Well, the newer news is that it's only since 2009 that non-Russian ships have been allowed to travel the passage and it's only very recently that it has opened enough to allow for larger volumes of traffic involving supertankers and they're waiting for the shipping companies to start to take advantage of the new route.
Summary: Cap and Trade is bad because of X, instead we should use a better solution which is.... Cap and Trade!
It's a really weird way of saying that Cap and Trade is the only viable solution for pollution reduction, but the proposed implementation is corrupt and ineffective (since it neither caps, nor properly trades).
That's why I called them extremist. Most reasonable people consider a free market a market where well informed consumers can purchase goods in a competitive market.
No, by definition Liberal means Free and a Liberal is someone that wants to achieve it. You're just confused by the fact that Social Liberals are in opposition to Social Conservatives.
A Social Liberal is someone that believes that in order for people to be free the government has to guarantee certain rights (Exactly which ones can be debated, but you're probably used to seeing ones like access to education and healthcare).
An Economic Liberal is someone that believes that in order for people to be free the government has to guarantee freedom of transaction(Free Market).
Liberalism as a whole contains both of these elements and can be balanced various ways. Libertarians and Democrats are both Liberals, they're just approaching the same thing from opposite directions.
Well, I think you'll find that the extreme economic liberals consider exclusive licensing to be 'free market' since the event organiser should have the right to sell the broadcasting rights in whatever way he wishes.
Actually it appears to be using a completely different oxidation process. Normally the body converts Glucose into pyruvate though a very long process while the biocell uses Glucose oxidase to trigger a reaction that creates D-glucono-Î-lactone instead.
I suspect they're not at all worried about the issues you bring up, the body handles hydrogen peroxide just fine and the problem they're trying to solve is to how to get -more- energy out of the reaction, not less.
The idea is that while people are better off in the US then they are in the third world, that in no way justifies the fact that in the past 20 years there has been a 30% increase in GDP per Capita, but only 1% increase in Median household income: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gdp_versus_household_income.png
I also suspect you'll find that if you ask the illegal immigrants, you'll find that most of them didn't go to the US because they think it's the best destination, but because it's vastly easier to get into then their preferred alternative.
Well, I haven't read the actual court decision (is it available anywhere?) though I know in general it's often a coin toss what the decision will be in high profile court cases.
This is because often certain terms might be lacking a strict definition (FRAND for instance is never defined, so it's up to the court itself to decide if something is FRAND or not) and even when things are defined, it can be hard to establish whether it applies to the particular situation or not.
While I might change my mind after reading the actual court text, at this point I wouldn't be at all surprised if we see different rulings all over.
Indeed, the last one has the dual objectives of creating more work in the craftsmen/service sectors as well as reduce the amount of untaxed work.
Our government was a bit unlucky since they took over just as the country went from an economic boom into this international recession which means they're constantly put to the question why all their job increasing reforms haven't reduced unemployment. Though they're doing a decent job of showing that we're handling the recession much better then most other countries.
I don't think we can afford to lend out our current government, the problem is that the opposition is currently in shambles (The Social Democrats seem to be stuck in the 1960's) so we wouldn't have anyone viable left ^^
Well, what they did was sell off a couple of state owned companies, raise the fees for unemployment insurance and made the social security rules stricter and use the money gained from that to lower taxes, employment fees and subsidize home services.
While that particular list of demands contains a number of rather silly items, claiming it has anything to do with the communist manifesto does nothing but prove that you're just as ignorant as the people you're complaining about.
If you want to stop ignorance, isn't the first step to stop making ignorant statements yourself?
Well, what the Swedish Liberals did is the same thing that people love saying that the Socialists do. Basically it's always a sure win if you can convince the majority that they'll get more money, though instead of taking from the rich minority they took from the poor minority.
What is easy to forget when statements like "Democracy is doomed when the majority realises they can vote to get whatever they want" is that there is no such thing as a united majority.
Society is actually built up out of hundreds of minorities and which particular group of minorities team up to take the money from another group of minorities is very flexible.
Thus it's just as easy to get the not-poor to team up against the poor as it is to get the not-rich to team up against the rich.
I don't know about everyone else, but I don't want to break corporations. I want the government to properly regulate and monitor the financial industries to prevent fraud and I want the government to prevent people from earning money by leeching from the system rather then producing goods and services.
I also want the government to make sure that everyone contributes their fair share to society and prevent wealth from being accumulated by a select few.
I'm Swedish personally and I wouldn't say that's necessarily true. For instance Sweden is currently moving right, although finding out the painful way that privatization and deregulation is not always easy or desirable.
The right mix is probably not a constant, but rather variable. Countries change over time and so by necessity must the government, the real trick is finding some way to prevent corruption and make government more efficient.
Almost all issues in politics can be traced back to politicians and bureaucrats representing themselves rather then the people, which to be fair is human nature, and is something that has to be properly compensated for.
Aren't practically all higher level politicians rich in the US?
Anyhow your definitions are out of whack.
Republic and Democratic are not mutually exclusive. What you used to have is a Democratic Republic, what you have now is an Oligarchic Republic although I think you could make a good case for that you've -always- had an Oligarchic Republic. Notice how practically all the US presidents came from the same few families?
Since you seem to be confused I'll explain what these words mean.
Democracy: Everyone has an equal vote Oligarchy: Only a select few can hold political power Republic: Offices are not inherited Monarchy: Offices are inherited
Indeed, almost all industrialised countries have always been somewhere between, it's funny how heated arguments can get about jumping a few inches on the long line.
I think it's fairly ignorant to blame all of the US's current issues on entitlements however. The country is also paying for an army big enough to fight the rest of the world at once that's busy waging two simultaneous wars while it's government is deadlocked into a position where it can neither raise taxes nor lower expenditure(Since you can't politically survive lowering the military or entitlement budgets).
And even disregarding the sorry state of the US government budget, the wealth discrepancy in the US appears to have been growing consistently for over half a century which shows that if there are too much entitlements, they don't appear to be going to the poor.
"Bitcoins are about as easy to steal as the contents of many commercial US bank accounts today, ie they are vulnerable to malware. The existing banking system hasn't solved this consistently, see Krebs on Security for an endless stream of stories about e-banking thefts. The difference is that Bitcoin has a bunch of features that can be used to make effective security, like multi-signed coins. It allows you to lock up coins such that n-of-m signatures are required, eg, from your PC and also your cell phone (2 factor authentication), or 2-of-3 for things like funds held by a group of business partners." The banks are big enough to eat the losses due to theft (and can get very favourable insurance premiums) and has the power to hunt down anyone that steals a sizeable amount. You don't.
There's also the fact noted earlier that even if the bank loses money due to theft or destruction, you -still- have your money because of the guarantee.
"With regards to smart property, yes, it's kind of a sci-fi idea - but we are discussing alternatives to the existing, broken, semi-collapsed system aren't we? What do you expect, exactly? BTW to "collect the collateral" you can sell it again to a local buyer and take the funds. That 3rd party turns up and takes ownership of the car." Nothing is particularly wrong with the way we handle loans as such, we're just at times lacking proper oversight.
The 3rd party doesn't have any ability to take -physical- ownership of the car, which is the entire point. What he has is a digital token that claims it is a car. What is he supposed to do with it? Suppose you didn't lie and the token can actually unlock your car and he jumps in and starts driving. Next second you call the police and call in a theft, he's now in prison and you get your car back because while he did have the keys to your car, he didn't have any legally binding contract.
Actual ownership is based on -physical- force backed up by a -physical- trusted agency. No amount of cryptography gets around that basic fact.
"Think about what you just wrote. Why do you have to worry about whether your savings will randomly vanish due to no fault of your own? You say that banks "provide the guarantee that any money you give them, is money you'll get back" and then immediately admit that this very limited guarantee is actually provided by the government, which pays for it with bonds, which tend to be bought by central banks that inflate the currency in order to do so. This framework of guarantees and regulations is only necessary because banks spend your money (loan it out), then turn around and claim via your bank balance that they didn't. "
The most fundamental reason to worry is theft, the most basic service the bank provides is that they'll keep your money safe and in return they get to use it until you want it back. Like many other things Bitcoin doesn't do much to alter this relationship since stealing Bitcoins is easy (It made the headlines of Slashdot a while ago when a fortune of Bitcoin was stolen).
"Bitcoin solves this problem by letting you be your own bank." You don't -want- to be your own bank, because that's risky. You could try to insure the risk, but at that point you've basically made the insurance company your bank again.
"The other problem with living a cash-based life is that currencies inflate pretty fast. In the west we tend to think we have it good because we see only a compounded 2-4% inflation rate, but in some countries like Russia it is as high as 10% or even higher. All of these rates are pretty huge measured over a lifetime. Bitcoin is designed to enforce limited inflation. Right now its inflation rate is also very high (it's actually hyperinflating) but that rate is also fairly predictable over the long run." What you want from a currency is stability. Bitcoin isn't designed to enforce limited inflation, it's designed to be scarce. Specifically, it's designed to -deflate-. And that's the -worst- thing a currency can do, the reason that we have 2-4% inflation in most countries is because the government is keeping the inflation up on purpose to combat deflation.
What Bitcoin is doing is not hyperinflation, it's hyperdeflation. It's making people invest in the coins themselves which is ludicrous, it makes Bitcoin into a goods rather then a currency.
"Another criticism of a Bitcoin economy I see is that without banks, credit would be harder to obtain. But that isn't necessarily true. Minimizing trust through cryptography increases competition, and why not for credit as well? Think about how using smart property as collateral for a loan can bring about a quantum leap in the competitiveness of the credit markets." Smart property has the following issues. 1) It will never get implemented 2) There exists no method to verify the value of the collateral (All you get is data signed by a key created by a car company, if the key still is in the car or ever was is not something you can verify cryptographically) 3) There exists no method to collect the collateral. (You gain ownership over a Bitcoin token with no verifiable connection to the real world) 4) There exists no method to verify the trustworthiness of the debtor.
I'm not sure if I'd call it easily. The way I understood your interview was like this.
1) Terrorists attack 2) Government responds by shifting almost the entire white-collar FBI force over to tracing Terrorist funds 3) Largest recession and Economic Fraud of the century hits 4) FBI now has less then a tenth of the manpower necessary to investigate 5) The government now has to choose between A) Stop tracing terrorist funds in order to investigate white collar crime instead B) Find the budget to massively expand FBI manpower in the middle of massive budget wars C) Ignore the issue
Though Margaret used TINA when talking about the basic underlying system (Contrasting Liberalism against Protectionism and Communism). I don't think anyone has seriously tried to say that there are no alternatives within the implementation of a liberal economic system.
It's easy enough to say that Freeish Capitalism in the generalized sense has succeeded better then any other system, but it's pretty damn hard to make the case that the current implementation of it is the only one possible, especially since every country does it differently.
Slashdot Mirror
"* special-cased hiding of "http://". What's the point of that? It doesn't do so to "https://", "ftp://" or "gopher://" URLs..."
The reason would be that for 99% of the use cases of typing and sharing URL's, the HTTP is implied and unnecessary.
Non HTTP addresses are however non-standard and as such need to be declared explicitly.
Well, the newer news is that it's only since 2009 that non-Russian ships have been allowed to travel the passage and it's only very recently that it has opened enough to allow for larger volumes of traffic involving supertankers and they're waiting for the shipping companies to start to take advantage of the new route.
That's a really funny video.
Summary:
Cap and Trade is bad because of X, instead we should use a better solution which is.... Cap and Trade!
It's a really weird way of saying that Cap and Trade is the only viable solution for pollution reduction, but the proposed implementation is corrupt and ineffective (since it neither caps, nor properly trades).
That's why I called them extremist. Most reasonable people consider a free market a market where well informed consumers can purchase goods in a competitive market.
No, by definition Liberal means Free and a Liberal is someone that wants to achieve it. You're just confused by the fact that Social Liberals are in opposition to Social Conservatives.
A Social Liberal is someone that believes that in order for people to be free the government has to guarantee certain rights (Exactly which ones can be debated, but you're probably used to seeing ones like access to education and healthcare).
An Economic Liberal is someone that believes that in order for people to be free the government has to guarantee freedom of transaction(Free Market).
Liberalism as a whole contains both of these elements and can be balanced various ways. Libertarians and Democrats are both Liberals, they're just approaching the same thing from opposite directions.
You might want to read up on what Liberalism means, you can start at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
Well, from a technical standpoint if they get .p2p to work, it's fairly trivial to then change it to work for all domains.
The reason that these projects use their own top level domain is so they can avoid spending time on resolving name space conflicts.
Well, I think you'll find that the extreme economic liberals consider exclusive licensing to be 'free market' since the event organiser should have the right to sell the broadcasting rights in whatever way he wishes.
Your entire post is irrelevant. You're having reading comprehension issues due to your obviously re-canned rant.
Actually it appears to be using a completely different oxidation process. Normally the body converts Glucose into pyruvate though a very long process while the biocell uses Glucose oxidase to trigger a reaction that creates D-glucono-Î-lactone instead.
I suspect they're not at all worried about the issues you bring up, the body handles hydrogen peroxide just fine and the problem they're trying to solve is to how to get -more- energy out of the reaction, not less.
The idea is that while people are better off in the US then they are in the third world, that in no way justifies the fact that in the past 20 years there has been a 30% increase in GDP per Capita, but only 1% increase in Median household income:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gdp_versus_household_income.png
I also suspect you'll find that if you ask the illegal immigrants, you'll find that most of them didn't go to the US because they think it's the best destination, but because it's vastly easier to get into then their preferred alternative.
Well, I haven't read the actual court decision (is it available anywhere?) though I know in general it's often a coin toss what the decision will be in high profile court cases.
This is because often certain terms might be lacking a strict definition (FRAND for instance is never defined, so it's up to the court itself to decide if something is FRAND or not) and even when things are defined, it can be hard to establish whether it applies to the particular situation or not.
While I might change my mind after reading the actual court text, at this point I wouldn't be at all surprised if we see different rulings all over.
Indeed, the last one has the dual objectives of creating more work in the craftsmen/service sectors as well as reduce the amount of untaxed work.
Our government was a bit unlucky since they took over just as the country went from an economic boom into this international recession which means they're constantly put to the question why all their job increasing reforms haven't reduced unemployment. Though they're doing a decent job of showing that we're handling the recession much better then most other countries.
I don't think we can afford to lend out our current government, the problem is that the opposition is currently in shambles (The Social Democrats seem to be stuck in the 1960's) so we wouldn't have anyone viable left ^^
As a rule national courts do not care much about what other national courts rule.
Well, what they did was sell off a couple of state owned companies, raise the fees for unemployment insurance and made the social security rules stricter and use the money gained from that to lower taxes, employment fees and subsidize home services.
While that particular list of demands contains a number of rather silly items, claiming it has anything to do with the communist manifesto does nothing but prove that you're just as ignorant as the people you're complaining about.
If you want to stop ignorance, isn't the first step to stop making ignorant statements yourself?
Well, what the Swedish Liberals did is the same thing that people love saying that the Socialists do. Basically it's always a sure win if you can convince the majority that they'll get more money, though instead of taking from the rich minority they took from the poor minority.
What is easy to forget when statements like "Democracy is doomed when the majority realises they can vote to get whatever they want" is that there is no such thing as a united majority.
Society is actually built up out of hundreds of minorities and which particular group of minorities team up to take the money from another group of minorities is very flexible.
Thus it's just as easy to get the not-poor to team up against the poor as it is to get the not-rich to team up against the rich.
I don't know about everyone else, but I don't want to break corporations. I want the government to properly regulate and monitor the financial industries to prevent fraud and I want the government to prevent people from earning money by leeching from the system rather then producing goods and services.
I also want the government to make sure that everyone contributes their fair share to society and prevent wealth from being accumulated by a select few.
I'm Swedish personally and I wouldn't say that's necessarily true. For instance Sweden is currently moving right, although finding out the painful way that privatization and deregulation is not always easy or desirable.
The right mix is probably not a constant, but rather variable. Countries change over time and so by necessity must the government, the real trick is finding some way to prevent corruption and make government more efficient.
Almost all issues in politics can be traced back to politicians and bureaucrats representing themselves rather then the people, which to be fair is human nature, and is something that has to be properly compensated for.
Aren't practically all higher level politicians rich in the US?
Anyhow your definitions are out of whack.
Republic and Democratic are not mutually exclusive. What you used to have is a Democratic Republic, what you have now is an Oligarchic Republic although I think you could make a good case for that you've -always- had an Oligarchic Republic. Notice how practically all the US presidents came from the same few families?
Since you seem to be confused I'll explain what these words mean.
Democracy: Everyone has an equal vote
Oligarchy: Only a select few can hold political power
Republic: Offices are not inherited
Monarchy: Offices are inherited
Indeed, almost all industrialised countries have always been somewhere between, it's funny how heated arguments can get about jumping a few inches on the long line.
I think it's fairly ignorant to blame all of the US's current issues on entitlements however. The country is also paying for an army big enough to fight the rest of the world at once that's busy waging two simultaneous wars while it's government is deadlocked into a position where it can neither raise taxes nor lower expenditure(Since you can't politically survive lowering the military or entitlement budgets).
And even disregarding the sorry state of the US government budget, the wealth discrepancy in the US appears to have been growing consistently for over half a century which shows that if there are too much entitlements, they don't appear to be going to the poor.
"Bitcoins are about as easy to steal as the contents of many commercial US bank accounts today, ie they are vulnerable to malware. The existing banking system hasn't solved this consistently, see Krebs on Security for an endless stream of stories about e-banking thefts. The difference is that Bitcoin has a bunch of features that can be used to make effective security, like multi-signed coins. It allows you to lock up coins such that n-of-m signatures are required, eg, from your PC and also your cell phone (2 factor authentication), or 2-of-3 for things like funds held by a group of business partners."
The banks are big enough to eat the losses due to theft (and can get very favourable insurance premiums) and has the power to hunt down anyone that steals a sizeable amount. You don't.
There's also the fact noted earlier that even if the bank loses money due to theft or destruction, you -still- have your money because of the guarantee.
"With regards to smart property, yes, it's kind of a sci-fi idea - but we are discussing alternatives to the existing, broken, semi-collapsed system aren't we? What do you expect, exactly? BTW to "collect the collateral" you can sell it again to a local buyer and take the funds. That 3rd party turns up and takes ownership of the car."
Nothing is particularly wrong with the way we handle loans as such, we're just at times lacking proper oversight.
The 3rd party doesn't have any ability to take -physical- ownership of the car, which is the entire point. What he has is a digital token that claims it is a car. What is he supposed to do with it? Suppose you didn't lie and the token can actually unlock your car and he jumps in and starts driving. Next second you call the police and call in a theft, he's now in prison and you get your car back because while he did have the keys to your car, he didn't have any legally binding contract.
Actual ownership is based on -physical- force backed up by a -physical- trusted agency. No amount of cryptography gets around that basic fact.
"Think about what you just wrote. Why do you have to worry about whether your savings will randomly vanish due to no fault of your own? You say that banks "provide the guarantee that any money you give them, is money you'll get back" and then immediately admit that this very limited guarantee is actually provided by the government, which pays for it with bonds, which tend to be bought by central banks that inflate the currency in order to do so. This framework of guarantees and regulations is only necessary because banks spend your money (loan it out), then turn around and claim via your bank balance that they didn't. "
The most fundamental reason to worry is theft, the most basic service the bank provides is that they'll keep your money safe and in return they get to use it until you want it back. Like many other things Bitcoin doesn't do much to alter this relationship since stealing Bitcoins is easy (It made the headlines of Slashdot a while ago when a fortune of Bitcoin was stolen).
"Bitcoin solves this problem by letting you be your own bank."
You don't -want- to be your own bank, because that's risky. You could try to insure the risk, but at that point you've basically made the insurance company your bank again.
"The other problem with living a cash-based life is that currencies inflate pretty fast. In the west we tend to think we have it good because we see only a compounded 2-4% inflation rate, but in some countries like Russia it is as high as 10% or even higher. All of these rates are pretty huge measured over a lifetime. Bitcoin is designed to enforce limited inflation. Right now its inflation rate is also very high (it's actually hyperinflating) but that rate is also fairly predictable over the long run."
What you want from a currency is stability. Bitcoin isn't designed to enforce limited inflation, it's designed to be scarce. Specifically, it's designed to -deflate-. And that's the -worst- thing a currency can do, the reason that we have 2-4% inflation in most countries is because the government is keeping the inflation up on purpose to combat deflation.
What Bitcoin is doing is not hyperinflation, it's hyperdeflation. It's making people invest in the coins themselves which is ludicrous, it makes Bitcoin into a goods rather then a currency.
In fact Bitcoin is also extremely volatile, having no mechanisms whatsoever to keep the value stable, which is the purpose of the Central Bank. The Bitcoin wiki states this themselves:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Ideal_Properties_of_Digital_Commodities
"Another criticism of a Bitcoin economy I see is that without banks, credit would be harder to obtain. But that isn't necessarily true. Minimizing trust through cryptography increases competition, and why not for credit as well? Think about how using smart property as collateral for a loan can bring about a quantum leap in the competitiveness of the credit markets."
Smart property has the following issues.
1) It will never get implemented
2) There exists no method to verify the value of the collateral (All you get is data signed by a key created by a car company, if the key still is in the car or ever was is not something you can verify cryptographically)
3) There exists no method to collect the collateral. (You gain ownership over a Bitcoin token with no verifiable connection to the real world)
4) There exists no method to verify the trustworthiness of the debtor.
I'm not sure if I'd call it easily. The way I understood your interview was like this.
1) Terrorists attack
2) Government responds by shifting almost the entire white-collar FBI force over to tracing Terrorist funds
3) Largest recession and Economic Fraud of the century hits
4) FBI now has less then a tenth of the manpower necessary to investigate
5) The government now has to choose between
A) Stop tracing terrorist funds in order to investigate white collar crime instead
B) Find the budget to massively expand FBI manpower in the middle of massive budget wars
C) Ignore the issue
They seem to have chosen C.
Though Margaret used TINA when talking about the basic underlying system (Contrasting Liberalism against Protectionism and Communism). I don't think anyone has seriously tried to say that there are no alternatives within the implementation of a liberal economic system.
It's easy enough to say that Freeish Capitalism in the generalized sense has succeeded better then any other system, but it's pretty damn hard to make the case that the current implementation of it is the only one possible, especially since every country does it differently.