While we are discussing the whole "be a destination" vs. "sell stuff" dichotomy, I was dismayed to see our local Borders go the opposite way. They used to have friendly knowledgeable staff, a cozy coffee/snack area, the ability to order books and have them paid for and picked up at the store.
Recently they did away with their 'cozy coffee area', replacing it with a smaller, harsher, coffee seller with fewer high hard backed chairs, a more cafeteria feel.
They replaced some of their staff with what I can only suppose are cheaper, less informed people.
They no longer let you order books and have then delivered to the store, you have to go to Borders.com.
Predictably, at least to most of the readers here, people stopped 'hanging out' there. They stopped asking the staff their opinions about different books, and many went to Amazon.com instead of Borders.com as Amazon's prices are usually 10% to 15% cheaper.
The local Borders used to do a fairly thriving business. Since these changes they've had such a drop off of customers that they've let go staff, and reduced the inventory to about half of what it was.
They were a popular destination, now they are a more expensive Walmart.
It's hard to assign reasons from the linked story, but;
Why two years:
Perhaps it took two years to find an lawyer willing to take up the case?
Perhaps they didn't know until recently that they _could_ sue?
Perhaps they thought it was behind them and it was recently brought up as a reason why she's being denied/punished for something?
Why she didn't delete her account like the other girls did:
Perhaps she didn't have as fancy a cell phone, one that didn't allow her to log on to the internet and delete her account.
We may never know. It still reeks of 'abuse of power', 'poor judgment', and petty vindictiveness. On the part of the teacher that is.
It's hard to assign reasons from the linked story, but;
Why two years:
Perhaps it took two years to find an lawyer willing to take up the case?
Perhaps they didn't know until recently that they _could_ sue?
Perhaps they thought it was behind them and it was recently brought up as a reason why she's being denied/punished for something?
Why she didn't delete her account like the other girls did:
Perhaps she didn't have as fancy a cell phone, one that didn't allow her to log on to the internet and delete her account.
We may never know. It still reeks of 'abuse of power', 'poor judgment', and petty vindictiveness. On the part of the teacher that is.
Up in our neck of the woods, the municipal water district lobbied for (and got) a 5% increase in the water rate. The reason, people we conserving 'too' much. In order to keep making the same amount of money (or more) they need to keep increasing the rates if people have the nerve to use less water. The real killer though was the 15% stealth waste water hike. Sewer bills are calculated as water bill * 3. Oh and the same municipal company handles both water and sewer.
As for electricity, they 'sort of' deregulated a few years back. We have a monopoly distributor and our choice of several electric generators. Wouldn't you know it, 80% of our electric bill is for distribution and not choosing a supplier (the standard offer) gets you the best rate. Of course there is only a $0.2-$0.5 difference in the rates offered.
Since the mid 70's every utterance that anyone's bothered to write or otherwise record is automatically covered by copyright, right?
Since at least the mid 80's (when the internet was opened up to the great unwashed masses) people have been 'writing' their conversations down.
While there is an impressive number of words in the American English language, the majority or people in the majority of discourse use only a fraction of that number of words.
Can anyone see where I'm going here? At this point anything you can write/say is most likely already covered by someone else's copyright.
Time to scrap the entire idea. Copyright for a limited time (12-28 years) only on things that you specifically apply for a copyright on. Of course for that to work at this point, we need to start by scrapping all implied copyrights.
I've probably violated an unknown number of peoples copyrights just writing this.......
This just goes to show that the corps have way too much power.
Any contract that's subject to change without notice isn't a contract. Anytime you see those terms, especially in a privacy notice, I read them as no contract exists.
Other courts need to follow this. Just because many companies like to do this doesn't make it right.
The other thing that needs to happen is that consumers should not be able to waive any of their rights, no matter what the contract says. Companies can waive whatever rights they want. Consumers aren't in a position to negotiate especially when companies present 'contracts' in a take it or leave it manner.
Between these two changes (no waiving of consumer rights, no unilateral contract changes) a majority of illicit business practices would be curtailed.
Of course should that happen, expect companies to crawl out of the wood work complaining about how this would be unfair and infringe upon their rights to squeeze money out of the unsuspecting public, er. make a profit.
As it's been said by many others, your odometer already tracks miles driven. In most of the states I've seen you have to tell the government your odometer reading to register your car. Therefore, your excise tax could be based on the value of the car at purchase (you haven't driven any miles yet) then at a cost of base plus rate * tax per mile each year after that. In order to sell your car you have to pay the residual excise tax when you turn in your plates.
Fair tax per mile, effects electric/hydrogen/gas/etc. vehicles doesn't require any new privacy invading technology.
Makes sense, therefore it'll never get implemented. Oh well.
Re: If we go back to Dial Up rules it wouldn't be a problem.
Unfortunately there is _no_ competition. If CompuServe charged for connection time and AOL wasn't allowed to offer service over the same phone lines, then AOL would never have had a chance.
Simply saying that we should increase competition isn't going to make it so. Laying fiber, cable, whatever to people's homes is a natural monopoly. The incumbent phone/cable operator build the network usually with large government subsidies. It isn't really fair to expect a competitor to absorb the cost of laying out a complete network on their own. Besides how many wires do you need going into your house, two, ten, a hundred?
What we need to do, is what telco's and cable companies successfully fought against, line sharing. Back in the POTS days ISP's were very competitive. Any ISP could use the same copper pair into anyone's home. They had to compete on price, or service offerings. If AOL sucked, then Earthlink was there, if they changed their terms, some no name local ISP could fill the bill. Prices went down, options went up.
Enter broadband, only the cable company can provide service over the coax, many ISP's offered DSL service over your phone line. Alternate DSL providers flourished, most offering better packages and lower prices than the telcos. Buy off a few Congressmen and presto, only the local phone company can offer DSL over your phone line. Options went down, prices went up, customer service generally stunk. If there is both a DSL and a Cable provider (esp. if the telco is rolling out FIOS) no talk of caps. If the telco is AT&T and offering caps, then so will the Cable company, if there is one. You live too far for the telco's DSL, too bad. A competitor isn't allowed to provide service any more and the telco isn't under any pressure to offer you that service.
When you choice is accept the unfair offer or do without, that isn't really a choice. If your electric company wanted to offer tiered electricity rates, would you say, just get your electricity from another provider? No? Why not? Same answer to internet access.
Internet access is like phone, or electric, or water service. It's become a utility. It needs to be regulated like a utility, or we could do what other countries do. Separate the lines from the service. Have the lines be a regulated monopoly and allow anyone to offer service over those lines. We need to treat it like the electric company or like the roads. Pick one. Until then we will fall farther and farther behind the rest of the developed world all to line the pockets of a select few at the expense of the vast many.
If we had decent labor laws we wouldn't need unions.
When it comes to 'unions', there's good and there's bad.
Unfortunately as other have remarked, when labor has little to no protection, there's a clamor for someone to help. If the legislature won't then maybe the union will. Probably not, but they need some level of hope.
When to comes to labor vs. capitol, capitol is always going to be more fluid. Just look at what happened post NAFTA. Capitol moved to to the cheapest labor market. Where is the cheapest labor market? Why those areas that have the fewest labor laws. Without any minimum labor standards all it did was precipitate a rush to the bottom. Everyone raced to provide the least (benefit/pay/security) to their employees they could get away with.
Even lax immigration policy plays into it. Don't get me wrong, I'm all into providing opportunities for American business to hire the best and the brightest, no matter where their country of origin. Unfortunately too many companies abuse the immigration laws to hire cheaper foreign workers instead of equally, or even more, talented local workers. The less skilled the work the worse it gets. Why would a businessman interested in only his bottom line want to stop 'illegals' from getting into the country? They bloat the labor market driving down wages and they are unlikely to complain too loudly if you abuse them. If we were serious about stemming the tide of illegal immigrants make it more economical to hire legal workers. If there wasn't any work for them, they would go home. No ridiculous transcontinental fences, no civil rights violating gestapo needed, but I'm digressing.
Steps to obliterate the need for a union in most cases;
Livable minimum wage (tied to cost of living):
If you work full time at a minimum wage job you should be able to afford a modest apartment, functional cloths, and plain but nutritious food.
An end to 'work at will':
An employer should need a reason to fire someone. Too many states have restricted reasons (sex, religion, age) but any other reason is fair game. Boss gets in an accident with some one in a blue car that morning, your wearing a blue shirt, 'fired!".
Don't want to work 'off the clock', fired!.
Caught pneumonia from your coworkers because your workspace makes you long to be a sardine in a can, for all the extra room that it would afford, fired!.
Was overheard asking about unions in the grocery store last weekend, fired!.
Workplace laws that are actually enforced:
What's the purpose of having workplace laws if they are barely enforced?
Universal Health Care:
You ability to see a doctor shouldn't be tied to your employer to your employment status. One of the major concessions achieved by unions is a decent level of health care. Sensible businesses mostly agree (obviously health insurance firms, big pharma, etc. may object) spread to costs throughout society. Level the playing field from those companies that think health care for the rank and file is just another unneeded expense (you notice that most of the upper management are covered even in those places that don't offer coverage to mere workers). The donut shops, retail outlets, even some tech companies either drop coverage or allow the workers to 'purchase' health coverage at 50-75% of their salary.
Perhaps that last one will take the US finally going to universal coverage. It's coming, it's just a matter of how much the average citizen will have to suffer, how many will end up dead, before our leaders finally think about their constituents. The voters, not the big campaign contributors. Woops, I'm digressing again.
Decent, enforced labor laws would make unions less appealing. As long as businesses think more about the next quarter's numbers over the long term longevity of their company. As long as greed is given freedom to run amock, the idea of a union will remain appealing, whether or not it will actually provide any of the hoped for benifits.
That's what you get adding profit to criminal justice.
That just goes to show you what happens when you add a "for profit" element into the criminal justice system.
When jails were run by the state, it cost money to incarcerate people. Now that jails are run by private companies, you've got the "for profit" middle men who now have the incentive to game the system. More criminals = more profit (and more cost to the tax payers, but in the age of $500 toilet seats......).
Incarceration should be the solution of last recourse and no one should be using it as a profit center.
The physics arguments are compelling. Yes Sat. can't carry every local channel across the country, given.
Having said that, they need to allow everyone to watch network television, even if they don't live in a major metro area. While living in middle America with sat. t.v. I was told that I couldn't get ABC/NBC/etc. because I wasn't in a major metro area and I didn't fall into the exception of 'back woods' rural that didn't have a local affiliate.
If you want to serve rural (and middle ) America while keeping within the bounds of physics, mandating that they carry at least 1 channel of each of the networks that's available to all subscribers would be a start.
I think the fundamental misunderstanding stems from the perceived purpose of patents themselves.
Most people against software patents are those that believe patents, like copyrights are:
"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."
The people who like patents, software and business method patents in particular, seem to think patents are there for you to 'own' ideas and get a big payday from anyone who wants to actually do something with that idea.
Think about it, if you can get the government to grant you exclusive rights to a useful idea, you could be set for life. No need to to anything but hire a few patent lawyers to enforce your bounty.
Why would people, especially patent lawyers, want to change that? If you got rid of the really juicy patents (it's harder to collect widely for a patent on a threshing machine than from say doing anything remotely common "with a computer"). They might actually have to innovate, produce, or compete.
II've said it before and I'll say it again. If we switched to encrypted
email by default, joe jobs, authentication, and to some degree spam
would be controlled.
Publish your public keys either on your personal web site, in your
signature, in public/private directories.
Snail mail equivalents;
1st Class - Signed/encrypted
2nd-class - Signed
Bulk-Rate - Unsigned / unencrypted.
The more you value your privacy/hate spam the longer your encryption
key. The longer your encryption key, the more processor time it takes
to sign/encrypt email to you. (as a side benefit, the harder for people
to snoop on you). Can anyone speculate on the time/processor power to
send 1 million pieces of email currently vs. encrypting/signing 1 million pieces of email each encrypted with a different 2048bit key?
If you value your privacy/time/bandwidth then either sort by class or
reject (at the local level of course, NOT at the ISP level) certain
classes. Perhaps you only accept 1st class email. Maybe 1st class is
ok, second class gets filtered and bulk rate goes into the 'Junk mail'
folder.
Current problems with this idea, NSA/FBI/CIA etc. Google/Yahoo/AOL etc.
The powers that be like the fact that most email is unsigned
unencrypted plain text.
What's common about the current plans like "DomainKeys Identified Mail".
It's centrally located, the power is with the provider, not with the
individual.
It's still in plain text, so every one knows what you're writing about.
It authenticates the mail server, not the individual. So if I'm at
Alice@aol.com and I send mail pretending I'm from Bob@aol.com, then I
can authentically state that the email from AOL.com actually came from
an account at AOL.com. As email servers consolidate how does that help
you? If your email is processed by Verizon, AOL, Earthlink, you are ok.
If instead it's processed by Local Coop Inc., the ladies auxiliary, the
Free China Society, or heaven forbid, your own server. Well obviously
it doesn't come with the large corporate/government seal of approval,
it MUST be bad/evil/subversive/spam.
Spam works because it doesn't cost the sender near enough, and some
small percentage of people actually bite. We need to increase the cost
of sending thousands of emails without increasing the cost of sending
tens of emails. The cost increase can't be in dollars, because then
only the rich would be able to send email. We can't limit/consolidate
the control of email sending, because then only 'approved' people would
be able to send 'approved' messages. It shouldn't impact the current
infrastructure because then it wouldn't get implemented.
Default encrypted email; local control, authenticates the individual (or
company/origination), increases the cost to Spammers without undually burdening individual emails or non-profits. Keeps your neighbor/the government/corporate interests from reading your email. Requires little if any change to the current email infrastructure.
II've said it before and I'll say it again. If we switched to encrypted
email by default, joe jobs, authentication, and to some degree spam
would be controlled.
Publish your public keys either on your personal web site, in your
signature, in public/private directories.
Snail mail equivalents;
1st Class - Signed/encrypted
2nd-class - Signed
Bulk-Rate - Unsigned / unencrypted.
The more you value your privacy/hate spam the longer your encryption
key. The longer your encryption key, the more processor time it takes
to sign/encrypt email to you. (as a side benefit, the harder for people
to snoop on you). Can anyone speculate on the time/processor power to
send 1 million pieces of email currently vs. encrypting/signing 1 million pieces of email each encrypted with a different 2048bit key?
If you value your privacy/time/bandwidth then either sort by class or
reject (at the local level of course, NOT at the ISP level) certain
classes. Perhaps you only accept 1st class email. Maybe 1st class is
ok, second class gets filtered and bulk rate goes into the 'Junk mail'
folder.
Current problems with this idea, NSA/FBI/CIA etc. Google/Yahoo/AOL etc.
The powers that be like the fact that most email is unsigned
unencrypted plain text.
What's common about the current plans like "DomainKeys Identified Mail".
It's centrally located, the power is with the provider, not with the
individual.
It's still in plain text, so every one knows what you're writing about.
It authenticates the mail server, not the individual. So if I'm at
Alice@aol.com and I send mail pretending I'm from Bob@aol.com, then I
can authentically state that the email from AOL.com actually came from
an account at AOL.com. As email servers consolidate how does that help
you? If your email is processed by Verizon, AOL, Earthlink, you are ok.
If instead it's processed by Local Coop Inc., the ladies auxiliary, the
Free China Society, or heaven forbid, your own server. Well obviously
it doesn't come with the large corporate/government seal of approval,
it MUST be bad/evil/subversive/spam.
Spam works because it doesn't cost the sender near enough, and some
small percentage of people actually bite. We need to increase the cost
of sending thousands of emails without increasing the cost of sending
tens of emails. The cost increase can't be in dollars, because then
only the rich would be able to send email. We can't limit/consolidate
the control of email sending, because then only 'approved' people would
be able to send 'approved' messages. It shouldn't impact the current
infrastructure because then it wouldn't get implemented.
Default encrypted email; local control, authenticates the individual (or
company/origination), increases the cost to Spammers without undually burdening individual emails or non-profits. Keeps your neighbor/the government/corporate interests from reading your email. Requires little if any change to the current email infrastructure.
On the post: Indie Record Shops Learning To Adapt
On a slightly different matter....
Recently they did away with their 'cozy coffee area', replacing it with a smaller, harsher, coffee seller with fewer high hard backed chairs, a more cafeteria feel.
They replaced some of their staff with what I can only suppose are cheaper, less informed people.
They no longer let you order books and have then delivered to the store, you have to go to Borders.com.
Predictably, at least to most of the readers here, people stopped 'hanging out' there. They stopped asking the staff their opinions about different books, and many went to Amazon.com instead of Borders.com as Amazon's prices are usually 10% to 15% cheaper.
The local Borders used to do a fairly thriving business. Since these changes they've had such a drop off of customers that they've let go staff, and reduced the inventory to about half of what it was.
They were a popular destination, now they are a more expensive Walmart.
On the post: Student Files Lawsuit After Teacher Demands Facebook Password, Logs Into Account & Distributes Private Messages
Perhaps it took that long to find a lawyer?
Why two years:
Perhaps it took two years to find an lawyer willing to take up the case?
Perhaps they didn't know until recently that they _could_ sue?
Perhaps they thought it was behind them and it was recently brought up as a reason why she's being denied/punished for something?
Why she didn't delete her account like the other girls did:
Perhaps she didn't have as fancy a cell phone, one that didn't allow her to log on to the internet and delete her account.
We may never know. It still reeks of 'abuse of power', 'poor judgment', and petty vindictiveness. On the part of the teacher that is.
On the post: Student Files Lawsuit After Teacher Demands Facebook Password, Logs Into Account & Distributes Private Messages
Perhaps it took that long to find a lawyer?
Why two years:
Perhaps it took two years to find an lawyer willing to take up the case?
Perhaps they didn't know until recently that they _could_ sue?
Perhaps they thought it was behind them and it was recently brought up as a reason why she's being denied/punished for something?
Why she didn't delete her account like the other girls did:
Perhaps she didn't have as fancy a cell phone, one that didn't allow her to log on to the internet and delete her account.
We may never know. It still reeks of 'abuse of power', 'poor judgment', and petty vindictiveness. On the part of the teacher that is.
On the post: Utility Wants To Charge Solar Panel Users For Not Using Their Energy
Paying for not using isn't all that uncommon.
As for electricity, they 'sort of' deregulated a few years back. We have a monopoly distributor and our choice of several electric generators. Wouldn't you know it, 80% of our electric bill is for distribution and not choosing a supplier (the standard offer) gets you the best rate. Of course there is only a $0.2-$0.5 difference in the rates offered.
On the post: If You're Going To Meter Or Cap Broadband, Shouldn't You Provide A Meter?
I don't think they offer DSL.
You do realize that they are a cable company right?
On the post: Backlog At The Copyright Office Highlights Massive Problem With The System
Isn't _EVERYTHING_ copywritten by now?
Since at least the mid 80's (when the internet was opened up to the great unwashed masses) people have been 'writing' their conversations down.
While there is an impressive number of words in the American English language, the majority or people in the majority of discourse use only a fraction of that number of words.
Can anyone see where I'm going here? At this point anything you can write/say is most likely already covered by someone else's copyright.
Time to scrap the entire idea. Copyright for a limited time (12-28 years) only on things that you specifically apply for a copyright on. Of course for that to work at this point, we need to start by scrapping all implied copyrights.
I've probably violated an unknown number of peoples copyrights just writing this.......
On the post: Craigslist Gives In To Misplaced AG Anger... Again
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Mushrooms & steak, mushrooms on my pizza.......
Oh, you mean those mushrooms.
On the post: Court Rejects Online Terms Of Service That Reserve The Right To Change At Any Time
Too much power to corps, too little to consumers
Any contract that's subject to change without notice isn't a contract. Anytime you see those terms, especially in a privacy notice, I read them as no contract exists.
Other courts need to follow this. Just because many companies like to do this doesn't make it right.
The other thing that needs to happen is that consumers should not be able to waive any of their rights, no matter what the contract says. Companies can waive whatever rights they want. Consumers aren't in a position to negotiate especially when companies present 'contracts' in a take it or leave it manner.
Between these two changes (no waiving of consumer rights, no unilateral contract changes) a majority of illicit business practices would be curtailed.
Of course should that happen, expect companies to crawl out of the wood work complaining about how this would be unfair and infringe upon their rights to squeeze money out of the unsuspecting public, er. make a profit.
On the post: More Congress Critters Want To Track And Tax Your Driving Habits
Odometer -> Excise Tax -> tax per mile.
Fair tax per mile, effects electric/hydrogen/gas/etc. vehicles doesn't require any new privacy invading technology.
Makes sense, therefore it'll never get implemented. Oh well.
Just a few quick thoughts.
On the post: Supreme Court Says FCC Can Fine Fleeting Expletives... For Now
Umm because networks have the deepest pockets?
Just a thought.
On the post: Law To Ban Broadband Caps Moves Forward
Re: If we go back to Dial Up rules it wouldn't be a problem.
Simply saying that we should increase competition isn't going to make it so. Laying fiber, cable, whatever to people's homes is a natural monopoly. The incumbent phone/cable operator build the network usually with large government subsidies. It isn't really fair to expect a competitor to absorb the cost of laying out a complete network on their own. Besides how many wires do you need going into your house, two, ten, a hundred?
What we need to do, is what telco's and cable companies successfully fought against, line sharing. Back in the POTS days ISP's were very competitive. Any ISP could use the same copper pair into anyone's home. They had to compete on price, or service offerings. If AOL sucked, then Earthlink was there, if they changed their terms, some no name local ISP could fill the bill. Prices went down, options went up.
Enter broadband, only the cable company can provide service over the coax, many ISP's offered DSL service over your phone line. Alternate DSL providers flourished, most offering better packages and lower prices than the telcos. Buy off a few Congressmen and presto, only the local phone company can offer DSL over your phone line. Options went down, prices went up, customer service generally stunk. If there is both a DSL and a Cable provider (esp. if the telco is rolling out FIOS) no talk of caps. If the telco is AT&T and offering caps, then so will the Cable company, if there is one. You live too far for the telco's DSL, too bad. A competitor isn't allowed to provide service any more and the telco isn't under any pressure to offer you that service.
When you choice is accept the unfair offer or do without, that isn't really a choice. If your electric company wanted to offer tiered electricity rates, would you say, just get your electricity from another provider? No? Why not? Same answer to internet access.
Internet access is like phone, or electric, or water service. It's become a utility. It needs to be regulated like a utility, or we could do what other countries do. Separate the lines from the service. Have the lines be a regulated monopoly and allow anyone to offer service over those lines. We need to treat it like the electric company or like the roads. Pick one. Until then we will fall farther and farther behind the rest of the developed world all to line the pockets of a select few at the expense of the vast many.
Just my $0.02.
On the post: So Only When Piracy Gets Really Bad Will Record Labels Change Their Act?
Re: perhaps
$0.01 not 0.01 cent (one one hundredth of a cent)
and
$0.99 not 0.99 cent (ninety nine hundredths of a cent)
I believe there was a telcom that got into trouble with that sort of a mix up.
Just thought I would let you know,
jilocasin
On the post: Tech Companies Worried About Unions
If we had decent labor laws we wouldn't need unions.
Unfortunately as other have remarked, when labor has little to no protection, there's a clamor for someone to help. If the legislature won't then maybe the union will. Probably not, but they need some level of hope.
When to comes to labor vs. capitol, capitol is always going to be more fluid. Just look at what happened post NAFTA. Capitol moved to to the cheapest labor market. Where is the cheapest labor market? Why those areas that have the fewest labor laws. Without any minimum labor standards all it did was precipitate a rush to the bottom. Everyone raced to provide the least (benefit/pay/security) to their employees they could get away with.
Even lax immigration policy plays into it. Don't get me wrong, I'm all into providing opportunities for American business to hire the best and the brightest, no matter where their country of origin. Unfortunately too many companies abuse the immigration laws to hire cheaper foreign workers instead of equally, or even more, talented local workers. The less skilled the work the worse it gets. Why would a businessman interested in only his bottom line want to stop 'illegals' from getting into the country? They bloat the labor market driving down wages and they are unlikely to complain too loudly if you abuse them. If we were serious about stemming the tide of illegal immigrants make it more economical to hire legal workers. If there wasn't any work for them, they would go home. No ridiculous transcontinental fences, no civil rights violating gestapo needed, but I'm digressing.
Steps to obliterate the need for a union in most cases;
Livable minimum wage (tied to cost of living):
If you work full time at a minimum wage job you should be able to afford a modest apartment, functional cloths, and plain but nutritious food.
An end to 'work at will':
An employer should need a reason to fire someone. Too many states have restricted reasons (sex, religion, age) but any other reason is fair game. Boss gets in an accident with some one in a blue car that morning, your wearing a blue shirt, 'fired!".
Don't want to work 'off the clock', fired!.
Caught pneumonia from your coworkers because your workspace makes you long to be a sardine in a can, for all the extra room that it would afford, fired!.
Was overheard asking about unions in the grocery store last weekend, fired!.
Workplace laws that are actually enforced:
What's the purpose of having workplace laws if they are barely enforced?
Universal Health Care:
You ability to see a doctor shouldn't be tied to your employer to your employment status. One of the major concessions achieved by unions is a decent level of health care. Sensible businesses mostly agree (obviously health insurance firms, big pharma, etc. may object) spread to costs throughout society. Level the playing field from those companies that think health care for the rank and file is just another unneeded expense (you notice that most of the upper management are covered even in those places that don't offer coverage to mere workers). The donut shops, retail outlets, even some tech companies either drop coverage or allow the workers to 'purchase' health coverage at 50-75% of their salary.
Perhaps that last one will take the US finally going to universal coverage. It's coming, it's just a matter of how much the average citizen will have to suffer, how many will end up dead, before our leaders finally think about their constituents. The voters, not the big campaign contributors. Woops, I'm digressing again.
Decent, enforced labor laws would make unions less appealing. As long as businesses think more about the next quarter's numbers over the long term longevity of their company. As long as greed is given freedom to run amock, the idea of a union will remain appealing, whether or not it will actually provide any of the hoped for benifits.
Just my $0.02
On the post: Corrupt Judges Sent Kid Who Made Spoof MySpace Pages To Detention... For Profit
That's what you get adding profit to criminal justice.
When jails were run by the state, it cost money to incarcerate people. Now that jails are run by private companies, you've got the "for profit" middle men who now have the incentive to game the system. More criminals = more profit (and more cost to the tax payers, but in the age of $500 toilet seats......).
Incarceration should be the solution of last recourse and no one should be using it as a profit center.
jilocasin.
On the post: Why Does The Goverment Hate Satellite Service Providers?
I would opt ofr networks over local channels
Having said that, they need to allow everyone to watch network television, even if they don't live in a major metro area. While living in middle America with sat. t.v. I was told that I couldn't get ABC/NBC/etc. because I wasn't in a major metro area and I didn't fall into the exception of 'back woods' rural that didn't have a local affiliate.
If you want to serve rural (and middle ) America while keeping within the bounds of physics, mandating that they carry at least 1 channel of each of the networks that's available to all subscribers would be a start.
On the post: The Cultural Gulf Between Lawyers And Technologists On Patent Law
The problem is the purpose of patents....
Most people against software patents are those that believe patents, like copyrights are:
"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."
The people who like patents, software and business method patents in particular, seem to think patents are there for you to 'own' ideas and get a big payday from anyone who wants to actually do something with that idea.
Think about it, if you can get the government to grant you exclusive rights to a useful idea, you could be set for life. No need to to anything but hire a few patent lawyers to enforce your bounty.
Why would people, especially patent lawyers, want to change that? If you got rid of the really juicy patents (it's harder to collect widely for a patent on a threshing machine than from say doing anything remotely common "with a computer"). They might actually have to innovate, produce, or compete.
How much fun would that be?
jilocasin.
On the post: Email Authentication: Dead Or Alive (Depends On Whose Headline You Read)
Switch to encrypted email by default.
email by default, joe jobs, authentication, and to some degree spam
would be controlled.
Publish your public keys either on your personal web site, in your
signature, in public/private directories.
Snail mail equivalents;
1st Class - Signed/encrypted
2nd-class - Signed
Bulk-Rate - Unsigned / unencrypted.
The more you value your privacy/hate spam the longer your encryption
key. The longer your encryption key, the more processor time it takes
to sign/encrypt email to you. (as a side benefit, the harder for people
to snoop on you). Can anyone speculate on the time/processor power to
send 1 million pieces of email currently vs. encrypting/signing 1 million pieces of email each encrypted with a different 2048bit key?
If you value your privacy/time/bandwidth then either sort by class or
reject (at the local level of course, NOT at the ISP level) certain
classes. Perhaps you only accept 1st class email. Maybe 1st class is
ok, second class gets filtered and bulk rate goes into the 'Junk mail'
folder.
Current problems with this idea, NSA/FBI/CIA etc. Google/Yahoo/AOL etc.
The powers that be like the fact that most email is unsigned
unencrypted plain text.
What's common about the current plans like "DomainKeys Identified Mail".
It's centrally located, the power is with the provider, not with the
individual.
It's still in plain text, so every one knows what you're writing about.
It authenticates the mail server, not the individual. So if I'm at
Alice@aol.com and I send mail pretending I'm from Bob@aol.com, then I
can authentically state that the email from AOL.com actually came from
an account at AOL.com. As email servers consolidate how does that help
you? If your email is processed by Verizon, AOL, Earthlink, you are ok.
If instead it's processed by Local Coop Inc., the ladies auxiliary, the
Free China Society, or heaven forbid, your own server. Well obviously
it doesn't come with the large corporate/government seal of approval,
it MUST be bad/evil/subversive/spam.
Spam works because it doesn't cost the sender near enough, and some
small percentage of people actually bite. We need to increase the cost
of sending thousands of emails without increasing the cost of sending
tens of emails. The cost increase can't be in dollars, because then
only the rich would be able to send email. We can't limit/consolidate
the control of email sending, because then only 'approved' people would
be able to send 'approved' messages. It shouldn't impact the current
infrastructure because then it wouldn't get implemented.
Default encrypted email; local control, authenticates the individual (or
company/origination), increases the cost to Spammers without undually burdening individual emails or non-profits. Keeps your neighbor/the government/corporate interests from reading your email. Requires little if any change to the current email infrastructure.
rick
jilocain0@yahoo.com
On the post: Email Authentication: Dead Or Alive (Depends On Whose Headline You Read)
Switch to encrypted email by default.
email by default, joe jobs, authentication, and to some degree spam
would be controlled.
Publish your public keys either on your personal web site, in your
signature, in public/private directories.
Snail mail equivalents;
1st Class - Signed/encrypted
2nd-class - Signed
Bulk-Rate - Unsigned / unencrypted.
The more you value your privacy/hate spam the longer your encryption
key. The longer your encryption key, the more processor time it takes
to sign/encrypt email to you. (as a side benefit, the harder for people
to snoop on you). Can anyone speculate on the time/processor power to
send 1 million pieces of email currently vs. encrypting/signing 1 million pieces of email each encrypted with a different 2048bit key?
If you value your privacy/time/bandwidth then either sort by class or
reject (at the local level of course, NOT at the ISP level) certain
classes. Perhaps you only accept 1st class email. Maybe 1st class is
ok, second class gets filtered and bulk rate goes into the 'Junk mail'
folder.
Current problems with this idea, NSA/FBI/CIA etc. Google/Yahoo/AOL etc.
The powers that be like the fact that most email is unsigned
unencrypted plain text.
What's common about the current plans like "DomainKeys Identified Mail".
It's centrally located, the power is with the provider, not with the
individual.
It's still in plain text, so every one knows what you're writing about.
It authenticates the mail server, not the individual. So if I'm at
Alice@aol.com and I send mail pretending I'm from Bob@aol.com, then I
can authentically state that the email from AOL.com actually came from
an account at AOL.com. As email servers consolidate how does that help
you? If your email is processed by Verizon, AOL, Earthlink, you are ok.
If instead it's processed by Local Coop Inc., the ladies auxiliary, the
Free China Society, or heaven forbid, your own server. Well obviously
it doesn't come with the large corporate/government seal of approval,
it MUST be bad/evil/subversive/spam.
Spam works because it doesn't cost the sender near enough, and some
small percentage of people actually bite. We need to increase the cost
of sending thousands of emails without increasing the cost of sending
tens of emails. The cost increase can't be in dollars, because then
only the rich would be able to send email. We can't limit/consolidate
the control of email sending, because then only 'approved' people would
be able to send 'approved' messages. It shouldn't impact the current
infrastructure because then it wouldn't get implemented.
Default encrypted email; local control, authenticates the individual (or
company/origination), increases the cost to Spammers without undually burdening individual emails or non-profits. Keeps your neighbor/the government/corporate interests from reading your email. Requires little if any change to the current email infrastructure.
rick
jilocain0@yahoo.com
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