So they want to force all-la-carte programming, but also force a bunch of must-carry programming as well? Who's going to be paying for the must-carry stuff? What happens when cable companies move toward an all on-demand architecture and the concept of a channel disappears (it is being tested by most companies now, and is how AT&T U-verse works)? They won't have any unused bandwidth, so does it become a moot point?
Are they going to force the satellite guys to do this in areas where they are dominant (and yes, in many rural areas, there are many more Dishes than cable lines on houses)?
And why are they picking on cable companies when I can't get a discount on my cell phone bill, even though I bought an unlocked, unsubsidized phone?
It's a bit like having a bunch of hamsters generating your power, each in a separate cage with a treadmill. At any given time, some hamsters will be sleeping or eating and some will be running on their treadmill. If you have only one hamster, the treadmill is either turning or it isn't, so the power's either on or off. With two hamsters, the odds are better that one will be on a treadmill at any given point in time and your chances of running, say, your blender, go up. Get enough hamsters together and the odds are pretty good that at least a few will always be on the treadmill, cranking out the kilowatts.
That'd be SOOOO cool. I wonder how many hamsters I'd need to run my PC?
Of course, the smell would necessitate location in the (unheated) garage, so it may not work for very long...
What, like with the USS Cole? The Embassy bombings in Africa? Fat lot of good that did.
No, what needs to happen is 1) we need to let democracy run it's course in the middle east, even though it will likely lead to an Islamo-fascist regime, and 2) We need to get our government back from the military-industrial-energy complex. (2a: stop messing around in other countries' internal affairs without permission).
The largest variety of books sold these days is in the SciFi section. Jerry Pournelle recently said on TWiT that he was told that the way to push books is to put a hot chick on the cover (paraphrasing). Black and White text is not worth much if you want to hawk new titles over EVDO to the thing (ordering from a PC is different).
I read the article on my cell phone before firing up the PC this morning. Not bad, but a little hard on the eyes for several pages. Holographic displays may help down the road, but still too far off to bet a business model on.
Finally, this has been one of the nicest discussions I've read in a long time. Very civil, complete sentences, and correct use of "there." Slashdot (and the overall websphere) would do well to use this as an example of proper communications.
Advertising was an extension of the public notice in newspapers. Broadcast advertising was "invented" by AT&T in the early days of radio. Their experimental station was open to anyone who wanted to speak into the microphone, provided they pay a fee. Business people quickly picked up on it and began sending people down to the station to read copy over the air. Eventually GE, Westinghouse and RCA adopted the model and the boom began.
The 3rd qtr conference call was all about customer loss on video. Seems like a lot of people are moving to another provider for their television service (as has been the case for years) Maybe because the prices are too high?
And what the hell is going on here anyway? The FCC does nothing about cross ownership rules and actually seems to encourage consolidation of the public airwaves (while advertising revenue is going up and listener/viewership has been decreasing), but beats up cable for not being open enough?
And then they'll ask for an extra $.05 or $.10 per subscriber per month just to carry ESPN.
Actually, it's more like $2.00 to $3.00 for ESPN. Sports programming is by far the most expensive stuff out there these days. Add to that regional sports networks (which might be even more than ESPN), NFL/NBA and Nascar on TNT, and you quickly see why the bill is going up-up-up. At least they keep boxing and "wrestling" on pay per view and HBO.
No, the older I get, the more I realize that the world is full of BS.
When you hear that the sky is falling over and over, but it still hasn't, it tends to make you a little less likely to change your ways. It really doesn't have much to do with neural pathways.
Based on what, exactly? This seems just as much targeted against Apple as against Windows Mobile, Symbian, etc
The articles imply that Google is going to "battle" Microsoft. This is in line with the current state of tech journalism, where everyone else is good, but MS is bad. I don't mind Microsoft, don't really have an opinion as to their moral compass*, but it seems that journalists need a villain in order to get page hits, and MS is this decade's evil company. See also: IBM in the 70's and 80's. Companies tend to implode under their own weight, although not at the pace of a 2 hour action thriller. Competition might expose weakness (which may send a wakeup call to management), but that's about all that it does.
*Yes, I know about the anti-trust rulings. I also know that MS has a turd with Vista and hasn't done anything to produce innovative products (that will end up in the hands of their customers) for years.
It seems to me that we have hit a technological plateau recently. This happens from time to time, when current designs have been played out. It happened with radio in the 1920s (broken by the superhetrodyne circuit), again in the 50s (broken by the transistor), then in the late 1960s and 70s (finally adopting FM over AM). In the wake of the innovation, many companies went out of business or had to go through massive changes.
The PC industry plateaued in the 1970s (miniframes and hobby computers), 1980s (death of 8-bit computers), 1990s (death of 8088 based PCs and 68000 series Macs), and we'll soon happen again, likely marked as the end of the Intel age. This is normal as technology doesn't develop in nice, easy to manage chunks. Moore's law just says that transistors will double every 18 months, not that everyone will have a use for all of them.
The growth in the market these days seems to be in microcontrollers, using designs that are becoming just as powerful as a PC without the OS tax. It is interesting to note that the trend is following the same software curve as before: authoring in assembler, migrating to simple microcode languages, stripped down OS (tiny Linux), custom OS (like Windows mobile smartphones and OS X on the iPhone). I wonder if the people writing the OS for these devices will realize that at one time Windows and DOS would fit on a few floppies.
20 years ago, cell phone mounted under the passenger seat in your car. 10 years ago, cell phone could be held in your hand 5 years ago, cell phone easily fit in your pocket 2 years ago, cell phone become even smaller/thinner, had better battery life, and could take a crappy picture 1 year ago, cell phone has longer battery life, bluetooth, plays.mp3s, connects to push email services, takes even better pictures, etc.
This is in the early prototype stage, for all practical purposes. The system you may be referring to is the JTRS, a piece of this technology (although I admit that I really haven't been following the news on this for some time now, so the real deal could be in the hands of a few for testing now).
The point is, if you have a lot of people/machines on a battlefield, and every comms device is capable of being a relay for anther, you don't need a lot of power (=weight). I would think most hand-held military radios transmit several Watts, just because there are so few of them as to need to cover several miles of a battlefield. The cellular phone followed the growth of the network to the point that now all that is needed is less than 300mW for most of us to reach a tower. I would think that antenna development is ultimately going to be the big hold up for this sort of technology to really succeed. If someone can invent an antenna that will fit in a pocket, match on just about any frequency and radiate a signal efficiently they'll have something. Now, where did I put my can of magic smoke?...
I always thought it interesting that we use fairy tails as stories to help children sleep. The big, bad wolf used to keep children from approaching strange animals, The witch in the candy house luring Hansel and Gretel to their death (don't talk to strangers 'lest you be put to work in the mines), and the others. Seems a little quaint these days, but yet we still tell them.
And then there's the whole TV news myths of inner city violence to keep people in the suburbs.
The thing about all the cell phone companies is that you likely have a choice. I live in a county with more moose than people, and I have a choice of Verizon wireless, Sprint/Nextel (both networks), and Union Wireless (a small regional player who is GSM and roams with both AT&T and T-mobile). All have some trade-offs as far as price, coverage and bullshit. Verizon has the best price (and good coverage), but the BS is just too much to deal with. Sprint/Nextel doesn't have GSM and my new phone uses it. AT&T is cheap, but again with the BS and long contract. TMO has a great price, but I can't get a real answer out of them for anything. The sales kids in both AT&T and TMO had no idea where I lived, even though it was only a few miles as the crow flies from the mall I was in, but when I asked about coverage, they said that it was "great" according to the computer.
I just checked in with Union Wireless this afternoon (they don't have a store nearby, so I had to drive a little). The salesguy was very honest about coverage when asked (provided more info than necessary, mentioning specific highways that were troublesome), he knew the area well, understood exactly what I wanted from them (provision my phone and don't rape me on data), and gave me honest advice about a plan. Guess who I'm going with when I get my new phone, even though I'll be paying a $10/month premium over the AT&T equivalent plan. However, if you read the fine print on an AT&T contract you find that if you spend too much time roaming they'll terminate the agreement. Since they use Union's towers, I'd be roaming most of the time, so it is for the best anyway.
So, lesson learned (so far): Not every company is evil. Just the ones that think everyone just wants the same thing, and forget customer service.
We tried that for about 100 years. Yes, it worked just fine. It efficiently pissed off just about everyone in the United States. It efficiently managed to keep innovation out of the hands of the customer, dictated who could install what on their network (such as a 9600baud modem that was the size of modern mini tower PC), and vacuumed billions of dollars from the US treasury.
What we need is a customer who is knowledgeable enough to pick the correct plan (not always the cheapest), not just take the word of the sales person. That's how we ended up with the 5000 free night/weekend minutes, but we failed to notice that "night" starts at 21:00 and the "weekend" starts on Saturday at 8:00. Or, the locked in ringtones, etc. Caveat emptor.
I told him that if they allowed me to get the $60 iphone plan for a different phone, I would consider it. He said that the iphone is apple's deal.
No, he's wrong. While shopping for an carrier for a Nokia N95, I specifically asked if I could get the same deal as the iPhone and was told by two reps in two different stores that I could. Of course, I still had to sign on for a 2 yr deal, and AT&T would be getting a better deal from me since they didn't have to share that revenue with AAPL or subsidize my phone. Bad deal.
Actually what usually happens is that the landlord calls the cable company and complains about the cables laying on the ground or run on the front of the building/etc. The cable guy looks at it and sees it running to the dish and says "not my problem." The landlord then tells the cable guy that he can't reach anyone at dish network. The cable guys says he should talk to his tenant and have a nice day.
With exclusive agreements, the cable company (or sat. company) agrees to rewire the building for free, but those lines become the property of the cable company. IF the existing wiring is still in place, they are up for grabs. What this law does is guarantee another company the right to run wire (essentially a right of way agreement), if the existing wire was determined to be owned by the company with the exclusive agreement. If it determined that the wiring is owned by the landlord, a method for line release will need to be formulated (or better yet, a common demarc), or it will be a real mess. For the most part, exclusive rights to a building really cannot be enforced in the case of a satellite system, since the tenant could just put a dish on the balcony, for example.
I think it would make a lot of sense for airlines to divide up the plane into family and non-family sections, just like McDonalds. Forget about 1st class seating and service, just get me there without having to hear screaming and having the "cute little munchkin" in front of me play the turn-around-and-stare-at-me-for-2-hours game and I'll pay the 10% premium.
Besides, anyone who can afford first class these days is using NetJets
Except that now they fall under the Department of Homeland Security. You cannot "turn up at the door" anymore. You have to be registered, trained, and certified to be a volunteer. I am not making this up. I know a lot of ham radio operators who used to assist with ARES (amateur radio emergency service) who no longer participate because of all the new rules and regulations. This means (among other things) taking classes. Now, you may think that it is just part of being a volunteer, and you may be right, but many of the people who no longer participate in ARES quit because it wasn't worth the hassle, didn't have the time (went from a few hours a month to several weeks of training and required participation in mock disasters), or didn't want to have to register (again) with (another) federal agency. The FCC sets somewhat clear restrictions on what we can and cannot do on the air. For the most part, the rules are sufficient and have worked very well for the past 100 years, even in times of a disaster or emergency. But that's not good enough for the bureaucracy.
The DHS is moving into uncharted territory, taking a decentralized system that had a few rough edges and turned it into a poorly run centralized monolith that is impossible to move quickly enough and doesn't know that people will basically do the right thing if given the chance. There are almost no disasters that need to be handled on a nationwide basis. There are a few regional disasters, such as hurricanes, that due to the interstate nature, fall under the federal government's jurisdiction. Disasters are best handled on a local level, by local people. If New York City EMCOMM can't get dispatch working right, why should taxpayers in Denver pay for them to attempt to fix it? And where is the feedback/accountability for all this new spending?
"If and when martial law comes to America at large, it will be under the auspices of the shadowy Federal Emergency Management Agency ("FEMA"), a massive, secretive agency operated from a huge, fortified bunker in Virginia, and established by unconstitutional means to carry out an unconstitutional and indeed anti-constitutional program."
You know that you'd add a lot of credibility to your argument if you didn't quote the X-Files movie. Next you'll be telling me that Dick Chaney is Cancer Man.
At least find a good conspiracy plot movie to quote. May I suggest Enemy of the State?
Except that a true world war, like the all out win-no-matter-what type war that happened in the 1940's would by necessity lead to a nuclear option fairly quickly if the US got involved. Sure, it sucks to think of such a thing, but if the commander in chief had to choose between a long, drawn out battle lasting for years (likely decades now, given the level of mechanization and increasing automation), or nuking a few dozen cities, it becomes a no-brainer. Most countries of the world want nothing to do with nuclear weapons for that very reason.
Remember, the US was the only country on Earth to use nuclear weapons against an enemy. At the time, it was justified by the example of the carpet bombing in Europe and all the losses incurred during the fight in the Pacific. I don't know if that is a good enough reason, but that case could be made again.
And FYI Clinton reduced the size of the military and increased the size of military contractors (mercenaries) like Blackwater. Remember this when you vote for his wife.
Finally, people have been complaining about the lack of education in this country for ages. Sure, the unwashed masses may not know anything, but most revolutionary devices come from individuals, not groups. In fact, groups do more to destroy good ideas than anything else, mostly because the group can't see the vision of the individual.
Examples include (in no order other than my thought process):
Apple ][ computer
PONG
Mass produced automobile/adapting line to manufacturing.
interchangeable parts for guns
Newtonian Physics
Calculus
World Wide Web
Modern helo-centric solar system
At the time of these inventions and ideas, the world was somewhat stable, people had enough to eat, and art and leisure were considered important (renaissance, age of exploration, early US history, 1970s, late 1980s/early 1990s). If you told someone in the early 1990s that there would be software that would display information electronically with as rich an experience as a magazine, they would have said you were crazy (well, maybe not, but nothing existed outside the lab). Sure, AOL had graphics that you had to download every few weeks, but nothing like inline graphics. Then one guy made the protocol and another guy made the browser. Why didn't someone at IBM or DEC come up with it? How about someone at SUN or HP? Because they don't want individuals who are innovative, they want people who can play well with others. I don't think you can have both. But, luckily for business, our educational system produces lots of people who fit their mold every year. It also produces a few people who can fight the system and do their own thing. Wonderful thing, democracy.
Slashdot Mirror
So they want to force all-la-carte programming, but also force a bunch of must-carry programming as well? Who's going to be paying for the must-carry stuff? What happens when cable companies move toward an all on-demand architecture and the concept of a channel disappears (it is being tested by most companies now, and is how AT&T U-verse works)? They won't have any unused bandwidth, so does it become a moot point?
Are they going to force the satellite guys to do this in areas where they are dominant (and yes, in many rural areas, there are many more Dishes than cable lines on houses)?
And why are they picking on cable companies when I can't get a discount on my cell phone bill, even though I bought an unlocked, unsubsidized phone?
Yes, the lifespans are shorter, according to author Alan Weisman, who wrote _The_World_Without_us_
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200711231
And, maybe their lives are shorter BECAUSE of Leukemia and other cancers.
It's a bit like having a bunch of hamsters generating your power, each in a separate cage with a treadmill. At any given time, some hamsters will be sleeping or eating and some will be running on their treadmill. If you have only one hamster, the treadmill is either turning or it isn't, so the power's either on or off. With two hamsters, the odds are better that one will be on a treadmill at any given point in time and your chances of running, say, your blender, go up. Get enough hamsters together and the odds are pretty good that at least a few will always be on the treadmill, cranking out the kilowatts.
That'd be SOOOO cool. I wonder how many hamsters I'd need to run my PC?
Of course, the smell would necessitate location in the (unheated) garage, so it may not work for very long...
What, like with the USS Cole? The Embassy bombings in Africa? Fat lot of good that did.
No, what needs to happen is 1) we need to let democracy run it's course in the middle east, even though it will likely lead to an Islamo-fascist regime, and 2) We need to get our government back from the military-industrial-energy complex. (2a: stop messing around in other countries' internal affairs without permission).
A few points:
The largest variety of books sold these days is in the SciFi section. Jerry Pournelle recently said on TWiT that he was told that the way to push books is to put a hot chick on the cover (paraphrasing). Black and White text is not worth much if you want to hawk new titles over EVDO to the thing (ordering from a PC is different).
I read the article on my cell phone before firing up the PC this morning. Not bad, but a little hard on the eyes for several pages. Holographic displays may help down the road, but still too far off to bet a business model on.
Finally, this has been one of the nicest discussions I've read in a long time. Very civil, complete sentences, and correct use of "there." Slashdot (and the overall websphere) would do well to use this as an example of proper communications.
Yea, ummm, we already tried that. We put a guy named Saddam in charge. Didn't work out so good.
Advertising was an extension of the public notice in newspapers. Broadcast advertising was "invented" by AT&T in the early days of radio. Their experimental station was open to anyone who wanted to speak into the microphone, provided they pay a fee. Business people quickly picked up on it and began sending people down to the station to read copy over the air. Eventually GE, Westinghouse and RCA adopted the model and the boom began.
http://finance.google.com/finance?client=ig&q=CMCSA
The 3rd qtr conference call was all about customer loss on video. Seems like a lot of people are moving to another provider for their television service (as has been the case for years) Maybe because the prices are too high?
And what the hell is going on here anyway? The FCC does nothing about cross ownership rules and actually seems to encourage consolidation of the public airwaves (while advertising revenue is going up and listener/viewership has been decreasing), but beats up cable for not being open enough?
And then they'll ask for an extra $.05 or $.10 per subscriber per month just to carry ESPN.
Actually, it's more like $2.00 to $3.00 for ESPN. Sports programming is by far the most expensive stuff out there these days. Add to that regional sports networks (which might be even more than ESPN), NFL/NBA and Nascar on TNT, and you quickly see why the bill is going up-up-up. At least they keep boxing and "wrestling" on pay per view and HBO.
No, the older I get, the more I realize that the world is full of BS.
When you hear that the sky is falling over and over, but it still hasn't, it tends to make you a little less likely to change your ways. It really doesn't have much to do with neural pathways.
Based on what, exactly? This seems just as much targeted against Apple as against Windows Mobile, Symbian, etc
The articles imply that Google is going to "battle" Microsoft. This is in line with the current state of tech journalism, where everyone else is good, but MS is bad. I don't mind Microsoft, don't really have an opinion as to their moral compass*, but it seems that journalists need a villain in order to get page hits, and MS is this decade's evil company. See also: IBM in the 70's and 80's. Companies tend to implode under their own weight, although not at the pace of a 2 hour action thriller. Competition might expose weakness (which may send a wakeup call to management), but that's about all that it does.
*Yes, I know about the anti-trust rulings. I also know that MS has a turd with Vista and hasn't done anything to produce innovative products (that will end up in the hands of their customers) for years.
Boy, they play hardball... Don't mess with the golden arches or you may end up at the pearly gates.
It seems to me that we have hit a technological plateau recently. This happens from time to time, when current designs have been played out. It happened with radio in the 1920s (broken by the superhetrodyne circuit), again in the 50s (broken by the transistor), then in the late 1960s and 70s (finally adopting FM over AM). In the wake of the innovation, many companies went out of business or had to go through massive changes.
The PC industry plateaued in the 1970s (miniframes and hobby computers), 1980s (death of 8-bit computers), 1990s (death of 8088 based PCs and 68000 series Macs), and we'll soon happen again, likely marked as the end of the Intel age. This is normal as technology doesn't develop in nice, easy to manage chunks. Moore's law just says that transistors will double every 18 months, not that everyone will have a use for all of them.
The growth in the market these days seems to be in microcontrollers, using designs that are becoming just as powerful as a PC without the OS tax. It is interesting to note that the trend is following the same software curve as before: authoring in assembler, migrating to simple microcode languages, stripped down OS (tiny Linux), custom OS (like Windows mobile smartphones and OS X on the iPhone). I wonder if the people writing the OS for these devices will realize that at one time Windows and DOS would fit on a few floppies.
20 years ago, cell phone mounted under the passenger seat in your car. .mp3s, connects to push email services, takes even better pictures, etc.
10 years ago, cell phone could be held in your hand
5 years ago, cell phone easily fit in your pocket
2 years ago, cell phone become even smaller/thinner, had better battery life, and could take a crappy picture
1 year ago, cell phone has longer battery life, bluetooth, plays
This is in the early prototype stage, for all practical purposes. The system you may be referring to is the JTRS, a piece of this technology (although I admit that I really haven't been following the news on this for some time now, so the real deal could be in the hands of a few for testing now).
The point is, if you have a lot of people/machines on a battlefield, and every comms device is capable of being a relay for anther, you don't need a lot of power (=weight). I would think most hand-held military radios transmit several Watts, just because there are so few of them as to need to cover several miles of a battlefield. The cellular phone followed the growth of the network to the point that now all that is needed is less than 300mW for most of us to reach a tower. I would think that antenna development is ultimately going to be the big hold up for this sort of technology to really succeed. If someone can invent an antenna that will fit in a pocket, match on just about any frequency and radiate a signal efficiently they'll have something. Now, where did I put my can of magic smoke?...
I always thought it interesting that we use fairy tails as stories to help children sleep. The big, bad wolf used to keep children from approaching strange animals, The witch in the candy house luring Hansel and Gretel to their death (don't talk to strangers 'lest you be put to work in the mines), and the others. Seems a little quaint these days, but yet we still tell them.
And then there's the whole TV news myths of inner city violence to keep people in the suburbs.
The thing about all the cell phone companies is that you likely have a choice. I live in a county with more moose than people, and I have a choice of Verizon wireless, Sprint/Nextel (both networks), and Union Wireless (a small regional player who is GSM and roams with both AT&T and T-mobile). All have some trade-offs as far as price, coverage and bullshit. Verizon has the best price (and good coverage), but the BS is just too much to deal with. Sprint/Nextel doesn't have GSM and my new phone uses it. AT&T is cheap, but again with the BS and long contract. TMO has a great price, but I can't get a real answer out of them for anything. The sales kids in both AT&T and TMO had no idea where I lived, even though it was only a few miles as the crow flies from the mall I was in, but when I asked about coverage, they said that it was "great" according to the computer.
I just checked in with Union Wireless this afternoon (they don't have a store nearby, so I had to drive a little). The salesguy was very honest about coverage when asked (provided more info than necessary, mentioning specific highways that were troublesome), he knew the area well, understood exactly what I wanted from them (provision my phone and don't rape me on data), and gave me honest advice about a plan. Guess who I'm going with when I get my new phone, even though I'll be paying a $10/month premium over the AT&T equivalent plan. However, if you read the fine print on an AT&T contract you find that if you spend too much time roaming they'll terminate the agreement. Since they use Union's towers, I'd be roaming most of the time, so it is for the best anyway.
So, lesson learned (so far): Not every company is evil. Just the ones that think everyone just wants the same thing, and forget customer service.
It went bankrupt in just a matter of months as I recall.
Yep. It was introduced 6 months before the transcontinental telegraph line was completed. Turns out the horses couldn't keep up...
You mean like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System#History
We tried that for about 100 years. Yes, it worked just fine. It efficiently pissed off just about everyone in the United States. It efficiently managed to keep innovation out of the hands of the customer, dictated who could install what on their network (such as a 9600baud modem that was the size of modern mini tower PC), and vacuumed billions of dollars from the US treasury.
What we need is a customer who is knowledgeable enough to pick the correct plan (not always the cheapest), not just take the word of the sales person. That's how we ended up with the 5000 free night/weekend minutes, but we failed to notice that "night" starts at 21:00 and the "weekend" starts on Saturday at 8:00. Or, the locked in ringtones, etc. Caveat emptor.
I told him that if they allowed me to get the $60 iphone plan for a different phone, I would consider it. He said that the iphone is apple's deal.
No, he's wrong. While shopping for an carrier for a Nokia N95, I specifically asked if I could get the same deal as the iPhone and was told by two reps in two different stores that I could. Of course, I still had to sign on for a 2 yr deal, and AT&T would be getting a better deal from me since they didn't have to share that revenue with AAPL or subsidize my phone. Bad deal.
Actually what usually happens is that the landlord calls the cable company and complains about the cables laying on the ground or run on the front of the building/etc. The cable guy looks at it and sees it running to the dish and says "not my problem." The landlord then tells the cable guy that he can't reach anyone at dish network. The cable guys says he should talk to his tenant and have a nice day.
With exclusive agreements, the cable company (or sat. company) agrees to rewire the building for free, but those lines become the property of the cable company. IF the existing wiring is still in place, they are up for grabs. What this law does is guarantee another company the right to run wire (essentially a right of way agreement), if the existing wire was determined to be owned by the company with the exclusive agreement. If it determined that the wiring is owned by the landlord, a method for line release will need to be formulated (or better yet, a common demarc), or it will be a real mess. For the most part, exclusive rights to a building really cannot be enforced in the case of a satellite system, since the tenant could just put a dish on the balcony, for example.
Like this?
http://blaaguuu.home.comcast.net/~blaaguuu/futurama_truman_65.gif
I think it would make a lot of sense for airlines to divide up the plane into family and non-family sections, just like McDonalds. Forget about 1st class seating and service, just get me there without having to hear screaming and having the "cute little munchkin" in front of me play the turn-around-and-stare-at-me-for-2-hours game and I'll pay the 10% premium.
Besides, anyone who can afford first class these days is using NetJets
Except that now they fall under the Department of Homeland Security. You cannot "turn up at the door" anymore. You have to be registered, trained, and certified to be a volunteer. I am not making this up. I know a lot of ham radio operators who used to assist with ARES (amateur radio emergency service) who no longer participate because of all the new rules and regulations. This means (among other things) taking classes. Now, you may think that it is just part of being a volunteer, and you may be right, but many of the people who no longer participate in ARES quit because it wasn't worth the hassle, didn't have the time (went from a few hours a month to several weeks of training and required participation in mock disasters), or didn't want to have to register (again) with (another) federal agency. The FCC sets somewhat clear restrictions on what we can and cannot do on the air. For the most part, the rules are sufficient and have worked very well for the past 100 years, even in times of a disaster or emergency. But that's not good enough for the bureaucracy.
The DHS is moving into uncharted territory, taking a decentralized system that had a few rough edges and turned it into a poorly run centralized monolith that is impossible to move quickly enough and doesn't know that people will basically do the right thing if given the chance. There are almost no disasters that need to be handled on a nationwide basis. There are a few regional disasters, such as hurricanes, that due to the interstate nature, fall under the federal government's jurisdiction. Disasters are best handled on a local level, by local people. If New York City EMCOMM can't get dispatch working right, why should taxpayers in Denver pay for them to attempt to fix it? And where is the feedback/accountability for all this new spending?
"If and when martial law comes to America at large, it will be under the auspices of the shadowy Federal Emergency Management Agency ("FEMA"), a massive, secretive agency operated from a huge, fortified bunker in Virginia, and established by unconstitutional means to carry out an unconstitutional and indeed anti-constitutional program."
You know that you'd add a lot of credibility to your argument if you didn't quote the X-Files movie. Next you'll be telling me that Dick Chaney is Cancer Man.
At least find a good conspiracy plot movie to quote. May I suggest Enemy of the State?
Remember, the US was the only country on Earth to use nuclear weapons against an enemy. At the time, it was justified by the example of the carpet bombing in Europe and all the losses incurred during the fight in the Pacific. I don't know if that is a good enough reason, but that case could be made again.
And FYI Clinton reduced the size of the military and increased the size of military contractors (mercenaries) like Blackwater. Remember this when you vote for his wife.
Finally, people have been complaining about the lack of education in this country for ages. Sure, the unwashed masses may not know anything, but most revolutionary devices come from individuals, not groups. In fact, groups do more to destroy good ideas than anything else, mostly because the group can't see the vision of the individual.
Examples include (in no order other than my thought process):
At the time of these inventions and ideas, the world was somewhat stable, people had enough to eat, and art and leisure were considered important (renaissance, age of exploration, early US history, 1970s, late 1980s/early 1990s). If you told someone in the early 1990s that there would be software that would display information electronically with as rich an experience as a magazine, they would have said you were crazy (well, maybe not, but nothing existed outside the lab). Sure, AOL had graphics that you had to download every few weeks, but nothing like inline graphics. Then one guy made the protocol and another guy made the browser. Why didn't someone at IBM or DEC come up with it? How about someone at SUN or HP? Because they don't want individuals who are innovative, they want people who can play well with others. I don't think you can have both. But, luckily for business, our educational system produces lots of people who fit their mold every year. It also produces a few people who can fight the system and do their own thing. Wonderful thing, democracy.