Unlike some other former presidents who during from 1/01-01/09 spent a great deal of time relentlessly attacking the then President and attempting to undermine him... 43 seems to have opted to allow the current president to succeed or fail on his own.
Perhaps that's because there is a whole industry of vicious dogs that attack Obama 24/7. GWB doesn't need to. Or perhaps it is because the various former Presidents realize that Obama is as centrist and moderate as they come and that he frequently tries to work with the Republicans despite their current state of frothing at the mouth insanity.
And perhaps those former Presidents spoke up in such unprecedented frequency during the dismal Bush years because he was so actively evil. (starting wars, torture, eviscerating the constitution, etc.)
What you won't hear, and what makes this more religion than science as Lovelock says, is an argument against Lovelock's actual critiques of the state of climate science. It's because his points are too logical and irrefutable, so rather than try and engage in that uphill battle they will change the question posed and make up their own questions to answer.
Okay I'm confused I read the article you linked to and saw this: "Lovelock still believes anthropogenic global warming is occurring and that mankind must lower its greenhouse gas emissions, but says it’s now clear the doomsday predictions, including his own (and Al Gore’s) were incorrect." Now I know you are focusing on the second part of the sentence, but did you read the first half of the sentence? For the rest of the article he makes arguments about what sorts of things we should be doing to minimize anthropomorphic global warming.
Now the rhetorical trick you and he are using here is sneaky. He says that the doomsday predictions including his and Al Gore's were incorrect. But his predictions and "Al Gore's Predictions" were never the same, and his predictions were always radically more alarmist than anything real climate scientists predicted. Al Gore, who is not a scientist, but has made an effort to bring scientific results to the public, never made the sort of wild predictions that Lovelock is known for. He implied that he and Al Gore made the same predicitions, and you implied that he and real scientists made the same wild predictions. Mainstream climate science never made the sort of sensational predictions that Lovelock made. In 2006 Lovelock predicted that 80% of the world population would be wiped out by 2100. In 2008 he predicted that by 2040 the Sahara will have grown to encompass Paris and even Berlin! he also predicted in 2008 that by 2040 there would be no vitually food grown in Europe. So when he goes to the media and states that his past alarmism was wrong, anybody who has been paying attention says "no shit!" Real climate scientists have never made those sorts of wild claims. If you haven't been paying attention you might say "oh look an important climate scientist is backpedaling!!" Lovelock was an attention hound then and he is one now.
So, i responded to the article you liked to without attacking his age, mentioning that he doesn't publish (or really participate in science at all), without accusing the Guardian or Sun of being biased, or without using a straw man. In fact I demonstrated how he, and you, were using a something similar to a strawman argument by conflating his past hyperbole with real scientific predictions then attacking both as if they were the same.
In a followup message you suggested that people "address his valid critiques." The critiques he made in the article you linked to were all about means of addressing the problem of climate change. He suggests that wind energy will never be enough. Fine, i agree. He suggests massive adoption of nuclear energy. Fine, that would be much better than burying our heads in the sand, though there are real problems with nuclear power. He suggests that the political environmental movement is prone to hyperbole. Fine, I'm glad he finally looked in the mirror. He suggests more use of methane gotten through fracking. Fine. Methane is certainly a less carbon intensive fossil fuel than coal, and though fracking is likely to be very damaging to our water supply at least getting methane doesn't involve blowing up whole mountains. So all the things he said have to do with means and methods of dealing with climate change. I think as a society we need to be open to suggestions about means and methods. I'd much rather have that discussion than this endless disinformation campaign trying to hide the fact that climate change is real.
And this right here is why I refuse to take people like you seriously. I offered a fair, and non-preferential solution to encourage climate change research and validity, and you respond with biased hate and vitriol. My solution provides the following;
You proposed an experiment. You suggested that we have the scientific community make predictions about the climate over a reasonable term, then judge those predictions against what happens. rrohbeck responded by politely informing you that the experiment you suggested has already taken place and that the predictions have been verified. Then he ended the comment with an observation that instead of responding to the situation (which you suggested as your step 8) that many are doing their best to deny it. Somehow you missed the message and interpreted it as hate and vitriol. The only vitriol anyone else sees in this interchange is the bit where you called him immature and a zealot. So sad. The problem isn't that science has failed you, it is that you failed to listen to science.
Things should only be illegal when they cause serious harm to the entire society AND making them illegal won't cause even worse problems. So what's the harm from unauthorized file sharing?
Instead of just jumping in with your opinion you might actually RTFA. It contains the most succinct and convincing set of arguments on the subject I've seen so for. So the answers to your question are in the linked letter that David Lowery wrote.
One of the best points that he makes is that there is an industry that actually makes lots money by distributing works of art without compensating the artist. They make their money by selling ad space on their websites. Others make money by selling hardware that is used for illegally copying music. Some make money by selling things like mp3 players. Certainly mp3 players would be much less popular if it weren't for the fact that you can fill them with music for free if you make that moral decision. On the other hand the recording industry does make contracts with artists and they do pay royalties for the recording artist and the author of the work. The file sharing industry and the hardware support industries contribute absolutely none of their income with the artists who's product they distribute.
Your statement that "Things should only be illegal when they cause serious harm to the entire society" is an astonishing statement. So if the RIAA sends some thugs to rough you up it makes very little difference to the entire society, (I wouldn't care) but it would make a hell of a difference to you. Should it be legal? Naturally not. Our threshold for what is wrong or illegal is much lower and includes causing harm to individuals.
The rest of your argument can be summed up like this, "Everyone does it so it must be okay." If there really is this overwhelming majority of people who think artists should work for free then I would suggest that you build a movement to modify law to eliminate copyright. Until you do so your claims of popular support are only claims. Recall that copyright is enshrined in our constitution, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." I am the first to argue that current copyright law violates the "limited times" portion of the constitution, but in most cases the artists who are impoverished by the fact that millions of people who should pay for music choose not to, are living people today and whether you should have free access to Leadbelly songs is a much different issue than your access to copyrighted material by current living artists.
What it really boils down to is this: do we want professional music in our society? If we do we have to make it possible for musicians to make a living.
Good thing Eric Holder is appointing two Obama partisans to investigate the leaks.
What exactly is an "Obama Partisan?"
Perhaps Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Army Secretary John McHugh, and Ambassador Jon Huntsman? All of these people are Republicans, conservatives, or people who served in Republican administrations. Finally as another poster here pointed out one of the two investigators appointed is a, gasp!, Republican! If you're drinking the Fox coolaid you may believe that the current administration is partisan, but it flies in the face of the facts. This President reaches across the aisle repeatedly looking for compromise only to have his open hand slapped. If you're looking for partisanship you'll have to look elsewhere.
Seriously, before I read your post I was still thinking, "YEAH! why would hearing aids be so expensive!?" After reading, I am utterly convinced and I can't imagine any other answer.
I'm not even going to bother reading anymore of this topic, the rest is all waste.
OMG! I just now noticed that Anonymous Coward wrote this response! What a waste of good karma!
I wonder if this "fear the cloud" meme comes from the possibility that companies will be able to handle their IT needs without actually hiring any IT people? The office I work in is seriously considering moving into a tiny office suite with enough room for just a few people and the rest of us will telecommute. In support of this idea I've been pushing the use of Google Apps for Business.
I'm just wondering, but are IT people afraid of "the cloud" the way that autoworkers are afraid that their factories will be moved to the 3rd world?
Of course, anyone who is interested in facts is aware that the 'great pacific garbage patch' (a colossal and deliberately sensational overstatement) is an area of sea where the density of microscopic plastic particulates is 'as high as' a single-digit number per cubic meter of water. I know a lot of people were fooled by environmentalists' clever 'accidental (?) misappropriation' of a picture of some plastic trash floating in the water into thinking that's what the patch is. It's effectively some water where there's a little more plastic DUST.
Anyone who has spent time on the Oregon coast knows from personal experience that sea garbage is a real problem. Sure the trash gyre is mostly made up of very small particles, but this actually increases the degredation of the plastics into toxic by-products such as bisphenol A, PCBs, and derivatives of polystyrene. Also though it may be a low density of trash on a per km^2 basis, the size of it has lead scientists to estimate that there is 100 million tons of garbage. I don't think that it is a "colossal and deliberately sensational overstatement" to call 100,000,000 tons of trash floating in a particular portion of the pacific a "great pacific garbage patch".
Also to say that this garbage patch is an area where there's "a little more plastic DUST" is a colossal and deliberately sensational understatement. First samples were collected in the 1980s and in 1999 during that time the density of plastic had increased by an order of magnitude. Second, the studies that have been conducted used nets to collect the debris. Net mesh size of about 0.33mm was used in one of the biggest studies. A net with this size mesh would not collect "dust," but would collect larger visible sized particles. It is likely that much of the debris is smaller there fore it is likely that current measurements are in fact underestimations. Oregon Coast-ies have seen this very stuff washed up on the beaches over and over. It's very sad to see.
If you've spent time on the Oregon coast you'd know that after certain big storms tons (literally) of stuff from across the sea washes ashore. This stuff consists mostly of plastic and styrofoam. Occasionally there will be an antique hand blown glass buoy (those are really cool). The most common items are commercial fishing floats (plastic), flip-flop parts, wrappers, styrofoam floats, and big plastic floats. How do I know it is from across the ocean? It usually has japanese or chinese writing on it. Styrofoam and similar materials are very commonly used for floating docks. Most likely the dock that washed ashore was wood planks lashed to a bunch of flotation stuff made of plastic or styrofoam. Ain't nuthin' natural about any of it.
Wrong again. The 5% figure, which came from the Congressional Budget Office and the Urban Institute account for a variety of costs that are hidden from the often quoted and incorrect 1% overhead figure for medicare. Also the numbers I quoted regarding private insurance are for private insurance, not for doctor costs. Sure it is true that medicare paperwork is a big problem. Oddly it is a problem that is completely avoided in the many western nations that have real government health care. Doctors in the UK and France actually get to spend their days providing medical care instead of dealing with a dozen insurance company claims processes and endless paperwork.
Finally I noticed that you ignored my primary point which was that your original statement that you have to be rich to afford government healthcare backwards. You have to be poor, retired, or military to even get government healthcare.
1) Actually you have to be very poor, retired, in the military, a veteran, or a elected official to even get government paid for healthcare.
2) The ONLY people in the US who get healthcare directly from the government are military personnel and veterans. The rest of us are lucky to get private healthcare through private insurance with private profit and private overhead driving up the costs. Sure the private insurance is regulated (and now required) by the government, but that doesn't make it government healthcare any more than your government required and regulated auto liability insurance means that your Honda is a "government" car. Oops to be honest your Honda is much more of a government product that your healthcare, because our governments (fed, state, and local) spend hundreds of billions each year on our car infrastructure, without which honda, chrysler, gm, ford, bmw, toyota, porsche, vw, etc. would all be non-existent.
3) Government paid healthcare is radically more efficient and less bureaucratic than private healthcare. Medicare's overhead is somewhere in the range of 1-5%. Overhead for private insurance is typically in the range of 10-15% with profits added on top of that. In California health care insurance regulations require that insurers spend 70% on actual healthcare and the rest is for overhead and profit. For me that means that I spend about 2.5 months per year working to pay for my healthcare, and around 3 weeks of that is spent working to pay for Blue Cross's overhead and profit!!
4) You do have to be pretty well off to afford private healthcare insurance and direct costs; or conversely you are relatively impoverished by your hidden healthcare costs. My employer spends about $15,000 in medical insurance premiums on me and my son every year. My plan covers 80% of costs until I get to $2500. I have historically been healthy, but being over 40 I am less healthy now. Kids often require a bit more medical attention. I often spend out of my own pocket around $2000 (including deductibles, co-pays, and drugs). So my health care costs are in the neighborhood of $17,000 per year. That's more than my rent and utilities combined. That's more than my transportation, food, and entertainment costs combined. In fact, after taxes, it is the single biggest cost in my life and I am pretty healthy!!! I am happy that my employer pays most of that, but in truth they don't. My company is employee owned and the increasing costs of private healthcare insurance in the last 15 years have decimated our profitability, ability to give raises, and pay bonuses, this is in spite of increasing utilization, substantial growth, and increased efficiency during the same period. So in effect I do pay for all of that (and so do you!)
So I share your frustration at the cost of our healthcare but your characterization of it as "government healthcare" is just wrong just reveals that you've been drinking the Fox News Coolaid.
So how could we cast off this anchor that syphoning so much of our labor and putting it in the pockets of the already filthy rich? Government healthcare.
Here is my healthcare reform bill in it's entirety. "Extend medicare coverage to all United States Citizens."
I got an Ergotron adjustable standing workstation earlier this year. I probably stand 4-6 hours a day and sit once my feet get tired. It was cheaper than the next cheapest adjustable standing desk by a factor of 2. I'm loving it. It clamps onto a regular desk and it has some internal counter weight so it glides up and down without fiddly cranks or buttons.
The Mythos of Christianity absolutely depends on a a literal understanding of Genesis. In Judaism, Genesis can be metaphor, it changes nothing. But the Sacrifice of Jesus is contingent on an event called the fall of man, where Eve and Adam ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge, angering Yahweh (God) and damning all Humans to Hell save for a few Jewish Prophets and anyone who accepts Jesus as the Savior.
I'm an atheist, but I can tell you that this is not a universal position of christians. I know many christians that accept Genesis as allegorical and the snake and apple story as being about the introduction of sin into the world. These same people go on to believe in the literal virgin birth and the literal resurrection as a basis for the redemption of mankind, etc. I say that it is nice that they would flex their beliefs to accommodate the facts, but I am disappointed that they don't take it the next step since so much in the Bible flies in the face of our understanding of the world (such as the age of Methuselah, or Shadrach, Meshak, and Abednego in the fiery furnace etc.)
So you cannot force labels on the manipulated foods? Ok, then why not invent a "gene-manipulation free food" label and only grant it to "clean" food? Along with promotion, this can prove to be even more effective since you get to set the standards and make sure that nobody slips past.
Great idea, but that is currently illegal, thanks to the fact that Monsanto basically owns the FDA.
Tell me then, where can I freely, and relatively easily find food products that do not contain genetically UNmodified corn or soy? Have you ever called up General Mills to ask them about the corn that was used in a particular box of cereal? Seriously?
Your statement that this information is "non-essential" is strange. Why would knowing if our food has been soaked in Roundup be non-essential? Roundup ready crops have been modified to be resistant to the broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup. They were created basically for the purpose of selling more of Monsanto's best selling herbicide. Roundup is toxic, it is an endocrine disruptor, and it damages DNA. In addition is has a profound negative ecological impact.
You also ask "why single out one thing and ignore the rest?" Well because direct manipulation of genetic code is very new, very radical, only sparsely tested, and has become unavoidably widespread in very short time. Each of those criteria is worthy of making an exception and forcing monoplistic predatory corporations to disclose what they are feeding to the public. Oh and this is not an individual issue, it is societal. When some of these crops turn out to be really bad, all of society will have to bear the medical costs.
The problem with mandatory labeling in many. While it is easy to claim 'right to know' the reality is a bit fuzzier if you take the time to think about it. First, we should not require regulations based on who screams the loudest, or based on simple wants. Millions of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, vegans, ect. have dietary restrictions, but rather than demand that food processors cater to them, they go through the market, create demand for food labeled kosher or halal or vegan, and buy that food, or simply do their homework, for example, calling to find out if the gelatin in a product came from pigs, or if the 'natural flavors' of a product were animal based. There is nothing wrong with them doing their thing, but they do not try to impose their beliefs on others either.
Actually people who care about the purity of their food did just this. "Organic" was the term used to describe foods that were grown under certain rather strict conditions. This was going quite well and a thriving and growing market segment was catering to people who wanted "organic" food. Then at the behest of major agribusiness the US Government stepped in with legislation that redefined "organic" to be something that was substantially less strict and then made it illegal for associations to use different definitions of "organic."
Now in the case of GM foods, it is illegal for a food to be labeled as non-GMO food. So your exhortations to copy the Kosher/Halal approach is a bit ironic considering that we have been banned from doing so! This free market nonsense is absurd. The free market is supposed to depend on an informed buying public. We want to be informed.
Could you imagine the torches and pitchforks if a Muslim group said that they could not be bothered to read the Quran and find out what was Halal and Haram so they demanded mandaotry labeling?
Could you imagine the outrage that would be generated if the government banned the labeling of food as kosher or halal?
You argue that there are way too many types of genetic manipulation for us commoners to be able to know the difference. On one hand this makes the case for labeling and strict regulation even MORE OBVIOUS. There should not be a presumption of safety, genetic tinkerers should bear the burden of proof before their crops are sold to the public or released into the ecosystem. Also your argument is a bit misleading,
the GMO crops that are most available on the market today fall basically into two categories. Roundup-resistant crops and crops which produce their own pesticides. Roundup-resistant means that astonishing quantities of Roundup were used on the crop to kill weeds. Roundup which was touted as safe by your agribusiness "scientists" is turning out to be pretty bad for us. Roundup is teratogenic, and endocrine disruptor, and causes genetic damage. The second common type is even scarier since we know that you can't wash the pesticides off of these, they are inside!
I usually fall on the science side of arguments (evolution, climate change, etc.) but there are currently two areas of science that have been totally corrupted by money and corporate influence: Pharmacology, and agricultural biology. Anyone who follows this story knows that new GMO crops are invented all the time and the FDA rubberstamps them because the FDA is a captured agency. It's staffed with a revolving door of Monsanto and ADM employees. There is no way that the kind of large scale long-term studies have been done to validate the safety of GMO crops. So I call a hearty BS on your vilifying concerned people as being anti-science. Shame on you for resulting to name-calling.
If its not availbale for sale in my region, its not theft. If they wont sell it to me, they cant claim lost sale.
Want Game of Thrones outside the USA?? hahahahahahahahaha, only one way to get it.
With ebooks I have I look for legal sources first, 70% of the time I am still faced with "not available in your region"
I can buy the frikken paper book from Amazon and ship it around the world, but not a lousy 300Kb of data?
I hate to be nit-picky here but you are wrong about something. You state there there is "only one way to get it" and the implication is that one way is downloading a pirated copy, but then in the next sentence you state that you can buy the paper book and have it shipped to you. I'm no mathematician, I'm only an engineer, but by my count that is TWO ways. One of which doesn't break any laws.
And we have absolutely no proof that they ever will be able to effectively monetise Facebook or that it is even possible to the extent that all of these optimists believe that it will be.
Actually I think that from the perspective of the major shareholders (the founders and early employees) they JUST DID MONETIZE it. If I was MZ with $20b in my bank account, I wouldn't give a shit if FB ever was successful.
I misunderstood the summary title, "Stone-Throwing Chimp Back In the News With Better Plan." I expected the article to be about congressional republicans.
Spoken like a person who has never served on a jury. The jury probably represents the last vestige of true participatory government left in the US. They do great work and deserve our heartfelt thanks. Most decisions by juries that people find to be badly decided are the result of bad instructions from the judge or evidence that has been withheld for one reason or another.
So honestly, do all you anonymous cowards believe that there is a grand conspiracy of thousands of climate scientists that are all willing to lie and fake evidence to try to convince the world that we are headed for trouble, and that the oil industry from the golden glowing goodness of their souls is spending billions of dollars to uncover the evil conspiracy? Ever hear of Occam's Razor?
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Unlike some other former presidents who during from 1/01-01/09 spent a great deal of time relentlessly attacking the then President and attempting to undermine him... 43 seems to have opted to allow the current president to succeed or fail on his own.
Perhaps that's because there is a whole industry of vicious dogs that attack Obama 24/7. GWB doesn't need to. Or perhaps it is because the various former Presidents realize that Obama is as centrist and moderate as they come and that he frequently tries to work with the Republicans despite their current state of frothing at the mouth insanity.
And perhaps those former Presidents spoke up in such unprecedented frequency during the dismal Bush years because he was so actively evil. (starting wars, torture, eviscerating the constitution, etc.)
What you won't hear, and what makes this more religion than science as Lovelock says, is an argument against Lovelock's actual critiques of the state of climate science. It's because his points are too logical and irrefutable, so rather than try and engage in that uphill battle they will change the question posed and make up their own questions to answer.
Okay I'm confused I read the article you linked to and saw this: "Lovelock still believes anthropogenic global warming is occurring and that mankind must lower its greenhouse gas emissions, but says it’s now clear the doomsday predictions, including his own (and Al Gore’s) were incorrect." Now I know you are focusing on the second part of the sentence, but did you read the first half of the sentence? For the rest of the article he makes arguments about what sorts of things we should be doing to minimize anthropomorphic global warming.
Now the rhetorical trick you and he are using here is sneaky. He says that the doomsday predictions including his and Al Gore's were incorrect. But his predictions and "Al Gore's Predictions" were never the same, and his predictions were always radically more alarmist than anything real climate scientists predicted. Al Gore, who is not a scientist, but has made an effort to bring scientific results to the public, never made the sort of wild predictions that Lovelock is known for. He implied that he and Al Gore made the same predicitions, and you implied that he and real scientists made the same wild predictions. Mainstream climate science never made the sort of sensational predictions that Lovelock made. In 2006 Lovelock predicted that 80% of the world population would be wiped out by 2100. In 2008 he predicted that by 2040 the Sahara will have grown to encompass Paris and even Berlin! he also predicted in 2008 that by 2040 there would be no vitually food grown in Europe. So when he goes to the media and states that his past alarmism was wrong, anybody who has been paying attention says "no shit!" Real climate scientists have never made those sorts of wild claims. If you haven't been paying attention you might say "oh look an important climate scientist is backpedaling!!" Lovelock was an attention hound then and he is one now. So, i responded to the article you liked to without attacking his age, mentioning that he doesn't publish (or really participate in science at all), without accusing the Guardian or Sun of being biased, or without using a straw man. In fact I demonstrated how he, and you, were using a something similar to a strawman argument by conflating his past hyperbole with real scientific predictions then attacking both as if they were the same. In a followup message you suggested that people "address his valid critiques." The critiques he made in the article you linked to were all about means of addressing the problem of climate change. He suggests that wind energy will never be enough. Fine, i agree. He suggests massive adoption of nuclear energy. Fine, that would be much better than burying our heads in the sand, though there are real problems with nuclear power. He suggests that the political environmental movement is prone to hyperbole. Fine, I'm glad he finally looked in the mirror. He suggests more use of methane gotten through fracking. Fine. Methane is certainly a less carbon intensive fossil fuel than coal, and though fracking is likely to be very damaging to our water supply at least getting methane doesn't involve blowing up whole mountains. So all the things he said have to do with means and methods of dealing with climate change. I think as a society we need to be open to suggestions about means and methods. I'd much rather have that discussion than this endless disinformation campaign trying to hide the fact that climate change is real.
And this right here is why I refuse to take people like you seriously. I offered a fair, and non-preferential solution to encourage climate change research and validity, and you respond with biased hate and vitriol. My solution provides the following;
You proposed an experiment. You suggested that we have the scientific community make predictions about the climate over a reasonable term, then judge those predictions against what happens. rrohbeck responded by politely informing you that the experiment you suggested has already taken place and that the predictions have been verified. Then he ended the comment with an observation that instead of responding to the situation (which you suggested as your step 8) that many are doing their best to deny it. Somehow you missed the message and interpreted it as hate and vitriol. The only vitriol anyone else sees in this interchange is the bit where you called him immature and a zealot. So sad. The problem isn't that science has failed you, it is that you failed to listen to science.
Things should only be illegal when they cause serious harm to the entire society AND making them illegal won't cause even worse problems. So what's the harm from unauthorized file sharing?
Instead of just jumping in with your opinion you might actually RTFA. It contains the most succinct and convincing set of arguments on the subject I've seen so for. So the answers to your question are in the linked letter that David Lowery wrote.
One of the best points that he makes is that there is an industry that actually makes lots money by distributing works of art without compensating the artist. They make their money by selling ad space on their websites. Others make money by selling hardware that is used for illegally copying music. Some make money by selling things like mp3 players. Certainly mp3 players would be much less popular if it weren't for the fact that you can fill them with music for free if you make that moral decision. On the other hand the recording industry does make contracts with artists and they do pay royalties for the recording artist and the author of the work. The file sharing industry and the hardware support industries contribute absolutely none of their income with the artists who's product they distribute.
Your statement that "Things should only be illegal when they cause serious harm to the entire society" is an astonishing statement. So if the RIAA sends some thugs to rough you up it makes very little difference to the entire society, (I wouldn't care) but it would make a hell of a difference to you. Should it be legal? Naturally not. Our threshold for what is wrong or illegal is much lower and includes causing harm to individuals.
The rest of your argument can be summed up like this, "Everyone does it so it must be okay." If there really is this overwhelming majority of people who think artists should work for free then I would suggest that you build a movement to modify law to eliminate copyright. Until you do so your claims of popular support are only claims. Recall that copyright is enshrined in our constitution, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." I am the first to argue that current copyright law violates the "limited times" portion of the constitution, but in most cases the artists who are impoverished by the fact that millions of people who should pay for music choose not to, are living people today and whether you should have free access to Leadbelly songs is a much different issue than your access to copyrighted material by current living artists.
What it really boils down to is this: do we want professional music in our society? If we do we have to make it possible for musicians to make a living.
Good thing Eric Holder is appointing two Obama partisans to investigate the leaks.
What exactly is an "Obama Partisan?"
Perhaps Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Army Secretary John McHugh, and Ambassador Jon Huntsman? All of these people are Republicans, conservatives, or people who served in Republican administrations. Finally as another poster here pointed out one of the two investigators appointed is a, gasp!, Republican! If you're drinking the Fox coolaid you may believe that the current administration is partisan, but it flies in the face of the facts. This President reaches across the aisle repeatedly looking for compromise only to have his open hand slapped. If you're looking for partisanship you'll have to look elsewhere.
Seriously, before I read your post I was still thinking, "YEAH! why would hearing aids be so expensive!?" After reading, I am utterly convinced and I can't imagine any other answer.
I'm not even going to bother reading anymore of this topic, the rest is all waste.
OMG! I just now noticed that Anonymous Coward wrote this response! What a waste of good karma!
I wonder if this "fear the cloud" meme comes from the possibility that companies will be able to handle their IT needs without actually hiring any IT people? The office I work in is seriously considering moving into a tiny office suite with enough room for just a few people and the rest of us will telecommute. In support of this idea I've been pushing the use of Google Apps for Business.
I'm just wondering, but are IT people afraid of "the cloud" the way that autoworkers are afraid that their factories will be moved to the 3rd world?
Of course, anyone who is interested in facts is aware that the 'great pacific garbage patch' (a colossal and deliberately sensational overstatement) is an area of sea where the density of microscopic plastic particulates is 'as high as' a single-digit number per cubic meter of water. I know a lot of people were fooled by environmentalists' clever 'accidental (?) misappropriation' of a picture of some plastic trash floating in the water into thinking that's what the patch is. It's effectively some water where there's a little more plastic DUST.
Anyone who has spent time on the Oregon coast knows from personal experience that sea garbage is a real problem. Sure the trash gyre is mostly made up of very small particles, but this actually increases the degredation of the plastics into toxic by-products such as bisphenol A, PCBs, and derivatives of polystyrene. Also though it may be a low density of trash on a per km^2 basis, the size of it has lead scientists to estimate that there is 100 million tons of garbage. I don't think that it is a "colossal and deliberately sensational overstatement" to call 100,000,000 tons of trash floating in a particular portion of the pacific a "great pacific garbage patch".
Also to say that this garbage patch is an area where there's "a little more plastic DUST" is a colossal and deliberately sensational understatement. First samples were collected in the 1980s and in 1999 during that time the density of plastic had increased by an order of magnitude. Second, the studies that have been conducted used nets to collect the debris. Net mesh size of about 0.33mm was used in one of the biggest studies. A net with this size mesh would not collect "dust," but would collect larger visible sized particles. It is likely that much of the debris is smaller there fore it is likely that current measurements are in fact underestimations. Oregon Coast-ies have seen this very stuff washed up on the beaches over and over. It's very sad to see.
If you've spent time on the Oregon coast you'd know that after certain big storms tons (literally) of stuff from across the sea washes ashore. This stuff consists mostly of plastic and styrofoam. Occasionally there will be an antique hand blown glass buoy (those are really cool). The most common items are commercial fishing floats (plastic), flip-flop parts, wrappers, styrofoam floats, and big plastic floats. How do I know it is from across the ocean? It usually has japanese or chinese writing on it. Styrofoam and similar materials are very commonly used for floating docks. Most likely the dock that washed ashore was wood planks lashed to a bunch of flotation stuff made of plastic or styrofoam. Ain't nuthin' natural about any of it.
Digital effects. Pixar, ILM, or one of the many smaller FX houses.
Wrong again. The 5% figure, which came from the Congressional Budget Office and the Urban Institute account for a variety of costs that are hidden from the often quoted and incorrect 1% overhead figure for medicare. Also the numbers I quoted regarding private insurance are for private insurance, not for doctor costs. Sure it is true that medicare paperwork is a big problem. Oddly it is a problem that is completely avoided in the many western nations that have real government health care. Doctors in the UK and France actually get to spend their days providing medical care instead of dealing with a dozen insurance company claims processes and endless paperwork.
Finally I noticed that you ignored my primary point which was that your original statement that you have to be rich to afford government healthcare backwards. You have to be poor, retired, or military to even get government healthcare.
You don't have to be rich to afford health care. You have to be rich to afford all the bullshit bureaucracy that comes with government healthcare.
Wrong. ... wrong wrong wrong WRONG!
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong
1) Actually you have to be very poor, retired, in the military, a veteran, or a elected official to even get government paid for healthcare.
2) The ONLY people in the US who get healthcare directly from the government are military personnel and veterans. The rest of us are lucky to get private healthcare through private insurance with private profit and private overhead driving up the costs. Sure the private insurance is regulated (and now required) by the government, but that doesn't make it government healthcare any more than your government required and regulated auto liability insurance means that your Honda is a "government" car. Oops to be honest your Honda is much more of a government product that your healthcare, because our governments (fed, state, and local) spend hundreds of billions each year on our car infrastructure, without which honda, chrysler, gm, ford, bmw, toyota, porsche, vw, etc. would all be non-existent.
3) Government paid healthcare is radically more efficient and less bureaucratic than private healthcare. Medicare's overhead is somewhere in the range of 1-5%. Overhead for private insurance is typically in the range of 10-15% with profits added on top of that. In California health care insurance regulations require that insurers spend 70% on actual healthcare and the rest is for overhead and profit. For me that means that I spend about 2.5 months per year working to pay for my healthcare, and around 3 weeks of that is spent working to pay for Blue Cross's overhead and profit!!
4) You do have to be pretty well off to afford private healthcare insurance and direct costs; or conversely you are relatively impoverished by your hidden healthcare costs. My employer spends about $15,000 in medical insurance premiums on me and my son every year. My plan covers 80% of costs until I get to $2500. I have historically been healthy, but being over 40 I am less healthy now. Kids often require a bit more medical attention. I often spend out of my own pocket around $2000 (including deductibles, co-pays, and drugs). So my health care costs are in the neighborhood of $17,000 per year. That's more than my rent and utilities combined. That's more than my transportation, food, and entertainment costs combined. In fact, after taxes, it is the single biggest cost in my life and I am pretty healthy!!! I am happy that my employer pays most of that, but in truth they don't. My company is employee owned and the increasing costs of private healthcare insurance in the last 15 years have decimated our profitability, ability to give raises, and pay bonuses, this is in spite of increasing utilization, substantial growth, and increased efficiency during the same period. So in effect I do pay for all of that (and so do you!)
So I share your frustration at the cost of our healthcare but your characterization of it as "government healthcare" is just wrong just reveals that you've been drinking the Fox News Coolaid.
So how could we cast off this anchor that syphoning so much of our labor and putting it in the pockets of the already filthy rich? Government healthcare.
Here is my healthcare reform bill in it's entirety. "Extend medicare coverage to all United States Citizens."
I got an Ergotron adjustable standing workstation earlier this year. I probably stand 4-6 hours a day and sit once my feet get tired. It was cheaper than the next cheapest adjustable standing desk by a factor of 2. I'm loving it. It clamps onto a regular desk and it has some internal counter weight so it glides up and down without fiddly cranks or buttons.
http://www.ergotron.com/Products/tabid/65/PRDID/560/language/en-US/Default.aspx
I got it after hearing that sitting all day, even for people who exercise, is bad for heart health. http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20110112/sitting-down-too-long-bad-health
The Mythos of Christianity absolutely depends on a a literal understanding of Genesis. In Judaism, Genesis can be metaphor, it changes nothing. But the Sacrifice of Jesus is contingent on an event called the fall of man, where Eve and Adam ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge, angering Yahweh (God) and damning all Humans to Hell save for a few Jewish Prophets and anyone who accepts Jesus as the Savior.
I'm an atheist, but I can tell you that this is not a universal position of christians. I know many christians that accept Genesis as allegorical and the snake and apple story as being about the introduction of sin into the world. These same people go on to believe in the literal virgin birth and the literal resurrection as a basis for the redemption of mankind, etc. I say that it is nice that they would flex their beliefs to accommodate the facts, but I am disappointed that they don't take it the next step since so much in the Bible flies in the face of our understanding of the world (such as the age of Methuselah, or Shadrach, Meshak, and Abednego in the fiery furnace etc.)
Telephone polls are inherently biased because in that they select for people who are willing to waste their time talking to telephone pollsters.
So you cannot force labels on the manipulated foods? Ok, then why not invent a "gene-manipulation free food" label and only grant it to "clean" food? Along with promotion, this can prove to be even more effective since you get to set the standards and make sure that nobody slips past.
Great idea, but that is currently illegal, thanks to the fact that Monsanto basically owns the FDA.
Tell me then, where can I freely, and relatively easily find food products that do not contain genetically UNmodified corn or soy? Have you ever called up General Mills to ask them about the corn that was used in a particular box of cereal? Seriously?
Your statement that this information is "non-essential" is strange. Why would knowing if our food has been soaked in Roundup be non-essential? Roundup ready crops have been modified to be resistant to the broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup. They were created basically for the purpose of selling more of Monsanto's best selling herbicide. Roundup is toxic, it is an endocrine disruptor, and it damages DNA. In addition is has a profound negative ecological impact. You also ask "why single out one thing and ignore the rest?" Well because direct manipulation of genetic code is very new, very radical, only sparsely tested, and has become unavoidably widespread in very short time. Each of those criteria is worthy of making an exception and forcing monoplistic predatory corporations to disclose what they are feeding to the public. Oh and this is not an individual issue, it is societal. When some of these crops turn out to be really bad, all of society will have to bear the medical costs.
The problem with mandatory labeling in many. While it is easy to claim 'right to know' the reality is a bit fuzzier if you take the time to think about it. First, we should not require regulations based on who screams the loudest, or based on simple wants. Millions of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, vegans, ect. have dietary restrictions, but rather than demand that food processors cater to them, they go through the market, create demand for food labeled kosher or halal or vegan, and buy that food, or simply do their homework, for example, calling to find out if the gelatin in a product came from pigs, or if the 'natural flavors' of a product were animal based. There is nothing wrong with them doing their thing, but they do not try to impose their beliefs on others either.
Actually people who care about the purity of their food did just this. "Organic" was the term used to describe foods that were grown under certain rather strict conditions. This was going quite well and a thriving and growing market segment was catering to people who wanted "organic" food. Then at the behest of major agribusiness the US Government stepped in with legislation that redefined "organic" to be something that was substantially less strict and then made it illegal for associations to use different definitions of "organic."
Now in the case of GM foods, it is illegal for a food to be labeled as non-GMO food. So your exhortations to copy the Kosher/Halal approach is a bit ironic considering that we have been banned from doing so! This free market nonsense is absurd. The free market is supposed to depend on an informed buying public. We want to be informed.
Could you imagine the torches and pitchforks if a Muslim group said that they could not be bothered to read the Quran and find out what was Halal and Haram so they demanded mandaotry labeling?
Could you imagine the outrage that would be generated if the government banned the labeling of food as kosher or halal? You argue that there are way too many types of genetic manipulation for us commoners to be able to know the difference. On one hand this makes the case for labeling and strict regulation even MORE OBVIOUS. There should not be a presumption of safety, genetic tinkerers should bear the burden of proof before their crops are sold to the public or released into the ecosystem. Also your argument is a bit misleading, the GMO crops that are most available on the market today fall basically into two categories. Roundup-resistant crops and crops which produce their own pesticides. Roundup-resistant means that astonishing quantities of Roundup were used on the crop to kill weeds. Roundup which was touted as safe by your agribusiness "scientists" is turning out to be pretty bad for us. Roundup is teratogenic, and endocrine disruptor, and causes genetic damage. The second common type is even scarier since we know that you can't wash the pesticides off of these, they are inside!
I usually fall on the science side of arguments (evolution, climate change, etc.) but there are currently two areas of science that have been totally corrupted by money and corporate influence: Pharmacology, and agricultural biology. Anyone who follows this story knows that new GMO crops are invented all the time and the FDA rubberstamps them because the FDA is a captured agency. It's staffed with a revolving door of Monsanto and ADM employees. There is no way that the kind of large scale long-term studies have been done to validate the safety of GMO crops. So I call a hearty BS on your vilifying concerned people as being anti-science. Shame on you for resulting to name-calling.
If its not availbale for sale in my region, its not theft. If they wont sell it to me, they cant claim lost sale. Want Game of Thrones outside the USA?? hahahahahahahahaha, only one way to get it. With ebooks I have I look for legal sources first, 70% of the time I am still faced with "not available in your region" I can buy the frikken paper book from Amazon and ship it around the world, but not a lousy 300Kb of data?
I hate to be nit-picky here but you are wrong about something. You state there there is "only one way to get it" and the implication is that one way is downloading a pirated copy, but then in the next sentence you state that you can buy the paper book and have it shipped to you. I'm no mathematician, I'm only an engineer, but by my count that is TWO ways. One of which doesn't break any laws.
Just sayin'.
the more risk you are willing to take, the higher return you will get long term
the more risk you are willing to take, the higher return you MAY get long term if your high risk gamble actually pays off.
there I fixed that for you.
And we have absolutely no proof that they ever will be able to effectively monetise Facebook or that it is even possible to the extent that all of these optimists believe that it will be.
Actually I think that from the perspective of the major shareholders (the founders and early employees) they JUST DID MONETIZE it. If I was MZ with $20b in my bank account, I wouldn't give a shit if FB ever was successful.
I have served on a jury. Not in a criminal case, but in a civil case.
I misunderstood the summary title, "Stone-Throwing Chimp Back In the News With Better Plan." I expected the article to be about congressional republicans.
Spoken like a person who has never served on a jury. The jury probably represents the last vestige of true participatory government left in the US. They do great work and deserve our heartfelt thanks. Most decisions by juries that people find to be badly decided are the result of bad instructions from the judge or evidence that has been withheld for one reason or another.
So honestly, do all you anonymous cowards believe that there is a grand conspiracy of thousands of climate scientists that are all willing to lie and fake evidence to try to convince the world that we are headed for trouble, and that the oil industry from the golden glowing goodness of their souls is spending billions of dollars to uncover the evil conspiracy? Ever hear of Occam's Razor?