Personally, I don't much like his movies because they're often sleazy and underhanded, taking cheap shots at people. No matter what, he doesn't seem like the type of director to let facts get in the way of his narrative. His health care movie was a fairly good exposé, until he got to the solutions part, or lack thereof. His capitalism movie was a complete load of crap, with a bunch of bluster, a total misunderstanding of economics, and no proposed solutions to any of the problems raised. Seeing that movie just left me feeling dirty from all the sleazy argumentation tactics. After seeing that one, I doubt I'll be watching another of his movies.
I'm simply arguing that the current setup is unconstitutional, and that including it in your taxes would not be, since the 16th Amendment specifically allows for a federal income tax. I'm not arguing my preference for one setup vs. the other.
The reason people have a "right" to treatment is for public health. It's idiotic to call for people to go untreated at hospitals, as that will simply create populations where communicable diseases can evolve and flourish, and eventually affect your health and well-being. Everyone else already benefits when someone gets free treatment at a hospital. I wouldn't have a problem dedicating a portion of my taxes to pay for this, as long as everyone else pays for it as well, regardless of whether they themselves have health insurance. I agree that the cost for this shouldn't be born by only those who have purchased insurance, but the solution is not to force others into the insurance system, it's to provide base single-payer insurance for everyone.
Actually, if they had structured it so that everyone's income taxes go up by the amount of the health insurance penalty, and then credit those with health insurance for that amount, then there would be a much better case for the law's constitutionality. As it is now, however, it is clearly unconstitutional, as citizens cannot be compelled to purchase any unwanted product or service with the force of law. That is the fundamental basis of personal freedom. You can't make a law that says that everyone presently alive must perform action x. You can outlaw certain behavior, but you can't force behavior by law.
Driving is a privilege, not a right. No one has to drive. If you choose to drive, then you need insurance. You might see how that's slightly different from requiring that anyone presently alive must buy health insurance or be extorted for a lot of money.
I will agree that governments and their people are surely best served by a certain level of secrecy for their diplomats, but that doesn't mean that our government has a mandate to punish people from other countries with no obligation to the US for disseminating those secrets once they've been handed to them. Why should they care what secrets the US government would rather be kept hidden? They don't owe the US government a thing, and the US has no jurisdiction over them. This whole media attack on Wikileaks is simply to divert attention from the State Department's devastating lack of information security. There's no one to blame but ourselves.
Perhaps libertarians and statists might agree on the notion that a federal government has its place in restricting state governments in order to protect the individual rights guaranteed to all citizens in the contstitution, and that local governments have their place in creating the specific type of society they have been elected to implement, with the restrictions and boundaries implied. Therefore, the local governments should be the ones restricting their citizens, and the federal government in turn restricts local governments. The problems start when the federal government starts restricting citizens directly, such as with Prohibition and the War on Drugs, due to the relatively poor representation citizens have at the federal level.
You've likely never heard anything quite like the robot's latest heartwarming masterpiece, Ode To Data Integrity. Certainly a worthy follow up to classic spoken-word lounge room hit, Destroy All Humans.
Note that Sony has also announced support in their BluRay players, and I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see something come out for the PS3. That expands the market significantly, in addition to the Logitech gear.
The only thing I don't get is that the gear is supposedly coming out this fall, but the development SDK doesn't come out until next spring. Will they be banking on some kind of really attractive first party built-in functionality? If so, what is it? The only thing that makes sense for me without 3rd party apps is local network media playback (accessing a media server on the network), Youtube access, and building it into the DVRs and making those a lot easier to use. They didn't mention anything about local media playback, and they're talking about TVs and non-DVR set-top boxes being out this fall, so that eliminates the DVR feature for those; are people really going to spend extra on a TV or a set-top box just for Youtube access? Maybe Logitech is already implementing local media playback on their own? Otherwise, it seems it will be a pretty slow uptake until the killer apps start coming out, sometime in mid 2011. That said, I'd jump on a Comcast DVR option with GoogleTV, and maybe I'd even pay $2-5 a month extra for it...
Ubuntu also runs the Chrome browser, if that's what you're looking for. At that point, you're talking about zero official application framework support, and all unsupported (by Google) Qt and GTK stuff. What's the point?
Or, you could have that roaming webtop() on your Android device and be able to use native apps such as ported C/C++/OpenGL commercial game titles, or leverage locally stored media for playback. No sane consumer is going to pick the needlessly limited device. ChromeOS should be merged into Android for the foreseeable future. They can always strip it back out again if the market is ready at some point.
ChromeOS will never get far enough in the marketplace for developers to even consider targeting it, so it's null set all around. Consumers will obviously pick the Android tablet/netbook/whatever that can play native games over the ChromeOS one that can only play crappy Flash games. ChromeOS widely misses the mark with consumers in the first place, so it's got absolutely no chance with developers.
Ah, thanks for the correction. I'll have to replace 'play the skin flute' with 'arm-wrestle the purple-headed stormtrooper' to sound equally sophomoric.
I hate to respond to trolls, but I just tried it out, and Redtube works fine on my iPhone. You'll be happy to know that you can still play the skin flute without Flash installed.
Makes you shudder to think of the poor kids who will get beat up for demonstrating this unbelievably lame app. Won't anyone think of the children? Apple?
That's a fine concern to have, but the logic is unsound. By doing this, Comedy Central is saying to people "threaten our lives and we'll do whatever you want." They're encouraging this group and others like them, practically begging to be threatened some more. This is just a complete failure on Comedy Central's part.
Clearly, you're a lot more intelligent than the lobbyists your employers are hiring, who are busy guaranteeing the destruction of your entire industry rather than adapting to the present situation. They are apparently far enough up their own asses to think that declaring a war on their customers, using the cash they gave them to buy consumer-hostile laws, would be a good idea. I hope they like the taste of backlash.
Photoshop would be replaced by Acorn, which would get a bunch of resources dumped on it. Illustrator is replaced by Inkscape. Quark Xpress makes a comeback to replace InDesign. Apple iWeb, Softpress or Karelia Sandvox or someone steps up to the plate to replace Dreamweaver. Fireworks is replaced with DrawIt. And Flash is replaced by Anime Studio or something. In any case, there's a great number of companies that would be ready to jump into the fray should Adobe choose to pull out of the Mac market.
The point is that Apple isn't restricting Adobe in any way whatsoever. Adobe is free to go make their own phones that use a Flash development chain, or partner with Apple's competitors. There's no reason Apple should have to allow apps built in any competing vendor's development environment to the App Store if they don't want them; everyone is free to use competing devices if that's a problem. Apple is free to control their app marketplace using any criteria they want, and Adobe and others are free to compete with them on the outside.
The only case in which Apple could possibly be found to be abusing a monopoly in mobile app distribution to muscle in on the mobile application development tool market would be if competing platforms are no longer viable markets for application development tools and mobile app sales. If one day, Apple gains a 90%+ market share in mobile device sales due to their hold on the mobile app market, then we can start talking about breaking up the monopoly on not only development tools, but on app distribution, sales processing, advertising, and any number of facets of Apple's control over their platform. That's not even close to being a consideration at this point, however, so Adobe is just wasting everyone's time.
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Personally, I don't much like his movies because they're often sleazy and underhanded, taking cheap shots at people. No matter what, he doesn't seem like the type of director to let facts get in the way of his narrative. His health care movie was a fairly good exposé, until he got to the solutions part, or lack thereof. His capitalism movie was a complete load of crap, with a bunch of bluster, a total misunderstanding of economics, and no proposed solutions to any of the problems raised. Seeing that movie just left me feeling dirty from all the sleazy argumentation tactics. After seeing that one, I doubt I'll be watching another of his movies.
I'm simply arguing that the current setup is unconstitutional, and that including it in your taxes would not be, since the 16th Amendment specifically allows for a federal income tax. I'm not arguing my preference for one setup vs. the other.
The reason people have a "right" to treatment is for public health. It's idiotic to call for people to go untreated at hospitals, as that will simply create populations where communicable diseases can evolve and flourish, and eventually affect your health and well-being. Everyone else already benefits when someone gets free treatment at a hospital. I wouldn't have a problem dedicating a portion of my taxes to pay for this, as long as everyone else pays for it as well, regardless of whether they themselves have health insurance. I agree that the cost for this shouldn't be born by only those who have purchased insurance, but the solution is not to force others into the insurance system, it's to provide base single-payer insurance for everyone.
Actually, if they had structured it so that everyone's income taxes go up by the amount of the health insurance penalty, and then credit those with health insurance for that amount, then there would be a much better case for the law's constitutionality. As it is now, however, it is clearly unconstitutional, as citizens cannot be compelled to purchase any unwanted product or service with the force of law. That is the fundamental basis of personal freedom. You can't make a law that says that everyone presently alive must perform action x. You can outlaw certain behavior, but you can't force behavior by law.
Driving is a privilege, not a right. No one has to drive. If you choose to drive, then you need insurance. You might see how that's slightly different from requiring that anyone presently alive must buy health insurance or be extorted for a lot of money.
Seriously, how is a disgruntled private supposed to suck down the contents of the DoD document store without a USB port?
Google has blessed the Flash player, so ChromeOS will keep it automatically updated for you... probably whether you wanted it or not.
I will agree that governments and their people are surely best served by a certain level of secrecy for their diplomats, but that doesn't mean that our government has a mandate to punish people from other countries with no obligation to the US for disseminating those secrets once they've been handed to them. Why should they care what secrets the US government would rather be kept hidden? They don't owe the US government a thing, and the US has no jurisdiction over them. This whole media attack on Wikileaks is simply to divert attention from the State Department's devastating lack of information security. There's no one to blame but ourselves.
Decentralized Metropolitan Area Networks, baby! I'd pay $100 extra for a router that can connect to other routers supporting such a feature.
Perhaps libertarians and statists might agree on the notion that a federal government has its place in restricting state governments in order to protect the individual rights guaranteed to all citizens in the contstitution, and that local governments have their place in creating the specific type of society they have been elected to implement, with the restrictions and boundaries implied. Therefore, the local governments should be the ones restricting their citizens, and the federal government in turn restricts local governments. The problems start when the federal government starts restricting citizens directly, such as with Prohibition and the War on Drugs, due to the relatively poor representation citizens have at the federal level.
"How is that flash video working out for you?"
It's blessedly absent, thank you for asking!
You've likely never heard anything quite like the robot's latest heartwarming masterpiece, Ode To Data Integrity. Certainly a worthy follow up to classic spoken-word lounge room hit, Destroy All Humans.
Note that Sony has also announced support in their BluRay players, and I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see something come out for the PS3. That expands the market significantly, in addition to the Logitech gear.
The only thing I don't get is that the gear is supposedly coming out this fall, but the development SDK doesn't come out until next spring. Will they be banking on some kind of really attractive first party built-in functionality? If so, what is it? The only thing that makes sense for me without 3rd party apps is local network media playback (accessing a media server on the network), Youtube access, and building it into the DVRs and making those a lot easier to use. They didn't mention anything about local media playback, and they're talking about TVs and non-DVR set-top boxes being out this fall, so that eliminates the DVR feature for those; are people really going to spend extra on a TV or a set-top box just for Youtube access? Maybe Logitech is already implementing local media playback on their own? Otherwise, it seems it will be a pretty slow uptake until the killer apps start coming out, sometime in mid 2011. That said, I'd jump on a Comcast DVR option with GoogleTV, and maybe I'd even pay $2-5 a month extra for it...
They've got top men working on it. TOP men.
Ubuntu also runs the Chrome browser, if that's what you're looking for. At that point, you're talking about zero official application framework support, and all unsupported (by Google) Qt and GTK stuff. What's the point?
Or, you could have that roaming webtop() on your Android device and be able to use native apps such as ported C/C++/OpenGL commercial game titles, or leverage locally stored media for playback. No sane consumer is going to pick the needlessly limited device. ChromeOS should be merged into Android for the foreseeable future. They can always strip it back out again if the market is ready at some point.
ChromeOS will never get far enough in the marketplace for developers to even consider targeting it, so it's null set all around. Consumers will obviously pick the Android tablet/netbook/whatever that can play native games over the ChromeOS one that can only play crappy Flash games. ChromeOS widely misses the mark with consumers in the first place, so it's got absolutely no chance with developers.
Ah, thanks for the correction. I'll have to replace 'play the skin flute' with 'arm-wrestle the purple-headed stormtrooper' to sound equally sophomoric.
I hate to respond to trolls, but I just tried it out, and Redtube works fine on my iPhone. You'll be happy to know that you can still play the skin flute without Flash installed.
Watch out, Microsoft employees! Flying chair hazard!
Makes you shudder to think of the poor kids who will get beat up for demonstrating this unbelievably lame app. Won't anyone think of the children? Apple?
That's a fine concern to have, but the logic is unsound. By doing this, Comedy Central is saying to people "threaten our lives and we'll do whatever you want." They're encouraging this group and others like them, practically begging to be threatened some more. This is just a complete failure on Comedy Central's part.
Clearly, you're a lot more intelligent than the lobbyists your employers are hiring, who are busy guaranteeing the destruction of your entire industry rather than adapting to the present situation. They are apparently far enough up their own asses to think that declaring a war on their customers, using the cash they gave them to buy consumer-hostile laws, would be a good idea. I hope they like the taste of backlash.
Photoshop would be replaced by Acorn, which would get a bunch of resources dumped on it. Illustrator is replaced by Inkscape. Quark Xpress makes a comeback to replace InDesign. Apple iWeb, Softpress or Karelia Sandvox or someone steps up to the plate to replace Dreamweaver. Fireworks is replaced with DrawIt. And Flash is replaced by Anime Studio or something. In any case, there's a great number of companies that would be ready to jump into the fray should Adobe choose to pull out of the Mac market.
The point is that Apple isn't restricting Adobe in any way whatsoever. Adobe is free to go make their own phones that use a Flash development chain, or partner with Apple's competitors. There's no reason Apple should have to allow apps built in any competing vendor's development environment to the App Store if they don't want them; everyone is free to use competing devices if that's a problem. Apple is free to control their app marketplace using any criteria they want, and Adobe and others are free to compete with them on the outside.
The only case in which Apple could possibly be found to be abusing a monopoly in mobile app distribution to muscle in on the mobile application development tool market would be if competing platforms are no longer viable markets for application development tools and mobile app sales. If one day, Apple gains a 90%+ market share in mobile device sales due to their hold on the mobile app market, then we can start talking about breaking up the monopoly on not only development tools, but on app distribution, sales processing, advertising, and any number of facets of Apple's control over their platform. That's not even close to being a consideration at this point, however, so Adobe is just wasting everyone's time.