Funny, I thought libertarianism was about, well, liberty. Not business. But, then, I guess that's the difference between libertarianism-with-a-small-l and Libertarian-with-a-capital-L (as in Libertarian Party). IMO, big business is at least as much of a threat to liberty in the modern world as government. Personally, I don't give a damn whether I'm being trampled on by government or by insert-large-corporation-here, the effects are largely the same. (Unless you take it to the "men with guns" level, but, then, would the random large corporation even exist if the men with guns didn't declare it to?)
That said, I also agree with regulation of natural monopolies because it promotes liberty by preventing the monopoly holders from unfairly exploiting their position. Interestingly, note that you say that a prerequisite for you to support such regulation is that it doesn't interfere with business, while I support it precisely because it does interfere with (certain types of) business. Funny how often things work out that way, no?
Facetious, but perhaps closer to the truth than you think...
Many years ago, I needed to write an app to email a report in RTF format. (The client wanted to look at it in Word and this was long enough ago that Word and HTML didn't get along all that well yet.) Failing to find a good RTF spec, I dummied up a copy of the report in Word, saved it, and opened it in Notepad to reverse-engineer enough RTF to create the real reports. It wasn't difficult, but I discovered that, when doing tables, the structure looked something like:
new cell - reset all defaults - set font - set font color - set font size - set text justification - (the cell contents) - new cell - reset all defaults - set font - set font color - set font size - set text justification - (the cell contents) - new cell - reset all defaults...
Even when the font/color/size/justification were exactly the same through the entire table, it still reset them all to default, then set every attribute individually, for each and every cell. It's not as bad as doing it per-character, of course, but that sort of excessively overdone redundancy seems common in most documents produced by general-purpose "rich" editing tools.
and the tyranny of the majority will cease to be such a factor in society
Perhaps. But it could just as easily go the other way, with people taking great pains to ensure that they (appear to) conform perfectly to some bland ideal for fear that they might be indelibly branded a "deviant", and thus the tyranny of the majority grows even stronger.
Yes, and in 15 years, your daughter will probably know the answer to the question, too. Unfortunately, the thread will be long-since archived, so she'll have to answer it for you in person rather than posting a comment here.
Didn't you read any of the anti-D&D propaganda? They weren't trying to protect us from anything as innocent as our own imaginations - D&D was a real training program, intended to teach us to cast spells in real life and gently lead us into worshipping Satan!
*sigh* If only the truth of it had been that exciting...
Yup... There was a guy I went to college with, die-hard Republican, back when the Iran-Contra thing was hot. One of the left-wing groups on campus had a big rally one day to protest it and all the local news stations showed up. This guy rounded up a couple of his buddies and set up across the street to protest against lime jello.
Hundreds of people protesting a real issue on one side. Three loonies claiming lime Jello should be banned because it killed one of their mothers on the other side. Guess which way the TV cameras were pointed... (Hint: The Iran-Contra protesters were not happy about being ignored.)
What is your definition of "unbotrusive and unproblematic"? It seems that most/all copy-restriction schemes in current use on games are based on "you must have the game CD/DVD in the drive to play". Having to keep track of where all the CDs/DVDs are and futz with the drive every time I decide to play a different game is, IMO, obtrusive. Having to lug them all with me to a LAN party (and make sure they all get home with me again afterwards), as well as the possibility of the CD/DVD ultimately being scratched or otherwise damaged, is, IMO, problematic. Therefore, even if I am "contented with copy protection that's unbotrusive and unproblematic, none of the schemes in current, widespread use meet those criteria (unless I am able to readily obtain a nocd crack, but, then, that effectively disables the copy-restriction scheme, so it doesn't really qualify).
Since you asked... I live in Minnesota, which that site's data lists as receiving $0.10 less than New York per dollar paid in federal taxes. I'm sure that, in raw dollar amounts, NY is probably doing more to subsidize the rest of the country than MN, but we're paying more out proportionally.
Back on topic, you are right that the odds of a completely fair and just tax system coming out are about the same as pigs landing on the moon (without human assistance), but that still doesn't make overtaxing Peter to undertax Paul right. I must've missed the subthreads where you've said that you think telecommuters should pay less than those who are physically present, so my apologies for not realizing you'd already said it, but I do still believe that the accounting costs of trying to do a fair appraisal of telecommuting work in the general case would be unreasonably high and, to be fair, would have to be applied to all workers, telecommuting or not. e.g., I go in to work at the Minneapolis office, access an intranet server in New York, pull up a remote desktop off a server in Dallas, and then send mail through a company server in San Francisco. If there are telecommuting income taxes, then shouldn't they at least apply to that remote desktop connection in Texas, if not for all three states I touched? If not, why not? I'm making the exact same use of NY, TX, and CA resources by connecting to them from the MN office as if I were doing so from my home, 5 miles away. But if they are assessed, then we have an accounting nightmare, especially when some legislator in Iowa realizes that I'm using a router in Iowa to reach that server in Texas...
If "the company underpays taxes already", then the appropriate solution is to correct the company's tax rate, not to overtax anyone who happens to telecommute to the company.
Consider: If I telecommute to a NY company 10% of the time, then, even if your suggestion that I am using NY services is accepted at face value, I am only using them during 10% of my working hours. There is no justification for requiring me to pay NY taxes on the 90% of my working hours which are spent working with non-NY companies.
Consider further: While telecommuting to the NY company for that 10% of my working hours, I am using NY services at a far lower level than if I were a worker in NY - I'm not using the roads, fire department, police protection, etc. - and the services I am using are generally among the least expensive of the services provided by NY, therefore, telecommuting to NY for 10% of my hours costs NY far less than if I physically commuted there for those hours. It follows that, even on that 10% of my hours, I should be paying taxes at a far lower rate if I am telecommuting. Perhaps even at a rate so low that the cost of calculating and collecting the fair tax would be greater than the amount of that tax, in which case the tax should just be dropped to save money (both for me and for NY).
Unless, of course, you think NY should get a free lunch by charging out-of-state workers for services they're not in a position to make use of...
Walk into the back of a local fast-food joint. Grab an unopened case of napkins and walk out. When they stop you, try convincing them that "you give away napkins for free and you can't steal something that's free, therefore I can take all your napkins and it's not stealing."
Not a non-sequitur at all. You had stated that "But forbidding newspapers from publishing classified materials? Don't make me laugh! They shouldn't be doing that anyways, regardless of the terrorism threat." I replied that, if the government is breaking the law, then that is among the most important information for newspapers to publish, whether it's classified or not, using Watergate as an example.
My attempts to verify whether Watergate was a classified operation or not proved inconclusive, thanks to the noise introduced by countless articles comparing alleged current classified operations to Watergate, but my point still stands: If Watergate were classified, do you believe that it should have never been reported on because "[newspapers] shouldn't be [publishing classified materials] anyways, regardless of the terrorism threat"?
So, then, Nixon should have served out the remainder of his term without anyone knowing about Watergate?
If our government is acting illegally, then that is some of the most important information that the press needs to be able to publish - and it's almost certainly classified.
Personally, I am highly skeptical of the "the terrorists hate us because of our freedoms" theory, but, assuming it's correct... then aren't we giving them exactly what they want every time we expand the power of our government at the expense of personal liberties and freedoms?
No, I think it's because some of us were brought up to believe that, 30 years ago, it was wrong for the KGB to spy on their own citizens and it was wrong for the Soviet government to hold people without charges in secret prisons, and believe that, if the US government is doing it now, then it's just as wrong as it was when the Soviets did it. If anything, it's more wrong, given that I don't think the USSR ever claimed to be a beacon of freedom and democracy for all the world to emulate.
I intended it as a characterization of Gonzales' apparent attitude/beliefs, not a direct quote. I would be very surprised to find that he's actually said anything which even comes close to being that blatant of a statement that he believes the President's authority to trump that of the other two branches.
In essence, however... When he refuses to entertain the idea that it would be appropriate for NSA activities to be reviewed by the FISA court, despite it being a court which was set up to deal with exactly that sort of cases and should, therefore, have both the appropriate expertise and security clearances, simply because the executive branch is firmly convinced that the programs are legal, I have a hard time seeing that as anything other than a position that the executive branch is qualified to interpret the law and Constitution without consulting the judicial branch.
As far as inherent Constitutional authority of each branch, I agree that no branch has the power to do usurp the Constitutional powers of another branch. However, by unilaterally deciding which laws do and do not interfere with the President's Constitutional authority, the Bush administration is itself interfering with the Supreme Court's Constitutional authority to make that determination. Deciding which laws are Constitutional and which are not is not the executive branch's job, it's the judicial branch's.
Your quote is on rather a different matter... In Michigan "young adults and minors" (i.e., those who are younger than the minimum legal drinking age) "who are not driving" are required to submit to breathalyzer tests. This doesn't really say anything about whether people who are driving and are of legal drinking age are allowed to refuse such tests or not. It's targeted at underage drinking, not DWI/DUI.
Like other posters, I am vaguely aware that the authorities try to paint refusing a breathalyzer test as a Very, Very Bad Thing To Do, but I don't know how many states have actually made it a crime or what the resulting penalties would be.
the NSA's United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 (USSID 18) strictly prohibits the interception or collection of information about "...US persons, entities, corporations or organizations..." without explicit written legal permission from the Attorney General of the United States
Check that last bit again... "without explicit written legal permission from the Attorney General of the United States"
So the NSA is allowed to spy on US citizens, etc. if they get a note from the AG saying it's OK. Who's the AG again? Oh, yeah - Alberto "the President has the inherent Constitutional authority to ignore any law made by Congress which disagrees with his personal interpretation of his inherent Constitutional authority without needing to see whether the Supreme Court agrees or not" Gonzales.
If they need a note from the AG saying they can do whatever they damn well please, I'm sure he'd give it to them as soon as they asked (if he hasn't already).
Right or wrong, abortion is legal in (most of) the U.S. and the government should not take any action against those who seek to undertake acts which are legal.
I don't think that even Microsoft refers to that as "open source", even if it doesn't all fall under their definition of "shared source". Distributing proprietary software as source instead of binaries has been around a long time... Longer than either of the terms "Free Software" or "open source".
The thing I found most interesting about it was how many of the pro-snooping comments were extremely similar, if not verbatim identical. At least none of them claim to result from independent thought.
But wouldn't you say that it's important for us to know when our government is taking illegal actions in our names, regardless of the motives of the person who brings those activities to light?
Re:Pronouncing it as "sequel"...
on
SQL Cookbook
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· Score: 1
You know how stupid it sounds when someone pronounces Linux as "Line-uhx"?
It always amuses me when someone goes off on the pronunciation of "Linux"... Linus Torvalds pronounces it "lee-noox". Some years back, I saw a usenet post in which he was quoted as saying that, for natives of countries where his name would be pronounced "line-us", it is appropriate to pronounce it "line-ux".
And yet the people who are dogmatic about the "correct" pronunciation almost invariably insist that it must be pronounced "lin-nix" - the only one of the three major pronunciations that I have not heard of Torvalds explicitly endorsing.
(And, for the record, I say "ess cue ell", which is, incidentally, an abbreviation of SEQUEL, which was not "an entirely different... product", but rather the direct ancestor of SQL, according to the histories of SQL that I've read.)
...and yet most people pronounce "Linux" as "lin-nix" instead of "lee-noox". (I would transliterate the Swedish pronunciation of his name as "lee-noos" rather than "lee-nuss", as it's a long "u".)
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Funny, I thought libertarianism was about, well, liberty. Not business. But, then, I guess that's the difference between libertarianism-with-a-small-l and Libertarian-with-a-capital-L (as in Libertarian Party). IMO, big business is at least as much of a threat to liberty in the modern world as government. Personally, I don't give a damn whether I'm being trampled on by government or by insert-large-corporation-here, the effects are largely the same. (Unless you take it to the "men with guns" level, but, then, would the random large corporation even exist if the men with guns didn't declare it to?)
That said, I also agree with regulation of natural monopolies because it promotes liberty by preventing the monopoly holders from unfairly exploiting their position. Interestingly, note that you say that a prerequisite for you to support such regulation is that it doesn't interfere with business, while I support it precisely because it does interfere with (certain types of) business. Funny how often things work out that way, no?
"and minimise with an 's'. Learn to type English!"
You were saying?
Facetious, but perhaps closer to the truth than you think...
Many years ago, I needed to write an app to email a report in RTF format. (The client wanted to look at it in Word and this was long enough ago that Word and HTML didn't get along all that well yet.) Failing to find a good RTF spec, I dummied up a copy of the report in Word, saved it, and opened it in Notepad to reverse-engineer enough RTF to create the real reports. It wasn't difficult, but I discovered that, when doing tables, the structure looked something like:
new cell - reset all defaults - set font - set font color - set font size - set text justification - (the cell contents) - new cell - reset all defaults - set font - set font color - set font size - set text justification - (the cell contents) - new cell - reset all defaults...
Even when the font/color/size/justification were exactly the same through the entire table, it still reset them all to default, then set every attribute individually, for each and every cell. It's not as bad as doing it per-character, of course, but that sort of excessively overdone redundancy seems common in most documents produced by general-purpose "rich" editing tools.
and the tyranny of the majority will cease to be such a factor in society
Perhaps. But it could just as easily go the other way, with people taking great pains to ensure that they (appear to) conform perfectly to some bland ideal for fear that they might be indelibly branded a "deviant", and thus the tyranny of the majority grows even stronger.
I'm not sure which is the more likely outcome.
Yes, and in 15 years, your daughter will probably know the answer to the question, too. Unfortunately, the thread will be long-since archived, so she'll have to answer it for you in person rather than posting a comment here.
Didn't you read any of the anti-D&D propaganda? They weren't trying to protect us from anything as innocent as our own imaginations - D&D was a real training program, intended to teach us to cast spells in real life and gently lead us into worshipping Satan!
*sigh* If only the truth of it had been that exciting...
Yup... There was a guy I went to college with, die-hard Republican, back when the Iran-Contra thing was hot. One of the left-wing groups on campus had a big rally one day to protest it and all the local news stations showed up. This guy rounded up a couple of his buddies and set up across the street to protest against lime jello.
Hundreds of people protesting a real issue on one side. Three loonies claiming lime Jello should be banned because it killed one of their mothers on the other side. Guess which way the TV cameras were pointed... (Hint: The Iran-Contra protesters were not happy about being ignored.)
What is your definition of "unbotrusive and unproblematic"? It seems that most/all copy-restriction schemes in current use on games are based on "you must have the game CD/DVD in the drive to play". Having to keep track of where all the CDs/DVDs are and futz with the drive every time I decide to play a different game is, IMO, obtrusive. Having to lug them all with me to a LAN party (and make sure they all get home with me again afterwards), as well as the possibility of the CD/DVD ultimately being scratched or otherwise damaged, is, IMO, problematic. Therefore, even if I am "contented with copy protection that's unbotrusive and unproblematic, none of the schemes in current, widespread use meet those criteria (unless I am able to readily obtain a nocd crack, but, then, that effectively disables the copy-restriction scheme, so it doesn't really qualify).
Since you asked... I live in Minnesota, which that site's data lists as receiving $0.10 less than New York per dollar paid in federal taxes. I'm sure that, in raw dollar amounts, NY is probably doing more to subsidize the rest of the country than MN, but we're paying more out proportionally.
Back on topic, you are right that the odds of a completely fair and just tax system coming out are about the same as pigs landing on the moon (without human assistance), but that still doesn't make overtaxing Peter to undertax Paul right. I must've missed the subthreads where you've said that you think telecommuters should pay less than those who are physically present, so my apologies for not realizing you'd already said it, but I do still believe that the accounting costs of trying to do a fair appraisal of telecommuting work in the general case would be unreasonably high and, to be fair, would have to be applied to all workers, telecommuting or not. e.g., I go in to work at the Minneapolis office, access an intranet server in New York, pull up a remote desktop off a server in Dallas, and then send mail through a company server in San Francisco. If there are telecommuting income taxes, then shouldn't they at least apply to that remote desktop connection in Texas, if not for all three states I touched? If not, why not? I'm making the exact same use of NY, TX, and CA resources by connecting to them from the MN office as if I were doing so from my home, 5 miles away. But if they are assessed, then we have an accounting nightmare, especially when some legislator in Iowa realizes that I'm using a router in Iowa to reach that server in Texas...
If "the company underpays taxes already", then the appropriate solution is to correct the company's tax rate, not to overtax anyone who happens to telecommute to the company.
Consider: If I telecommute to a NY company 10% of the time, then, even if your suggestion that I am using NY services is accepted at face value, I am only using them during 10% of my working hours. There is no justification for requiring me to pay NY taxes on the 90% of my working hours which are spent working with non-NY companies.
Consider further: While telecommuting to the NY company for that 10% of my working hours, I am using NY services at a far lower level than if I were a worker in NY - I'm not using the roads, fire department, police protection, etc. - and the services I am using are generally among the least expensive of the services provided by NY, therefore, telecommuting to NY for 10% of my hours costs NY far less than if I physically commuted there for those hours. It follows that, even on that 10% of my hours, I should be paying taxes at a far lower rate if I am telecommuting. Perhaps even at a rate so low that the cost of calculating and collecting the fair tax would be greater than the amount of that tax, in which case the tax should just be dropped to save money (both for me and for NY).
Unless, of course, you think NY should get a free lunch by charging out-of-state workers for services they're not in a position to make use of...
Walk into the back of a local fast-food joint. Grab an unopened case of napkins and walk out. When they stop you, try convincing them that "you give away napkins for free and you can't steal something that's free, therefore I can take all your napkins and it's not stealing."
Good luck.
Not a non-sequitur at all. You had stated that "But forbidding newspapers from publishing classified materials? Don't make me laugh! They shouldn't be doing that anyways, regardless of the terrorism threat." I replied that, if the government is breaking the law, then that is among the most important information for newspapers to publish, whether it's classified or not, using Watergate as an example.
My attempts to verify whether Watergate was a classified operation or not proved inconclusive, thanks to the noise introduced by countless articles comparing alleged current classified operations to Watergate, but my point still stands: If Watergate were classified, do you believe that it should have never been reported on because "[newspapers] shouldn't be [publishing classified materials] anyways, regardless of the terrorism threat"?
Detecting Cylons is trivial: Have sex with them and see if their spines glow.
So, then, Nixon should have served out the remainder of his term without anyone knowing about Watergate?
If our government is acting illegally, then that is some of the most important information that the press needs to be able to publish - and it's almost certainly classified.
Personally, I am highly skeptical of the "the terrorists hate us because of our freedoms" theory, but, assuming it's correct... then aren't we giving them exactly what they want every time we expand the power of our government at the expense of personal liberties and freedoms?
No, I think it's because some of us were brought up to believe that, 30 years ago, it was wrong for the KGB to spy on their own citizens and it was wrong for the Soviet government to hold people without charges in secret prisons, and believe that, if the US government is doing it now, then it's just as wrong as it was when the Soviets did it. If anything, it's more wrong, given that I don't think the USSR ever claimed to be a beacon of freedom and democracy for all the world to emulate.
I intended it as a characterization of Gonzales' apparent attitude/beliefs, not a direct quote. I would be very surprised to find that he's actually said anything which even comes close to being that blatant of a statement that he believes the President's authority to trump that of the other two branches.
In essence, however... When he refuses to entertain the idea that it would be appropriate for NSA activities to be reviewed by the FISA court, despite it being a court which was set up to deal with exactly that sort of cases and should, therefore, have both the appropriate expertise and security clearances, simply because the executive branch is firmly convinced that the programs are legal, I have a hard time seeing that as anything other than a position that the executive branch is qualified to interpret the law and Constitution without consulting the judicial branch.
As far as inherent Constitutional authority of each branch, I agree that no branch has the power to do usurp the Constitutional powers of another branch. However, by unilaterally deciding which laws do and do not interfere with the President's Constitutional authority, the Bush administration is itself interfering with the Supreme Court's Constitutional authority to make that determination. Deciding which laws are Constitutional and which are not is not the executive branch's job, it's the judicial branch's.
Your quote is on rather a different matter... In Michigan "young adults and minors" (i.e., those who are younger than the minimum legal drinking age) "who are not driving" are required to submit to breathalyzer tests. This doesn't really say anything about whether people who are driving and are of legal drinking age are allowed to refuse such tests or not. It's targeted at underage drinking, not DWI/DUI.
Like other posters, I am vaguely aware that the authorities try to paint refusing a breathalyzer test as a Very, Very Bad Thing To Do, but I don't know how many states have actually made it a crime or what the resulting penalties would be.
the NSA's United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 (USSID 18) strictly prohibits the interception or collection of information about "...US persons, entities, corporations or organizations..." without explicit written legal permission from the Attorney General of the United States
Check that last bit again... "without explicit written legal permission from the Attorney General of the United States"
So the NSA is allowed to spy on US citizens, etc. if they get a note from the AG saying it's OK. Who's the AG again? Oh, yeah - Alberto "the President has the inherent Constitutional authority to ignore any law made by Congress which disagrees with his personal interpretation of his inherent Constitutional authority without needing to see whether the Supreme Court agrees or not" Gonzales.
If they need a note from the AG saying they can do whatever they damn well please, I'm sure he'd give it to them as soon as they asked (if he hasn't already).
Right or wrong, abortion is legal in (most of) the U.S. and the government should not take any action against those who seek to undertake acts which are legal.
I don't think that even Microsoft refers to that as "open source", even if it doesn't all fall under their definition of "shared source". Distributing proprietary software as source instead of binaries has been around a long time... Longer than either of the terms "Free Software" or "open source".
The thing I found most interesting about it was how many of the pro-snooping comments were extremely similar, if not verbatim identical. At least none of them claim to result from independent thought.
But wouldn't you say that it's important for us to know when our government is taking illegal actions in our names, regardless of the motives of the person who brings those activities to light?
You know how stupid it sounds when someone pronounces Linux as "Line-uhx"?
It always amuses me when someone goes off on the pronunciation of "Linux"... Linus Torvalds pronounces it "lee-noox". Some years back, I saw a usenet post in which he was quoted as saying that, for natives of countries where his name would be pronounced "line-us", it is appropriate to pronounce it "line-ux".
And yet the people who are dogmatic about the "correct" pronunciation almost invariably insist that it must be pronounced "lin-nix" - the only one of the three major pronunciations that I have not heard of Torvalds explicitly endorsing.
(And, for the record, I say "ess cue ell", which is, incidentally, an abbreviation of SEQUEL, which was not "an entirely different... product", but rather the direct ancestor of SQL, according to the histories of SQL that I've read.)
...and yet most people pronounce "Linux" as "lin-nix" instead of "lee-noox". (I would transliterate the Swedish pronunciation of his name as "lee-noos" rather than "lee-nuss", as it's a long "u".)