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User: k1e0x

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  1. Re:Colbert on Measuring the "Colbert Bump" · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."
    --Ronald Reagan

    Reagan has all these great libertarian quotes.. but he shrunk the size of government NOT AT ALL. Even if he really believed what he was talking bout, he didn't really fix any problems. (No Reagan did not kill communism, its a popular myth but it was the unworkable system of communism that killed communism.)

    They say the power of the state changes people.. I seen a cartoonist liken it to The One Ring from Lord of the Rings.. as to say those who get power are unable to destroy that power.

    The cartoon is here. http://anarchyinyourhead.com/2007/12/14/no-more-kings/

  2. Camera's on Cops on UK Gov't Proposes Massive Internet Snooping, Data Storage · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sure they want to spy on us, but what happens when you put a camera on police and record there actions? They don't like *that* very much do they.. people who *do* record the police often find themselves arrested for --insert bogus reason here-- and their camera blank when they get out of jail in a few hours with no charges filed against them.

    If the state can record and monitor the actions of the people, but the people are unable to monitor and record the actions of the state.. then who exactly is master of whom?

  3. Re:Call the FBI? on Home Science Under Attack In Massachusetts · · Score: 1

    They don't care about the 4th amendment, and nothing will happen to the police.. mark my words. They can search whatever they want whenever they want and _nothing_ will ever happen to them. We live in a police state now, get use to it.

  4. Re:So what? on North Pole Ice On Track To Melt By September? · · Score: 1

    Pretty sure, I mean.. when you melt an ice cube in a glass of water, the water level remains the same. The reason ice floats is as water is frozen it expands and is therefore is less dense than water around it, but the amount of water displaced being solid or liquid is the same. Least as far as I know.

  5. So what? on North Pole Ice On Track To Melt By September? · · Score: 1

    Correct me if I'm wrong, (and I'm sure some of you will try), but when ice melts into water.. it does not displace the volume of the water.. correct?

    What that means is New York and DC will (sadly) not be submerged in the ocean.

  6. YOU pay the tax, not Amazon. on Will Amazon Get a Visit From the Tax Man? · · Score: 1

    Exactly.. it's not Amazon that is paying the tax, it's YOU. Corporations do not pay taxes, they only raise the cost of their products and services. Amazons customers pay that tax, and I think they are dammed well in their right NOT to charge it.

    What a biased story.

  7. Re:This is a monumental and historic decision on Supreme Court Holds Right to Bear Arms Applies to Individuals · · Score: 1

    Yeah, with this and the right to a trial narrowly escaping death last month.. it would appear Justice Kennedy is the most powerful man in America and the sole person holding the Constitution in place from the Republican and Democrat wolves.

  8. Re:I am _so_ calling this one: on DOJ To Oversee Windows 7 Development · · Score: 1

    Well.. yes, you are correct. We don't need such things.

    A lot of people seem to think that government is the only thing holding society together.. but these agencies and regulations you suggest are unnecessary because the market will self regulate.

    Next time your at the hardware store or Walmart look around at all the unregulated products that are sold that if manufactures wanted to save money and kill people they could. On many of these products you will see the Underwriter Laboratories (UL) logo. When you see that logo you can be assured that the coffee pot you are buying has been tested for safety and will not burn your house down. Underwriter Laboratories is a private company, shockingly those manufactures pay them to certify that their products are safe. This is a market based solution, one that is not so alien to the problems you cite above.

    Now lets say the FDA was private.. and they certified a new heart drug that was found to be dangerous (this happened recently) .. can you sue the FDA for improperly certifying that drug? Can you sue the pharmacist that sold it to you? Will the FDA loose trust to a competing certification firm? In government, nobody is ever to blame.. they say "whoops.. we killed a bunch of people, sorry." and nothing changes.

    Reality is the market is what keeps you safe, that fact that people want safe, high quality, products means there is money to be made in producing safe, high quality, products.

    Boeing wanting to make safe aircraft that do not crash so they can keep the airlines and customers happy and continue buying safe Boeing aircraft is what keeps the planes in the air.. not the words the FAA write on paper.

  9. Re:I am _so_ calling this one: on DOJ To Oversee Windows 7 Development · · Score: 1

    I see, so you have the authority to tell others what is best for them? Tell me.. where did you get such power?

  10. Re:I am _so_ calling this one: on DOJ To Oversee Windows 7 Development · · Score: 1

    Libertarians are scary because they have a totally unrealistic view on the world and at the same time are totally sure that they have the one true vision just like every other flavor of extremist. As somebody on slashdot once said,"one look at any online community will show you why Libertarianism will never work". The real answer is that their probably isn't just one answer. Maybe you fear what you do not understand. This is a case *FOR* Libertarianism not against it. The case is that we do not have to agree on anything. GOOD! Let's not agree, we don't all have to.

    Using government to force everyone to agree is the problem in many cases. Libertarians seek a voluntary society where people can choose how to best do things for themselves.

    Let's not agree on what will be the mandated equal education in EVERY school in the country. Creationism, Evolution, Gay rights, pledge of allegiance, sex ed, abstinence and on and on. All of those arguments disappear when people can choose what school to send their children to for themselves.

    I'm with you, there isn't just one answer for America.. there are 300 million best answers.

  11. Re:I am _so_ calling this one: on DOJ To Oversee Windows 7 Development · · Score: 1

    We can hate Microsoft but as a libertarian, I find this development scary. Getting the federal government involved in the design and manufacture of a product is unwarranted and is akin to precrime. The US Government should leave Microsoft's development of Windows 7 alone. If it turns out to have anti-competitive effects, then the government can punish Microsoft for it. Everyone may say that would be too little, too late, but preemptive strikes are un-American. (And besides, we can always break MS up if it keeps pushing out monopolistic products.) I'm with you, government designing anything is bad.

    The Trabant, was a car designed in East Germany by the government. The same model was made from 1957 to 1991. It smoked, it had a two cycle engine, and it broke down a lot.. but it was good enough for the people so they never needed to make anything better. (while Volkswagen on the west.. well they could only manage to make some of the most successful and popular cars sold world wide.) Also look at Toyota, they started exporting cars to the US in 1958 and they were not much better than the Trabant? Did Toyota improve its model of cars and offerings by 1991? (Ever hear of a Lexus?)

    Korea was one country until 1948 but back then North Korea was richer than the south. Japan developed the north from 1910 to 1945. Even after the Japanese left, North Korea's industrial lead enabled it to maintain greater wealth over South Korea well into the 1960s. Where are they today? North Korea is in absolute poverty, and South Korea is an industrial powerhouse.

    In the 1980 France decided to embrace the internet and allow every citizen to use this new technology. They created the Minitel network. While it originally was a novel device the government could never keep up with all the technological experiments in the west. While the free market produced, Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay, Google, etc.. France produced.. yep, 1980's dumb Minitel terminals.

    What can we learn from this? Government produced products suck. They never get any better because there is no incentive to do so, and barley working is good enough. Do you see lines getting shorter and customer experience improving at the DMV. No, why? because the government bureaucrats running it are not going to inconvenienced in any way if they do not improve service.. their "customers" are forced to go there. There would be no Lexus without the free market, we would all be driving crap like the Trabant made several decades ago.

    Government control of anything, even a company as loathsome as Microsoft is bad bad news for the computer industry.

  12. Re:I am _so_ calling this one: on DOJ To Oversee Windows 7 Development · · Score: 1

    But Libertarians just want to bring us back to the ideals of the founding fathers of the country. That's not actually true.

    The founders did not create a voluntary society, and the early US government was not a libertarian government. (Need examples? Alien and Sedition Act, Genocide of the American Indians, Slavery?)A libertarian government would not do such things.

  13. In the Carlin spirit.. on George Carlin Dead of Heart Failure · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Carlin always wanted us to look differently at life, so in the Carlin spirit..

    "Today was the best day of George Carlin's life... he died."

  14. Re:waste of taxpayer dollars on Northrop Grumman To Develop Brain-Wave Binoculars · · Score: 3, Funny

    Really..

    If they do get it working it would be like this..

    Subconscious: *LOOK* LOOK LOOK LOOK! look at the big .. blue thing .., I don't know what that is! look!
    Conscious: uhh.. that's a mountain..

  15. Re:Press the button labeled "Submit" on FISA Bill Vote Today, With Telco Immunity · · Score: 1

    This is not Capitalism. Capitalist would sue these telcos and put their ass in jail.

    This is government teamed up with business.

    When government controls business it is fascism
    When business controls government it is corporatism. (with the suspected same results of fascism.)

    Business alone is not evil, business and power IS.

  16. Re:On NPR... on Safeguarding Data From Big Brother Sven? · · Score: 1

    I don't know, I didn't write the story.. occupational exemption maybe? :)

  17. Re:Sweden's just being honest about it on Safeguarding Data From Big Brother Sven? · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I've done this before in a lab environment 5+ years ago so I'm sure it is possible to do on a larger scale. (back then browsers did not warn about this stuff)

    Firefox 2+ and IE 7+ present a warning on Self Signed Certs, (that would be on the fly generated).

  18. Re:On NPR... on Safeguarding Data From Big Brother Sven? · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That is absolutely right.

    The 4th Amendment was written in response to the Stamp Act. Under the Stamp Act of 1765, all documents in your possession required the kings stamp on them to be legal. You had to by the stamps so this was in effect a tax.. the really ugly part of this law that people do not seem to know is that under the Stamp Act, British soldiers could come into your house any time they wanted to check your documents with what was known as a "writ of assistance". This is in effect a search warrant that British soldiers could write themselves. (It is akin to the NSA's National Security Letter as well..). Upon rummaging through your home, if you could not also prove that you paid taxes on other items such as your furniture or even your tea and your rum, they could arrest you.

    Privacy is a property right, you are in your right not to show your property to anyone. This becomes all the more dangerous in a society of data mining and government provided "universal health care" because the government may decide you do not work out enough or your diet is not proper.

    Don't think it can't happen.. In Japan the legal wast size is 33.5 inches. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/world/asia/13fat.html?_r=1&em&ex=1213588800&en=b5472f5ba2e31e50&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin Anything over that and you may be sent to "re-education". If you deny "re-education" you may even be arrested for being fat.

  19. Re:Why can't it be simple. on Safeguarding Data From Big Brother Sven? · · Score: 1

    Maybe it should be included in Thunderbird Core then. On the creation of a new account in Thunderbird it could prompt the user to create a gpg key, and publish to mozilla's own keyserver.

  20. Re:Why can't it be simple. on Safeguarding Data From Big Brother Sven? · · Score: 1

    Your right. My mistake. (my excuse is I just didn't use my brain.. more concerned on the government angle and the legal angle than the technical angle.. I know how this stuff works..)

  21. Re:Why can't it be simple. on Safeguarding Data From Big Brother Sven? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And how many tyrannical laws are overturned?

    I'm still waiting on the Patriot act.. it breaks what the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th amendments to the constitution and its law.

  22. Re:Why can't it be simple. on Safeguarding Data From Big Brother Sven? · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well.. yeah, you have a point. but at least they can't data mine this way unless they control the key server itself all the time.

    When your dealing with an entity like government .. it's pretty difficult to stop them from doing something. I mean.. they could just make encryption itself illegal if they wanted.

    It is our duty to stop them from doing that.. You have a right to privacy, you have a right to not show someone the inside of your house, the inside of your gym locker, the inside of your bank account, or the inside of your private letters. Governments should respect that right. A good paper came out a while ago called "'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy" http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565

  23. Re:Sweden's just being honest about it on Safeguarding Data From Big Brother Sven? · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've done MitM on SSL as a demonstration before. It would be reasonably hard to do in the real world even by an ISP. It involves generating a cert on the fly and passing it to the client.. today's browsers will warn on that.

    I'd be more worried about a super hardware AES cracker that the NSA isn't telling us about.

  24. Why can't it be simple. on Safeguarding Data From Big Brother Sven? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I use s/mime and gpg. I have for years.. but I believe this is too much of a hassle for people who can't even figure out Yahoo Mail or tell the difference between Internet Explorer and Firefox.

    Some time ago I suggested someone write a thunderbird extension that was a "one click" encryption setup. On clicking "encrypt" it would create a gpg key > send the pub key to a key server > and if it does not have someone elses key it can suggest thunderbird and itself to that person.

    I know this is not a good way to do this, but I can't see people using pgp/gpg it any other way.

  25. Lets tear apart some of those bombs.. on McCain Backs Nuclear Power · · Score: 1

    We have quite a bit of fuel I would think, why do we need so many nuclear weapons? Let's make something useful with them.