror
Because people don't want 5 different ISPs with 5 different lines going down their street. Local infrastructure for telecom, cable, water, electricity, gas, etc is a "natural monopoly". I don't care if the government or a private company owns/manages the wires in the ground, but the one company I do NOT want managing the wires in the ground is my ISP. I want a company with no incentive whatsoever to give preferential treatment to one ISP over another.
It seems that if the studios keep raising their streaming licensing fees then DVDs eventually will be cheaper for Netflix to handle than streaming. I don't think this will force Netflix out of business.
Maybe health insurance companies should start buying pharma companies? That might change a few things.
The PBS IQ/PBS Kids is a great kids channel. It is one of the digital OTA channels from PBS.
Cite your source.
According to http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-24.pdf 80% of people 25 yrs old and older have a high school Degree and 24% have a bachelorâ€(TM)s degree or better.
I think one thing I would do is use the money to expose hypocritical people, such as politicians using "family values" types of messages while sucking dick in a bathroom stall or cheating on their wife. I would try to buy legislation requiring drug testing for members of congress and police officers.
I was the one who was blaming religion. I did so partially because I was being lazy. You are correct that people and institutions of power try to control sex to control people. One thing I find funny about this thread is all this talk about sex between a husband and wife for procreation. This is the only sex which seems to be guilt free and I was not thinking of that when I posted.
I've had a lot of sex involving a large number of different fetishes, combinations of genders, and number of participants, but *never* for procreation. Sex for me is entirely about recreation. Sex is *powerful*, so powerful I think it scares the people in power. That is the sex people and institutions in power try to make people feel guilty about.
Guilt about sex is one of the things religion uses to keep people in line. Reduce guilt about sex and you reduce religion's hold over the populace. We can't have that happening, now can we?
Thinking the United States is "the best country in the world" is what I call the "American Delusion". The statement is factually incorrect in so many ways, but the population still thinks we are "the best". If we cannot recognize our problems, how will we ever fix them?
I'm sure different lists will rank slightly differently, lower is better:
Per capita GDP: #6 (wikipedia)
Life expectancy at birth: #50 (CIA factbook)
Freedom of the press: #47 (reporters without borders)
Population living in poverty: #23 (CIA factbook)
Infant mortality: #47 (CIA factbook)
Median household income: #2 (wikipedia)
We are the highest in the following:
Percent of population incarcerated: #1
Health care costs: #1
There is no one indicator of "best", but the Unites states is not the best or even close to the best in many important ways.
When I imagine a world with out the FCC I see a world where the radio spectrum is a wild west of interference and people cranking up their transmitters to drown out my transmitter.
The government, especially the federal government, *should* be there to promote the Common Good. The FCC, FDA, EPA, NIH, and many other government agencies do just that. Yes, they have their problems. We should work to fix these problems not work to abolish the agencies.
I strongly feel states rights should be much stronger. I used to have a problem reconciling this belief with slavery until I realized slavery was not a states rights issue. It was a human rights issue. Human rights and civil rights should be a federal issue
I don't support gay marriage at a federal level. I support abolishing all marriage at a federal level. If we must have something "marriage-like" at a federal level then convert all existing marriages to civil unions and remove the gender restrictions. If you want to get married, go ahead -- but it is a personal and/or religious thing, not a government thing,
This varies depending on the power company. Here in Huntsville I have reasonably reliable electrical service. I can say plenty of bad things about the local power company, but service reliability is not one of my complaints.
I work in telecommunications. There is an industry which should be held criminally negligent for their maintenance of the infrastructure.
I hate pointers in C, the lack of regular expressions in C, and string handling in C. I think of PHP as "like C without all the stuff I hate about C". I'm sure language purists will be astonished by that statement. I realize PHP isn't fast, but it seems to be fast enough for the stuff we use it for.
I sort of like that. When the PHP docs fail me I can turn to my C and Unix books for documentation on these wrapped functions. However, I can see how many people would not like that.
The C-like syntax and wrappers for all sorts of handy stuff like POSIX threading, sockets, SSL, etc is why I like PHP. My biggest issue with PHP is that these functions are poorly documented (especially the SSL wrappers). I am not a language purist, I want something easy to use, gives me access to all the nifty stuff Unix can provide, and doesn't make me learn an entirely new syntax. If I was a professional programmer I might feel differently, but for MY needs at my job and for personal projects PHP is a good tool.
In 2010 the average total health insurance premium per year for a single person was $4,940, for a family it is $13,871 per year. This is according to the annual Kaiser/HRET survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Benefits.
The Kaiser Family Foundation, based on historical data on premium increases from 1999 - 2009, projects a family will pay an average of $30,000 per year by 2019.
Health insurance premiums were going to increase significantly without the Affordable Care Act. The existing system is not working, I'm willing to try something else.
Do YOU pay for your health insurance or does your employer?
The majority of Americans did not want civil rights, social security, or interracial marriage.
All Americans win when everyone has health care coverage. The lower income people win because they will be healthier and more productive. Everyone else wins because the lower income people are not getting their primary care via emergency rooms and pass the cost on to the government and people with health insurance.
The only people I hear complaining about this are people with health insurance paid for by someone else (their employer, medicare/medicaid, and the VA). Try paying the full cost of insuring yourself and your family.
The logical extension of this is anyone who has not had enough sleep or is hungry, or any number of other things which might impair them slightly should not drive.
Law and Order should do an episode where a DUI is being contested. The defense could call a witness who has had a couple of beers and use a handful of breathalyzers from different manufacturers and models to show they all get different results.
The solution is obvious: only send gay men or lesbians.
See http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Are_the_sea_levels_different_in_the_Atlantic_and_the_Pacific_oceans
The "suffocation" feeling comes from the build up of carbon dioxide in your body. If you can prevent that you'll peacefully lose consciousnesses and never feel like you are suffocating. Breathing something else like helium or nitrogen with no oxygen would do the trick. If you let the carbon dioxide build up your body will continue to struggle even after you lose consciousnesses.
Microsoft's (near) monopoly in consumer operating systems, office suites, and corporate messaging means their only competition in these areas is the previous versions of their own software. Maybe this has caused a culture of mediocrity through the entire company?