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An idea (or data) is a "public good". "The Lighthouse in Economics" is a classic text on this - see here

conventional wisdom from John Stuart Mill to Paul Samuelson had claimed that the lighthouse was the quintessential "public good," which allegedly had to be provided by government due to the inherent free-riding of those who could not be charged for the services being provided.

At home you have far greater security that comes from the fact that no one cares what you are doing with your computer.

Remember the Vietnam war? The U.S. government killed more than 2,000,000 people, none of whom threatened the U.S. directly. Since then, the U.S. government has killed at least 1,000,000 more who did not threaten the U.S. directly. (Most people in the U.S. find these facts so painful that they refuse to learn about why they occurred.)

Don't think that a government that spends an almost endless amount of money on war-making capability suddenly becomes moral when considering invading the computers of foreign governments or companies.

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id =356

True, but Republicans also like to spend other peoples money. Mostly on "defense", much of it being wasteful or just plain pork*. I respect the Libertarian position, but the Republican position is pretty nasty in my eyes - they are happy to spend our money on killing people and pork projects but refuse to help people in need. That's just amoral in my eyes.
Not that I'm really defending the Democrats per say - when it came down to it, they chose to end social welfare as we know it but didn't cut back their own cronyism.

*references here and here and here and here and here

"If the additional elements of defense spending continue to maintain approximately the same ratio to the DoD amount -- and we have every reason to suppose that they will -- then in fiscal year 2004, through which we are passing currently, the grand total spent for defense will be approximately $695 billion. To this amount will have to be added the $58.8 billion allocated to fiscal year 2004 from the $87.5 billion supplemental spending authorized on November 6, 2003, for support of U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq and for so-called reconstruction of those despoiled and occupied countries. Thus, the super-grand total in fiscal year 2004 will reach the astonishing amount of nearly $754 billion -- or 88 percent more than the much-publicized $401.3 billion -- plus, of course, any additional supplemental spending that may be approved before the end of the fiscal year."

Oh, I wasn't implying that's what you meant. I should have been more explicit in my wording: there are a lot worse things out there than Bush. I do understand your sentiment though. What we have is a never-ending parade of self-indulgent babies who wish nothing more than to promote themselves and their petty agendas, to hell with everyone else.

Yes, there was a revolution in the 30's, and the revolutionaries won. FDR helped the revolutionaries win. He helped to permanently install socialism in the United States.

However, that wasn't actually what I was talking about. I was talking about his actions during the war. He signed EO9066 and EO9102, removing the rights of 120,000 Americans, stripping them of their property and dignity, and incarcerating them without due process for 4 years.

He forced 10,110,114 American men into involuntary servitude, stripping them of more rights than the 12,000 affected by EO9066. Many of them were ordered to their deaths against their will, the ultimate betrayal of individual rights.

FDR was also complicit in the bombing of Pearl Harbor, based on now-declassified documents pertaining to the breaking of the Japanese military code. They knew in advance.

He transformed the inalienable right to enjoy the fruits of ones' labor into a privilege to be granted or revoked by the government by creating a tax on the privilege of being employed, and the privilege of employing (neither of which are privileges, but absolute rights). When the Supreme Court laid the smack down on him, he extorted their complicity by threatening to destroy the integrity of the Judicial Branch by flooding the Court with partisans.

He removed the United States from a monetary standard backed by tangible wealth to one backed by nothing more than faith. After all, paper is worth what people believe it is, and nothing more.

FDR did not believe in Constitutional checks and balances - he tried to destroy and was prepared to defy the Supreme Court and Congress.

FDR signed legislation in order to fix prices and insulate people from the consequences of defaulting on contracts (ie the consequences of their actions as outlined clearly in contracts they agreed to).

Personally, I can't think of one good thing that FDR accomplished, but I can see a lot of people who are worse-off as a result. Just look at the abject failure of Social Security. Not only did it strip everyone of the right to work and enjoy all the fruits of their labors, but it has made generations of older people dependent on it, instead of having a family safety net. The family is busy paying taxes to fund the exact cost of Social Security at the current moment and so have nothing left to help support their elders and keep a family life together. All the surplus is spent on $1000.00 hammers and $800.00 toilet seats, or on renovating government offices to install a new spa or gym.

No, FDR wasn't a great president. He was the scum of the earth, and was only interested in acting along the same lines as his contemporaries Stalin and Churchill: an arrogant, power-hungry populist who had more ego and power than he had sense.

The only wartime president worth a damn in the entire history of the United States was Washington, and even he had his faults. At least he also had intelligence and principles, and was a reluctant leader. Those are the best.

Have you heard of Jose Padilla?

Bow before your soverign leader, the Dubya the Great!

The fact is, deregulation allowed the energy companies to put a gun to California's collective head.

Actually, if they had done "true" deregulation, it might have worked. State Senator Steve Peace, drafter of the deregulation plan, after receiving "input" from the power companies, left in place all kinds of partial rate caps, restrictions on new power producers entering the market, etc.

The flawed legislation, combined with the NIMBYism that has prevented new power plants from being built in the face of increased demand, did not allow the power generators to fairly and properly compete, which would have ultimately driven rates lower as intended.

If you're going to deregulate, you have to do it completely and let free-market forces take over. A great article about the whole process is here...

save your rage for the Republicans who set up the mugging

Don't forget it was Republican governor Pete Wilson who signed the deregulation legislation in 1996. Since there were no major problems until 2001, the proposed system wasn't all bad. If new power plants had been built as needed to keep up with skyrocketing demand caused by population increase and the dot-com boom, all the blackouts etc. probably never would have happened.

Mod the parent up. Another link about the qwerty myth is here.

The search (for the lazy)

One of the more interesting links

The article mentions that the Reverend died of heart failure during a no-knock police raid which had the wrong address due to a drunken informant...

Just a link to a speech about Hollywood and the media by Michael Medved. I don't agree with all of it, but it's an interesting perspective that of course the movies/media/tv will have an effect on someone. The world isn't full of crime because most of us aren't effected; however, some are.

Check out why you're using a qwerty keyboard. It was meant to slow you down so that you don't jam the typewriter. But wait, you're not on a typewriter...

This is actually a myth. Check out this and this for a little more explanation. The short of it is, though, that: QWERTY was designed to combat the mechanics of typewriter jams; however, the solution was not to slow down the typist -- instead, it involved rearranging the letters so that keys pressed one after the other would be less likely to jam. In fact, the alternation of letters from one hand to each other led to increased typing speed. Good studies of Dvorak vs. qwerty are generally hard to find; it seems likely that a Dvorak typist is a little faster than a qwerty typist of the same skill; however, the 80 wpm number is certainly hyperbole. Many people end up typing slower when they switch to Dvorak. (How many people here even type 80 wpm? I know I don't.)

That said, Dvorak is generally acknowledged to be a little bit easier on the hands than the qwerty layout, and so is probably slightly superior, if all things were equal. Of course, given the entrenched position of qwerty, things aren't equal -- I tried Dvorak for a bit, but decided that it wasn't worth the effort and trouble.

A relevant excerpt:

History books have misled today's Americans to believe the war was fought to free slaves. Statements from the time suggest otherwise. In President Lincoln's first inaugural address, he said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so." During the war, in an 1862 letter to the New York Daily Tribune editor Horace Greeley, Lincoln said, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery." A recent article by Baltimore's Loyola College Professor Thomas DiLorenzo titled "The Great Centralizer," in The Independent Review (Fall 1998) cites quotation after quotation of similar northern sentiment about slavery.

Dvorak is not superior - here is one article that disputes the notion that Dvorak is superior

Interestingly enough, acording to some people, the Dvorak keyboard isn't noticably more efficient than QWERTY in terms of typing speed. This article from the economist discusses the issue. It's mostly a light summary of this paper. Anyway, it's something to think about. Especially when you consider how long it must take to retrain yourself to type on a new keyboard.

First, there wasn't a single Reagan or Bush appointee who made the decisions on the basic cases. It was, instead, a Supreme Court ruling in Dobbins's Distillery v. United States, in 1877, 104 years before Reagan was President, that established the precedent. It was followed up, reconfirmed, and expanded in Calero-Toledo v. Pearson Yacht Leasing Co. in 1974, seven years before Reagan took the oath of office.

Now, of course, that didn't become a major issue until the Democratic Congress and Ronald Reagan jointly put through the 1988 Drug Act. But, at the height of Reagan-Bush influence on the Court, in four cases in 1993, the Supreme Court began to recognize the harm done by civil forfeiture laws and acted to curtail some of the government's most obvious abuses.".

Now, true, in 1996 the Court refused to further curtail civil forfeiture, bowing to those century- and decades-old precedents I mentioned above. So who stepped into the breach?

Republican senator Henry Hyde, with the support of Bill Clinton, shepherded the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act through the Republican-controlled Congress, after which it was signed by President Clinton.

In short, it's absolutely, ridiculously dishonest to blame this on Reagan-Bush appointees, when the major precedents predate Reagan, and all the recent laws on the subject were passed when one party controlled the Congress and the other controlled the Presidency.

Actually, that article is inaccurate.

It states that their "salesmen used this slight bit of subterfuge to impress potential customers"... However it failed to get into the typewriter "shoot-outs" that went on during that period, where manufacturers would pit their machines against each other in speed trials. QUERTY came to domminance in those. They world's first and fastest touch-typist also came from the Remingtons' machine promotions. (Look up Frank McGurrin sometime if you care).

It also cites Navy experiments on the Dvorak layout. However... they forgot to mention that it was only one study, compared 14 Dvorak typists to 18 QWERTY typists, and that the experiments were conducted by one Lieutenant-Commander August Dvorak, the navy's top time-and-motion man, and owner of the Dvorak layout patent.

For more (but slightly slanted against Dvorak) see "The Fable of the Keys"

(Note that I'm not saying here that Dvorak just the same as QUERTY, but just that QWERTY is much better than some give credit for, and that Dvorak isn't that vastly ahead).

I would start with The Antitrust Terrible 10: Why the Most Reviled "Anti-competitive" Business Practices Can Benefit Consumers in the New Economy and The Government's War on Mergers: The Fatal Conceit of Antitrust Policy, because it is a common misconception that antitrust is even needed. More analysis is found here, here, and these two links. In short, antitrust and monopoly-busting tactics do more damage than good.

If you'll look a few lines below that, you'll also see that Congress has the power to "grant letters of marque and reprisal".

"A letter of marque or letter of reprisal is the means by which a government authorizes a civilian to arm a private ship in order to attack and plunder the merchant ships of an enemy nation during war.", according to Wendy McElroy -- in other words, government-sponsored piracy.

I notice that we aren't authorizing privateers to attack enemy nations' ships any more.

Whatever possibility there may be of abolishing the USPS -- and I'll agree that this article was one of the most ludicrous things I've ever read in the mainstream media -- the U.S. Constitution doesn't mandate its continued existence.

Another good example is the querty keyboard, which was adopted precisely because it was inferior, (forcing slower typing precluded key jams), but made an empire for its inventor because the first secretaries learned it and everyone else had to follow.

Sorry, that's been disproven:

http://www.independent.org/tii/news/liebowitz_econ omist.html

"Cryptographers hadn't yet broken the Japanese code" ... ha! I thought Slashdot was interested in the truth about the NSA and its predecessors.

Robert Hutchinson

It's also supposed to be faster.

Sorry, a myth. A very popular myth, but one nonetheless. An article ripped from The Economist summarizes the creation and debunking of the myth quite well. Or go to Google and just do a search on "dvorak faster myth"

Hope this helps.

Oh please, people, we need to respect an organization that has the endorsement of Diane Feinstein, Ronald Reagan and Ed meese. I never thought I'd see those three in the same boat! Hee Hee! people

I'd hardly expect such an organization to conduct unbiased research, but any institute that wants to present itself as a purveyor of non-partisan findings has a strong interest in keeping their conflict-of-interest nose clean. The hiding of major contributions, when the contributors happen to be the beneficiaries of Institute actions, is a major strike against them. Even more so, when they duped professionals into placing their name on Independent Institute advertisements by presenting an appearance of bias-free findings. That tends to make professionals angry, and I'd be suprised if the Independent Institute garners much support in the future.

A more interesting question will be the impact upon the trial judge.

Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from

The Independent Institute reply also claims that the stolen info is wrong because their financial computer crashed and destroyed files. I wish they had mentioned what operating system it was using...