Maybe it would make them think twice before resorting to violence for anything except self-defense?

Probably not.

I don't like violence either. I even used to bounce at a redneck bar only to stop fights that seemed to pop up about every 3 or 4 beers. I did this mainly to stop innocent bystanders from being hurt because of their idiocy. But I have no sympathy for the guy or girl who runs their mouth to the point someone else shuts it for them. Sure the one who went to violence is weak, but the one who pushed them is weaker and stupid to boot. I don't really care if they want to trade punches, mouth off at each other, or fuck- just do it away from others trying to enjoy themselves and only harm each other.

So if it can't be capitalism and have reliable power, perhaps it's time to admit it and socialize power production.

Lol.. Just because it is not does not mean it cannot be. But do you really want to end up like these hellholes? I mean seriously, it's like you fell in love with the word socialism and have no clue about how horrid it is in practice.

Of course, if they have assured power production now, then more players bringing more capacity isn't going to reduce the reliability, now is it?

It can but doesn't have to. You see, when you flood a market with good, prices drop until players go bankrupt or decide to move on before that happens. In a purposefully manipulated market that artificially increases the costs of one but not all players, you will see the drop outs quicker. This will raise the costs but it might not allow enough capacity to remain. That reduced liability which is likely why it is manipulated on ways you don't like to begin with.

A recurring theme I see is market after market that somehow fails to be healthy. If you see 'value pricing', then the market is unhealthy, for example. It's hard to find a healthy market anywhere.

There are plenty of healthy markets out there. Most commodities are traded on them and do a decent job of representing demand. The problem you seem to be having is that value pricing is not market pricing. It's an arbitrary price set by a manufacturer bases partly on perceived value and largely on profit potential. But that is not a market. If you built and sold competitor Ipad like computers, you would not be in a market in the same ways as energy is. Now market is sort of generic encompassing several types of markets you wouldn't be putting your UPad up for bid and having resellers place bids then resell the product. You would use value pricing and hope to generate sales using any number of techniques like price competition, specialized features, advertising and so on.But it is not the same market type as energy.

I was thinking the same thing. Does this mean we are screwed>?

The post office has a variety of problems. Commercial mail discounts are not the most significant among them and in fact an increasing amount of their business comes from junk mail overall. On an operational basis the USPS is profitable. The biggest problem they face is that mail volume has fallen by 20% in the last 10 years and is showing little sign of stopping. People simply don't send as many letters as they once did thanks to email and other new technologies. The USPS is a shrinking business but since they in actuality are a government agency they aren't truly given the freedom to behave like one. They are forced to serve unprofitable locations, they cannot close unnecessary post offices, they are limited in their ability to reduce their workforce, etc.

What? they are a government agency but not given the freedom to act like one? And yes, they have closed or are closing unnecessary post offices.

The bulk mail and so on is insignificant other than if they are not making money, they simply need to increase the rates a bit. But they lower the rates for businesses sending spam and up the private postage fee which is declining. Now, you really do not need to be the headmaster at the University of Austin (* the best accounting school last I checked) to see a disconnect here. Let me spell it out, Business rates are too low and private rates are too high. If they did something about that, they would have both business and private customers again.

It's not that government "can be part of the answer". Government HAS to be part of the answer. I agree that except on very small scales, government owned ISPs are probably not the best idea. But large ISPs without any government oversight is probably an even worse idea. There are certain industries (postal services, utilities, infrastructure, communications services) that simply will not work effectively on a large scale without a significant amount of government involvement and oversight.

I disagree on the industries that do not work well without government but that is neither here nor there. Government does not have to be part of the answer, if they weren't involved in the first place, they wouldn't need to be involved in the answer either. Companies like Comcast, Time Warner, ATT/SBC got their big jump in being large ISPs because they had the government give them monopolies in other areas in which they now piggyback their internet service offering onto. With very little effort, existing government regulation can be used to solve problems like net neutrality and so on. We already have consumer protection laws on the books about not receiving what you are being charged for. We already have these large telecoms receiving benefits for broadband roll outs and if they block or limit any services, their access doesn't meet broadband definitions. What is needed is strict enforcement of existing regulation and perhaps a little consolidations or inter-agency abilities with existing government agencies.

That said if the citizens of my local town wanted to have municipal gigabit ethernet controlled by the local government and collectively voted to indicate they were fine with the cost of doing this, I cannot think of a logical reason to prohibit it either. If the local telecom/cable monopolies aren't providing what people want they should be able to utilize their government to make it happen.

Governments who can tax people not wanting the service in order to fund it should never be in competition with private entities. The correct way for the town to get gigabit Ethernet is to bid out access to right of ways provided a certain coverage area on specific types of lines. Treat it like a cable company or the telephone company in which a company does the roll out and then leases the lines at cost to competitors or provides the service together. There is absolutely no reason why your local telecom/cable monopolies need to stay monopolies or that another (lets call it an internet coop) cannot start up. Well, that is unless there are existing contracts the local government was stupid enough to make which prohibits it. Municipal broadband is a bad idea. Granting access to private citizens working in a coop is an excellent idea. The local government can even bid on service to help initially fund it.

There is a principle in most states that place limits and in some cases indemnify parents from some acts committed by children due to the fact that children are thinking creature capable of acting on their own will. It's sort of like school, you can teach them all day long but will they learn and will they put what they learned to use or will they attempt something they have not even learned yet.

In some cases, your kid may be the only one liable for the broken window.

But this case isn't exactly like that. It was a defamation case over a fake facebook profile and it wasn't the fact that it existed that made the parents liable. It was that it remained up for 11 months and viewable after the parents were contacted and the two students behind it was suspended from school as well as disciplined by their own parents.

This is more sort of more like if your kid kept swinging balls into the neighbors window for 11 months after being told he broke it the first time.

Oh they are already working on it.

They just have all this sunk cost involved with 5-10 already and need to justify their raises.

And you showed nothing that describes dowloading. The owner of the server controls whether a copy is made or a file is transfered and is responsablty for the distribution.

You have to stretch really hard to get any of that to apply. Case law is not law either. Judges have been wrong before and they will be wrong in the future.

Didn't MS just introduce something that promises to send even more? I think it built into the latest version of windows and is supposed to help them fix it or something.

Lol. Did you seriously not read my post? I specifically mentioned the probles with roads but lets get into the post office too. They are constantly floating with bankruptcy yet offer commerial mail discounts so steep that postage to send a lettle or post card by a private citizen has almost trippled in my life time.

Oh, and these ISPs are already in the same place as telecoms. They enjoy limited competition already. They have fast tracks to right of ways already. If you actually looked at the situation, we are where we are at mostly because government and telecoms/cable service.

Yes government can be part of the answer. But government owning the ISP is not.

Getting what you pay for and forbiding ISPs from purosely limiting your service or any part of it to below the advertised speedscan be instituted without the government taking over the internet distribution/last mile infrastructure.

Having the government own the last mile or even the ISP does luttle to nothing to net neutrality.

We can see how that already works out. Roads is something that used to be largely private but now are mostly public. We pay a special tax to fund them.

Now that sounds good until you realize that the funding is not beholden to its intended uses. Highway trust funds get used to fund parks, bike and walking paths where no roads exist, they fund travel lanes that only select people can use ( hov, mass transit only, no commercial vehicles lanes). It is ever used for busy work where the need has nothing to do with maintaning the roads but to keeps workers employed when they aren't really needed.

I'm not saying comcast is the answer, but government replacing them is not really the cure. At least not the cure unless you want your internet carrying 10 times the load it was designed for and the solution pushed being expanding lanes that only a small portion of people can legally use- or worse yet, have to pay a premium for express travel. Yes, some expansion to existing freeways have been adding toll lanes to an otherwise non toll road.

Well not only that but i would think there might ve fears of driving development in directions that depend on ir outright violate those patents and then taking them to town down the road by requiring an expensive license. I think they call that submarining or something similar when it is done on standards.

There are infectious disease protocals that should be in place at any hospital. H.I.V. and measles or viral menangitus risks combined with trauma injuries for instance would have required enough protections in the initial contact to have prevented the spread. They simply were not prrepared to have a third world disease in a first world country.

As for sealing off the state. The nurse in question already went running around the country trying to see how many people she could expose. It could be too late to isolate it but you would only need to seal off Dallas. Texas has a huge border we already cannot close. If we tried to seal off the entire state, you might as well make screen doors for submarines. This government simply isn't up to the task.

Yes, it is. And yes I'm being serious.

Amber Joy Vinson after knowing of her exposure to an Ebola patient who died from the disease, decided with her vast knowlege of healthcare issues that it was prudent to travel to cleavland ohio on a commercial airliner and return to Texas hours before reporting her symptoms on the same type of travel.

When the healthcare workers decide to move about and interact with the public- crossing state lines- after knowing other healthcare workers with the same patient contracted the disease, you should be very concerned and panic. The CDC, who makes brown and the Katrina response by FEMA look like a perfectly executed plan, has failed in providing guidence competent enough that someone potentially exposed figured what the hell, lets travel within the incubation period. We are all going to get screwed in this.

Some people think it ids government trying to be too politically correct. I think it is either incompetance or intentional. I'm reminded of an interview on PBS where Ted Turner was asked about his over population stance that he and many greenies take. He said you can kill people and you cannot sterilize them so you have to educate people. He said eventually mother nature will catch up and solve the problrm. Except if a disease kills people, it is the natural way and all fits in. I think people in positions of power may qant this to spread in order to thin the herd out. This will lower carbon use and solve the so called population problem.

Thats right, i think this is intentional and by design. The lack of the most simple common sense protections points to this.

Its also plenty of time for companies to set up a location sk the irish government still gets the revenue.