Why do I get a lunch break? The unions require it.
A whole bunch of employees are not unionized. Does it mean they don't get a lunch break? If you claim that, it doesn't match the reality.
Do you think that if we eliminate minimum wage employers would cut wages and hire more people or would they just cut wages?
In majority of industries nothing will happen. Already the minimum wage is paid only to a miniscule percentage of employees. Most people earn far more than that. Why doesn't the company cut their wages to the minimum right now? Why the CEO of BofA doesn't work for the minimum wage? Once you answer that question you also answer your own one.
The only group of people who are in any way affected by the minimum wage law are essentially young, unskilled workers who are willing to do very simple and pretty easy jobs. Everyone else has already negotiated the price of their own labor and is not going to trade down unless there is a good market reason to do so. A good number of states don't even have minimum wage laws; how do they manage to survive, I wonder? (even though it's South, there shouldn't be many slaves left there by now:-) This proves that the minimum wage law is at best irrelevant and at worst it suppresses economic activity at its lowest level.
Let me illustrate further. Let's imagine that the Congress raises the minimum wage to $500 per hour. To do better than that you need to win a lottery, or something. Any employer caught paying less than that will go to jail. What will happen next? Do I need to spell it out?
It is right if you see it this way: when you drive you must be able to cover the damage that you may inflict upon others. It doesn't matter if you take it all from your pocket, or if someone else pays for you (and you then pay them, little by little) - it's all up to you to arrange for that; but you must have the money available if you ever need it.
If you can't afford to cover the damage at all then you shouldn't be driving. Other people expect you to be responsible for your mistake if you accidentally make one.
If I pay a man quarter a day, but charge a dollar for the food he eats, he can never be free.
The current system pays him nothing per day, but still charges a dollar for the food. How is it better?
Besides, as long as the worker is free to move about he is also free to accept or reject bad deals. Imagine that it is legal for me to hire you for $1E-6 per day. Will you agree to work for me on these conditions? Remember, you are not a slave.
People (most of them) want to be useful and have control over their lives, so they accept the dole until they can find something better.
I disagree, technically - though I agree with the principle. It's just the idea != reality. Even though most people are born with desire to be useful, this desire fades fast in real life. To maintain that desire you need to enjoy your work, and it is possible only for few people - who just happen to be high value employees anyway, not at any risk of loss of a job. A sanitation worker will not be striving to work more just because his work helps people. He'd rather be fishing (not at work:-)
Dependency is addictive. There are technical and mental aspects. The technical ones are easy - find a job and lose your benefits, or have them cut. It is honorable to work, but it doesn't pay.
Mental blocks are also a problem. Try to not work for a year. You will even forget how it is to go to work. If you were a skilled worker then probably you aren't any more - your skills have faded.
There is also that gap on the resume. Sure, if you are applying for a job to mow lawns it's not a problem - you could be just out of prison and it's still "no questions asked." But many jobs are above that line, and being unemployed is a serious stigma. The problem is that this stigma in fact correlates with the quality of the employee (poor performers get laid off first) and because of that HR pays attention to it. So if you are an older guy (say, mid-30's) you have multiple hits against you. You require higher pay because you have experience (but HR doesn't care.) You are older and likely to need more medical leave. You have family. You are not as malleable into the company's culture. And finally you are jobless for a year. You will be picked last, unless you are really good (but then you won't be jobless to begin with.)
Go to europe and just talk to people
I was there, and it's worse than in the USA. I was always surprised how they manage to make ends meet, but Greece finally demonstrated that they don't. It's coming to the US of A.
I'm confused - what part of your own electrical consumtion could you possibly need a Smart Meter to understand?
The usage pattern is important. Your water heater's cycle depends on how much hot water you draw, and how do you know that? Your washing machine may heat water, but do you know how much energy it takes on different settings? It's not documented, and even the manufacturer can't tell you anything beyond the rated power of the heater. But that number is useless, you need to know the duty cycle too.
There are also devices that draw power all the time; more of them today than before. We leave computers running or in sleep mode; but how much power do they draw in those modes? The manual (what manual?) is silent about that. Then there are A/C systems that are controlled by thermostats and RH sensors; nobody can tell how much those fans and compressors and heaters draw until you measure.
There is probably a hundred devices in my home that are always powered (like remotely controllable wall switches, or UPS, or refrigerator, or garage door opener, or the automatic light outside, etc.) I do my best to know their power consumption, but I have a portable Kill-a-watt and I have one Brultech ECM-1240 too. So I don't need to guess.
Or if your meter knew the rate, it just needs to report a cost to the power company.
Yes, the meter knows the rate if it varies. Otherwise it's impossible to charge one price at 5:59am and another price at 6:00am. The communication from the meter to the station is not that fast. Modern meters (like GE's kv2c) are computers with DSP in them, Flash, optical I/O and tons of add-on interfaces. They are very sophisticated, and they are more than capable of calculating the costs.
You left out a very popular option: d)the company can use the additional income to buy its competitors, lay off thousands of workers, give consumers fewer choices and raise prices and profit margins.
Only the "buy its competitors" option requires money. The rest can be done (and is done) when the company is out of money.
Now if we focus on the "buy its competitors" - let's say Safeway bought and closed the "Mom & Pop Groceries." Mom & pop got $1M for their troubles, and they are now happily retired. What happened to the premises? They are vacant. Now what stops you or anyone else from opening another grocery store there? NOTHING.
In other words, when a company buys another company it creates a void in the market, and that void can be filled by newcomers. Such acquisitions are actually good for newcomers - the acquired company is out of circulation for a long time and probably forever; its product line is history; its management team is reshuffled, in golden handcuffs, and probably counting minutes until they can quit. I went through an acquisition of such sort, and it's very typical.
There used to be scores of companies making containers in the US. Now there are only a couple and just in the past few years half of them were bought up by an outfit in New Zealand.
The answer to that is very simple: the cost of doing business in the USA is not competitive. You can open a company and you can make a container, but it will cost more than a Chinese or NZ container. So you don't even need to try; it's a dead end.
And if you ask why it is so, the cost of doing business depends primarily on local salaries and taxes. Draw your own conclusions. If you don't believe them, open a company, start making containers, and become rich. If you can.
There are only few types of businesses that are still viable in the USA. Local services are #1 among them - you can't outsource your doctor or your water supply. Then there are companies with unique products and high barrier of entry (like Intel and AMD and Boeing.) Then they are companies working for Pentagon - they have clearances and they employ citizens; this can't be outsourced. There are startups who are too small to move to China. The rest... they are doing the balancing act right now, doing their best to not keel over. But outsourcing and transfer of operations overseas in those companies is going at full speed, and most of them already have established centers of operations in Asia.
I don't find that Bill Gates being rich as hell actually impacts my life in any real way.
It actually does impact your life, in a positive way. Rich people don't usually spend all their money on buying jewelry and paintings and mansions on hills. Most of the money is invested. It means they lent their money to other entrepreneurs and businesses so that they can hire people like me and you, and give us jobs.
But we got shafted instead of getting rich, with a tiny minority harvesting all the fruits of our labors.
What stops you from joining that "tiny majority"? C*Os are not in a hereditary guild. I'm sure you can buy a failing garage and within a few years turn it into a top notch nation-wide dealership chain. Once you do that you will be a player in the next round of jobs.
I'm not bashing on meter readers by the way, I was just using it as an example. I'm sure current smart readers have some flaws (like privacy) and have a ways to go.
Most households in the USA have meters outside, available not just to meter readers but to anyone who cares to see how fast it spins (or counts, nowadays.) With binoculars you can see that across the street if you want. Even if we assume for a moment that you consider your power consumption a private thing (which is your right, BTW) the chance of anyone learning that accidentally is zero. And if someone wants this data, he will get it one way or another, as I just illustrated.
So IMO it doesn't matter if the reader is smart or not. If you want privacy of the meter you need to cover and lock it, so that only authorized people can have access to them. In doing so you will discover that smart meters are much better in this aspect because they *can* be placed under opaque covers, locked in sheds, etc. etc. and they will still be readable.
No, we have a duty to maintain a functional society.
Perhaps so. But how do you define a functional society? That's the first problem right here.
With hyper-capitalism things are at least black and white. The machinery is simple. Put a ball on top of a hill and release; it will roll downhill, one way or another. That's capitalism. It works (for a certain, limited definition of "works.") We understand it.
But now look at the society. It's far more complex. So far not a single person managed to come up with a working idea about how to "organize" it. Last time it was Lenin who tried; he failed, of course. The problem is that the society is inherently unstable. Take any arbitrarily small group of people (larger than one,) and some will be working more and better, and other will be working less. We may with the same success proclaim that it's a universal right of every man and woman to levitate themselves. It doesn't make it so.
Nations all over the world are using capitalism simply because it keeps things under control. The truth of the matter is that the society can't be controlled by anything except a threat of death (and even that is not enough, see "crime.") Capitalism uses the death threat to force you to work (or else you can't buy food or shelter.) Whenever this threat is removed the society starts falling apart - some people decide that they don't need to work that hard, since someone else will provide them with food and shelter. This, of course, ends up with nobody working and everyone consuming. This is why USSR fell - not because of Reagan but simply because the shelves in stores were empty. This gave the politicians the bait with which they took local power. And why the shelves were empty? Because nobody worked hard; why would anyone do that if you don't have to?
I would be all for building that functional society of yours. I don't like street crime any more than you do. But there is just no obvious way to get there from here. Sometimes I fear that the society of humans has no future, so self-destructive it is. Evolution created us as wild animals, and wild animals we largely remain.
I spoze that's easier than cleaning the harmonics out of your tower and keeping your transmissions out of the TV bands
The problem is that many of these harmonics are created not in the transmitter but in your antenna and your receiver - because not every manufacturer does a good job. Nothing that he transmits can fix that.
Is your assertion supposed to be true because you made the font bold?
His assertion is unconditionally true. If a resource costs next to nothing it promotes its use. If a man-hour costs me 0.001 cent I will hire 100 workers to trim my lawn with manicure scissors, one blade of grass at a time, under the magnifying glass.
Just think if you had access to unlimited pool of free workers, even though they are low-skilled, what could you do with them? How about building hydro power stations all over the world? That sure is good. Or making solar panels for free, or mining copper for free, or...
The big problem is the minimum hourly salary that is set by the government. Many jobs don't deserve it, and then the job is not contracted out. The needy worker has no job and the willing purchaser of the service keeps his money because the law doesn't allow them to strike a deal. Where is the free market here?
Mr. Solzhenitsyn never got a talk. It was straight to the Gulag for him.
You are mixing centuries here. Solzhenitsyn was sent to GULag by Stalin, in 1945 (for his criticism of Stalin.) He was released and acquitted in 1953. He started writing while in prison.
His conflict with the USSR's establishment (not just KGB) really began in 1963. But he was not arrested, though KGB watched him and stole some of his papers. Solzhenitsyn protested, with no success. All this "invisible war" lasted 10 years, with all sides being perfectly aware of each other. In 1974 his case was discussed by the Politburo (not KGB) and the decision was made to cancel his citizenship and eject him from the country. He was picked up, loaded into an airplane and shipped to Germany, all in two days.
To suggest that [...] the double jeopardy prosecution of Khordorkhovsky is not political is to be dishonest.
Then don't suggest that:-) I certainly don't. Khordorkhovsky is a political prisoner. Bit I think he deserved the punishment.
A whole literary genre was created - alternative history - where some historical event gets added, changed, or doesn't happen at all. What would the Europe look like today if a certain Austrian-born German politician instead of getting a 5-year slap on the wrist is executed? Would we all be better off, or not? Is it even moral to entertain such a possibility if you could do it? Insert references to Crime and Punishment and The Demons as appropriate. Add Larry Niven's Ringworld too, for a good measure - Pak Protectors were genetically unable to sacrifice a few to save many, and Teela Brown had a good chance to "protect" everyone into extinction.
There are lots of examples in recent history. Take Lenin, for example. The Czar designated him a political enemy, but didn't imprison. The Czar was soft on the enemies (his own and his country's.) So Lenin proceeded escaping from Siberia and destroying the empire. Later Stalin was widely seen as a dangerous politician, but he wasn't doing anything bad (yet) so he was allowed to keep the reins. Then he was unstoppable. And I already mentioned the one that is not to be mentioned.
The problem here is caused by the fact that nations are not protected by the police. You and I, as citizens, are; if someone threatens us we can talk to the police, and [theoretically] the police will take care of that. But imagine that you, as the USA, are threatened by a rogue operative called Osama. Assume that you don't have a court-ready proof that Osama killed anyone or even ordered killing of anyone (I don't know what kind of proof they have.) Can you call your police and complain? No. You have to deal with the problem yourself, using any usable means.
A guy called Salvador Allende didn't pay attention to ramblings of his employee, general Pinochet. Shortly he paid for that with his life, and his country was drowned in blood. [Note that political debates are irrelevant after the first shot is fired.] Putin didn't want, nor could afford, a similar scenario. He took the threat out. What would you do in his place?
Part of the point of free software is that there are lots of repositories, and anyone who wants to create their own can do so.
A single set of repositories of precompiled binaries doesn't forbid you from creating your own software, your own repositories, or pulling stuff from other repositories. In Windows terms, they are creating a huge, replicated network drive with all the software that is approved for government use. Most of it will be F/OSS, but some will be licensed to the government (like expensive CAD tools,) and its use will be necessarily restricted by license owners.
This is not any different from the way things are done in the corporate world in the USA.
And how is Khodorkhovski different from our own Bernard Madoff? Both who have have bilked many many people for their billions of moolah?
Khodorkhovski was worse. Madoff would only take your money. Khodorkhovski wanted to rule over you. That's the difference.
It's a long story, but if we keep it short, Khodorkhovski had political ambitions, had no constraints in how to implement them, and had infinite amount of money to do it all with. He wanted political power just because he was rich. (and how he got rich is yet another story.)
Normally when a man wants political power he runs for office, and people decide if he is really that good. Khodorkhovski wanted to bypass all that, and in the style of Yeltsin get direct access to the government. He heeded no warnings.
Needless to say, such a power struggle, with resources that oil baron Khodorkhovski was willing to throw into the ring, could not be allowed. Khodorkhovski was arrested and jailed. He is convicted for a most likely contrived crime - for stealing more oil that his oil company ever produced. His real crime is trying to interfere in politics - specifically, to bypass democracy and buy or force his way to power.
We also must understand that under Yeltsin magnates controlled most of the Russia, one way or another. When Putin came to power he had to dismantle this topmost rung of corruption. Many businessmen worked out a peace agreement, and they are still in business. Khodorkhovski was one of very few who were working against the elected President. By "working" I mean real bad things - it could be a military coup, or a nuke or two stolen and used for blackmail... that kind of a thing. On one hand, you can't jail a man because you *know* he is about to kill you; on the other hand, if you wait until he kills you it will be a tad late. And if it's not your life at stake but the whole country... one man is a small sacrifice for peace. So Khodorkhovski was arrested and jailed not for what he has done, but for what he was inevitably going to do.
It's called the FSB now, and they may well insert backdoors in code
Even KGB in worst times (70's-80's) wasn't that paranoid. There was no wholesale spying on people. In East Germany Erich Honecker did that; but in USSR KGB knew their foe, and the foe knew that. Everyone else lived their lives and didn't care about KGB. If you did something untoward KGB would actually summon you "for a talk" first, and only if you persist then harsher measures would be used.
honestly, not many people will go the LFS route and compile their whole system from scratch
RFL is not different from any other distribution in this aspect. If you have secrets worth keeping you will keep an airgap between your box and the Net. If you have a bit lower threshold of secrecy then you will compile your own binaries. And if you treat the box as "insecure" then you don't care what happens to your data, since it's not a secret [from the government.]
Well, in that case, companies who embrace automation will kill off the weaker companies who are too proud to adjust.
Yes, if the former company is just as large and has a good slice of the market. But if not, the stupid and large company goes on, and you - a small startup that does things a zillion times better - may be acquired, just to be plugged into a defunct system and be absorbed with no trace.
Anyway, this is where startups have lots of value. They can develop technologies that giants can't even afford to think about. And those startups can nicely profit if they are acquired.
He is sitting in solitary confinement for over 200 days now
He signed up for all the hardships of military service. Other guys can be ordered to sit 200 days under water; yet other guys can be sent to their death if the mission is worth it. They can have their arms and legs torn off by IEDs. He is lucky in comparison.
23 hours a day he is alone, he is explicitely forbidden to sleep or exercise during the day, he is given 1 hour of 'exercise time', when he can walk around in a circle for that one hour.
Slashdot is not a proper forum to seek pity about such things. How many slashdotters exercise for one hour in a month? How many walk for one hour even?
Slashdot Mirror
Why do I get a lunch break? The unions require it.
A whole bunch of employees are not unionized. Does it mean they don't get a lunch break? If you claim that, it doesn't match the reality.
Do you think that if we eliminate minimum wage employers would cut wages and hire more people or would they just cut wages?
In majority of industries nothing will happen. Already the minimum wage is paid only to a miniscule percentage of employees. Most people earn far more than that. Why doesn't the company cut their wages to the minimum right now? Why the CEO of BofA doesn't work for the minimum wage? Once you answer that question you also answer your own one.
The only group of people who are in any way affected by the minimum wage law are essentially young, unskilled workers who are willing to do very simple and pretty easy jobs. Everyone else has already negotiated the price of their own labor and is not going to trade down unless there is a good market reason to do so. A good number of states don't even have minimum wage laws; how do they manage to survive, I wonder? (even though it's South, there shouldn't be many slaves left there by now :-) This proves that the minimum wage law is at best irrelevant and at worst it suppresses economic activity at its lowest level.
Let me illustrate further. Let's imagine that the Congress raises the minimum wage to $500 per hour. To do better than that you need to win a lottery, or something. Any employer caught paying less than that will go to jail. What will happen next? Do I need to spell it out?
It is right if you see it this way: when you drive you must be able to cover the damage that you may inflict upon others. It doesn't matter if you take it all from your pocket, or if someone else pays for you (and you then pay them, little by little) - it's all up to you to arrange for that; but you must have the money available if you ever need it.
If you can't afford to cover the damage at all then you shouldn't be driving. Other people expect you to be responsible for your mistake if you accidentally make one.
You just got forced into supporting the car insurance industry.
You don't have to have a car insurance; instead you can post a certain sum of money with DMV and it will be all legal.
If I pay a man quarter a day, but charge a dollar for the food he eats, he can never be free.
The current system pays him nothing per day, but still charges a dollar for the food. How is it better?
Besides, as long as the worker is free to move about he is also free to accept or reject bad deals. Imagine that it is legal for me to hire you for $1E-6 per day. Will you agree to work for me on these conditions? Remember, you are not a slave.
People (most of them) want to be useful and have control over their lives, so they accept the dole until they can find something better.
I disagree, technically - though I agree with the principle. It's just the idea != reality. Even though most people are born with desire to be useful, this desire fades fast in real life. To maintain that desire you need to enjoy your work, and it is possible only for few people - who just happen to be high value employees anyway, not at any risk of loss of a job. A sanitation worker will not be striving to work more just because his work helps people. He'd rather be fishing (not at work :-)
Dependency is addictive. There are technical and mental aspects. The technical ones are easy - find a job and lose your benefits, or have them cut. It is honorable to work, but it doesn't pay.
Mental blocks are also a problem. Try to not work for a year. You will even forget how it is to go to work. If you were a skilled worker then probably you aren't any more - your skills have faded.
There is also that gap on the resume. Sure, if you are applying for a job to mow lawns it's not a problem - you could be just out of prison and it's still "no questions asked." But many jobs are above that line, and being unemployed is a serious stigma. The problem is that this stigma in fact correlates with the quality of the employee (poor performers get laid off first) and because of that HR pays attention to it. So if you are an older guy (say, mid-30's) you have multiple hits against you. You require higher pay because you have experience (but HR doesn't care.) You are older and likely to need more medical leave. You have family. You are not as malleable into the company's culture. And finally you are jobless for a year. You will be picked last, unless you are really good (but then you won't be jobless to begin with.)
Go to europe and just talk to people
I was there, and it's worse than in the USA. I was always surprised how they manage to make ends meet, but Greece finally demonstrated that they don't. It's coming to the US of A.
I'm confused - what part of your own electrical consumtion could you possibly need a Smart Meter to understand?
The usage pattern is important. Your water heater's cycle depends on how much hot water you draw, and how do you know that? Your washing machine may heat water, but do you know how much energy it takes on different settings? It's not documented, and even the manufacturer can't tell you anything beyond the rated power of the heater. But that number is useless, you need to know the duty cycle too.
There are also devices that draw power all the time; more of them today than before. We leave computers running or in sleep mode; but how much power do they draw in those modes? The manual (what manual?) is silent about that. Then there are A/C systems that are controlled by thermostats and RH sensors; nobody can tell how much those fans and compressors and heaters draw until you measure.
There is probably a hundred devices in my home that are always powered (like remotely controllable wall switches, or UPS, or refrigerator, or garage door opener, or the automatic light outside, etc.) I do my best to know their power consumption, but I have a portable Kill-a-watt and I have one Brultech ECM-1240 too. So I don't need to guess.
Or if your meter knew the rate, it just needs to report a cost to the power company.
Yes, the meter knows the rate if it varies. Otherwise it's impossible to charge one price at 5:59am and another price at 6:00am. The communication from the meter to the station is not that fast. Modern meters (like GE's kv2c) are computers with DSP in them, Flash, optical I/O and tons of add-on interfaces. They are very sophisticated, and they are more than capable of calculating the costs.
You left out a very popular option: d)the company can use the additional income to buy its competitors, lay off thousands of workers, give consumers fewer choices and raise prices and profit margins.
Only the "buy its competitors" option requires money. The rest can be done (and is done) when the company is out of money.
Now if we focus on the "buy its competitors" - let's say Safeway bought and closed the "Mom & Pop Groceries." Mom & pop got $1M for their troubles, and they are now happily retired. What happened to the premises? They are vacant. Now what stops you or anyone else from opening another grocery store there? NOTHING.
In other words, when a company buys another company it creates a void in the market, and that void can be filled by newcomers. Such acquisitions are actually good for newcomers - the acquired company is out of circulation for a long time and probably forever; its product line is history; its management team is reshuffled, in golden handcuffs, and probably counting minutes until they can quit. I went through an acquisition of such sort, and it's very typical.
There used to be scores of companies making containers in the US. Now there are only a couple and just in the past few years half of them were bought up by an outfit in New Zealand.
The answer to that is very simple: the cost of doing business in the USA is not competitive. You can open a company and you can make a container, but it will cost more than a Chinese or NZ container. So you don't even need to try; it's a dead end.
And if you ask why it is so, the cost of doing business depends primarily on local salaries and taxes. Draw your own conclusions. If you don't believe them, open a company, start making containers, and become rich. If you can.
There are only few types of businesses that are still viable in the USA. Local services are #1 among them - you can't outsource your doctor or your water supply. Then there are companies with unique products and high barrier of entry (like Intel and AMD and Boeing.) Then they are companies working for Pentagon - they have clearances and they employ citizens; this can't be outsourced. There are startups who are too small to move to China. The rest... they are doing the balancing act right now, doing their best to not keel over. But outsourcing and transfer of operations overseas in those companies is going at full speed, and most of them already have established centers of operations in Asia.
I don't find that Bill Gates being rich as hell actually impacts my life in any real way.
It actually does impact your life, in a positive way. Rich people don't usually spend all their money on buying jewelry and paintings and mansions on hills. Most of the money is invested. It means they lent their money to other entrepreneurs and businesses so that they can hire people like me and you, and give us jobs.
But we got shafted instead of getting rich, with a tiny minority harvesting all the fruits of our labors.
What stops you from joining that "tiny majority"? C*Os are not in a hereditary guild. I'm sure you can buy a failing garage and within a few years turn it into a top notch nation-wide dealership chain. Once you do that you will be a player in the next round of jobs.
I'm not bashing on meter readers by the way, I was just using it as an example. I'm sure current smart readers have some flaws (like privacy) and have a ways to go.
Most households in the USA have meters outside, available not just to meter readers but to anyone who cares to see how fast it spins (or counts, nowadays.) With binoculars you can see that across the street if you want. Even if we assume for a moment that you consider your power consumption a private thing (which is your right, BTW) the chance of anyone learning that accidentally is zero. And if someone wants this data, he will get it one way or another, as I just illustrated.
So IMO it doesn't matter if the reader is smart or not. If you want privacy of the meter you need to cover and lock it, so that only authorized people can have access to them. In doing so you will discover that smart meters are much better in this aspect because they *can* be placed under opaque covers, locked in sheds, etc. etc. and they will still be readable.
No, we have a duty to maintain a functional society.
Perhaps so. But how do you define a functional society? That's the first problem right here.
With hyper-capitalism things are at least black and white. The machinery is simple. Put a ball on top of a hill and release; it will roll downhill, one way or another. That's capitalism. It works (for a certain, limited definition of "works.") We understand it.
But now look at the society. It's far more complex. So far not a single person managed to come up with a working idea about how to "organize" it. Last time it was Lenin who tried; he failed, of course. The problem is that the society is inherently unstable. Take any arbitrarily small group of people (larger than one,) and some will be working more and better, and other will be working less. We may with the same success proclaim that it's a universal right of every man and woman to levitate themselves. It doesn't make it so.
Nations all over the world are using capitalism simply because it keeps things under control. The truth of the matter is that the society can't be controlled by anything except a threat of death (and even that is not enough, see "crime.") Capitalism uses the death threat to force you to work (or else you can't buy food or shelter.) Whenever this threat is removed the society starts falling apart - some people decide that they don't need to work that hard, since someone else will provide them with food and shelter. This, of course, ends up with nobody working and everyone consuming. This is why USSR fell - not because of Reagan but simply because the shelves in stores were empty. This gave the politicians the bait with which they took local power. And why the shelves were empty? Because nobody worked hard; why would anyone do that if you don't have to?
I would be all for building that functional society of yours. I don't like street crime any more than you do. But there is just no obvious way to get there from here. Sometimes I fear that the society of humans has no future, so self-destructive it is. Evolution created us as wild animals, and wild animals we largely remain.
I spoze that's easier than cleaning the harmonics out of your tower and keeping your transmissions out of the TV bands
The problem is that many of these harmonics are created not in the transmitter but in your antenna and your receiver - because not every manufacturer does a good job. Nothing that he transmits can fix that.
Is your assertion supposed to be true because you made the font bold?
His assertion is unconditionally true. If a resource costs next to nothing it promotes its use. If a man-hour costs me 0.001 cent I will hire 100 workers to trim my lawn with manicure scissors, one blade of grass at a time, under the magnifying glass.
Just think if you had access to unlimited pool of free workers, even though they are low-skilled, what could you do with them? How about building hydro power stations all over the world? That sure is good. Or making solar panels for free, or mining copper for free, or...
The big problem is the minimum hourly salary that is set by the government. Many jobs don't deserve it, and then the job is not contracted out. The needy worker has no job and the willing purchaser of the service keeps his money because the law doesn't allow them to strike a deal. Where is the free market here?
Mr. Solzhenitsyn never got a talk. It was straight to the Gulag for him.
You are mixing centuries here. Solzhenitsyn was sent to GULag by Stalin, in 1945 (for his criticism of Stalin.) He was released and acquitted in 1953. He started writing while in prison.
His conflict with the USSR's establishment (not just KGB) really began in 1963. But he was not arrested, though KGB watched him and stole some of his papers. Solzhenitsyn protested, with no success. All this "invisible war" lasted 10 years, with all sides being perfectly aware of each other. In 1974 his case was discussed by the Politburo (not KGB) and the decision was made to cancel his citizenship and eject him from the country. He was picked up, loaded into an airplane and shipped to Germany, all in two days.
All this is available here, for example.
To suggest that [...] the double jeopardy prosecution of Khordorkhovsky is not political is to be dishonest.
Then don't suggest that :-) I certainly don't. Khordorkhovsky is a political prisoner. Bit I think he deserved the punishment.
A whole literary genre was created - alternative history - where some historical event gets added, changed, or doesn't happen at all. What would the Europe look like today if a certain Austrian-born German politician instead of getting a 5-year slap on the wrist is executed? Would we all be better off, or not? Is it even moral to entertain such a possibility if you could do it? Insert references to Crime and Punishment and The Demons as appropriate. Add Larry Niven's Ringworld too, for a good measure - Pak Protectors were genetically unable to sacrifice a few to save many, and Teela Brown had a good chance to "protect" everyone into extinction.
There are lots of examples in recent history. Take Lenin, for example. The Czar designated him a political enemy, but didn't imprison. The Czar was soft on the enemies (his own and his country's.) So Lenin proceeded escaping from Siberia and destroying the empire. Later Stalin was widely seen as a dangerous politician, but he wasn't doing anything bad (yet) so he was allowed to keep the reins. Then he was unstoppable. And I already mentioned the one that is not to be mentioned.
The problem here is caused by the fact that nations are not protected by the police. You and I, as citizens, are; if someone threatens us we can talk to the police, and [theoretically] the police will take care of that. But imagine that you, as the USA, are threatened by a rogue operative called Osama. Assume that you don't have a court-ready proof that Osama killed anyone or even ordered killing of anyone (I don't know what kind of proof they have.) Can you call your police and complain? No. You have to deal with the problem yourself, using any usable means.
A guy called Salvador Allende didn't pay attention to ramblings of his employee, general Pinochet. Shortly he paid for that with his life, and his country was drowned in blood. [Note that political debates are irrelevant after the first shot is fired.] Putin didn't want, nor could afford, a similar scenario. He took the threat out. What would you do in his place?
Part of the point of free software is that there are lots of repositories, and anyone who wants to create their own can do so.
A single set of repositories of precompiled binaries doesn't forbid you from creating your own software, your own repositories, or pulling stuff from other repositories. In Windows terms, they are creating a huge, replicated network drive with all the software that is approved for government use. Most of it will be F/OSS, but some will be licensed to the government (like expensive CAD tools,) and its use will be necessarily restricted by license owners.
This is not any different from the way things are done in the corporate world in the USA.
And how is Khodorkhovski different from our own Bernard Madoff? Both who have have bilked many many people for their billions of moolah?
Khodorkhovski was worse. Madoff would only take your money. Khodorkhovski wanted to rule over you. That's the difference.
It's a long story, but if we keep it short, Khodorkhovski had political ambitions, had no constraints in how to implement them, and had infinite amount of money to do it all with. He wanted political power just because he was rich. (and how he got rich is yet another story.)
Normally when a man wants political power he runs for office, and people decide if he is really that good. Khodorkhovski wanted to bypass all that, and in the style of Yeltsin get direct access to the government. He heeded no warnings.
Needless to say, such a power struggle, with resources that oil baron Khodorkhovski was willing to throw into the ring, could not be allowed. Khodorkhovski was arrested and jailed. He is convicted for a most likely contrived crime - for stealing more oil that his oil company ever produced. His real crime is trying to interfere in politics - specifically, to bypass democracy and buy or force his way to power.
We also must understand that under Yeltsin magnates controlled most of the Russia, one way or another. When Putin came to power he had to dismantle this topmost rung of corruption. Many businessmen worked out a peace agreement, and they are still in business. Khodorkhovski was one of very few who were working against the elected President. By "working" I mean real bad things - it could be a military coup, or a nuke or two stolen and used for blackmail ... that kind of a thing. On one hand, you can't jail a man because you *know* he is about to kill you; on the other hand, if you wait until he kills you it will be a tad late. And if it's not your life at stake but the whole country ... one man is a small sacrifice for peace. So Khodorkhovski was arrested and jailed not for what he has done, but for what he was inevitably going to do.
Thus, there is no one that needs to be murdered/arrested/expelled.
The establishment in the USA has more options. For example, do you remember Dan Rather?
It's called the FSB now, and they may well insert backdoors in code
Even KGB in worst times (70's-80's) wasn't that paranoid. There was no wholesale spying on people. In East Germany Erich Honecker did that; but in USSR KGB knew their foe, and the foe knew that. Everyone else lived their lives and didn't care about KGB. If you did something untoward KGB would actually summon you "for a talk" first, and only if you persist then harsher measures would be used.
honestly, not many people will go the LFS route and compile their whole system from scratch
RFL is not different from any other distribution in this aspect. If you have secrets worth keeping you will keep an airgap between your box and the Net. If you have a bit lower threshold of secrecy then you will compile your own binaries. And if you treat the box as "insecure" then you don't care what happens to your data, since it's not a secret [from the government.]
It might have something to do with not wanting to be dependent on US closed source technology. Or free of suspected back doors.
Don't forget the Stuxnet.
Well, in that case, companies who embrace automation will kill off the weaker companies who are too proud to adjust.
Yes, if the former company is just as large and has a good slice of the market. But if not, the stupid and large company goes on, and you - a small startup that does things a zillion times better - may be acquired, just to be plugged into a defunct system and be absorbed with no trace.
Anyway, this is where startups have lots of value. They can develop technologies that giants can't even afford to think about. And those startups can nicely profit if they are acquired.
He is sitting in solitary confinement for over 200 days now
He signed up for all the hardships of military service. Other guys can be ordered to sit 200 days under water; yet other guys can be sent to their death if the mission is worth it. They can have their arms and legs torn off by IEDs. He is lucky in comparison.
23 hours a day he is alone, he is explicitely forbidden to sleep or exercise during the day, he is given 1 hour of 'exercise time', when he can walk around in a circle for that one hour.
Slashdot is not a proper forum to seek pity about such things. How many slashdotters exercise for one hour in a month? How many walk for one hour even?
One real hole in this security theater is trucks driving into the airport.
Do you think TSA would allow to store a few tons of flammable liquids in the airplane? So yes, trucks of course need to skip the TSA and go right in.