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Even to suggesting a "basic income": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
http://www.rawilson.com/home.h...
http://www.rawilson.com/though...
http://deoxy.org/raw.htm

Thanks for the pointer. I'd be curious where specifically (which book or other writing) wherein he says that, if you know off-hand.

"You deserve to be thrown in a fucking gas chamber."

There. I said it. Now are you damaged in any way? Poorer? Or do you just feel bad? Scared? Apprehensive? Amused? I have no way of knowing in advance how you'll react to my words. One person's mortal threat is another's sick joke. Just witness the paranoia about guns and schools now... kids get suspended for having a toy that has a toy gun accessory. All because people are quaking in their boots instead of being mature and reasonable.

Sorry, but you have NO right not to be offended... not leastwise because nobody can correctly guess 100% of the time what the hell might offend you. Lots of things in this world offend me. Censorship offends me. Know how I dealt with it? I grew up and coped instead of throwing tantrums. You will not always get your way in this world. If someone's action does not physically harm your person or your property, you have no right to prohibit them from exercising their freedom of choice.

I'm going to recommend that you and other busybody nanny-state authoritarians read the late Peter McWilliams's book:

Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society.

Sometimes the best thing to do in life is the most difficult... In this case, I'm all for making online porn illegal because I know it's nothing but 100% trash.

Sometimes letting go of the need to control others is difficult, but I believe you can do it.

If you think porn is trash, the best thing for you to do is simply don't view it. As long as it isn't hurting anyone (or at least anyone who didn't volunteer to be hurt) attempting to censor it is against the spirit and letter of the First Amendment.

The thing about living in a free society is, you need to grant others the same freedom you have. Or sooner or later, someone will decide they don't like the thing you like to do, and make it illegal. You want to live in a free society, don't you?

http://deoxy.org/ccrime.htm

cower in my shadow behind your chosen fantasy based pseudonym, feeb.

Really?

This man said it how it is: http://deoxy.org/mckenna.htm

http://deoxy.org/lawenfor.htm

Here is who it really benefits.

Now, how nearby combat affects whether you can shoot at people retrieving the wounded without violating the Geneva Conventions is a different question.

Article 50 of the Geneva Convention defines a "civilian", and makes it clear that there is a presumption of innocence on the part of civilians - a solder is not allowed to "assume" that an unidentified person is an enemy combatant and then fire upon them:

"Article 50: Definition of Civilians and Civilian Population

1. A civilian is any person who does not belong to one of the categories of persons referred to in Article 4 A 111, lIl, (31 and 161 of the Third Convention and in Article 43 of this Protocol. In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.
2. The civilian population comprises all persons who are civilians.
3. The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character."

It is the soldiers job to clearly identify that a target is a combatant before opening fire. If the soldier is unclear as to whether or not a target is a combatant, then that person is to be treated as a civilian: "In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.". The presence of combatants within a civilian population does not excuse firing on civilians: "The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character." The rules are very clear on this issue.

One of the important distinctions is that this was an occupying military force battling internal resistance fighters. It was not a war between nation states. Under the Geneva Conventions, an occupying force has the absolute responsibility of providing for the basic needs of the people under its control, including food, clothing, shelter, medical attention, and the maintenance of law and order. It is not supposed to kill them. Under the conventions, in an actual battle with soldiers of an opposing nation state, a commander has a duty to protect civilian life, even if it comes at the cost of exposing his troops to greater danger. The commander/soldier must be able to justify any military action that results in the loss of civilian life as being "reasonable" and "unavoidable" in the context of the military target. Hence, a soldier could not slaughter a million civilians in order to kill 100 enemy, but if the enemy had one civilian amongst them, then the killing of that civilian as a side effect of killing the enemy may be justifiable. But this is a completely different matter to that of killing civilians because you "presume" them to be combatants due to their presence in an occupied city. Baghdad is one of the most populous cities on the planet - ranked 22nd with a density of 9,250 per square kilometer. Within a few hundred meters of this incident there are thousands of people living. The men in the street could have been anyone - there was no attempt made to identify them as being combatants or civilians, and therefore the laws of war state that they must be treated as civilians.

You are a RAGING military apologist. What would it take for you to say something bad about the military?

Shooting targets that are clearly identifiable as civilians would do the trick.

You seem to be under the misapprehension that there is a presumption of guilt for civilians that makes it okay to open fire on them unless you can prove that they are civilians. This is not the case. Article 50 of the Geneva Convention makes it clear that there is a presumption of innocence:

"Article 50: Definition of Civilians and Civilian Population

1. A civilian is any person who does not belong to one of the categories of persons referred to in Article 4 A 111, lIl, (31 and 161 of the Third Convention and in Article 43 of this Protocol. In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.
2. The civilian population comprises all persons who are civilians.
3. The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character."

It is the soldiers job to clearly identify that a target is a combatant before opening fire. If the soldier is unclear as to whether or not a target is a combatant, then that person is to be treated as a civilian: "In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.". The presence of combatants within a civilian population does not excuse firing on civilians: The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character." The rules are very clear on this issue.

and said people are hanging around precisely where the fire was opened mere minutes ago

Do you really believe that this happened? I have never seen anyone, journalists or otherwise, walking carefree around an area where there is an active firefight taking place. Civilians usually run from gunfire - the fact that a large group of civilians are casually walking about, clearly unaware that there had been any shooting in that area, suggests that there had not in fact been any shooting in that area.

Also, I wonder if there has been a warning to civilians in the area to stay clear in the case of the taped operation. So far as I know, U.S. usually does that before sending the troops in.

That is not true. Firstly, patrols for weapons etc. would be ineffective if the local population were warned beforehand that the patrols were to take place. Secondly, providing insurgents with knowledge that troops would be patrolling in a particular area beforehand would make those troops a target for roadside bombs.

You seem to be under the misapprehension that there is a presumption of guilt for civilians that makes it okay to open fire on them unless you can prove that they are civilians. This is not the case. Article 50 of the Geneva Convention makes it clear that there is a presumption of innocence:

"Article 50: Definition of Civilians and Civilian Population

1. A civilian is any person who does not belong to one of the categories of persons referred to in Article 4 A 111, lIl, (31 and 161 of the Third Convention and in Article 43 of this Protocol. In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.
2. The civilian population comprises all persons who are civilians.
3. The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character."

In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian. There is clearly room for doubt in this video. Baghdad is one of the most populous cities on the planet - ranked 22nd with a density of 9,250 per square kilometer. Within a few hundred meters of this incident there are thousands of people living. The men in the street could have been anyone - there was no attempt made to identify them as being combatants or civilians, and therefore the laws of war state that they must be treated as civilians.

You mean law enforcement is a growth industry?

I really enjoyed this article. It reminds of the lectures of Alan Watts

"Human beings are not really individuals; theyâ(TM)re communities of organisms,"

This ties back to the illusion of separate self. The whole universe is a community of organisms; How can you distinguish self from other?

... microbiologists focused mainly on "isolating" bacteria: removing them from their natural contexts and growing them in culture dishes in the lab. This approach was the only way to observe and understand bacterial cells in great detail. But it also created huge gaps in knowledge about bacterial life. It focused on the fraction of microorganisms that can be grown in culture, and it overlooked the highly complex and diverse ways in which they actually live togetherâ"âan approach akin to studying humans by confining them in prison cells while ignoring the cities and communities that make up their natural habitat.

Microbiologists have long understood that you can't define an organism without it's environment.

"In some ways, weâ(TM)re an amalgam and a continuously evolving collective," Relman says.

Extend this idea to human communities. Is a city not a continuously evolving collective. Perhaps humans are just the symbiotic bacteria of a city. Consider the whole planet, solar system, universe; are we not all just one being?

1. Science becomes aware of the fundamental interconnectedness of all life.
2. ???
3. Golden age of love an harmony

I agree. In fact I would go so far as to say that in general active volcanos stink and produce more "pollution" than the people living on their flanks. I also think that long before we were human we evolved a survival mechanisim that perceives the stink as a warning to stay away, when we learned to write that mechanisim became the Bible's "fire and brimstone". Many tribal religions that actually live on volcanos are more sophisticated than that, they recognise that the volcano can also bring new life in the form of rain and fertilzer. The mistake that all these tribes make is that they think they can appeal to the volcano's "good side", nature doesn't have a "good side" and doesn't care one bit if she covers you and your tribe with molten rock.

/rant

The tribal view is also applicable to the industrial revolution. Factories provide us with a lifestyle that few of us are willing/able to give up, but it's clear those factories are killing environmental canaries at an alarming rate.

I witnessed Mao's famine on a B&W TV as a child and that's what would happen if we stopped the industrial revolution, but I also recognise we are now so numerous that to continue with bussiness as usual means a global Easter Island is a real risk for my grandkids (first one due in March). It's not that we don't have the technology to have our environmental cake and eat it, it's that (until recently) most of our "chiefs" have been busy fighting each other over the right to kiss the factory god's arse. The world's witch doctors who collectively create our technology are ignored when they point out fatal but potentialy fixable bugs such as the tradjedy of the commons. Like the tribal witch-doctors appealing to the "good side" of the volcano god's I fear that our witch-doctors are appealing to the "good side" of human nature.

There are now over twice as many people on the planet than when I was born, I was a moderate greenie before the term "greenie" was invented. I watched the rural town where I grew up swallowed by the city of Melbourne. I have been visiting the local beach where I now live for 45yrs, over that time it went from clean to filthy and back to clean again, in fact the entire bay did likewise (Port Phillip Bay) and the fishing is slowly returning to what it used to be in the 60's (recreational fishing licenses were introduced to buy back commercial scallop boat licences). The strip of wetlands on the other side of where I live is a paradise for birds and a breeding ground for fish. It's still a shit farm but not like the original one that ruined the beach in the 70's, this one produces "drinkable" water and fertlizer for nearby turf farms. OTOH like a more intense version of California, much of the land that supported Melboune's growth is dead, dying, in drought, or in flames.

Technological supremacy is what seperates us from other animals, if we don't use it to our long term advantage we are just like any other predatorless mammal and will soon eat and shit ourselves into a population crash that according to the witch doctors will also drag much of the planets biosphere down with it. Currently middle eastern goat hearders are best equiped to deal with the aftermath of the witch-doctors visions.

/rant

well regulated free markets

I'm trying to figure this one out.

If you're trying to figure it out then you haven't been paying attention to the Adam Smith's free market. Nor have you been really thinking about how we got here economically. I believe in a free market, but what are the qualities of a free market that make it work for us in society - why should we tolerate it if it doesn't work for us overall.

Well regulated in this case would mean that you are systematically removing impediments to the efficient operation of a free market. For instance, shouldn't there be significant impediments to the operation of too-big-to-fail corporations in favor of small competive, efficient businesses? Well-regulated would mean that we require the increase transparency in the holdings of banks instead of obscuring them so the market can better judge the efficacy of investments?

Try this link. It's not necessarily the comprehensive, but maybe we need to rethink what actually constitutes a free market.

it's capitalism - as long as iot's within the bounds of the law it's all about competition and squeezing your competitors out

That's not what capitalism is about, capitalism encourages competition. What you're proposing, monopolies, is what what Adam Smith the Father of capitalism was opposed to. He didn't even like patents calling them a necessary evil. To Adams capitalism provided a fair or equitable and optimum outcome for everyone.

Falcon

The law enforcement growth industry.
http://deoxy.org/lawenfor.htm

"Let's just say that those who don't study history are doomed to get their butts kicked by the geeks who do."
        --Kevyn http://www.schlockmercenary.com/

And who would know history and how to rape the proletariat better than our two current parties?

"I'm still laughing at how the Bush administration is out smarting the democrats in Congress at every turn."

Laugh while you can.

Your sorry assed demagogues have succeeded in squandering international goodwill towards the U.S., sold military technology to China in order to insure low prices at Wal-Mart and guaranteed that not only *you*, but your children (if you stop doing the hand dance long enough to have any), and their children's chidren will be paying the price for their stupidity.

The long and short of it laughing boy, is that *your* party attempted to impeach a sitting president over a stain on a blue dress and failed, but have sufficiently befuddled the nation with misdirection and divisiveness that we are failing to impeach a president and his cronies who have lied to us, lead us into a quagmire, are shredding the constitution at every turn, and who felt the need to put safeguards in place to prevent them from being charged as war criminals like his father was.

So, yeah, good ahead and laugh, I for one will shed a tear.

Sorry I don't have mod points at the moment. Thanks for the essay link to http://deoxy.org/aip.htm

Our business plan is to soon provide an environment for free innovation (the customer is the inventor concept) and push the patent system into where it belongs, a harmless oblivion.

Copyright laws are still important though, as they care for software licences like GPL to not be abused. Regarding creative art, DRM is evil (I don't purchase DRM stuff) and DMCA is pure insanity.

support FFII.org, EFF.org and DefectiveByDesign.org

There's a great essay, "Against Intellectual Property," by Brian Martin at deoxy.org ( http://deoxy.org/aip.htm )

Martin attacks the very idea that intellectual products can be considered property at all: "The alternative to intellectual property is straightforward: intellectual products should not be owned. That means not owned by individuals, corporations, governments, or the community as common property. It means that ideas are available to be used by anyone who wants to." He demolishes many of the standard rationales for IP and cites many abuses of it, such as: "The neem tree is used in India in the areas of medicine, toiletries, contraception, timber, fuel and agriculture. Its uses have been developed over many centuries but never patented. Since the mid 1980s, US and Japanese corporations have taken out over a dozen patents on neem-based materials. In this way, collective local knowleilge developed by Indian researchers and villagers has been expropriated by outsiders who have added very little to the process.5
Vandana Shiva and Radha Holla-Ehar, "Intellectual piracy and the neena tree," Ecologist, Vol. 23 No. 6, 1993, pp, 223-227."

I recommend this essay highly.

Why? The case was cut n dry, she broke the law and she lost. The jury's job is to determine if she broke the law, not determine if the law makes sense

This is a common misconception about American law, heavily promoted by the legal system but patently false.

Every aspect of the american legal system is permeated with checks and balances. The Jury is the ultimate check against the legal system. It allows the people to determine is someone is worthy of punishment. It protects the accused against a corrupt legal system or unjust laws. . . not enforces them. The true power of a Jury is not the ability to enforce law, but to veto it. They are the final say. The ultimate check.

Here's a nice link with some citations which illuminate the true role and intent of the jury. Role of the JuryFor every case, in every court, the jury not only judges the facts of the case, but sits in judgement of the law itself. The courts and legal system has often tried to subvert this epitome of "power by the people" through various denouncements of this...but the legal history is clear.

It is a true travesty of the current state of our system that the courts and schools neglect to inform the general population that their role of Jury is not only to determine if the defended, in fact, did what the prosecution claims they are guilty of. But also if the law itself is worthy of being upheld.

...otherwise known as DMT, is believed to activate such an "extraterrestrial" communication center.

Under some circumstances, it can be released by your own pineal gland, affecting several brain regions, and it seems to be actively transported across the blood-brain barrier. IIRC, the pineal gland releases DMT when you die, which is _the_ moment for communicating with other (higher) beings. But what you think of this is, of course, subject to your own beliefs.

Alien abduction reports have a lot in common with DMT smoking experiences, suggesting these may be caused by a DMT release by the pineal gland.

Maybe there are more substances producing similar results, but DMT is certainly a special one (sorry, no time for references. Try http://deoxy.org/ ).

Someone who believes the universe is a divine monarchy can never honestly embrace secular democracy.

You should cite your sources. This is something Alan Watts said many times in many ways. You also might want to provide one of the full quotations, since they're directly relevant to this discussion. For example, in 1968 he said that

Citizens of the United States believe, or are supposed to believe, that a republic is the best form of government. Yet vast confusion arises from trying to be republican in politics and monarchist in religion. How can a republic be the best form of government if the universe, heaven, and hell are a monarchy? Thus, despite the theory of government by consent, based upon mutual trust, the peoples of the United States retain, from the authoritarian backgrounds of their religions or national origins, an utterly naive faith in law as some sort of supernatural and paternalistic power. "There ought to be a law against it!" Our law-enforcement officers are therefore confused, hindered, and bewildered--not to mention corrupted--by being asked to enforce sumptuary laws, often of ecclesiastical origin, that vast numbers of people have no intention of obeying and that, in any case, are immensely difficult or simply impossible to enforce--for example, the barring of anything so undetectable as LSD-25 from international and interstate commerce. [Emphasis added]

Source

I don't think you're the first to be thinking along those lines. Corporations have been making attempts to restrict what types of media can play on a computer, under what terms, to the point of Sony's installing rootkits on its customers' computers. On the hardware side, the Trusted Computing concept helps limit users' anonymity. In politics, the free world is toying with laws requiring monitoring of innocent Net users to fight terrorism/porn/drugs, and countries like China are doing massive censorship. In looking at other hardware, we know that there's at least one US-government-mandated design feature -- the V-Chip for televisions -- and supposedly the Secret Service has subverted several brands of printer. Japan has even issued some draft guidelines for robot regulation.

What we're seeing is a convergence of trends towards locking down computers, making it illegal to build or sell a machine with the full power and freedom of a Turing Machine. Some argue (Okay, it's not a great source; just did a quick search) that restrictions like this are equivalent to Soviet Russian restrictions on the use of photocopiers.

The various restrictions being placed on computer users for various reasons threaten our use of an important tool, and are oppressive and insulting. Even if you personally are a savvy computer user, are you prepared (based on your proposal) to be charged a fee, photographed, fingerprinted, licensed, monitored, and otherwise treated like a criminal, because you weren't content with the toys your government allows lesser geeks to use?

The right to vote chimps into office needs to be abolished!

Ok ok, I was kidding. George Bush is NOT a chimp! My apologies to all chimps out there. A chimp might actually do a better job..

The US censor doesn't like these sites at all but right now they're still legal
(even though they're information terrorists, you know).

I wonder though what the Ayatollah Al Censori makes of these here:

Unwelcome Guests
Alex Jones Infowars
Disinformation gateway
Alan Watt's site (do watch Reality Check)
alternate thought, psychodelic substance experimentation
Learn about Astrotheology
History _is_ a weapon

Most of the stuff you can download with a 128kbs connection, okay, so instead of a minute a 20Mb
mpeg like "Reality Check" you will have to wait half an hour to get it. So what. Most of the
stuff out there is text anyway and you could even re- or rather de-educate yourself with a
16Kbps connection.

Btw... don't visit these sites in internet cafes etc, especially in countries where they have
execution buses in the parking lot (China) or whip and hang you in public (Iran, I suppose) or in
countries where somebody peeking at your screen will surreptiously take out his mobile phone to
call Homeland Security (you know where that happens, don't you).

Happy self-deprogramming!

yes, half human half monkey hybrids http://deoxy.org/chimp

Makes sense..

If enough good people prefer sharing there would really be no reason to pay for anything, I mean, its not like money is really based on anything anymore. And a lot of products are valuable because of their intellectual property, whatever that is..

Hrmm, I believe in The Abolition of Work.

This is also interesting..

For more on your point, see:
    "The Original Affluent Society" by Marshall Sahlins
    http://www.eco-action.org/dt/affluent.html
    "Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times."
and:
    "CLAWS: Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery"
    http://www.whywork.org/
    "If you start asking yourself "why work?" you may see a connection between wage slavery, misunderstandings of leisure, lifestyles based on consumption, corporate welfare, education that often amounts to little more than conditioning, and the global social, environmental, and economic crises we are now facing. We hope that the materials we feature here will encourage critical thinking about such things. This site is primarily about ideas and encouragement, so our focus is more philosophical than practical. However, ideas and action go hand-in-hand, so we're currently expanding the "practicality" sections."
and:
    "THE ABOLITION OF WORK" by Bob Black
    http://deoxy.org/endwork.htm
    "Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists--except that I'm not kidding--I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work--and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs--they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working."
or:
      _The End of Work_
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0874778247/002-64 49219-7760050?v=glance&n=283155
  "Global unemployment is now at its highest levels since the Great Depression. Rifkin (Biosphere Politics, LJ 5/15/91) argues that the Information Age is the third great Industrial Revolution. A consequence of these technological advances is the rapid decline in employment and purchasing power that could lead to a worldwide economic collapse. Rifkin foresees two possible outcomes: a near workerless world in which people are free, for the first time in history, to pursue a utopian life of leisure; or a world in which unemployment leads to an even further polarization of the economic classes and a decline in living conditions for millions of people."

James P. Hogan has several sci-fi novels envisioning an alternative positive future (e.g. _Voyage from Yesteryear_)

In an individualist way, Paul Graham is ignoring the bigger picture, and just advising individuals on how to have a better life in a failing society. There is nothing wrong with that kind of good advice by itself, and it is good advice, but it lacks social context, lacks long term planning, and lacks a way to make things permanently better for people without a lot of social advantages needed to follow that advice (let alone have time to read it).

From:
http://deoxy.org/endwork.htm
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolitio n.html
"Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists--except that I'm not kidding--I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work--and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs--they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working."

Bob Black then goes on to say most work is unneeded, most of the rest can be made into fun, and the small remaining amount no one wants to do can be automated.

We have the system of "work" we do as a holdover from an agricultural feudal mindset coupled with a scarcity driven ideology (where dollars are really "ration units"). Compare this with, for example the better parts of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, see: "The Original Affluent Society -- by Marshall Sahlins"
http://www.eco-action.org/dt/affluent.html
for a description of life in a world where there is abundance for all with only a limited need for other-directed "work", where the productivity of the surrounding (living) system far exceeds that of collective human needs.

I don't see we have much of a good alternative to a post-work "utopia" for all;
"Utopia or Oblivian -- by Buckminster Fuller"
http://www.bfi.org/node/17
we either build the world Bob Black envisions (or something like it, whether Bucky Fuller's ideas, or see James P. Hogan's _Voyage from Yesteryear_ novel for a related perspective,
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/voyage/baen99/tit lepage.shtml )
with abundance for all people, or, alternatively, by following the status quo off the cliffs of either pollution or warfare, humanity (though probably neither life nor intelligence nor humans) will perish in a world driven to destruction by putting abstractions like profits or nationalism ahead of basic human needs (including the basic human need not to be bored or demeaned eight hours a day). Does it all have to change in one day? No. You can build a better world bit by bit -- and that's one thi

"Before the time of the great Purification, they will make metal roads for iron horses and hang metal ropes in the air."

"First they will bring back pieces of the Moon which will upset the balance and unleash disastrous forces."

"Near the day of the Great Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky."

"The Purification will begin shortly after humans build a great house in the sky. By then there will be fires everywhere and greedy, selfish, power-mad leaders, internal wars."

~ pre-Colombian Hopi prophecies

Just crazy talk?
http://deoxy.org/omega.htm

Sounds to me like mr. Carrigan just finished reading Macroscope.

Get used to using the word "info-feudalism", for that is what the corporations are creating. Think about it: under feudalism, the lord owned the land, the serfs worked on the land, and the serfs were not allowed to move away if they didn't like the deal.
Under info-feudalism:
Large corporations bribe legislatures to expand "intellectual property" to include many, many things that used to be open to all;
Government spends your money on basic drug research, but drug companies patent the results;
Copyright gets extended again and again so that works no longer pass into the public domain after the creator dies;
Your DNA gets patented by someone else without your say-so; authors patent story lines (!), corporations apply for ridiculously broad patents in an attempt to control what others can and cannot invent;
Police arrest scientists who publish papers on flaws in Digital Rights Management schemes;
You buy a song or a movie but never really own it;
Fair Use quotations are legally doubtful;
Crooked churches sue their critics because their 'bibles' are copyrighted;
Governments tell lies such as "piracy helps the terrorists;
News media are corrupted by their connection to cash-cow entertainment conglomerates;
And it's not like any of them truly invented the ideas all by themselves; all of society indirectly helped; yet they rob all of society by seeking monopoly. Oh, I could go on and on.
See this demolition of the whole idea of "Intellectual Property":
http://deoxy.org/aip.htm

No. Not 'kay. Because it's all claptrap... The world designed and controlled by computers is a lovely Maguffin -- a cute conceit around which the first film is based. But as soon as you start to examine it in any detail it starts to fall apart, essentially because it was never designed to be an internally coherent design, it was a set-up around which to build a groovy chop-socky movie. As has been noted, it's tricky to build a world that doesn't fall apart two days later.

All this talk of remainders, and irrational numbers and choice... they're Midichlorians. In Star Wars 4,5,6 we don't care how The Force works -- we suspend our disbelief because we're happy to go along for the ride.

After that the mythos becomes more important than the movie, and more and more exposition is used trying to explain the backgound. And, because the background has not been built from the ground up (and why should it it's just a MacGuffin) that's not possible.

So what your left with is a film that's neither an enjoyable romp (because it takes itself far too seriously, and indulges in endless portentous, unlistenable dialogue) or a coherent philosophical work (because it's "philosophy" -- such as it is -- has been built from the top down, and lacks any sort of coherent foundation). The W's were unsatisfied with simply making a good film, but the so-called philosophical theory has been tacked on later, and the combination is, inevitably, an ugly mess.

And Lessig misses this point, as he is trying for compromise.

Some related issues:

If copyrights impose a burden on society (like real estate), why not tax them annually at some self-assessed buyout value (the cost the copyright holder would be content with to have the work in the public domain)?

Oh, but copyright holders might protest they can not fairly evaluate the copyright as some copyrights make a lot of money, and most do not. But there we have it -- the notion of copyright as a lottery ticket which the essay touches on. Do we want creative works funded as lotteries?

Also, with the increasing use of automation and robotics, people are less and less needed to produce things, so ultimately most people will become out of work in our society -- unless they get a guaranteed income in terms of a part of the production of the automated systems. If people had such a guaranteed income, then they would not need an incentive to create digital works, and they would not need to receive royalties from copyrights just to get the basics of food, water, shelter, education, manufactured goods, and medical care for themselves and their children.

So the future you are talking about is bound up into issues like a guaranteed income or fair share of rapidly increasing industrial productivity. So essentially a "Star Trek" like society, with matter replicators -- which are at most ten or twenty years away, as people are using limited prototypes of them now. Remember, thirty years ago, for most people there was no such thing as desktop publishing or local printing. Now you typically get a printer bundled for "free" with a computer. Thirty years from now, it may seem as ludicrous to get something other than raw materials delivered or to go out to shop for an object as it would seem now to have one-off printing done at some remote computer center (as was typical thirty years ago).

Related links:

The Abolition of Work
http://www.deoxy.org/endwork.htm

Robot Nation
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm

The Dream Factory: Any product, any shape, any size - manufactured on your desktop!
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/view.html ?pg=4

Getting Paid in Our Jobless Future: Only a guaranteed basic income can ensure economic growth, technological innovation and social welfare
http://betterhumans.com/Features/Columns/Change_Su rfing/column.aspx?articleID=2003-09-22-1

US BIG: The basic income guarantee (BIG) is a government insured guarantee that no citizen's income will fall below some minimal level for any reason. All citizens would receive a BIG without means test or work requirement. BIG is an efficient and effective solution to poverty that preserves individual autonomy and work incentives while simplifying government social policy. Some researchers estimate that a small BIG, sufficient to cut the poverty rate in half could be financed without an increase in taxes by redirecting funds from spending programs and tax deductions aimed at maintaining incomes.
http://www.usbig.net/

More discussion of "BIG" - Basic Income Guarantee (source of some links)
http://novogate.com/exco/thread.php?forumid=5374&t hreadid=79208

Hmm, I thought Anonymous Coward was actually someone's handle. Don't feel like creating an account now, so there.

Anyway:

I think the following essay, at http://www.deoxy.org/aip.htm
should be read by everybody who takes any interest at all in the Intellectual Property War which we are now witnessing.
Incidentally, even calling it 'intellectual property' is an admission that is is property; if you agree to argue on the other guy's terms, you may as well go home, 'cause you already surrendered.

"Against intellectual property
Chapter 3 of Information Liberation, Challenging the corruptions of information power
by Brian Martin, London: Freedom Press, 1998."

Martin, in a few pages, demolishes every excuse the info-feudalists have for fencing off the 'intellectual commons.' For my money, he could be the Tom Paine of intellectual content.

??SPOILER?? Cheers for trying to make this exploit fit the story, but unless I'm forgetting something, it wasn't the avatar doing the infecting. It was an assassin killing key hackers within the metaverse. The attacker showed a screen to intended victims which displayed 'snow'--like a TV tuned with no signal--which contained a message that crashed the victims brain turning them into a useless vegetable. More Info

From his essay:

"Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists--except that I'm not kidding--I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work--and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs--they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working."

(I) The highjacking or sabotage of any conveyance (including an aircraft, vessel, or vehicle).

(II) The seizing or detaining, and threatening to kill, injure, or continue to detain, another individual in order to compel a third person (including a governmental organization) to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the individual seized or detained.

(III) A violent attack upon an internationally protected person (as defined in section 1116(b)(4) of title 18) or upon the liberty of such a person.

(IV) An assassination.

(V) The use of any -
(a) biological agent, chemical agent, or nuclear weapon or device, or
(b) explosive or firearm (other than for mere personal monetary gain), with intent to endanger, directly or indirectly, the safety of one or more individuals or to cause substantial damage to property.

(VI) A threat, attempt, or conspiracy to do any of the foregoing.

And "terrorist activity" includes planning, supplying, supporting, funding, or carrying out any of the acts listed above.

So by the legal definition of terrorism, a foild plan to assassinate a former US president is most certainly an act of terror under both (III) and (IV) of the definition.

???
I assume that would probably be what women reading this would think, instead of all the really cool nerd-stuff you could do with it.

'Sure honey, go right ahead :)'

Why did I think of the fairytale "The emperor's new clothes" right now?

AoT, you might also want to check out: Conceptual Guerilla
On Rankism
Voyage from Yesteryear
Or my essay: how to to find the financing to create a "Star Trek" like society

Why is that "obvious"? Capitalism as an ideology has been widely discredited worldwide (although the media doesn't reflect that) through its end results in practice (colonialism and its aftermath, slavery and its aftermath, increasing rich/poor divide, pollution, inappropriate technological solutions, human suffering, mindless work) as opposed to claims in theory, see for example: Millionaire Wannabes. If Capitalism worked, we'd all be using Smalltalk or Lisp (developed thirty years ago) instead of Java and XML.

Money (in terms of Federal Reserve Notes) and loans (in terms of usury with interest and a fractional reserve banking system) are also equally problematical. In fact, the American Revolution was fought mainly over the right for the colonies to print their own paper money (a fact long forgotten or suppressed). See: The World's Alternative Trading Network for some more details. Or google on "Fractional Reserve". Alan Greenspan isn't busy setting interest rates to help everyone out -- he is trying to be an optimum parasite to get the most blood out of everyone he can by balancing drawing blood (interest) against how big the economy is.

Corporations? They are the biggest marauders around in many ways. Why should they have more than human rights in the USA? Effectively their charters are no longer revoked and if they commit a crime they just get fined and maybe some employees (disposable cells, like your skin cells) go to prison, while nothing about the corporation really changes. Why should investors have limited liability? If people support a bad cause, shouldn't they too go to jail? It is happening now with people who supposedly support "terrorism", so why should corporate investors get a free pass when they support pollution, habitat destruction, sweatshop practices, employee boredom, and so on?

In fact, the whole notion of "Work" underlying all that stuff is itself bogus. For alternatives to capitalism, consider: Buddhist Economics or: The End of Work. From that last: "Curiously --- maybe not --- all the old ideologies are conservative because they believe in work. Some of them, like Marxism and most brands of anarchism, believe in work all the more fiercely because they believe in so little else. Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists--except that I'm not kidding--I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work--and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs--they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and

Then, read James Lowen's _Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Texbook Got Wrong_ to see how your mind has unknowingly been filled with nationalist and consumer crap (despite your technical proclivities). Also check out Howard Zinn. Learn to live simply and frugally so you have more options:

If you have started doing all that, by now you are primed to begin to question what education really means.

And further, to even question why people need to work and what it should mean to do useful things.

You'll have time to read great minds like Bertrand Russel and Freeman Dyson.

Then you can accept you are still stuck in a stupid system.

But you'll be positioned to make the best of it and yet still see how the world can be a made better place to for the bulk of humanity and other creatures.

Always remember in your darker hours to at least ask yourself the question, "Can life be made worth living?" And in your brighter hours, remember to ask yourself if you are playing a finite (to win) game or an infinite (to play) game?

And, finally, for continual inspiration, read _Voyage From Yesteryear_ by James P. Hogan.

Now go out and take some educated risks to try to make life worth living -- despite your future happiness possibilities already almost being ruined by being convinced you that you are "bright" just because you know some technical things (same thing almost happened to me).

The aliens are inside the number! Didn't think of looking there , did you?!!! Yeesh!

This is a version of the Many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics first expressed Hugh Everett in 1957.

The article is very flawed, but don't let that reflect on David Deutsch who is very smart unlike the article.

"As it stands, regardless of the side you are on, the Hamas bombings are war-crimes -- because of their choice of targets -- whereas the Israeli attacks are not. " 1. Not all of them. In fact, most attacks by Hamas are against soldiers.

2. Let's just take a quick look at the Geneva conventions, shall we?

You are painfully imprecise. All your quotes are from Protocol 1, circa 1977. Israel (among others) did not sign this additions. Sorry, this biggest part of your posting is thus especially useless. See this analysis for more information.

Wrong, the most he [Ariel Sharon] was *convicted* of was failing to stop the militia; he was accused of far worse.

Sorry, you are right. He was, of course, and still is accused of baby raping, and using Muslim blood for not just Passover, but everyday matzos.

[...]

Every Six Months.

This, to you, is justified?

Yes. This is the path Palestinians chose for themselves. Israel's reaction can not be much milder if they want to survive -- their enemy fights them with everything the enemy has, constrains itself with no rules whatsoever, and is criticized for breaking no rules whatsoever.

If anything, Israel's restraint is admireable, to the point of being foolish -- as pointed out recently by some american military experts (that's a disgusting bunch of neocon shitheads for you). The Geneva conventions, which Israel did sign, only require protection of civilians as militarily permissible -- there is no requirement to risk lives of the soldiers. Yet they don't, for example, use artillery against the scumbags firing mortars at Israeli civilians, but send infantry to detain them...

Completely blind to the obvious war crimes committed regularly by various Palestinian factions, peace with who is not even possible according to their very charters, you demand perfect behavior from Israel. You put a homicide bomber boarding a packed bus, with the bomb "enhanced" by chopped nails on equal footing with a delayed ambulance, or with an accidental shooting of a Palestinian civilian, who wonders onto an active battlefield. You are a lost cause...

And for hundreds of thousands of years before that, people just picked fruit off the trees or killed game animals (who were not as afraid of humans then). The Hunter-Gatherer civilization -- possible when the population is low relative to what the ecology produces. With advanced technology -- like a Star Trek replicator in every home -- we may well return to those roots. See: http://www.deoxy.org/endwork.htm

"A gut buster worthy of John Belushi - but SCO does more drugs" - Timothy Leary

That's a neat trick, getting that quote.

• Indescriminate and excessive use of force, and a shitload of other charges the US was guilty of according to the International War Crimes Tribunal.
• Several US companies supplying chemical weapons precursors to Iraq.
• Staged media event when toppling the saddam statue.
• US companies provided Iraq with the seed stock for biological weapons agents including anthrax, botulinum, e-coli and many more.

• Indescriminate and excessive use of force, and a shitload of other charges the US was guilty of according to the International War Crimes Tribunal.
• Several US companies supplying chemical weapons precursors to Iraq.
• Staged media event when toppling the saddam statue.
• US companies provided Iraq with the seed stock for biological weapons agents including anthrax, botulinum, e-coli and many more.

Listen, you want evidence of your country's criminal activity, go no further ...

Just because the US *changed the law after the fact*, and continues to attempt to modify the law of the International Court in order to provide its leader clique with an 'out', doesn't mean that what was done wasn't *illegal*.

You're right, the US is faaaaar from innocent.

Far, far from innocent.