Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Suddenly your faith in "free market" vanishes?
No, I think what he was trying to say is something more like "anyone who supports regulation (of the kind / in the way advocated here on Techdirt) deserves (someone like) Pai (regardless of whether or not they actually have him)".
It's possible to deserve something and not get it, after all.
Unfortunately for that logic, I'm pretty sure that the act of receiving the E-mail (with the document attached) would constitute "accepting" the document.
When the FCC was established they openly delclared that they were going to regulate the telcos as natural monopolies.
This because the "run a wire to each person's home" market is a natural monopoly - that is, one where the most natural and most economical solution is a monopoly.
That is not a value judgment. It does not mean, or say, that a monopoly is a good thing.
All it says is that the choice is not "monopoly or no monopoly", but "regulated monopoly or unregulated monopoly".
The FCC's decision to "regulate the telcos as natural monopolies", did not create those monopolies. By definition, a created monopoly is not natural.
All the FCC's decision did is recognize the reality that trying to force a non-monopoly solution into a situation which is naturally suited to monopoly will cause more harm than leaving the monopoly in place but regulating it will.
Yeah, I'm aware of Maine's situation (although I haven't heard an update on it in a few months, and I don't know if I'd heard the maybe-OK-for-federal-offices bit).
What they seem to have adopted (or tried to adopt) is about the worst ranked-preference voting system, in terms of avoiding the "spoiler effect" and other perverse incentives, that I'm aware of - but it's still almost certainly better than single-choice first-past-the-post, particularly in regard to improving the chances of having more than two viable political parties.
Eh, I'm fairly sure this is just to give them room to not have to fight every site-blocking court order to the death.
While site blocking is generally bad, and it would certainly be nice if Comcast would fight against it, I can easily see why it's reasonable for them to not want to be bound to doing so in every single case regardless of the merits or the expense.
I think he's arguing that only a piece which only "provides the evidence and facts" qualifies as "exposing", and that as soon as you bring in things like calling the false statements "lies", the piece becomes "calling out" and deserving of condemnation on that basis.
From a certain abstract / philosophical / academic perspective, he may even be right. The trouble is that a piece which eschews that sort of call-a-spade-a-spade labelling is also likely to be sufficiently dry and unengaging that not many people are likely to properly read it, much less be persuaded by it.
Winning elections that way results in situations like what the GOP is dealing with in Congress right now: multiple distinct factions, which should each really be a separate political party, all pulling in different directions.
The effect is that even though the GOP controls the legislature in name, in fact none of their sub-parties has enough votes to control; the things some of those sub-parties want conflict with things some of the others want, and so they can't get things passed.
The Democratic Party is currently made up of at least two such factions: the "mainstream", roughly corresponding to the Clinton faction from the last primary-election cycle, and the "left", roughly corresponding to the Bernie faction from that same cycle. These have a certain amount of overlap and shared views, but there are other areas where they disagree.
The Republican Party is currently made up of at least three such factions, and possibly several more. There's the small-government faction (cut spending, reduce taxes, let the deficit explode so that later Congresses have to cut spending even further), the fiscal-conservative faction (reduce the deficit, but preferably by cutting spending, not raising taxes), the religious-conservative faction (freedom of religion! homosexuality is bad! abortion is murder!), and the Trumpist faction (everything Trump and/or Breitbart says is good!), at a minimum; I could probably go on pointing out distinct, or at least distinguishable, factions at considerable length. Some of these factions have areas of overlap (cutting spending, for example), but there is considerably more area of disagreement than seems to exist on the Democratic side.
No matter how you define these factions, none of them - on either side of the two-party division - has enough seats in the legislature to be a majority.
In European democracies, when that happens, the various factions have to negotiate among themselves to put together a "governing coalition", a group of two or more factions which in combination do have a majority of seats.
The GOP as it is currently constituted is, de facto, just such a governing coalition - but not one resulting from that type of negotiation; instead, it's formed out of the fact that its member factions are officially parts of the same party. This fiction that they're all part of the same monolithic group ties their hands; it might be more natural for the moderate faction to form a coalition with the Democratic Party than with the rest of what is currently called the Republican Party, but because their voters think of them as "Republicans" they don't really have that option.
I really think we'd be better off if our system formally acknowledged this governing-coalition reality, so that voters could recognize which faction they're supporting, rather than trying to hide it under the two-party model.
Unfortunately, by the way our election system is structured, a two-party model is pretty much all we can meaningfully achieve. About the only way we're really going to break out of that is by switching from a single-choice, first-past-the-post voting system to a ranked-preferences model, preferably one which satisfies the Condorcet criteria; unfortunately (again), the chances of getting that adopted in the existing political environment are slim at best.
they want the police to keep them safe so they don't have to contribute to the safety of society itself. See trouble better let the law man handle it and run/hide until the problem is over.
This is an example of what is known as "specialization". It is the basis of civilization, stretching all the way back to the first time some people were able to spare time to work on things other than the pursuit of food and shelter.
This happens to be one of the cases where the simple, naive way of implementing "some people specialize in X" leads to undesirable side effects, but the solution to that is to use a different implementation, not to go back to everyone doing X for themselves.
Re: Re: Re: Re: First, your Socialist slant simply doesn't apply to entertainments.
The article indicates that "useful arts" would have meant what we now would call "inventions" - techniques for doing things. "Science" would have meant "knowledge / learning", and "the useful arts" would be equivalent to "methods for doing useful things".
It does, indeed, not seem clear that either of these things should properly be read to cover works that exist purely for purposes of entertainment - but I can still see benefit to society in encouraging the people who create such works to release them rather than keeping them private, and a sufficiently-limited copyright is still the best idea I've seen suggested for a way of providing that encouragement.
That only helps if the released works do then make it into the public domain within a reasonable amount of time, of course, and currently they do not.
Re: Is there ANY evidence against Moore besides allegations? LIKE THIS:
By the way: it's difficult to refute allegations that come from out of the blue, that's why the letter is flailing. One doesn't know what the charge is or who one is fighting.
I don't know about that; most of the allegations I've seen out of the blue make have seemed trivially easy to refute. (Some of them may have been so blatantly obvious as to basically refute themselves.)
I always understood that the name "Naruto" came to this case out of PETA's claim, and that PETA were claiming that that was the name of the relevant monkey.
The only way I cank think of by which a "the wrong monkey" assertion could make sense is if the name had been applied to the monkey in the photograph, and the photograph had been actually taken by a different monkey - but that's also not what I remember seeing stated to have been the case, in the entire history of covering this.
Re your use of "tax-feeding": I sometimes find it interesting to contrast the image of those receiving a government paycheck as "sucking at the government teat" (with the implication that these people do not contribute to society and that the fewer of them there are the better off the rest of us will be) against the image of those working for government as "in public service" (with the connotation of nobly putting themselves forward to do things that society needs done).
Re: Re: Re: 'Yeah they want to point a gun at you, but don't worry, they won't pull the trigger.'
I guess I do have to bring this up again, so once again, are there such things as legal adult ads and should sites be allowed to host them, or are there no such thing as legal adult ads and as such sites should not be allowed to host them?
Although he hasn't explicitly stated it that I've seen, his position appears to be "there are such things as legal ads for adult products, but there are no such things as legal ads for adult services". If you want to try to pin him down on this, it might be useful to target the question more specifically at adult services.
On the post: As Net Neutrality Repeal Nears, Comcast's Promise To Avoid 'Paid Prioritization' Disappears
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Suddenly your faith in "free market" vanishes?
It's possible to deserve something and not get it, after all.
On the post: Maine Government Agency Tries To Charge Public Records Requester $750 For Opening A PDF
Re: Boolean logic
On the post: The FCC's Attack On Net Neutrality Is Based Entirely On Debunked Lobbyist Garbage Data
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
This because the "run a wire to each person's home" market is a natural monopoly - that is, one where the most natural and most economical solution is a monopoly.
That is not a value judgment. It does not mean, or say, that a monopoly is a good thing.
All it says is that the choice is not "monopoly or no monopoly", but "regulated monopoly or unregulated monopoly".
The FCC's decision to "regulate the telcos as natural monopolies", did not create those monopolies. By definition, a created monopoly is not natural.
All the FCC's decision did is recognize the reality that trying to force a non-monopoly solution into a situation which is naturally suited to monopoly will cause more harm than leaving the monopoly in place but regulating it will.
On the post: Ajit Pai's Big Lie
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Yeah, I'm aware of Maine's situation (although I haven't heard an update on it in a few months, and I don't know if I'd heard the maybe-OK-for-federal-offices bit).
What they seem to have adopted (or tried to adopt) is about the worst ranked-preference voting system, in terms of avoiding the "spoiler effect" and other perverse incentives, that I'm aware of - but it's still almost certainly better than single-choice first-past-the-post, particularly in regard to improving the chances of having more than two viable political parties.
On the post: Comcast Spent Millions Repealing Net Neutrality, Now Wants You To Believe It Won't Take Full, Brutal Advantage
Re:
While site blocking is generally bad, and it would certainly be nice if Comcast would fight against it, I can easily see why it's reasonable for them to not want to be bound to doing so in every single case regardless of the merits or the expense.
On the post: Sheriff Says He Won't Deploy Body Cameras Because He Doesn't Want His Deputies Criticized
Re: "The only lopsided, one-sided story allowed is OURS."
On the post: Treasury Department Report Shows ComputerCOP Used Bogus Endorsement Letter To Get Police To Distribute Keylogger
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: soo...
Where did those conversations take place? I don't remember seeing any of them here.
On the post: Ajit Pai's Big Lie
Re: Pai is sincerely wrong
I might almost agree with you, except one note:
Network neutrality will still be necessary, forever.
In the presence of robust competition, explicit rules mandating network neutrality may no longer be necessary.
But it will still be absolutely essential that the network be neutral, even if the market rather than a regulator is what is ensuring that neutrality.
On the post: Ajit Pai's Big Lie
Re: Re: Re: Re: Inflamatory headline
I think he's arguing that only a piece which only "provides the evidence and facts" qualifies as "exposing", and that as soon as you bring in things like calling the false statements "lies", the piece becomes "calling out" and deserving of condemnation on that basis.
From a certain abstract / philosophical / academic perspective, he may even be right. The trouble is that a piece which eschews that sort of call-a-spade-a-spade labelling is also likely to be sufficiently dry and unengaging that not many people are likely to properly read it, much less be persuaded by it.
On the post: Ajit Pai's Big Lie
Re: Re:
Winning elections that way results in situations like what the GOP is dealing with in Congress right now: multiple distinct factions, which should each really be a separate political party, all pulling in different directions.
The effect is that even though the GOP controls the legislature in name, in fact none of their sub-parties has enough votes to control; the things some of those sub-parties want conflict with things some of the others want, and so they can't get things passed.
The Democratic Party is currently made up of at least two such factions: the "mainstream", roughly corresponding to the Clinton faction from the last primary-election cycle, and the "left", roughly corresponding to the Bernie faction from that same cycle. These have a certain amount of overlap and shared views, but there are other areas where they disagree.
The Republican Party is currently made up of at least three such factions, and possibly several more. There's the small-government faction (cut spending, reduce taxes, let the deficit explode so that later Congresses have to cut spending even further), the fiscal-conservative faction (reduce the deficit, but preferably by cutting spending, not raising taxes), the religious-conservative faction (freedom of religion! homosexuality is bad! abortion is murder!), and the Trumpist faction (everything Trump and/or Breitbart says is good!), at a minimum; I could probably go on pointing out distinct, or at least distinguishable, factions at considerable length. Some of these factions have areas of overlap (cutting spending, for example), but there is considerably more area of disagreement than seems to exist on the Democratic side.
No matter how you define these factions, none of them - on either side of the two-party division - has enough seats in the legislature to be a majority.
In European democracies, when that happens, the various factions have to negotiate among themselves to put together a "governing coalition", a group of two or more factions which in combination do have a majority of seats.
The GOP as it is currently constituted is, de facto, just such a governing coalition - but not one resulting from that type of negotiation; instead, it's formed out of the fact that its member factions are officially parts of the same party. This fiction that they're all part of the same monolithic group ties their hands; it might be more natural for the moderate faction to form a coalition with the Democratic Party than with the rest of what is currently called the Republican Party, but because their voters think of them as "Republicans" they don't really have that option.
I really think we'd be better off if our system formally acknowledged this governing-coalition reality, so that voters could recognize which faction they're supporting, rather than trying to hide it under the two-party model.
Unfortunately, by the way our election system is structured, a two-party model is pretty much all we can meaningfully achieve. About the only way we're really going to break out of that is by switching from a single-choice, first-past-the-post voting system to a ranked-preferences model, preferably one which satisfies the Condorcet criteria; unfortunately (again), the chances of getting that adopted in the existing political environment are slim at best.
On the post: Investigation Finds Google Collected Location Data Even With Location Services Turned Off
Re:
About 88% of the smartphone market in 2016, apparently.
On the post: FCC Plan To Use Thanksgiving To 'Hide' Its Attack On Net Neutrality Vastly Underestimates The Looming Backlash
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: whiners
(Chopping down a tree - or cutting wood in general - involves doing the same thing over and over, and eventually you get a different result.)
On the post: Sheriff's Office To Pay $3 Million For Invasive Searches Of 850 High School Students
Re: Re: Re: Man..
This is an example of what is known as "specialization". It is the basis of civilization, stretching all the way back to the first time some people were able to spare time to work on things other than the pursuit of food and shelter.
This happens to be one of the cases where the simple, naive way of implementing "some people specialize in X" leads to undesirable side effects, but the solution to that is to use a different implementation, not to go back to everyone doing X for themselves.
On the post: EFF Wins Over Patent Troll Trying To Silence EFF Calling Its Patent Stupid
Re: Re: "Won over"?
On the post: The Sad Legacy Of Copyright: Locking Up Scientific Knowledge And Impeding Progress
Re: Re: Re: Re: First, your Socialist slant simply doesn't apply to entertainments.
It does, indeed, not seem clear that either of these things should properly be read to cover works that exist purely for purposes of entertainment - but I can still see benefit to society in encouraging the people who create such works to release them rather than keeping them private, and a sufficiently-limited copyright is still the best idea I've seen suggested for a way of providing that encouragement.
That only helps if the released works do then make it into the public domain within a reasonable amount of time, of course, and currently they do not.
On the post: Roy Moore's Threat Letter To Sue The Press Is An Artform In Bad Lawyering
Re: Is there ANY evidence against Moore besides allegations? LIKE THIS:
I don't know about that; most of the allegations I've seen out of the blue make have seemed trivially easy to refute. (Some of them may have been so blatantly obvious as to basically refute themselves.)
On the post: Monkey Selfie Photographer Says He's Now Going To Sue Wikipedia
Re:
I always understood that the name "Naruto" came to this case out of PETA's claim, and that PETA were claiming that that was the name of the relevant monkey.
The only way I cank think of by which a "the wrong monkey" assertion could make sense is if the name had been applied to the monkey in the photograph, and the photograph had been actually taken by a different monkey - but that's also not what I remember seeing stated to have been the case, in the entire history of covering this.
On the post: DOJ: Civil Asset Forfeiture Is A Good Thing That Only Harms All Those Criminals We Never Arrest
Re: Less Than Zero at DoJ (HAHA)
On the post: Recent Intel Chipsets Have A Built-In Hidden Computer, Running Minix With A Networking Stack And A Web Server
Re: Re: Re: Use or Not
Yes.
No, but one of my co-workers (the one whose judgment I trust the most, as it happens) has.
On the post: Wikipedia Warns That SESTA Could Destroy Wikipedia
Re: Re: Re: 'Yeah they want to point a gun at you, but don't worry, they won't pull the trigger.'
Although he hasn't explicitly stated it that I've seen, his position appears to be "there are such things as legal ads for adult products, but there are no such things as legal ads for adult services". If you want to try to pin him down on this, it might be useful to target the question more specifically at adult services.
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