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I remember that story, having read a later version. Here's H.G.Wells original

He also said it was a decaying art form. Few put the effort and creativity into a truly good lie. I guess, if you're really just not going to try, you are just better off telling the truth.

The Country of the Blind?
http://www.online-literature.com/wellshg/3/

Somebody has never read any Nathaniel Hawthorne...

No, in the sense of "Tolstoy wrote about cowboys and Indians."

Maybe he did, but they were search/replaced with Russian soldiers and Tartars?

Not really. They are pretty words. The price of control is eternal vigilance, and it still fails.

I dare quote Orwell (from Shooting an Elephant , bold added):

[...] Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives," and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. [...]

I hadn't heard of the irregularities in Napoleonic elections. Some googling turned up Victor Hugo's writings on the topic. http://www.online-literature.com/victor_hugo/napoleon-the-little/45/

Are there other places I should read?

But identifying a problem is not identical to finding the correct solution.

It is a prerequisite, though.

Perhaps not.

A book of modern social inquiry has a shape that is somewhat sharply defined. It begins as a rule with an analysis, with statistics, tables of population, decrease of crime among Congregationalists, growth of hysteria among policemen, and similar ascertained facts; it ends with a chapter that is generally called "The Remedy." It is almost wholly due to this careful, solid, and scientific method that "The Remedy" is never found. For this scheme of medical question and answer is a blunder; the first great blunder of sociology. It is always called stating the disease before we find the cure. But it is the whole definition and dignity of man that in social matters we must actually find the cure before we find the disease .

G. K. Chesterton

...best

http://www.online-literature.com/donne/920/

"The Sons of Martha, Rudyard Kipling "

The majority of Methane produced and used is produced from fossil sources (coal fields, natural gas fields, oil wells, etc). We have yet to find a way of capturing cow burps, and we don't produce enough landfill/crap to power all the cars.

There is enough produced to make your friends feel good about themselves, but, alas, it isn't a solution.

Of course we should take care of our environment. But not everyone can afford your standards.

The whole point, from the beginning, was that there are loonies out there who continue to insist that behavior A will result in world-wide catastrophe while behavior B will usher in a period of world-wide enlightenment and peace. Which completely belies an understanding of the complexities of the world.

And the point Shakespeare was making was that the world is more complex than anyone imagines and to be prepared to accept the complexity when confronted with it and adapt. He wasn't suggesting adaptability per se, he was suggesting the complexity of the world.

Specifically, Horatio is amazed at the revelations of the King's ghost and is unprepared to accept reality as revealed to him as it calls into question all he knows of reality and the actions of kings.

Hint, take some introductory level text on markets and read it.

I suggest you do the same about economics, for instance Adam Smith's On Wealth of Nations, some of Milton Friedman's, or Amity Shlaes books. Also try books by Ludwig von Mises. It's my guess you'll poo poo them as well as Ayn Rand though.

Reading the rest of your reply it's my guess you didn't even bother to read all of my post otherwise you would not have asked the following questions. So I'm ending here, it's no use trying to debate with someone would will not read what I say and instead make things up.

Falcon

The weirdness of logic and maths certainly is a large part of Alice, though I doubt it's all of it. But it's fairly obvious to me, just as a geek with a bit of general knowledge, that the Alice books parody a number of things from late-Victorian era politics and education. It's also about puns, wordplay, and the strict application of logic beyond the domains where it applies; and just general nerdy amusement.

* The organising principle of 'Wonderland' is the card game
* The 'Caucus-race' obviously a satire on politics: the members run in a circle, accomplishing nothing except a lot of hot air. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/caucus_race

I couldn't speak for certain about whether the Mad Hatter's party and the stuckness of Time really is a reference to Hamilton's quaternions, but quaternions are fascinating and they did introduce the idea of a 4D space-time continuum (and therefore time travel) half a century before Einstein/Minkowski, and scandalised and baffled the maths world, so it wouldn't surprise me if that was in the background.

* The organising principle of 'Looking Glass' is the chess game
* Anglo-Saxon literature (possibly Beowulf?) appears in Looking Glass - 'Jabberwocky' is a parody of the Beowulfian sort of epic, with the hero slaying the monster and lots of untranslated words
* The March Hare and Mad Hatter reappear as 'Anglo-Saxons' Haigha and Hatta. Again, this is the sort of stuff that educated children would have been expected to know as a matter of course, along with Latin and Greek and art ('Laughing and Grief; reeling, writhing and fainting in coils')

* The White Knight's speech ('the name of the song is called...') parses out the fine but very important distinction between objects and names, which becomes a major issue in logic (and more so in computer programming):

The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes.'"

"Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to feel interested.

"No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little vexed. "That's what the name
is called. The name really is 'The Aged, Aged Man.'"

"Then I ought to have said 'That's what the song is called'?" Alice corrected herself.

"No you oughtn't: that's another thing. The song is called 'Ways and Means' but that's only
what it's called, you know!"

"Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.

"I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is 'A-sitting On a Gate': and the
tune's my own invention."

Like Terry Pratchett (and Bram Stoker - see Dracula Blogged), Alice really needs a decent annotated edition to explain the obvious cultural and scientific references, since it is densely packed with references which might now be misunderstood, and so many weird conspiracy theories have arisen around the books.

The classic example of Dodgson's geeky humour is from 'Four Riddles':

http://www.online-literature.com/carroll/2826/

Yet what are all such gaieties to me
Whose thoughts are full of indices and surds?

x*x + 7x + 53 = 11/3

It doesn't just rhyme and form part of an overall story - it's an equation to be solved, which gives you a word, from which you can take the first and last letters and which give you a crossword/acrostic clue. Beat THAT for geek cred.

Please re-read your quote. Incidentally, in order to put a quote in a post, please use:

  <blockquote> Text of the quote </blockquote>

For example:

<blockquote> "I may be branded a traitor to "working men" everywhere but I believe this: I have a job because my company was successful enough to hire me. It is my job to bust my ass to make the company even more successful. I need my company more than my company needs me. If my company can find someone who can do my job better for less money, they are obligated to do so. It is my job to ensure that my contribution to the company assures my continued employment. My company and I are both playing for the same team." </blockquote>

And it will look like this:

"I may be branded a traitor to "working men" everywhere but I believe this: I have a job because my company was successful enough to hire me. It is my job to bust my ass to make the company even more successful. I need my company more than my company needs me. If my company can find someone who can do my job better for less money, they are obligated to do so. It is my job to ensure that my contribution to the company assures my continued employment. My company and I are both playing for the same team."

By the way, it's is very important to note that I am not being nice by telling you this. However, in future if you choose to quote flamebait, you will at least be able to properly format it.

Here's a quote you may like:

`At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,' said the gentleman, taking up a pen, `it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.'

`Are there no prisons?' asked Scrooge.

`Plenty of prisons,' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

`And the Union workhouses?' demanded Scrooge. `Are they still in operation?'

`They are. Still,' returned the gentleman, `I wish I could say they were not.'

`The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?' said Scrooge.

`Both very busy, sir.'

`Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,' said Scrooge. `I'm very glad to hear it.'

-- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave One, http://www.online-literature.com/dickens/christmascarol/1/

I've never understood why he is considered a great writer.

Have you tried reading his books?

In fact, I have never had the pleasure of reading Ulysses. Let me give it a try from the beginning...

STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: -- Introibo ad altare Dei.
Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:
-- Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful jesuit.

[vomits, then blacks out, wakes up half an hour later]

Forget "why he is considered a great writer," how about "I've never understood why he is considered a writer at all."

Gibberish isn't writing in my book. Then again, "my book" isn't taught at universities. Not sure if that counts for or against it.

Where does this perverse notion come from that all of human endeavour must be about making a profit?

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations , 1776.

What?!? You mean that was a rhetorical question?

This whole story gives me associations of George Bush and Jane Harman with Napoleon and Squealer from Animal Farm.

And here is an even better story.

Even in the 19th century, Jules Verne foretold a visit to the moon, and although his astronauts were shot out of a cannon, there is much in From The Earth To The Moon that mirrors Apollo 11 in many ways.

... Almost like it was scripted for a movie perhaps?

I think we are nearing some sort of "singularity" as the number of stories about real science invading what was until recently only Science fiction becomes common place

It's been that way since I learned to read 50 years ago. Actually since way before - in 1946 before there were computer screens or keyboards, when computers were programmed with solder and plugs, and their output was simply lights turned on or off and there were less than half dozen in the world, Murray Leinster wrote A Logic Named Joe that foretold personal computers, computer keyboards, computer screens, the internet, and client-server technology.

The old 1964 Star Trek foretold flat screened voice activated computers, talking computers, self-opening doors, cell phones, space shuttles, etc.

Some inventions seem to have never been foretold, afaik nobody had a replacement lens for the eye that would cure age related presbyopia (Dr. McCoy couldn't cure Kirk in Star Trek IV).

Even in the 19th century, Jules Verne foretold a visit to the moon, and although his astronauts were shot out of a cannon, there is much in From The Earth To The Moon that mirrors Apollo 11 in many ways.

There's nothing in the bible that says how long one of God's days are (in human years), so there's no definitive date for the age of the earth in the bible -- just the age of 'men'.

2 Peter, 3:8

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

And that was just an example that time to us as opposed to the figurehead of their church were not necessarily unified. Why humans should assume that they were is beyond me.

Edgar Allan Poe wrote an essay about The Turk in 1836 titled "Maelzel's Chess Player".

"Judicious lying is what the world needs. I sometimes think it were even better and safer not to lie at all than to lie injudiciously. An awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth."
-- Mark Twain, "On the Decay of the Art of Lying"

Though I don't often reply to replies, in your case I feel compelled. You may wish to read this story by Mark Twain, entitled "Punch, Brothers, Punch." It's a five-minute read, if that, and it may provide some insight into jingles in general. If it doesn't help, you can always think about me with pity. I've remembered the damned thing since childhood, and I know the tune as well.

Apparently you guys havent read 1984 http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/20/ a poor summary of it but it gets some of the point accross. You should be saying THERE, ARE, FOUR, FINGERS!

Are there any earlier mentions of liquid lenses before Dune?

The point is, the libertarian position is directly against wealth redistribution. In most modern societies, this is done through progressive taxing, luxury taxes, and estate taxes. Without those tools, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and eventually are so far behind that they are pretty much slaves.

Stealing from the rich and giving to uncle Sam you mean? Allow more people to keep more of the money they earn then they can create new jobs which benefit everyone. They can do this in two ways. The more money people can keep that they earn, the more they can invest and/or spend. Investing means more money can be used for research and for job creation. The more people spend the more jobs can be created as well. Whereas with government, with few exceptions government is less efficient than the capital market. Also more money goes to the already wealthy.

For instance in the US large multinational agriculture corporations get billions of dollars in subsidies yearly. That was a big reason the WTO meetings in Geneva fell apart. India and other countries demanded the EU, Japan, and the US to stop subsidizing these businesses because with subsidizies multinationals can sell food in India, South Korea, and Mexico cheaper than farmers in these countries can grow food. If you live in the US do you ever wonder why so many Mexicans and other Latin Americans come to the US as "illegal aliens or immigrants"? Many of them are being driven off of their farms because they can't compete with subsidized US agribusinesses who are able to export food to Mexico and sale it cheaply there.

Read some Marx.

I have read him, as well as Hilter's book. I've also read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations , various writings from Thomas Paine, and Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L Hunter Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

...any instance of ungoodspeak to the Ministry of Love. So what's the problem?

A common misconception about Darwin's "The Origin of Species". It's not about survival of the fittest. It's about survival of the fit enough.

http://www.online-literature.com/darwin/originofsp ecies/

This really seems like a fine example of Chocolate Rations are Up... (more to the point: see chocorat.)

Okay, since XP sold 17M in the first two months, I'll assume (maybe not accurately) that the Jan sales were roughly 8M.

FROM TFA:

Silver estimates PC makers sold between 12 million and 15 million PCs with Windows XP Home Edition over the holidays -- a significant chunk of the 20 million total, depending on how many included Vista coupons.

While Microsoft wouldn't say how many Vista upgrades were ordered in that time frame, Dell Inc. spokesman Bob Kaufman said about two-thirds of its holiday PC shoppers registered for the upgrade.

Assuming that estimate is remotely accurate, take the most optimistic number (we don't know what the sales before the holiday season were, but to be especially fair, I'll assume 0): 12M Jan sales of Vista.

So, since the market was roughly half the size in 2001, this translates, in equal market size, to Vista selling only three-quarters as well in Jan as XP did six years ago (less actually, since there are many more PCs in homes available to upgrade (2x,3x,4x... as many???)).

Quantum - I'll not sure if your attack is warrented given the fact that it was supposedly the job of the secret police in 1984 to know everything about a person. The phrase from the novel was "thoughtcrime". Big Brother was supposedly able to get children to turn against their parents to expose them of thoughtcrime. This is very similar to colleges turning against their students to expose them to the RIAA of "copyright infringement". Also, video cameras were everywhere. Do you remember the trouble Winston went through in the beginning of the story to find a place where he could be sure he could read a simple note? He certainly was afraid for his life to read it... that's what the RIAA wants us to feel about pirating music.

But your attack on communism from two posts ago was unwarrented. The government was Ingsol, which stood for English Socialism. The tennents of socialism is a state run socio-econmic system. Communism, on the other hand, should be noted for having the characteristic of not having different classes. Your ignorance of this fact points out that you obviously didn't notice how the High Party controlled things and left the Party to *think* they were better off then the other guys (the Proles).

The Party was really just the pawns of the High Party, though. The colleges and their students are just pawns of the RIAA.

Maybe I'm drawing the analogy too far... but recall that Winston hears a Prole singing a tune (Part 2, Chapter 4 - Paragraph 4) and thinking she did it more soulfully than the inhumane system that created it? That's what the RIAA doesn't want.

So what's the answer? Empower artists who don't care whether you download their songs by buying their non-RIAA albums and going to their shows.

And stop being ignorant, you insensitive clod!

Wow, I'm surprised no one posted 1984 yet.

It was only 23 years early.

War is Peace
Freesom is Slavery
Ignorance is strength

I'm fairly certain that you have no idea as to the real nature of this tracking system. You speak as if it's somehow ok for others to trample the rights of the populace. I encourage you to read this book. http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/1/

The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov

The premise of the series is that mathematician Hari Seldon has spent his life developing a branch of mathematics known as psychohistory.

It uses the law of mass action to predict the future on a large scale, such as of planets or empires.

Using these techniques, Seldon foresees the fall of the Galactic Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way. He also predicts that there will be a thirty-thousand-year dark age before the next great empire rises.

To prevent this, he decides to create a small secluded haven of technology in a corner of the galaxy (on the planet Terminus) called the Foundation, whose job it will be to preserve knowledge after the collapse, thus reducing the time required for the next Empire to rebuild. If done properly, it will take only a thousand years before the next empire rises.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Foundation_Series

BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley

"I'd like to show you some very interesting conditioning for Alpha Plus Intellectuals. We have a big batch of them on Rack 5. First Gallery level."

http://www.huxley.net/bnw/

1984 by George Orwell

WAR IS PEACE - FREEDOM IS SLAVERY - IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/

Source page where quotes came from is OFF TOPIC from discussion and has nothing with this thread. It is presented as 'source reference only', no need to visit:

http://www.flyingsnail.com/Scrapbook/page001.html

Please read before moderation. This post is an attempt to provoke imagination and humor in this thread and (imo) is on topic. Thank You ... A.C.

Okay, so what will prevent companies from abusing tiered service? The free market? There isn't one in telecom and there simply can't be one. Great example of a natural monopoly, no state required.

No there isn't a true freemarket but there is some things that can be done without a new Net Neutrality law. First the landline telcos are regulated as common carriers and can't discriminate based on who the parties are. Then there's isps' clients such as you and me. If my isp tried to throttle some of the websites I wanted to visit I'd raise hell. I pay for my access and by slowing down any website I try to visit they are breaking their contract with me. Then there's those like Google who own lots of dark fiber, and WiMax. Wimax, Like cellphone service, offers people the option to switch providers. Actually my only phone service is cellphonee service, I pay less for it than I did for a landline. And if you combine dark fiber with WiMax businesses can go around isps who throttle traffic, Google is already setting up a wireless system in San Francisco though not WiMax.

As it is now I see no need for a net neutrality law. We don't need more regulations we need less. If only the FCC were to open up the airwaves even more would be able to offer wireless access. Better yet get rid of the FCC.

That's what capitalism is all about right, dog eat dog, devil take the hindmost, screw the poor and powerless neo-social-darwinism sort of thing?

No it isn't. Freetrade capitalism is all about improving everyone's life. To see what capitalism is about Adam Smith's, the father of capitalism, book The Wealth Of Nations is good.

You can find some more fascinating videos on the Net about this and of course other topics to read. YouTube/Google has videos of Michael Badnarik discussing the subject, and www.cato.org probably has some basic primers on classical liberalism, libertarianism, and self-determination.

Yea, Michael Badnarik got my vote in 2004. If I lived in the district he's running to represent in Texas he'd get my vote again. Ron Paul would also get my vote. Actually if you go through his, Badnarik's website, he has some good stuff on the subject as well. One I like is about a speech Davy Crocket gave in the House of Representatives when they were debating a bill, "Not Yours to Give". Other good sources on classical liberalism are Thomas Paine, his Common Sense being pretty intro. Alexis de Tocqueville is another pretty good source on classical liberalism as is Adam Smith.

OR

Massive Freezer burn on my lap and thus gonads.

Robert Frost pondered the same thing...kind of. (Not to often I get to use my lit geekiness)

Can you name a non-aboriginal nation that was founded in North or South America before the United States in 1776? Didn't think so.

Yes I can, Vineland which is now called Nova Scotia.

Comrade Ogilvy sighted again!

Why is anyone at all surprised that Wikipedia is stuffed to the gills with junk and propaganda?

Oh, and let's get rid of another myth. You don't have to believe everything you read on Wikipedia - really? There are at least 965 domains that scrape Wikipedia's content and serve it up with advertising. Chances are, almost any factual subject searched for on Google will include Wikipedia and/or the scrapers.

Most people are unaware of these scraper sites, and they don't realise that they're reading Wikipedia without the visual clues. So what chance do they have? Wikipedia is feeding lies, distortion and propaganda into the body of the Internet, and all we get from slashdotters is -1000 mod points and pointless statements that "other encyclopedias have mistakes in them" as if that made a difference. The real difference between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica is that EB stands behind its scholarship and if a mistake is discovered, they will fix it. There is no guarantee from anyone at Wikimedia or anyone else as to the veracity of any article.

http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/

Have a nice day, and remember, Big Brother is just doing it because He loves you!

XXOXXXO, George Orwell's Spinning Corpse

When in London, visit my favourite pub, the Newman Arms!

It looked like many of the books were in limited preview (such as 1984)

Read 1984 in its entirety here.

'It was my little daughter,' said Jason9x19 with a sort of doleful pride. 'She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh? I don't bear her any grudge for it. In fact I'm proud of her. It shows I brought her up in the right spirit, anyway.'

G Orwell

Don't forget Bin Laden was a CIA asset, yes even according to the MSM MSNBC

"As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow's invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar - the MAK - which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.

What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan's state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA's primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow's occupation.

By no means was Osama bin Laden the leader of Afghanistan's mujahedeen. His money gave him undue prominence in the Afghan struggle, but the vast majority of those who fought and died for Afghanistan's freedom - like the Taliban regime that now holds sway over most of that tortured nation - were Afghan nationals.

Yet the CIA, concerned about the factionalism of Afghanistan made famous by Rudyard Kipling, found that Arab zealots who flocked to aid the Afghans were easier to "read" than the rivalry-ridden natives. While the Arab volunteers might well prove troublesome later, the agency reasoned, they at least were one-dimensionally anti-Soviet for now. So bin Laden, along with a small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East, became the "reliable" partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3340101/

The analogy to Goldstein as the fallen inner party member in 1984 though not exact is close enough to give one pause as to the uses of propaganda by the Bush regime.

"The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one's neck. The Hate had started.

As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even -- so it was occasionally rumoured -- in some hiding-place in Oceania itself."

http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/1/

So I would like to see slashdot's moderations have attribution of who that made them. Now, anonymity is important as well and there might be times where one would like to not give an Insightful moderation publicly. So I think a system where moderations are public by default but where anonymous moderations is possible, perhaps only for 2 or 3 points and most certainly not for Troll mods.
[/micro pre rant]

Please feel free to disagree with any of my opinions. The things that are marked as facts though should be impossible to disagree with and if you do you must come with an argument of why you think the fact is invalid.

[opinion] To me it sounds like you strongly believe that, to put it perhaps a bit naively, a free marked exists and left to itself without any external influence everything will automatically turn into optimal performance. Right? [/opinion]

Well, I hope you will start considering the following: [fact]The free marked is a model, and as a model it does not fully describe the reality[/fact]. All models are wrong, some models are useful. -- George Box

As already described in this post [fact]the free marked model is dependent on total information. This is a condition not fulfilled in the real world[/fact], and the post describes [opinion]very clearly[/opinion] how government regulation can increase competition.

No government mandate on companies is ever good for consumers because it decreases the amount of competition in a market and it raises prices. You can't prove otherwise.

[fact]The above mentioned post does prove that (at least) one kind of government mandate will increase competition[/fact].

[fact]Another thing that the free marked model is dependent on is a large number of insignificant sellers and buyers[/fact]. [opinion]While the consumers usually fulfill this criteria, the producers seldom or never does[/opinion]. [fact]This can be another reason for government intervention to make sure that no single company or group of company controls a too large part of the marked (anti-trust)[/fact].

So there you have two counter-proves to your "You can't prove otherwise".

[opinion] Sometimes people argue that the best companies will win long-term, using nature evolution as a model for economics. But this is grossly misleading when used in context of single entities; evolution is never about single individuals but many generations. This model can be used sensible if talking about trends, for instance open source vs closed source.

"Survival of the fittest" from an evolutionary aspect is extremely different from anything related to human corporate business because there are some fundamental and huge differences between nature and economics. In nature

• All animals in a race are approximately the same size.
• All animals start completely from scratch (I.e. there is no heritage and just because you are son of the leader wolf that does not make you special).
• Evolutionary changes are relatively small (No animal will say increase 100% in size over just one generation[1]).

[1]
Perhaps unless you start with one single cell I guess...

in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

(found here)

Holy Edgar Allen Poe, Batman!

http://www.online-literature.com/poe/26/

Am I the only one who finds it slightly disturbing that all of these new proposed bills and laws seem to come directly out of books like Orwell's 1984, Soylent Green, Gattaca?

What's the difference between a chip under the arm, and a tattoo on the arm for the purposes of "marking" people? How are we any better than them, for suggesting it?

Note to the current administration: These were not meant to be scripts or a HOWTO on how to run a government, these were meant to be a warning about how things can (and probably will) turn out if you take the wrong path.

Oh, and p.s., your time and chances to screw up this country even more, are up. Game over. Thanks for playing, but now its our turn.

Absolutely. It's fully matured about 20 years late, but not bad by prophecy standards (I think the w3c covers that, right?).

It's SO worth repeating...
war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength
war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength
war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength

This kind of behavior is exposed by Orwell on Animal Farm and, guess what? The average citizenry, in total absence of further information will take the government discourse as true.

The worst scenario is when the "West" starts to take their version as truth as well. See what happened to Tibet! What about the Goguryeo antiques found in China? In the latter case, the Chinese government spent a lot of money paying "scientists" to deliberately rewrite documents and papers about the history of that region to hide the fact that Goguryeo also was part of ancient Korea!

And screw the scientists as well (academical independence my ass!) Once the Chinese version of stuff hits Britannica, Larousse, the west will also start to believe in them.

"Gentlemen," concluded Napoleon, "I will give you the same toast as before, but in a different form. Fill your glasses to the brim. Gentlemen, here is my toast: To the prosperity of The Manor Farm! "

There was the same hearty cheering as before, and the mugs were emptied to the dregs. But as the animals outside gazed at the scene, it seemed to them that some strange thing was happening. What was it that had altered in the faces of the pigs? Clover's old dim eyes flitted from one face to another. Some of them had five chins, some had four, some had three. But what was it that seemed to be melting and changing? Then, the applause having come to an end, the company took up their cards and continued the game that had been interrupted, and the animals crept silently away.

But they had not gone twenty yards when they stopped short. An uproar of voices was coming from the farmhouse. They rushed back and looked through the window again. Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress. There were shoutings, bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances, furious denials. The source of the trouble appeared to be that Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington had each played an ace of spades simultaneously.

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Forty years ago, Nixon invented the policy of engagement to balance the dangerous Soviet Union against an equal dangerous but hungry Communist China.

Ten years ago, with the Soviet menace defeated, Bill Clinton invented the complete sell out. Slave made goods have flowed into out country, jobs and money have flowed out. Parallel to this was born the myth of the "information economy" where the US would own ideas and the rest of the world would do our bidding because of it. Of course, for this ownership to be complete, it must apply to our own citizens. To enslave others, we must first prove our dedication to ruling by enslaving ourselves.

You can draw a straight line to today, with the DMCA, Patriot act and rampant domestic spying from a tremendously expanded federal government. As the rich and powerful gateher in Redmond, ask yourself where the rhetoric of freedom has gone and why your boss is dining with a Communist. What in the hell are we doing?