I'm not sure why you are trying to make "mobile" broadband the thing to invest in, when wired broadband options suck just as much.
The government is already doing lots to encourage access to very-high-speed broadband (which likely means fixed, wired services), but mobile broadband has particular advantages that fixed does not. Fixed is important because it provides the best speed, mobile is important because of its utility to applications where fixed access doesn't work (e.g., emergency responders.)
Andy Grove (fairly) recently made a sobering speech about how naive the US is about the role startups play. I think the broadband argument plays into his point. You can't rely on just startups to rebuild the US economy. Every would-be Apple that starts in a future Steve Jobs' garage must eventually reach the ability to employ hundreds or even thousands of employees and handle unsexy work like running factories.
Sure, if its a "would-be Apple." Not every startup is destined to be a megacorp, most will be small businesses their whole lives, and most of the people actually employed in the US are employed by small businesses. Big businesses get more attention because they are bigger and more influential individually, not because they are more significant collectively.
No amount of broadband penetration or legions of startups will change the fact that the US regulatory system makes it very difficult for the US to have a robust, diverse and productive economy.
That's true, insofar as nothing can change a "fact" that isn't a fact in the first place. The U.S. has, in broad terms, a robust, diverse, and productive economy. Its going through a period of poor performance relative to the recent past right now (but still robust, diverse, and productive compared to, oh, almost any other economy on the planet), most of which can be traced to a handful of deregulatory policies that set the stage for the initial financial-sector collapse that led to the current crisis, and reinforced by a series of tax shifts, particularly in the 1980s and early 2000s, that shifted the both the burdens and incentives in federal taxation in a manner which caused the results from the periods of growth experienced when those policies have been in effect more narrowly than past expansions, hollowing out the base of the economy compared to earlier periods, making the U.S. economy less resilient to regular cyclical downturns and major shocks like the financial market collapse.
Where does it say in the Bible to confess to the priest? Oh yah it doesn't
Where does it say in the doctrines of the Catholic Church that the faith is based on the Bible alone. "Oh yah", as you say, it doesn't: sola scriptura is a pillar of the Protestant Reformation not held by any of the ancient Christian Churches (the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Non-Chalcedonian Churches), all of whom hold that Scripture and Tradition are pillars of faith.
Being surprised that people who aren't Protestants don't adhere to key doctrines of the Protestant reformation is, well, somewhat silly.
But the Catholic Church wants you dependent on the Church, and this app removes part of that dependence.
Lets ignore the attribution of intent to the Church here and get to the readily verifiable fact part of this claim, the part about removing dependence: since all the app does is provided guidance for the penitent participating in the rite according to the normal Catholic norms -- it does not replace the confessor -- the app, in fact, does not do this. The misrepresentation of what the app does (and the mispresentation of the Vatican statement as "banning the app") are gross distortions of facts which are readily apparent from even casual examination, and as is all to common on Slashdot you've gone galloping off with these misrepresentations because they are align with your prejudices with regard to the institutions involved.
High speed rail is a corporate welfare joke. We already have rail in this country that nobody cares about.
Nobody cares because it isn't fast at best, and because its often even slower in practice because it shares track with freight lines which (because the freight operators own the track) have priority. That's why there is interest in high-speed rail on dedicated track in much of the country.
This isn't a troll, I would really like someone to explain the situations where a high speed train is better than an airplane or a car.
Its faster than cars and more energy efficient than cars or aircraft, and, as I understand, the stations are smaller for their capacity than aircraft making them easier to locate in convenient places and integrated efficiently with local public transit networks.
The security will be just as bad as at an airport if the government runs it, especially considering that just as many trains get bombed by terrorists as airplanes.
As apparently a large number of people have forgotten this in less than a decade (judging from the comments on topics like this on Slashdot), the event that precipitated the creation of the TSA and the intense focus on airline security wasn't airline bombings, it was hijacked airliners being used as a manned bombs against high-population targets chosen by the hijackers. This is somewhat impractical with trains which, even if they are hijacked, have very little freedom of maneuver once the hijackers take control.
Wouldn't we be better served either putting that 53 Billion into our roads and infrastructure?
High-speed rail is infrastructure and, as such, is not an alternative to "roads and infrastructure".
It doesn't matter if it goes 250mph if it sits on the track for an hour waiting for right of way.It doesn't matter if it goes 250mph if it sits on the track for an hour waiting for right of way.
High-speed rail, almost without exception, relies on dedicated lines, not shared lines with freight like existing, less-than-high-speed, passenger rail in the US. Consequently, this wouldn't be an issue.
Yes, if an attacker roots your box, you have a much bigger problem. But the point is that you now have two problems: your box is rooted, AND all your customers' passwords are exposed.
Those are not two problems. The problem "your box is rooted" is simply another way of saying "all the data on or transiting the box is exposed to the attacker". So, you can't then go and describe as separate problems from the "your box is rooted problem" each of the categories of data that happen to be on the box being exposed.
This app offers no real service other than to point out other things for you to feel guilty about, and you have to pay them for this?
If by them, you mean the authors of the app (not the Catholic Church), the "you have to pay them for this" is correct. I'll leave aside any discussion of what the app provides.
All the Catholic Church (well, the local diocesan censor and bishop) has done is to review the content of the app and determine that it the content is free of doctrinal or moral error.
The app was developed by a small group including a friend of mine. It's sanctioned only insofar as Bishop Rhodes (his local bishop) has given it an imprimatur. An imprimatur is usually given to books. It's is not an endorsement or any kind of insistence that anyone should actually buy the product, but only a statement to the effect that nothing harmful to the faith is contained within. Not that an app really needs an imprimatur, but it's a way for the bishop to show support for Catholics utilizing contemporary media for the promotion of faith.
To be more specific, the imprimatur is not generally mandatory for anything other than prayer books and for books on religious and moral matters intended for use in the context of educational programs, though its encouraged-but-not-required for books on religious and moral topics not intended for use in educational programs, and is in theory available for any published work. Other than the form (as it is an interactive app, rather than a book) this seems to, from the descriptions, have elements of a prayer aid and a work on moral topics intended for use outside an education program, so while (because its not a book) it certainly isn't even in a formally-encouraged category, it seems to be in a category for which the imprimatur is clearly appropriate, and which if the rules were updated to be neutral to the form of the published work would either be an encouraged or obligatory category.
Because the issue is so controversial (and probably frowned upon by many rich backers, never mind the public at large), the church is fairly silent on the issue and leaves it up to the individual to decide whether it is sinful to buy unnecessary expensive items when you could have given the money to the poor.
Wrong. The Church is not silent on the matter, its a key part of the social doctrine of the Church. You seem to be mistaking the absence of a one-size-fits-all simple rule that lets people be lazy, look up a yes-or-no answer, and do no moral reflection for silence on the issue, but that is a mistake.
The Church's social teaching moreover calls for recognition of the social function of any form of private ownership that clearly refers to its necessary relation to the common good. Man “should regard the external things that he legitimately possesses not only as his own but also as common in the sense that they should be able to benefit not only him but also others”. The universal destination of goods entails obligations on how goods are to be used by their legitimate owners. Individual persons may not use their resources without considering the effects that this use will have, rather they must act in a way that benefits not only themselves and their family but also the common good. [...]
And at paragraph 328:
Goods, even when legitimately owned, always have a universal destination; any type of improper accumulation is immoral, because it openly contradicts the universal destination assigned to all goods by the Creator. Christian salvation is an integral liberation of man, which means being freed not only from need but also in respect to possessions. “For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith” (1 Tim 6:10). The Fathers of the Church insist more on the need for the conversion and transformation of the consciences of believers than on the need to change the social and political structures of their day. They call on those who work in the economic sphere and who possess goods to consider themselves administrators of the goods that God has entrusted to them.
And at paragraph 329:
Riches fulfil their function of service to man when they are destined to produce benefits for others and for society. “How could we ever do good to our neighbour,” asks St. Clement of Alexandria, “if none of us possessed anything?”. In the perspective of St. John Chrysostom, riches belong to some people so that they can gain merit by sharing them with others.[687] Wealth is a good that comes from God and is to be used by its owner and made to circulate so that even the needy may enjoy it. Evil is seen in the immoderate attachment to riches and the desire to hoard. [...]
And in paragraphs 358-360
358. Consumers, who in many cases have a broad range of buying power well above the mere subsistence level, exercise significant influence over economic realities by their free decisions regarding whether to put their money into consumer goods or savings. In fact, the possibility to influence the choices made within the economic sector is in the hands of those who must decide where to place their financial resources. Today more than in the past it is possible to evaluate the available options not only on the basis of the expected return and the relative risk but also by making a value judgment of the investment projects that those resources would finance, in the awareness that
If you gave all your money to the poor, as Jesus commanded, you would not afford an I Phone.
If you gave all your money to the poor, you also couldn't afford a meal.
And, of course, those you gave your money did the same with the money that was now theirs, neither could they.
But Jesus didn't say everyone should give their money to the poor, he told a rich man who was trying to approach salvation as a checklist of items to mark off that that's what he needed to do beyond what he already had. The most common interpretation of that interaction is that it has essentially the same message as the story of Abraham and Isaac, that one must be willing to sacrifice what one finds most precious in the world when called by God to do so—that money was what was most precious to the rich man, and he failed the test the Abraham passed. The idea that it is a general call that everyone must give up everything that they have to the poor is not widely accepted.
[If you're Catholic] isn't an iPhone kinda incompatible with your religion?
No. A particular persons decision to purchase an iPhone given other uses of the money may or may not be prudent, and certainly might be influenced by any number of sins, but the iPhone isn't inherently incompatible with Catholicism.
It's a large, unnecessary expenditure of money and resources when there are millions of poor.
Catholic teaching does not prohibit purchasing expensive items which are not essential to survival.
Plus it's a status symbol
Purchasing an iPhone out of vanity would certainly be sinful, but the fact that society treats it as a status symbol does not make the device itself inherently sinful.
What they also confirmed was that mechanical issues were a factor.
The mechanical issues (pedal design and floor mats) that were confirmed were not in dispute -- Toyota already issued recalls over them. The controversial issue was whether some other design issue -- the most commonly suggested was a problem in the electronic throttle control -- that had not been the subject of recall and correction was also at fault, posing continuing risk, or whether the incidents not related to the acknowledged mechanical issues were due to driver error.
Since one of the people behind the wheel was Steve Wozniak (previous slashdot story hyperlinked here [slashdot.org]), and he said he'd actually been able to replicate unchecked acceleration by the cruise-control system, I'm not trusting Toyota.
The results announced by the Department of Transportation were of the study conducted by the NHTSA (which, remember, fined Toyota for not responding promptly enough to the floor mat and pedal design issues) with the assistance of NASA, not by Toyota. So, whether you trust Toyota would seem to be irrelevant.
Nor would I trust the government. They're not likely to be bringing A+ talent to the party.
Trusting the government is, OTOH, at least relevant to the issue, since this was a government study. However, your stated basis for dismissing the government study (which amounts to "Steve Wozniak said something different, and the people working for the government are stupid") is pretty vacuous.
Having the vehicle engine drop to idle if you touch the brake should suffice
Since the problem in many cases is people stomping on the gas and not the brake, that won't actually stop the problem.
Reengineering the human brain so people never make erroneous reactions in stressful situations would address the problem, but probably will not be practical for quite some time.
I know that it is rather routine for Congress to write bad laws like this one.
I really don't think the alternative you seem to be offering -- Congress essentially abolishing all executive branch regulatory bodies and doing everything currently done through regulation as legislation -- is really desirable.
"Improving access to advanced telecommunications services" is entirely too subjective
That's the high level purpose. The law (47 USC Sec. 254) provides additional detail on both the substance (factors to be considered in deciding what should be encompassed ) and procedure (mechanisms by which changes shall be considered and adopted) associated with the determination of "universal service".
You would know that, if you knew what the law was before criticizing it; you didn't, and you still apparently don't.
I do know that Congress often delegates quite a bit to regulatory agencies. I beleive that that is bad policy.It encourages people to blame bureaucrats for things that they should be blaming their Congressperson for.
Everything that is within the jurisdiction of a regulatory agency is so because of Congressional action. Whether people "should" blame Congress or the regulatory authority depends on whether the problem they have is with the regulatory agency having the scope of authority Congress has delegated it or whether the problem they have is with the way the regulatory agency is exercising its authority; those are two separate questions. But it makes no sense to say that this delegation is bad policy on the basis that it supposedly encourages people to blame the wrong set of decision makers, since it does no such thing. Anyone who blames the wrong set of decision makers does so based on ignorance of who is responsible for the decision that they specifically disagree with, and this does not encourage (or discourage) that kind of ignorance.
You are correct. Congress wrote a bad law (what a surprise).
That's not what I said.
The law should specify what this tax is for and when that purpose becomes obsolete,
The law specifies what the tax is for: it is for improving access to advanced telecommunications services.
Its actually rather routine for Congress to set high-level policy and priorities and delegate ongoing administration to regulatory agencies. That's, actually, the whole purpose of having regulatory agencies.
Congress created this tax. When they did they also specified what it would be used for. The FCC does not have the authority to decide to use this money for something else, no matter how worthy that something else might be, nor how obsolete the original purpose might be.
Really? So what do you think Congress defined the tax as being for? Telephone service alone? Nope, not under the current version of the law adopted by Congress governing the USF. 42 USC Sec. 254(c)(1):
Universal service is an evolving level of telecommunications services that the Commission shall establish periodically under this section, taking into account advances in telecommunications and information technologies and services.
Seems to me that Congress has specifically granted the FCC authority it has proposed using.
Next time you want to accuse someone of breaking the law, try checking what the law is first.
So let me get this straight. Congress back in 1934 passes a bill to fund rural phone lines by charging city slickers an extra tax on their phone bill.
Now 70 years later the FTC decides on its own that it can levy any tax it wants to against anyone it wants to and put the money towards any program it so desires.
Nope.
First of all, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) isn't involved in this story at all, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) is.
Second, the provision of law governing the universal service fund (47 USC Sec. 254) has been amended by Congress since 1934, and the current version adopted by Congress states:
Universal service is an evolving level of telecommunications services that the Commission shall establish periodically under this section, taking into account advances in telecommunications and information technologies and services.
See, the thing with Congress' ability to make law is that it keeps being exercised, its not just something that happened once in the distant past.
Does Congress' power to tax and make law have little meaning anymore? Is our form of government becoming one in which bureaucrats decide for themselves what taxes to levy and what laws to create?
I'm hoping at least a few people on SlashDot recognize the types of precedents that have been set over the last several years in how it undermines the intentional separation of powers in the US Constitution. It's more insidious and the long-term consequences more dire than I'm sure most people here realize.
I'm hoping that at least a few people on Slashdot will recognize the importance of actually having some idea of what the facts are before launching into crazed rants.
The usual handwave for BSD is to claim that the BSD licenses qualify as part of the copyright notice, which the GPL mandates must be retained.
The GPL doesn't require retaining existing copyright notices on derivative works, it requires the creator of the derivative work to place a copyright notice. The BSD license (all forms) requires retaining the original copyright license and the licensing term require downstream licensees to do the same and a specifically-worded warranty disclaimer (with a different wording than the one required by the GPL.) The 3-clause BSD license also has and requires inclusion of an additional licensing term regarding endorsements (and the old 4-clause BSD requires yet another licensing term regarding advertising to be included.)
Its pretty bizarre to claim that the 4-clause BSD license with its additional terms is not GPL2-compatible but the 2- and 3-clause licenses, which also contain additional terms that must be included as licensing conditions, is GPL2-compatible.
What would prevent them from delivering new features in versions 4.1, 4.2, etc?
I don't think you understand the idea. The idea isn't that you have some releases with a tight feature set, rapid cycle time, and low cost of moving features out to a later release if they aren't ready for the next one, the idea is that you have all releases like that. And when you do that, there becomes no purpose in having point release numbers, because if you designate that kind of release as a "point release", you never have a new major release.
When you adopt that kind of development strategy, you've got one kind of release, and when you have one kind of release, that is your major release.
There is NOTHING that prevents developers from doing that with pointreleases.
If you divide into "point releases" and "major releases", then you might be doing small incremental feature upgrades with a low cost of moving features between releases with "point releases", but you either aren't doing that with "major releases" or there is no point to the distinction between "point releases" and "major releases". So, if you have a "point release"/"major release" distinction, you either aren't doing it consistently, or you are making a meaningless distinction.
And, when you eliminate the meaningless distinction, there is no point in having "pont releases" since they exist to distinguish a release that is less important than whatever the major releases are in your system. When you have only one kind of feature release, it is a major release.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure why you are trying to make "mobile" broadband the thing to invest in, when wired broadband options suck just as much.
The government is already doing lots to encourage access to very-high-speed broadband (which likely means fixed, wired services), but mobile broadband has particular advantages that fixed does not. Fixed is important because it provides the best speed, mobile is important because of its utility to applications where fixed access doesn't work (e.g., emergency responders.)
Andy Grove (fairly) recently made a sobering speech about how naive the US is about the role startups play. I think the broadband argument plays into his point. You can't rely on just startups to rebuild the US economy. Every would-be Apple that starts in a future Steve Jobs' garage must eventually reach the ability to employ hundreds or even thousands of employees and handle unsexy work like running factories.
Sure, if its a "would-be Apple." Not every startup is destined to be a megacorp, most will be small businesses their whole lives, and most of the people actually employed in the US are employed by small businesses. Big businesses get more attention because they are bigger and more influential individually, not because they are more significant collectively.
No amount of broadband penetration or legions of startups will change the fact that the US regulatory system makes it very difficult for the US to have a robust, diverse and productive economy.
That's true, insofar as nothing can change a "fact" that isn't a fact in the first place. The U.S. has, in broad terms, a robust, diverse, and productive economy. Its going through a period of poor performance relative to the recent past right now (but still robust, diverse, and productive compared to, oh, almost any other economy on the planet), most of which can be traced to a handful of deregulatory policies that set the stage for the initial financial-sector collapse that led to the current crisis, and reinforced by a series of tax shifts, particularly in the 1980s and early 2000s, that shifted the both the burdens and incentives in federal taxation in a manner which caused the results from the periods of growth experienced when those policies have been in effect more narrowly than past expansions, hollowing out the base of the economy compared to earlier periods, making the U.S. economy less resilient to regular cyclical downturns and major shocks like the financial market collapse.
Where does it say in the Bible to confess to the priest? Oh yah it doesn't
Where does it say in the doctrines of the Catholic Church that the faith is based on the Bible alone. "Oh yah", as you say, it doesn't: sola scriptura is a pillar of the Protestant Reformation not held by any of the ancient Christian Churches (the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Non-Chalcedonian Churches), all of whom hold that Scripture and Tradition are pillars of faith.
Being surprised that people who aren't Protestants don't adhere to key doctrines of the Protestant reformation is, well, somewhat silly.
But the Catholic Church wants you dependent on the Church, and this app removes part of that dependence.
Lets ignore the attribution of intent to the Church here and get to the readily verifiable fact part of this claim, the part about removing dependence: since all the app does is provided guidance for the penitent participating in the rite according to the normal Catholic norms -- it does not replace the confessor -- the app, in fact, does not do this. The misrepresentation of what the app does (and the mispresentation of the Vatican statement as "banning the app") are gross distortions of facts which are readily apparent from even casual examination, and as is all to common on Slashdot you've gone galloping off with these misrepresentations because they are align with your prejudices with regard to the institutions involved.
hello! /. is better than this!
This is demonstrably false. Slashdot is exactly as bad as this, the proof is that this news article is, in fact, posted on Slashdot.
High speed rail is a corporate welfare joke. We already have rail in this country that nobody cares about.
Nobody cares because it isn't fast at best, and because its often even slower in practice because it shares track with freight lines which (because the freight operators own the track) have priority. That's why there is interest in high-speed rail on dedicated track in much of the country.
This isn't a troll, I would really like someone to explain the situations where a high speed train is better than an airplane or a car.
Its faster than cars and more energy efficient than cars or aircraft, and, as I understand, the stations are smaller for their capacity than aircraft making them easier to locate in convenient places and integrated efficiently with local public transit networks.
The security will be just as bad as at an airport if the government runs it, especially considering that just as many trains get bombed by terrorists as airplanes.
As apparently a large number of people have forgotten this in less than a decade (judging from the comments on topics like this on Slashdot), the event that precipitated the creation of the TSA and the intense focus on airline security wasn't airline bombings, it was hijacked airliners being used as a manned bombs against high-population targets chosen by the hijackers. This is somewhat impractical with trains which, even if they are hijacked, have very little freedom of maneuver once the hijackers take control.
Wouldn't we be better served either putting that 53 Billion into our roads and infrastructure?
High-speed rail is infrastructure and, as such, is not an alternative to "roads and infrastructure".
It doesn't matter if it goes 250mph if it sits on the track for an hour waiting for right of way.It doesn't matter if it goes 250mph if it sits on the track for an hour waiting for right of way.
High-speed rail, almost without exception, relies on dedicated lines, not shared lines with freight like existing, less-than-high-speed, passenger rail in the US. Consequently, this wouldn't be an issue.
Yes, if an attacker roots your box, you have a much bigger problem. But the point is that you now have two problems: your box is rooted, AND all your customers' passwords are exposed.
Those are not two problems. The problem "your box is rooted" is simply another way of saying "all the data on or transiting the box is exposed to the attacker". So, you can't then go and describe as separate problems from the "your box is rooted problem" each of the categories of data that happen to be on the box being exposed.
This app offers no real service other than to point out other things for you to feel guilty about, and you have to pay them for this?
If by them, you mean the authors of the app (not the Catholic Church), the "you have to pay them for this" is correct. I'll leave aside any discussion of what the app provides.
All the Catholic Church (well, the local diocesan censor and bishop) has done is to review the content of the app and determine that it the content is free of doctrinal or moral error.
The app was developed by a small group including a friend of mine. It's sanctioned only insofar as Bishop Rhodes (his local bishop) has given it an imprimatur. An imprimatur is usually given to books. It's is not an endorsement or any kind of insistence that anyone should actually buy the product, but only a statement to the effect that nothing harmful to the faith is contained within. Not that an app really needs an imprimatur, but it's a way for the bishop to show support for Catholics utilizing contemporary media for the promotion of faith.
To be more specific, the imprimatur is not generally mandatory for anything other than prayer books and for books on religious and moral matters intended for use in the context of educational programs, though its encouraged-but-not-required for books on religious and moral topics not intended for use in educational programs, and is in theory available for any published work. Other than the form (as it is an interactive app, rather than a book) this seems to, from the descriptions, have elements of a prayer aid and a work on moral topics intended for use outside an education program, so while (because its not a book) it certainly isn't even in a formally-encouraged category, it seems to be in a category for which the imprimatur is clearly appropriate, and which if the rules were updated to be neutral to the form of the published work would either be an encouraged or obligatory category.
Because the issue is so controversial (and probably frowned upon by many rich backers, never mind the public at large), the church is fairly silent on the issue and leaves it up to the individual to decide whether it is sinful to buy unnecessary expensive items when you could have given the money to the poor.
Wrong. The Church is not silent on the matter, its a key part of the social doctrine of the Church. You seem to be mistaking the absence of a one-size-fits-all simple rule that lets people be lazy, look up a yes-or-no answer, and do no moral reflection for silence on the issue, but that is a mistake.
See, e.g., The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church , Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (2004), which addresses this at many places. A few selections follow:
At paragraph 178:
The Church's social teaching moreover calls for recognition of the social function of any form of private ownership that clearly refers to its necessary relation to the common good. Man “should regard the external things that he legitimately possesses not only as his own but also as common in the sense that they should be able to benefit not only him but also others”. The universal destination of goods entails obligations on how goods are to be used by their legitimate owners. Individual persons may not use their resources without considering the effects that this use will have, rather they must act in a way that benefits not only themselves and their family but also the common good. [...]
And at paragraph 328:
Goods, even when legitimately owned, always have a universal destination; any type of improper accumulation is immoral, because it openly contradicts the universal destination assigned to all goods by the Creator. Christian salvation is an integral liberation of man, which means being freed not only from need but also in respect to possessions. “For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith” (1 Tim 6:10). The Fathers of the Church insist more on the need for the conversion and transformation of the consciences of believers than on the need to change the social and political structures of their day. They call on those who work in the economic sphere and who possess goods to consider themselves administrators of the goods that God has entrusted to them.
And at paragraph 329:
Riches fulfil their function of service to man when they are destined to produce benefits for others and for society. “How could we ever do good to our neighbour,” asks St. Clement of Alexandria, “if none of us possessed anything?”. In the perspective of St. John Chrysostom, riches belong to some people so that they can gain merit by sharing them with others.[687] Wealth is a good that comes from God and is to be used by its owner and made to circulate so that even the needy may enjoy it. Evil is seen in the immoderate attachment to riches and the desire to hoard. [...]
And in paragraphs 358-360
358. Consumers, who in many cases have a broad range of buying power well above the mere subsistence level, exercise significant influence over economic realities by their free decisions regarding whether to put their money into consumer goods or savings. In fact, the possibility to influence the choices made within the economic sector is in the hands of those who must decide where to place their financial resources. Today more than in the past it is possible to evaluate the available options not only on the basis of the expected return and the relative risk but also by making a value judgment of the investment projects that those resources would finance, in the awareness that
If you gave all your money to the poor, as Jesus commanded, you would not afford an I Phone.
If you gave all your money to the poor, you also couldn't afford a meal.
And, of course, those you gave your money did the same with the money that was now theirs, neither could they.
But Jesus didn't say everyone should give their money to the poor, he told a rich man who was trying to approach salvation as a checklist of items to mark off that that's what he needed to do beyond what he already had. The most common interpretation of that interaction is that it has essentially the same message as the story of Abraham and Isaac, that one must be willing to sacrifice what one finds most precious in the world when called by God to do so—that money was what was most precious to the rich man, and he failed the test the Abraham passed. The idea that it is a general call that everyone must give up everything that they have to the poor is not widely accepted.
[If you're Catholic] isn't an iPhone kinda incompatible with your religion?
No. A particular persons decision to purchase an iPhone given other uses of the money may or may not be prudent, and certainly might be influenced by any number of sins, but the iPhone isn't inherently incompatible with Catholicism.
It's a large, unnecessary expenditure of money and resources when there are millions of poor.
Catholic teaching does not prohibit purchasing expensive items which are not essential to survival.
Plus it's a status symbol
Purchasing an iPhone out of vanity would certainly be sinful, but the fact that society treats it as a status symbol does not make the device itself inherently sinful.
What they also confirmed was that mechanical issues were a factor.
The mechanical issues (pedal design and floor mats) that were confirmed were not in dispute -- Toyota already issued recalls over them. The controversial issue was whether some other design issue -- the most commonly suggested was a problem in the electronic throttle control -- that had not been the subject of recall and correction was also at fault, posing continuing risk, or whether the incidents not related to the acknowledged mechanical issues were due to driver error.
Since one of the people behind the wheel was Steve Wozniak (previous slashdot story hyperlinked here [slashdot.org]), and he said he'd actually been able to replicate unchecked acceleration by the cruise-control system, I'm not trusting Toyota.
The results announced by the Department of Transportation were of the study conducted by the NHTSA (which, remember, fined Toyota for not responding promptly enough to the floor mat and pedal design issues) with the assistance of NASA, not by Toyota. So, whether you trust Toyota would seem to be irrelevant.
Nor would I trust the government. They're not likely to be bringing A+ talent to the party.
Trusting the government is, OTOH, at least relevant to the issue, since this was a government study. However, your stated basis for dismissing the government study (which amounts to "Steve Wozniak said something different, and the people working for the government are stupid") is pretty vacuous.
Having the vehicle engine drop to idle if you touch the brake should suffice
Since the problem in many cases is people stomping on the gas and not the brake, that won't actually stop the problem.
Reengineering the human brain so people never make erroneous reactions in stressful situations would address the problem, but probably will not be practical for quite some time.
I know that it is rather routine for Congress to write bad laws like this one.
I really don't think the alternative you seem to be offering -- Congress essentially abolishing all executive branch regulatory bodies and doing everything currently done through regulation as legislation -- is really desirable.
"Improving access to advanced telecommunications services" is entirely too subjective
That's the high level purpose. The law (47 USC Sec. 254) provides additional detail on both the substance (factors to be considered in deciding what should be encompassed ) and procedure (mechanisms by which changes shall be considered and adopted) associated with the determination of "universal service".
You would know that, if you knew what the law was before criticizing it; you didn't, and you still apparently don't.
I do know that Congress often delegates quite a bit to regulatory agencies. I beleive that that is bad policy .It encourages people to blame bureaucrats for things that they should be blaming their Congressperson for.
Everything that is within the jurisdiction of a regulatory agency is so because of Congressional action. Whether people "should" blame Congress or the regulatory authority depends on whether the problem they have is with the regulatory agency having the scope of authority Congress has delegated it or whether the problem they have is with the way the regulatory agency is exercising its authority; those are two separate questions. But it makes no sense to say that this delegation is bad policy on the basis that it supposedly encourages people to blame the wrong set of decision makers, since it does no such thing. Anyone who blames the wrong set of decision makers does so based on ignorance of who is responsible for the decision that they specifically disagree with, and this does not encourage (or discourage) that kind of ignorance.
42 USC Sec. 254(c)(1):
Actually, that's wrong. It's title 47, not title 42, so that should be 47 USC Sec. 254(c).
You are correct. Congress wrote a bad law (what a surprise).
That's not what I said.
The law should specify what this tax is for and when that purpose becomes obsolete,
The law specifies what the tax is for: it is for improving access to advanced telecommunications services.
Its actually rather routine for Congress to set high-level policy and priorities and delegate ongoing administration to regulatory agencies. That's, actually, the whole purpose of having regulatory agencies.
Congress created this tax. When they did they also specified what it would be used for. The FCC does not have the authority to decide to use this money for something else, no matter how worthy that something else might be, nor how obsolete the original purpose might be.
Really? So what do you think Congress defined the tax as being for? Telephone service alone? Nope, not under the current version of the law adopted by Congress governing the USF. 42 USC Sec. 254(c)(1):
Universal service is an evolving level of telecommunications services that the Commission shall establish periodically under this section, taking into account advances in telecommunications and information technologies and services.
Seems to me that Congress has specifically granted the FCC authority it has proposed using.
Next time you want to accuse someone of breaking the law, try checking what the law is first.
So let me get this straight. Congress back in 1934 passes a bill to fund rural phone lines by charging city slickers an extra tax on their phone bill.
Now 70 years later the FTC decides on its own that it can levy any tax it wants to against anyone it wants to and put the money towards any program it so desires.
Nope.
First of all, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) isn't involved in this story at all, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) is.
Second, the provision of law governing the universal service fund (47 USC Sec. 254) has been amended by Congress since 1934, and the current version adopted by Congress states:
Universal service is an evolving level of telecommunications services that the Commission shall establish periodically under this section, taking into account advances in telecommunications and information technologies and services.
See, the thing with Congress' ability to make law is that it keeps being exercised, its not just something that happened once in the distant past.
Does Congress' power to tax and make law have little meaning anymore? Is our form of government becoming one in which bureaucrats decide for themselves what taxes to levy and what laws to create?
I'm hoping at least a few people on SlashDot recognize the types of precedents that have been set over the last several years in how it undermines the intentional separation of powers in the US Constitution. It's more insidious and the long-term consequences more dire than I'm sure most people here realize.
I'm hoping that at least a few people on Slashdot will recognize the importance of actually having some idea of what the facts are before launching into crazed rants.
The usual handwave for BSD is to claim that the BSD licenses qualify as part of the copyright notice, which the GPL mandates must be retained.
The GPL doesn't require retaining existing copyright notices on derivative works, it requires the creator of the derivative work to place a copyright notice. The BSD license (all forms) requires retaining the original copyright license and the licensing term require downstream licensees to do the same and a specifically-worded warranty disclaimer (with a different wording than the one required by the GPL.) The 3-clause BSD license also has and requires inclusion of an additional licensing term regarding endorsements (and the old 4-clause BSD requires yet another licensing term regarding advertising to be included.)
Its pretty bizarre to claim that the 4-clause BSD license with its additional terms is not GPL2-compatible but the 2- and 3-clause licenses, which also contain additional terms that must be included as licensing conditions, is GPL2-compatible.
What would prevent them from delivering new features in versions 4.1, 4.2, etc?
I don't think you understand the idea. The idea isn't that you have some releases with a tight feature set, rapid cycle time, and low cost of moving features out to a later release if they aren't ready for the next one, the idea is that you have all releases like that. And when you do that, there becomes no purpose in having point release numbers, because if you designate that kind of release as a "point release", you never have a new major release.
When you adopt that kind of development strategy, you've got one kind of release, and when you have one kind of release, that is your major release.
There is NOTHING that prevents developers from doing that with pointreleases.
If you divide into "point releases" and "major releases", then you might be doing small incremental feature upgrades with a low cost of moving features between releases with "point releases", but you either aren't doing that with "major releases" or there is no point to the distinction between "point releases" and "major releases". So, if you have a "point release"/"major release" distinction, you either aren't doing it consistently, or you are making a meaningless distinction.
And, when you eliminate the meaningless distinction, there is no point in having "pont releases" since they exist to distinguish a release that is less important than whatever the major releases are in your system. When you have only one kind of feature release, it is a major release.