The argument is that the libertarian utopia will always corrupted by greedy corporations, who will change laws in their own favour. A way to organise society cannot be good, if it can't protect itself from those who wish to overthrow it. (And I mean this for communism as well.)
The rebuttal is that the utopia will have constitutional principles that make the officials powerless to grant favors. If the state cannot regulate commerce, it can't grant commercial favors, and there is no benefit to bribery. Now, that's very 'utopian', of course. I agree with Larry Niven's description of libertarianism as a vector... something you can move towards, or away from, but never truly reach.
Buy some land in the middle of nowhere, make sure you pay your taxes, and handle everything else internally
What happens when you violate the American with Disabilities Act, for instance? You think that will be handled 'internally'? I think you are underestimating how much federal and state law is inexorably forced into your life.
No. The problem is that they're complaining about CERTAIN OTHER PEOPLE using the programs while THEY THEMSELVES benefit from those programs.
That's what you want them to complain about, because it fits with your conceptions about them being stupid and immoral. That isn't, however, what they are actually complaining about. You won't take correction on this issue, though, because it would damage your ego and sense of superiority, which is the most valuable thing you have.
Why do you think murder would be legal in a libertarian society? A large number of slashdot posters seem to think that libertarianism is the same as anarchy. It's not. Generally, even the most utopian ideas of a 'libertarian society' have laws against murder, rape, theft, and other rights violations.
They also argue for keeping laws against theft and fraud, which makes a libertarian society obviously not anarchic. They also generally advocate for removing all sorts of protections and subsidies the law gives corporations.
I think C++ code can be clean and tight, but you need to restrict yourself to a very stringent subset of the language... basically, C plus classes and scoping. Don't use overloading, don't use templates unless it's absolutely necessary, don't use pass by reference, minimalize multiple inheritance and such idealized OO complications.
C is basically portable assembly. C++ should be portable OO assembly... but it has ballooned to the point that its strengths have become weaknesses.
If the Wii and DS have taught the gaming industry anything, it's that touch and motion controls are not a substitute for buttons.
How so, given that the Wii outsold the competitor consoles and the DS outsold the competitor hand-helds?
Perhaps because Nintendo was smart enough to include buttons and d-pads on both? They realized that motion/touch controls alone are not adequate for a general purpose gaming device.
Hell, Microsoft's Kinect is massively advanced over touchscreen, and yet if the 360 had supported only Kinect and not a gamepad, it would have been a massive failure.
Maybe when 6 buttons and an analog stick are standard equipment for smart phones Nintendo might have something to be afraid of;
Agreed. Until phones are released that are designed for playing games, gaming devices will be superior in their niche. Right now, gaming on phones is still like the talking dog; the impressive thing is that it talks at all, not on how well it does it.
I'd go Opera instead of Chrome, but yes. Plugins and standard adherence were the two reasons to use Firefox. Now, honestly, all the browsers are pretty good at meeting standards.
I can't even imagine what is going through the minds over at the Mozilla foundation.
I was a big Firefox booster, but the marketing-driven decisions that have been coming down have been troubling me ever since the damn Awesomebar. Not the existence of marketing; they needed marketing. The problem was that marketing was constraining and limiting the browser. Now we've reached the ultimate. Version numbers are a problem? We'll hide them! Problem fixed.
What you are saying is we should give as much credence to the anecdotes as to controlled scientific study.
That's not what he's saying. He's saying that you know yourself in ways a doctor never can, and care about yourself more than a doctor ever will. A doctor's advice is terrifically valuable, but statistical studies are always, by their nature, generalizations.
I'm as pro-science and as pro-evidence as anybody. But, just because a study shows that a particular drug will provide 50% mitigation in most patients with a particular condition, doesn't mean it will on you. It probably will; but if it doesn't, you need to be an active part of deciding to yank it. You have the opportunity to bring MORE specific data about yourself and your behavior to your medical treatment than any doctor will ever have, and specific data about the specific drug interacting with your specific body trumps statistical studies every time.
Exactly. I'm dealing with doctors wanting to put my wife on all sorts of medications due to some test results which are, frankly, just barely abnormal. The side-effects of the drugs look to be worse than the condition they are treating.
It's important to treat all medical advice from doctors as professional recommendations. Something you should pay serious attention to, when YOU make the decision. They are there to help you decide what your course of treatment should be. They aren't unbiased.
So unless a Society has settled and depleted every solar system in the galaxy it's more efficient to move part of your society to another solar system (think Firefly).
I'm not sure about that. A Dyson sphere has the inhabitable space of 500 millions earths. Are you sure that there are that many inhabitable planets in our galaxy?
I imagine that a Dyson Sphere would be constructed by mining one star of a close binary star system. I'll leave the details to the engineers.
You are correct, although I don't think there is any real stipulation that said densely packed cloud of satellites can't be attached to one another and therefore become a solid mass.
Orbital requirements. You'll need some satellites orbiting over the poles. If the satellites are attached to each other, the only satellites that are truly 'orbiting' are around the equator. The rest are moving too slow, and would fall into the sun without enough structural support to hold them aloft. Hence, unobtanium.
This planet is most likely a completely natural, if unusual, phenomenon. Still, though, this at least slightly perks the interest in extraterrestrials. Maybe this is a complete conversion to trap all solar power falling on a planet?
It is somewhat counter-intuitive, but recessive genes do not diminish in frequency over generations. If 10% of a population has blonde hair, a hundred generations later, it will still be 10% (well, there is random drift, but it is as likely to be higher as it is lower). Recessive genes are no less likely to pass between generations.
Of course, if blonde hair is beneficial or detrimental to reproduction, that will have an effect... but I can't imagine blonde or red hair being a detriment to breeding.
There's a good reason that the only correct move, when offered dictatorial powers, is to refuse them. "As a dictator, design a good society and economy" is an inherent contradiction.
I worked for a while to build a 'weekly chores list' for my kids that was based on computer RPGs. There would be experience awarded for various chores, and some would be required to progress further. The kids could pick a class, or dual-class, and that would have effects on their chores (a ranger would get double experience for yardwork, for instance). When they leveled up, they would get rewards based on their class.
I never quite got it working, but I still think it was a cool idea.
Slashdot Mirror
The argument is that the libertarian utopia will always corrupted by greedy corporations, who will change laws in their own favour. A way to organise society cannot be good, if it can't protect itself from those who wish to overthrow it. (And I mean this for communism as well.)
The rebuttal is that the utopia will have constitutional principles that make the officials powerless to grant favors. If the state cannot regulate commerce, it can't grant commercial favors, and there is no benefit to bribery. Now, that's very 'utopian', of course. I agree with Larry Niven's description of libertarianism as a vector... something you can move towards, or away from, but never truly reach.
Buy some land in the middle of nowhere, make sure you pay your taxes, and handle everything else internally
What happens when you violate the American with Disabilities Act, for instance? You think that will be handled 'internally'? I think you are underestimating how much federal and state law is inexorably forced into your life.
Who do you get a job from... rich or poor people? I have a good job, and I hope my bosses get filthy rich so they can hire more 'poor' people.
No. The problem is that they're complaining about CERTAIN OTHER PEOPLE using the programs while THEY THEMSELVES benefit from those programs.
That's what you want them to complain about, because it fits with your conceptions about them being stupid and immoral. That isn't, however, what they are actually complaining about. You won't take correction on this issue, though, because it would damage your ego and sense of superiority, which is the most valuable thing you have.
Why do you think murder would be legal in a libertarian society? A large number of slashdot posters seem to think that libertarianism is the same as anarchy. It's not. Generally, even the most utopian ideas of a 'libertarian society' have laws against murder, rape, theft, and other rights violations.
On that island, child abusers could be immediately shot when discovered. Maybe it'll be a haven for vigilante justice-dealers?
Anyway, I doubt that the prevalence of child abusers is effected one whit by the number of laws against child abuse. It's a social problem, not legal.
They also argue for keeping laws against theft and fraud, which makes a libertarian society obviously not anarchic. They also generally advocate for removing all sorts of protections and subsidies the law gives corporations.
The smart ones drive on the same side as everyone else, so as not to die. That's not 'against the libertarian credo' or anything silly like that.
Argue against actual libertarians, not against simplified cartoon distortions of them.
Am I bitter and jaded? I can't help but view those comment as biting sarcasm. Is it possible the poster is simply being nice and optimistic?
I think C++ code can be clean and tight, but you need to restrict yourself to a very stringent subset of the language... basically, C plus classes and scoping. Don't use overloading, don't use templates unless it's absolutely necessary, don't use pass by reference, minimalize multiple inheritance and such idealized OO complications.
C is basically portable assembly. C++ should be portable OO assembly... but it has ballooned to the point that its strengths have become weaknesses.
Yes, you have the European mindset that the GP was speaking of. Freedom would be scary, wouldn't it?
If the Wii and DS have taught the gaming industry anything, it's that touch and motion controls are not a substitute for buttons.
How so, given that the Wii outsold the competitor consoles and the DS outsold the competitor hand-helds?
Perhaps because Nintendo was smart enough to include buttons and d-pads on both? They realized that motion/touch controls alone are not adequate for a general purpose gaming device.
Hell, Microsoft's Kinect is massively advanced over touchscreen, and yet if the 360 had supported only Kinect and not a gamepad, it would have been a massive failure.
Maybe when 6 buttons and an analog stick are standard equipment for smart phones Nintendo might have something to be afraid of;
Agreed. Until phones are released that are designed for playing games, gaming devices will be superior in their niche. Right now, gaming on phones is still like the talking dog; the impressive thing is that it talks at all, not on how well it does it.
Basically, take 3.6 and incorporate in the Javascript speed enhancements. That's the only progress they've made since then that is really important.
I'd go Opera instead of Chrome, but yes. Plugins and standard adherence were the two reasons to use Firefox. Now, honestly, all the browsers are pretty good at meeting standards.
I can't even imagine what is going through the minds over at the Mozilla foundation.
I was a big Firefox booster, but the marketing-driven decisions that have been coming down have been troubling me ever since the damn Awesomebar. Not the existence of marketing; they needed marketing. The problem was that marketing was constraining and limiting the browser. Now we've reached the ultimate. Version numbers are a problem? We'll hide them! Problem fixed.
By GOOGs own admission, they infringed and want to settle.
Cite? I don't believe you can provide one.
What you are saying is we should give as much credence to the anecdotes as to controlled scientific study.
That's not what he's saying. He's saying that you know yourself in ways a doctor never can, and care about yourself more than a doctor ever will. A doctor's advice is terrifically valuable, but statistical studies are always, by their nature, generalizations.
I'm as pro-science and as pro-evidence as anybody. But, just because a study shows that a particular drug will provide 50% mitigation in most patients with a particular condition, doesn't mean it will on you. It probably will; but if it doesn't, you need to be an active part of deciding to yank it. You have the opportunity to bring MORE specific data about yourself and your behavior to your medical treatment than any doctor will ever have, and specific data about the specific drug interacting with your specific body trumps statistical studies every time.
Exactly. I'm dealing with doctors wanting to put my wife on all sorts of medications due to some test results which are, frankly, just barely abnormal. The side-effects of the drugs look to be worse than the condition they are treating.
It's important to treat all medical advice from doctors as professional recommendations. Something you should pay serious attention to, when YOU make the decision. They are there to help you decide what your course of treatment should be. They aren't unbiased.
It happened to silicon breast implants. Pure hysteria.
Or, slightly unrelated, DDT.
So unless a Society has settled and depleted every solar system in the galaxy it's more efficient to move part of your society to another solar system (think Firefly).
I'm not sure about that. A Dyson sphere has the inhabitable space of 500 millions earths. Are you sure that there are that many inhabitable planets in our galaxy?
I imagine that a Dyson Sphere would be constructed by mining one star of a close binary star system. I'll leave the details to the engineers.
You are correct, although I don't think there is any real stipulation that said densely packed cloud of satellites can't be attached to one another and therefore become a solid mass.
Orbital requirements. You'll need some satellites orbiting over the poles. If the satellites are attached to each other, the only satellites that are truly 'orbiting' are around the equator. The rest are moving too slow, and would fall into the sun without enough structural support to hold them aloft. Hence, unobtanium.
This planet is most likely a completely natural, if unusual, phenomenon. Still, though, this at least slightly perks the interest in extraterrestrials. Maybe this is a complete conversion to trap all solar power falling on a planet?
It is somewhat counter-intuitive, but recessive genes do not diminish in frequency over generations. If 10% of a population has blonde hair, a hundred generations later, it will still be 10% (well, there is random drift, but it is as likely to be higher as it is lower). Recessive genes are no less likely to pass between generations.
Of course, if blonde hair is beneficial or detrimental to reproduction, that will have an effect... but I can't imagine blonde or red hair being a detriment to breeding.
There's a good reason that the only correct move, when offered dictatorial powers, is to refuse them. "As a dictator, design a good society and economy" is an inherent contradiction.
I worked for a while to build a 'weekly chores list' for my kids that was based on computer RPGs. There would be experience awarded for various chores, and some would be required to progress further. The kids could pick a class, or dual-class, and that would have effects on their chores (a ranger would get double experience for yardwork, for instance). When they leveled up, they would get rewards based on their class.
I never quite got it working, but I still think it was a cool idea.
Does the Blockbuster mail service include games? It used to be movies only.