That is just so sad, I mean, I really used to think of USA as the actual 'beacon of freedom' in the world:( but then again, that was before I moved from the former USSR to Canada about 16 years ago.
About 2 years ago I spent a couple of weeks in the Bahamas (I am a Canadian, born in USSR, lived in Israel for a year and currently living in Germany) and I had an unfortunate conversation with one of the US border guards also vacationing there. I don't remember the reason, but he started yelling at me that US is the country that everyone wants to enter and live there, I said that I don't, given the events starting from about the Iraq war. I mean, I visited US a few times, but to live there at this point does not seem such a great proposition, though I understand how people with little to lose from very poor or otherwise unfortunate places would want to move there (or anywhere). He became very agitated with me, I thought he'd attack me or something.
Just what kind of people become border guards anyway?
There is no need for any government regulations, I am a libertarian/objectivist/minarchist, that's my point of view, I am not here to discuss it.
My point is that given the myriad of things that can go wrong in any business, in any industry at any time, the real issue is this: is the private business aware that there will be consequences for its actions, should it cause any damage to private property of others, public property, environment in general or any people.
Government should do one thing: punish severely people and firms that those who cause damage to public property, to environment or to people.
Punishing is the second step, first step of-course must be establishing damage. To do that, Government must use the Justice Department. Government needs to run the Justice Department and the Department of Defense but not to run wars, only really to defend the country.
So the Justice Department must be the main tool to fight against criminals, either persons or businesses. In case of damage to environment and public property, government must start Class Action Lawsuits on behalf of the people, who the Government is supposed to represent.
The Class Action Lawsuits must be started to show that there is damage to public property and environment, and these are all about fines, clean up costs, liability. I believe that corporations are rational machines and if it was known that transgressions are punished by taking away money enough to fix the damage + x10 or x100 or x1000 the amount of damages in liability and punitive damages AND if there was also criminal investigations that would in fact lead to personal responsibility assignment, then corporations would have to behave on both, the system (corporate) level and on personal level. Personal responsibility must include possibility of personal fines, confiscation of money, property and jail time.
A system that ran this way would not need to have government dictated regulations. I understand that many people believe this is unachievable, that only government can set regulations correctly, however I believe this is a misunderstanding.
Government normally does not come up with regulations all by itself in vacuum, most if not all regulations actually come out of best industry practices and standards. So the industry itself Knows how to do its business in ways that minimizes damage but it Chooses not to do so very often.
The reasons for choosing one practice over another is obviously cost.
So it must be made cost prohibitive to run a business in a way, that would allow it to continue operations that are knowingly and/or negligently harming either individuals and/or public property and/or environment.
In such a system the Government's role would be that of a judge/executioner but not that of a regulatory body, as we see that regulations are constantly abused, regulatory bodies are corrupted, regulations are most of the time out of date because the industry moves so fast, it is very costly if possible at all to keep up.
We can use the Internet, the Drug Manufacturing corporations, the Food Manufacturing corporations, the Energy producing corporations, the Tech Corporations of almost any kind as examples of how the government is always behind the current events and how yesterdays regulations are already obsolete by today or tomorrow. The cost and time of running a government that actually is on top of all developments in all industries and for all the players would be bigger than the industries themselves, it is extremely prohibitive and abusive to the Economy.
Of-course the Government would not like or endorse this idea because it would actually mean that the Government would not really get any pie in this action. It would actually have to do its job, it is much easier to observe work of One Government Department than of so many separate regulatory bodies, who knew that MMS was literally fucking with BP staff, taking drugs and money and alcohol and gifts? Well, we cou
You know what would be funny in a black humor sense (African American humor for the politically correct)?
If this rig, the BP's Atlantis, which apparently never even submitted its blue prints for any inspection and is drilling some place even deeper and with more oil also sank and created another oil geyser at the bottom of the ocean. It's possible, apparently BP found some issues with Atlantis and of-course it would be even a worse disaster.
I bet BP has learned so much by now, they can plug a new leak where Atlantis is in no time and everything will be hunky dory. Oh wait a second...
According to Wiki, the total assets are 236 billion, total equity is 101.6 billion, revenue 246.1 billion, operating income is 26.43 billion, net income 16.58 billion and 92000 employees.
You shouldn't, but even if you add all of those numbers together and multiply by 20 you won't balance the budget.
It's hard to be knowledgeable, to be at the right place at the right time as society needs, to have the power to cause change etc.
On the other hand, in personal life history is extremely useful if the right conclusions are drawn from the surrounding factors. Example could be looking at what is happening in the economy of the world, looking back and seeing similar things that happened before and drawing the right conclusions (again, whether the conclusions that are drawn are right, will be seen later in history:) So from the situation with economy that we have been observing for the past 20 years, it is possible to draw conclusions, such as that it is very dangerous to stay in fiat currencies of both, the Americas, of Europe, any fiat currencies at this point in time. Looks like the countries with the most debt will start tightening the financial systems, will start pressing banks on giving up the personal information, will start insisting that foreign financial institutions must not deal with customers from this country, the currency controls and exchanges will be introduced, the gold will again become a currency (even if unofficial) and access to it will be tightly regulated and then it may even be confiscated, so it will become more and more dangerous to hold fiat money and to hold them in government controlled institutions, like banks.
By looking back at history, the future looks quite grim actually, at least for the next 30-50 years, there will be more border controls, there will be residence registration requirements to prevent people from moving from area to area without a permit, there will be more price controls and shortages, the commodities like food and energy will become increasingly difficult to buy at ever increasing prices, the currency will inflate faster and faster, the unemployment will grow bigger and faster, the Government regulations will grow bigger and stronger, the crime rates will shoot up, there maybe martial laws implemented, there maybe some form of collectivization of resources coming, especially farm lands and properties to maintain 'stability' of the society.
Things are changing and history can be observed in many different times to have changed in similar ways, of-course today there are differences: the Internet for example, so what does that mean? It means there will be more controls imposed over this technological barrier to controls.
This information could be useful for personal planing of future events and personal financial decision making.
Science is important, but history I truly believe is crucial to be able to recognize and work out problems in society, which cannot be fixed by any scientific means (not counting blasting everyone with nuclear weapons or using biological WMDs of-course).
Those who do not know history do not understand what is happening with them in the present and cannot at all recognize the warning signs to come in the future.
Knowing history is like having a telescope that sees the future, and telescopes are quite scientific, no?
Those who are in control of things in present are in control of minds and ideas. To control the present means to control the future and that is a very powerful statement not because it is obvious but because of the implication that your future is predetermined by those in control.
There is a fix for that, look at what Opera is doing, they are allowing you to browse in a mode, that first caches the pages on Opera side and then pre-processes them and sends them to the browser. This could also be used to surf all the found sites through an SSL encrypted connection.
I disagree with Rand on the Oil spill, it is not supposed to be a position of a libertarian that damage must be socialized while profits privatized, that is not acceptable from point of view of common resources. Obviously public has responsibility to fight against BP, Transocean, Halliburton etc. because if the public chooses to do nothing, soon enough there will be no natural resources left that are still alive/undamaged, thus the public represented by governments should start Class Action Lawsuits against the companies and require that the companies do clean up / pay for it, pay all damages to all parties involved and punitive damages equal to a factor of the actual costs, something like x10 or x100 times the actual damages.
Also when it concerns the Act of 1964, Rand Paul should have said that in the balance of things, the rights of minorities were violated, thus shifting the balance of equal opportunities too much to one side, so were he in government at that time, he should have tried to modify the language but eventually should have voted for the Act.
Now to be clear, I am completely, totally, utterly, uncompromisingly against government creating laws that limit rights and freedoms of anybody. This means I am against the government institutionalizing slavery. I am just as much against the government creating laws that violate people's rights to private property and freedom of speech. Any kind of hate speech laws - I am completely against that. Any kind of violation of the right of individual to private property by government law - I am completely against that. So in my view it is incorrect to force any business or anybody to accept the terms of behavior set by government law. This of-course does not include criminal behavior - murder, beatings, etc.
If I had to vote on that Act of 64, I would have tried to modify it, so that business owners rights were not violated. If I failed at that, I would have still voted for the Act, because as a libertarian, I see that on balance of things, the rights of people to equal start, equal treatment was violated for too long and Free Market suffers from that.
My basic principles are actually those, of an Objectivist, I am more of Ayn Rand supporter than of Rand Paul, so I cannot have Government passing laws on public good.
Just as she came from USSR, only at the start of that country, I came from it at the end of it and I understand that dictatorship by government is the worst part of any society and it always starts with 'good intentions'. I can't have it.
You are looking at it all wrong, the God of Jobs requires that each significant batch of new iToys is washed in blood of someone, who committed suicide while in deep depression. This is how the iToy gets its final touch, something magical that makes people want to continue buying iToys, regardless of any common sense and reason really.
I remember in 97/98 writing an Intranet (a buzz at that time) app for Coke Canada to do some sort of internal accounting and I needed a way to submit data and bring it back to the browser without a refresh. Figured out a way to do it with parent/child frames and some javascript to communicate between them (top.function or parent.function something like that).
Then, not too long from that time, I learn that MS has come up with a way of doing it through Javascript without a Frame: XML HTTP Request and then something like AJAX was born that way. It's an easier approach than using frames, so there you go, that's an innovation though sort of obvious if you are a browser author and ever wanted to do something like that, but still.
CRAP, that's my proprietary BUSINESS MODEL! Damn you,/., for revealing all that stands between our Intellectual Property value and the abyss of impossible to implement DRM scheme!
but can it utilize revolutionary interfaces to productize cross-media e-services to mesh extensible niches which helps to incubate end-to-end communities and to drive sticky functionalities while scaling collaborative systems in an effort to monetize open-source convergence?
We are all about transitioning value-added web-readiness here.
Slashdot Mirror
That is just so sad, I mean, I really used to think of USA as the actual 'beacon of freedom' in the world :( but then again, that was before I moved from the former USSR to Canada about 16 years ago.
About 2 years ago I spent a couple of weeks in the Bahamas (I am a Canadian, born in USSR, lived in Israel for a year and currently living in Germany) and I had an unfortunate conversation with one of the US border guards also vacationing there. I don't remember the reason, but he started yelling at me that US is the country that everyone wants to enter and live there, I said that I don't, given the events starting from about the Iraq war. I mean, I visited US a few times, but to live there at this point does not seem such a great proposition, though I understand how people with little to lose from very poor or otherwise unfortunate places would want to move there (or anywhere). He became very agitated with me, I thought he'd attack me or something.
Just what kind of people become border guards anyway?
By politics Obama is on the left, by their policy, I'd say that Obama is exactly like Reagan on the right.
I suggest inviting all of the BP officers and managers and then nuking THAT site from the orbit.
The hole can be plugged by other oil companies and the money must be taking from BP corporate and personal accounts.
Because nobody ever gets punished.
There is no need for any government regulations, I am a libertarian/objectivist/minarchist, that's my point of view, I am not here to discuss it.
My point is that given the myriad of things that can go wrong in any business, in any industry at any time, the real issue is this: is the private business aware that there will be consequences for its actions, should it cause any damage to private property of others, public property, environment in general or any people.
Government should do one thing: punish severely people and firms that those who cause damage to public property, to environment or to people.
Punishing is the second step, first step of-course must be establishing damage. To do that, Government must use the Justice Department. Government needs to run the Justice Department and the Department of Defense but not to run wars, only really to defend the country.
So the Justice Department must be the main tool to fight against criminals, either persons or businesses. In case of damage to environment and public property, government must start Class Action Lawsuits on behalf of the people, who the Government is supposed to represent.
The Class Action Lawsuits must be started to show that there is damage to public property and environment, and these are all about fines, clean up costs, liability. I believe that corporations are rational machines and if it was known that transgressions are punished by taking away money enough to fix the damage + x10 or x100 or x1000 the amount of damages in liability and punitive damages AND if there was also criminal investigations that would in fact lead to personal responsibility assignment, then corporations would have to behave on both, the system (corporate) level and on personal level. Personal responsibility must include possibility of personal fines, confiscation of money, property and jail time.
A system that ran this way would not need to have government dictated regulations. I understand that many people believe this is unachievable, that only government can set regulations correctly, however I believe this is a misunderstanding.
Government normally does not come up with regulations all by itself in vacuum, most if not all regulations actually come out of best industry practices and standards. So the industry itself Knows how to do its business in ways that minimizes damage but it Chooses not to do so very often.
The reasons for choosing one practice over another is obviously cost.
So it must be made cost prohibitive to run a business in a way, that would allow it to continue operations that are knowingly and/or negligently harming either individuals and/or public property and/or environment.
In such a system the Government's role would be that of a judge/executioner but not that of a regulatory body, as we see that regulations are constantly abused, regulatory bodies are corrupted, regulations are most of the time out of date because the industry moves so fast, it is very costly if possible at all to keep up.
We can use the Internet, the Drug Manufacturing corporations, the Food Manufacturing corporations, the Energy producing corporations, the Tech Corporations of almost any kind as examples of how the government is always behind the current events and how yesterdays regulations are already obsolete by today or tomorrow. The cost and time of running a government that actually is on top of all developments in all industries and for all the players would be bigger than the industries themselves, it is extremely prohibitive and abusive to the Economy.
Of-course the Government would not like or endorse this idea because it would actually mean that the Government would not really get any pie in this action. It would actually have to do its job, it is much easier to observe work of One Government Department than of so many separate regulatory bodies, who knew that MMS was literally fucking with BP staff, taking drugs and money and alcohol and gifts? Well, we cou
You know what would be funny in a black humor sense (African American humor for the politically correct)?
If this rig, the BP's Atlantis, which apparently never even submitted its blue prints for any inspection and is drilling some place even deeper and with more oil also sank and created another oil geyser at the bottom of the ocean. It's possible, apparently BP found some issues with Atlantis and of-course it would be even a worse disaster.
I bet BP has learned so much by now, they can plug a new leak where Atlantis is in no time and everything will be hunky dory. Oh wait a second...
drop in a bucket.
According to Wiki, the total assets are 236 billion, total equity is 101.6 billion, revenue 246.1 billion, operating income is 26.43 billion, net income 16.58 billion and 92000 employees.
You shouldn't, but even if you add all of those numbers together and multiply by 20 you won't balance the budget.
Sorry.
Fuck yeah
It's hard to be knowledgeable, to be at the right place at the right time as society needs, to have the power to cause change etc.
On the other hand, in personal life history is extremely useful if the right conclusions are drawn from the surrounding factors. Example could be looking at what is happening in the economy of the world, looking back and seeing similar things that happened before and drawing the right conclusions (again, whether the conclusions that are drawn are right, will be seen later in history :) So from the situation with economy that we have been observing for the past 20 years, it is possible to draw conclusions, such as that it is very dangerous to stay in fiat currencies of both, the Americas, of Europe, any fiat currencies at this point in time. Looks like the countries with the most debt will start tightening the financial systems, will start pressing banks on giving up the personal information, will start insisting that foreign financial institutions must not deal with customers from this country, the currency controls and exchanges will be introduced, the gold will again become a currency (even if unofficial) and access to it will be tightly regulated and then it may even be confiscated, so it will become more and more dangerous to hold fiat money and to hold them in government controlled institutions, like banks.
By looking back at history, the future looks quite grim actually, at least for the next 30-50 years, there will be more border controls, there will be residence registration requirements to prevent people from moving from area to area without a permit, there will be more price controls and shortages, the commodities like food and energy will become increasingly difficult to buy at ever increasing prices, the currency will inflate faster and faster, the unemployment will grow bigger and faster, the Government regulations will grow bigger and stronger, the crime rates will shoot up, there maybe martial laws implemented, there maybe some form of collectivization of resources coming, especially farm lands and properties to maintain 'stability' of the society.
Things are changing and history can be observed in many different times to have changed in similar ways, of-course today there are differences: the Internet for example, so what does that mean? It means there will be more controls imposed over this technological barrier to controls.
This information could be useful for personal planing of future events and personal financial decision making.
Science is important, but history I truly believe is crucial to be able to recognize and work out problems in society, which cannot be fixed by any scientific means (not counting blasting everyone with nuclear weapons or using biological WMDs of-course).
Those who do not know history do not understand what is happening with them in the present and cannot at all recognize the warning signs to come in the future.
Knowing history is like having a telescope that sees the future, and telescopes are quite scientific, no?
Those who are in control of things in present are in control of minds and ideas. To control the present means to control the future and that is a very powerful statement not because it is obvious but because of the implication that your future is predetermined by those in control.
It was in an empty forest and nobody was listening to the clock.
First, they came for the History books...
Those who control the present, control the past. Those who control the past, control the future.
Google already provides DNS servers, why not encrypted ones?
There is a fix for that, look at what Opera is doing, they are allowing you to browse in a mode, that first caches the pages on Opera side and then pre-processes them and sends them to the browser. This could also be used to surf all the found sites through an SSL encrypted connection.
I disagree with Rand on the Oil spill, it is not supposed to be a position of a libertarian that damage must be socialized while profits privatized, that is not acceptable from point of view of common resources. Obviously public has responsibility to fight against BP, Transocean, Halliburton etc. because if the public chooses to do nothing, soon enough there will be no natural resources left that are still alive/undamaged, thus the public represented by governments should start Class Action Lawsuits against the companies and require that the companies do clean up / pay for it, pay all damages to all parties involved and punitive damages equal to a factor of the actual costs, something like x10 or x100 times the actual damages.
Also when it concerns the Act of 1964, Rand Paul should have said that in the balance of things, the rights of minorities were violated, thus shifting the balance of equal opportunities too much to one side, so were he in government at that time, he should have tried to modify the language but eventually should have voted for the Act.
Now to be clear, I am completely, totally, utterly, uncompromisingly against government creating laws that limit rights and freedoms of anybody. This means I am against the government institutionalizing slavery. I am just as much against the government creating laws that violate people's rights to private property and freedom of speech. Any kind of hate speech laws - I am completely against that. Any kind of violation of the right of individual to private property by government law - I am completely against that. So in my view it is incorrect to force any business or anybody to accept the terms of behavior set by government law. This of-course does not include criminal behavior - murder, beatings, etc.
If I had to vote on that Act of 64, I would have tried to modify it, so that business owners rights were not violated. If I failed at that, I would have still voted for the Act, because as a libertarian, I see that on balance of things, the rights of people to equal start, equal treatment was violated for too long and Free Market suffers from that.
My basic principles are actually those, of an Objectivist, I am more of Ayn Rand supporter than of Rand Paul, so I cannot have Government passing laws on public good.
Just as she came from USSR, only at the start of that country, I came from it at the end of it and I understand that dictatorship by government is the worst part of any society and it always starts with 'good intentions'. I can't have it.
You are looking at it all wrong, the God of Jobs requires that each significant batch of new iToys is washed in blood of someone, who committed suicide while in deep depression. This is how the iToy gets its final touch, something magical that makes people want to continue buying iToys, regardless of any common sense and reason really.
Only 9 by now? The Gods are not too pleased.
GWB suxors
and
After Bush and Obama, this is just Another Big A$$ Mistake, America.
(vote libertarian)
That's so cruel, it is unbearably cruel to do that.
To the oil well.
I remember in 97/98 writing an Intranet (a buzz at that time) app for Coke Canada to do some sort of internal accounting and I needed a way to submit data and bring it back to the browser without a refresh. Figured out a way to do it with parent/child frames and some javascript to communicate between them (top.function or parent.function something like that).
Then, not too long from that time, I learn that MS has come up with a way of doing it through Javascript without a Frame: XML HTTP Request and then something like AJAX was born that way. It's an easier approach than using frames, so there you go, that's an innovation though sort of obvious if you are a browser author and ever wanted to do something like that, but still.
He simply wanted to try and push the world into his particular Walled Garden.
- and again, he failed in a mediocre way where the greatest Jobs has succeeded.
Smart move. Without a doubt you will be recognized as a high thinker and a shrewd strategist and promoted into a position of unstoppable power.
CRAP, that's my proprietary BUSINESS MODEL!
Damn you, /., for revealing all that stands between our Intellectual Property value and the abyss of impossible to implement DRM scheme!
CRAP, that's my proprietary BUSINESS MODEL! Damn you, /., for revealing all that stands between our Intellectual Property value and the abyss of impossible to implement DRM scheme!
we just shrink the box, until our current thinking overcomes the natural physical boundaries of it.
but can it utilize revolutionary interfaces to productize cross-media e-services to mesh extensible niches which helps to incubate end-to-end communities and to drive sticky functionalities while scaling collaborative systems in an effort to monetize open-source convergence?
We are all about transitioning value-added web-readiness here.