Sorry, your pistols and rifles are no match for the government's tanks, missiles, nukes, and whatever the fuck else they have and want to use on you.
So... why are we still in Afghanistan? Why did the Iraq war take so long? Why is there still a rebellion in Syria?
I generally support the Second Amendment. However, all the gun nuts going around and sucking the barrels of their guns like giant metal cocks hurts the movement as a whole.
I don't know about that. If you didn't have the gun nuts, the scale would slide until people like you are considered gun nuts. It's kind of like how Richard Stallman's view on software freedom is a bit insane, but we're better off for it overall because the people in the middle look more reasonable.
Yeah, gun nuts make me a bit nervous too, but if it wasn't for them, the government would be looking at making me turn in the rifles I inherited from my grandparents.
Modern can have two meanings. At the time of the French and American revolutions, the armies the rebels faced were the most modern armies in the world. Same with Vietnam.
As far as the outcome of the Vietnam war being determined in the U.S., that's only partly true. If we were fighting a traditional war (i.e. WWII or the U.S. Civil War) against the Vietnamese army, we'd have rolled right over them with our superior technology and numbers. We ended up fighting a guerilla war against a good chunk of the civilian population. The defenders always have an advantage in guerilla warfare. We did go home eventually because of pressure in the U.S. against the war, but we wouldn't have been there long enough for that pressure to build up if it were not for the armed populace we were fighting.
If you want recent conflicts, I'd look at the recent events in Lybia, Syria, and elsewhere in the middle east, as well as some of the rebellions in Africa and South America.
The ethical issues aren't our problem. What's ethical? Is it what God tells you? Is it listening to your conscience? Nietzsche would probably approve of this, and his view on ethics is popular among many with power. Maybe we can get someone with a PhD to tell us what Immanuel Kant would have thought of it.
I'm sure there's a forum for gun enthusiasts where people will discuss the technical details of how Kennedy was assasinated, and they will go into great detail about weapon specifications, accuracy, the pros and cons of different ammunition, etc. That doesn't mean they think you should go around shooting politicians.
If you want to talk about if it's right to do this, by all means make a post about it. Just don't be an asshole about it when people start talking about the actual methods and how they could be employed.
The AC never said anything hate-filled. He never said anything bigoted. He never said anything that bore the marks for ignorance, intolerance, or hatred. You said all that.
You're the one that seems to think antisemitism is the norm in the U.S. You're the one thinking jews are blamed for all the ills of the nation (silly me, I thought it was the Democrats, or the Republicans, or the financial industry, or etc. etc. etc.). You're the one who thinks we're only one step away from setting up concentration camps.
In other words, you're the one who's acting like a Zionist troll.
You seem to equate disliking Israel's policies with being a hate-filled bigoted troll. Well, I'm not hate-filled, bigoted, nor a troll, and I don't care for Israel's policies. Sure, they got the whole democracy thing down, which is good, and they have a decent record for civil rights as far as those they consider citizens (i.e. not palestinians), but hey - so does the U.S., and I don't like a lot of our policies either.
What we're sick of is the neverending "peace process" which is basically just Israel spinning its wheels and doing nothing about the status quo. You might like the status quo, but palestinians do not. You blame arab nations for not allowing palestinian refugees into their countries, but you hold blameless the country responsible for making them refugees in the first place. Israel can't even keep basic promises, like not building settlements in the West Bank. Israel shows no interest in the welfare of the palestinians.
That's what he meant by apartheid. If you can't see parallels there, you're blind.
Now, you're just going to say I'm just another troll (I'm not), and that I'm an antisemite (I'm not), and that I want a war against Israel (I don't), because you've got a chip on your shoulder the size of Syria. That's fine, I don't care. I'd like to think, though, that maybe, just maybe, you'd engage your brain and realize that just because some people don't suck off the "chosen of God" doesn't mean we want to slaughter them wholesale.
As things stand right now, no one owns anything in space that they didn't send up there. I may be wrong here, but it was my understanding the Outer Space Treaty stated that planets, asteroids, and pretty much everything else in space is not allowed to become private property or be claimed by any nation. There's nothing to stop some other organization or country from sending their own mining equipment up to the asteroid once it's put into place.
I'll be interested to see what becomes of this should this project become successful.
Yeah, it's got the Mississippi river on the east border, and the Missouri river running through it, but it's not hard at all to find land in Missouri that won't flood. A good chunk of the state is the Ozarks. The company mentioned is the article is based out of St. Louis, where there's certainly no lack of high ground.
In fact, most of the larger cities in Missouri are in hilly areas. There's not a whole not of Missouri that isn't hilly.
The flooding and busted levees you mention are all along rivers, which should be easy enough to avoid when you're looking for a place to put a reactor.
I've had a few. Yeah, I was a computer professional at the time, but these were systems I had at home. None of them ran Windows, sure, but they could have.
Power users like their computers powerful. I bought the first Tyan dual-proc board for the Athlon MP for my home desktop (which I ran until I replaced it with a dual-core Phenom system years later). Prior to that, I had a couple dual Pentium Pro systems and a dual Pentium II box. I've had a fair share of old Sun equipment with multiple processors as well. This is all home stuff, mind you - I'm not counting equipment I used for business purposes.
I seriously considered an 8-proc Supermicro motherboard when the capacitors died on my Tyan board. I opted out because I couldn't justify the cost of more than a quad-processor system, and multicore processors were making the whole thing pointless anyway.
These days, I just use a laptop and a few servers at home I tinker with. If I were still in my 20s, and had the money, I'd probably be typing this on that 8-socket Supermicro right now.
It was designed much for the same reasons the 8088 was designed - motherboards and the relevant chipsets were all 16 bit, so a company could save a bit of cash and development time and get an SX out there faster and cheaper than a DX.
Neither the SX nor the DX had a coprocessor. You could buy one and install it, if the board supported it - I never actually saw an Intel 80387 chip, but I saw a few clones.
The whole SX/DX thing got more confusing with the 486, since it didn't mean the same thing (SX chips were the same as DX but with the coprocessor disabled).
You could run Windows 3.0 on one of those. I've done it, and it worked all right.
As far as being useless, well, it really depends on what you're using it for. I mostly used it as a dumb terminal hooked to a Linux box, and my girlfriend at the time played DOS games on it. It worked well enough. I can't say speed was much of an issue for playing solitaire or old DOS games - it was more responsive than you'd think for an XT.
Granted, this was around '97 or so, so our expectations for speed were a lot different back then (2.0.30 kernel compiled on my 133MHz Cyrix box in about thirty minutes, for instance).
What do you see as the advantage of the ban over what we have now with the wholesale retail system for cell?
I'm not horribly familiar with the wholesale system, so I can't comment much on it. I prefer it because it matches the system I imagine for land lines.
Everyone I know uses a major carrier (AT&T with a couple on T-Mobile) these days. I remember Sprint used to not have any service outside my city limits. If that's changed, then good - there's no big deal then.
For landlines I agree there is a huge problem with LECs, but as you mentioned that's already regulated. Honestly I'm fine with the PSTN just being a legacy system rotting over the next generation. It simply lacks far too many capabilities.
Landlines aren't going away. Businesses will continue to use them, and people in rural areas need them for their modems, if nothing else.
For data service, wireless just can't compete with landlines. Voice services may be on their way out, but data service is booming, and will only get bigger.
Under the system I describe, the physical lines would be operated and maintained by one organization, be it a private company, cooperative, or local government utility. They wouldn't offer any service direct to the consumer, other than wiring and maintenance (interior wiring, for instance). Customers would sign up with whatever services they required, which would be provided over that line. The owner of the line would have to offer the same services and pricing to any service company that requests it. Service companies could offer any service they liked, as long as it would fit within the capabilities of the line service.
This allows more competition. You have to regulate the line owners, but the service companies can operate under free market rules. You might even be able to get around the whole net neutrality argument with it.
Right now, land line owners are required to allow "fair" access to other service providers, but the problem is that it's not in their best interest to do so, and they know it.
I had more points, but my truck just got loaded, so I gotta go.
Pretty much, in the sense that slavery and female oppression are symptoms of human behavor
Except they don't exist without laws that enforce them...
Seriously?
OK, slavery as a system requires some sort of legal structure. I'll grant you that. Slavery itself doesn't. You think a government is required to go kidnap some attractive girl and force her to be your wife, or just your sex puppet?
The opression of women is an even more stupid argument. It's cultural. Honor killings aren't legal pretty much anywhere, but they happen. The concept of "women's work" and "a woman's place" isn't a legal one. Laws may codify such behavior, but they don't cause it, except in a few rare exceptions like the Taliban's government in Afghanistan.
Discrimination against women is illegal in the U.S. except in a few certain areas, like the military. Why do women still get on average $.75 to every dollar a man makes? Hint: The government isn't causing it.
There's always going to be a bully and people who follow him, and then BAM! Instant dictator.
I'm all about not having dictators, but governments have been the most useful tool of dictators throughout history. When Hitler passed a law forbidding Jews to own guns in 1938, that was a government action. Then we have governments like the US supporting every dictator [lewrockwell.com] around since WWII.
Sure. Not all government is good. I never said it was. My point is that governments prevent the guy on the corner from ganging up with his neighbors and conquering your street.
Face it. You're going to have a government, because if there isn't one, someone's going to make one, and he's going to make you subject to it. You can be a U.S. citizen, or a subject of King Bob's Pine Street Mauraders.
Get rid of the government, and you'll find yourself needing to solve a lot of problems.
No doubt. But laziness doesn't excuse the killing of half a billion people. As Gandhi always said, "the means are everything."
How do you solve large problems without government? It's not laziness.
How many did governments save?
You tell me (my number has easy citations). Governments saving people from other governments wouldn't count. Governments saving people from problems it created wouldn't count either.
How about governments saving people from each other? When was the last time you were stabbed for your wallet? When was the last time a group of armed men came into your house and shot you to take over your land? There are no numbers for these things, because the government prevents them from happening.
How about governments saving helpless people? How many people were rescued by the Coast Guard, or averted death because of the lighthouses, communicatoin, and weather services it provides? How many people were found alive under the rubble by the Oklahoma National Guard the last time a tornado ripped Oklahoma City a new one? How many orphaned children were given shelter, food, and an education? How many suddenly homeless people did FEMA shelter and feed when they lost their homes on the gulf coast after Katrina? How many children have survived to adulthood because the government requires you to innoculate them for polio? There are numbers for some of these, but these are just a few examples and looking up the number of people the government has actively saved would be quite task.
Yeah, governments kill people sometimes. The solution is better government, not no government.
There's a few places in the world that don't have government in any meaningful sense. Lessee... Darfur, Somalia...
Somalia's conditions are improving [ssrn.com] without a government. The fair measure is before and after, and comparing with neighbors.
Darfur was a mess because one group of people who w
When people talk about "private ownership" they mean leasing from the government. No one is suggesting outright permanent ownership because regulation is still needed to get the systems to work together.
Ah, from the tone of other comments, I was assuming actual permanant assignments sans oversight. My bad.
By and large what you are asking for is the current system.
Not really. Under the system I describe, you can't both be a service provider and a tower operator. Service providers would be largely unregulated. Tower operators would be heavily regulated to require open access and equal pricing.
Infrastructure (i.e. land lines) would be similar, with lines being owned by a utility company and bandwidth sold to anyone who wants it. You sign up with any service provider you like, and they buy the bandwidth and features directly from the utility company.
It's not my idea, nor a new idea. This seperates out the natural monopolies from the parts of the system which can operate as a free market. It's not as much a problem with cell towers (although it does create an extremely high barrier to entry), but it's good for land line systems - most places only have one choice for phone and data service (maybe two, if there's a cable company).
We've got some open access laws on the books already, which is why you have the carriers you describe. What I'm arguing for would be the natural extension of that.
As an aside on IPV4. There really isn't that much "class A" space being wasted by private entities. It is a few month's expansion at this point. Most of the waste was absorbed long ago.
There's a good chunk of it, but I didn't mean to suggest that freeing up class A space (and class B - some of those are still out there too) would solve the IP crunch - merely that it's a similar problem, where single companies hold large amounts of the usable resources.
I think we'll eventually be dual-stack with private IPv4 addresses. AT&T is already moving towards that with their new DSL service - while you do get a public IPv4 address, it's taken by your router, unless you explicitly tell your router to assign it to a computer. They're handing out IPv6 blocks in some if not all areas now.
I don't see how private ownership of spectrum is the best way at all. It's a non-renewable public resource. It's similar to how many organizations still have class A networks eating up IP space unnecessarily.
What's wrong with the old scheme, where you license spectrum for a fee, and the FCC has regulatory control over where and how spectrum is used? It worked well enough for years. You want to transmit on such and such frequency at such and such power in a certain region of the country, you pay the fee to license it, and then you use it as long as you pay the fee. Commercial radio and TV work like this, as does (I'm pretty sure) most HAM radio and private two-way radio.
For applications like cell phones, this would also allow the FCC to encourage standardization on certain frequencies. CDMA on these frequencies, GSM on these, etc. Companies could license spectrum for experimental purposes (new protocols, etc.). It'd work best with a bill that seperated regulated infrastructure ownership (cell towers, fibre and copper lines, etc.) from unregulated service providers, but yeah, I'm dreaming there.
Pretty much, in the sense that slavery and female oppression are symptoms of human behavor - just like establishing governments. There's always going to be a bully and people who follow him, and then BAM! Instant dictator.
Get rid of the government, and you'll find yourself needing to solve a lot of problems.
Heaven forbid we work those things out. Governments only killed a half-billion people last century, that's not too high a price, is it?
How many did governments save? There's a few places in the world that don't have government in any meaningful sense. Lessee... Darfur, Somalia...
Besides, who works the problems out? Everyone just magically agrees to the obvious solutions?
my street hasn't been repaved since it was built in the 1930s
And you're against fee-for-service roads....
Yep, that I am. My city maintains asphalt and concrete streets in poor neighborhoods. It doesn't maintain brick streets (even ones in upper middle class neighborhoods). I don't know why - I suspect they can't rebrick them because brick streets no longer meet roadway standards. I do know any time they try to asphalt a brick street the city historical society throws a fit.
I don't really care that much about my street; it was built well, and while there's a few potholes, it's not too bad - pretty much like a concrete street with more road noise. Some of the other brick streets in town are much worse, though, and those are the ones I'd like to see repaved.
He claims to be a member of the NH congress. That's not the same view of government a middle level government employee would have, but it is part of the government, yes.
There is a Seth Cohn listed on the Wikipedia page for the New Hampshire House of Representatives. I'm assuming this is the same guy (otherwise it'd be pretty bizarre). In another post he said he was Libertarian, although Wikipedia lists him as a Republican.
He doesn't have his own Wikipedia page, but you can google for him as easy as I can if you want more info.
Sorry to hear that. But what you are saying is that, given your limited resources, you'd prefer to spend money in things other than improving the quality of your street. That is totally reasonable.
My street doesn't get improved (it was a WPA project from the 1930s - the city won't rebrick it for some reason, and they can't pave over the bricks because the historical society won't let them), but that's besides the point. If I were to go out and rebrick the part of the street I own, it wouldn't do any good for the part of street in front of the vacant lot two houses down, or the part in front of the old woman down the street who gets $300/month on social security.
The city, on the streets that it actually does improve, improves streets all at once, to the same quality, with the same materials. And no, there's no way the people on my street would come together on this. The old woman can't pay, the drug dealer across the street wouldn't be interested, the drunk dude on the corner would just want to start a fight, etc.
Poorer areas don't have to be maintained. It would be nice if they were, but people might want to user their money for other things.
Thus increasing the class disparity in this country. Think about the consequences of that kind of thinking for a while. Look at countries where it prevails.
Places like India, where some people make good money and live in nice houses, while other people literally live in dumps, recycling garbage to buy enough rice to stay alive. Places like Nigeria, where the population lives in squalor, except for the people making money hand over fist in the oil trade.
A large class disparity makes for a dissatisfied, bitter populace. That breeds security problems. I don't know about you, but I like not living behind a barbed wire fence.
If you regard the company as violent for cutting your services, you'd have to regard your neighbors/friends/family/coworkers in the same way for not helping you pay the bill. Why are the gas company owners any more responsible for your wellbeing than your neighbor or your friend?
I never said I regarded the company as violent, or that the company was somehow responsible for my well-being. I was pointing out that I would suffer potentially fatal consequences if I failed to pay my bill. Not paying taxes is actually safer - the most they'll do is garnish my wages or put me in jail.
I don't think I'd like Somalia at all...
Somalia is what happens when you have an ineffectual government. People are people - regardless of religion, culture, whatever - we as a group are greedy bastards who look after ourselves and those we care about first. We don't organize well, and when we do, it's usually as a special interest group or a mob.
To keep a people calm and peaceful, they have to be satisfied with their situation (or at least satisfied enough that they won't risk losing what they have). First, you need security - you have to feel safe in your home and about on your business. The government provides that. Next you need a standard of living that isn't disgraceful. Most people here have that - including most poor people. That's provided either by the government or by the economic system it supports. Next you need the people to feel they have some control over their lives. We have democracy and the government prevents most monopolies from forcing themselves on the populace.
When you don't have these things, the people don't stay peaceful. Where do gangs form in this country? Places where the standard of living is the lowest and security is lax.
This is out of order, but it shouldn't hurt the context:
The government is a company who has a monopoly on violence against the populace.
Agreed. I believe this is the primary function of government, although I'd call it an enterprise instead of a company.
I believe the primary function of government is to fill in the spaces where capit
You fail to see the scale of the nation we live in.
Seriously. I'm a truck driver. This country is _big_. We have the third largest population of any country in the world. We have the largest economy in the world. Trillions are certainly appropriate.
Even if you were to cut government services to the bone (by anyone this side of Ron Paul's definition*), you'd still have a multitrillion dollar budget. It's a big number. This is a big country.
Personally, I think it's a (mostly) non-issue. We've been in deficits before. You get those when you have a recession. The people screaming about it now are the same people who had no problem deficit spending during the Bush era. It's a political pony show. If people weren't so up in arms about this, they'd be up in arms about something else (maybe something important, like Obama's refusal to do away with the PATRIOT ACT and other nonsense).
* Ron Paul wants to slash the responsibilities of the federal government. This doesn't mean you keep more of your paycheck. You don't get something for free. The states would have to raise taxes to compensate by paying their own way (an example is highway funding, which is part federal and part state responsibility). You'd have to pay for what services you want that aren't government supplied out of your pocket. Spending would still be in the trillions.
I agree with you. Checks and balances aren't perfect.
There is no perfect system, and I certainly don't claim government is perfect. My point is that I can't see a better system that wouldn't involve government.
You seem to be under the impression that if the government stops providing some services then those services won't be provided by other institutions. This is certainly _not_ true for all government activity.
Some services, yes. Not all. I'm well aware there are portions of the government that could be privatized successfully.
You seem to be under the impression that other institutions would provide all useful services provided by the government. That's certainly not true as well.
The idea that streets would not be built if it were not by the government is ridiculous.
Your street maybe. I'm probably the second wealthiest person on my street, only after a guy who inherited his mother's slumlord properties. I bring in around $2k/month. My street would be a loss.
Street maintenance could certainly be privatized, but someone has to hire and pay the company to do it, and someone has to make sure the poorer areas are maintained. Only a government is capable of this.
I'm not a hardcore socialist. I don't believe the government should own and control industry, outside of necessary regulatory duties (i.e. keep lead paint out of our food, make sure 1lb is really 1lb, etc.). I do believe the government is required to act in places where capitalism fails. Basic public infrastructure is one of those places.
The key difference between a government and a regular business is that a government extracts payment under the threat of violence, or in some cases, by using actual violence.
Companies would do the same if they were not prevented from doing so (by - you guessed it - the government). The government is a company who has a monopoly on violence against the populace.
I once lived somewhere where the electric and gas services were provided by a private company. If I didn't pay, I was under the threat of freezing to death in the winter. I don't see much difference.
Also, a share holder in a public company can trade his shares if he does not like how the company is run.
And you can squat in a shack in Idaho. Or you can move to somewhere where there is no government, like Somalia. Have fun with that.
The idea is that they actually have to consider open source software. I imagine they think it'll be cheaper overall than purchasing proprietary software.
Think things like "Don't use Oracle to store a database with 2000 entries when MySQL will do the job just as well for cheaper." They can use Oracle if it's actually needed, but they have to give their reasons why.
I suspect it's actually more about the open document formats than anything else. Governments retain documents for a long time. How will you read something made in Wordperfect 5.1 in fifty years?
Anyway, I doubt state attorneys will be seeing much of this at all. It's a basic paperwork requirement, and most of the paperwork probably won't be given more than a cursory glance. It's a tool to stop major abuses.
How about we just get rid of government and let everyone decide what to do with their own goddamn money.
Because most of us like having things like sewage systems, streets, and someone to get the drunk drivers off the roads. Of course, with no roads, I guess the drunk drivers wouldn't be a problem.
And if you think people would band together to pay for basic infrastructure without any government-style coordination, you're out of your mind.
Open source is great. I use it for all kinds of things, but I don't have much faith that government can make it work to anyone's benefit.
Why not? They make proprietary software work for people's benefit. What's so different about open source software?
Let people keep their earnings and decide what solutions are best for themselves.
Most people would be more concerned about basic security than software solutions if you were to remove the government.
Otherwise, you might as well just have them at least support real business that actually employs someone.
Government is real business. Seriously. They provide services for their customers in exchange for money. Sure, the people who receive services and the people who pay aren't necessarily the same people (i.e. I pay road tax, but my street hasn't been repaved since it was built in the 1930s, since apparently no one knows how to rebrick a #*$%ing street anymore), but the concept is the same. You even get to vote for the officers, which is more than an shareholder does.
The government employs people, just like a business. It pays those people in real, actual money - which is more than many business do, what with stock options and whatnot. Government can't run without government employees. Those employees are regular people, just like you and me. I've met quite a few very competent sysadmins who were GS rated government employees.
Get rid of the government, and you'll find yourself needing to solve a lot of problems. Every solution to those problems will evolve into government. It's the way of the world. Don't like it? Build a shack in the middle of Idaho and live off the land.
Let's all say it together, once again, for those who somehow missed it:
Linux is not a business!
Again!
Linux is not a business!!
I can't hear you!
LINUX IS NOT A BUSINESS!!!
Ahem. Linux's survival does not depend on marketshare. It doesn't follow capitalistic ideals. It will survive, and continue to survive, because people want to keep working on it. Red Hat might go bankrupt, Canonical may close its doors, Linus might decide to switch to Amiga - but Linux will go on.
If that's not "good enough" for you, then don't use it. Linux will go on without you, too.
That's true on some projects. There are a few megalomaniac assholes out there. Some are quite successful. Some are not.
Sometimes the users are unreasonable. On smaller projects, you can't expect a two person dev team to drop everything they're working on to add whatever minor feature every user wants. In these cases, it's actually sound advice; if you want it, send us a patch, and we'll give it a try. They're not being assholes in these cases; they just don't have the time. In other cases, you have people who disagree with fundamental parts of a project. They demand sweeping changes that would affect the entire codebase. It's just not possible to make everyone happy.
If you think about it, it's not really that much different than the closed source world; software companies don't bow to the whim of every user that submits an idea. Maybe, if enough people want a feature, they'll add it - but there's no guarantee. With open source, if enough people want a feature, one of those people will probably have the ability and time to code it and submit a patch.
None of those are the reason there are 300+ Linux distros out there. There are a few distros that were forked due to poor management, but most of the time it's down to philosophical differences. Debian exists to fulfill the idea of a completely free platform. Redhat exists to make money. Slackware exists because it's been there since the dawn of time and some people like they way it does things. Ubuntu exists to provide a polished, user-friendly version of Debian. DSL exists for small installs. Many distros exist because some people decided they wanted to try making their own distro. When you get down to it, there's only really a handful of relevant distros out there - the other ones are really only for hobbyists, people with special needs, or people who want to try something different. If one of the small ones comes up with a good idea, it might get adopted by one of the big distros. It's useful, and I don't understand why people think multiple distros is a bad thing.
No, because at smaller than Planck length, the concept of length starts to get fuzzy and weird. The idea of dimensions at the size also gets weird.
I'm not a physicist, but from what I can tell, distance itself becomes meaningless at that size. If you don't have distance, you don't have dimensions.
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Sorry, your pistols and rifles are no match for the government's tanks, missiles, nukes, and whatever the fuck else they have and want to use on you.
So... why are we still in Afghanistan? Why did the Iraq war take so long? Why is there still a rebellion in Syria?
I generally support the Second Amendment. However, all the gun nuts going around and sucking the barrels of their guns like giant metal cocks hurts the movement as a whole.
I don't know about that. If you didn't have the gun nuts, the scale would slide until people like you are considered gun nuts. It's kind of like how Richard Stallman's view on software freedom is a bit insane, but we're better off for it overall because the people in the middle look more reasonable.
Yeah, gun nuts make me a bit nervous too, but if it wasn't for them, the government would be looking at making me turn in the rifles I inherited from my grandparents.
Modern can have two meanings. At the time of the French and American revolutions, the armies the rebels faced were the most modern armies in the world. Same with Vietnam.
As far as the outcome of the Vietnam war being determined in the U.S., that's only partly true. If we were fighting a traditional war (i.e. WWII or the U.S. Civil War) against the Vietnamese army, we'd have rolled right over them with our superior technology and numbers. We ended up fighting a guerilla war against a good chunk of the civilian population. The defenders always have an advantage in guerilla warfare. We did go home eventually because of pressure in the U.S. against the war, but we wouldn't have been there long enough for that pressure to build up if it were not for the armed populace we were fighting.
If you want recent conflicts, I'd look at the recent events in Lybia, Syria, and elsewhere in the middle east, as well as some of the rebellions in Africa and South America.
The ethical issues aren't our problem. What's ethical? Is it what God tells you? Is it listening to your conscience? Nietzsche would probably approve of this, and his view on ethics is popular among many with power. Maybe we can get someone with a PhD to tell us what Immanuel Kant would have thought of it.
I'm sure there's a forum for gun enthusiasts where people will discuss the technical details of how Kennedy was assasinated, and they will go into great detail about weapon specifications, accuracy, the pros and cons of different ammunition, etc. That doesn't mean they think you should go around shooting politicians.
If you want to talk about if it's right to do this, by all means make a post about it. Just don't be an asshole about it when people start talking about the actual methods and how they could be employed.
I'm not the AC, but I'll respond anyway.
The AC never said anything hate-filled. He never said anything bigoted. He never said anything that bore the marks for ignorance, intolerance, or hatred. You said all that.
You're the one that seems to think antisemitism is the norm in the U.S. You're the one thinking jews are blamed for all the ills of the nation (silly me, I thought it was the Democrats, or the Republicans, or the financial industry, or etc. etc. etc.). You're the one who thinks we're only one step away from setting up concentration camps.
In other words, you're the one who's acting like a Zionist troll.
You seem to equate disliking Israel's policies with being a hate-filled bigoted troll. Well, I'm not hate-filled, bigoted, nor a troll, and I don't care for Israel's policies. Sure, they got the whole democracy thing down, which is good, and they have a decent record for civil rights as far as those they consider citizens (i.e. not palestinians), but hey - so does the U.S., and I don't like a lot of our policies either.
What we're sick of is the neverending "peace process" which is basically just Israel spinning its wheels and doing nothing about the status quo. You might like the status quo, but palestinians do not. You blame arab nations for not allowing palestinian refugees into their countries, but you hold blameless the country responsible for making them refugees in the first place. Israel can't even keep basic promises, like not building settlements in the West Bank. Israel shows no interest in the welfare of the palestinians.
That's what he meant by apartheid. If you can't see parallels there, you're blind.
Now, you're just going to say I'm just another troll (I'm not), and that I'm an antisemite (I'm not), and that I want a war against Israel (I don't), because you've got a chip on your shoulder the size of Syria. That's fine, I don't care. I'd like to think, though, that maybe, just maybe, you'd engage your brain and realize that just because some people don't suck off the "chosen of God" doesn't mean we want to slaughter them wholesale.
Who will own the asteroid?
As things stand right now, no one owns anything in space that they didn't send up there. I may be wrong here, but it was my understanding the Outer Space Treaty stated that planets, asteroids, and pretty much everything else in space is not allowed to become private property or be claimed by any nation. There's nothing to stop some other organization or country from sending their own mining equipment up to the asteroid once it's put into place.
I'll be interested to see what becomes of this should this project become successful.
Ever been to Missouri?
Yeah, it's got the Mississippi river on the east border, and the Missouri river running through it, but it's not hard at all to find land in Missouri that won't flood. A good chunk of the state is the Ozarks. The company mentioned is the article is based out of St. Louis, where there's certainly no lack of high ground.
In fact, most of the larger cities in Missouri are in hilly areas. There's not a whole not of Missouri that isn't hilly.
The flooding and busted levees you mention are all along rivers, which should be easy enough to avoid when you're looking for a place to put a reactor.
When I saw it, "realtime" was the first thing I thought of.
About two seconds later I realized it couldn't possibly mean realtime, since Microsoft doesn't make realtime systems. It's not their specialty.
So yeah, more than just that guy thinks "realtime" when they see "RT". It's probably worse for people who actually used RTOS on Acorn systems.
I've had a few. Yeah, I was a computer professional at the time, but these were systems I had at home. None of them ran Windows, sure, but they could have.
Power users like their computers powerful. I bought the first Tyan dual-proc board for the Athlon MP for my home desktop (which I ran until I replaced it with a dual-core Phenom system years later). Prior to that, I had a couple dual Pentium Pro systems and a dual Pentium II box. I've had a fair share of old Sun equipment with multiple processors as well. This is all home stuff, mind you - I'm not counting equipment I used for business purposes.
I seriously considered an 8-proc Supermicro motherboard when the capacitors died on my Tyan board. I opted out because I couldn't justify the cost of more than a quad-processor system, and multicore processors were making the whole thing pointless anyway.
These days, I just use a laptop and a few servers at home I tinker with. If I were still in my 20s, and had the money, I'd probably be typing this on that 8-socket Supermicro right now.
The 386 SX used a 16 bit bus.
It was designed much for the same reasons the 8088 was designed - motherboards and the relevant chipsets were all 16 bit, so a company could save a bit of cash and development time and get an SX out there faster and cheaper than a DX.
Neither the SX nor the DX had a coprocessor. You could buy one and install it, if the board supported it - I never actually saw an Intel 80387 chip, but I saw a few clones.
The whole SX/DX thing got more confusing with the 486, since it didn't mean the same thing (SX chips were the same as DX but with the coprocessor disabled).
You could run Windows 3.0 on one of those. I've done it, and it worked all right.
As far as being useless, well, it really depends on what you're using it for. I mostly used it as a dumb terminal hooked to a Linux box, and my girlfriend at the time played DOS games on it. It worked well enough. I can't say speed was much of an issue for playing solitaire or old DOS games - it was more responsive than you'd think for an XT.
Granted, this was around '97 or so, so our expectations for speed were a lot different back then (2.0.30 kernel compiled on my 133MHz Cyrix box in about thirty minutes, for instance).
What do you see as the advantage of the ban over what we have now with the wholesale retail system for cell?
I'm not horribly familiar with the wholesale system, so I can't comment much on it. I prefer it because it matches the system I imagine for land lines.
Everyone I know uses a major carrier (AT&T with a couple on T-Mobile) these days. I remember Sprint used to not have any service outside my city limits. If that's changed, then good - there's no big deal then.
For landlines I agree there is a huge problem with LECs, but as you mentioned that's already regulated. Honestly I'm fine with the PSTN just being a legacy system rotting over the next generation. It simply lacks far too many capabilities.
Landlines aren't going away. Businesses will continue to use them, and people in rural areas need them for their modems, if nothing else.
For data service, wireless just can't compete with landlines. Voice services may be on their way out, but data service is booming, and will only get bigger.
Under the system I describe, the physical lines would be operated and maintained by one organization, be it a private company, cooperative, or local government utility. They wouldn't offer any service direct to the consumer, other than wiring and maintenance (interior wiring, for instance). Customers would sign up with whatever services they required, which would be provided over that line. The owner of the line would have to offer the same services and pricing to any service company that requests it. Service companies could offer any service they liked, as long as it would fit within the capabilities of the line service.
This allows more competition. You have to regulate the line owners, but the service companies can operate under free market rules. You might even be able to get around the whole net neutrality argument with it.
Right now, land line owners are required to allow "fair" access to other service providers, but the problem is that it's not in their best interest to do so, and they know it.
I had more points, but my truck just got loaded, so I gotta go.
Pretty much, in the sense that slavery and female oppression are symptoms of human behavor
Except they don't exist without laws that enforce them...
Seriously?
OK, slavery as a system requires some sort of legal structure. I'll grant you that. Slavery itself doesn't. You think a government is required to go kidnap some attractive girl and force her to be your wife, or just your sex puppet?
The opression of women is an even more stupid argument. It's cultural. Honor killings aren't legal pretty much anywhere, but they happen. The concept of "women's work" and "a woman's place" isn't a legal one. Laws may codify such behavior, but they don't cause it, except in a few rare exceptions like the Taliban's government in Afghanistan.
Discrimination against women is illegal in the U.S. except in a few certain areas, like the military. Why do women still get on average $.75 to every dollar a man makes? Hint: The government isn't causing it.
There's always going to be a bully and people who follow him, and then BAM! Instant dictator.
I'm all about not having dictators, but governments have been the most useful tool of dictators throughout history. When Hitler passed a law forbidding Jews to own guns in 1938, that was a government action. Then we have governments like the US supporting every dictator [lewrockwell.com] around since WWII.
Sure. Not all government is good. I never said it was. My point is that governments prevent the guy on the corner from ganging up with his neighbors and conquering your street.
Face it. You're going to have a government, because if there isn't one, someone's going to make one, and he's going to make you subject to it. You can be a U.S. citizen, or a subject of King Bob's Pine Street Mauraders.
Get rid of the government, and you'll find yourself needing to solve a lot of problems.
No doubt. But laziness doesn't excuse the killing of half a billion people. As Gandhi always said, "the means are everything."
How do you solve large problems without government? It's not laziness.
How many did governments save?
You tell me (my number has easy citations). Governments saving people from other governments wouldn't count. Governments saving people from problems it created wouldn't count either.
How about governments saving people from each other? When was the last time you were stabbed for your wallet? When was the last time a group of armed men came into your house and shot you to take over your land? There are no numbers for these things, because the government prevents them from happening.
How about governments saving helpless people? How many people were rescued by the Coast Guard, or averted death because of the lighthouses, communicatoin, and weather services it provides? How many people were found alive under the rubble by the Oklahoma National Guard the last time a tornado ripped Oklahoma City a new one? How many orphaned children were given shelter, food, and an education? How many suddenly homeless people did FEMA shelter and feed when they lost their homes on the gulf coast after Katrina? How many children have survived to adulthood because the government requires you to innoculate them for polio? There are numbers for some of these, but these are just a few examples and looking up the number of people the government has actively saved would be quite task.
Yeah, governments kill people sometimes. The solution is better government, not no government.
There's a few places in the world that don't have government in any meaningful sense. Lessee... Darfur, Somalia...
Somalia's conditions are improving [ssrn.com] without a government. The fair measure is before and after, and comparing with neighbors.
Darfur was a mess because one group of people who w
When people talk about "private ownership" they mean leasing from the government. No one is suggesting outright permanent ownership because regulation is still needed to get the systems to work together.
Ah, from the tone of other comments, I was assuming actual permanant assignments sans oversight. My bad.
By and large what you are asking for is the current system.
Not really. Under the system I describe, you can't both be a service provider and a tower operator. Service providers would be largely unregulated. Tower operators would be heavily regulated to require open access and equal pricing.
Infrastructure (i.e. land lines) would be similar, with lines being owned by a utility company and bandwidth sold to anyone who wants it. You sign up with any service provider you like, and they buy the bandwidth and features directly from the utility company.
It's not my idea, nor a new idea. This seperates out the natural monopolies from the parts of the system which can operate as a free market. It's not as much a problem with cell towers (although it does create an extremely high barrier to entry), but it's good for land line systems - most places only have one choice for phone and data service (maybe two, if there's a cable company).
We've got some open access laws on the books already, which is why you have the carriers you describe. What I'm arguing for would be the natural extension of that.
As an aside on IPV4. There really isn't that much "class A" space being wasted by private entities. It is a few month's expansion at this point. Most of the waste was absorbed long ago.
There's a good chunk of it, but I didn't mean to suggest that freeing up class A space (and class B - some of those are still out there too) would solve the IP crunch - merely that it's a similar problem, where single companies hold large amounts of the usable resources.
I think we'll eventually be dual-stack with private IPv4 addresses. AT&T is already moving towards that with their new DSL service - while you do get a public IPv4 address, it's taken by your router, unless you explicitly tell your router to assign it to a computer. They're handing out IPv6 blocks in some if not all areas now.
I don't see how private ownership of spectrum is the best way at all. It's a non-renewable public resource. It's similar to how many organizations still have class A networks eating up IP space unnecessarily.
What's wrong with the old scheme, where you license spectrum for a fee, and the FCC has regulatory control over where and how spectrum is used? It worked well enough for years. You want to transmit on such and such frequency at such and such power in a certain region of the country, you pay the fee to license it, and then you use it as long as you pay the fee. Commercial radio and TV work like this, as does (I'm pretty sure) most HAM radio and private two-way radio.
For applications like cell phones, this would also allow the FCC to encourage standardization on certain frequencies. CDMA on these frequencies, GSM on these, etc. Companies could license spectrum for experimental purposes (new protocols, etc.). It'd work best with a bill that seperated regulated infrastructure ownership (cell towers, fibre and copper lines, etc.) from unregulated service providers, but yeah, I'm dreaming there.
It's the way of the world.
Just like slavery and female repression!
Pretty much, in the sense that slavery and female oppression are symptoms of human behavor - just like establishing governments. There's always going to be a bully and people who follow him, and then BAM! Instant dictator.
Get rid of the government, and you'll find yourself needing to solve a lot of problems.
Heaven forbid we work those things out. Governments only killed a half-billion people last century, that's not too high a price, is it?
How many did governments save? There's a few places in the world that don't have government in any meaningful sense. Lessee... Darfur, Somalia...
Besides, who works the problems out? Everyone just magically agrees to the obvious solutions?
my street hasn't been repaved since it was built in the 1930s
And you're against fee-for-service roads....
Yep, that I am. My city maintains asphalt and concrete streets in poor neighborhoods. It doesn't maintain brick streets (even ones in upper middle class neighborhoods). I don't know why - I suspect they can't rebrick them because brick streets no longer meet roadway standards. I do know any time they try to asphalt a brick street the city historical society throws a fit.
I don't really care that much about my street; it was built well, and while there's a few potholes, it's not too bad - pretty much like a concrete street with more road noise. Some of the other brick streets in town are much worse, though, and those are the ones I'd like to see repaved.
He claims to be a member of the NH congress. That's not the same view of government a middle level government employee would have, but it is part of the government, yes.
There is a Seth Cohn listed on the Wikipedia page for the New Hampshire House of Representatives. I'm assuming this is the same guy (otherwise it'd be pretty bizarre). In another post he said he was Libertarian, although Wikipedia lists him as a Republican.
He doesn't have his own Wikipedia page, but you can google for him as easy as I can if you want more info.
Sorry to hear that. But what you are saying is that, given your limited resources, you'd prefer to spend money in things other than improving the quality of your street. That is totally reasonable.
My street doesn't get improved (it was a WPA project from the 1930s - the city won't rebrick it for some reason, and they can't pave over the bricks because the historical society won't let them), but that's besides the point. If I were to go out and rebrick the part of the street I own, it wouldn't do any good for the part of street in front of the vacant lot two houses down, or the part in front of the old woman down the street who gets $300/month on social security.
The city, on the streets that it actually does improve, improves streets all at once, to the same quality, with the same materials. And no, there's no way the people on my street would come together on this. The old woman can't pay, the drug dealer across the street wouldn't be interested, the drunk dude on the corner would just want to start a fight, etc.
Poorer areas don't have to be maintained. It would be nice if they were, but people might want to user their money for other things.
Thus increasing the class disparity in this country. Think about the consequences of that kind of thinking for a while. Look at countries where it prevails.
Places like India, where some people make good money and live in nice houses, while other people literally live in dumps, recycling garbage to buy enough rice to stay alive. Places like Nigeria, where the population lives in squalor, except for the people making money hand over fist in the oil trade.
A large class disparity makes for a dissatisfied, bitter populace. That breeds security problems. I don't know about you, but I like not living behind a barbed wire fence.
If you regard the company as violent for cutting your services, you'd have to regard your neighbors/friends/family/coworkers in the same way for not helping you pay the bill. Why are the gas company owners any more responsible for your wellbeing than your neighbor or your friend?
I never said I regarded the company as violent, or that the company was somehow responsible for my well-being. I was pointing out that I would suffer potentially fatal consequences if I failed to pay my bill. Not paying taxes is actually safer - the most they'll do is garnish my wages or put me in jail.
I don't think I'd like Somalia at all...
Somalia is what happens when you have an ineffectual government. People are people - regardless of religion, culture, whatever - we as a group are greedy bastards who look after ourselves and those we care about first. We don't organize well, and when we do, it's usually as a special interest group or a mob.
To keep a people calm and peaceful, they have to be satisfied with their situation (or at least satisfied enough that they won't risk losing what they have). First, you need security - you have to feel safe in your home and about on your business. The government provides that. Next you need a standard of living that isn't disgraceful. Most people here have that - including most poor people. That's provided either by the government or by the economic system it supports. Next you need the people to feel they have some control over their lives. We have democracy and the government prevents most monopolies from forcing themselves on the populace.
When you don't have these things, the people don't stay peaceful. Where do gangs form in this country? Places where the standard of living is the lowest and security is lax.
This is out of order, but it shouldn't hurt the context:
Agreed. I believe this is the primary function of government, although I'd call it an enterprise instead of a company.
I believe the primary function of government is to fill in the spaces where capit
You fail to see the scale of the nation we live in.
Seriously. I'm a truck driver. This country is _big_. We have the third largest population of any country in the world. We have the largest economy in the world. Trillions are certainly appropriate.
Even if you were to cut government services to the bone (by anyone this side of Ron Paul's definition*), you'd still have a multitrillion dollar budget. It's a big number. This is a big country.
Personally, I think it's a (mostly) non-issue. We've been in deficits before. You get those when you have a recession. The people screaming about it now are the same people who had no problem deficit spending during the Bush era. It's a political pony show. If people weren't so up in arms about this, they'd be up in arms about something else (maybe something important, like Obama's refusal to do away with the PATRIOT ACT and other nonsense).
* Ron Paul wants to slash the responsibilities of the federal government. This doesn't mean you keep more of your paycheck. You don't get something for free. The states would have to raise taxes to compensate by paying their own way (an example is highway funding, which is part federal and part state responsibility). You'd have to pay for what services you want that aren't government supplied out of your pocket. Spending would still be in the trillions.
I agree with you. Checks and balances aren't perfect.
There is no perfect system, and I certainly don't claim government is perfect. My point is that I can't see a better system that wouldn't involve government.
You seem to be under the impression that if the government stops providing some services then those services won't be provided by other institutions. This is certainly _not_ true for all government activity.
Some services, yes. Not all. I'm well aware there are portions of the government that could be privatized successfully.
You seem to be under the impression that other institutions would provide all useful services provided by the government. That's certainly not true as well.
The idea that streets would not be built if it were not by the government is ridiculous.
Your street maybe. I'm probably the second wealthiest person on my street, only after a guy who inherited his mother's slumlord properties. I bring in around $2k/month. My street would be a loss.
Street maintenance could certainly be privatized, but someone has to hire and pay the company to do it, and someone has to make sure the poorer areas are maintained. Only a government is capable of this.
I'm not a hardcore socialist. I don't believe the government should own and control industry, outside of necessary regulatory duties (i.e. keep lead paint out of our food, make sure 1lb is really 1lb, etc.). I do believe the government is required to act in places where capitalism fails. Basic public infrastructure is one of those places.
The key difference between a government and a regular business is that a government extracts payment under the threat of violence, or in some cases, by using actual violence.
Companies would do the same if they were not prevented from doing so (by - you guessed it - the government). The government is a company who has a monopoly on violence against the populace.
I once lived somewhere where the electric and gas services were provided by a private company. If I didn't pay, I was under the threat of freezing to death in the winter. I don't see much difference.
Also, a share holder in a public company can trade his shares if he does not like how the company is run.
And you can squat in a shack in Idaho. Or you can move to somewhere where there is no government, like Somalia. Have fun with that.
The idea is that they actually have to consider open source software. I imagine they think it'll be cheaper overall than purchasing proprietary software.
Think things like "Don't use Oracle to store a database with 2000 entries when MySQL will do the job just as well for cheaper." They can use Oracle if it's actually needed, but they have to give their reasons why.
I suspect it's actually more about the open document formats than anything else. Governments retain documents for a long time. How will you read something made in Wordperfect 5.1 in fifty years?
Anyway, I doubt state attorneys will be seeing much of this at all. It's a basic paperwork requirement, and most of the paperwork probably won't be given more than a cursory glance. It's a tool to stop major abuses.
How about we just get rid of government and let everyone decide what to do with their own goddamn money.
Because most of us like having things like sewage systems, streets, and someone to get the drunk drivers off the roads. Of course, with no roads, I guess the drunk drivers wouldn't be a problem.
And if you think people would band together to pay for basic infrastructure without any government-style coordination, you're out of your mind.
Open source is great. I use it for all kinds of things, but I don't have much faith that government can make it work to anyone's benefit.
Why not? They make proprietary software work for people's benefit. What's so different about open source software?
Let people keep their earnings and decide what solutions are best for themselves.
Most people would be more concerned about basic security than software solutions if you were to remove the government.
Otherwise, you might as well just have them at least support real business that actually employs someone.
Government is real business. Seriously. They provide services for their customers in exchange for money. Sure, the people who receive services and the people who pay aren't necessarily the same people (i.e. I pay road tax, but my street hasn't been repaved since it was built in the 1930s, since apparently no one knows how to rebrick a #*$%ing street anymore), but the concept is the same. You even get to vote for the officers, which is more than an shareholder does.
The government employs people, just like a business. It pays those people in real, actual money - which is more than many business do, what with stock options and whatnot. Government can't run without government employees. Those employees are regular people, just like you and me. I've met quite a few very competent sysadmins who were GS rated government employees.
Get rid of the government, and you'll find yourself needing to solve a lot of problems. Every solution to those problems will evolve into government. It's the way of the world. Don't like it? Build a shack in the middle of Idaho and live off the land.
Let's all say it together, once again, for those who somehow missed it:
Linux is not a business!
Again!
Linux is not a business!!
I can't hear you!
LINUX IS NOT A BUSINESS!!!
Ahem. Linux's survival does not depend on marketshare. It doesn't follow capitalistic ideals. It will survive, and continue to survive, because people want to keep working on it. Red Hat might go bankrupt, Canonical may close its doors, Linus might decide to switch to Amiga - but Linux will go on.
If that's not "good enough" for you, then don't use it. Linux will go on without you, too.
That's true on some projects. There are a few megalomaniac assholes out there. Some are quite successful. Some are not.
Sometimes the users are unreasonable. On smaller projects, you can't expect a two person dev team to drop everything they're working on to add whatever minor feature every user wants. In these cases, it's actually sound advice; if you want it, send us a patch, and we'll give it a try. They're not being assholes in these cases; they just don't have the time. In other cases, you have people who disagree with fundamental parts of a project. They demand sweeping changes that would affect the entire codebase. It's just not possible to make everyone happy.
If you think about it, it's not really that much different than the closed source world; software companies don't bow to the whim of every user that submits an idea. Maybe, if enough people want a feature, they'll add it - but there's no guarantee. With open source, if enough people want a feature, one of those people will probably have the ability and time to code it and submit a patch.
None of those are the reason there are 300+ Linux distros out there. There are a few distros that were forked due to poor management, but most of the time it's down to philosophical differences. Debian exists to fulfill the idea of a completely free platform. Redhat exists to make money. Slackware exists because it's been there since the dawn of time and some people like they way it does things. Ubuntu exists to provide a polished, user-friendly version of Debian. DSL exists for small installs. Many distros exist because some people decided they wanted to try making their own distro. When you get down to it, there's only really a handful of relevant distros out there - the other ones are really only for hobbyists, people with special needs, or people who want to try something different. If one of the small ones comes up with a good idea, it might get adopted by one of the big distros. It's useful, and I don't understand why people think multiple distros is a bad thing.
No, because at smaller than Planck length, the concept of length starts to get fuzzy and weird. The idea of dimensions at the size also gets weird.
I'm not a physicist, but from what I can tell, distance itself becomes meaningless at that size. If you don't have distance, you don't have dimensions.